#she is just a gal trying to survive and trying to regain her sense of self after being violently dehumanized for over a decade
Text
object memories
A fic I wrote as part of my D&D druid’s backstory that I’m in the mood to share. Do you ever write something for the sole purpose of splashing around in your own prose like a dog in a kiddie pool?
TLDR: POV character Hush and her father were held prisoner by a cult for 10 years in solitary confinement, before being ritually sacrificed. Unbeknownst to the cult, Hush wasn’t quite dead and woke up later in the mass grave mortally wounded but alive. As a druid, Hush can shapeshift into animals if she’s seen and studied them before. This fic is about how she 'discovered’ her first four wildshapes in the aftermath of her ordeal, while learning to survive alone in the wilderness and fend off the hunger that threatened to consume her.
~4,600 words; CWs: gore, animal death, take ‘em seriously I’m not kidding around. I feel like there’s also something going on here with the hunger stuff, but I truly don’t know what the fuck to even call that CW. If somebody knows, let me know lol.
The rat was the first.
She doesn’t know exactly when she reached the tipping point, but she grew intimately acquainted with the ways of the rats over the years. She spent an eternity in that dungeon, curled in the corner among her clinking chains, feeling them scurry over her in her sleep. Grew acquainted with how they move, how they think, grew used to fighting them away from what little she had to eat, bartering with them for the space, for help to stay clean, teaching them to bring her things. She watched them for generations, while they nested in the dirty little pallet that she slept on, until they were closer friends than she’d ever had among humans.
She knew them, inside and out, long before she knew how to change into anything. When she awoke in the aftermath and the wildshapes came, the rat was like a second skin. She slipped into the shape like a shield, slick with blood, and slithered out with the last of her breath.
The world outside was big.
She couldn’t heal. The first word she spoke when she took her given shape again was a rattling, empty gasp that sent sticky gore oozing through the feeble scabs over the gash in her neck. It didn’t matter how desperately she grasped for the language, how well she knew the incantation, how crisp and adamant the gestures were that should have saved her. There was no magic without sound. And her angelic heritage did little to help when whatever the source of her limited innate healing, it simply didn’t respond.
She spent the first week or so in the glade on the edge of the forest where she collapsed after running out of time as the rat. The summer heat broiled her skin, even through the shield of the canopy, leaving her parched and aching and crisp like a dead leaf. In the haze of exhaustion, she began to treat her wounds.
The sacrificial shift they’d dressed her in shredded easily. She wound long strips of it carefully around her waist and chest, stomach churning at the horrid sight of the injuries, and tied the rest as tightly as she could across her ragged neck before the pressure made her choke. Every motion left her dizzy and sick. She might have laid there on and off for hours or days or a month, languishing in the softest patch of moss she managed to find and dragging herself back and forth from the clear little stream that burbled a few yards away. As many moments as she could, she hid behind the rat again. The rat wasn’t bleeding. The rat was safe. The rat could forage, devouring whatever it could find, just enough to sustain her.
She learned the rabbits next.
Timid creatures, cautious and quick, they watched her with their wide beaded-bright eyes and darted to safety at the sound of her rattling breaths. While she waited to recover her strength between wildshapes, she watched them back, tracking the little families back and forth among the wild grasses. They were solitary, but not alone—never truly alone.
There was a nest not far from her resting place. She stumbled across the babies on her way to the stream. Their tiny forms huddled together in a depression in the grass and she looked one in the eyes and its little ears trembled, it tucked itself deeper in the shadows, bracing, and a sudden knife twisted in the center left of her stomach.
It took too long to realize it wasn’t the wound this time.
Her sunburnt skin ached desperately, throbbing to the rhythm of a heart that wasn’t hers. She fumbled past to the edge of the water and dipped her face below the surface, where the chill could bring her to her senses, but the soft curves of the current brushed their way along her cheeks like the perfect ghosts of her father’s hands.
Her lungs burned before she came back up for air.
The next time she changed, the new shape was a rescue. She was a stranger but she smelled like the glade, and the other rabbits allowed her there. In the shadowed night they huddled together, warmed by each other’s skin, and her tiny rabbit’s heart began to calm as it hadn’t before in a very long time.
She couldn’t remain forever. She was keenly aware, the longer she lingered, that she was far too close to the cult. Any member could stumble across her here, out on a forage or traveling to the compound, and she wouldn’t get another chance at freedom. She couldn’t risk it. When her stomach sealed enough that the insides of her abdomen didn’t spill to the outside after any major movement, she staggered to her feet like a newborn fawn and began the journey.
She stuck to the woods. Waterdeep was a death trap, anyone could be cult-aligned, anyone could see her and they thought she was dead but she couldn’t know who might know her face. The roads were too much of a risk, populated as they were. Stealth was her only option. The angels guided her when she slept, teaching her how to find north and south in the stars, how to know clean water from stagnant, how to name the leaves and berries around her and tell which ones were safe. She treated her aches with willow bark and bandaged herself with buffers of soft clean leaves. She passed the days in the shelter of her animal forms or huddled in the shade, thinking of anything but the black spots that swarmed intermittent in her vision and the weakness in her limbs. She stayed alive. It was a near thing.
When the berry season faded, and the leaves began to turn, the hunger snarled in her like a wild beast.
She stumbled to the nearest town under cover of night, shielding her body with her arms, following the smell of something delicious she couldn’t name that made her gut twist with starving, nauseous desperation. It was too open, the streets too broad, but every building’s door loomed and narrowed and filled her mouth with the suffocating taste of molding earth until her heart pattered the way it did in the rabbit’s body and the outlines of the structures blurred and blackened before her eyes. A too-cold breeze swirled through the streets and she shuddered from head to toe.
There was a man ahead in dark robes that swirled and her heart moved like rabbit’s feet fleeing in her ribcage. She forced herself to the alley, forced herself back, and bolted into the safety of the sacred darkness.
It was like that at the next few towns, too. There were kind people, here and there. One gave her a soft dark shirt and soft dark pants when she met him in the night, thrust them at her and skittered off when she tried through rattling gasps to ask if he wanted payment; a few innkeepers let her stay the night and gave her meals in the morning that softened the hunger’s brutal edge. But it couldn’t last, because the figures in the alleyways always came back, and names that she remembered from another life haunted her until she fled back to the safety of the trees.
The days grew colder.
The woods were safer further south, deep and dark, filled with birdsong and the golden colors of the waning year, the colors bright as life. She’d taken a sharp rock and cut a stick to hold her weight, easing the pressure on the days when walking was too much. Her breathing was growing easier, and her neck didn’t bleed anymore. But the words that would call magic to her side still couldn’t find their way from her mind out through her lips.
She was losing strength. The angels taught her traps and snares, but her feeble hands couldn’t tie the knots tight enough, and the few beasts she trapped slipped free when she tried to claim them. The herd of deer that once bolted at the sight of her now didn’t even flinch, the great many-pointed stag that led their numbers watching her passively while his mate and children drank at the riverside and foraged from the dying grasses. There was little to forage and less to live by, and some days the wavering mists of exhaustion hardly left her vision.
Sometimes, on the nights the angels didn’t come, she dreamed of the stag instead. Of his glinting eyes in the brush, watching her, unafraid. She murmured prayers in the morning to whatever forces listened.
She met the wolves in the pits of a moonless night, by way of gleaming golden eyes and an uncanny silence sweeping over her resting place, and she knew they’d come for her. She resolved herself to at least go down on her feet.
When the first wolf lunged, she lashed out with her staff, squeezing her eyes shut against the wave of fatigue that swept through her body from head to toe and sent the blood rushing out of her head, and felt herself make contact. The beast yelped, and she blinked spots from her vision just in time to fend off a second, sending it sprawling across the scrubby ground. Her hands shook.
“Please,” she tried to rasp, though nothing but a helpless wheeze came out. The wolves paced. She shifted back, making space, feeling acid adrenaline spread slow like venom down her arms and into her fingertips, biting back the way every motion tore at the scabby flesh of her still-healing abdomen.
The wolves kept pacing. In the dark, they moved like dancers, every footstep intentionally measured. Silent, despite their size, dwarfing her with heavy bodies—direwolves, not just wolves, but their largest and most vicious cousins.
Her stomach growled with a ferocity that nearly sent her to her knees.
The third wolf lunged. She grasped for the little magic she knew, one of the rare spells that remained without her voice, and scared it back with a shard of ice that burst into bitter steam across the pack. Its yelp was piercing and sharp and left her dizzy. Through the haze as she recovered, she watched the wolf pack flee.
She dreamed of the stag that night. She dreamed of blood and the careful steps of hunting beasts, tender in the foliage. She dreamed that she staggered to uncertain feet and the stag was there, his muzzle nudging against her arm, strong and stable, as she found her way upright. She wrapped her arms around him. He was warm and smelled of musk and the gentle decay of the forest floor in fall. He didn’t flee. His fur was soft like the velveteen skin of something whose name she’d forgotten, a precious something she’d loved in another life, beyond her memory, behind the veil of the endless dark. She awoke grasping for it, the name on her lips but not close enough to catch it, even if she’d had the voice to speak.
She dreamed fitfully, in bursts, interrupted by the empty claws of a hollow stomach scratching at the inside of her vessel like nails on slate.
The next day, something whimpered in the bushes when she went to change her bandages at the stream. She braced herself against her staff, and nudged aside the leafy branches, and found the wolf. It was panting, golden eyes glazed grey with pain, curled up defensively with hackles raised. It growled at her approach, but the sound was weak, and tapered to a whimper.
Near its feet, the ground was muddied with black-red blood. She traced the line from its paws to the place in its side where the fur was shaved down to muscle and a thin line of bone. The ghost of a spell and an icy projectile flashed across her memory.
Her hands were shaking again.
She went to the water. This stream ran clear and cold, down from somewhere in the mountains, carrying the mineral taste of glaciers high above. Flakes of mud and blood trailed free from her hands when she dipped them in the current, and she watched them swirl away through the eddies and whorls.
It was all mechanical, in the end. She pried a piece of moss from the bank, hefted it, ran it through the water and watched the dirt run off the roots towards the valley. Washed it clean, squeezed it under the surface and watched it fill with water. Stood and turned back to the forest.
The beast didn’t calm, but it didn’t bite when she pressed the pad of moss as gently as she could against the gash. It snapped, and she looked it in the eye, waiting. Its jaws were wide, teeth yellowed and worn from use. It could tear her to ribbons even now, if it had the nerve. She wouldn’t last long.
She washed the wound, and padded it with clean dry lichen, and flinched when she touched the beast’s side and a warmth filled her fingers that hadn’t answered her since she first returned to consciousness in the grave. She caught it like a soap bubble, soft as a memory. It settled in her chest and the breath that filled her lungs was deeper than she’d had in years.
She’d forgotten how it felt, when the warding darkness at her center answered. When the healing power in her blood responded to her call.
She forgot it again when the hunger returned in a wave of dizzying force, chasing all other thoughts from her mind. The wolf, rising from its rest in the hollow, tilted its head with a calculating glint and watched her. Gold eyes met gold.
It turned to follow the water, limping ever so slightly, and padded off.
She followed.
The pack was waiting in a stony cavern where the stream met a sparkling river. She felt their wary gazes long before she saw them, hidden as they were among the warm grey stone. But they recognized their lost member and pounced on him, tumbling together in a massive joyful bundle over the sandy patch of riverside, and before long it was like they hadn’t even seen her. She found a bright place on a rock by the shore, and waited for the sun to warm her bones more than the hunger chilled them.
Across the river, the bushes rustled. She knew what she’d see there.
The stag disappeared into the brush, and her vision blackened.
She awoke to the hot wet stickiness of a tongue on her face, and flinched, recoiling from the threat. In front of her sat the injured direwolf.
“Hi,” she whispered, bracing herself. “Hi there.” The words stuck in her wound and scraped.
The wolf cocked its head, stood, and licked her face again. It… did not try to bite her head off. This was not a situation she had anticipated. She particularly did not expect to be licked a third time. The wolf’s breath almost made her faint again.
Behind the wounded animal, the packmates slunk forward, watching her. Waiting.
The hunger in their eyes was a mirror of her own, and the shapechange came in its aching wake.
She followed them, that night, in a wolfish skin that matched their own. It wasn’t long before she had to pause, the time limits of her wildshapes forcing her back to rest while the pack moved on, but the howl carried on. They didn’t like to leave their own behind. She learned their faces—the mother the first to lunge, the father the second, the grown pups that followed them with their own faces and minds and hearts. They walked the trails of the forest, and she learned their gait, their stalking dance, their silent patience.
She slept between great warm bodies, and dreamed of blood and meat and the beasts that once wore the bite-marked bones on the floor of the den.
In the days, she jostled with the pups as one of them while she could. When she couldn’t, she rested on the rock by the river, while the echoes gnawing in her stomach dueled the white-hot claws of her bone-deep scars. She scrounged late-season eggs from a duck’s nest and swallowed them raw, on her hands and knees in the riverbank mud, eggshells scraping her gums and spilled yolk staining the ground, and coughed up half what she found when her scarred neck screamed with pain from bending low. It staved off the ache for an hour. She scraped up the spilled remains in her hands and wept.
On the fifth night, she followed the pack to a valley full of marsh-weed, where they found a limping boar. The pack struck in a whirl of fur and fangs, iron-stink staining the water. They fought her back from the bounty until the leaders took their share, but the scraps she claimed sated something, hot and vicious in the pit of her gut.
It was enough for a day.
She dreamed of it after, the blood that dripped from her fangs, the viscera on her tongue, the hot iron taste of it, the texture of muscle rending against her jaw. The heat on her lips and gums, bone crushing and crunching and cracking in her grasp, the relief like a soft warm pelt at the end of a long day’s journey as the soft squishing prey slid down her gullet like a prayer…
She dreamed of it night after night after night, waking with saliva in her mouth, thinking of it between the angels’ words, the ghost of that sensation dancing through her mouth in all her forms. She sat by the river and echoed it, conjuring up the giving resistance of flesh under her teeth, biting her tongue till it bled to remember the taste. She dreamed of nothing but. She dreamed even in her waking hours, as the first autumn frost laced over the land and the pack sat full and happy from the hunt.
She dreamed of it until the dream consumed her, empty of everything but teeth.
She left the den on an ice-bitter evening under ponderous slate skies when the dull weight of the thought hung heavy like an overripe fruit, when she wondered what the wolves would feel like beneath her fangs, if their heavy furs would rip and tear the way that scrap of boar did or if they’d linger in the teeth and scratch and bristle. She slunk up the hill to the north on the pack’s favored trail, filling her muzzle with the scent of heavy musk and petrichor.
The stag was waiting.
His antlers glinted in the cold dead moonlight, graceful as a halo, round as the crescent moon. He turned his head. She met his eyes and lunged.
She tore out the flesh of his neck like pages from a holy book, paper beneath her fangs as his blood ran like wine at a ritual. His stomach opened just as easily, staining the fallen leaves in garish scarlet, and his legs kicked feebly as she tore through the viscera that spilled free, relishing in the iron stench. Mouthful after mouthful, she ate her fill. She tore through muscle and tendon until she finally sank her teeth into his bright-hot heart and swallowed it in shreds. It might have still been beating, or the pulse between her jaws might have been her own, racing and vicious. She felt every piece reach her stomach, filling the void, hot in her chest like a hearthfire, bright as a star, sweet and tangy in the wolf’s senses and prickling in her own.
She hunted the liver down among the mess and swallowed it next, and the kidneys, and parts she knew no name for that glistened red and pink and sickish yellow in the light. She savored the feeling, the soft wet warm of it, the taste of the life that would fuel her own. She pried out the lowest of his ribs and it crackled in her jaws and she chewed out the marrow until there was nothing left of worth.
She didn’t know when he stopped moving, only that eventually, he did. It took too long.
When the wolf’s stomach filled, she lost the shape and scrabbled at the stag with her own weak human-shaped hands, her fingers shaking, nails digging into the slickened meat for purchase and prying up scraps to devour. She shook and shuddered and buried her own face into the stag’s shattered chest, drinking the lifeblood until it dried sticky on the edges of her skin, until she was full, until her aching stomach silenced and stopped and grew bloated with bleeding flesh.
She raised her head and her gaze caught upon his eyes. They were wide, and glassy, and milky with the haze of death.
She turned away from the kill and threw up nothing but bile, choking on the taste of steel.
“Thank you,” she murmured, too hoarse for anyone to hear, shuffling to the side and cradling his head in her lap, the warm blood filling her soft dark pants and seeping through to her skin. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Thank you.”
She leaned over him, wrapped her arms around his neck, curling her fingers into his short soft fur. Velveteen. Buried her face in his, her eyes hot and stinging, she swore she felt the ghosts of hands in her hair as the blood dried sticky on her face and melted down her cheeks. She clutched him tight enough to strain the scabs down her chest and belly, threatening to once again reopen the wounds. And she stayed there, waiting, until nothing came. Her stomach was quiet.
As she rose to her feet, she carefully bent and lifted as much of the stag as her body could manage. He was lighter than seemed fair, even to her haggard limbs.
Her hands didn’t shake.
There were hunters in these woods. The angels had told her, murmurs in the night, between the endless thoughts of hunger. They could help her. She stumbled through the brush, dragging the stag behind her, listening for someone larger than herself.
In the hours before the dawn, she found a young man in the valley, carrying a crossbow and a knife. He stiffened at her approach, and stood there wide-eyed, watching.
The words she spoke to explain herself died in rasping whistles in her throat, but still he watched, rapt, his eyes darting between the stag and her own face.
“You… you killed that?” the man asked, gesturing.
She nodded. Her neck twinged. She felt the man’s gaze skirt over her scarred neck, her hands slick with blood, the wrinkled scabby mess of her stomach where it was visible between the hem of her shirt and her makeshift belt.
“Do you… need to… take it somewhere?” She shook her head. The man swallowed. “That’s a lot of meat for one person. Erm…” He looked around, and she tilted her head. “…Do you know how to treat it? If you’re planning to eat that yourself, you probably want to salt-preserve it, it’ll spoil quickly otherwise. I could… help?”
She shook her head quickly, forcefully, then nodded, please, and the man flinched. But he was true to his word.
He led her to a clearing, his hands fluttering and his soft eyes nervous as she followed like a wraith, and showed her how to lay the stag down and open the rest of its body with a clean sharp knife. How to strip the meat from the bones, careful and keen, and process it into chunks and then lay it in pieces in salt to let it dry. She watched the process with singleminded focus, noting down every last motion, memorizing each flick of the knife.
He let her borrow his blade, so she could clean the carcass and keep that velveteen skin. With a few weeks’ drying and treatment, it would make a good blanket to last the winter through. She stripped the stag to the bones, and kept those as trophies. That night, the angels taught her to sharpen them into knives.
When the man had left, knife and bow in hand, retreating into the shadows, she realized that he never once quite looked her in the eyes.
She kept the skull. Late at night she stared into its face, searching for the glint of the stag’s all-knowing gaze in the depths of his bones, knowing there was nothing on the other side. She stared at him until somewhere deep inside, a part of her became him. Until his eyes became her own.
She took the form of a deer in the morning, wearing the weight of his antlers like a crown. The herd moved by her in the bushes and watched her like a ghost.
She went south. The winter was upon her, and it was time again to travel. The herd had enough to haunt them.
#dnd fic#this is... more gruesome than i usually go in for but it was fun to write#the way this feels like cannibalism when it definitely isn't#but at the same time in some metaphorical sense it kind of is#it's more... killing somebody and then stealing their skin#hush is a creepy forest witch who talks to angels and makes people nervous#and i love that for her#the hunter she met in the woods is just some sad little himbo trying to feed his family and thanking the gods he wasn't murdered by the fey#100% that man thought hush was either a faerie or a demon and feared for his LIFE#i told the DM that someday i would love her to just randomly bump into that guy again#because now that she's healed enough to /talk/ again she wants to thank him and will be all excited to see him#'omg it's my best friend!!!' meanwhile this poor guy is shitting himself 'oh fuck oh no i DID accidentally sell my soul to the fey'#hush is one of those characters i categorize as 'obliviously terrifying'#she is just a gal trying to survive and trying to regain her sense of self after being violently dehumanized for over a decade#she encounters other people and is overwhelmed but tries to be 'normal'#she just... fails to realize that between the aasimar angel traits and the inability to talk and the telepathy she uses to compensate...#she is very scary to other people#but then you talk to her and she is in tears of joy bc she had a fresh baguette this morning and it was really good#and it's like... ah. she's just poorly socialized
5 notes
·
View notes
Text
HEY i really like northstars and, by default, this includes viper’s gal. so i wrote about him and her. this is pure angst :)
AO3 link
The Draconis collides with the ground in no gentle manner.
Metal screeches as it is rendered and wrenched out of position, bent in impossible ways. The sound of glass breaking. The hull collapses, letting out a groan as boulders and trees rip into it like paper.
Viper does his best to hold on.
Holding on is hard to do with one arm and a damaged torso.
Finally, the Draconis rumbles to a stop. He’s thrown forward as inertia carries him, sliding off the ship’s top and landing hard and ungraciously onto the disturbed dirt below.
It takes him a moment to regain his senses. His feed is overwhelmed-- errors reporting his missing limb; multiple bullet wounds in his torso, shredding the delicate mechanics inside; severe trauma to his head. He tries to move, but his body refuses, at first.
Viper is not going to lay here and die.
With renewed strength, he drags himself away from the fiery wreckage with his remaining arm. His legs, at least, seem to be intact, and he uses them to push himself forward as best he can. Once he deems himself safe a fair distance away from the downed ship, he rests.
The remnants of the Draconis remind him of a downed bird. No more wings to fly. Doomed to her end on the ground below.
His mind snaps to his Titan.
He does not know where his Titan is. He hasn’t undergone the trauma of the Link breaking, so he knows his Northstar is still kicking in some manner. Like him, she is resilient. A force that will not be stopped so easily.
“Fang,” he coughs feebly. He hates how weak he sounds. “Fang, do you copy?”
Fang’s end of the comm link fizzes in his helmet. The HUD scrolls warnings and errors alike in an unending stream. TITAN - CRITICALLY DAMAGED. RECOMMEND STRATEGIC RETREAT. PROTOCOL 3.
“Fang!” he barks. “Report!”
Through the static, he vaguely hears her.
“-rror...critical d-damage…-ystems-s failing-g…”
She does not sound good, he decides.
“Protocol 3, Fang.” He hates to use the Protocol to force her into moving to find him, but it is necessary. “I am by the wreckage of the Draconis. Locate me.”
Trusting that the command had gone through, he slumps. The sudden weight of what has happened presses down on him. The other Apex Predators are dead. Any left alive probably think he’s dead. It’s a surprise he survived the landing.
Nobody would come looking for a dead man.
Would he rather Blisk know he’s alive, after failing?
He decides against contacting the man.
All the fight ebbs out of his body. He wants to sleep for a decade. He wants Fang to be alright. He wants to forget today.
Would he have been better off dead?
He snaps his head, shaking the thought out. Viper is not one to give up. A bad day is nothing to lament over. There will be time to reunite and repair, then to go charging back in with the same prowess he knows he has.
And so, he waits.
The star illuminating Typhon starts to hide behind the horizon. The shadows grow longer, reaching and crawling across the landscape before him. The wreckage still crackles and pops, fires refusing to die out with such ample supply of fuel.
With the sinking of the star brings the rising of wildlife. He hears things in the forest behind him. Twigs breaking underfoot. The birds have gone eerily silent. His mind supplies him with an endless barrage of worst-case scenarios.
Maybe a Prowler finds you, and mauls you.
Perhaps a Flyer takes interest in you and carries you off.
He wishes he could quell it. It does no good to him to fret like this.
He pointedly focuses on something else.
Something thumps on the other side of the wreckage. It startles him, making him jolt and whip his head around. Even through the cracked HUD, he can see things approaching on the radar.
Viper would rather not be ultimately killed by wildlife. He deserves an honorable and proud death.
Slowly yet furiously, he drags himself back to the wreckage of the Draconis. Maybe the flames would startle off any curious eyes. If he hides, Prowlers surely wouldn’t expend the energy to dig him out. Flyers have to be afraid of fire, right? They wouldn’t attack an already-downed airship.
Whatever it may be, it lumbers closer. Heavy footsteps that rumble the ground as it nears. He tried to identify it as Fang, but her tracker systems have been shot offline.
While he hopes it is Fang, he braces for the worst, hunkering back under twisted metal as the footsteps round the Draconis.
“Pilot?”
The relief slams through him harshly. It shuts down his thoughts. He stubbornly holds back a whimper.
“Fang,” he croaks. Her stark silhouette comes into view.
She is most certainly worse for wear.
She leans on one leg heavily. He can see the struts bent on the other. Her chassis is riddled with bullet holes from both the damned Pilot’s and their Titan’s guns. Her shoulders and optic spark erratically, spitting orange particles that hazily fall to the ground and die out. Her optic blinks, fritzing. Fang shakes her head to stop it, or to at least try. She is unarmed.
“Oh, Fang…” he laments.
“Pilot-t Viper. Sta-ate your c-condition.”
“Don’t worry about me right now,” he huffs. “I’ll be alright.”
“Protocol-col 3 demands th-that I ensure your s-safety, Pilot. That is-s my top priority r-right now.”
“Forget about the fuckin’ Protocol,” he spits.
“There is-s no Protocol-l for--”
“Fang!” he begs. “Take things seriously here. We’re both on our last legs.”
“Cor-r-rection,” she warbles. “I am techni-c-caly on both pedes.”
Viper lets out a delirious, frustrated sound. His Titan is barely standing and she is still quipping to him to keep him comforted.
“What do we do?” he mumbles quietly. “We’re left for dead. Nobody is going to come looking for us. We’re stranded. Abandoned.”
“Still, w-we are not hopeless-less, Pilot.”
Anger hits him like a punch. Would he rather Fang be as pessimistic as he? He holds back.
“Typhon is heav-vily populated by IMC b-bases,” Fang continues. “It is entirely-ly possible we c-could locate one.”
“Yeah? And what?” he says. “I highly doubt they’re going to take us in if we’ve already failed them.”
Fang is silent.
“What the everloving fuck can we possibly do, here?” he bellows. “We failed! We can’t even die when we’re supposed to! If Blisk finds out we didn’t die, he’s probably going to finish the job himself!”
“I have contacted-d Kuben Blisk-k, Pilot.”
His mind blanks. “You what?”
“I have acquired con-tact with th-the foreman of-f the Apex Predators-s.”
“Why?!” He can’t help but scream. “You gave him our location?”
“Af-f-firmativ-ve.”
He throws himself back against the jagged metal behind him in a fit of rage. His remaining fist balls up and slams into the dirt with a feeble, barely-audible thump. He kicks his legs angrily. “You fucker!” he snarls. “Protocol 3 includes not signaling the only motherfucker that would be the most enraged about our failure! And you’re leading him right to us!”
“Pilot,” Fang sounds reluctant, hurt. “I am doing-g what is b-best for you. Your survi-vial is my priority.”
“You just did the exact opposite of making sure I survive,” he growls. He rips the helmet off his head and throws it at the Northstar, missing by a great distance. Still, Fang flinches, accidentally leaning on the wrecked leg and nearly collapsing. “Leave.”
Fang recoils.
“Pilot--”
“You damn well heard me,” he says. He makes eye contact with her. “Get the fuck outta here.”
Hesitating, Fang shifts from foot to foot. She hangs her head sadly, optic locked on the ground in front of him. “That would-d be dis-disobeying Protocol 3.”
“You’ve already gone and done that,” he responds coldly. “You’ve basically killed us both. Go.”
Quietly, Fang gives him one last desperate glance, only to find that Viper is pointedly avoiding her gaze. He hears her vocalizer spit out some semblance of a whimper as she turns away. He listens as she stumbles to the other side of the ship’s wreckage, settling down as quietly as she can with a lame leg and off-kilter systems.
Immediately, he deflates. His head thumps back against the metal. All the anger fizzles out and leaves him despaired and hopeless.
He knows he shouldn’t have done it. He should not have taken his anger and fear out on his Titan. As she said, she is acting in his best interest. She may not understand that Blisk would want him dead. To her, she is contacting an ally for rescue, even if it turns out to be the exact opposite.
Suddenly alone, he feels exposed, even hiding in the wreckage. He knows Fang’s coding would prevent her from going too far--she sounds like she stopped on the other side of the wreckage.
The facade of bravado and skill falters, leaving behind a fearful, distraught husk of...something.
He chooses to not name it.
He has effectively clipped the wings of a once free-flying bird.
24 notes
·
View notes
Text
Boo || Kana & Lyla
The day had been long and.. exhausting to say the least. Even though the succubus had been in the town of Spiritvale for roughly five months, she was still trying to get into the swing of things. People were different here compared to the other places she’d visited. Besides human, all she could sense were wet dogs, blood sucking bats, and witchy bitches.
Call it luck, though, that she was able to find a small cottage on the outskirts of Spiritvale, surrounded by woods and a one way road to the bustling downtown.
The moon hung in the sky with bright, twinkling specks surrounding it. Even though Lyla was a soulless creature, she always admired the creation of a forest. She loved how everything worked together in perfect harmony and survived without the help of pitiful humans -- thus creating it her go-to place to drag her victims.
Not only was it easy to dispose of the bodies, but it allowed her create as much noise and drama as she pleased. ‘Movies’ the humans called them -- animated pictures that showed dramatic events and stories. Lyla liked to play her tortures like the movies she’d been able to forge from her victim’s empty houses or even in the garbage.
“You’re a kinky gal, aint’cha?” He was a handsome fellow but oh so empty in the head.. in one of them, at least. Lyla looked back at him and smirked devilishly, securing his answer. “Never been back here ‘fore. Didn’t even know there were woods back’ere.”
“Well darling, I guess it’s just an exciting night for you, huh?” Lyla said smoothly, keeping her hand in his firmly and taking her time through the forest. “I hope it will get even more interesting.” The man’s voice hushed into her ear as his power overtook her and pushed her against a nearby tree, his body against her’s. “God if the Devil had Angels, then I would think you’d be one.” Lyla brushed off his nonsense statement and allowed his whiskey poisoned mouth to explore her neck.
Heavy breathing increased as Lyla listened for the man’s heartbeat to hit the limit where he’d be the most fulfilling. Her actions led him to pulling her shirt over her head and forcing her zipper down. “This isn’t fair, darling.” Lyla, with one hard push, pinned the human down on the ground, noticing a small pool of blood beginning to form in the back of his head causing her hunger to grow larger in her throat. “A lil blood never hurt nobody! Jus’ a lil scratch. Besides, there’s plenty of blood going other places.” He exclaimed, trying to regain her attention, his handing trailing hard against her pelvis.
"Oh doll..” Lyla moaned, guiding his hands up her belly and to her neck, taking his index finger into her mouth and allowing her tongue to do the talking -- never breaking eye contact as the human melted under her legs and growing harder by the second. Lyla’s gums ached and before she knew it, her incisors expanded into the man’s finger, causing him to yelp and retracting his hand. “You bit me!” He shouted, surprised, pushing his hips harder against her.
She couldn’t help it, tonight -- she was starving. All the missing people reports had left her secluded in her home, hoping to not get stuck in the crossfires.
Twigs cracked in the distance, making both of them snap out of their love fest to look around. But once the man looked back at his strange lover, his shock was not over for the woman’s eyes glowed a bright yet deep orange.
“Y-Your eyes!”
“You talk too much, you know that?”
“What are you?!”
“Oh doll... I’m one of Lucifer’s Angels.” A wicked grin spread across her bloodied lips, exposing her sharpened teeth. The human tried his hardest to throw Lyla off but instead caused her to wrap her hand around his neck, pressing her full finger claw ring into his jugular. “I really thought you were going to be fun.” Lyla whispered, not quite impressed with how her night was going to end. But if someone was in the woods with them, she couldn’t risk exposing herself.
“Wh-” His words began to gurgle as she pushed her thumb claw into his throat, basking in the blood that splattered onto her porcelain face. Lyla groaned in satisfaction, leaning down to run her tongue along his jaw line and down to her thumb. She would never become full off of just his blood but it would have to do.
Lyla jolted off the man as his blood began trickling to an end. She pulled her t-shirt back over herself and buttoned her pants, soon grabbing the man’s wrist and dragging him behind her.
Another rustle spook her, causing her to transform her eyes into her signature cool brown and allowing her teeth to dull back down. It didn’t take long before her trip was stopped by a figure in front of her.
Police? Supernatural? Whatever it was, it better not be a witch.
@kanaxfau
21 notes
·
View notes
Text
The Most Influential People in the fire inside music Industry and Their Celebrity Dopplegangers
Correction Appended
On an album of bittersweet childrens music that she wrote greater than a decade ago, the woman who came to get recognised only as being the piano Instructor provided what, in hindsight, seems like an eerie glimpse of her have long term.
Im going absent today to an area so distant, the place nobody understands my identify, she wrote while in the lyrics of a track identified as Relocating.
When she wrote that song, she was younger and vivacious, a piano Trainer and freelance audio writer who liked Beethoven and jazz, sunsets and river Appears, extended walks and almost everything about Big apple.
On one of those beloved walks, by way of Central Park in the bright Sunshine of the June day in 1996, a homeless drifter conquer her and attempted to rape her, leaving her clinging to everyday living. Following the attack, the phrases to her track came real. She moved away, out of Ny city, from her previous life, and all but her closest close friends didn't know her name. To the remainder of the planet, she was — similar to the additional well known jogger attacked in Central Park seven many years previously — an anonymous symbol of the city nightmare. She was the piano Instructor.
Now, about the 10th anniversary on the assault, she's celebrating what appears to be her complete recovery from Mind trauma. She's forty two, married, with a small boy or girl. She's Kyle Kevorkian McCann, the piano teacher, and she or he wants to convey to her Tale, her way.
Her doctor told her it could just take ten years to recover, and Sunday was that talismanic anniversary. I sense my everyday living continues to be redefined by Central Park, she said a number of times in the past, her voice smooth and hopeful. In advance of park; immediately after park. Will there ever certainly be a time Once i dont Feel, Oh, Here is the 10th anniversary, the 11th anniversary?
She spoke in her modest ranch house in the wooded subdivision in a The big apple suburb. She sat in a very eating room strewn with toys, surrounded by pictures of her cherubic, dim-haired 2-calendar year-outdated daughter. A Steinway grand stuffed 50 percent the place, and at one place she sat down and performed. Her actively playing was forceful, but she appeared humiliated to Engage in more than a few bars, and shrugged, rather then answering, when requested the name of your piece. She questioned that her daughter and her town not be named.
She phone calls that working day, June four, 1996, the working day when I was damage.
Hers was the main within a string of attacks by the same guy on four Gals above eight times. The final target, Evelyn Alvarez, sixty five, was crushed to Dying as she opened her Park Avenue dry-cleansing shop, and in the end, the assailant, John J. Royster, was convicted of murder and sentenced to existence in prison.
Nevertheless the attack around the piano teacher would be the just one individuals appear to recollect one of the most. Part of the fascination has got to do with echoes in the 1989 attack to the Central Park jogger. But Furthermore, it frightened folks in a method the attack to the jogger did not because its instances were so mundane.
It did not occur inside of a remote A part of the park late in the evening, but near a preferred playground at 3 during the afternoon. It could have took place to anybody. The tension was heightened with the secret of the piano lecturers identity.
For 3 times, as law enforcement and Medical practitioners tried using to see who she was, she lay inside a coma in her medical center mattress, nameless. Her dad and mom were being on getaway and her boyfriend, also a musician, was in Europe, on tour. Lastly, one of her learners regarded a law enforcement sketch and was ready to identify her from the clinic by her fingers, due to the fact her experience was swollen over and above recognition. The law enforcement did not release her name.
The last thing she remembers about June four, 1996, is offering a lesson in her studio condominium on West 57th Avenue, then putting her prolonged hair within a ponytail and likely out for just a stroll. She would not remember the attack, Despite the fact that she has read the accounts of the police and prosecutors.
youtube
To me its just like a reality I discovered and memorized, she claimed. Just as if I were a pupil in school learning history.
She will not think of The person who did it. I may have been offended to get a second, but not a lot longer than that, she said. How could I be indignant at John Royster? He was declared not insane, but I suppose by our specifications he was.
youtube
Dr. Jamshid Ghajar, her health care provider at Big apple Medical center-Cornell Medical Heart, as it absolutely was recognised in 1996, instructed reporters that she had a 10 per cent possibility of survival. Doctors experienced to eliminate her forehead bone, which was later on replaced, to generate home for her swelling Mind. When her mother produced a public attract pray for my daughter, thousands did.
Immediately after eight days, she arrived out of a coma, to start with inside a vegetative point out, then in a very childlike point out. As she recovered, she slept little and talked consistently, occasionally in gibberish. I used to be obtaining mad at people whenever they didnt respond to these terms, she said.
Like an Alzheimers individual, she had very little quick-phrase memory and would fail to remember readers as soon as they remaining the space.
About various months, she needed to relearn ways to wander, costume, go through and produce. Her boyfriend, Tony Scherr, visited every single day to Perform guitar for her. He inspired her to Perform the piano, from the recommendation of her physical therapists, who believed she could well be disappointed by her lack of ability to Engage in the way she after experienced. Mr. Scherr performed Beatles duets together with her, taking part in the left-hand portion although she performed the right.
Which was my ideal therapy, she said.
youtube
In August, she moved back household to New Jersey, with her father, an engineer, and mom, a schoolteacher. She visited outdated haunts and identified as friends, seeking to revive her shattered memory. I was pretty obsessed with remembering, she claimed. Any memory loss was to me a sign of abnormality or deficit.
Her therapists assumed her development was great, but her two sisters protested that she wasn't the deep thinker she were.
What bothered her most was that she had misplaced the chance to cry, as though a faucet within her brain had been turned off. Just one evening, nine months immediately after she was damage, she stayed up late to observe the John Grisham Film A Time for you to Get rid of. Just following her father had long gone to mattress, she watched a courtroom scene of Samuel Jacksons character on demo for killing two Adult males who experienced raped his youthful daughter.
The faucet opened, and also the tears trickled down her cheeks. I considered my mother and father, my father, and what they went as a result of, she explained. Small by very little, my experience returned, my depth of mind returned.
Urged by her sisters, she went back again to highschool and acquired a masters diploma in music education and learning.
Not every thing went nicely. She and Mr. Scherr break up up five years after the assault, although they continue to be pals. She dated other Adult men, but she usually instructed them with regard to the assault instantly — she could not enable it, she explained — and so they never identified as for the next day.
We've got to uncover you someone, her Pal David Phelps, a guitar participant, reported 4 a long time back, before introducing her to Liam McCann, a pc technician and novice drummer. For when, she did not say anything at all with regards to the attack right up until she obtained to understand Mr. McCann, after which when she did, he admired her energy.
Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who experienced normally visited her at her bedside while she was within the healthcare facility, married them in his Moments Square Business. She wore a blue costume and pearls. Even though she was Expecting, inside of a burst of creativeness, she and her pals recorded Though Were being Younger, an album of childrens music that she experienced penned ahead of the assault, including the song Relocating. Her ex-boyfriend, Mr. Scherr, produced the CD. On it, her spouse plays drums and she performs electrical piano.
Is her lifestyle as it absolutely was? Not exactly, although she's unwilling to attribute the discrepancies to her accidents. Her very last two piano pupils left her, without contacting to clarify why, she mentioned. She has resumed playing classical songs, but simple parts, simply because her daughter doesn't give her time for you to follow. As for jazz, I dont even try, she reported.
She want to drive additional, emotion stranded in the suburbs, but she is well rattled. She attempts to be written content with staying household and caring for her daughter.
Dr. Ghajar, a scientific professor of neurological surgical procedure at what's now called Big apple-Presbyterian Medical center/Weill Cornell Healthcare Middle, who operated on Ms. Kevorkian McCann following the assault, reported final 7 days that her level of Restoration was rare. Shes mainly typical, he explained.
Other specialists, who will be not personally familiar with Ms. Kevorkian McCanns situation, tend to be more careful.
Regaining a chance to Participate in the piano may possibly require an Virtually mechanical process, a semiautomatic remember of just what the fingers must do, claimed Dr. Yehuda Ben-Yishay, a professor of clinical rehabilitation medicine at The big apple College School of Medicine. As soon as brain-injured, you are often Mind-wounded, for the rest of your life, Dr. Ben-Yishay mentioned. There isn't any overcome, You can find only intense compensation.
The greater telling Portion of a recovery, in his watch, is psychological, and on that score he counts Ms. Kevorkian McCanns relationship and little one as a significant victory.
For her aspect, the piano Instructor appreciates she has transformed, but she has made her peace with it. I was form of a hyper —— I dont know if I used to be a sort A, but I was bold, she says. Why was I so formidable? I was a piano Instructor. I dont understand what the ambition was about. I really did come back to the individual Im designed to be.
0 notes
Note
>:D here I am... with writing prompts!! 8 for Shovel and 32 for Evgenii.
Thanks for the ask mate! And, as impossible as it may sound, I actually have both pieces written.
But there’s one teensy problem: you gave me prompt 32 for Evgenii (“This is, by far, the dumbest thing you’ve ever done.”) which had the potential to be something fun and light-hearted. And I took it and went the angsty and spoilery route. Ooops. So since that short piece has spoilers about what will happen on Shovel’s next adventure, I’m undecided whether I should post it now or wait and first finish and post the next installement of Shovel’s story. Halp guys.
Meanwhile, here’s Shovel’s prompt: “Were you ever going to tell me?”
This hunt wasn’t going according to the plan. So far all of Wolf’s jobshad been fairly easy: go kill some mutants and come back for the pay. Andperhaps Shovel freaked out a bit the first time she saw a horde of fleshes-because she knew what pigs looked like and those things were certainly nopigs, no matter what everyone said- but killing the rowdy mutated pigs was still easier than killing apseudo-dog.
Coming to the railroad bridge was always risky, since the military weretrying to regain its control, and Shovel’s latest mission drove her too closeto it for her liking. To her great relief, it was empty today. No soldiers, nostalkers and, best of all, no bandits. So she went towards the spot marked inher map, close to the old mill. Everything was calm and silent. Too silent forShovel to feel comfortable. But the marker on her map urged to go forward,towards the far end of the railways, away from the bridge.
A strange static sound could be heard the closer she got to her mark,and Shovel turned around, half-expecting to see that strange floating ball ofelectricity that once chased her through the forest and into the Zone. Butthere was nothing. In fact the sound seemed to come from beneath the ground,more or less? It was coming from atunnel, as she soon saw. The entry looked dark and foreboding from herposition, curtained by burnt fuzz. No way Shovel was going in there, shepreferred to find another way to cross the railways if needed.
The growl was loud in the otherwise silent area. And it was coming frombehind her. She’d heard this kind of grunts before, when she killed that odddog with a shovel while they tried to bury their fallen companion in DarkValley. Frankly, that wasn’t the worst that happened during that firstescapade, but she remembered well enough the pseudo-dog to know they werescarily resistant and agile and aggressive. So she ran, even if that meantgetting into the tunnel. The static sound grew louder and she went into thedarkness of the tunnel. Seeing a huge dark shape amidst the shadows, she jumpedon it. A second later an electric discharged bathed the tunnel in a bluishflash, and she heard the pained yip of the dog.
“You’re a lucky son of a bitch, huh? If you stumbled you’d be dead forsure.”
There was someone else on top of that moored truck, hidden by theshadows that consumed the tunnel. She squinted her eyes and glimpsed an indistincthuman shape, so Shovel took out her torchlight and pointed it at the unknownperson.
“Fuck’s sake, turn it off!” The guy protected his eyes with one of hishands.
Shovel quickly powered down the torchlight, whispering a “Sorry” to him. That brief moment oflight served her to see her mysterious companion was no stalker. He wasmilitary. Oh blin, she was screwed!Stalking was a crime under Ukrainian law, and the rookie village was closeenough to the military checkpoint to know how military dealt with stalkers –with a hail of bullets usually.
“Not a very talkative gal?” The soldier had finally caught on that shewasn’t a man, probably when she said sorry. “A shame, I wouldn’t mind a bit ofconversation.”
“For a soldier you are friendly,” It was a stupid observation, andShovel wished she‘d kept her mouth shut. But from all she’d heard she halfexpected the soldier to point his rifle at her immediately after seeing her.
The soldier laughed heartily, much to Shovel’s confusion. The laughterquickly died when the pseudo-dog barked angrily at them from the other side ofthe tunnel’s entrance, its yellowish eyes glinting in a decidedly unfriendlyway.
“Fucking beast has had me trapped here for at least six hours,” thesoldier growled. “You’re the first person I’ve seen since I left the outpostthis morning.”
“Wait, you’ve been trapped here all day long?” Shovel eyed his rifle,which was just a lump in the dark, but she remembered it looked much better anddeadly than her hunting rifle. “Why didn’t you shoot it?”
The soldier grunted again and shuffled closer to her. “Ran out ofbullets. And I dropped my bag when I jumped up here, that electric thing stingsreally hard if it catches you.”
Shovel felt a little bad for him. He was clearly new to the Zone, justlike her. And the Zone was kicking their asses. They sat on top of the rustedtruck in silence for a while, contemplating their situation. The soldiereventually broke the silence once more.
“What about you stalker, do you know how to shoot?”
“Of course I do!” She was a bit insulted he’d questioned herproficiency. Why carry a weapon you didn’t know how t use? That was stupid! Wasit because she was a woman or because she was rookie? Well, she’d show him!
She crawled to the far end of the truck, closer to the pseudo-dog, angertaking over her earlier fear. It took quite a fair bit of bullets to make itlimp, but soon it would be dead. However her optimism was quickly snuffed whenshe ran out of bullets and the pseudo-dog was still alive.
“Well, you’re not a bad shot, but that thing is still kicking around,”the soldier pointed out. Yeah, thanks, like she couldn’t see it with her owneyes. But getting snippy wouldn’t solve anything.
“I’m out of ammo too.” She admitted over the buzzing sound of theever-present electro.
The soldier took out something from his belt, and when he crept closershe saw it was a huge knife. Shovel took a step back.
“You lure it to us and I’ll finish it while it’s distracted.”
No. Absolutely not. “I’m not playing bait!”
A tense silence fell over them, only broken by the growls of the stillprowling pseudo-dog. Shovel was silently panicking, mentally going over heroptions if he decided to lunge at her with the knife or tried to push her down.Her odds were… not good.
In the end it was the soldier who broke their stalemate, offering herthe knife. “Fine. I’ll play bait and you kill it. I just want to get out ofhere.”
He dragged himself forward, and it was then Shovel noticed his ankledidn’t look right. Oh, had the pseudo-dog got him before? Walking like thatmust hurt him like hell. She was considering offering him a change of placesafter all when the pseudo-dog jumped at the soldier. He’d been perched at theedge of the truck, searching for a landing spot that wasn’t covered by tendrilsof static, when the dog dragged him down. Man and beast fell into the electricanomaly, which then exploded in another discharge. Shovel crept closer to theedge as well, to see what happened. The electro reformed and exploded again,starling her enough to make her slip as well.
Shovel rolled down the side of the truck and on top of the two bodies onthe ground. She tried to get away from the anomaly before it shocked her. Andshe made it. But then she noticed the soldier was trying to move from beneaththe dead pseudo-dog. Not thinking about it, Shovel went back to help him. Trueto the soldier’s earlier comment, the anomaly’s shock stung harder than shecould have imagined. Her scream echoed in the darkness of the tunnel.
Moving faster than ever before in her life, she dragged the soldier outof the tunnel, and just in time to avoid another electric discharge. The man onthe ground twitched and gasped like he couldn’t breathe properly, and Shovelhoped he didn’t require immediate medical attention, because she barely knewhow to bandage a wound.
“Th-th-thank you,” he finally managed, extending a hand towards her. Shoveldidn’t take it, out of fear it would hurt him more than do him any good. Therewas a map of red lines criss-crossing the skin, like an artsy tattoo gone wrong.
“Are- are you okay?” Probably a stupid question, but she asked anyway.
The soldier wheezed, slowly getting up. “Been better. But I’m alive.”
Shovel nodded. It made sense. At least he was able to stand on his own.He took a couple of hesitant steps towards the truck, and Shovel feared he wouldfall into the electro. She hadn’t saved him from the anomaly just for him tofall into it again. It would be a waste of her effort. However he did not fall.Instead he retrieved a bag that was stuck underneath the vehicle. He rummagedaround and then thrust a pair of small packages out to her.
“Not much, but I have nothing else besides my ammo.” He waved his handimpatiently when she didn’t grab them. “C’mon, what are you waiting for? Yousaved my life, I won’t let you go empty handed.”
His thanks and a promise to not kill her when she turned her back wouldhave sufficed, yet he seemed intent on giving her those parcels of food–presumably it was food, but she wasn’t sure.
“Okay, yeah.” She took his offering.
The situation felt awkward to Shovel. How do you accept someone’sgratitude when you just saved them? Saying “Noproblem” or “It was no trouble”would be either lacking or big filthy lies.
“Normally I’d try to arrest you, but not today. I hope you survive yourstay here stalker,” he told her before he left, limping and hobbling but steadyon his feet.
Shovel stood there, watching him leave while she clutched the food onher hands. They turned out to be some sort of chocolate flavoured energy bars.Oh goodness, it seemed like the last time she tasted chocolate was a lifetimeago.
She went back to the rookie village, happily munching a chocolate barand with an odd feeling of satisfaction blooming in her chest.
#
Their planned trip to Garbage had a rocky start. And a rocky middle. Orperhaps this wasn’t even the middle and it would be simply their end. Therailroad bridge was supposedly under stalker control, but it was the militarythey found waiting for them. Unfortunately, neither she nor Evgenii noticed ituntil it was too late to go back unseen.
One of the soldiers was aiming their rifle at them, and another gesturedthem to come forward, closer to his armed comrade.
“Want to cross the bridge stalkers?” One of the soldiers hollered.“Don’t be rude, come have a chat!”
Following the armed soldiers’ orders, they went towards the bridge, likesheep to the slaughter. Evgenii looked as worried as she felt. This wasn’tgood, they didn’t have anything to bribe them. But what else could they do?Run? When they were closer, Shovel saw there was a third soldier sitting in oneof the vehicles parked –or was it abandoned?– by the side. The soldier also saw her.
“Fuck off Sergei, they get through for free.”
“But corporal…” The one who called them forward wasn’t happy with thechange of plans.
“No buts, lower the damn weapons!”
It was the soldier she met in the tunnel with the electro. He lookedwell, better than she remembered, but then again more than a week had passedsince that day. The soldier, corporal, whatever he was, approached her.
“With this the debt is settled, yes?” he looked serious, his voice hard.Shovel was confused by his actions. She was under the impression he’d already ‘paid’ her for that, or that was whatshe had told her.
“Why this? I’m not ungrateful, but you already gave me the chocolates.”
The other two soldiers howled with laughter at this. She couldn’tunderstand why her confusion was so freaking funny to them. At least they letthem through, without uttering another complaint, while their Corporal led herand Evgenii to the other side of the bridge and thanked her again “for being how she was,” whatever thatmeant. The echoes of the soldier’s mirth followed them past the bridge. Andduring all that time Evgenii was silent like a tomb.
“Were you ever going to tell me?” he eventually asked her, when theywere close to the old farm.
That simple sentence made Shovel flinch.
The door opened and Polina’s hand was gone from her,leaving a ghostly cold in its absence.
“Yulia!” Her sister Irina stood on the door, lookingangrily at her friend and her. “Were you ever going to tell me?”
She took a deep breath and focused on the now. This was completelydifferent from that time, she wasn’t hiding anythinganymore. And in the end everything worked out between her sister and her.Besides, Evgenii didn’t sound angry or hurt. His voice was full of surprise andawe.
“Tell you what?”
“You befriended a soldier! And he gave you chocolate! How? And when?”
Leaveit to Evgenii to be impressed by something she accomplished by accident. Likegetting that stupid nickname (that she’d started to grow fond of, but don’ttell anyone that). She launched to tell him the story while they walked alongthe empty road, marching to an adventure of their own.
6 notes
·
View notes
Text
So I'm having endless summer withdrawal symptoms and needed to deal w them so here's a nice juicy fic for y'all. It follows Rourke's ending, with Jake being back on the run and MC being transported back to Hartfield with her memories. She still loves our boi and is mega thirsty so goes to Costa Rica to try & find him:
Song Inspo: Jerico - Ruston Kelly
The back of the bus pulls away from you, rattling further and further away along the dusty road you only just travelled down as you take in your surroundings.
The stifling air is heavy in your lungs as you scan the area for anything that would give you an idea of where the hell you've managed to end up. After surviving La Huerta, you'd have thought that finding a single person wouldn't be nearly as hard as it had been so far.
Tracking down his sister was difficult enough. By the time you'd managed to find the little lakeside house in Louisiana, only a few photographs and letters laying on the kitchen table remained to lead you to her. You'd never condoned breaking the law, but you didn't mind a bit of breaking & entering if it meant you'd find him sooner.
You found her in LA, working as a cop under Rourke's newly established police force. It took a lot to get anything from her, but eventually, with a few elaborate white lies and heart-wrenching stories from you she gave you the only trace she had left of him; a letter sent from the tiny village in which you found yourself now.
The odds of finding him were next to nothing, but you couldn't rest until you'd tried. Any hope you had left was quickly fading along with the light from the setting sun.
A number of once brightly plastered buildings stand crumbling in front of you, with a few narrow side streets snaking between them. You make out the distant glow of a bar a few streets back, and start towards it with the letter still on hand.
A group of older man mutter to eachother in Spanish, eyeing you suspiciously as you wander into the dimly-lit boozer. The stench of cigarettes and spilled beer is overwhelming, and the hazy smoke hanging around the room makes your eyes sting. You turn to leave when you hear an unmistakable, quiet chuckle behind you.
You freeze, a flood of emotion taking over your body for a split second before you slowly turn back, stuffing the letter in your pocket as you do so. That's when you see him. Facing away from you, Jake is leaning over the bar, teasing the bartender as he pours him another glass of scotch. Time seems to stop as you stare at the man you've spent so long trying to find.
As if sensing your presence, he stops talking and slowly turns around to face you, his piercing blue eyes meeting yours. Something seems to light up in his weathered face as he looks at you. Recognition? Relief? You could only hope.
He regains his composure as you make yourself walk up to the bar, ordering a shot of whiskey for yourself. He raises an eyebrow as you down it and slam the glass on the surface in front of you.
"Huh."
He glances at the glass, then back at you, a look of both awe and confusion across his face.
"What's a gal like you doing in a place like this?"
You hold his gaze for a few seconds, losing yourself in the eyes you've waited so long to see, before looking down at the glass in front of you.
"Well, Top Gun..."
You look back up at him, noticing his eyes widen as he processes what you've just said.
"...Wouldn't you like to know."
He furrows his brow, glancing around the room before looking at you again. You can see the suspicion in his eyes as he tries to work out where he's seen you before.
His words fall to almost a whisper.
"Look, princess. I ain't trying to start nothin' funny." He pauses, running a hand through his hair as his eyes fall to the ground "But I know you. Ain't got a clue how I do, but I do".
He looks back up at you
"Yeah.... you do," you reply, cautiously taking his hand as his eyes pierce into yours, looking for something he knows is in there, but can't quite seem to find.
His rough fingers feel cold against your own. You reach into your pocket and pull out the letter, unfolding it and sliding it across the short distance between you. He gasps as he reads his own words to his sister, and pulls his hand back from yours.
"Where the hell did you get this?!"
You hold his gaze, determined to make him remember.
"Look..." You trail off, not knowing where to start. "I know you've seen a lot of crazy shit in your time, but what I'm about to say is going to be a hell of a lot crazier than any of that."
He scoffs, but still holds your gaze, failing to hide the urgency in his eyes.
"Try me, princess."
You look back down at the bar, smiling to yourself. After a pause that feels like forever, you look back up at him with a glint in your eye.
"You ever wish you were a time traveller?"
He grins and shakes his head, laughing softly as he does so. All that time had lead to this moment, when you finally managed to find him despite the odds. All you could do was hold on to the hope that he would believe you, and maybe, just maybe, there was a chance that things could go back to the way they were before.
#endless summer#choices#pixelberry#jake mckenzie#jacob lucas mckenzie#jake x mc#jake x taylor#endless summer fic
49 notes
·
View notes
Last Seen Blogs
stalepeeps
StalePeeps
aleman-eden
Madra
flintbrokers1
Flint Brokers & Associates
sweetmutha
change is inevitable