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houserautha · 12 days

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These Destined Ends

Part Fifteen

Summary: Jessica fulfilled the wishes of the Bene Gesserits to produce a daughter. You’re now burdened with the task of not only marrying the na-Baron, but also bearing his child — the Kwisatz Haderach. Will you take your fate into your own hands? Or will it always belong to those who control you?

Pairings: Feyd-Rautha x F!Reader

Word Count: 3.9k

Warnings: description of injuries/wounds, blood, reader and Feyd go through some shit, I take Dune lore/canon and reality into my own hands

A/N: well you don’t know me, but I know you/and I’ve got a message to give to you

Waves crash on the shore of Caladan.

The silhouette approaches you from the east, cowl billowing in the breeze off the sea. At first you think it must be your father but the figure is much too young, though bearing striking resemblance to Leto. He stops a few feet from you, dressed in a stillsuit. You search his face — handsome, angular, familiar to you in a way that you can't quite explain. Dark curls hang over blue-on-blue eyes that speak of plenty of time on Arrakis.

His mouth is moving, talking to you, but you can't understand anything he's saying. You try to get closer but every step you take he seems to take two backwards, just barely out of reach.

"Who are you?" You plead with him.

The boy regards you carefully. In a flash of movement he's upon you, and it's then that you can finally hear him, yelling —

"Wake up."

When you rouse, your fingers clench reflexively, sand slipping through them. But it is not the familiar sand of Caladan where you had been. No, this sand is coarse and fine and burns you where it comes in contact with your skin. Your mouth is dry, sand gritting between your teeth, mingling with the copper taste of blood. The discomfort becomes too much to bear and you do your best to draw yourself into a sitting position.

Instantly you feel faint, your mind swimming with pain and confusion. There's a deep rumbling beneath you. It takes only a moment for you to gather enough of your senses to determine its cause — you'd seen it before, felt it. Leto took you out on a thopter before and you rescued men from becoming sandworm food.

The horrible image of the worm's massive jaws closing in on the harvest machine flashes through your mind. Panic seizes you, followed by a flood of memories.

The dinner party. The thopter crash.

Feyd.

You scramble, feet trying to find purchase in the sand. Blood thoroughly wets the ground. It drips over your brow. A head injury, then, which explains the excess of blood and your muddled movements. Your body screams out in protest as you wheel in a circle, searching desperately for your husband. The last memory you had was him throwing himself over you as the thopter plummeted into the desert.

If you were still alive, it couldn't have been very long ago. The rumbling under your feet grows more intense, louder, and in the distance you can hear the shifting of sand over the high-pitched whine in your ears. You don't have much time.

A dozen yards from you, you spot the mangled body of the thopter. Was Feyd trapped beneath it? Falling and sliding, you clamor over to the crash site and begin sifting through the rubble. One side of the thopter is engulfed in flames and you're forced to stay away from it. "Feyd! Feyd!"

You've about given up hope when you notice a slender white hand poking out from the wrecked machine. Feyd lays beneath a fallen beam of metal, face even paler than usual and blood dribbling from his nose. "You're-You're alive," he breathes.

You open your mouth to reply but find your throat too dry to form words. Tears spring to your eyes. Desperately you push on the beam but the best you can do is shift it slightly, provoking a moan of pain from Feyd. His lids flutter.

"Go," he orders you weakly.

You vehemently shake your head. I'm not leaving you. Not again.

Blood spurts from your fingers as you claw at the metal, nails ripping from their beds. You're frenzied in your movements, the rumbling turning into a dull groaning sound. The crash invited the sandworm to your location, and you had to free Feyd before it came upon you both.

You scan your surroundings. Plucking a piece of warped metal from the wreckage, you slide it under the bar trapping Feyd and push with all of your might — like a fulcrum, one side of the bar lifts ever so slightly. Triumph surges through you but is quickly dashed. Feyd's torso is ripped from under one breast across his stomach and to the hip on the other side, a ghastly wound that's bubbling with ink-colored blood. There's no way he can move on his own.

You send a silent apology to Feyd as you're forced to lower the bar back down. The ringing in your ears has intensified but you can make out the word "Go" from his lips. Sweat coats your face, beneath your dress. You have to find someway to drag Feyd out of the wreckage while simultaneously lifting the bar that's fallen across him. Every second ticks by accompanied by the rattling of the incoming worm.

Using more strength than you should have, you heave a large portion of metal onto the end of your makeshift lever. It lifts again, but you know you have a limited amount of time before the weight of the beam sends it crashing back down.

You forgo any rationality as you grab Feyd's ankles and begin to drag him out, his face morphing into one of immense pain. His limp weight is even more difficult to pull than when he's conscious. Teeth gritting, muscles straining, you manage to yank him mostly free before the bar falls down — crunching on top of his arm.

Feyd howls out in pain.

Guilt fills you but you force it down, working to reset the lever so that you might finally free him. His black blood stains the sand as you slide your hands under his arms and begin to pull him back from the wreckage, summoning all of your strength in order to do so. There's no distance that seems far enough away from the crash, but you don't know how much further you can go.

The blood from the gash on your head drips onto Feyd's face. Exhaustion wears on you.

Then, without warning, the ground begins to give under you and Feyd slips from your grasp. You clamor to catch hold of him — snatching him by his maimed hand. A renewed burst of strength guides you into yanking him up and over the receding sand and several feet away. Shock paralyzes you as you watch the ginormous jaws of the worm open up and swallow the thopter whole, the entirety of the desert that you had only just seconds ago been occupying.

Ripples of aftershock course through the ground. You don't know if you can manage to pull Feyd any further. Does one worm inspire others to follow it?

The thought nags at you as your mind slips again into a state of unconsciousness, darkness enveloping your vision.

When you wake again, you find your body badly baked from the duel Arrakis suns. Every inch of your skin is red, inflamed, skin peeling in some places. Pain spirals through you.

You want to cry but the lack of water in your system has sufficiently dried you out. Your entire body, inside and out, feels like sandpaper.

Feyd lays next to you where you had dragged him, seemingly unconscious. Blood surrounds him. The sight of it seizes you with horror and you shakily lift a hand to test his pulse. It's faint, but it's there, as fragile as a hummingbird.

You know it's stupid to remove any clothing, but you can't think of any other option. The skin beneath your dress protests against the glare of the sun. How long had you been unconscious? How many days had passed? You lay out your tattered dress, adorn only in your sheer shift, and battle your rising nausea to roll Feyd onto it.

It's not easy to move him in your weakened state and it takes several attempts, but finally you deposit him beneath a sandy dune, offering a modicum of shade. It's a welcome reprieve from the suns, though the heat oppresses you from all sides. Thoroughly fatigued, you collapse onto the sand beside Feyd and nestle into his side.

His heart pounds softly beneath your ear.

Had it truly only been a short while ago that you were in the palace?

Trembling, you wipe sweat from your brow and press your fingers to Feyd's cracked, sunburnt lips and then your own.

At least, you think, if you die, you will die with him by your side.

It's impossible to discern reality from dreams. You vaguely remember fending off curious lizards and something resembling a small mouse. Giant birds sense you and Feyd's deteriorating health and circle, waiting to feast.

At one point a tanned, bearded face swims before your eyes, joined by several other similar looking faces. You think you remember them arguing and pointing fingers before finally lifting you onto a stretcher-type apparatus.

"Get...Feyd..." you mumble.

The third time you wake, your mind is much more clear. The blisters across your skin have settled somewhat and your throat no longer feels seared by the sun. You blink. Above your head is smooth rock, the air decidedly wet and damp. A foul odor pervades your nose.

"She's awake!" A feminine voices startles you, drawing your attention sideways. The room appears to be carved out of the rock, rounded and only a few feet in length. There's an opening in the cave that serves as a door, which promptly spits out a Fremen woman.

"Lady Y/N," she says, eyes bright. "Can you hear me?"

How did she know your name?

You test your voice, finding that it is usable, if not lilting and croaking. "Where is he? Where is Feyd-Rautha?"

The Fremen woman at your bedside frowns slightly. She takes your hand. "How do you feel?"

Your body stiffens and you jerk upright. Somewhere in the depths of your mind, saturated by years of etiquette lessons, you're aware that you must look deranged, wild. But you don't care. You grab the woman's shoulders.

"Where is Feyd? Where is he? Tell me he's alive."

The woman fends off your hands and pushes you back down onto the bed. "Lady Y/N, you must rest. You risk opening your stitches."

"Where is Feyd? Is he alive? I must see him this instance," you chatter, reeling with desperation. The woman is able to keep you seated in your weakened state, though you exert all of your strength into combating her.

"ENOUGH. LEAVE US."

The Voice pierces the space. The Fremen woman immediately releases you and disappears from your vision. A shadow drapes over you as a tall, slender figure swathed in chains and orange fabric arrives at your bedside. Now you really doubt your sanity — word-like runes are imprinted on her face, her skin pale despite the blue color of her eyes.

Eyes that you have seen before.

"Mother?" You weakly say. Perhaps this was just another dream, like the boy who greatly resembled your father. The heat had split open your skull like an egg and spilled out your mind like a runny yolk.

"Hello, Y/N." The woman removes her hood, revealing a cap of burnished hair. "I know you have a lot of questions. But you must lay down."

"You're alive? But —"

Jessica sits down beside you, a phantom, as regal and elegant as ever. "Yes. And so is Feyd-Rautha, thanks to you. He's very fragile."

"Can I see him?"

Her mouth quirks like she's torn between displeasure at this request and amusement. "We have him in a coma in order for his body to heal."

"We?"

"The Fremen," Jessica says with a wistful smile. "They found you and Stilgar recognized me in you. Otherwise they would've taken your water and disposed of Feyd-Rautha. It took quite a bit of convincing on my part for them to take him."

Your head pounds. "I-I don't understand. I thought Rabban killed everyone? How are you alive? Is Father alive?"

"No," Jessica says softly. There’s a trace of sadness beneath the surface of her cool demeanor. "I managed to escape. Bene Gesserits, as you know, as revered to the Fremen so my status was the only thing that kept me alive. As does yours as the mother of the Lisan al-Gaib."

A wave of numbness washes over you. "He...survived?"

"Ah, so you’re aware."

You close your eyes, throat bobbing. You don't know if you feel grateful or not. "Of course I am. I felt it there, that spark of life."

The one that Feyd placed in your womb. Even now, even as you had fought to ignore it before, you feel it nestled in your uterine lining, impossible to ignore. Your baby.

"It is a boy."

"I know," you tell her fiercely.

You might not be a Bene Gesserit but you already know the child better than you know yourself. Nausea rolls over you, though not from your tiny son. You had half of the hope that the crash would've snuffed out the life inside you. As much as your heart longs for him to thrive, you grieve over his burdened existence.

You can feel Jessica examining you closely, even though you keep your eyes shut as if doing so would block out the world. "It's still early," you say, though there's no doubt in your mind that your mother already knows.

"Yes."

"What happens next?"

In way of reply, Jessica presents you a small cup of water and a slate of what looks like dried meat. Spice dominates any other flavor but you gulp both down greedily, not realizing how hungry you actually were.

"Rest now," Jessica says, rising to her feet. Her hand goes to your abdomen. "You must heal for the sake of your son."

Disgust rears its head, ugly and twisted. You are just barely over a month pregnant and already your health is only for the sake of the baby, not yourself. Finally you have become the vessel that everyone has been waiting for. You blink back tears as your mother departs and, to your reluctance, slide back into a restless slumber.

Your healing is quick, most of it spent feigning sleep as several Fremen come to pray at your bedside. You practice walking on your blistered feet and gaining strength, all while coming to terms with your new life.

Jessica was alive and well. Your father was not. She had become something called a Sayyadina and held considerable sway over the Fremen. You did your best to acclimate to life in the sietch and the stares of the Fremen — both in reverence to you and in distrust.

All you cared about was seeing Feyd, however, but they refused you entrance to the room where they kept him. It outraged you when you discovered he was considered a prisoner, but Jessica addressed the matter calmly.

"He's a Harkonnen," she had reminded you, "their sworn enemy. You must speak to them to alleviate their fears."

And so you find yourself before the sietch, Fremen gathered below you. You waver slightly. They still gaze at you with obvious suspicion, despite whatever lies Jessica had been plying them with. They were right to be distrustful of you, though, a fact that you can not deny. The scar Rabban had inflicted upon them was not easy to be healed. Still, worry wears at the edges of your mind as Jessica indicates for you to start.

“I will not waste breath introducing myself to you,” you begin, “you know who I am and I understand your caution, your weariness of me and my husband. We were exiled by the Baron after an attempt on his life.”

A murmur rises at this, and even Jessica looks at you strangely. You hadn’t told her everything yet.

You forge ahead, “We may be Harkonnen in name but we seek vengeance against them, much as I suspect you do. Although we wear the face of your enemies I implore you to think of us as allies — we have the same wish to defeat the Harkonnens, the Emperor and his vindictive rule.” You pause to let your words sink in. Trying to gauge the reactions of the Fremen is almost impossible with their stoic nature, but you think that they might be more tolerant.

Jessica signals to you with her hands to keep going, a thorn of annoyance in your side. She coached you for the next part of your speech and you do not agree with it. But you are desperate to keep Feyd alive, and you, so you will spread the lies of the Bene Gesserits.

“I cannot express in words how grateful I am for your generosity and kindness in taking us in after the crash —” as you were trained by your mother, your hand flutters up to your lower abdomen, “—in my womb I carry the Messiah, the one destined to bring life back to Arrakis, and by keeping me safe you have also preserved the health of the Lisan al-Gaib.”

This time the mourners are much louder, almost protesting, and the crowd shifts. “It’s true? You are pregnant with the prophesied child?”

The man who comes forward looks familiar to you. You suspect he was one of the Fremen who found you in the desert. The way the others look to him makes you believe that he is some sort of representative, a leader. You regard him with as much conviction as you can muster.

“I am. The one the Bene Gesserits have promised to deliver Arrakis from its perpetual drought. My child, the child sired by Feyd-Rautha — as it was prophesied — will bring life back to Dune.”

Dune. The word carries an important weight to these people, the name for the planet from long ago. Jessica had told you to mention it, and clearly it had the effect that she wanted.

“The Holy Mother,” the man replies, tremulous. He drops to his knees. “Lisan al-Gaib!”

“Get up, Stilgar,” a feminine voice hisses. A woman parts from the crowd next, gazing at you with burning defiance. “How do we know this is true? That any of this is true?”

“You have good reason to doubt anything I say, Chani.”

Her expression twitches slightly but she does not reveal any other emotion. Jessica warned you that she might rebel against you — and now can use her predictable suspension against her.

“It means nothing that you know my name,” she challenges you. “We’re supposed to expect an unborn child to save us?”

You summon the same regality your mother imparts upon others, lifting your chin slightly. “I met your father, Kynes, and he spoke to me of his own plans to rebuild Arrakis. He was a great man. As you know, my father, too, was stolen from me by the Emperor and his puppet, the Baron.” You let your upper lip curl back in a sneer at this, then settle your features in determination. “Until my son grows to fulfill the prophecy, my husband and I will strive to join you in battle against our shared enemies.”

You had met Kynes, but he had not shared his plans with you, that was another imbedded lie told to you by Jessica. This, again, seemed to have the desired effect with the gathered crowd. The man, Stilgar, still gazes up at you with unabashed devotion and respect. Chani’s mouth screws up in anger but she does not grace you with a reply, choosing instead to slip back into the crowd.

Opening your mouth to continue, to sway the ones not entirely convinced by your facade, you promptly shut it at the interruption of a guttural yell that makes your stomach twist. Feyd.

The show was over. You all but jump from your elevated position, frantic. “That’s Feyd. Where is he? He’s in pain. Bring me to him.”

You’re ordering anyone you come in contact with, begging them to take you. He yells again and this time you take off, behest to your mother, who tries to chase after you. You follow the sounds of his yells as they turn from pain into fury, scrambling through the unfamiliar layout of the sietch. Sweat stands out on your brow from the concentrated effort of it all but finally you find him in a room similar to the one you had been in.

Several things stand out to you all at once, a dizzying kaleidoscope of information — Feyd stands in the center of the room, shirtless, a large bandage wrapped around his middle that’s blossoming with blood. He is more gaunt than you have ever seen him, cheekbones standing out in his face; his dark eyes possess an unholy anger.

That you recognize, and it relieves you slightly.

Feyd advances on one of the Fremen in the room. “Where is she? Where is my wife?”

The collateral damage of his tantrum is evident around the room: the bed knocked aside, what you assume to be medical equipment overturned. To their credit, the Fremen healers hold their own against him, regarding him brazenly.

“Feyd,” you breathe out, stepping into the room. It would not promote good relations between you and the Fremen if they attack one another.

His gaze dart to you and it’s as if a wire has been severed. His shoulders relax instantly, the anger leaving him as quickly as a candle being blown out by an invisible force. Feyd crosses the room in only a few strides before embracing you tightly, burying his face in your hair.

“I thought you dead,” he rasps.

Your heart clenches. “I wouldn’t leave you even in death,” you whisper fervently to him. “Nothing can keep me from you.”

Feyd withdraws slightly, searching your face as you might suddenly disappear, committing it all to memory. “Are you alright?” His fingers ghost over the wound on your forehead.

“I am,” you say. “Feyd, I have to tell you —”

“The prisoner, er,” the healer falters after a pointed glare from you, “the patient needs to lie back down. He was about to receive his dose of medicine when he woke from his coma. And his movement has reopened his wound.”

Feyd snarls at this. “I’m fine.”

“Listen to them,” you instruct him. The bandage around his middle has become saturated with blood. For his sake, you guide Feyd back to the bed. His gaze remains firmly on you as the Fremen work to change his bandage and disinfect the wound.

“Drink,” the Fremen say.

Your eyes widen slightly as he’s handed a vial of liquid. “What is that?”

“It is a small dosage of sandworm bile,” one of the healers says distractedly, “the Sayyadina said that it was necessary for him to survive. To balance out the poison in his system and to sustain his life.”

“The only thing worse than the taste are the…dreams it gives me,” Feyd says. His brows furrow. “That’s what woke me.”

“Dreams?” You sit down on the edge of the bed with him.

Feyd considers replying then but thinks better of it, glaring at the healers. “Leave me to be with my wife. You are done here.”

You want to reprimand him for treating the healers as such but they oblige anyway. He waits until they’re gone before he says, unbelievably fragile, “I dreamt of many things. Unspeakable things.”

“Like what?” You lace your fingers in his.

Pain spasms on his face. “I do not wish to impart them upon you.” All you have to do is read his expression to know that he’s imploring you not to press, so you don’t despite your concerns. “What did you wish to tell me, jewel?”

Panic flashes through you as quick and efficient as a knife between your ribs. It’s clear that Feyd still needs time to rest and recover, and if you tell him of the pregnancy then he would do exactly the opposite. You allow a small smile to grace your mouth instead, and ease him gently back down. “Just that I’m relieved you’re okay.”

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#feyd rautha #dune #feyd x reader #feyd x you #feyd rautha harkonnen #fanfic writing #writers on tumblr #fanfic #writing #these destined ends

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jiminjamms · 2 months

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sex therapy :: 28. perfect timing

chapter tags/warnings: therapist! toji. manipulative! naoya. toji defends you. naoya 100% has anger issues. infidelity/adultery. extremely strong language. corruption. family drama.

word count: 3.8k

notes: hugs to everyone! been a while, and my busy days at work (plus straggling mental health) have not been doing me favors. writing, reading, and interacting with you all have been bringing me joy. i spent extra time on this chapter to make this piece what i hoped it would be. enjoy. likes, comments, and reblogs are much appreciated. xoxo

fic masterlist | 01. 02. 03. 04. 05. 06. 07. 08. 09. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

Toji loved working on Sundays.

With his colleagues off, Sundays were the only day in the week when Toji could be the sole person in the therapy office. He appreciated the slowness that came with working on the weekends, allowing him to balance his time for scheduled appointments with unoccupied windows used to strategize and decompress.

He relished in the lull. The tranquility. The peace.

But alas, the serenity was cut short on this particular Sunday, as someone barged through the entrance like a wild boar, causing a rambunctious racket as the front door flung open with immense force.

The doorknob clanged against the wall, and Toji—sitting behind the reception counter—looked up from a patient file on his computer screen.

With both curiosity and annoyance, he peered above his monitor.

The black tips to blond hair. The sharp brown glare. The permanent frown.

Who else could this have been but Naoya Zenin, presenting himself in the flesh?

The incomer’s expression consisted of nothing but antipathy as he bared his teeth at the doorway, his hands balled into fists by his sides. Based on how he glared upon seeing his older cousin, anyone could safely conclude that this man was beyond livid.

Must he pester me on the weekend? Toji thought as he mentally shook his head, clucking his tongue faintly in disapproval. He had not seen Naoya ever since his official departure from the Zenin Corporation and household, which was months ago. From his recollection, the manchild before him had a fickle personality, bursting into immature fits that easily made someone younger (like his son Megumi) seem like the actual adult around.

Given this, Toji legitimately did not understand how you had been putting up with Naoya as your husband.

As for himself, Toji did his best to ignore the new presence, clicking his mouse as he resumed analyzing the file on his screen. He did not wish to spare a moment longer than necessary tending to the human tornado on his way. If Toji had wanted to deal with Naoya in person, he would have confronted him long ago. Rather, he had decided strategically to watch his cousin wreak havoc from afar to avoid interacting with his burdensome family. Everyone in the Zenin household, except for Mai and Maki, was not worth the aggravation that came with mere association.

Now, especially with today’s booked schedule, Toji would not be able to make an exception to soothe Naoya’s upcoming tantrum.

On the other hand, Naoya had no better choice than to drag himself to his older cousin’s doorstep.

Had circumstances been any different, he also could not bother to see Toji again. He hadn't talked to Toji in months. Why would he? After many years of neglect and inferiority, Naoya finally achieved everything he wanted.

Or so he thought.

This was why, to face his estranged relative again—after recently learning that you had been seeing him for weeks—was a grand ego blow to Naoya, who could not accept the possibility that he was losing his reputation’s very foundation to the man he had envied all his life.

Recognizing the indignation that fumed from the current Zenin heir, Toji seized the opportunity to inveigle his cousin and greeted him with a cheer.

“Good morning!” he beamed, raising his hand in salutation. The scar by his lips flexed from his grin. “Do you have an appointment?”

Naoya scowled awfully.

"Great to finally see you again, Toji Zenin."

Immediately, the said man’s smile fell at his cousin's overly casual tone. "Woah, there,” he shot back. “Show some respect, will you? First, my last name is Fushiguro. Do not refer to me as Zenin. Second, calling me by my first name is bad manners. I'm older than you, kid."

Without question, the comment irked the blonde. Of all people in the universe, this was Naoya Zenin in question, a hubristic man who hated humiliation and the need to concede. His demeanor hardened with resentment while he struggled to maintain his composure.

"Fine, Mr. Fushiguro."

Toji quirked another smile.

Theoretically, he had no problem demanding more but decided to be nice by saying, “That’s better.” He locked his computer as he shifted his attention, crossing his arms as his back rested against his chair. “I haven't seen you in a while. Remember the days when you used to work here, too? Good times, hm?" All rhetorical chit-chat and pleasantries and, as expected, there was no response. "Well, I have only a few minutes to spare, after which I have business to attend. So...what brings you to visit?”

Another ironic question, as Toji already knew the answer.

Over the phone, he had spoken with an irate Naoya who demanded to speak to his wife and have her back home. Despite his insufferable treatment toward you, the Zenin CEO could not stand how his apartment remained empty the past few nights, meaning he hadn’t gotten his dick soaked by his lawful spouse like he should be doing.

But then again, Toji thought, he already has a mistress to satisfy himself with.

Meanwhile, Naoya might as well be digging holes into his cousin’s skull from how his glower fizzed with malice. He opened his mouth, only to promptly purse his lips again to choose his reply carefully.

“Did you make her see you?”

Quite a question.

Toji blinked rapidly through an empty stare.

Where did that come from?

“‘See me?’” he had to clarify.

In one smooth motion, Toji stood from his seat, his chair bouncing back slightly when he did. With his arms still folded over his chest, he meandered around the counter area that separated the client and employee zones in the reception area, stopping mere steps away from the younger man.

Then, he repeated, “See me who?”

Naoya did not appear amused in the slightest.

His hazel eyes all but narrowed from vexation. The paroxysm of negative emotions on the blonde’s face made him appear ready to snap. Like a button ready to blast everything around him, he was close to letting his wrath take over. “Did you send my wife your therapist information just so that you could talk to her and figure out how to get revenge on me?”

What an oddly specific accusation.

“Why would I do such a thing?” It was more of a statement than a question, and Toji could see how his nonchalance profoundly irritated the other man. “She found me like how all my other therapy clients find me. But me reaching out to her personally merely to spite you? No. That's only some shit you would think to do. Unlike yourself, I'm not that petty."

Toji was blunt in his response, he knew.

In his defense, he would rather cut to the chase than beat around the bush.

He no longer headed the Zenin conglomerate, but he still had a therapy practice to manage and a family to look after. With his packed schedule, every second mattered and he wasn’t the type to waste his time lingering around and dealing with non-important business matters, such as the grouchy kid with him.

His observations definitely blew a fuse within Naoya, though.

"Excuse me?!" In two sharp steps, he closed the distance between Toji and himself, jabbing a finger into the other's chest. Bold. “You’re fucked, you know that? You’re so damn fucked," he hissed, and the edges of his mouth contorted into a derisive sneer. “You…You’re goddamn obsessed with Y/N, and you don’t even realize that! Give me a fucking break. You only give two hoots about the bitch because she’s my wife, but you don't actually give a shit about the woman herself.”

At that, Toji immediately swatted the hand from his pec.

“Incorrect, I do,” he retorted, his tone firm. “But do you care about her?” and he didn’t need to hear a response for that one, so he went on. “No, you do not. You know what? I found her situation sad because every time your wife talked about you, she told me about how you neglect and can’t satisfy her. This entire time, I was sorry for her precisely because I know the person you are. Fine, you call her your wife. What that means is she's not just a pussy for you to play with. You can’t just pick and choose different parts of her. But where were you when your wife was crying?” He paused briefly, letting his words sink into his silenced cousin’s head. “Where were you, hm? Where were you when she was upset? Anyone with eyes could’ve seen that she’s been having a hard time! But where?” and Toji gave Naoya one pointed glare. “Where…was her husband?”

In the sheets with an older woman.

Of course, that very husband would not admit that aloud, especially since he had yet to realize that his older cousin already knew about his affair with the other’s ex-wife. Instead, Toji saw Naoya twist his lips into a deeper frown.

“I have a company to lead,” was the excuse he spat out, and he ran both hands through his light strands in evident frustration. “I can’t believe our family thought that you were a capable leader. I, however, saw right through your facades, alright? Despite all your fucking degrees and licenses, you left the Zenin Corporation as a shithole for me to manage.”

“No, I had set the company to run efficiently,” Toji retorted, keeping his levelheaded demeanor. “You turned the Zenin Corporation into—in your own words—a shithole. You decided to fire everyone I had hired. So currently, your managers are inept, your shareholders are unhappy, your daddy is getting angry, and the most convenient person to blame is me.” He shrugged dismissively. “Rookie mistakes. E for Effort, I guess. Luckily for you, Y/N is a good way to cover up the competence which you lack. Thus, she’s only useful when you deem her as such.”

Naoya scoffed, and his shoulders rose and fell with each enraged breath. “Because you don’t understand what a burden she can otherwise be. Besides, I can treat and use her in whatever way I please!”

He might not display this visibly, but Toji felt disgusted.

“Don’t talk like you own her. That’s disrespectful. She's a person, not an object.”

"What—" Naoya paused, and his eyebrows creased in annoyance. "Who the fuck do you think you are? That woman is my wife.”

“Then treat her like one,” Toji shot back. While matching Naoya's hostility with his own, he could see the latter's eyes widen at the remark. Not that Toji paid him any mind, and he continued staring at his younger cousin with an unfazed demeanor that showed how willing he was to defend. "She might be your wife, but she is not your property.”

As if Naoya would care.

Rather, he clenched his hands into tight fists by his sides. “You need to stay away from her. You’ve had your chances with marriages. Y/N is mine and not yours. I swear, if you talk about her with your gross lips again, I'll—" He stopped, as he wasn’t quite sure what would be a good threat. “I’ll—”

“You’ll do what, kid?” Toji interrupted, knowing just how pissed Naoya would get from every reminder of who the older person was and who the actual successor to the Zenin inheritance should be. “I’ll keep her since you can’t. You call her a burden, but I don’t find her to be one. I don’t know about you, but I like her. Have you ever had a civil conversation with her? She's sweet and quite interesting to talk to.”

The continuous comments unsurprisingly make Naoya bristle further.

“I said don’t talk about her like that!” he snarled. “Here you are, bossing me around and telling me to treat her better, but listen to how you talk about the woman! Holy shit, you're such a fucking creep.”

“Me?” Toji repeated, appalled by his bravery to say those words. “Mind you, boy, she is the one who wanted to talk to me first. As her concerned therapist and the more mature adult, I believe I must listen to her complaints and make her feel better, especially when she keeps whining she’s not being fucked good.”

Naoya breathed heavily, his chest undulating while he boiled with rage. Yet, as the younger, more naive, and less physically adept challenger, he could not make himself fight back against the other man. “You...You don’t know shit, Fushiguro.”

Immediately, Toji arched a brow.

“Really?" Was that supposed to be an insult? "I don't know shit?" This was hilarious! "Oh, boy. I know a lot of fucking shit alright. About ‘your wife’ or whatever you want to deem her, there is not a single chance in hell that she’d ever think about calling you her husband anymore.”

Naoya stared back, rather stupefied.

In any other situation, he would simply take the remark as a cheap way to rouse him. Of course, talking about you would be the easiest route to do so. This time, though, Toji’s suspiciously happy visage as he retraced his steps to the counter and positioned himself comfortably against the surface had him uneasy.

He did not like what the other man insinuated.

"What...do you mean?" As much as he tried, Naoya could not hide how affected he appeared. “Our marriage is none of your damn business.”

Toji shrugged. "Marriage? What marriage? I don't see the rings on her finger, kid. Heard she tossed them. Apparently, you made her upset enough for her to take them off."

Without a better way to retaliate, Naoya clenched his teeth to signal his displease. “Ring or not, she’s still my wife,” he spat. “Plus, I do not want my wife around a womanizer like you.”

Instead of taking umbrage from your husband’s words, Toji tossed his head to the side and let out a deep, harrowing chortle. “Wow! You’re one to talk," he rebuked. "The whole household used to joke about how you brought a different girlfriend to each of our family dinners. At the moment, you’re married, and what? You want your spouse to come home, but you then drive her away. You want her to be a good partner, but torment her when she does. Please, you are embarrassing yourself. Why don’t you make up your fucking mind?” With his emerald gaze returning to the younger man, Toji then added, “Now, if you excuse me. My next client is arriving and I have an appointment."

Still, Naoya was not ready to let the conversation end. “We’re not done. You think you’re all ‘high and mighty.’ But, you’re low, Toji. So, so low. Your last wife was a divorcee, and now you’re a motherfucker into married women, huh?”

"So were you."

"What?"

"Baby?"

And, in one go, all signs of life drained away from Naoya swiftly at the new voice.

No fucking way, his expression seemed to read as he craned his neck around in rigid and robotic motions. Naoya had to blink twice to confirm the woman by the door before he placed his arms down and froze.

Mari, who returned the man’s aghast expression with perplexion, had her dark brows crinkled. “What…Why are you looking at me like that?”

Even with Naoya’s face presently angled away, Toji could see his eyes widen at the ludicrous question. Yet, they both thought the same thing: did she forget where she was?

“What are you doing here? I did not expect you,” she continued. “But, I’m here for an…an appointment.”

Her voice trailed off.

When the woman finally seemed to remember that Toji was also there, her dark eyes rounded in alarm. Wait, her expression seemed to say as she very, very slowly dragged her sights to the man by the counter. Once her eyes met Toji’s, her jaw fell slack before she promptly slapped both hands over her gaping mouth.

With the two visitors transformed into Medusa's stone statues, Toji took great gratification in the perfect timing. This coincidence far exceeded his expectations because he honestly did not anticipate ever being in the same vicinity as Naoya and Mari, yet here he was. Presented this chance, Toji pushed his bottom lip out in fake thought and furrowed his brows, pointing at Mari then Naoya then at Mari again.

“Seems like you two know each other?” he asked in mock confusion, his finger swinging between the pair. “How come I didn’t get invited to the party? Has something been going on between my baby cousin and my ex-wife?”

No response.

So, he continued.

“What? Were you two spying on me or something?” (He knew the answer was yes.) “Or…wait,” and his voice dropped to a dangerous low, “Don’t tell me that you two…have been having an affair?”

Naoya—realizing the trap they had been set up in—swung his arm forward, prepared to defend them with whatever good lies he could spin (which Toji knew that he had a talent for), only for the woman to speak up first.

“We’re acquaintances.”

The manner in which Mari snapped caused Toji to pop a brow in surprise.

Oh? he noted. His suggestion on their illicit relationship appeared to strike a particular nerve. Even Naoya could sense the danger in his mistress’s overreaction as his eyes widened in horror. He tried to give her a warning expression, but she failed to see him.

By the way, did Naoya, know that Mari—well—wasn’t very streetsmart?

Maybe, but he likely prioritized keeping her in his bed to pay her absent wits any attention.

At this, Toji could not pass on the excellent opportunity to simultaneously provoke the two people who betrayed him.

“Just acquaintances?” he pressed.

“Yes.”

In another curt response, Mari pressed her lips into a firm line and shot Naoya a ‘shut the hell up and play along’ look, thinking she was slick when Toji only felt second-hand embarrassment from how utterly blatant the communication had been executed.

Pretending to nod along, Toji added, “Interesting. Because I never knew acquaintances called each other ‘baby.’”

Checkmate.

But the woman must not be thinking, as she sensed her inevitable defeat but hurriedly explained herself by saying, “It’s not what you think, Naoya and I haven’t had sex since—”

“Stop,” Toji interrupted before she could finish her sentence. That statement truly crossed the line. The lady must be inane. To talk about her dirty deeds with his relative as if that was appropriate! Clearly, she was oblivious to common sense and proper etiquette, given how she was desperate to try to save some face, resorting to the most crass justifications as if that would ameliorate the issue. Toji felt ashamed to think that he used to be married to this woman for years. While he noticed a fit of pique boiling within him, he ultimately let the ill feelings go. “I never asked about your sex lives. I don’t want to hear about what you two have been doing.”

Plus, the tabloids have shown him enough already.

Nonetheless, Mari’s face brewed with annoyance. She folded her arms firmly and tucked her chin outward. “Well, if that’s the case, then when and where I’m riding your cousin's dick should not matter!”

“Oh my fucking lord, stop talking already!” and this time, it was Naoya who spoke, shouting into his hands and cupping his face from sheer exasperation. He had been stunned speechless for a while but could no longer contain himself. When he picked up his head, he growled with rage as he raised a shaking finger at the woman. “You,” he seethed. “You’re saying all the wrong things! Holy fuck, bitch, how fucking blind are you? Unbelievable!” He leered to the side as if shaking off part of his rage, only to add on, “Just…Just shut the fuck up!”

The sudden, scathing comments soured Mari's mien in seconds. “Wait, but babe—”

“No.” Naoya cut her off right there. “Don’t ‘babe’ or ‘baby’ me with your bullshit anymore. Can’t you fucking see the atrocities you have fucking committed in the last ten minutes? You’re literally ruining my life! Even Y/N wouldn’t be stupid enough to say all the crap you just said! I should’ve never approached a dumb whore like you.”

While Toji had his eyes widened from silent bewilderment, tears began to roll down the woman's cheeks.

“That’s a lie!” For what must be her first time, she had to face the reality that, despite all the pleasure and company she offered Naoya Zenin after his tough days at work, he was an egotistical sociopath and a married man. "That's not what you've been telling me. You know I’m the only person who can make you happy, not the actual whore whom you have at home! These last few months, you would’ve been absolutely miserable without me!”

“Is that a threat?”

“It’s a reminder,” she hissed harshly. “You had said so yourself.”

At this point, Naoya found himself in the middle of a living nightmare.

To think about his wife who had been avoiding him for days, to see his loathsome cousin watch the scene like this was some sort of Netflix episode, and now to witness his mistress ridiculing him like a fucking fool.

“God dammit!” he roared. With animosity overwhelming his sanity, Naoya—who was already on the verge of destruction—only saw red as he lurched forward. He used his arms to sweep everything, all things, anything he could reach from a nearby tabletop onto the floor: a ceramic vase that shattered into shards, magazines that flew in all directions, a framed photograph that clinked upon descent. He didn’t stop there. Like a mid-tantrum toddler, he kicked angrily at the mess, sending paper and broken pottery flying in all directions without much regret for his actions.

In fact, this was cathartic for him. Because the very thing he wanted was to make his cousin's world wretched, just like how the latter had done to him.

“I'm going to find Y/N and bring her back to me, but if either of you…” the blonde warned several moments later, regarding the therapist and the woman with a deathly fire burning in his auburn eyes, “if either of you do more shit to ruin my life in the meantime, I...I will make you regret.”

With that, Naoya stormed off in a huff, releasing all the profanities that have manifested his anger throughout his life. Mari followed soon after, chasing after him in sobs.

Finally, as for Toji, well, he...was stunned.

He blinked thrice in the same second, processing what he had just seen.

He drew in a deep breath...

...and he chuckled.

He knew he looked crazy, laughing to himself in an empty and currently deranged parlor. However, Toji had not felt this triumphant and optimistic in years. He saw a hopeful gleam for himself, for his family, for his colleagues, and for you.

He picked up his phone with a languid grin, scrolling through his contacts and sending over a quick text when he found your name: Guess what?

last chapter || next chapter

end notes: Throughout this fic, Toji and Naoya obviously have a very complicated and terse cousin-ship. For weeks and months, I have been thinking about how to orchestrate this scene, where we see them together for the first time...and with Mari too. Likes and reblogs are appreciated, and let me know in the comments how you all are doing!

taglist: @dissociatingdiva @httpsplanetmarsdotcom @nemoyr @huangfairy @shadowarchon @203steph @agentdedf1sh @cloudybabes @lynn-writes-things @illicitwriter @7oji @kikuchimi @chaoticjojofan @musicisme333 @kumocchin @s-guru @mwahilovemylife @hey-gurls69 @cloudsinthecosmos @moon-mumu-moon @kazscara @skilerfrostfairy @funicidals @nico707 @proteovaldez @tsukiyohanayome @marimoares @qirbys @puffaloxx @sakanoshitaa @arizzu @kissditrio @lewd-bunny14 @mistyheart @szired @supsii @yvy1s @lazyassfinals @katkbc @tokyometronetwork @downtown-roponggi @the-cosmos-network

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princessanonymous · 4 months

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When Night Comes

Platonic Yandere Vampire

Previous Part | Next Part

First Chapter

15. 𝓐𝔀𝓪𝓴𝓮𝓷𝓮𝓭 𝓖𝓻𝓪𝓿𝓮

Time took its course. Days turned into weeks and those turned into months. (Y/n)'s outbursts became few and far between and Dorian liked to think their relationship was growing closer. She retreated less from him and talked to him more often. She was progressively starting to act more comfortably, like the little bright girl he had met in that forest all these months ago.

Dorian thought fondly of the little moments they spent together. Her nightmares were becoming less frequent, but every time she had one, the girl came to him for comfort. They played chess and, while the vampire was still winning against the girl, she was a fast learner and was getting better at it.

(Y/n)'s etiquette was something he was very proud of. They had gone to two other balls and the girl had behaved impeccably. Dorian had received a lot of comments about how the child acted the part of a future vampire very well; that she was a good fit to be amongst their elite society. He relished at those compliments, a proudness only a parent could feel growing in him.

Additionally, he grew more cautious, understanding he had underestimated her wits. He had ensured that she had less contact with the servant. The unfortunate events on that night could not repeat themselves. He wouldn't allow it. The vampire was however positive that they were unlikely to repeat themselves as he had had an enlightening conversation with the child. One that hopefully crushed these foolish ideas out of her head.

· • —– ٠ ⏳ ٠ —– • ·

"I am so relieved you have given up on the silly idea of leaving, doll," Dorian had told her one night as they were both spending time together in the living room.

(Y/n) looked up, but didn't say anything. The vampire, nonchalantly engrossed in the pages of his book, continued his discourse with an air of detached sophistication. "Considering your circumstances, it's not as though you possess anything to return to," he declared, a smirk playing upon his lips, casting a shadow of cruelty. One that was necessary to educate her; she wouldn’t learn otherwise. "You have nothing to go back to. What would you do on your own ?"

She averted her eyes uncomfortably, her shoulders responding with a subtle shrug. "I don't know," she admitted in a soft whisper, her uncertainty palpable.

A chuckle escaped Dorian's lips. "Nothing," he corrected with a pointed emphasis. "But, I am here, which is why there is nothing good in leaving."

· • —– ٠ ⌛️ ٠ —– • ·

(Y/n) knew it. The child knew leaving would be fruitless and foolish. Dorian found comfort in the knowledge that she relied on him, the assurance of her presence intertwining with his sense of control over the situation. She had to understand who was the caretaker here.

Despite the apparent tranquility of their coexistence, the veneer of familial harmony in the household couldn't fully mask the palpable void that lingered within. It was as if an essential piece of their collective puzzle was conspicuously absent, leaving Dorian with an unshakable sense of incompleteness. As the days unfolded and (Y/n) became increasingly amenable to the idea of establishing connections, Dorian seized upon the opportune moment that presented itself. A subtle shift in the familial dynamic paved the way for him to contemplate the reintroduction of that elusive missing piece into their lives. He had been away long enough by now. 72 years of slumber must have taught him a lesson.

"(Y/n), dear," called out the vampire as he entered the library. He had recently bought books for the girl to read and she was spending more time in their library.

She looked up from her armchair, curiosity etched across her features. "Yes?" she inquired.

"Come with me, starshine. I have something to show you," he announced with an air of gleeful anticipation.

She straightened, tension briefly evident in the set of her shoulders, yet she followed him nonetheless, her steps echoing through the dimly lit corridor. As they approached the basement door, she edged closer to him, her unease palpable, and she hesitated for a moment, the uncertainty etched across her face. She shook her head.

"I didn't do anything," she promised with a brittle voice, her words hanging in the air like delicate glass on the verge of shattering. Her eyes pleaded for understanding. Despite the conviction in her voice, there was a vulnerability that betrayed the turmoil within.

He gave her an understanding look, his eyes softening with empathy, acknowledging her discomfort with this place. He recognized that her fear stemmed from the anticipation of potential punishment. After all, the first time she had been allowed in that basement was to be reprimanded. However, he sought to convey that this time would be different.

"I know, dear," he reassured, his comforting touch guiding her forward. "Trust me, I merely want you to meet someone."

She trembled, a palpable shiver coursing through her frame, yet his firm grip on her trembling hand compelled her to follow him nonetheless, even if it was against her wishes. Her steps were hesitant, but they arrived at the room at the back of the corridor and Dorian used the key to unlock the door.

He turned to his child and passed a hand through her hair tenderly. "Wait here for me until I tell you to enter, starshine," he instructed. He smiled when she nodded dutifully. Dorian opened the door and closed it behind him.

The room, untouched since his last visit, held Killian in a state of slumber. Dorian approached him, placing a hand on the lifeless figure's chest. With a sigh, he declared, "I believe we are ready."

He withdrew the wooden stake, an artifact designed to neutralize their kind, and the body, once inert, sprang back to life. The vampire, now released from the temporary paralysis, slowly rose. He gasped out for breath, the sound echoing in the cold silence of the tomb as he stood up from the casket.

He scanned the room, his eyes adjusting to the muted light, and a sense of disorientation lingered. It however disappeared mere instants later when Killian's eyes shot on Dorian as he put his hands on his chest where the wound that had disappeared by now had been. Sensing an opportunity, the dark-haired vampire seized the moment. With a swift and fluid motion, he retrieved the wooden stake discarded in the earlier struggle. The blond vampire realized the imminent threat. He could feel the energy coursing through the blessed weapon, a reminder of the danger it posed. Fortunately, he sidestepped it with ease as the other had been weakened by the stasis he had been put in.

As the recently awakened vampire raised the stake for a second strike, determination etched on his features, Dorian managed to summon a surge of strength. In a swift and calculated move, he intercepted the descending weapon, his hand closing around it just inches away from his own chest. He found himself cornered against the cold wall, his back pressed against the ancient stones. The impact sent a shiver through his undead form, but the immediate danger was averted.

"Welcome back, darling," Dorian greeted, his voice a mixture of defiance and wry amusement, still struggling against the wooden stake the other was pushing dangerously close to his chest.

"Dorian," the other responded, his tone dripping with a dark edge. "You stabbed me."

He glared at the remark, his previous smiling exterior disappearing in mere seconds. "You wanted to leave," he snapped back to justify himself. "I had to do something to make you understand."

"I will leave," Killian declared adamantly. The dark-haired vampire, unmoved by Dorian's explanation, maintained his grip on the stake, the tip hovering dangerously close to the point of no return. "I will leave, and you will not stop—"

"We have a daughter," Dorian interjected hastily, his words slicing through the tension like a sudden gust of wind.

Instantly, the other paused at the words uttered. Seizing the moment, Dorian acted with agility. The pause granted him the opportunity to disarm his adversary effortlessly. With a swift and calculated move, he deftly knocked the stake from Killian's grasp, sending it clattering across the stone floor.

"What are you on about?" The other asked with narrowed eyes, the fiery being temporarily quelled. Killian, known for his aggression, typically combined actions and words seamlessly.

There existed an unspoken agreement between the two, a delicate balance ensuring that their clashes never escalated to true harm. Dorian had, however, shattered this agreement the day he pierced his lover's chest with the blessed stake—a memory he preferred not to dwell upon. Despite such incidents, a mutual understanding persisted: they wouldn't inflict genuine harm on each other. And while the memory of the quarrel leading to Dorian’s slumber often hung wavy on his mind, he justified his action; Killian hadn’t been genuinely hurt. That had all been temporary; Dorian hadn’t done anything wrong.

"A child. I brought in a child," the blonde reiterated, approaching his partner. Clasping both hands, he offered a smile. "Our child."

Killian's face remained closed off, his stare unyielding. "If she is anything like you, I do not wish to see this girl," he sneered coldly. "I will not raise a child with you."

He looked away for a second dissimulating the hurt he felt at that. "At least, let me introduce the both of you." Before the other could respond, he opened the door and let (Y/n) in. "This is (Y/n)," he introduced. "Doll, this is your—"

"Killian Ambrose-Hart," he introduced sharply, his eyes shining a bright red as his gaze focused on the girl. "She's human."

Dorian stepped between the two, placing an arm on his child's shoulder. With Killian having not fed for decades, the vampire was uncertain of what he might do in his current state of hunger. Who knew what he could do to the human with the hunger he must feel right now.

"She will be turned following her twelfth birthday," he declared with unwavering conviction.

Killian, outraged, furrowed his brow. "On her—you won't," he insisted, pointing accusingly.

He had known Killian wouldn't have liked that. There was a reason why children couldn't be turned before they turned twelve, after all. Following the turning, the body completely stopped aging. It was the same for the person's mind. Children turned before their twelfth birthday were called immortal children. They could not grow physically and neither could they age mentally. The immortal child would therefore lack the self control of an older vampire and become a creature only driven by hunger ; a danger for their world. A liability that was meant to be put down. Turning a child was therefore not allowed and punished by other vampires.

"I can and will," he retorted. "She will be old enough by that point and—"

(Y/n) would be turned after she reached twelve years old. At twelve, it was deemed that individuals had generally developed sufficient self-control. Though turning someone so young was rare, it was permissible. Some at that age were still too uncontrollable, but Dorian was sure it wouldn’t be the case for his fledgling. And even if it was, he wouldn’t care; the mere idea of a member of their vampiric society touching even a single strand of hair on her head would unleash the formidable force of Dorian.

"You cannot curse her to such an existence," Killian tried to reason with him. "What will we do with an uncontrollable beast?"

Dorian would have been happy at the slip — 'We' meant that he felt involved in the child's existence — but his eyes darkened at the way he referred to her. He turned to the girl who seemed frightened by the presence of the other. "Why don't you go to your room, dear," he suggested lightly. "Killian and I are going to have a grown up conversation. Close the door behind you."

She left diligently and as she closed the door, he gave the newly awakened vampire a dangerous look. "Do not," he sneered, "call her a beast ever again. She is well-behaved, and we will ensure her safety once she is turned."

Their argument persisted through the night and into the early hours as the sun ascended in the sky. That wasn't anything new for them—Killian always rambled about how the 'curse of vampirism was something he didn't wish on anybody else'. Or how 'selfish and conniving Dorian had been to doom him to such a fate,' acting like a martyr. If anything, the older vampire should be the one complaining. Killian was too focused on making a tragedy out of his existence to care about anyone else. As always, the two only stopped when both of them had exhausted each other enough and then left it at that.

"I will go hunting," Killian declared, exasperation evident in the pinch of his nose.

"At this hour of the day?" Dorian questioned, both baffled and frustrated.

"Had you not started this complete mess, I would have been able to do so earlier," the dark-haired vampire countered.

"Oh, so all of this is my fault?" Dorian challenged. "Typical of you."

"Typical?" Killian repeated with outrage. "What do you mean, 'typical'?"

"Always trying to put the blame on someone, aren’t you, darling?" Dorian snapped back sardonically.

"Don't you try to put this on me," he threatened angrily. "This is all your doing!"

"This is ridiculous!" the blond exclaimed, flinging his hands in the air spitefully. "Utterly ridiculous; you are ridiculous!"

And like that, another session of arguing began.

#platonic yandere #yandere platonic #yandere vampire #yandere father #obsession #yandere #vampire #platonic #x reader #female reader #reader insert #child reader #yandere x reader #fanfic #unhealthy relationships #toxic relationship #They are lovers your honor #but they shouldn't be XD

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precious-little-scoundrel · 1 month

Text

|| What Took him so Long?

Summary: For a long time I’ve wanted a comfort fic dealing with Bucky’s arrival in camp and the assumption that once he got there, found his men and was relatively safe, he had a big adrenaline crash and needed a ton of loving care. So I wrote it into this world.

Note: I wrote so many of the boys for the first time this time and, well, it was fun but have mercy I’m new here

Continuity: This segment follows the events of First Night

Thanks: I owe dear @hogans-heroes a lot for helping me sort my screams about multiple different aspects of this fic and for how much depth they’ve added to my own love of these guys. Also to @ab4eva @blurredcolour and @crazymadpassionatelove

Warnings: usual universe warnings apply, 18+,additional graphic recounting of past violence and rape, descriptions of injuries from the same, angsty conversations and misplaced blame, the boys trying to give all six foot two inches of dead weight Egan a bath

“It’s Ida,” Brady’s nimble hand was deceptively strong when clutching Gale’s bicep and shaking him to wakefulness early in the morning, “she won’t fuckin’ respond but she’s bowin’ up ‘till I think her neck might snap.”

Well that got Gale tumbling out of his bunk, out from Maureen’s hold on his face, swollen thumb on his tongue. The hell had he been thinking last night? The raucous noise of his landing to his feet woke the others, Crank instantly startled at their hovering over Ida.

“What’s wrong?”

“Dunno,” Gale replied, staring down at Ida Brady who was suddenly quite still again, “when’d the jerks start?”

“About an hour ago. She didn’t move before that.” John reported and Gale was sure it was an accurate report as Brady’s eye bags suggested he’d not even slept a wink. “She’s cold but she kept seizing so I stopped holding her.”

Gale bit his lip and tried to recall how pale was deathly pale, or just, pale. He bent over her and placed his fingers against her pulse, relieved to find a strong heartbeat in her neck. Maybe too strong, but he wasn’t about to start picking apart mercies. He was trying to measure it to his watch’s third hand when she started again, neck truly so bowed beneath his fingers he understood the impression of it close to breaking. He took his hand away discomfited and by this time Crank had joined them to stare down at her but those eyelids didn’t even flutter.

“We shoulda called a doctor last night.” Crank fretted, “She wasn’t just tired, not after what she’s been through.”

What she had been through was not something that had been discussed really, and so, it had been happily tabled as a past occurrence when she came in last night and toppled into the bunk straight after showers. Now their silence on the topic seemed like the sort of lethal discretion that kills amongst “polite” societies.

“Well, let’s get one now.” Gale snapped, “Crank -find the one who sewed my cut. Vega, I think, Vargas, something like that. He’s here, in the south compound.”

“You got it major.”

As Ida quieted again, Gale tried his hand at her pulse once more. A few moments later she was writhing in her sleep again.

“Since she seizes everytime you touch her, how about ya stop touching her?” Demarco’s word of wisdom filtered in from his bunk.

Chastised, and with shared looks of alarm at their foolishness, Gale and Johnny retracted their hands to clasp behind their backs and waited in that mock parade rest until the doctor came in, dark expression on his face and a very deflated medical bag at his side.

“It’s one of the women?” he asked, shouldering between the two men.

“Yeah, our colonel.” Gale supplied before relaying in brief terms the timeline of her stay here, her symptoms, her rather obvious injuries.

“We might be dealing with a concussion,” the Doc warned upon inspecting her face, “how’d she get these?” he asked about the swollen cheek and torn temple.

Gale turned to Maureen who still sat in her bunk, quiet, oddly quiet. “I saw her get punched once, I think it was on that side. But it wasn’t so bad, the rest happened when they took her away from us.”

Doc Vega was inspecting the rest of her as he pulled the covers down, her shirt flaps up, bruises and more bruises visible and -“She’s bleeding through her pants. Is this a cycle or-?” He turned to Kendeigh expectantly and she only shook her head, making Brady turn away with a wounded noise and walk a convict’s lap around the table, breath shuttering out in rough huffs, fists shoved into his pockets. Maureen wasn’t sure how anyone expected to get on top of such emotions, much less a bother. She was sure as soon as she had energy for it, she’d start making some Germans pay, it didn’t matter which, someone needed to pay.

“With assault this severe-“ Doc Vega’s face was more than eloquent regarding his horrified assessment. “-she should be in hospital. You know that right? That’s what this is, sexual battery, and like the word suggests, it's damaging, very damaging. Not to mention infection, fever- she belongs in hospital.”

The silence was heavy except for Brady and his off kilter laps.

“If they take her, I don’t trust them to guarantee her Combatant status.” Gale’s jaw worked overtime as he stared down at the body of his friend, “German hospital might be the best thing to ever happen to her or the worst when they discharge her. She’d not want me to let them take her out of here. Not after she fought so hard to get in.”

“Then by god,” the doctor exclaimed, “take her to the camp doctor, there must be some supplies. Antibiotics at the least, aspirin perhaps. Something for the swelling, inside and out. Camp doctor has supplies, how many times do I gotta tell you guys -I don’t! Take her to him.”

“No!” John Brady spoke up urgently only to immediately appear chagrined at his slip as Gale Cleven turned a very suspicious eye on him, “I mean, sir, if we take her, the German doctor will just transfer her to hospital. He can’t see how bad she is.”

That was a valid point, Cleven had to give it to him, although he noticed Hambone’s own suspicious, cud chewing, background shuffling observation of his pilot. Every time that doctor was brought up, Brady mildly suggested that they not go to him, without fail. His mentions regarding the guy being German and illusions to his methods being foreign were wearing thin. There was a miasma of myth about the doctor that no one could actually credit for a single source and Cleven hadn’t expected Brady, sensible, steady, laconic and measured Brady, to be the one to start spinning folklore in a place like this. He had next to no patience for it.

“Brady,” he decided to have at it, “you gonna tell me why everytime I bring up medical care in this camp you act like I’m suggesting suicide?”

“Sir,” Johnny’s gentle eyes grew wide and ever more guileless, “I told you, that man isn't much good.”

“Even a trash physician who has supplies is better than a good one without.” Doc Vega pointed out as he prepared to take his leave, “I’ve done everything with what I have. There simply isn’t anything at my disposal. Packages got held up and didn’t have everything accounted for.”

“He probably takes the stuff.” Brady muttured.

“So he’s the one to go to.” Gale snapped.

“He’s not touching her.” Ida’s brother replied.

Gale pinched his nose as he watched Vega leave them, the guy’s useless little bag of nothing swinging by his side, “By not being good - do you mean a poor physician? Be clear, Damnit.”

As if sensing a penultimate conflict, the room soon cleared of everyone save Maureen who was too invested by curiosity and a healthy dose of her own suspicion.

“Sir I’ve told you, he -he operates outside his purview.”

“Son? I can’t even pretend to understand what that means.” Gale’s patience grew more lethal as it rubbed thin, “That could mean he uses leeches or he abuses his patients.”

Brady’s eyes darted back and forth from Cleven’s face to the plain beamed ceiling as if he could find his answer there. Manic and with an odd glitter easily mistaken for tears. The kid probably needed to sleep, or maybe he needed to fess up about the doctor. Either way, Gale found the whole thing more and more unsettling but also, aggravating.

“Now are you gonna tell me which is it? Or are you alright with me withholding help from dying men because Captain Brady’s too intent on staying vague?”

“He’s just odd, sir.” Brady gave a defeated huff, eyes still watery, “It’s nothing bad, I-I never said not to send them, sir. He just can’t see Ida. He can’t.”

Gale was intently watching Brady swallow hard and wrack his brain for another respectful appeal when Crack came barreling back in, the eagerness in his step reserved for only one thing these dismal days: “They’re here! There’s a new batch, bringing them in the front now, quick, there’s not a long line!”

Brady was up and darting out the room before Gale could blink, uncharacteristically excusing himself before his superior had dismissed him and leaving Ida behind, still motionless in her bunk.

“Bucky could be with them!” Brady explained as he dashed out, same old hope repeated for over a month now and Gale wondered when the guy was going to crack from one too many hits to the morale.

“Brady!” Gale called after him a beat too late, wondering who was going to stay with Ida, but after catching Maureen’s quizzical eye, Gale too bolted and left the woman in his lover’s charge, tearing out of the combine to have a word with his young Captain, fleece and cover on for a little added dignity the camp pallor had no doubt stripped him of.

The scars, too.

Brady was at the fence by the time Gale caught up, his wiry frame slipping between the surging mass of POWs come to greet and heckle the newcomers. Gale had long ago found it a dismal scene and wasn’t fond of watching after it, but Crank and Brady were too intent, and some heartsick need drove Gale to find such excuses for why he, too, always managed to be at the scene when a new batch trudged in.

And what the cat brought in today made Gale forget about everything, everything else but that tall, shuffling, bloodied mess of a man he knew was his friend. And, characterically, despite appearing half dead, Egan was asking after Cleven, like the crackers after the cheese, damn the association risks.

“John Egan! Your two o’clock!”

Like a sunbeam splintering a thundercloud, Bucky’s battered face split open in a beaming smile the second he’d registered Cleven’s own. Gale couldn’t help the effusion of bittersweet gratification at the immediate resumption of the old ways, the old sweetness between them, the nearness of a good man to help brave this hell.

“What took you so long?” he jabbed, but his friend’s face told a story Buck wasn’t sure anyone left in Stalag Luft III had the stamina to hear.

And just like that, Egan was shuffled past and into processing and it would be ages before he saw him again. When Gale turned his back and worked his way through the crowd, Brady was lingering in one of the clearings, hands clasped and a rote twirl of thumbs matching the catatonically grateful prayers on his imperceptibly moving lips. Or Gale sure hoped they were prayers, it was that or Johnny having finally cracked.

“You were right.” He gave the kid a pat on the shoulder, smiling gently at him as he seemed to come out of his relieved fog, eyes too big in that lean face and dark circles making reflective ponds below, “You were right, you said he’d make it.”

“I hoped he would.” Johnny didn’t sound like he was expecting to cash in those prayers so soon.

“I’m going to that doctor.” Gale informed him, leveling him a strong look, “I think we should get a little list for the other girls. Play it off, could be for anyone. Penicillin, sulfa, that sorta thing. Does that sorta thing cure…their sorta thing?” Cleven admittedly obfuscated towards the end, not really expecting John Brady to know what cured venereal diseases but more hoping for an opinion of solidarity, like one does when ordering a risky plate off the menu.

Major Cleven never learned whether Captain Brady thought penicillin would work or not, there was a commotion outside the main center compound’s administrative building, and then the sudden appearance of guards dragging between them a slumped figure.

A dragged body was bad in most situations, at the prison camp it was cause for more than a little ire and panic. When Gale recognized the stature of their burden, the familiar span of the shoulders, the dark mop of curls hung low, his own brisk walk turned into a full on sprint across the muddy yard, Brady at his heels full of the same enlightenment.

“The hell did you do to him?” Cleven bellowed at the reasonably perturbed guards who were already mounting a defense of their blamelessness for Egan’s unconscious state.

“Nothing!” the more fluent of the two protested, “He vas being processed, yes? And he falls over, like zat. Nothing. Did nothing. Check him, he is—“ the guard made a motion to his face signifying the battlement Gale had already noticed as Egan trudged in. Back when Egan was awake and on his own two feet. “We? Nothing!”

Gale took Egan from them like a mother being handed their child, full frontal weight of his large friend propped against him and he succeeded at little more than keeping them both from hitting the mud. He was already weaker than when he first got there and the proof was here in the staggering weight of a man he used to hold his own against. Crank and Johnny and Demarco were beside him before he can even look for assistance, expressions of compassion and anger at Egan’s plight all melding into a series of disbelieving grunts as they heaved him up between them, carrying his dead weight like a feedsack. Gale and Brady take under his arms, Crank and Benny his legs. Gale studied the completely bashed face of his friend, a seething deduction brewing as to how he came to be in such a state.

“The showers.” he directed his men as they stalled midway in the yard after having got the weight of him hoisted.

They created a stir as they went, the dire oddity of the scene drawing attention as they shuffled through camp.

“Holy shit, is that Egan?” Talullah Smith came to a sudden halt in their path.

“Move!” Gale told her. “Or get the door.”

“He even alive?” Murphy was with her, no doubt obeying Cleven’s order for no woman to be unattended around camp, and he scrambled alongside to help as they mounted the steps and passed through the door Smith held until they were in the dank and echoing, poorly tiled room. There were a few other men in here, washing clothes and dabbing at their underarms. The showers themselves were not on today, hadn’t been for days, and Gale knew the large trough sinks down the middle of the room were their best bet for a triage and an initial wash.

“Somebody get his boots off, come on.”

It was horrible, grunting, grappling work trying to keep Egan’s dead weight up as they tugged off encrusted articles of clothing one after another, cringing at the bruises each grip and pull necessarily aggravated.

“Sorry Bucky.” Demarco apologized repeatedly to the insensible man as he adjusted his grip on his ribs for Brady to pull the slate gray button up off him.

“Smith, you can go.” Cleven noticed her lingering by the door, consternation written all over her face at Egan’s state, Murphy shadowing her. It wasn’t suitable for a woman to remain for the rest of it, whatever skill she had at setting fingers was a little below the pay grade of John Egan’s injuries. “You and Murph, can go get Doc Vega. Again.”

He sent Brady a look but the boy was too busy to notice, helping pull a very discolored arm out of a Bucky’s standard issue, fleece-less jacket. “What’d the looney do with his sheepskin?” he asked.

“Gave it to, Kidd.” Brady grunted, “Right before Munster. Said you didn’t like it.”

I’ll be damned: no lucky deuce and no lucky jacket and no fighter escorts, how were they supposed to manage to stay in the sky with recklessness like that? “You sentimental sunnuvabitch,” he hissed mournfully at his friend’s flopping head as they got him stripped and the full extent of his bruises came in view, “-supposed to be the last ones up.”

If anyone else understood what he meant in his mournful rage, they didn’t heed it, and if they didn’t understand they also did not press him for his meaning.

“Let’s get him up.”

Collectively they grabbed a limb apiece again and hoisted Bucky, groaning themselves under the bare weight of him.

“What did his mother feed him?” Benny protested as they staggered, and dumped him onto the longest of the troughs, getting a weak moan of protest from their specimen at the cold and hard surface.

“Major?” Crank begged hopefully of his closed eyes as Gale worked at the pump on the faucet, the gurgle of chilled water preceding the blast.

“I’m gonna use this, lad.” Brady was informing one of the armpit washing boys down the way, swiping their washcloth with kind presumption and returning to squeeze it out under Cleven’s growing steam.

Gently as he had his sister’s scalp, Brady began to use the wet cloth to scrub and wipe at the blood dried in an ominous swirl around Bucky’s eye as Gale continued to pump.

“He’s gonna catch chill.” Demarco warned.

“Haul some buckets?” Gale asked if they were willing, the kitchen combine was not so far away with fires and tin pails.

“We’ll be back.” Benny agreed.

“Brady, go with him.” Cleven unceremoniously pried the washcloth from the boy’s hand; silent weeping was an art Gale had perfected as a child but he’d not seen it in a grown man until today, “Go.”

While they were gone Gale did his best to keep the chilled water somewhat diverted, with Crank’s help he even managed to roll Bucky on his side and probe at his blackened ribs. As is, Bucky began to shiver and when Doc Vega got there; he was none too gentle in his hurried and angry assessment.

“Fractured ribs.” he rubbed the washcloth across his face like he was sanding the deck back home, “Possible fractured orbit. Eye socket, Cleven, looks busted. Just keep him propped, hope his eye doesn’t fall back into his skull.” Gale stared back at him unblinking, there was only ever one question these days and after a beat Doc Vega answered it, “And no, don’t have anything for it.”

Brady and DeMarco had returned with their now tepid water in time to hear this. “Should we wash him?” Benny gestured hopelessly.

“Yeah, he’ll probably sleep it off. If we’re lucky. Get him clean, get him warm.”

Gale began to pump anew and Brady gently tipped his warm bucket over Egan’s clotted curls, running his fingers through to disentangle the crusted snarls. Unfortunately their irrepressible patient took the kindness for a waterboarding and began to thrash, sending a shower of cold droplets over his caregivers.

“Buck?” a wrecked voice, punctuated by chattering teeth, stalled them all. “I saw Buck, where’s Buck, I found Buck, wh-“

“Yeah, yeah Bucky, it’s me.” Gale dropped his task and crouched over him, shivering himself as the sink ledge dampened the front of his own clothes.

“Buck!” Egan begged again, arms reaching out until Gale found himself all but tipped into the sink himself, arms wound around Egan’s pale shoulders with their blooming blue mottle, “M’so goddamn cold, Buck.”

“I know, I know, I’ve got ya. I swear, I’ve got ya.” Gale squeezed him tighter, “Almost over. Gettin’ you freshened up. We’ve got ladies here now.” he joked.

John’s head rolled listlessly on Gale’s forearm and his sharp blue eyes flitted across the washroom ceiling until he caught sight of someone else dear hovering over him with another pail, “Brady, what’re you cryin’ for?” he croaked.

“You.” the kid didn’t miss a beat. “So sorry Bucky, I’m so sorry.

“Hey,” Bucky’s voice strengthened with vehemence, “s’not your fault. None of it.”

“Yeah,” Gale agreed, gently peeling a flake of blood off his ear, “that plane was going down anyway without your lucky jacket.”

Bucky somehow had the stamina and the facial expertise to look sheepish at that despite his disfigurement. “Why'd you guys put me in the sink? Animals! Get me out, too goddamn cold, get me out. Gale! Get me out.”

“Ok, ok, shh, ok.”

There was a compassionate scramble to help Bucky sit up and swing his legs over the side, the groaning and swaying of the Major a hardly promising sign for the excursion he seemed intent to make. Suddenly they were helping to prop him on his feet again, and while he was no longer the dead, unconscious weight of before, he was now six feet something of bare, slippery flesh vibrating between them all in a terrible chill. Murphy and Smith had brought blankets along with the Doc, and gratifyingly someone from their combine had proffered a t-shirt and fresh skivvies.

Crank and Brady swayed dangerously with his weight on their shoulders as Gale knelt down and made his shaking legs step into them. Bucky’s own hand arrested him standing up by placing a clumsy hand on his cheek.

“Where’d you get these?” he was thumbing at those scars Gale hadn’t managed to live down.

“Flack.” Gale maintaIned as he rose to his feet, “What the hell happened to you?“

Bucky gave him his old lopsided grin, “War, Buck.”

“Too much of this kind of war lately.” Crank pointed out unamused, wounds were one thing but what was with the abuse? It didn’t seem to stay away, even from the strongest or most esteemed of their number.

Bucky’s brow ticked in curiosity at the allusion to others but he was too drained to keep his thoughts ordered, “Marched us through a town, RAF had just paid a call. Townspeople didn’t exactly come out with flowers.”

“Holy shit.” Benny sucked his teeth in a grimace, noticing how the other men down the way paused their chores to listen in.

“They attacked you?” Cleven’s tone left little room for questioning.

Bucky gave them a wincing little smile, tilting his head in a shrug, “Yeah, guards just let them at us. I’m the only one who made it.”

“What?” Came up in a chorus, his doleful audience suddenly animated, “You mean they killed the rest?”

“One got knifed,” Bucky stared down at Brady’s work on lacing his boots, skivvies and boots, now he looked like all the other clowns here, “the others - guess they beat them, too. I heard shots. Woke up in a cart on the way to a nice, quiet little spot in the woods.”

“Jesus Christ:” Crank uttered, “Jesus Christ.”

“I’ll be ok.” Bucky muttered, scuffing his boots to see how heavy they felt, his limbs wouldn’t stop shivering and he had a sick feeling it wasn’t from cold alone.

“Yeah, you will.” Cleven’s pained eyes ordered him sternly and to swipe away that horrid crease between his brows, Egan would do anything.

“Yeah.” he agreed.

“Let’s get you a bunk.” Brady prodded, slipping back under one of his armpits, wiry shoulders having more strength in them than Bucky credited, “We’ve got a nice little sick ward going.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah; and no medical supplies.”

“Great.”

“Yeah, it’s a real well oiled machine they got here.” Benny snarked as the lot of them kept pace with Egan’s limps across to their combine -it wasn’t under discussion where he’d bunk, he would be in with them.

“What’d you name the place?” Egan asked dismally at the threshold of their combine.

“We didn’t.” Gale admitted his unimaginative oversight for the second time in twenty four hours on these same steps.

“No?” Egan slapped at the boring raw lumber and sniffed, “You let Maureen in billet in here?” he asked suddenly.

“Y-yeah.” Gale was wary and his defense at the ready, “All the women who’ve arrived so far are in this one, so we can help guard them. Yes, Maureen’s in with us.”

It was better just to say it, to head off the teasing and the suggestions and the disorder right away. Cleven smiled back at Bucky confidently, waiting for this friend to get a move on over the threshold.

“Huh, ok,” Egan made a funny little face; “then I christen you,” he went on addressing the combine itself, clearing his throat loudly to collect before spitting on the doorframe above Benny’s disgusted head, “Love Shack Number Nine.”

“Just -get your ass inside.” Gale shoved at him between his shoulders and Bucky -with Brady still tucked dutifully under a wing- entered his new home.

Gale gave him a preliminary roster of inmates in each barrack, “We’re down near the end.” and by the time they got to their own room Crank had to help support Bucky’s other side, the brief surge of energy the cold water and friendly faces had given him waning fast.

“Just so goddamn hard to breathe.” He tried to explain, wincing at the pull of his arms as they clumsily shouldered into their room.

It was empty except for Ida in her bunk and Maureen beside her who stood up fast as a lightning bolt at the sight of Egan. “Jumping Jehoshaphat, what happened to you?” She rushed him but pulled back before her usual greeting of hugs to survey the damage, suspecting a squeeze might be too cruel even by Egan’s standards.

“I’m ok, Candy.” he assured, smooth as butter as he reached for her and ran busted knuckles over the curl of her hair, “God you’re a sight for sore eyes after all these ugly bastards.”

“Really though, what happened?” she shied away from his pacifying touches, glaring at the others to start spilling the beans.

“They tried to lynch him.” Gale saw there was nothing for, she’d wheedle it out at some point and after what she’d seemingly endured, what exactly was he shielding her from? “Killed everyone else with him.”

Maureen’s worried eyes dulled sadly at this and she proceeded to hug herself, hands carefully tucked into her armpits, “Gosh, Bucky.” she mumbled.

“Hey, said I’m alright, didn’t I?” Bucky coaxed, swaying towards Maureen and laying a heavy hand on her small shoulder. It tipped him too far forward and he had to clutch at and brace himself on the bunk slat behind her head. Suddenly he was peering over her shoulder and instead of empty sheets as he expected in the lowest bunk, he found the bruised face of a superior he didn’t know had even been shot down. “What the hell happened to her?”

At the silence that followed this very simple question, Bucky swung his head round to stare the men down. It made the world rock, window blurring into the room in a nauseating sheet of white and Buck had too many eyes and all of them sad and Crank hadn’t even a face but a blob and his vision was shot to shit with spots but as no one said a word, he repeated his question in a yell that surprised even himself, “What happened to her?”

“The Gestapo kept taking them from the Dulag.” Brady’s voice was soft and thin in his ringing ears, like a child explaining the fate of a broken toy, “They even took them to a camp. A women’s prison camp.”

“Am I missing the part where any of that promises a face like that?” Bucky demanded, trying to get the goddamn window to stop whiting out his vision.

Gale’s voice was on his other side, the side without the window, he wanted to look at him but he was afraid to move his head again and for the spots to get large and everything go black one more time. “Long time before they’d recognize them as combatants, Bucky,” Gale laid a preemptively calming hand on Egan’s arm, “SS knocked them around bad.”

That’s all Gale really knew of it. Most of it had been gotten out of Smith who seemed most fit and most angry over it all. The others were skittish or tired.

“Knocked them around.” Bucky repeated bitterly, disbelieving Cleven’s moderate retelling, “Who’s them? Who else?”

“We’ve got a little over a dozen of the girls here.” Gale replied, “Brought them in a group, some downed weeks before others. Held them while figuring out what to do before they brought them here.”

“What to do?” Bucky knew he was back to yelling and the spots were getting excited from it, “Treat them like officers being a little too much to ask?”

“Like they treated you?” Demarco weighed in, if only to take the heat off his co-pilot, “Like they treated Buck?” -or maybe not.

“The fuck did they do to him?” Bucky really did try to turn his head this time and he was blindly groping for Cleven’s soft cheeks even as the spots took over his vision and his knees began to buckle. Gale grabbed him on the way down with Candy’s help, but Egan heard her exclamation of pain from it.

Steadied, with his hands back on the bunk slat, Bucky willed away the spots and stared down at Kendeigh’s supportive hands on his waist -or what shoulda been hands. He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen an uglier set of paws.

“Were you with her?” he asked, gravelly and not to be ignored.

“Most of the time.” Maureen whispered back and if Gale could have cleared the room for her he would’ve.

“Then what the hell happened to her?” Bucky summoned the last bit of himself and stared down the auburn beauty of his erstwhile drinking buddy, “No really Kendeigh, answer me. I’m your superior, you don’t have recourse, you answer to me. What’re you gonna do, huh? Ask your fairy godmother colonel if you can ignore me? Huh? ‘Hey ida got a sec, Ida?’ No? Looks like her office is closed. Fucking talk to me, Candy. Start with those hands. What happened?”

“Someone stood on them.” -if Gale had to hear Maureen repeat it one more time in that monotone way he was going to start chewing through his cheek.

“Why?” Bucky always had such simple questions, it was one of his wisdoms and Maureen hated it right now, her eyes flashing and her face reddening as she ducked away from the stare of friends.

“So I’d stop fighting him.” The statement was hardly legible, her voice had gone so wispy.

“He, this ‘he’ -he knew you were an Officer?” Gale hadn’t thought to ask that, and he’d thought of so many things to ask that never made it out his throat, but Bucky did. “An army Air Force combatant?”

Maureen swallowed hard before throwing her head back, neck taut and nose flaring -Gale didn’t think he’d ever seen her more magnificent. “He knocked my cap off before it.” she answered at last, a cold hard meeting of blue eyes and Bucky stared her down, “And he laughed at the engraving on my belt buckle when he undid my pants.” There was dead silence for a beat before she went on, “They tore the wing patches off Ida’s shirt, you can see the holes there, see? Johnny’s not fixed them yet.”

Bucky slumped to a seat on Ida’s bunk, a shaky hand extending to push down the blanket and expose her shoulder, and there was a jagged tear in the standard issue, sure enough. “What’s Johnny been fixing?” he asked, voice hollow as he thumbed at Ida’s mottled skin, she was white as a ghost beneath the blue discoloration. Bucky wondered if he looked half as rough.

Johnny was then in a squat beside him, rummaging under the bunk before pulling out a pair of trousers. He tossed them into Bucky’s lap, wordlessly. Drab olive, Brady’s tidy repairs obvious due to the clashing thread, and also blood -so much goddamn blood down the inseams, meticulously scrubbed out but stained all the same and woven together by the white stitches. “You bastards let him do this?” Bucky asked the men incredulously, rage beginning to boil over and it didn’t have a single source and it certainly had no rightful outlet, “None of you can handle a fuckin’ needle? No? No, go on then, let a brother sew up this shit, let him get to think long and hard about what each fuckin’ rip means for his sister! You goddamn cowards -you haven’t even asked them! You haven’t talked about it with the girls, have you?”

“Bucky, Bucky come on now,” Gale tried reasoning with him, “they just got in. So did you. Let’s, let’s take it easy, save our mad for the ones who deserve it.”

“Oh, oh you don’t think that’s us then, Major Cleven?” Egan scoffed, “Because we didn’t do it, isn’t our fault at all?”

“It’s not!” Crank insisted behind Gale’s back, “Gonna blame Buck for your ribs, too?”

That defeated him. Bucky’s fury visibly dimmed in his eyes and Gale would have almost preferred the insulting rage over the dead helplessness that followed, it was too reminiscent of his own. “They’re safe, you’re safe.” he summarized gruffly, “Doc says sleep for both you and her.”

“Sleep.” Bucky mumbled as he looked back to Ida, trying to imagine with masochistic singleness of mind the sort of men who’d enjoy picking a strong woman like her apart -he could bring them to mind too easily. “Sure, just…sleep it off.”

“I don’t want her going to the doctor.” John Brady insisted once more like this had never been argued before in this very room.

“He no good?” was all Bucky asked.

“No sir.” Brady was emphatic and relieved to be taken at vaguest value.

“Brady’s the only one to say that,” Cleven butted in, “and he won’t specify.” Gale may have shot a glare at Ida’s brother, Bucky’s own predicament causing a double issue. “You need one, she needs one, too.”

“I-I trust my little Fox.” Bucky disagreed, although it was less impressive by both the use of a nickname and the slurring stumble that occurred right after as he attempted to get up from the bunk and pat Brady’s cheek. This small movement caused such disturbance in his fragile equilibrium that he would have nearly toppled if Cleven and Kendeigh hadn’t been at his side to catch him. “Goddamn! Goddamn, I’m dizzy as hell.” he repeated, “And cold. I don’t want a doctor, I want a blanket. And a nap.”

“Just what the doctor ordered.” Gale repeated dryly with a ghost of a grin that would have normally riled Bucky into smushing it between his fingers. He was too far away for that and Bucky was too dizzy to reach.

“M’gonna sleep for a week.” He announced.

“They’ll be in here for roll if you don’t show.” Gale begged.

“Good luck to them, moving me.” Bucky grumbled and shook a boot across the room before Brady knelt and helped with the other one. How many times had the sweet kid been shoeing him today? He should start calling him mom.

“They’ll come for her too, if she misses again.” Gale pushed, “A guard came and checked to make sure she was alive this morning.”

“They’ll just take her to the doctor.” Brady repeated hopelessly.

“No they won’t.” Bucky assured him, already fully convinced of two things Gale very much held in suspicion, and he’d been here under half an hour, “They won’t.” he repeated and, before anyone could fully credit their eyes, he appeared to use his last gasp of strength and dexterity to roll Ida Brady, none too gently, further in her bunk toward the wall before climbing in after her and sagging into the meager bedding.

“John!” Cleven had too many objections to itemize at present and all of them were tidily conveyed by use of his Christian name.

“They can’t take her from us like this, Buck.” Bucky was slurring worse than ever, now obstructed by a pillowcase and Ida’s torn head.

“She doesn’t wanna be touched.” Gale hissed urgently, side eyeing Demarco who seemed beyond caution and was now viewing this as analytically as a laboratory experiment.

“S’ok.” Bucky mumbled, “Ida always knows me.”

Gale and Johnny exchanged helpless looks, with Gale choosing to flavor his own with no small amount of accusation towards the younger man. But then, both occupants of the bunk became -and stayed- still, and no seizing episodes followed the heavy burden of Bucky’s arm over Ida’s ribs. So, with shrugs and outstretched hands of mere mortal impotency, they resigned themselves to life with Bucky in Love Shack Number Nine.

“I forgot how loud he could get.” Crank’s mutter broke the silence.

“We should get some salve at least.” Demarco observed with a nod to Bukcy’s face and Kendeigh, who had been oddly quiet and sat with legs swinging on her bunk, echoed in agreement.

“I thought maybe penicillin, too.” Gale asked the room at large.

“Why not ask for the keys to the front gate while we’re at it?” Crank snarked, “That krout sawbones never gave me shit for Murphy’s cuts, hasn’t even tended Hambone since he got out of hospital.”

“Hambone hasn’t gone to him because Brady has scared him off.” Cleven retorted, “Any of you have a better idea?”

“I could try.” Maureen spoke up, “He might -respond?- if a woman asked.”

“No.” Cleven shut that down with a sharp cut of his hand through the air, “No way in hell.”

“I’ll go sir.“ Brady’s soft assurance broke the tenseness, Gale watched the boy stoically as he rose from his place by Ida’s -and now Egan’s- bunk, and grabbed his pipe off the table, “Salve and penicillin?” he confirmed, face cocked shyly back at Cleven once more from the doorway.

“Salve and penicillin.” Cleven affirmed, “And Brady-“ he halted the boy, “-you sure about this?”

“He knows me.” Brady’s eyebrows drew together, a sudden strong expression on his face, nonplussed in a way that made Cleven feel like he was the one slow in the head, “Fixed the shoulder.” he reminded, gesticulating to the joint that had been dislocated by a poor parachute landing, no doubt caused by arguing too long and close to the ground in a spiraling plane with Major Egan. “I’ll get you the stuff, sir.”

Brady shoved his pipe in his mouth and dug his hands into his coat pockets as he walked down the drafty hallway. Conversations from the various rooms drifted to his ear, odd still to hear the high tones of female chatter amongst them. He found himself rolling his last bit of tobacco round and round in his pocket as he neared the door, he’d been saving it for a real doozy of a day; for some catastrophe that needed nicotine to wash it down, or else a holiday that deserved the special exception. Ramming his once hurt shoulder into the door to open it, Brady decided today would have to be significant enough.

The day he got salve and penicillin.

“You just chew on that thing instead of smoke it now?” The laconic humor of his bombardier startled him mid shiver, it wasn’t even that cold outside he just felt poorly and everything was getting real cold and awful as he stood rooted to their steps and eyeing the main compound.

“No, I was gettin’ ready to pack it.” He answered Hamilton, leveling him a scrutinizing look over the pipe in question, “How’ve you been keepin’ occupied?”

“This and that.” Hambone shrugged, gold teeth still glinting as he assessed Brady. “Where you headed?”

“Who says I’m headed anyplace?”

“Word is Egan’s here and half dead.” Hambone scratched at his scar, the rough sutures too late in being taken out and now causing irritation, Brady almost felt guilty for that. “And now you're out here eyeing the Pill Hut. I’d say you’re going to that doctor.”

Hambone never really got enough credit for his smarts, and Brady wished he’d stop using them only when it concerned things Johnny was already having enough trouble psyching himself up for -like radioing the tower to admit they were lost or visiting this freak in a white coat.

“They need some stuff.” He conceded.

“Gonna waste good baccy on it?” Hambone scoffed again, “Come on, I feel like a walk. Haven’t seen inside the place anyway, all your ghost stories were too spooky.” Hambone was mocking him, but he was also beginning to walk towards the hut with the plain expectation of accompanying Brady.

“Hambone-“

“With all due respect, just shut it, Captain.” Hambone gave him a look, and it was the first one today that made Brady feel seen without feeling all of two inches tall, “If I have to rub these stitches on those rough pillows one more night I’m gonna claw my face back open.”

Brady didn’t doubt he would, so in a spooked and complacent mood, pilot followed grinning bombardier down the muddy lanes to the doctor’s shack.

💋 Hope you enjoyed! Feedback is a writer’s lifeblood, please feel free to scream in comments or the inbox, I love it and wanna hear it all. Trust me, nothing is “too dumb”. Your thoughts mean the world to me.

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#mota fanfic #masters of the air fic #mota fic #masters of the air #mota #gale cleven #John Egan #john brady #hambone hamilton #charles cruikshank #benny demarco #those who can #integrated au #gale cleven x oc #Gale x Maureen #mota oc

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yostresswritinggirl · 2 years

Text

Disaster - Chase The Mirage

pairing -> Cyno x Adventurer!Reader x Tighnari; poly

word count -> 2,490 words

themes -> injury, healing, angst with comfort, disliking scars

(masterlist) (next) Two Akademiya giants, infatuated and hooked to a simple adventurer from the Adventurer’s Guild. But their love is powerless in comparison to the danger you face daily.

It started off as any other normal day, and that was why Tighnari wasn't expecting anything.

There were no Withering emergencies he had to tend to, no adventurer dumb enough to bite another mushroom, no incidents in the patrol routes he'd assigned.

It was so peaceful and pleasant, so much so that when the rain suddenly poured as expected of the forest's unpredictable weather, it didn't bother him.

He embraced the petrichor, gazed at the droplets hitting his face like a soothing massage from nature. In the middle of Ghandarva Ville under the sky's shower, he had found peace with himself.

Which is why when his ears picked up the sound of familiar footsteps and saw the approach of his cloaked lover, he gave it no deeper thought, even throwing a smile.

It only fell when Cyno didn't smile back.

That was his first sign, and when the hairs on the back of his neck all stood, each warning became apparent from focus.

The persistent stench of something metallic despite no signs of injury on Cyno, the way his eyes were darkened even after he had pulled down his hood, and the last evidence he needed was the red stains under the general's nails.

He reads the singular word that moved his lips for the rain (and the ringing in his ears) blocked his ability to hear.

"Bismartan."

And he fled without waiting for him to follow.

It was only when he saw your unconscious form surrounded by doctors and healers did Cyno gave him the liberty of the truth.

There was a commission in the desert that you accepted, to accompany a Fontaine merchant group through the desert. At one point of the relatively safe journey, the caravan had to detour upon the sight of camping Eremites.

Past the ruin golem in the Valley of Dahri.

A child of a merchant couple strayed too far from the path in hopes of getting a closer view of the Khaenri'ah technology, and the moment he was in the vicinity, the golem identified its target and shot. In that moment, you pushed the kid out of golem's area of reach.

If not for the fact that he was stationed by Caravan Ribat by that time, he wouldn't have heard the full story.

He remembers seeing the caravan scrambling through the entryway, one merchant cradling a body covered in cloth, in a color that failed to hide the red seeping through. The commotion caused the Corps of Thirty and his entourage to check up on them.

"Please, where is the nearest hospital?! We're in an emergency!"

"What happened here? You don't look like you're from around here, and Bismartan is hours away."

The moment he lifted the cloth to see the damage, everything around him seized to exist.

He was shouting orders, taking you in his arms the next, and soon he found himself sprinting through the forest with the fastest merchant trying to catch up.

"I'm sorry." Tighnari's ears twitched, slowly raising his head from looking at the floor to Cyno.

"What are you saying sorry for?" But he knew why, he knew better than anyone.

You were in the desert, Cyno's territory. Long ago they've had an agreement to keep you safe whenever you crossed either of their territories, to look out for you when the other couldn't.

"For not being there." Looking ahead, the sound of the doctors and nurses scrambling inside became clearer, your breathing too if he would focus. Tighnari wanted to comfort Cyno, but right now all he wants is to close his eyes and forget everything.

Forget this reality.

Forget the world that dared to hurt you.

"It's not your fault."

But he desperately wants to blame someone.

A week had gone by before the doctors finally allowed Tighnari's insistence to discharge you for him to take care of in Ghandarva Ville. While you're not in critical condition anymore, you were still resting 24/7 due to the medicine sedating you.

The forest ranger felt more at ease having you near for him to tend to than to check up on you everyday, trekking through the forests just to reach Bismartan. In the comforts of his home, as he lays you on his bed where you'll be staying for the duration of your stay, he sighs a relief.

"Will they... be okay?"

Cyno turns away from the sight to look at the person peering through the entrance shyly, urging Collei to get inside after getting permission from the general. There they stood side by side, a respectable distance from where Tighnari was silently stroking your bandaged hand.

"They'll be okay." With a shaky sigh, he closed his eyes.

It isn't long before Ghandarva Ville fell into a new routine during your period of rest. Even tho Tighnari made himself as available as he could be, the forest rangers knew he would rather be in the headquarters than outside doing mindless patrols.

Rangers took more tasks, watchers started leading more, and Tighnari's workload easing up. Everyone can feel the unrest in the village but none dared speak up about it, not wanting to sour their chief's already stale mood. They can see it in the way his ears droop, his eyes twitch, his sighs ever so loud.

No matter how much he tries to deny it, he was teethering on the edge of sanity, irritable more than usual.

Cyno, the General Mahamatra, had also been sighted frequently. Unlike before when he'd only visit for important matters or for dinner, this time he was more present than ever before. Half of his time would be used to stay by the village with Collei, assisting in whatever way he could.

Rangers had the rare chance to witness Cyno clearing a Withering Zone by himself, and the many miracles after of him tending to forest ranger work. It wasn't long before they realized his intentions. He was taking up a part of his lover's work so he can focus on nursing you back to health.

Sometimes, if they don't see Cyno, it would be Tighnari out and about to keep the forest rangers together.

But after an incident where the Akademiya paid him visit on a day he was at his limit, the rangers started to appreciate Cyno's presence more when they watched their head forest watcher bare his teeth in warning.

Collei had also been pushing herself to her limits yet carefully maneuvering herself to not overwork to the point of bed rest. This wasn't her first time taking charge for Tighnari, but this was a time that she was needed the most.

Perhaps it was because she knew Master Tighnari and Lord Cyno best, knew that they needed the support more than anything, that she would go to great lengths to be there for them. Collei would be seen entering and exiting Tighnari's hut the most, either to fetch something or to send the reports the others may have.

Every time she leaves their head's dwelling, she would look a little nervous. But Collei would always shake her head and pat her cheeks, the determination quickly brightening her violet eyes as she walks away to her destination.

"This is the third time this week."

Cyno sighed after making sure you were sound asleep once again. Tighnari only sighed by his desk before his hand crumples up the letter he was writing.

The people of Sumeru do not dream, but despite hailing from a foreign land, nightmares won't stop plaguing your sleep. It was only recent that you've become more acquainted with the waking world due to the lowering of your dosage. And after a month, the trauma of the incident still follows you where they couldn't be of help.

Leaving a kiss to your forehead, Cyno made his way over to Tighnari who was starting a new letter.

"You've been here for too long." Leave it to the forest ranger to put things so bluntly. Even if Cyno knew he meant to talk about how he's needed by the Matra sooner than later, it still pained him.

"They can wait, (Y/N) needs us." His hand lands on his lover's shoulder, lightly squeezing it. "And so do you."

The quill in his hand fell from his grip, tainting the unfinished letter and the extra parchment underneath with dark splotches of ink. Tighnari can't even begin to describe what he's feeling right now but he knows he's been scared this whole time, something that Cyno had picked up long ago.

"I can't - I can't finish this letter." Cyno was quick to hold his trembling hand, squeezing it with reassurance before pulling him off the chair for a quick hug.

"I'll take care of it, go rest, I can see the bags under your eyes even in this lighting."

Only when he saw the forest watcher take his spot next to your resting form did he finally turn back towards the ruined table, cleaning up the mess, and picking up the quill. Hearing the soft snores of another did he finally sigh out heavily.

"I'm not sure if I could finish this either." But he starts the first stroke anyways, trying his best to steady his writing hand.

'Dear Uncle Cyrus,

may this letter find you well. There's something that you need to know...'

You can't help the shiver that wracks your entire body despite the fact that you've dealt with this everyday now. And every time, whoever it was between your lovers that spreads the cold aloe vera on your burns, would pause and ask if you were alright.

"I'm okay." You try your best to reassure them with a smile, but they would simply sigh and go back to spreading the balm.

It was like you woke up in a new world where your lovers were replaced. And while you'll never know what had transpired in the day of the accident and the period following up to your consciousness, it was undeniable that the damage wasn't just on you.

The critical injuries were tended to thanks to the vision wielder healers of Bismartan, yet the fact that almost every inch of your body was covered with bandages was testament that you didn't exactly escape scot-free.

Collei would look at the bandages with distant recognition, before assuring you with a bounced back smile that things will get better.

It will get better, it's just a matter of when.

Not just for your body, for yourself, for the itch of adventure - no. Slowly sitting up from your spot on the bed, your gaze wanders to the sleeping faces of your boyfriends. As gently as you could, you cup their cheeks to stroke at the darkening circles under their eyes.

They look so exhausted. Maybe more than you. Who knows what they've been through while you were gone?

"Don't worry about us, focus on your own recovery."

For every pain that shot through your body, there would always be a soothing presence by your side.

For every trip or stumble, a guiding hand immediately steadies you.

So you try your best to smile through it, anything to give back and reassure your lovers that things are going as well as they could. That the nightmares don't bother you, that the uneventful days doesn't eat away at your sanity.

But Cyno and Tighnari are your lovers for a reason.

As you stand in front of the full body mirror, bandages removed to be replaced soon, they do not miss the way your eyes linger on every glaring red patch of skin. Look so distant as your eyes roamed your form riddled with the scars of your sacrifice.

Do you regret your decisions?

As Cyno urges you away to shower, Tighnari picks up the mirror to tuck it away in a corner that you won't have to see.

And then one morning, as you were stretching by Ghandarva Ville with Collei to get rid of your bed cramps and for her to alleviate her Eleazar, familiar visitors passed by looking for you.

You willed yourself to breathe as you watched the Fontaine kid hesitantly take steps towards you, eyes unwilling to meet yours but still trying his best to brave the distance. Cyno and Tighnari weren't there at that time, weren't there when the parents of the kid you saved came all this way to thank you.

"We wanted to thank you for saving our child that day, but we weren't sure where to find you until recently."

How you didn't see this before when he was definitely smaller baffled you, but you were surprised when the kid pulled out a bouquet of pink tulips from behind him. "Thank you for saving me, and I'm also very sorry..."

Get well soon, taking the flowers in your arms, you knelt down to be at eye level with the child. He was pulling the beret down to hide his face which made you smile.

"Thank you, I'm glad you're not hurt." When you do catch a glimpse of his stare, you followed it to a scar on your arm formed by a cut from flying debris. "Those are my battle scars."

"Huh?" Thankfully it was fully healed and in the scarring phase. Pulling your sleeves to show the scar, you traced the discoloration almost lovingly.

"Adventurers always take on dangers to help people, did you know that?" The way his hair bounced as he shook his head yes was endearing. "We get scars all the time, and this one right here, is my scar for successfully saving you. This is proof of me doing a good job and I'm proud of it."

Smiling at the kid, you ruffled his hair with the beret, his mood brightening at your words. More words were exchanged as you asked the boy to be more careful, and to stay safe now that they're leaving Sumeru for another region.

Cyno and Tighnari were surprised to see you outside and waving at someone in the distance, a fulfilled smile on your face as you hugged the bouquet tightly, the dark blue beret on your head almost slipping off.

"And where do you think you're going?"

You had just finished tying your boots up when Tighnari came in the hut, staring at your green and white uniform with obvious distaste. When you reached for the beret instead of the standard adventurer's hat however, it was swept away by Cyno and out of your reach.

"Hey, I need that!"

"Just because you're fully recovered doesn't mean you can go straight back to work." Confused, you heard the shutters of the hut close as Cyno pulls your tie loose. "What if you're not fit to work yet?"

"But you've been monitoring me for a week now, I'm in good condition! H-Hey, wait a minute-!"

The next day, Collei watched you exit Tighnari's hut with shaky legs, huffing and groaning about the soreness preventing you from doing commissions.

You're not fit to work yet, it seems. Especially when your boyfriends now have the liberty to be as clingy as possible.

I'll be honest with you, I had no idea where this was going. But also fun fact, this chapter was referenced in the first one!

@ireallylikehamsters

#chase the mirage #genshin x reader #genshin impact x reader #tighnari x reader #cyno x reader #poly cynonari #exile.flower #exile.reader #gender neutral #genshin impact angst #sumeru arc

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raayllum · 2 months

Text

Key to His Heart Theory: Shot Through the Heart, and You're (S5) to Blame

Intro

So a little over a year ago (since usually I think about things meta wise for at least a good month before writing them down), I wrote a meta about why I thought the Key of Aaravos might hold a quasar diamond, specifically Aaravos' missing chest piece. His heart, if you will.

At the time, I thought it was a very strong contender for what the cube might be, even if it didn't necessarily give us a clear depiction on what it might be used for, and was again operating under the assumption the cube itself is something Aaravos even wants back or needs (which is assumption still, at this point).

It made sense loosely with some of the new information we'd gleaned about the cube from S4 (mostly the Callum pawn intro with its bright flashing light, the emphasis on hearts in the narrative with Ezran's speech, the 4x04 flashbacks) and was likewise built upon a previous meta regarding the series' use of Egyptian mythology (Thoth and Ibis being present somewhat in Callum's arc, the main trio's parallels to another Egyptian myth trio, Aaravos' mirror and mirrors as objects of divination, and potential matching symbolism with the ankh).

The Key to His Heart theory was also built on previous seasons — largely the Magma Titan plot line, and Avizandum being stabbed in the heart — in addition to Aaravos' chest piece, seemingly, being notably absent, which seemed indicative of certain lines from the short stories, particularly Rayla (S4's Dear Callum), but we'll talk more about these later:

Please don’t let this hurt too much. But, if it does—if you feel that soft aching—know that that piece of your heart isn’t missing. It’s not missing at all, Callum: I’m carrying it with me! Always.

If you're interested in this theory and want to know about it, I recommend reading the two metas I've linked above, as the rest of this won't really be delving too much into what I've already written about, and talking about how season five has given more potential evidence.

With that out of the way, let's get into it in rough order of "most to least" likely:

Season Five

TDP Reflections

Whereas hearts weren't mentioned too much in the short stories leading up to S4, they became a reoccurring motif every TDP reflection story going into S5.

Fools. They might as well have held their own hearts, beating and bloody, in the palms of their hands. Kim’dael knew that if she showed them her heart—or something convincingly like it—the Sunfire elves would do exactly what she wanted them to do.

“Rayla,” she said, meeting Redfeather’s gaze. “My name is Rayla. And I’m going home.” Redfeather sighed. “Oh, you bleeding heart.”

“They balk at shadows, then.” Aditi pulled a slip of white-hot metal from the forge and turned to place it upon a gilded anvil. “I see your heart—and I am not afraid.”

It stared up at him. Ezran felt a coldness twist its way around his heart. It took his lungs, too, and for a long moment he could not breathe, could not feel anything but an unfamiliar anger so potent it seized the whole of him, inside and out.

Viren staggers backwards, his last breath shuddering through the blade. His white robes turn red at his heart. Something in Soren’s own chest shatters along old cracks, but he cannot look away.

“You are stronger than this. All storms end!” Rex rumbled a snort through flared nostrils. “What lies at its heart?”

He wept for his city, his people, and the darkness struck deep into their hearts.

While one may say it ends with a sunrise, another will insist it ends at nightfall. Yet at the heart of the story is a single, simple truth…A star fell from the sky.

From where Kim’dael stood, she could only see the brilliant aura of its magic. For a moment, it was as though the queen’s heart overflowed with light.

Now, some of this is undeniably because a heart is a short hand for emotion and one of our most useful metaphors for communicating a variety of emotion. However, I did think it was particularly interesting / eye catching that these lines tended to overlap with the series' growing light and darkness motif and emphasis on wounds/scars (to the point we have a 5x02 episode titled "Old Wounds" that refers to both Viren's past and Callum and Rayla's healing relationship).

But by far the one that struck me the most, and seemed the most reminiscent of how Aaravos's (literal?) wound manifests is this paragraph from Claudia's short story:

Lissa had left her years ago, but the space she had owned in Claudia’s heart remained. It was a dark place now, hard and hateful, its edges raw as a wound that had forgotten to heal.

Mountains had crumbled and left in their wake a vast new sea. It was as though the land had been dealt a great wound and bled a hundred years. Terror washed across the remnants of humanity like a wave: What power could fell mountains? Turn all the world dark, and bleed a sea from stones?

—Ripples (pre-S5)

As well as Aaravos' clear desire to have revenge over the Startouch elves for something that seems to go beyond the resentment over just being banished:

I have not seen the stars in centuries. But when I see them again—when the stars are forced to look upon me, their dark brother—they will know how I have waited. And when everything they have built lies shattered, I will savor their fall from the sky. For I have been patient.

—Patience (pre-S4)

We don't know yet if we are going to get more TDP reflections going into S6 or S7, but given the way the previous stories emphasize the heart as both a symbolic idea (a darkened, hollowed out heart) and a literal entity you can hold in your hands... It's clear there's something going on symbolism else, otherwise why be so consistent? But enough of the reflections, for now.

Time to talk about S5 itself.

Laurelion

Previously, I thought the cube in the intro (a literal glow toy, as Rayla identified back in 1x05) already had similar properties to the star-glow effect in the title intro back at S4.

At the time, this was more of a guess. Most of the Star magic we'd seen at that point we weren't able to fully identify as such, it seemed a bit more magenta in colour, and while there was a parallel in the bright flash of light upon releasing Sir Sparklepuff, there's also a bright flash when the prison is actually made. It's just a good short hand for a crescendo of magical power, you know? We didn't know if quasar diamonds were even going to be white, besides the one presumably in Aaravos' chest concept art wise.

And yet — it still felt like something to me. Then S5 with Laurelion came along.

The Death of the Immortal

K: "And though undying, took last breath, immortal Laurelion was no more." C: That's good, right? I mean when someone "was no more," that's — that's dead, yeah? K: It's a bit confusing, but that is the clearest implication. Though it is somewhat odd they call them undying and immortal. C: Well, that doesn't sound so immortal? Laurelion "was no more". K: Right. C: But how? How did they...? K: Right here. "White as the star's heart it pierced, ivory draconic brought death's bite known ever forth as Novablade." C: It's a sword.

There's a few noteworthy things about this whole exchange:

The poem has to be relevant eventually, otherwise why include it at all when you easily could've just had Kazi and Callum stumble across the sword period?

It confirms that the heart of a star is something that can be pierced, presumably removed, and white, which I think is the biggest "hell yeah" to the 4x04 intro

There is no reason to point out the contradictions in the poem itself unless A) the sword doesn't work the way we think it does and/or B) we are going to find out why the "undying and immortal" thing matters — and they make sure to emphasize the contradictions quite a bit as well, so they definitely want us to notice

If Laurelion died, and Aaravos took his place, that would explain how Laurelion — identity wise — could die while the same person under a new name could also remain alive / immortal

We learn in Rayla's pre-S5 short story that Ghosts don't often keep their real names, and take a new one as the final severance of their bond with their old community. For all extents and purposes, Aaravos was Ghosted (banished) from his community as well. Taking a new name would make sense

"That must've been when [Harrow] fell." "Fell? Fell! He didn't fall, Rayla, he didn't trip and fall on the ground — he got killed!" (2x08)

There's more speculation here regarding the actual sword and draconic ivory, but that is another post for another day that other smart people have made if you are interested. For now let's just focus on the heart.

We know Laurelion had a heart; we know it got stabbed with the Novablade, leaving Laurelion both no more (i.e. dead) and yet immortal / undying. We know that Arc 2 in particular has had an emphasis on losing your sense of self and identity ("I was his puppet" / "We can't save everyone, Soren" / "But I'm not evil. It's me" / all of Viren's dream visions). We know that a Star's heart is white. We know that Aaravos seemingly used to have one, and now it's either missing or impermanent, only visible sometimes.

(Putting a pin in the second image cause we'll roll back around to it in the counter evidence section.)

We know his chest centrepiece glowed when he was imprisoned, and we know it was seemingly gone when he got banished. We know something about the Key of Aaravos was able to reveal his treachery.

I'm not saying any of this is for sure connected, but it does make you think, at least a little?

That, and it'd play into another bit of potential interesting foreshadowing / symbolism we got in s5 with

Viren Heart Theory

This is another theory I've discussed in more detail elsewhere, so I'm going to link to it here, but it wouldn't feel right to not talk about it at least a little here. Basically the theory is that Viren used his own blood / a piece of his heart, or possibly the whole thing, and the relic staff in order to save Soren when he was a young child.

This is largely due to Viren's spotlight turning red after he begs to be able to save Soren, and cinched by Kpp'Ar pointing specifically at Viren's heart only for Viren to deflect and start talking about Soren's case specifically. Whatever he did seemed to make him more 'powerful,' but at a great personal cost ("In the name of love you may perform acts that are so unforgivable, you will never forgive yourself") and something he finds the need to justify ("I had to do something! I had to save him! I had no choice!").

If Viren did this, it also adds another layer to Viren's sentiment of "Harrow's death breaks my heart" being well, half-hearted, in addition to Soren literally stabbing illusion Viren in the heart in 3x09. Viren mutilated his heart for his son's life, stopped being able to properly express love to said son, and then Soren stabbed his father right in the place that presumably saved him as a child. Ouch.

It seems likely that one of the reasons Aaravos was able to prey so aptly on Viren's desire for importance and attention — to Matter — was because Aaravos might've tried and failed earlier on to get the Startouch elves to listen to him pre-banishment. Being ignored, exiled, and disempowered is something he can relate to, and something he doesn't mind taking advantage of when it suits him.

However, if this combination could save someone Viren loved, it makes me wonder if Aaravos did something similar to likewise try (and fail?) to save someone he loved, too. It's either that or the Startouch elves just completely ripped it out, so... I guess we'll have to see?

But yeah — if Viren did it, then I'm expecting it's more likely that Aaravos did it, too. That is all.

The Pawn Intros

But Dragons, you say, didn't we already talk about the Callum pawn intro?

And to that I say yes, but — thanks to a promo S6 picture of Aaravos crying, we know something else very important about said intros that we didn't know before: they take place at the Sea of the Cast Out.

The sky, the mountains... the fact we know, thanks to the statues in 5x09, that this is likely where Aaravos' grief — his wound, if you will — began to bleed and take root, leading to his thousands of years of seeking vengeance and using just about anything or anyone he could. This is, presumably, where his chess game started... and where it is, symbolically at least, going to end.

Okay, so it's the Sea of the Cast Out — why does that matter?

Well, we know the Sea of the Cast Out is a site of literal trauma for Aaravos. We know, thanks to the statues of Aaravos and the Merciful One, that it plays into the same reaching motif we see Viren participate in quite a few times, both in his intro and in other places/relationships (most notably Sarai, Harrow, and Terry).

The Sea of the Cast Out is also, perhaps more importantly for this theory's purposes, near Elarion. What little we do know about the city beyond it being an important place for humans and dark magic ties it repeatedly to nature through The Midnight Star poem:

Elarion, trembling seed, lay down to earth in icy night, and in the cold her roots took hold defying winter’s deathly bite. Elarion, fading bloom, afraid to wilt and dim and die, [...] Elarion, dying husk, did wilt and whimper in the dark [...] Elarion, black-eyed child, her twisted roots spread deep and far,

as well as a tale about the Flowers of Elarion, precious blooms that could soothe the senses and turned to dust come morning—flowers that were left as "a fair exchange of beloved for beloved" (Tales of Xadia). Put a pin that Exchange idea because I swear we're gonna come back to it but not in the usual way you might be expecting, or at least not entirely.

And we have good reason to believe this nature motif is tied to Aaravos' current imprisonment as well, given how present flower imagery is for his mirror.

So the Sea of the Cast Out and Elarion seem to be the two places we know of thus far that are not only the most important to Aaravos, but the most instrumental to his banishment. It would not surprise me if either Aaravos got involved in what would become Elarion either because he was banished, or it was what he was banished over, or if discovering the truth of what happened there is likewise why the Archdragons were partially like "Yeah, we gotta lock this guy up" (now that they knew he posed a serious threat). The fact that Elarion is referred to as a child (everything with "blood of a child,"), black-eyed (which denotes dark magic), and winter's "deathly bite" ("White as the star's heart it pierced, / ivory draconic brought death's bite") just all ties together nicely in being related even if we're not totally sure how.

But Aaravos having his chest piece removed by force / as punishment in addition to being cast out by the Startouch elves, or him taking it out himself and giving it to someone who was lost... There's a lot of roads to get here as to why this stuff all seems connected if the Key is indeed his chest piece, which offers up both a power up, a sad tragic backstory, some baller symbolism, and some nice double meanings as to what it is key wise.

As the Key works in the moment, it doesn't seem like it's something that would be very useful to a primal mage, as other than pretty easily identifiable gemstones they wouldn't be using much the key identifies. However, the function of the Key being able to categorize and sort magical creatures and plants from each other is something that is very useful if you're a dark mage and need to shore up your ingredients list.

If the Key has Aaravos' chest piece in it, there are two main prongs this offers:

It may have been instrumental in helping humans discover dark magic, hence the "Elarion, searing white" and could also be the Gift the poem speaks of. Aaravos removed it himself (love makes you weak?), gave it to his chosen human, chosen human died, and he was locked out of Startouch realm as a combined result. This offers the clearest connection between why Aaravos' mirror has the nature motif and why Aaravos is crying in the beginning of 6x01.

It was removed by the Startouch elves and lost/hidden, forcing Aaravos to be away from his old home until he could find it again. This is the clearest explanation as to why the Key might be relevant on a plot level. It could give him the power up he needs to get out of his prison and barring that, it's what he needs to wreck havoc and gain access to the Startouch elves to get revenge on them

It also allows what we learn of the cube in 2x06 to have multiple meanings:

The Key is revealed in an episode called The Heart of a Titan. We're led to assume that this is just the Magma Titan, and you could perhaps make an argument the dual meaning (just like how Breaking the Seal refers to the letter and the titan's chest) refers to Harrow or Callum's capacity to love. But, given that one of Aaravos' most prominent mythic comparisons is to Prometheus, a literal Titan, well...

"It unlocks something of great power in Xadia" would work equally well if it's a Key literally made from Aaravos, not just to Aaravos. And the past 2 seasons in particular have emphasized over and over again just how powerful and dangerous he is

The salvation and destruction motif that is inherent in the key, ("I just have a feeling this key thing can help me" / "It's the key of Aaravos, no good will come of it") as keys are linked to chains and freedom with the ability to lock and unlock, is rampant in 2x06, as Viren states that Xadia and the Magma Titan "held both the promise of our salvation and threat of our destruction." This goes double for Sarai sacrificing her life to save Viren

And to round back to Viren and his intro, I don't think it's a coincidence that

is one of the first things Aaravos ever says to Viren, particularly when trying to earn Viren's trust. (Nor that Aaravos considers that Zubeia and co. "betrayed" him when "he would lower his guard," just before the imprisonment.) And while Aaravos gains Viren's trust as a political ally here first, it's also clear that he's actually primarily preying upon Viren's deepest emotional desires here as well: to be listened to. To matter.

Viren wasn't listened to by the monarchs around him (Harrow). He wanted to be important (to them). He wanted to matter.

"It is everything to me, to know that I matter. It's all I ever wanted."

Aaravos: Search your heart. There is something you want very badly. (2x09) Zubeia: He was able to give them something they wanted very badly. (4x04)

And that's what Aaravos offered him, with power and knowledge just being the bait. (If you're interested in more detailed thoughts on this aspect of Viren / their dynamic, check out this meta here.)

More to the point, I do lean towards the Key's plot purposes being 1) a power-up that may be needed for him to get out of his mirror and 2) something that likewise allows him to see the other Startouch elves again. After all, the Silvergrove gave each elf a similar kind of key:

But y'know what, let's talk about Rayla now, because

The Missing Piece of Your Heart

As stated earlier, Rayla's letter has a consistent metaphor when it comes to family and loss:

I remember how I felt when my parents left me to join the Dragonguard, like PART OF MY HEART WAS MISSING and I would never feel right again. I thought I hated them when they did that to me. In the beginning, it felt so big and terrible—like raging despair—but, overtime, it became a soft, sweet ache—a reminder of that missing part of my heart. [...] Please don’t let this hurt too much. But, if it does—if you feel that soft aching—know that that piece of your heart isn’t missing. It’s not missing at all, Callum: I’m carrying it with me! Always.

This struck me as interesting when the letter first came out, as it was a departure from most of Rayla's previous heart motif ("My heart for Xadia") and even the one attributed to her one half of her parents ("My heart goes out with this one"). Why have the motif suddenly switch up when it would've worked just as well, or been doubly romantic + a Ruthari parallel, to just have it be the whole heart?

Then season four came out, and I understood, because, well...

Upon her return, Rayla brings back that "missing piece" of "Callum's heart". It's a painful restoration and doesn't run entirely smooth, but in season five in particular we see him be much more like his older, happier self once he's let himself love her again, and how steadfast he is in said love ("To love is simply know this...").

But, in a moment that could've been exclusively about Rayla, nor did it need for Stella's connection to the Star arcanum to be this prominent in the same moment, they choose to likewise highlight Rayla 'bringing home' the missing piece of Aaravos' heart, too.

This symbolism is also consistent with how the key is introduced in the first place, i.e. first thought of because Rayla's drawing in Callum's sketchbook (another gift from Harrow) reminds Callum of it, and her ultimately being the one to retrieve it even once things at the Banther Lodge take a turn towards the south.

Furthermore, we do have reason to believe that Rayla is indeed the 'Key to Callum' in a sense, particularly after 5x08. Just like how a key can both lock and unlock — give freedom or entrapment — Rayla symbolizes a great deal of duality in Callum's life, including but not limited to:

Leading him to primal magic (1x03, 5x08) and dark magic (2x07, 5x08)

Light ("No one can control you or make your choices for you" / Ray of light) and dark ("But the second you see that elf girl in pain, you completely lost yourself" / "Stay safe, and stay in the light. Don't look for me")

Being routinely emphasized in Callum's arc with Aaravos, especially in S4

"Now you're back. That's kind of good, and it's kind of bad" / "You have to hold pain and love in your heart at the same time" / "And when she came back, I was so happy, and so mad at the same time"

Salvation ("Rayla saves people [...] that's what makes her a hero") and destruction (being willing to die / do dark magic for her)

The Ocean arcanum realization being both positive and negative, just as the poem itself takes on a different shape across the season in regards to how Callum views her and how he views himself while being motivated by his love for her / Ezran

“Wow. So [the berries] look identical, but they might kill you or they might save you,” Callum said. “Exactly. Just like me…” Rayla smiled.

—Book One: Sky novelization

If you're interested in a more specific meta on this dichotomy, I recommend this meta written pre-s4 and this more recent one about 5x08 specifically.

I've written before about Rayla have a weird consistency with the cube as well, particularly in her being the primary carrier of its foreshadowing for most of arc 1, with Callum only really doing so in 1x04 and having Rayla pick up the slack the rest of the time:

"It's a toy, a piece from a children's game" (1x04) as well as "It's a glow toy" (1x05) are now literally true as the cube is 1) involved in Aaravos' game and 2) literally glows a bright flashing light circa the 4x04 intro.

"Are you practicing magic or are you losing to Bait at a game of rolly-cubes?" (2x07 right after Callum calls it a key) came to pass, somewhat if not outright, it seems, in 5x08. Callum practices two different magics, Rayla is literal bait in exchange for the glow-toad, and the episode ends with Callum being worried he's potentially losing Aaravos' 'game' so to speak — that he's made himself more vulnerable to the Startouch elf's control.

Two lines of hers regarding the cube that have not yet come to pass are "This doesn't end well for you" (1x05) and "I hope it was worth it to you, putting everyone's lives in danger" (1x04) but I expect that we'll get them soon enough.

Rayla's 'tether' to a the cube does, of course, loop back into the Flowers of Elarion tale, in which there was a fair exchange of beloved for beloved. If the Key does indeed hold Aaravos' heart (and that is still a very big If), whether it would include an actual exchange is still debatable, but it seems inevitable that she would at least play a part. (If you're interested in more thoughts on Rayla + the cube, check out this meta pre-s4.)

Where the game motif gets the most interesting, I think, is where it intersects with the idea Aaravos mentions in 2x09 regarding, "Those who fail tests of love are simple animals," and one of the TDP short stories in particular having one very interesting tidbit:

“My behavior is—?” “—unusual,” Corvus repeated, nodding. “Very unusual. Ever since you started challenging me to all these little games.” Soren squirmed. His pauldrons clanked as his shoulders slumped. “They aren’t games. They’re tests. Ugh…I’m really messing this up.”

Since Rayla is going to have her "My heart for Xadia" undeniably tested, it would make sense if Callum and Aaravos' hearts came into play too, don't you think?

Other Misc Symbolism / Oddities

Last but not least, we have our odds and ends that didn't fit in the other sections, but I thought may be worthwhile to mention anyway.

For starters, we have screencaps (most notably in 3x06) where you can see a visible dip in Aaravos' tiddies chest that indicates something was removed, and it's not just an artificial darkness.

We have Aaravos touching a fist to his heart twice before he bows and indicates that Callum is going to "play" into his hands (remember that game motif?).

We have this shot, which is the exact kind of thing that "crew makes sure the Ocean and Moon runes are most prominently on display in Callum's dark magic dreams to foreshadow him doing dark magic in S5 Ocean for his Moonshadow gf 3 seasons later" would absolutely do and think they're So Funny about. "No gem for star magic" except the one you're unknowingly holding in your hand, am I right?

Finally, we have precedent that dark magic can 'darken' your heart both in show when Amaya passes the light trial ("A human that is pure of heart") and in the graphic novels with Claudia ("Your heart is not yet darkened") which allows her to see the map to a unicorn (The Puzzle House).

@self-spaghettification also noted that the bright white flash of the star in the 'o' of Aaravos' name in the Arc 2 intro momentarily looks like and makes the shape of the Nova Blade, which is also very cool.

Honourable mention to Rayla going "it's a piece from a children's game" and Ezran going "you said each of the archdragons had a piece of the puzzle" and the Orphan Queen and Jailer presumably working together to trap Aaravos. I think about that shit every day.

Evidence to the Contrary / Alternatives

But like I said at the start, there are plenty of alternatives or feasible pitfalls to consider. This theory resides on a few assumptions after all, that may not be true, such as Aaravos not actually needing the key for anything other than as a lure for Callum, it could purely have something to do with the Nova Blade and nothing to do with the prison, or even have something to do with the nature of magic itself, capable of great good as well as great evil.

His chest piece could've always been more immaterial and dark magic has just darkened it rather than it being removed. Aaravos may have stabbed Laurelion in order to use that heart diamond to partially make the Relic Staff he passed onto Ziard, or Aaravos' chest piece could be in the staff itself, and the cube is something else entirely.

Conclusion

In the end, as we go forward into S6 all the above is more less my personal bet as to where I think we really could go in terms of answering a lot of these questions we've had for a few seasons now. I hope you enjoyed reading the theory and considering (and possibly subscribing to) it, as well as getting your own thoughts stimulated. If any of the above happens I will cry for days and no matter what, I am deeply intrigued to see where S6 takes Aaravos' backstory and, of course, his cube. Luckily:

#tdp #the dragon prince #tdp aaravos #key to his heart theory #tdp meta #analysis series #aaravos

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keroppimelon0 · 11 months

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๑ -- ‘ʜᴇ ʟᴏᴏᴋꜱ ᴊᴜꜱᴛ ʟɪᴋᴇ ᴀ ᴅʀᴇᴀᴍ’

ᴛʜᴇ ᴘʀᴇᴛᴛɪᴇꜱᴛ ʙᴏʏ ɪ’ᴠᴇ ᴇᴠᴇʀ ꜱᴇᴇɴ <3

๑ – synopsis : you can’t help it. seeing dan heng sitting next to you so peacefully reminds you of why you’ve fallen so hard for the guard of the astral express.

๑ – notes : first time posting on tumblr + writing for dan heng!! i’m a massive simp for him so this is just a teensy bit indulgent but i can’t help it, he’s just so gorjuss i am WHIPPED for this man

๑ – relationship : dan heng x reader

๑ – w/c : 1526

DAN HENG was not a confrontational man.

that’s why, when you just so happened to stumble across the faint light peeking out from under the archive room door, he didn’t mind when you let yourself inside. nor did he mind when you sat yourself down beside him after plucking a random book off the ground - a fairytale, one you weren’t really interested in.

instead, your eyes scan the frame of the man sitting beside you, his soft breathing mixed with yours the only noise in the room, minus the gentle rumble of machinery as the astral express moved through the galaxy. you’re so lost in thought, your voice bubbles past your lips before you have the chance to even think about what you’re going to, and have just said.

"you're gorgeous."

the words tumble past your lips before you can properly comprehend them. he didn't even seem to notice, if not for the gentle dust of pink across his cheeks and tips of his ears. dan heng was quietly reading beside you before you decided to suddenly compliment him.

"hm?" was his nonchalant response, misty blue-green eyes flickering to your face for a second. the moment your eyes meet, there's a quick jolt of electricity that sparks between you both, dispelled as quickly as it came as his eyes return to the words across the script he quietly read.

"i'm what?" His clear crisp voice rings out in your head. you half acknowledged his sound of curiosity beforehand, still reeling from the embarrassment of admitting that dan heng was gorgeous in your eyes.

you couldn't help it - who could, really. just looking at dan heng, the way his onyx hair fell across his forehead as his head tilted down towards his book, the silken strands framing his gentle jawline. within the bathe of the milkyway shining down upon his skin from the window of the archives room, dan heng looks like he was taken out of the fairytale book that's nestled comfortably in your lap. a prince charming of his own design.

"..will you not elaborate? hm, very well." and just like that, he's dropped the topic. you don't know whether to sigh in relief or be a little disappointed that he didn't push it further, but you know that dan heng wasn't usually one for confrontation. at least, that's what he made it seem to you.

for now, though, all it seems you can do is continue to read the story you had lost interest in a long time ago. it was easy to lose interest in anything when the most gorgeous man you've ever laid eyes upon is sitting right beside you, reading as if he's unaware of this fact. probably because he is.

you wonder if dan heng is actually aware of all the times he's caught your eye, if he's aware of how he makes your heart seize so violently in your chest when he casts a soft glance in your direction. half the time, you're praying you don't die of a heart attack because that's just what he does to your heart - he has his hand wrapped around it and he doesn't even realize.

the soft sigh that leaves your lips afterwards makes you realize, finally come to terms with it. 'dan heng will never be yours,' because how can a man of such intelligence and grace ever like you?

just before your self-deprecating thoughts can swallow you whole, the gentlest brush of fingers against your own cheek makes you jump. you snap out of your reverie with little fanfare, lips slightly parted as you make eye contact with dan heng. this time, neither of you look away.

"you seem troubled tonight," his warm breath gently fans your face, and you're now acutely aware of how close he is to you. "is everything alright?"

you pause before you give your answer, wondering what you can say to him. you're distracted, because with his face so up close, you can see every inch of his stoic yet gentle expression. "y-yeah." you curse yourself for stuttering - can you really not control yourself around him?

but dan heng finds it amusing, as the corner of his lip quirks upwards before it settles back into a line. "very well," he pauses, his eyes scanning your face a little more intently, "if there is anything bothering you.."

"no, no! really, i'm fine." you manage to force out, giving him a half-hearted smile to go along with it. "i'm just.. thinking." that should do it, you think to yourself. he wouldn't pry, because dan heng is not a confrontational man. at least, that's what you would think...

"thinking.. and that requires you to stare holes into my face whenever i'm not looking?"

"ghK-" the noise that you make sounds like you've just choked on a bone, eyes widening to the size of planets as your face flushes crimson in seconds. "of course not! what makes you think.. w-what makes you.."

the words you were crafting meticulously in your head dies on your tongue as dan heng inches closer. he's no longer holding his book. rather, his arm has made its way over your lap, effectively trapping you in place.

"what makes me think..?" your jaw clicks shut as you dry gulp hard, bottom lip trembling as his face inches closer once again, close enough to smell his scent, the faintest hint of maple and newly opened books. a strange combination, but one that makes your heart practically leap out of your chest.

"i think.. that you have something to confess to me." your breath hitches in your throat as his nose touches yours. his lips, they're right there. inches away from yours. you let out a soft exhale, squeezing your eyes shut as you carefully lean in.

just as the gap barely shortens between you both, the sound of the archive room door slamming open makes you both jolt. in the midst of your panic, dan heng's head moves backwards, but yours moves forwards with the momentum, and your lips collide with his nose instead.

a familiar pink haired girl stands at the doorway, her blue eyes sparkling as she excitedly calls out for the male that had you held in his arms at that exact moment. "dan heng, have you seen-"

march's grin drops a little at the sight of the both of you. dan heng is clutching his nose, propped up against one arm as you frantically apologize over and over, hands flailing as you basically landed on top of him in the struggle.

"uhh.. you guys just.. finish up in here, okay?" march smiles, her hand flying to her mouth to suppress her giggles as she slowly slides the door shut.

"i'm so sorry- oh my god!" you feel tears pricking your eyes out of embarrassment as dan heng hisses, slowly moving his hand away from his nose, where a small, almost minuscule bruise has begun to form.

"it's fine.. leave it to march to never knock before entering.." dan heng grumbles, his cheeks tinted a soft pink as you bury your head into your hands. "i'm so sorry.." you apologize again, feeling the heat radiating off of you as a gentle gloved hand touches your shoulder.

"really, it's okay.." you peek through the cracks of your fingers, and you see his eyebrows are scrunched in concern. the guilt weighs on you along with the embarrassment, and you sigh miserably at the failed chance to kiss the man of your dreams.

rather, you feel a warmth brush your cheek, like a maple leaf falling against your skin. you barely have time to react before dan heng has leaned in, pressing the warmest of kisses against your soft skin. "there. now we're even."

your mouth opens and closes like a fish gasping for breath, and you can see his almost teasing smile before a dumb grin spreads across your own face. his position shifting slightly, enough to give you space to properly sit on his lap, was all the invitation you needed.

your lips collided with each other again and again until you both could hear nothing but the mechanical whirring of the archive room fading into nothingness around you.

⋆ 𓏲 𓂅 ๑ 𓍼 𓏲 ⋆

bonus:

the next morning, march peeked into the archives room to check on you both. your room was empty, so she definitely knew you never returned for the night. but seeing you and dan heng peacefully curled up together on his (honestly, uncomfortable looking) makeshift bed, she couldn't help but grin widely as she fumbled with her camera to snap a quick picture for later on.

"march, why are you spying on dan heng?" himeko raised a brow behind the girl who quickly made a shushing motion, sliding the door open a little wider so she could peek at the spectacle of the two of you happily cuddled up with each other. "ah, i see." himeko smiled mirthfully, shaking her head as she waved her hand. "just don't embarrass them too much, march."

march 7th snickered as she snapped another picture, knowing once you both woke up, the teasing you would get from her would be unimaginable.

hope you enjoyed!! i'm actually so scared to post this haha,, but i love dan heng he's my fav he's so babygirl

#dan heng x reader #honkai star rail #hsr x reader #honkai star rail x reader #danheng x reader #๑ -- kerokero's works #honkai dan heng #hsr dan heng

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higanbana-writer · 1 year

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Everlasting Family

Pairing: Gyūtarō x Platonic!Mother!Reader x Daki Summary: Tanjirō fails to behead Gyūtarō after you intervene. Note: Based off the headcanon I did with Upper Moon!Reader turning Daki and Gyūtarō into demons.

“Brother! Do something will you, Brother?!”

Daki’s shrill shrieks sounded distant, muffled by the roaring blood in Gyūtarō’s ears.

How? How had things come to this? That Hashira and those other three demon slayers – all of them were supposed to be dead! So why was it that both he and his sister were on the verge of being beheaded by them?!

He’d been so confident in their victory not too long ago, but now, try as he might, he couldn’t suppress the fear that welled up within him. He could feel it so clearly, the way the cold blade sliced deeper into his neck as its wielder bellowed in desperation.

No. It wasn’t over yet. He could still fight back.

He had to.

Clenching his teeth, blood began to bubble at the stump of his severed arm as he tightened his grip on his kama, sinking it further into Tanjirō’s jaw in a last-ditch attempt to force him away. But the boy never faltered, not even seeming to register the pain. And a second later, Gyūtarō found his head flying through the air. Oddly enough, instead of the expected sound of Tanjirō’s blade slicing cleanly through his flesh, he heard the piercing screech of blades scraping against each other.

Rather than dropping to the ground as it should have, his head was suddenly seized by something and the next thing he knew, he was overlooking the demon slayers from atop a building.

“Wha-“

With everything happening the blink of an eye, he couldn’t understand what had just happened. Uzui and Tanjirō were still below, and he was certain Daki had been beheaded as well, so who’s hand was it that held him? It felt gentle and somehow extremely familiar.

“Goodness, I see that some pests have crawled their way into our home while I was gone.”

Upon hearing your voice, Gyūtarō inhaled sharply in surprise. What were you doing here when you were supposed to be away on a mission for Muzan? Had you completed it sooner than anticipated? Well, never mind that. Though your tone had been light and almost on the edge of playful, he could hear the simmering rage layered underneath it, threatening to boil over at any moment.

While he was unable to turn his head with no body attached to it, he was still able to catch a glimpse of you through the corner of his eye and what he saw sent a chill down his detached spine lying below.

A frigid smile graced your lips and your eyes, ever intimidating with the Upper Moon rank displayed, held nothing but a murderous fire as you gazed at the humans that had decapitated him. Never during the entire century he’d known you for, had he ever seen you this furious.

Just as Gyūtarō opened his mouth to call your attention onto him, he suddenly caught sight of an open folding fan clutched in your other hand. It was a weapon he was all too familiar with, having seen you using it numerous times during hunts for meals and times when you needed to blend in with the human courtesans. What he was unaccustomed to seeing, however, was the blood that dripped off its bladed edge. His own blood, to be more precise.

Had you perhaps… sliced away at the remaining flesh that had connected his head and neck before Tanjirō could fully behead him? That would certainly explain why he hadn’t started to disintegrate yet. Then, if it weren’t for you swooping in at the last second, both he and Daki would have been guaranteed to die.

He grimaced at the thought, shame quickly overtaking any and all relief he felt towards he and his sister’s narrow escape from death. The two of them had upheld their position among the Twelve Kizuki for almost as long as they had been with you, taking the lives of countless people along the way and continuously growing stronger. They were your pride and joy, demons whom you turned and taught yourself, honing them into the perfect weapons befitting of Muzan.

Or at least, that’s what he thought. But here they were, having been nearly killed by one measly Hashira and three brats not even old enough to be called men. An utter disgrace to their rank and to you. It would come as no surprise if you were to cast aside the siblings and leave for good, though he dreaded the very thought of his cherished family breaking apart.

“Gyūtarō.”

He couldn’t help but flinch when you called his name and while reluctant – perhaps even scared – to face whatever harsh words you had for him, he was left with no choice when you lifted his head to look him in the eyes.

Contrary to his expectations, however, you looked far from displeased at his and Daki’s loss. As a matter of fact, the burning ire you held towards the demon slayers mere moments ago was all but gone, replaced with a gentle concern for your children.

He had been prepared to plead with you, beg you for another chance if you decided to abandon them. But met with your worry and love, not a hint of anger or disappointment to be found, all he could do was croak out a quiet apology. “Mother, I… I’m sorry Daki and I couldn’t do better.”

You quietly shushed him, placing a soft kiss on his forehead. “You have nothing to apologize for. I know you and Daki did the best you both could, and that’s what matters. It’s that boy who’s the problem.” Your gaze flickered down to whom he could only presume to be Tanjirō, your lips curling into a disdainful sneer. “Those hanafuda earrings – he must be the one Master Muzan wishes dead. I’ll take over from here, so could you please check on your sister, Gyūtarō?”

“Of course, Mother.” His reply was quick and he blinked in place of nodding. As much as he wanted to kill Tanjirō himself for nearly beheading him not just once, but twice, he knew he was in no position to argue with you. He and Daki were already fortunate enough that you were so forgiving of their blunder.

Gyūtarō raised his body off the ground from behind Tanjirō and Uzui, and though the latter had lunged at it to prevent him from reconnecting his head, he was far too slow. Gyūtarō’s body leapt up and landed next to you on the roof side, taking his head back when you handed it to him and placing it back on the stump of his neck.

“Now then,” You narrowed your eyes as you looked down at the humans, a cruel glint mixing with the returning anger in them. “I believe you have reinforcements on the way, yes? I can see that most of you here are already on the verge of dying, but do try to stay alive until they arrive. I’ll have you watch as I slaughter them all.” As you let out a fiendish laugh, blue flames began to flicker behind you, taking on the appearance of nine fox tails.

“You’ve got to be kidding me…” Uzui muttered in disbelief, the ever-irritating confidant façade of his finally starting to break with dread peeking through its cracks.

But who could blame him? One glance at the younger demon slayer next to him was all it took for Gyūtarō to know that his poison had already taken effect. It wouldn’t be long now before Tanjirō succumbed to it. Uzui was now alone in his fight against you, Upper Moon Four. Oh, how the tables have turned.

A smug smirk slipped its way onto his face and as he began heading towards the direction where Daki’s head should have fallen, he heard the clashing of weapons and your voice snarling, “You should have never touched my children, human.”

Your children.

No matter how many times Gyūtarō had heard you say it, it still filled him with a warmth that almost seemed…human. With your words echoing in his head, he leapt from roof to roof, scanning the ground until he spotted his sister, clearly fuming. Daki seemed to still be in the process of reattaching her head, holding a hand to each side to keep it still as her flesh fused together.

She scowled when he dropped down in front of her, immediately beginning to whine. “Brother! What took you so long?! Those brats beheaded me again! You killed them, right? Tell me you killed them all!”

Wasn’t this the fourth time her head had been cut off that night? As exasperating as that fact was, he had to admit, after knowing that they would have died without your intervention, he was relieved to see her being so lively.

“Mother is home.”

In an instant, Daki’s eyes lit up with delight. “Really? She’s back already? I have to go welcome her home then!” With her head now fully reattached, she rushed to her feet and started hurrying back to where they’d last been, eager to see you again.

As he followed after his sister, seeing how excited she was reminded him of the brief, mostly one-sided conversation he’d had with Tanjirō. It really was quite a pity that he’d refused his offer to become a demon. Gyūtarō had no doubt that if he had accepted, you would have welcomed he and his sister into the family. Well, not that it mattered anymore since the boy would be dead soon.

The three of you were a perfect family as it was and he knew that as long as you were together, nothing – no matter how many demon slayers or Hashira were sent your way – would be able to tear you apart.

#kimetsu no yaiba #kimetsu no yaiba x reader #demon slayer #demon slayer x reader #kny #x reader #gyutaro x reader #daki x reader #platonic

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otomefiend · 9 months

Text

Alfons Sylvatica & Elbert Greetia

Story Event: Villains want to bother little 'Robin'

Epilogue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3 Premium

Kate, we gotta talk girl, cause this scenario was ready to go places. Also, how cute are those two. I might have teared up a bit here and there. Love this throuple so much. 🤧

~~~

Alfons: "Now that you've been taken straight to your room, `Your Majesty`..."

Alfons: "Please, grant us our reward."

Kate: "Re...reward, what the...?"

Elbert: "... you can give me anything."

(Uh....)

Just by looking at Alfons' face, it was clear that he truly enjoyed playing with me.

Lord Elbert, on the other hand, was overly protective and surprisingly forceful.

Now that the two of them had come to my room, I couldn't afford to send them away with nothing.

(I was perfectly aware that those two supported and protected me, physically and mentally, all day long)

I would feel guilty if I repayed that effort with something perfunctory.

(Though I'd be lying if I said that I did not deserve something in return since I was a part of this mission as well...)

Still, it was true that I was indebted to both of them.

(I wonder what Her Majesty would give...)

(A medal or something expensive? Those are out of my reach. If not an item, then... maybe something that can be shown through actions?)

It was presumptuous trying to guess Her Majesty's thoughts, but I was willing to give it a try.

-- I was reminded of my desire for the debutantes' happiness that I had experienced earlier today.

(If Her Majesty felt the same way about them as I did... if she acted upon it at that time...)

Kate: "Could you both be so kind and sit there, please?"

Alfons: "Heh, you're Her Majesty now, right? You'll have to order us."

Kate: "Both of you... sit there."

Alfons: "Can't you simply say 'sit down'? That's what you'd expect from a well-bred lady."

Elbert: "... you would, huh."

Feeling a little nervous, I walked over to them sitting side by side on the sofa...

And lightly kissed them on their forheads.

Elbert: "........."

Alfons: "... what was that?"

Kate: "It's a kiss of blessing for each of you that means 'May you find happiness'."

Elbert: "... happiness."

Alfons: "May we find it...?"

Kate: "Yes. I don't remember who it was, as it happened a long time ago, but I recall someone saying it to me and kissing me on the forehead."

Kate: "I've heard the nobles do that as well, wishing for happiness."

Kate: "If there was a reward worthy of Her Majesty that I was able to grant you, I thought this would be it..."

Elbert: "........ "

Alfons: "......ha."

Alfons: "I'm disappointed by how pure the reward is. I was hoping for something more radical."

Kate: "Good luck trying to get it from Her Majesty."

Alfons: "Please try again, this time a little lower."

He smiled seductively whilst tapping his lips with his index finger.

Kate: "N-not a chance."

Elbert: "... Kate."

Kate: "Yes, Lord El...bert?"

I felt a gentle tug, then my face was pulled towards his and something soft touched my forehead.

(...ah?)

The moment I realised Lord Elbert had kissed me, his beautifully shaped lips whispered.

Elbert: "My blessing may have no effect, but..."

Elbert: "I also wish you happiness."

Elbert: "I hope you're happy."

Kate: "...t-thank you."

(I wasn't conscious of it when I did it myself, but... now I'm starting to feel embarrassed)

When I thought about it calmly, I realised I did something quite daring, kissing them without permission.

(Maybe it's because I spent the day trying to be dignified like Her Majesty...)

Elbert: "...... was it unpleasant?"

Kate: "What!? No, not at all!"

As he peered at me at close range, I became aware of his lips, and my face grew hot.

Alfons: "You're so cunning, Elbert. Getting a head start like that."

Suddenly, a hand appeared from the side, and --

Alfons seized my chin from Lord Elbert's hand and pulled it towards himself.

Then planted a soft kiss on my left cheek.

Kate: "Ah!?"

Elbert: "........."

Alfons: "Blessings from me too."

Kate: "A kiss on a cheek means something entirely different, doesn't it?"

Alfons: "Haha! It's nonsense to give a meaning to a kiss in the first place."

Alfons: "Kissing is just the act of touching sensitive parts of the body for pleasure, isn't it?"

Kate: "Only you have such distorted views...!"

Kate: "Saying that, if this is what you believe, then your kiss wasn't a 'blessing' after all..."

Alfons: "No, no, I put it all in there, didn't I? That pure wish for happiness..."

Alfons: "If feelings are as important as you say, then it shouldn't matter where you kiss?"

(What a quibble...)

He shrugged his shoulders, not even trying to hide his mocking attitude.

(Seriously... I've been swayed by those two all day)

Lord Elbert, who returned the kiss of blessing,

And Alfons, who scoffed at the kiss of blessing.

They were polar opposites, after all, and their follies had a bad effect on my heart.

(In the end... I was able to act on behalf of Her Majesty and returned to the Castle without any problems)

(Granted, I didn't expect to be asked for a reward)

(I'm glad we spent the time together... huh?)

Four entwined arms prevented me from drawing the curtain on today in my mind.

Kate: "Um... Why am I being hugged by you two...?"

Elbert: "... it happened when I was looking at you, somehow."

Alfons: "I tried to carefully hold Lord El, and one thing led to another."

(Neither of them explained why...)

Kate: "Then, can we assume that the reward has been granted...?"

Elbert: "...I want more."

Kate: "Eh!?"

Alfons: "Ah, I see."

Alfons: "Given that the kisses you got from El and me in return evened out your `kiss of blessing`,"

Alfons: "I'm afraid you still haven't rewarded us adequately."

Kate: "Huh!? But... what more can I to do...?"

Elbert: "I want you to kiss me again."

Kate: "Wha...!?

Elbert: "And then... I want to kiss you on the cheek as well."

(Won't those cancel themselves out again...?)

Alfons: "Ah, that's greed for you. Hmm, I have an excellent idea."

Alfons: "How about the three of us welcome the morning in bed together?"

Kate: "No, absolutely not -- !"

~~~

After quite a bit of struggle in their arms that night,

-- two kisses on the right cheek and two on the left finally set me free.

~~~

Alfons: "Seriously, 'May you find happiness"... what a silly little 'Robin'."

Alfons: "I've never been offered such a pure blessing in my entire life... I think."

Elbert: "... yeah."

Elbert: "Her blessing was warm, dazzling and... scary."

Elbert: "I feel like I will always want this..."

Alfons: "........."

Elbert narrowed his eyes as if remembering something, and muttered.

Elbert: "Hey Al --- is Kate beatitlful?

Alfons: "......no."

Alfons: "There aren't many people in the world so beautiful that you'd have to collect them."

Elbert: "......I see."

Elbert: "...... that's good."

Despite the words of relief, Elbert looked terribly sad and depressed.

Alfons, who was smiling all the time, let out a sigh that was far from happy as well.

Alfons: "Really, there is no way to save... you and me."

#ikemen villains #ikevil #alfons & elbert #ikevil alfons & elbert #alfons sylvatica #ikevil alfons #elbert greetia #ikevil elbert #ikevil story event #fan translation

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twis-world · 3 months

Text

Loving Arms

Mentions: Jamil Centric, 2nd Person, Gender Neutral Reader, Fluff??? Fluff

Though he loathed to admit it, relaxation did not come easily to Jamil.

One could not blame him for that. His entire life up to a certain point had been dedicated solely to serving the Al-Asim family. To serve Kalim. The mere thought of resting was a luxury he could not afford nor even desire for.

Anything could happen at any moment in time. There was no small number of brave fools that wouldn’t love to seize the throne for themselves, not even the rest of the royal family were to be excluded, painful as it was. Assassination attempts were never ending, kidnappings even less, and the rare counts of food poisoning were never to be taken lightly. Painful memories of when he had to undertake the latter for his “master” loved to rear its ugly head from time to time, showing its form in dreadful nightmares that took far too long to wake up from.

To ever be in a true state of peace and tranquility was but a mere dream.

One that he did not ever wish to wake up from at the moment.

Having his guard down was such a foreign feeling that it almost felt wrong. To not have walls of the strongest steel protecting his mind and body, to not be so alert that his brain ached at all the details he must note, to not have every fiber in his body ready to pounce the mere second danger showed itself…wrong. It was all so terribly wrong.

How could something so wrong, though, feel so incredibly right?

Your hands running through his let down hair with such care that he thought himself fragile for once. How could he not when you yourself not dare to apply more than the little pressure necessary to bring about chills of such pleasure all throughout his body. Fingertips running down his scalp so smoothly for the past hour that it was truly a surprise he hadn’t yet fallen victim to the cruel world of dreams.

Was it an underlying fear for what may greet him that prevented him from moving on peacefully? The smallest inkling of dread that held him back, his consciousness clinging to remain with the one person it considered truly safe? Someone who he childishly believed would protect him from the horrors of the past?

He quickly learned, though, that such immature thoughts were all for naught. It truly was a wonder as to how you could seemingly hear everything that ran through his head. All the doubts, the paranoia, the anxiety, none of them could hide from your being no matter how much he may try.

Gentle caresses moved from his locks to his face, yet he dared not open his eyes. He couldn’t even if he tried anyways, eyelids so heavy it was fruitless to even flicker them. Instead he nuzzled his face further into your lap, an action he would no doubt come to regret when your relentless teasing would inevitably come about in the near future. That, however, was something he would deal with later. Instead, for once, he would be selfish and simply enjoy the moment.

He hadn’t even realized how tense he had been mere moments ago, feeling how his muscles so easily relaxed with each brush of your fingers. Starting from his cheeks, running up to the spot between his eyebrows, playfully running down the slope of his nose, finally coming to a dangerous close along the bow of his lip. A pleasant shiver ran up his spine, exhaustion holding him in too tight of a grasp to allow him to blush at how you chuckled in response.

It finally took the delicate kiss you placed upon his forehead for him to finally let go of himself. Consciousness so easily drifting away that it was almost scary. Almost, not quite. Submitting himself to you would always be something he dare not fear, but instead wholly welcome with just as loving arms as you would him.

#twisted wonderland #twisted wonderland x reader #x reader #reader #gender neautral reader #x gender neutral reader #jamil #jamil viper #jamil viper x reader #fluff #scarabia #tws #twst jamil #twst x reader

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mists-reading-nook · 1 year

Text

Creator!Reader who has religious trauma!

780 words (maybe I'll make another part that's longer)

Tw: Religious Trauma,Worship,It's basically a cult,they do not respect you,mention of being constantly watched.

You were shaking again. Sitting in a balcony pew in a church built in your honor,Your acolytes sitting with you. You could feel it all coming back. You hated it,but you couldn't leave this time. You couldn't just get up and leave. You couldn't ignore the pastors words about you. Your breathing was getting shallower. When had the air gotten so thick? You couldn't breathe,you needed to breathe. Your ears rung,a high pitched sound you couldn't make go away.

Aether and Lumine are the first to notice your distress. Aether looks worried. "Your grace,is the sermon not to your liking?" He asks,ready to stop the sermon at a moment's notice. You shake your head. You can't speak. Not now. Your tongue feels heavy,like cotton in your mouth.

Zhongli is next. "Your grace,if it's not to your liking,we can change it." You finally find your voice. You know leaving will disappoint everyone,that it will cause a lot of drama,but you can't stay another second.

"I wish to go home Zhongli." He nods,and you stand up. Everyone in the church turns to look at you,looking to see your next movements,but you simply look at the floor and turn around,walking out of the balcony and out of the church,taking a deep,shaky breath when you are finally outside. You're out. You're safe.

"Your Grace,are you ok? Was the sermon not to your liking?" Zhongli's voice snaps you out of your trance,and you see that there are no prying eyes. It's only you and your attending acolytes. You feel the tears start to fall,and you let yourself sob,ignoring the worried looks your acolytes send each other. No matter how long ago it was,no matter if you lived in Tevyat or Earth,you couldn't shake the way anxiety seized your heart,the way your body began to shake. The way you became so scared. You hated all this creator nonsense,it just reminded you of the one who caused so you much pain. Reminded you that you were just like them. That you were no better than them.

The way your acolytes worshiped your every move,the way the ground ached for your touch. It scared you so much. You feared the pain,the hurt,the suffering of those who followed "your" doctrine. Most people would love to be a God. Not you. For you it only reminded you of the pain you had to deal with. How many had died because they looked like you? How many young children had to hide themselves because they had the same hair or the same eyes? How many had been killed? How many lives had been lost simply because of something as simple as hair color?

You were "home" now. It'd been months since you were found to be the true creator,but you'd never truly feel like this was "home". Not when those you once saw as equals kneeled and grovelled at your feet. Not when the title of "god" was forced upon you. You had tried to explain,but your "darling" followers had taken it as a sign to worship more. To atone for the sin of making you feel inadequate. That's what Zhongli had said. When you told him he weeded. He thought that you were uncomfortable because of what they had done to you. You remember that conversation. It had only been a couple hours ago,yet it felt like it had been years.

"...And that's why I don't want to be treated like a God. I hope you understand." You said,looking at your knees as you sat across from Zhongli,who looked very calm.

"Of course your grace,I understand. We shall double our worship." Your eyes widened. That wasn't what you wanted!

"Zhongli no,that's not what I meant-" Zhongli cut you off,voice sounding sad as he began to kneel at your feet.

"We will never make you feel inadequate to be our God ever again your excellency. You have my word." You just nodded,holding back the tears that threatened to flow. Your mind screeched. 'NO NO NO,THAT'S NOT WHAT I WANT…' but you didn't speak. You couldn't find the words.

It hurt remembering that. Knowing that you would never be truly understood. That you would always be *

watched,trapped. Even now,you were stuck inside your room,with an acolyte watching outside your door. You were a 'God',yet you couldn't control your own followers. How silly. You hated this. Hated that you were surrounded by people yet had no friends,hated the way your body would shake like a leaf in the wind whenever you were reminded of your 'Godly' status. Hated that you couldn't ignore this treatment. Hated how you had Nightmares of being hunted,hated how you flinched whenever someone tried to touch you. Hated how you could barely remember your own name. Hated how you couldn't remember what your friends looked like,what your family looked like. Hated how your memories of your old life slipped through your fingers like sand. You hated it all.

Oh how you wished you weren't a God.

#genshin cult au #sagau brainrot #sagau cult au #genshin sagau #yandere genshin sagau #genshin impact sagau #sagau #genshin impact #genshin impact cult au

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tenjito · 10 months

Text

fireflies become stars when the sky burns. || jang wonyoung

pairing: jang wonyoung x female reader contents: angst, hanahaki disease, y/n just wants wonyoung to be happy, implied death, unhappy ending description: you had never realized your feelings for your best friend until you started coughing up those pink carnations—wonyoung's favourite flower.

how ironic, was your initial thought after the first petal tumbled from your lips, because essentially, you did this to yourself.

you had introduced yujin to your best friend only two weeks ago. expectedly, they hit it off almost immediately, and it was very much planned.

wonyoung wasn't the type to go out and find people to date. like she had always told you, she wanted to "fall in love naturally and not force anything", to which you'd scoff and roll your eyes.

it was exhausting to watch your best friend be so painfully single all the time, that you made a vow to yourself to change that. so, when you met ahn yujin, you took the role of playing matchmaker (foolishly enough).

it was almost like a calling, a sign of fate. you knew wonyoung like the back of your hand, so you knew that yujin was absolutely perfect for her.

and fuck you for being so right.

staring down at the toilet basin, crimson covered petals of what resembled pink carnations floating in the water, you understood perfectly.

it was always there, you were just to blind to actually notice.

the lingering trembles and flutters your heart would get whenever your eyes would catch hers, they were always there.

wonyoung had always been a pain to you, even before yujin.

she was a pain to look at, laughing and shining like a small sun, because you knew you'd never get to taste her smile. a pain to touch with only slight brushes from your fingertips, knowing there were miles and miles of her skin you'd never get to feel.

and now, this. an ultimatum. this was the painful confirmation that even if you died now, from the flowers in your throat suffocating you whole, or the all-encompassing dread from the unrequited, you would never be able to forget jang wonyoung.

it's always been like that, you've always felt like that. hacks of red coated pink, finally make you realize that you've been in love with your best friend this whole time, and now you're dying because of it.

you couldn't help but wonder if you and wonyoung could've been something. something more than just best friends. you wondered if you hadn't have introduced her to yujin, would she have loved you back?

you wanted so desperately for the answer to be yes, to give yourself a chance, some hope. your soul was captured, chained and broken into so thoroughly by wonyoung, and now you were being released into the reality.

wonyoung would never love you. she couldn't. not in the way you loved her.

not in the way she loved yujin.

your breathing kicked in violently, filling your lungs with longing, burning gasps as you choked on another flower. sensation tingled back to the edges of your body, prickling like a thousand tiny, rusted needles.

you were dying.

you remembered what your friend, gaeul, had said when you told her about the disease. "but you can't die." is what she said after you had admitted you weren't going to get the surgery.

you thought it was an utterly stupid sentence. everyone died eventually. gaeul said it like it was a crime, an impossibility. she said it like it was something that could never happen.

except that it was happening right in front of you.

you felt your chest seize again, and the cold tiles of your bathroom floor underneath you, nipping at your skin as your body slowly lost its warmth.

there was a tragedy in being selfless, and you had it down to an art.

watching as the radiant-hued lights on the ceiling gleamed, you conjectured where your soul would go upon your death, the moment you'd join a spray of stars reserved in eternity.

the door opens, but you don't notice until wonyoung's in front of you, tears in her eyes but you couldn't hear her cries. your gaze is latched onto her and, slowly giving out as it was, your heart beat lonely within your ever-aching chest.

you know why you're here now. all you ever wanted in this world was one simple thing, and that was for jang wonyoung to be happy. she found her happiness, who were you to get in the way?

the blood continued to pool, drip, drip, dripping away. each droplet was in the shape of a spider lily bud, blooming, blossoming, agonizingly red, eerily reminiscent of an emotion in your chest that's about to burst.

you imagine the scene drawn as an impressionist painting; the light, flickering brutal white-yellow in thin pen strokes, enhancing the two bodies, two friends in embrace, one laying limp on the ground, and the other holding her with glass-like droplets down her cheeks.

it's beautiful (and so is wonyoung).

it's beautiful, in the way she's telling you to stay awake, completely unknowing of the fact that she's the reason you were there, covered in a sprawl of blood and petals.

it's delicate, in the way her eyes focus on yours, then to the flowers, then back to you, and her cries grow louder, as she finally realizes.

it's soothing, in the way she's holding you in her arms and whispering while you die, sounding like nothing but a sweet symphony to you.

it's tragic, in a way, but you think it's a pretty poetic way to die, and you wouldn't want it any other way.

"y/n..."

agony is to hear your name on her tongue. when she says it, it's as though her lips are dancing across razorblades, as though her voice whistles through a slick iron grid.

her touch is soft and warm, her tears striking along your cold jugular, her breathing cardice, smaze against your skin. she sounds of regrets and mistakes.

"y/n, please..."

you try to hate it, you definitely want to hate it. the way she says your name is beautiful, like a poem, but it is also so cruel, the way she forces it through your ears, because you know you'll never hear it again, and it spreads and stings like blight.

but you love it.

"i love you, wonyoung."

and you love her.

"i'm so sorry, y/n..."

yet she'll never love you back.

#jang wonyoung #jang wonyoung x reader #wonyoung x reader #ive #ive x reader #ive imagines #hanahaki #kpop x reader #wonyoung #kpop #kpop gg #ive scenarios #tenjito

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little-box-of-autism · 1 year

Text

Hidden Blessing

Note: A gift for @hyperfixatedfandomer

It's been so long, too long, since Spider has been able to feel the wind against the skin of his face or taste the crisp air in his lungs, that he doesn't bother to hide himself as much as he usually would for moments like this.

When he'd take off his mask and breath.

Years ago he wouldn't have hidden it - his miraculous ability to breath Pandora's air - but that was before the sky people, the humans, returned and turned entire swathes of forest to ash.

If Spider had found out before that, under different circumstances than how he had, he wouldn't have hid it. He would have walked before the entire clan, no exopack in sight but still breathing, to show them the proof that he belonged, that Eywa had blessed him, but that never happened.

It was a stupid decision really, Spider could admit that, to go to the Village just two days after the RDA's return to Pandora, but he was fifteen and scared.

Scared for his friends, his siblings, for himself.

Neytiri had never hidden her hate for him, but she hadn't outright attacked him before that moment. Spider still could remember the wild look in her eyes when she saw him, her bow drawn in seconds and an arrow longer than his arm aimed at his chest.

Spider never forgot what Jake had said to him after he had calmed his wife enough that she withdrew her bow.

"It's best that you leave Spider, and don't come back for a bit. You'll do more harm than good being here right now."

Spider still thinks that those words hurt worse than an arrow to the heart ever would have.

Truthfully, he doesn't really remember what was going through his head when he had done it - taking off the mask he needed to breathe - and Spider doesn't like thinking about it too much.

Push it down, bury it and pray the darkness doesn't fester. Spider's learned how to choke down the pain, self-hatred, and sadness.

Spider is too caught up in the swirling storm that is his mind to hear the sound of approaching footsteps, or to hear the pained gasp, before long four-fingered hands are grasping his arms and big yellow eyes are staring at him in panic.

Neteyam.

"Spider-! Brother-!"

Hearing Neteyam call him brother is a shock to his system, it's been years since Neteyam has called him that. Hell, Neteyam barely acknowledged him since the RDA returned.

Spider only comes back to himself when Neteyam tries to shove the mask back on his face, clearly too panicked to realize that Spider's been breathing fine without it this entire time.

"Stop- Neteyam, stop! I don't need it!"

Neteyam te Suli Tsyeyk'itan had many things he regretted in life, and his near death had forced many of those regrets to the forefront of his mind as he healed.

Spider was one of his bigger regrets, or specifically how he treated the boy he once called brother.

Before the weight of being the eldest son of Toruk Makto had been set heavy upon his shoulders; before the words of The People had become too hard to ignore; before his mother's grief had tainted his view of the boy he has known for as long as Neteyam could remember, he had called Spider his brother.

Neteyam would never forget the pain on Spider's face the first time he had called him a demon.

Fear had seized his heart and panic had stolen the air from his lungs when Neteyam had spotted Spider sitting at the far end of the beach, partially hidden by the trees and the shack that Norm had left behind for him, without his mask.

The mask he needed to breathe.

Neteyam had scrambled for Spider's discarded mask, long fingers trembling as he struggled to secure the mask back to his little big brother's face. He had barely heard Spider when he yelled for him to stop.

Spider who was breathing.

Without his mask.

Neteyam can't remember the last time he had been able to look at Spider without the visor of his mask in the way, been able to touch his face, or feel the breath coming out his mouth.

"Hì'i'tsmukan" Little brother.

It wasn't until after Neteyam had scooped Spider into his arms, practically pulling him into his lap as he held him as tight as he could without hurting the human boy, that he realized he was crying.

He could feel Spider breathing; the rise and fall of his chest under Neteyam's hand and the warm puffs of air against his chest, and he couldn't stop the litany of words that spilled from his lips as he praised the Great Mother.

"Nete…"

Neteyam couldn't stop the choked sound that escaped his throat at the old nickname. Kiri, Lo'ak, and Tuk, had always used 'Teyam' for his nickname, but only Spider had ever called him 'Nete' and Eywa did he miss that.

"Ma'tsmukan, ma'tsmukan."

Neteyam knew they would have to return to the village eventually, to tell everyone of the Great Mother's miracle, but for now he just held his brother.

He would never fail his brother again.

#spider socorro #miles spider socorro #spider miles socorro #neteyam te suli tsyeyk'itan #neteyam #brothers spider and neteyam #good brother neteyam #not always but he's trying #angst with a happy ending #atwow #atwow angst #this idea woke me up at 7 AM #we need more neteyam and spider content #avatar 2 #avatar way of water #avatar the way of water #drabble #fic

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wh3nturtlesfly · 1 year

Text

Hello @epiclamer ! I saw you were looking for some hero whumpee and villain caretaker, I hope this could suffice :)

CW/TW: Hypothermia and frostbite, near death experience, whump

The room was immersed in white. Creeping over the metal walls and across the concrete floor. Icicles hung from the ceiling and left the floor slick and shining. The patterns would have been beautiful in any other case, spindling across the room in delicate flakes, but now they left the Hero shivering.

Their thin t-shirt served as almost no defense against the blistering temperatures- their coat had been taken long ago. Now Hero shook, red blotching their exposed forearms and stinging their cheeks.

Hero shifted, trying to touch as little of their bare skin to the concrete as possible. The chill numbed their muscles, though it didn’t take the pain of the bruises away. Supervillain had made sure of that.

Energy seeped out of them too fast to keep up. Too many times they had caught their eyelids threatening to slip shut. Their fingertips had frozen to the point they couldn’t feel them anymore. Hero was helpless, trapped in the pain that couldn’t even be healed by sleep. Their tears crystallized when they couldn’t hold it in anymore.

When the click of the latch sounded, Hero went rigid. Fingers numb, they couldn’t form so much as a fist, much less fight off anything more that came their way. Supervillain knew this as they strode in.

“My, you’re looking a bit blue my dear,” Their lips split in a cruel smile. Supervillain stepped forward and Hero inched back. They couldn’t do it- couldn’t fight-

Hero’s back bumped against the wall and they flinched from the new wave of cold that shot up their spine. Trapped, and Supervillain was well aware.

“Don’t look so afraid now. You know what I want,” They stepped forward before Hero could scramble away- not that they had the strength to- and grabbed a fistful of their hair. It crackled with the frost that had settled in their locks. “You’re only making this harder on yourself, and really, I don’t think you have much left to give.”

Supervillain yanked harshly on Hero’s hair and received a sharp cry in return. Hero fought to pry their fingers away but their own muscles were stiff. It was like moving through molasses, they couldn’t even manage to grasp Supervillain’s hand.

“It's lovely seeing you struggle,” they chuckled, pulling Hero so close that they could feel the breath upon their cheek. Warm. Their hands shifted to either side of Hero’s cheek, and they couldn’t help but lean into the touch, starved of heat for much too long. “Now, give in and we can forget this mess.”

They eyed Hero expectantly, brushing a finger down Hero’s cheek and leaving them chasing the trail of warmth that followed. It was a wicked game to play, though it was working. Hero wished to be free- to have their bones no longer encased in ice. It hurt to think, hurt to breathe. Supervillain’s touch was like fire, beautiful and comforting- and yet-

“I c-can’t.” The words were broken as they fell from Hero’s mouth.

Supervillain’s expression darkened. “You insolent fool,” their grip tightened, fingernails pricking Hero’s skin.

They hurled Hero to the ground and their cheek collided hard with the concrete. Pain shot through the Hero. It was all so cold. Hero groaned as they pushed themself up. Not a moment later and a foot connected with their stomach, sending them into the back wall.

“You just never know when to stop, do you?” Supervillain chuckled, eyes alight. “This time I’ll make sure the message is clear.”

“No- please,” The words were choked as Hero clawed at their ground. Their muscles refused to move, stiff with the chill and reddened with bruises and the smear of blood. Supervillain stalked forward and seized Hero by the throat, pinning them against the wall.

Hero gasped as the air was forced from their lungs. It burned. Squeezing, squeezing, they could feel Supervillain’s hands crushing their windpipe and yet there was nothing they could do to stop it. Pins and needles lingered in their joints. They couldn’t move.

The corners of their vision began to grow dark. Hero’s eyelids were heavy and a new wave of panic shot through Hero. They were falling unconscious. Fingers flexing, reaching for any sort of movement. They couldn’t close their eyes- they wouldn’t wake up again.

“Not so strong now,” Supervillain cackled, squeezing tighter and grinning when a choked cry fell from Hero’s blue lips.

Hero fumbled through pleas but no sound came out. Flakes swirled around Supervillain’s head like a halo, though they were anything but. Their lips were spread wide into the cruelest of smiles, nails pinching into Hero’s skin. They had to stay awake- they had to hold on-

They had to…

Hero went limp and fell into the void of ice and darkness.

***

Words mumbled above their head as if suspended in a fog. Hushed at first, a silent plea. Hero’s head lulled to the side as their eyelids lazily peaked open.

“It’s alright-” Were they being spoken to? Their eyes searched the space, but they couldn’t see anything. “It’s okay, you’re safe.”

Hero was dizzy. Everything felt distant. They couldn’t remember. This voice, it swirled around their form, but it was undeniably kind, comforting even. Supervillain would never-

Supervillain. Panic shot down Hero’s spine. They leapt up from where they had been laid only to discover they were trapped. Eyes darting frantically around, they trashed in the covers that held them down. Get out, they had to get out-

A hand pressed against their chest and Hero fell back onto the covers. Blankets, they must be in a bed. Why would they be in bed?

“You mustn’t move too much, no need to start any new wounds.”

Hero looked up to find the Villain staring at them. Worry shone in the wrinkles by their eyes though they hid it behind a gentle smile. The hand that wasn’t resting on the blankets held a damp rag. Beside the Villain was a bowl of water, steam pooling gently above the surface.

Villain dunked the cloth in the water and wrung it out until droplets of water no longer fell into the bowl. They reached forward and began to peel away the layer of blankets that were wrapped around Hero’s form.

“No! Wait, please!” Hero shouted before they could stop themself. They pulled desperately at the covers, their warmth. They couldn’t feel the scrape of cold air against their skin again. Couldn’t live with another second of clouded breath and silent shivers.

Sorrow crossed Villain’s face and they laid a hand on the Hero’s own, warming it with the touch of their fingers. “I have to treat the damaged skin. I promise I won’t hurt you.” They studied Hero’s expression, waiting until the tension in their shoulders faded before taking Hero’s arms from beneath the covers.

For the first time Hero noted the pinkish-blue tint of their fingertips. They had been too stunned to care before, but now the tingling sensation made sense. Frostbite.

Hero couldn’t help but sigh as the rag was wrapped around their hands. It spread like fire, licking up their insides and settling in a pool of heat. The cuts that covered their skin no longer screamed with pain, and the coloring returned to their complexion.

They stayed like that for minutes, breathing softly under the embrace of heat. Villain then removed the cloth to dip it back in the bowl.

“How did you find me?” Hero asked as Villain tucked them back beneath the blankets.

“It was late, and I still had yet to see you,” Clear droplets fell into the silver bowl as Villain squeezed the rag tighter, “I found your jacket in an alleyway, and Supervillain isn’t so secretive about their ventures.”

Hero tensed at the thought of the Supervillain, but Villain caught their gaze. “Don’t worry, I won’t let them touch you again, ever.” Their expression darkened as they spoke, though was soon replaced by a reassuring smile.

This time they held Hero’s chin gently and brushed the towel across their nose. The stroke of Villain’s thumb across their cheek left searing trails and Hero longed never to lose the feeling of their touch.

Villains retrieved a small device from their pocket, a thermometer, and ran it gently across Hero’s forehead. After a small beep sounded, they observed the reading with a pleased expression.

“Your temperature has gone back up,” they said, “You’ll have some scabs, but they should heal in due time.”

Villain gathered the bowl and rag and set them at Hero’s bedside. The thermometer was tucked into their pocket, but as they moved to stand, Hero stopped them.

“Wait-” Hero grasped their arm, all the numbness had gone from their fingers and they now latched onto Villain like a lifeline. “Stay.”

Arms outstretched, desperate, Hero tightened their grip ever so slightly. They couldn’t be alone again. They wanted Villain’s comfort and the warmth that came with their touch. They wanted Villain at their side.

And the Villain listened. They settled back onto the bed and shifted close. When Hero remained with their arms outstretched, they understood and carefully wrapped their arms around the other. Hero melted into the embrace, burying their face into Villain’s shoulder. They hadn’t even realized they had started to cry…

Villains rubbed soothing circles on their back, carding through their tangled locks even when Hero’s tears soaked their sleeve. They were safe.

Hero hugged Villain tighter, latching onto them as if they were the only one left on earth, and in Hero’s world, they were. “Please don’t let go,” They mumbled into Villain’s sleeve, and ever so softly a hand rose to cup their cheek.

“I won’t Hero, I swear with everything that I never will again.”

#turtlewrites #hero x villain #prompts #writing prompts #story prompt #villain x hero #heroes and villains #whump #whumpee x caretaker

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darlingshane · 1 year

Text

sweet revenge

Shane Walsh x F!Reader

Rating: 18+

Word Count: 2k

Summary: You and Shane sleep together to get back at your respective exes.

Content/Warnings: explicit, smut, car sex, revenge fuck, angst.

A/N: I made this for @bernthirst-events using the prompt – revenge fuck. It's a little different from what I usually write, but I hope you like it.

– Read below or at AO3.

Bad choices don't necessarily make you a bad person as long as those choices don't hurt other people, you’ve always believed.

What you’re about to do might take you to cross that hypothetical line that kept you from considering yourself a bad person. But after all the events that led you to this point, you don’t give a flying fuck. You've been hurt too often by other people's choices that it's your turn to make something so incredibly reckless that will royally piss some people off… Like sleeping with Shane Walsh.

“Are you completely sure you wanna do this?”

“Are you?”

You ask each other, half naked, in the back of his cruiser before proceeding any further with your plan.

Too hot and bothered to back out now, with no regrets, you nod and seize his mouth as he opens his buckle and zipper to seal the deal you made about getting back at your respective duplicitous exes.

It all started a few weeks ago when you caught Shane's girlfriend cheating on him with your ex-boyfriend. She wasn't just his girlfriend, but she was also one of your best friends, in fact. Not only did she manage to break Shane's heart, but she violated an unspoken friendship code and the common sense of not hooking up with your friend's in the process.

Regardless of you and your ex being broken up before that day, – discovering their filthy lie was a low blow that still hurts like hell.

Blinded by rage, after being witness to that moment of indiscretion, you picked up the phone, called Shane, and spared no detail about what just had happened. Someone had to, cause that hag wasn’t going to do it, and he deserved to know. Admittedly, you were never Shane's biggest fan to begin with, but you felt sorry for him. For what you knew, he was completely in love with your friend, and he was just something to toy with cause she had nothing better to do. That’s how she always treated guys, and up until that day, you never said anything cause you had your own stuff to deal with, and you were never the one to stick your nose where it didn’t belong, but it was about time for her to get a taste of her own medicine.

A few days later, you found out that Shane had beat the crap out of your ex. The deputy was arrested and released the day after, and indefinitely suspended from the department.

Two weeks after his arrest, you stumbled upon him at the grocery store in the evening, and he looked miserable trying to pick up between the amount of cereal boxes along the aisle.

“I like Cocoa Puffs,” you pointed at the box in one of the lower shelves to break the ice.

He sighed and glanced at you, “yeah, I like those too. I was just in the mood for something else… any suggestions?”

“Hm, cinnamon toast is my second favorite.”

He considered it for a second before reaching and grabbing a box of those per your suggestion. Then you both continued shopping on your own.

Later, you saw him at the parking lot after loading your groceries in your car.

“Hey,” you stopped by his truck while he put his bags on the flatbed, “I just wanted to say I’m sorry about what happened.”

“Why?” he scoffed, “wasn’t your fault, darlin’. You didn’t sleep with her, didn’t you?”

“No, but it wasn’t my place to tell.”

“Maybe it wasn’t, but I’m glad you did.”

“How so?”

“I don’t know,” his head sank into his shoulders quickly, “I guess cause you were hurt by it too, and you went straight to the cold, hard facts. That took guts.”

“I was a little harsh.”

“You weren’t. I always thought you were a pushover, y’know? But you proved me wrong.”

“Ouch. I always thought you were an asshole,” you quipped back, leaning against his car.

“Sometimes I am, but I’d never cheat on anyone,” he admitted, honestly. “Look, it’s no secret that I like sleeping around, but when I’m in a relationship– I’m a hundred percent in.”

“Are you guys getting back together?”

He scoffed, and gave it a thought, “would you consider getting back with your ex after that?”

You shook your head.

“I didn't think so. Me neither. I'm done with her. She's like the fucking antichrist.”

“It suits her,” you laughed softly at his chosen nickname.

“You should've heard the things she said about you.”

“Save it, I don't need to know,” you paused. “Are you gonna be okay with your job and all?”

“Yeah,” he ran a hand over his hair, “I think I will.”

After parting that evening, you started texting from time to time. You were never that close, but something clicked that day between you two in that little exchange that led you to this particular night when you bumped into the other once more.

You were hanging with a couple of friends after work at your local bar when the bartender brought you a complimentary beer from a guy sitting at the counter. You glanced over your shoulder and saw the deputy back in his uniform, tilting his beer bottle in your direction. You beckoned him, and he joined your little group.

Quickly, you started talking and joking about getting back at both your exes somehow. You were both still bitter about it, and of course it kept coming up in all your conversations.

At first, you thought it was a joke when Shane suggested you should sleep together to even things out.

An eye for an eye and all – he said.

You and Shane, sleeping together? It was the most absurd idea someone’s ever had. It made you burst into laughter initially; but as the night progressed, it made more sense. It’s a fitting punishment for a treacherous crime, you deemed.

Halfway into making up your mind, you glanced at Shane once more when he strutted out of the bathroom with his uniform shirt half unbuttoned, showing a black tee underneath well hugged around his chest. To be honest, he isn’t completely gross physically. You've always found him hot. It’s the way he sometimes talks that has kept you from seeing that he’s actually sweet as well.

Once he got back to the table, you bit your lower lip and tilted your head in the direction of the door, conveying silently with just one look – I need to be railed by you, right now. I don’t care if it’s right or wrong.

He quickly grasped it and took your hand as he licked the corner of your mouth before guiding you out towards the car.

You couldn't blame it on the alcohol because you barely took a couple of sips of your beer. It was the dangerous determination in Shane's eyes, boring nothing but dark lust and vengeance, that convinced you. You’ve never seen him like that, and you're still not sure if it’s all about revenge or that he actually likes you. You wouldn't hold it against him if it was a bit of both, cause that’s exactly how you feel right now in this unrehearsed dance of ripping each other’s clothes, clawing each other’s skin, and mauling each other’s mouth in the confined space of the backseat of the cruiser, parked on the side of the road, away from prying eyes.

It’s thrilling to have that rush of adrenaline coursing through your veins, knowing that you’re doing something so wrong, but so rightfully earned, and not giving a damn about it.

A whole new world opens right in front of your eyes, and right between your legs when you stop kissing him to sink onto his cock for the first time. You shudder at how big he feels once he’s fully sheathed inside your slickness. He’s hard as rock and big enough to fill and stretch your walls a little more than you're used to.

“Go on, sweetheart,” he can barely get those words out, as your hips slowly wave back and forth.

As you get used to the generous size of his erection filling you up to the hilt, he presses his parted lips against yours.

Unexpectedly, you both thrive and savor every second of it as you explore and seek that ultimate pleasure that comes from your bodies tangled together.

“God, you feel so good,” you purr on his lips, hands clutched to his neck; having his large palms holding your ass, aiding your moves as you switch to bouncing uncontrollably on his lap.

“Not as good as you, darlin’,” he groans, breathlessly, “you’re so fucking wet.”

Then, his tongue juts out and traces the shape of your mouth before devouring your lips like a maniac, stealing your moans and hums. If you’re desperate, he’s viciously focused on sucking the life out of you with great vehemence. His delicious kisses and grunts muddle your mind, and you can barely keep your thoughts straight as you inch closer to that aching point where your legs strain to keep going.

“Fuck, sweetheart, just a little more,” he pants, barely pulling away from your lips, “please, please, keep going for me.”

Holding on tight to him, you exert yourself a little longer as your hips roll with reckless abandon until that bomb made out of pure pleasure, expanding at your core, explodes. Your body shivers and your mind turns to mush, gladly overtaken by a wave of electric joy that awakens every cell of your body from head to toe. And right after you come, the wild pressure of your opening contracting around him has Shane spurting his seed inside you in a matter of seconds.

To be completely honest, there was never anything greater between your legs than Shane Walsh, you come to realize. As uncomfortable as the car is, it’s barely a nuisance below how amazing that orgasm is. How your once-friend would ever give that up is beyond you.

Slowly coming back to your senses, you sweetly smile, noticing that your forehead is pressed to Shane’s shoulder as his chest rises and falls under your palms.

There isn’t a sliver of guilt or shame after you’re done and put your clothes back on. The only thing that’s new is a desire of not wanting this night to be over, so when the deputy drives you home, you invite him for a second round.

“Too bad they’ll never know what we did,” you express, relaxing on top of Shane’s broad chest, with your hand under your chin, like it was the most casual thing you’ve ever done since you met him.

“But we do,” he smiles tiredly, “did it make you feel better?”

“Uh-hm. That was the point, right? Do you feel better?”

“Yeah, sweetheart, I do,” his fingers brush your cheek, pulling you for a chaste kiss before shifting on the bed and having you on your back against the mattress as he slithers down your body, pushing your knees apart to have a little taste of you. You fix a pillow under your head as the adventurous tip of his tongue traces every inch of your sex, slowly. His arms curl around your thighs, as you weave your fingers in his curls, quietly enjoying the mind-blowing attention of the tip of his tongue when it circles your clit. He teases it, flicks it, and licks it before allowing his lips to wrap around it. Lazily sucking that bundle of nerves, he delivers a pleasant buzz that runs all over your body, and earns himself a new symphony of hums, moans, and curses at his name.

As your mind reaches cloud nine for a third time, the delicious pressure of his lips changes, sucking harder and harder, until you’re met with a calming relief once the orgasm hits.

Shane climbs back up to the head of the bed and presses his slick-covered lips against yours, his tongue slipping past your lips, so you can have a taste of yourself, reminding you that payback never tasted sweeter.

#bernthirstpalooza #shane walsh #shane walsh x reader #twd #twd fanfiction #jon bernthal #jon bernthal fanfiction #jon bernthal smut #the walking dead #darlingwrites

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haruhey · 1 year

Text

The Day Will Come When You Won't Be

Enemies With Benefits masterlist

Word count: 5k

Chapter warnings: descriptions of everything that happens at the Negan lineup. If you can stomach that, everything else should be no problem.

The Saviors seize a hostage.

You should have never gotten on the truck.

But what could you have done, really?

“Got a new group out there givin’ us trouble, and I’m in the mood to settle some shit. Wanna come?”

He stood lent against your doorframe just 4 hours ago, the Virginian sun still streaming in from the tiny crack of wall you called a window, and he had that grin twisting his features. You’d been through enough of those looks to understand that, when it morphs his face, he’s not asking, and your skin had risen into those insistent, memory-laden goosebumps that come like Pavlovian instinct, forcing you to leave the scratchy linen of your sheets and pad across the frigid cement of your room.

In 10 minutes flat, you were dressed and loading into the seat you’re in now, and 5 minutes later you were peeling out of that hell-hole, a nonchalant humming coming from the man next to you as he taps his thumbs on the steering wheel, one half of some long forgotten rhythm muffled slightly by the leather of his glove.

You keep your eyes on the flashes of trees as you ride on gravel roads. You don’t want to look at him. Or at the mirror, where you would see Arat and the bat resting next to her. You’re not sure if you can, souvenirs of its violence painting the metal wire. Knowing what will be happening once each checkpoint reports back, you’re not sure you could even handle the look of any of them.

It’s been months since you’d been forced into those 4 suffocating walls you’d refused to call home, and though you’ve lost a lot of yourself, your fear of Negan lingered no matter how much you’d wanted it to evaporate and disappear like the parts of you before it. It’s been months since he held that goddamn bat against you, but it doesn’t matter. That fear ignites at the worst times, knotting up your stomach.

You loathe it, but you’re powerless against it.

Maybe you hate that fact more.

There seems to always be an ever-present smirk on his face whenever it comes to ‘settling shit’, the promise of making a show of his unwavering power dangling in front of him and ramping up his excitement with each passing moment. You can’t remember how many times you’ve sat in this seat - the last group was a while ago, you think, the place with the huge house at the top of that hill - but as Negan’s hum changes into a whistle, that stupid overwhelming fear shoots through you, taking over your body for a second and banging your knees against the door when you flinch away from him.

The knock reverberates through the truck, the enclosed space doing you no favours when you take a sharp inhale at the pain, but the whistling stops, the crush of asphalt and the squeak of his leather jacket taking over as he turns to look at you.

“Oh, c’mon. Loosen up, princess. It’s not like this is your first time.”

You bite the inside of your lip to keep from responding to his poorly hidden double entendre and that stupid nickname which has wormed into his vocabulary. It was a joke - at least it was when it was a throwaway comment from Sherry after she had one too many sips of cheap vodka - but Negan seems especially inept when it comes to how close he thinks he is to you. He had pinpointed it and insisted upon it being some playful replacement of your actual name, and every fucking time he said it, you feel your blood start to simmer.

But you know what happens when you upset him.

He makes a show of it in front of the furnace, and you remember the pain which tears through you, but in private - a handful of Saviors for insurance and away from prying eyes, in front of his own stovetop and his squeaky cupboards and his hidden drawers - that’s what terrifies you.

Actually, no. What scares you is the fact he can do all that and then act like it never happened.

He’d greet you in the morning like he was greeting an old friend, and just go on with his day.

“Keep your eyes on the road, Negan.”

Arat scoff does little to hide her smile - neither does he, an upwards curl of his lips before he turns away to do just that - and you let out a breath, shifting in your seat in an attempt to regain your bearings. It’s like walking on eggshells, each time you talk to him.

He’s volatile.

One day he’d brush it off with a laugh, but some days he would pin you into place with a look, and you’d go to bed with one more bandage than you’d had the night before. But he’s mellowed out since you’d first met him; either old age is taking its toll or he’s become comfortable in the status quo he’d hammered in with swings of Lucille and burnt faces by the iron.

“Well, shit, who pissed in your cereal this morning?”

You let the question linger, and Negan peels into the gravel-faced clearing before you can let silence fully steal the space between the three of you. He slams the brakes as he turns into his spot, and it sends your body forward. You barely have time to lift your hands to brace for the stop, but you manage enough, your forearms pressing against the dashboard.

“Whoops,”

He pulls the keys from the ignition then, pulling a laugh from his chest before you hear a click from between the two of you, and he gets out, resting his arms against the top edge of the truck before leaning in with a wide smirk.

“Guess you should’a worn your seatbelt.”

Asshole.

You’re not sure at what point your abrasion had distorted in his head into banter, but, frankly, it pisses you off. It pisses you off because he couldn’t be more obvious with the fact he doesn’t think of you as a threat. As far as he’s concerned, you’re some angry chihuahua he’s ultimately got control over. Angry as all hell, but harmless at the end of the day. The more you think about it, the more it pisses you off, and though your mouth opens in the beginning of a retort, Simon’s static voice breaks through before you can form anything further.

The group reached checkpoint C first.

“Pass me that, won’t you?”

Grabbing the walkie-talkie from the cupholder, you chuck it at him without another thought, turning to open your side’s door as it hits his chest with a thump, and he even laughs at that, not missing a beat before the push-to-talk is engaged and his voice rumbles into the microphone.

They reach a second checkpoint not much longer, the chained-up rotted soon after that, and radio silence follows after they reach the wall of burning trees. It must have freaked them out - it was Simon, after all, whose voice was the first and last they’d heard. They would have had to have known something was coming at this point, even if his presence at the flames was purely by chance.

Sooner or later, they were gonna get sloppy. They were gonna get nervous - get desperate, and slip up - and they have no fucking clue what’s in store for them.

As the sun inches under the horizon, you sip nervously from your water bottle, the carabiner attached to its lid tinking against metal as your hand shakes. The Saviors had started getting into position just after sunset - an order that was barked by Negan echoed by Laura when she’d decided they were moving out a little too slow - but you’re stuck in place, your heart pounding in your chest and a lump in your throat that you can’t get down no matter how hard you try.

You’re leant behind a car, Arat sat in the driver's seat as she absentmindedly toys with the safety on her pistol, and you’re thankful for the Virginian night. It hides the shaky breaths visible from the chill after an unfamiliar RV pulls into the clearing, and it hides the flash of panic that crosses your face when Simon pulls out someone you can’t quite make out in the dark.

It’s starting.

You don’t know how many people are in the group. You’re sure Negan has told you - that big mouth of his never quite shuts up between the orders he gives you and the monologues he considers ‘conversation’ - but you never listen.

It can’t just be him, though, you’re sure of it. One man can’t have caused him to go all on the offensive like this.

Negan’s sat in that red-lined RV now, a short conversation with Simon wrapping up with a wolfish grin shot in your direction before slinging Lucille over his shoulder and waltzing into the open door, and you clip your water bottle back onto your belt, rubbing your temples to try and forget it.

It feels so pointless, every time you’re dragged to one of these stupid confrontations. You don’t even do anything here. You don’t grab automatics to ‘get shit done’ - you don’t douse cut-down trees in lighter fluid or tie up the infected for some sick psychological torture - you’re just some spectator in all this.

Every time Negan looks at you like that, that expression wiping across his face like that night you’d first met him, it’s like a taunt. It’s like he knows, even without making you kneel next to the squelch and crush of a head, that he can make you break out in a cold sweat and make you remember the fear that coursed through your veins when you had been.

You hate that he’s right.

When you hear the first few whistles, your hair stands at the back of your neck, and you try to blink away the first few tears threatening your vision. The Saviors are close - they have to be, even grouped up, whistles can’t get that loud - and as the two tones get even closer, you close your eyes and lean forward, putting your head between your knees as you prop yourself up against the trunk of the sedan.

It was only a matter of time before they were caught.

In the position you’re in, you urge your bloodflow to your brain in hopes that maybe - just maybe - it’ll work well enough that it won’t make you think of the first time you’d heard those sounds. You hope that it’ll melt the ice lining your muscles, but you don’t have to hope any longer when the lights of the parked cars turn on, breaking you out of your spiral with the momentary flash of white as you squint your eyes to adjust to the brightness.

Despite the pain at your temples when you stare into the lit clearing, you’re thankful for it. It reminds you you’re here, not in a long-buried memory, and though you hate being here, you hate being there even more.

But you know this weirdly settled thankfulness won’t last long. As you watch them get onto their knees, whatever’s left of your morals are screaming at you to do something try to stop the way Negan swings open the door and waves Lucille like he’s at some pissing contest, but you know it won’t do anything. You know you can’t do anything.

You’re not sure if savior complex is the right word for what you’re feeling, but it feels funny when you’re in this type of situation.

There’s always an illusion of help - that maybe if you screamed loud enough or just spoke some stubbornly-ignored reason, you could be able to stop him - but you know you can’t. As the first bash of Lucille breaks skull, you know there’s no way to stop him. He swings and swings and swings, and it’s so silent save for the group’s sobbing and the constant thunk of his strikes.

You’re not close to them at all - the length of a car and several people separate you from the group - but you can see them well enough when you turn your head, your heart hammering against your ribs when you recognize that one of them is a kid and one of them looks so pale that she might pass out at any given second. The headlights illuminate them like some sort of demented spotlight, Negan’s shadow distorting across their bodies and their bloodshot eyes as he lingers the bat in front of one of them for too long.

You know what he’s getting at - he’s testing their fear, he’s testing how much more he needs to push before they crack and run back to their community with their tails between their legs - and you remember when you were there, a different type of acquiescing running through your mind. You knew you couldn’t do anything when you were the one knelt on hard ground. You knew that there were too many guns pointed at you and there was too much violence in Negan’s eyes.

The only people who would act on that impulse would be the stupidest people in the-

Holy shit.

The only people who would act on that impulse are here. Or, at least one of them was.

He swung at Negan - that man who had blood running down his chest and blood covering his hands - made hard contact with the corner of one of Negan’s cheeks, and though he’s subdued in almost an instant, you can’t look away. An odd sense of fascination keeps your eyes glued to the scene in front of you.

You don’t remember the last time anyone’s swung at Negan - let alone at a lineup - and you can’t help the spark of a long-forgotten hope that sparks within you.

He’s brave, that much is obvious.

But still, he’s stupid as all hell, held down to the ground as Dwight points a crossbow at him, staring straight at the barrel of it like a trapped animal, and you watch them drag him back into place, a sick feeling crawling into when Negan rises back to his feet.

You know what’s coming. You were on the receiving end of this once, too.

You know defiance gets you nothing except another grave to dig.

And though you’re expecting it, your hands balled into fists at your sides as if to somehow cushion the consequences of not looking away, you still recoil when Negan brings Lucille down on a different man.

It’s different, this time. This man doesn’t use his last bit of consciousness for a well-deserved ‘fuck you’ to Negan. He uses it to tell someone that he’ll ‘find her’ - holds on to his coherence and fights the rushing blood and pain to try and get out more - but he can’t, Negan’s voice filling the space with a mock of sympathy.

Then he swings again, and your stomach feels like it’s folding in on itself, rushing up your throat and through your lips. You turn back away from the scene, hoping that it’ll erase you from whatever the hell is going on, but it doesn’t and in a split second, you’re throwing up. Everything you’ve just seen finally catches up with you and you’re really throwing up, but nothing is coming out except pieces of a granola bar and the ocean of water you’d tried to calm yourself with.

It hits the line between the gravel and the sparse grass, and you take a step back to avoid it, but nausea hits you like a wave and makes you stumble. The trunk of the sedan stops you from moving any further, and you place a hand on it to steady yourself before taking a step to the side and then another, leant forward with your arm in front of you until you can brace on a tree.

Jesus Christ, did you really manage to forget the reality of this? Did you really manage to forget how the air smells when it’s tinged with this much fresh blood? Or how fucking haunting the sound of so many people crying is?

It seems you have - at least, you forgot how overwhelming it was - and you’re not sure if you’re furious or happy that you have.

But now you remember. You remember kneeling and your ribs stinging with each breath you took. You remember the smell of your friend’s blood coming from right next to you. You remember the way your eyes burnt from all your crying and the way your chest hurt with each sob that ripped through you. You remember it all, down to each blade of grass.

Stop overreacting.

There’s always that voice in you that berates when moments like these happen. It curls its lips up in disgust at the fact you’ve let yourself become so terrified, and you loathe yourself for it, a reminder of how it had all gone wrong that day and how you’d let it. It speaks tenfold, the image of that man even just trying to swing at Negan sharpening its words to a point and cutting you with its disappointment.

Even though you try to convince yourself you’re not there anymore, it all feels so real that you can’t help but spiral.

God, you’re such a fucking-

“Hey! Hey, y’alright?”

You’re not sure how long you’d spent lent on that poor tree, the intensity pulling you from reality, but it doesn’t matter because, when Arat places her hand on your shoulder, you flinch away, stumbling on your shaky legs. It feels like it’s been ages - your mouth is cotton and your ears are ringing - but it can’t have been long, the sun barely starting to rise.

“Yeah, fine. Great. I’m great.”

Wiping your mouth with your sleeve, you ease yourself back into a stand, blinking hard before looking around and ignoring the suspecting squint of Arat’s eyes. You’re pretty far out, a couple meters past the closest vehicle, and when you spot the pistol strapped to her thigh, you can’t help but wonder if you could just go.

If you just reached down and took it - if you just concentrated enough pressure to one spot at the side of her head - would she be knocked unconscious, giving you the opening to run?

But you know you can’t. Well-aimed pistol whips barely knock people out as it is, and you haven’t eaten anything substantial since the day started. There was no way you’d be able to do it. The second you bolt, Arat would tackle you. Even if you knocked her out, you wouldn’t make it far, your legs would give up as if they knew he would end up finding you.

He always does.

“Here, eat this.”

A tiny plastic packet is pressed into your palm before she steps back, grabbing your arm and dragging you back towards the clearing. With the darkness ebbing away, the headlights have been turned off, and you can see everything without its blaring harshness.

The scene looks even sadder in natural lighting - tracks of dried tears and slumped shoulders lined up one by one - and all of them refuse to move their heads from where they’re frozen.

But one of them is missing.

Leaning against the sedan, you rip open the packet with your teeth, your fingers still lacking feeling from what Arat had caught you in just moments ago, and you try not to look at the center of the clearing as you force down the crackers.

It’s then when you notice the RV is gone, and it’s then when you realize Negan’s gone too.

It doesn’t take long to connect the dots, and when you finally glance back over to them, you finally figure out who’s missing.

He’s the leader, then - curly hair and fur-lined jacket.

Break him, and everyone falls in line.

The sun comes up soon, lighting the clearing through the gaps between heavy-set trees, and the RV peels in not long after. You watch with the same pit in your stomach when Negan pulls him out by the back of his collar, and as he yells his demand of him to chop off his son’s arm off - as he stops him before he really does it - everyone knows that, whatever Negan had set out to do, he must have done it.

Dwight loads the man who punched Negan into the van he’d come out of - and he shifts his weight when he gets in, swaying like an animal trying to escape - and you find yourself curious about him. You watch as Negan leans in just a foot away to talk to their leader before rising back onto his feet, and you learn that the man’s name is Daryl.

And as much as you hate agreeing with Negan, he really does look like a Daryl.

“We'll be back for our first offering in one week. Until then, ta-ta.”

He throws their axe over his shoulder, a nonchalance in his gait, and he’s quick to hop back into the truck he drove over, letting out a theatrical sigh as if to say ‘all in a day's work’ without actually saying something. Though, knowing him, he’d probably love it if his voice carried for a moment more.

You contemplate where to go as you watch everyone start to disperse - if you’d asked, would Dwight be willing to let you sit shotgun in the car he’s keeping Daryl? Or should you follow to wherever Arat is going and try to figure out a way to thank her for the saltines that have settled your stomach for the time being? - but you don’t have time to move your feet before you hear a familiar voice calling your name and banging against the car roof.

“Get on in, princess.”

Negan sticks his head through the driver’s seat window, and you pull your lips into a line before taking a deep breath and turning your feet in his direction. He’s looking at you with an easy smile, but you keep your eyes on the ground instead, walking behind the wall of cars to mitigate some of the embarrassment you feel at any type of association with Negan.

You look over at the group before pulling at the passenger side handle, and some of them are looking back at you. The woman who had spoken up is studying you, so is their leader and the kid and two of the other women, and you feel shame course through you at their glares. You tear your eyes away from them and blink harshly before hitting the seat, and you slam the door shut, taking a deep breath as you refuse to look at Negan as he barks orders through the open window.

You watch them as all of the Saviors loads back up, and you can’t stop yourself from wondering if this was what you looked like on that night, too. Was this what you would have looked like on that soccer field if he hadn’t taken you before the sun rose?

You can’t blame them for it, though.

Because it’s your fault for letting him push you around like this, isn’t it?

Because you’re so scared of being out there alone, you’d do anything to survive, wouldn’t you?

Because he’s scarred you enough times for you to think like that, hasn’t he?

Swallowing hard, you try to stop that stupid voice from running by pulling your legs up to your chest and tapping a lazy rhythm onto your shin. It’s comforting. It reminds you of the world before - when you’d slaved over schoolwork to it playing mindlessly out of your old cassette player - but also of how things were before you met Negan, its tune playing through that rusty old vinyl player you’d dug up.

You hadn’t heard it since.

“Hey, your little… blegh, during the shit that went down, you alright?”

Your eyebrows meet in the middle of your forehead as you turn to look at him, trying to figure out if there was some hidden motive behind what he’d just said only to conclude that there doesn’t seem to be.

“Yeah, fine. Doing great. Don’t worry about it.”

Your face relaxes as you speak, and you shake your head to try and convince him to drop it. Turning back towards the window, you study the trees as they pass by once again, and it feels like you’re back in yesterday, blurs of green the same way they’d been when he’d driven you to the clearing. There’s some peace to be found in the colour, but he breaks it before it settles.

“Go see the doc when we get back.”

It turns out that your response just wasn’t convincing enough for him, so he tells you what to do, and you think about how this is always how it is with him. You think about how it’s never a suggestion - how you never get a say - and how it’s always an order you’re just expected to follow.

Guess you’re clocking into your shift earlier than expected.

“You got some boyfriend I don’t fucking know about or something?”

Scrunching your nose at his digging, you give him a curt response - ‘I’m not pregnant, if that’s what you’re implying’ - and when he speaks again, you can hear the way a corner of his lips turns up.

“You haven’t been screwing around?”

You don’t dignify him with an answer.

Instead, you let an emptiness linger as you chew at the inside of your cheek, wondering if you really should say what’s hanging on the tip of your tongue. It could get you in trouble - no, it could get you in a shit ton of trouble - but you do it anyways, some feeling gnawing at you to take a hint from that Daryl guy and just be brave for once.

“You didn’t have to kill the Asian guy.”

The silence that follows is deafening.

“I let you get away with a lot of shit, y’know that?”

Then panic comes - it drips slowly, down from your hairline and stings from your forehead down to your chin - but you stave it off before it can shake your voice.

“I’m just saying that you-“

He interrupts with a raise of his gloved hand, the pieces of dried blood on it cracking with the open and close of his first, and for that second where you think he might hit you, you flinch away by instinct, pinching your eyes closed to brace for it.

It wouldn’t be the first time he’s done it, but the impact never comes.

“If you were one of the limp-dicks out there, I would’ve thrown you in a cell for questionin’ my goddamn authority.”

Instead, he places his hand back on the steering wheel with a small smile, his words making you let out a breath, and you find yourself listening more intently than you care to admit.

“But that’s why I like you, isn’t it, princess?”

Your jaw strains at the stupid nickname, but the playfulness that’s wormed into his words makes your tensed shoulders relax just the slightest.

“Pullin’ me back and really putting shit into perspective when that shit needs it. I like that, keeps me in line. It shows you’re really lookin’ out for the future of this place.”

It takes all the strength in you not to scoff, but some of it slips out, a tiny huff followed by a twist of your lips, and it doesn’t take a genius to understand that it’s definitely not a smile. There’s no doubt in your mind that he knows you’re not looking out for the Sanctuary or the Saviors when you find the courage to mouth back at him. Why else would he keep dragging you out to shit like this?

It’s to keep you in line, you’re sure of it. It’s to keep you in line as if reminding you of that night would keep you locked in your room and stuck where he wanted you. He’d dragged you back to the Sanctuary one too many times for him to just not care about you anymore.

“It was just- it was just unnecessary, Negan. If you liked the balls on the guy who punched you, you could’ve just taken him and left and ended everything there. You didn’t have to kill the Asian guy or do any of the stuff you did afterwards, either.”

The breath that escapes his mouth as a barely-audible whistle, his frown oddly approving before he questions you. His voice isn’t condescending or accusatory, you don’t think, but there’s a dangerous edge to it, like something could go wrong if you answered it wrong.

“You know what they did, right?”

But you don’t have the right answer, so you just don’t say anything.

“They ambushed the whole fucking satellite station! Killed every one of them! The blood’s on their hands, so I would say it was pretty fuckin’ courteous of me not to cut off their dicks and kill every last one of ‘em, wouldn’t you?”

You can’t find the words to refute that - not when his voice rises enough for the vibrations to run through the car and work their way into your bones, or when he gestures with that same gloved hand that’s done more than its fair share of things to hurt you - but even if you did, he gives you no time to respond, anyways.

“So you still wanna debate morals, princess? ‘Cause I don’t think you understand the whole damn scope of what they did.”

His voice drops down, but it doesn’t hide his irritation, and you swallow down the spit that’s made home in your throat. Nobody told you what that group did, but you think you know why, biting down the smile pulling at your cheeks.

They’re the only ones to have tried it and done it successfully.

“Yeah, I guess I don’t.”

The rest of the drive is silent.

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