#topic: suicide hotline
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me on the verge of a mental breakdown on the bus:
some nice old bald guy about to single handedly keep me from getting sent to the psych ward:
#chaotic but like not on topic#god bless him bc i was on the line between srsly calling the suicide hotline today#anyways. i love old ppl on bus stops and benches bc theyre always so nice i want to cry
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Floating Above Those Dark Skies
My Navigation and Masterlist
My Sweet Home Masterlist
My Cha Hyun-su Masterlist
Pairing(s): Cha Hyun-su x Fem!Reader
Summary: Living with the love of your life and the girl you love like a daughter is perfect. Except for all the bad parts.
Warnings: Season 2 spoilers! Follows the dialogue of the episodes relatively strictly (I know some people like that but some people don't so it's a warning), Reader being like a second mother to Ah-yi, Hyun-su being a great big brother/father figure, slight talk of previous suicide attempts (The National Suicide and Crisis Hotline is 988. There are so many people who care about you and would love to help you. You are not alone), injuries, underage drinking (but they're in the apocalypse so who cares), canonical death, hurt with comfort, the appearance of (soft and kinda ooc) monster!Hyun-su, no use of (y/n), reader has the nickname "Lucky".
Word Count: 17,132 (wow, what a doozy)
Pt 1: Drowning Without You By My Side - This could be read separately if you want to skip the harsh topics in part 1 but I would suggest reading it for context.
Hyun-su led the way as you all walked to his home. Halfway there, Ah-yi complained about her feet hurting and it was then you noticed she had been barefoot this entire time.
‘We definitely need to fix that,’ you thought.
Before Hyun-su could even open his mouth, you crouched down and extended your hands out to her. She rushed forward to jump into your arms with a tired smile. When you straightened back up, she rested her head against your shoulder and was out like a light within a few minutes.
“She seems to like you a lot,” Hyun-su whispered fondly as a gentle smile laid itself on his lips. After making sure she was secure in your arms, you smiled back at him and dropped one hand from holding her to hold his hand.
“I guess I’m just a toddler whisperer. I think she likes me better than you,” you joked and he let out a scoff while squeezing your hand.
“Yeah, sure. Whatever,” he told you in an offended tone you could tell was fake by the smile threatening to break his facade.
After a few minutes of comfortable silence as you walked, you asked the question that had been burning in your mind since you saw him again with the girl in your arms. “So… who is she?”
He let out a heavy sigh before pushing a tree branch out of the way for you to walk through since your hands were full.
Always the gentleman.
“She’s Seo Yi-kyung’s baby.”
You let out a quiet gasp. “What? But she hadn’t even been pregnant for half a year? And this is at least a 4-year-old child!” You whisper shouted at him, completely shocked by the information.
“I don’t fully understand it either, but I do know she’s hers,” he assured you and you let out a sigh, your eyes wide as you tried to process the information.
“So, is she a monster-human mix as well? Is she like you?” You asked. You hadn’t noticed the way Hyun-su snapped his head towards you because you were too focused on the girl in your arm, letting out small breaths that tickled your neck. The way you said the sentence was so unlike anything he had heard before - especially relating to talking about monsters and neohumans. You sounded so soft, not an ounce of judgment or resentment in your voice. You sounded like no matter what the answer was you wouldn’t treat her any differently. You would adore her just as much as you were in that moment with your face buried in her hair as she let out quiet snores in her sleep. He gave a soft smile at the thought.
“I think so. She's grown so much since I first met her. Her actual age is around 5 or 6 months.”
“Wow,” you breathed and he couldn’t help but marvel at the way your voice embodied adoration and your smile was so bright it set the sky on fire despite the sun falling over the horizon. “That’s… wow.”
The rest of the walk was spent in silence. At some point, Hyun-su’s hand moved from holding yours to circling your waist as you hugged Ah-yi to your chest protectively. Eventually, the three of you arrived at a dock where a large boat was parked.
You weren’t all too surprised to find he had lived on a boat for the past half-year but you couldn’t help the small part that didn’t believe him when he told you.
He hopped up onto the boat first before helping you, careful not to wake Ah-yi. After the two of you were safely atop the boat, he led you to the captain’s quarters and helped you lay the girl in your arms down onto the nest of blankets and sweaters assembled to make a bed. Her dress had dried surprisingly quickly on the way to the boat, the only thing left to be damp was her hair.
You weren’t so lucky.
Your clothes stuck to your skin uncomfortably but you refused to complain, giving a - hopefully convincing - smile to Hyun-su when he saw you detach your shirt from your chest with a grimace. He walked away for a few moments and you sat down at the entrance to the captain’s quarters, resting your head against the door frame until his soft footsteps brought your attention back to him. He stood in front of you with a pair of folded clothes in his hands.
“I have these if you want to change into some fresh clothes. I don’t have any towels but this might help.”
The hesitant and shy look on his face made a smile break out on your own. You gave him a nod and took the clothes from his hands. You didn’t comment on how they were exactly your size but it made your heart flutter.
“Thank you,” you told him genuinely.
He nodded back at you before pointing to a door inside the quarters. “In there is a bathroom for whenever you want to change. I’ll wait for you out here.”
You nodded and turned before the smitten smile overcame your face stupidly at the thought. He just said he would wait for you and you could feel your heartbeat quickening alarmingly while heat rose to your cheeks. You walked into the bathroom and looked at yourself in the mirror. It was kind of scary. You hadn’t seen your reflection in a few months, never venturing into any areas with cars and rarely going near water. All the mirrors in the women's locker room back at the stadium had been broken after a monster outbreak and the monster breaking all of them because she was ‘too ugly.’
You honestly almost forgot what you looked like, but you were beautiful. You had always thought of yourself as a relatively attractive person but never the kind that would make someone turn their head. Now, you found yourself unable to look away. Your skin was glowing, whether that be from the sweat collecting from the walk or the water, you didn’t know. Any blood that had collected on you over the past few weeks had been rinsed off in the lake and you relished in the feeling of being clean of it for once, despite how the stickiness of the wet clothes you were still wearing still made you feel a bit dirty.
Snapping out of your amazement, you quickly took your old clothes off, replacing them with the ones Hyun-su had given you. It was a simple pair of dark gray sweatpants and a maroon short-sleeved shirt. You took off your unbearably uncomfortable socks and replaced them with the soft wool socks he provided as well. Now dry, you exited the bathroom to see Hyun-su had stuck to his word and was waiting for you as he leaned against the door frame of the room, though this time in a different, dryer outfit.
“Hey,” you said softly to get his attention. He looked over at you and smiled when he saw you all dressed and dryer than before.
“Hey,” he whispered back. He held his hands out for you to give him your wet clothes and you did reluctantly. He walked over to the edge of the boat and laid them over the edge so they could dry before returning to you. “Well, you should get some sleep.”
As if his words were magic, you suddenly felt the events of the day hit you like a truck and you yawned, nodding your agreement. “I think that’s a good idea.”
You gave a quick look around the room before deciding to sleep next to Ah-yi with your head using a part of her ‘bed’ as a pillow.
Hyun-su winced as he saw you settle against the hard floor of the boat and walked forward without thinking. He gently grabbed your shoulders, lifting you and then settling you against his chest while you sat in between his legs.
You blushed but said nothing as you settled with your cheek pressed against his chest, his heartbeat echoing against your ear and calming your nerves.
“Sleep,” he told you and tightened his grip around you. “I’ll keep watch.”
Your tongue felt heavy with sleep as you spoke your next words with a slight slur. “But what about you?”
He let out a soft laugh as he heard your breathing even out almost immediately after your sentence ended. He let his head rest against the wall behind him as he kept his gaze on the door.
“I’ll be okay,” he whispered as he briefly looked down at your peaceful sleeping face. “As long as you’re here with me…”
“Lucky.”
~A Week Into The Apocalypse, In Green Home~
It had been a week since the apocalypse started, and you had barely seen Hyun-su. The way the other residents and survivors treated him caused you to be so angry. You were thankful that at least one person - Eun-yu - didn’t treat him like a monster.
She wasn’t much different though, considering she still avoided him most of the time.
It was after the reappearance of Yi-kyung and the failed mission to retrieve medicine for Ji-su and her surgery that you got the chance to talk to him for more than just a quick goodbye or hello.
“All alone?” You asked him as you approached the staircase. The candle in your hands burned a bright yellow and smelled of cinnamon sugar. His head looked up at where you were approaching and nodded as you settled yourself on the stairs with him. Although he appreciated you trying to give him space and sitting a short distance away, he couldn’t help but wish you were closer. You smiled at him and smoothed your hands along your pants when you were seated.
“Are you scared?”
The question through you off guard. Giving a quick look around the room, you didn’t see anything that you would consider to be a threat so you weren’t really sure what he was talking about.
“Of what?” You asked, tilting your head in confusion at the boy.
He mirrored your head tilt with a confused look of his own. Inwardly you laughed at how the two of you must look like confused dogs when their owners told them a command they didn’t understand.
“Of… me?” He questioned again and a small laugh left you when you finally realized.
“Oh, Hyun-su,” you reached over to gently grab his hand as you looked him deeply in the eyes. “I promise you I could never be scared of you.”
He looked down with a small smile at that and you could see the small hints of red on his ears and cheeks.
“So, I’ve been meaning to ask you,” you started and gently released his hand. He immediately felt cold at the lack of your added warmth. “I never tried because I wasn’t sure if you even wanted to talk to me, but is there a reason why you never came by? Even after you were given a choice to leave the quarantining room?”
He paused as he thought for a moment. “I thought you didn’t want to see me. You were the only person not put on guard duty so I figured it was because you asked not to.”
You let out a sad sigh. “Shit, I’m sorry. I promise that’s not what happened.”
He looked up at you with sad, confused little puppy eyes. “It’s not?”
You shook your head. “The first, and only, time I was put on guard duty, I tried breaking the lock on the door,” you told him and looked away sheepishly.
“Really?” He asked after a moment of stunned silence.
You nodded in assurance. “After that, Eun-hyuk tried to do whatever he could to keep me as far away from you as possible. I was hoping that would change since you got out but now I know why it didn’t,” you smiled at him sweetly and he felt the heat rise to his cheeks so he looked away. “You know,” you continued. “I always saw you stop by my door right before you would leave, but you never said anything. Was that also because you thought I didn’t want to talk to you?”
“Partially. It was mainly so I could just see you before I left. Every time I thought I was going to die I thought about returning so I could at least try to fix whatever was happening,” he told you. Now he was the one who looked sheepish as he scratched the back of his neck. “I always backed out at the last minute though.”
You smiled and scooted closer to him on the stairs, moving down so you were on the same level and making it so only half a foot of space separated you. “I guess I was like your lucky charm then, wasn’t I?” You teased and lightly bumped your shoulder against his.
“Yeah, I guess you were.”
~Back To The Present~
It had been about a month since you reunited with Hyun-su. You’d grown closer to Ah-yi in no time. She looked up to you and it seemed she just needed another girl in her life to have around. Your favorite part about growing closer to her was she had upgraded your honorific from ‘Miss’ to ‘Unni’ which made your heart clench adoringly every time.
The first time Hyun-su decided to make a trip into the city to collect some supplies, he was so hesitant to leave the two of you alone. You promised you would protect Ah-yi and yourself with whatever it takes; that seemed to be enough for him to be comfortable enough to leave. He never lost his hesitancy to leave the two of you alone despite each time he came back the two of you would be fine.
The most recent time was no different. You sat on top of a large, red, metal shipping container with Ah-yi as the two of you drew using the chalk you were fortunate enough to find a few days ago.
“That looks beautiful, Ah-yi! You are such a good artist,” you praised her on her drawing and she visibly beamed. It was a simple drawing of some flowers and her, you, and Hyun-su. It was clear it was made by a child but it was so beautiful in your eyes.
“Thank you, Unni!” You ruffled her hair which she squealed at until you noticed Hyun-su walking towards the two of you with a smile on his face and a hand hiding behind his back while the other supported a red bag over his shoulder. “Oppa!” Ah-yi exclaimed and you smiled at her excitement.
He rounded the corner of the large container and brought the hand hiding behind his back out to place a pair of pink shoes on the top. Ah-yi gasped while you had a big smile on your face.
“Come on!” You urged her and she sat on the edge of the box so Hyun-su could slip the shoes onto her feet with the cutest smile ever on his face. Once the shoes were on, he held his hands out for her and she eagerly jumped down, having full faith that he wouldn’t drop her. Once he set her down, he reached his hands out for you to take and you gave him a funny look.
“What’s wrong, Lucky?” He voiced his thoughts with a confused tilt of his head. You rolled your eyes at him while smiling. Your heart fluttered at the nickname. He’d started calling you it more often since the two of you reunited and yet it still gave you butterflies.
“I’m okay, I can get down by myself,” you reassured him and turned around while you slowly lowered yourself from the canister, your front facing the metal.
You heard Hyun-su softly breathe out a laugh from behind you before a hand grabbed onto the back of your shirt and pulled. You let out a yelp as you felt yourself falling only to land bridal style in Hyun-su’s arms. You clicked your tongue in faux annoyance and crossed your arms while he tried to hide the smug smile on his lips.
“Going full ‘knight in shining armor’ mode, are we now?” You teased him and he blushed, pointedly avoiding your gaze. Suddenly, your stomach dipped as you felt him pretend to drop you and your arms wrapped themselves around his neck while he looked at you with another self-satisfied smirk.
“Well, it looks like my ‘princess’ needs her ‘knight in shining armor,’” he said softly as he looked away from you and you slapped his chest. He kneeled down when Ah-yi ran up to him. Knowing exactly what he was offering, she used one of his extended hands along with yours to help prop herself onto his shoulders. Hyun-su regained his grip on you as he grabbed the red bag he had set down and stood back up to his full height before starting the walk in the direction of the boat. You rolled your eyes, knowing any protests about him carrying you would be brushed off. Instead, you just snatched the red bag from his hand, placing it on your lap and holding it tightly to your body as you gave him a challenging glare. He just rolled his eyes with a fond smile and continued walking.
The three of you made small talk as he carried you. Ah-yi explained what you and her had done while Hyun-su was venturing off and you chimed in every now and then with a comment. Hyun-su explained how he saw a peculiar monster today.
“It was like a mermaid with wings.”
Then, you both went on to explain what a mermaid was to the child.
When you arrived at the boat, Hyun-su set the both of you down and Ah-yi started pulling you to the edge of the boat. You laughed as you walked up to the contraption. It was during your first week that you made the efficient self-fishing machine. It was a relatively simple mechanism that was made of a bunch of fishing poles and a homemade weight sensor. Whenever one of the poles was tugged on by something in the water, the device yanked it up and whatever was attached to the hook was left dangling in the air. 7 times out of 10, the hook was caught on litter in the ocean or a monster that was able to detach itself but there were the 3 times where you would catch a fish or two and the three of you would share it for dinner.
It became a bit of a game for Ah-yi and yourself, guessing if the day would end with a fresh meal or a degrading empty can with barnacles growing on the side.
As Hyun-su smiled at the two of you, he walked over to the stairs leading to the roof of the captain’s quarters and sat on the top, watching the sunset. No matter how many times you invited him to join the two of you, he always refused. It was nice you had a special activity to bond with Ah-yi over and he used that as his excuse every time.
It wasn’t even 10 minutes later as you were skinning the rare fish you’d caught with Ah-yi watching attentively as you explained the different anatomy parts to her that Hyun-su noticed a familiar face climbing the steps of the boat. He climbed down and started walking over to her while the two of you stayed distracted. You only looked over and noticed the two when you heard their footsteps. You carefully set down the knife and fish, wiping your hands on a stray towel beside you, and stood up to walk over beside Hyun-su. Ah-yi followed up behind you, grabbing onto the back of your shirt shyly.
“I came too late, didn’t I?” Yi-kyung asked from in front of you as she looked at the girl shyly standing behind you. You decided not to answer considering you still weren’t sure how you felt about the whole situation of her leaving her child. Instead, Hyun-su answered her question.
“Not at all. You’re here now, right?”
She looked down and you could see the guilt and regret on her face. Slowly, you turned around to face Ah-yi. “That’s your mommy,” you told her and she looked at her hands shyly. “Why don’t you say hi.”
You lightly pushed her in the direction of Yi-kyung and the woman kneeled so she was face to face with her.
“Hi there,” you heard her whisper to the girl while you stood up to your full height. You wrapped your arms around Hyun-su’s waist and leaned into him while you watched them interact. Yi-kyung brought her into a hug and you smiled at the relief that settled on her face.
Over the next few months, you and Hyun-su traveled through the city together, occasionally going back to visit Yi-kyung and Ah-yi but mainly wanting to give them the privacy a mother and daughter should have. It was adorable to come back and see the markings on the wall increase where Yi-kyung marked her daughter’s growth every day. Everything seemed to be going perfectly for the family of two.
Up until that day.
You had an awful feeling in the pit of your stomach for the entire day, feeling as if something bad was going to happen and you needed to get back to the two girls on the boat. When you shared your feelings with Hyun-su, he didn’t question it for a second, immediately going with you to rush back.
When you arrived at the boat, you found a teenage girl covered in blood wearing the same dress as the little girl you’d grown to love while sitting on the bed blankets and jackets. You walked slowly towards her and she snapped her head up when she saw your feet enter her vision from where she had her head hung low. You kneeled in front of her, tentatively reaching a hand out to hold her cheek and she leaned into it.
Just like Ah-yi always did.
You let out a shaky breath as you finally voiced the question.
“Ah-yi?”
She nodded, her eyes filled with fear.
Fear of resentment.
Fear of abandonment.
Fear of your fear.
You just let out a sigh, whether it was from relief or surprise, you didn’t know. What you did know was that this was your Ah-yi and you would love her no matter what form she would take. You wrapped your arms around her and brought her in for a hug which she returned immediately. Relief coursed through her body so evidently that you could practically hear it.
“It’s okay. Everything’s okay,” you dispelled her fears, bringing her closer and rocking her as she cried into your shoulder and told you what happened. You smoothed down her bloodied hair, not caring about how she was staining your clothes with the blood coating her.
Once she calmed down a bit more, you gathered a rag from the bathroom.
“I’ll be right back, okay?” You promised her and she nodded. You turned and left, closing the door behind you and giving her a playful wink through the window which she giggled quietly at. Hyun-su followed you as you walked down the stairs of the boat and to the edge of the water. As you kneeled down to dip the rag into the lake's water, you started asking the questions on your mind about what Ah-yi told you happened.
“How did they even find this place? How did they find out about her being mixed?” You asked Hyun-su. His lips twitched into a small smile when he heard you refer to her as ‘mixed.’ He remembers you telling him the reasoning behind it like it was yesterday.
“I don’t like the word ‘monster.’ I always associated the word ‘monster’ with someone who acts evilly and neither of you are like that. I know you’re not entirely human anymore but I refuse to call you monsters. Human or not, you are still a good person.”
It was the moment he had set it in stone that you were the one he wanted to spend the rest of his life with.
“I don’t know,” he answered your questions. “But I have a bad feeling about the whole thing,” he paused momentarily before continuing. “What do you think we should do about the whole… touch thing she has?” He asked you and you frowned in thought.
“Well, I don’t think we should do anything. It’s a part of who she is and she shouldn’t feel the need to be ashamed of it. I don’t necessarily think she should use it on people, least of all those undeserving of it, but she can learn to control it. She doesn’t have to live in fear of herself.”
Just as Hyun-su was about to reply to your heartwarming statement, the two of you were interrupted by Ah-yi screaming and crying from the boat. You both ran in the direction of the scream and when you got there you saw Yi-kyung with her head down as blood dripped from her eye while Ah-yi was rubbing at a wound on her forearm.
“What’s going on?” Hyun-su questioned in a panic. Seeing the bloody knife on the ground as well as a bloody pencil, you pieced together what happened. It seemed Hyun-su did too, if his sigh was any way to tell. “Why did you have to do this?”
Yi-kyung let out a few heavy breaths as she breathed through the pain coursing through her eye. “I’m her mother. No matter how she changes, or what form she takes… I need to recognize my little girl. I won’t ever lose her.”
It was then you realized the wound Yi-kyung inflicted on Ah-yi was black. You let out another sigh, anger, and understanding fighting for control of your emotions as you realized the purpose of her actions. She may have had better intentions behind the action, but how she carried it out was not the way to go.
As Yi-kyung rose and left the scene, you sat down in front of Ah-yi, carefully reaching for her left arm where the wound had already healed. You gently used the rag to wipe down her arm, then her other arm, and then her face. You wiped down all the blood that tainted her smooth skin while she sat there silently, most likely in shock by what just happened. The domestic act, despite the violent acts that brought it about, brought a wave of emotion over Hyun-su as he watched the two of you.
It made him realize how much he wanted a family with you one day.
After Ah-yi was all clean, you gave her a pair of clothes to change into while you and Hyun-su went to the opposite side of the boat to talk while you waited for her. When she came out, you walked over to give her a hug which she gladly accepted. She squeezed you just as tightly as you squeezed her. You wished you could engrave it into her brain that you would never, could never, be afraid of her.
Afterward, she went to sit on a barrel, swinging her legs back and forth while you watched her and leaned against Hyun-su’s embrace. It was all so calm until Yi-kyung appeared from the boat’s stairs and walked towards Ah-yi with purpose. Ah-yi, still angry at her mother for what she did, hopped off the barrel and started walking away but was stopped when Yi-kyung’s hand wrapped around her bicep and aggressively pulled her back. The woman shoved her daughter’s hands into a pair of pink gloves connected by a rope that she placed behind the girl’s neck.
“Don’t take those off no matter what. Understand?” Yi-kyung told her daughter. You rushed forward, feeling anger simmer beneath your blood at the sudden display of aggression she started showing toward her daughter.
“Hey, don’t you think this is a bit extreme?” You told her, standing in between the two girls. You felt Ah-yi grip your shirt from behind you. You could tell even if her body had grown more, she was still used to her childhood ways of having you protect her.
“She’s my daughter, I will do as I see fit,” Yi-kyung told you sternly before swiftly turning around and walking back down the stairs of the boat, leaving the three of you alone.
You turned around to face the girl and sighed when you saw her speed-walking to her sleeping space in the captain’s quarters and locking the door behind her. You and Hyun-su decided to just set up camp outside the door, leaving her alone for the time being so she could sort out her thoughts.
The next morning, you woke up to the sound of Yi-kyung panicking. You instinctively looked around, looking to protect Ah-yi until you realized she wasn’t there. You rushed to stand up and ran to where her mother was breathing heavily and pacing back and forth.
“What’s going on? Where’s Ah-yi?” You questioned and she turned to face you.
“I don’t know! I was looking for her this morning and I can’t find her anywhere!”
“Shit,” you muttered to yourself. Your thoughts were racing, trying to think of any place she could possibly be. When you finally landed on an answer, you started walking off.
“Where are you going?” Yi-kyung called out to you and you scoffed, not bothering to face her as you continued walking.
“To find your daughter.”
When you got to the garden dome, the rusting doors were firmly closed unlike the previous times you were here with Ah-yi. Not deterred in any way, you rammed into the doors, successfully sending them flying open. You winced at the loud noise and walked in.
“Ah-yi!” You yelled out, praying your instinct was right and she was here.
“Go away, Unni,” you heard her soft voice tell you from further into the garden.
Sighing, you walked closer until you saw her sitting on the grass flooring while playing with a flower.
“Ah-yi, why don’t you come home?” You tried but she just shook her head. When you realized she wasn’t going to say anything else, you walked closer.
Imagine your surprise when she scrambled away from you, desperate to keep the space between you two.
“Ah-yi, what’s wrong?” You asked gently, stopping in your tracks to give her the space she desired.
“Don’t touch me! I might hurt you!” She exclaimed fearfully through a sob and you cursed her mother for putting that image in her head. Taking another slow and gentle step toward her, you internally cheered when she didn’t move away. You took more steps toward her until you were sitting right in front of her and your hand reached for hers.
When she pulled back, you gave her the best reassuring smile you could muster. “Sweetie, I know that you won’t hurt me. I promise.”
She hesitated but when you reached for her hands again she let you take them. You gave her a smile and squeezed her hand before pulling her into your chest. Your arms wrapped around her shoulders and held her tightly while she started crying more, her body wracking with the violent sobs she let out.
“I just don’t understand why she hates me so much! Those men hurt me first!” She sobbed into the crook of your neck and you softly caressed her hair, brushing the loose leaves and grass strands out.
“I know, I’m so sorry she did that to you. You definitely didn’t deserve that,” you reassured her and lifted your chin to rest your head on top of hers when you saw Hyun-su leaning against a wall while watching the two of you with a frown. You used a hand to wave him over and he slowly walked over so he was sitting about a foot away from the two of you. You looked back down at her and kissed her forehead lovingly. “I don’t want you to be afraid of yourself. You did what you had to do in that situation and no one is blaming you for it. Your mom is just…” you hesitated, looking to Hyun-su for support on how to explain the girl’s mother’s actions in a way that wouldn’t drag her name through the mud any more than it already was.
“Your mom was just worried,” Hyun-su intervened when he noticed your pleading gaze, bringing a hand to rest against Ah-yi’s back comfortingly. Ah-yi jumped a bit, startled, but otherwise didn’t do anything. “It was a shock to her to not only see you grow 10 years older in a few seconds but also to see how you dealt with those men. She didn’t want to lose you.”
“You mean she was scared. Scared of me,” she argued.
The both of you stayed quiet for a minute before you spoke again. “I know it doesn’t seem like it now because of what happened yesterday, but I promise you she loves you,” she started crying again and you just hugged her tighter to you. “And if you don’t believe me, at least know that I love you.”
It was the first time you’d expressed that to her in words and she looked up at you in surprise.
“Really?”
The pure innocence and surprise in her tone were enough for a genuine smile to break out on your face.
“Of course,” you told her sincerely and brushed her overgrown bangs to the side of her face.
‘I guess I should trim those soon,’ you thought to yourself.
“How could I not love you? You’re amazing!” You teased her lightly and she grinned at you. “You’re like a daughter to me, Ah-yi. I can’t see a life in which I wouldn’t love you.”
She dug her head into the crook of your neck again at your words.
“I just stopped crying,” she complained with a whine that made you laugh. “Don’t make me start again!”
“Okay! Okay,” you caved and leaned back to look at her again. “Why don’t we go home now?” She hesitated for a moment before nodding decisively.
The three of you stood up and you offered your hand to Ah-yi without a second of hesitation, something you could see in her eyes she appreciated.
“Ah-yi,” Hyun-su said as the boat came into view in front of you all. You’d stopped by the lake where you saved her all those months ago on the way back and spent a few hours there. Both of you could tell she didn’t really want to go home yet so you extended the day as long as you could.
She hummed and looked over at him from where you had her propped up on your back in a piggyback ride. She had stepped on a rock and dramatically complained about it until one of you just decided to pick her up and bring her along.
That someone being you.
“I…” he hesitated and you freed up a hand to reach over and give his hand a reassuring squeeze. “I need you to do me a favor. When we get back, I need you to go easy on your mom.”
You could feel her body tensing on your back, not expecting his words to be that. You quickly intervened. “We don’t expect you to forgive her anytime soon. Hell, I don’t really expect you to ever forgive her, but I think we both agree that you should give her another chance,” you told her. She huffed and rested her chin on your head childishly. “We’ll talk to her whenever we get back and tell her what she did was wrong, but she was only trying to keep you with her.”
There were a few moments where Ah-yi stayed silent as you walked and you got nervous about what her reaction would be until she sighed.
“Fine.”
You sighed in relief and smiled. What you wouldn’t tell her is that the ‘talk’ you would be having would most likely be a screaming match between the two of you while Hyun-su tried to be the mediator.
It had been about a month since that day and you’d stayed with Ah-yi and Yi-kyung for about half of it. The rest of the time, you and Hyun-su traveled through the city together, enjoying the feeling of being free with each other and occasionally spying on the soldiers of the stadium when they went out on their supply runs.
“I have a bad feeling,” Hyun-su told you one day while the two of you were washing a muddied shirt in the river.
“Let’s go check it out then,” you told him, standing up and wiping your hands on your trousers but he held his hand up.
“I… I don’t think you should come with me.”
You looked at him, feeling shocked and slightly hurt but masking it under a calm exterior. “O-oh. Oka-”
“I just mean it feels dangerous. I don’t really know how to explain it,” he interrupted you quickly, hesitantly taking one of your hands and squeezing it reassuringly.
You gave him a small frown. “But I don’t want you to be in any danger either.”
He smiled confidently at you and stared deeply into your eyes. “I promise I will be okay. Just stay in the shed until I get back. I’ll be back in a few hours at most.”
After a moment of hesitation, your eyes flicking between the broken down shed behind you and Hyun-su’s dark mocha brown eyes, you nodded in agreement. He smiled at you before turning in the opposite direction and starting to walk away. Just as he started to get out of arm's length, you tightened the grip you had around his hand. He turned back to you, tilting his head in question but your head was down, your eyes focused on his hand where you gently played with his fingers.
“Please return to me,” you whispered, barely audible to him and he sighed. Taking a step forward, he wrapped his arms around you, one resting on the back of your head and the other around your waist.
“I will, Lucky. I always will.”
Eun-yu walked down the empty street of the city, darkness clouding every corner and making her jump at every noise. She wasn’t nearly as experienced as you when it came to venturing off alone and outside of the stadium so it was all new to her. This was her first time out of the stadium, let alone all by herself, and she had barely any idea of what to do or where to go. It all started when she was waiting for you at the exit you used to go through when you went on your personal expeditions.
She wasn’t dumb. She knew you were leaving every day and trying to hurt yourself, yet every day you came back safe. Maybe a little broken and bruised at times, but alive nonetheless. Despite the two of you not being close, she still cared about you more than anything. You were the closest thing to a friend that she had. She was positive you didn’t remember this, but she had helped comfort you one night as you cried after another - but also thankfully your last - attempt to leave this world. You told her about the force that kept you alive, protecting you from monsters and from yourself. You told her about how you blame yourself for Hyun-su’s disappearance and how he was most likely dead. You told her everything. Afterward, you ended up passing out in her embrace and sleeping the entirety of the next day away while she stayed by your side to ward off anyone wanting to wake you.
Once you woke up, you seemed normal. The same expressionless look on your face as you went on with your day. It stayed that way for a long time. Eun-yu tried her best to do subtle things to help you; to make you feel more wanted and make you blame yourself less.
Until one day, you never came back.
You leaving and never returning is what led her to be standing at the exit not even a week ago, feeding some of her rations to a small stray kitten. It’s what led her to stay there even when Chan-young approached her and asked her what she was doing. It’s what made her stay even after a young girl she hadn’t recognized revealed herself. It’s what made her stay despite the pleas to go back inside from Chan-young and allowed her to see the woman she thought had died show up and take the girl with her.
It is also what led her here, all alone looking for you or the girl or Yi-kyung. Whilst finding you was her main goal, she would be satisfied with any of the three.
She lost Chan-young somewhere along the way after he was poisoned by the girl accompanying that old man but she didn’t let that deter her.
Now, in the dark shadows looming over the alleyways she walked through, a long metal pipe clutched in one of her hands, she searched the abandoned city with the need to find you forcing down any fear she was feeling. The unoccupied hand had an old piece of clothing wrapped around it, protecting any dirt from getting into the wound where she protected Yeong-su from that soldier.
She often wondered if you knew how much you inspired her to be brave and protect those around her.
After some time, she found herself standing in front of a large greenhouse. Most of the windows were broken and she could see the plants inside had overgrown their once pristinely gardened form, but it was gorgeous regardless. The moonlight shone through the broken glass and cast spotlights of glimmering luminescence across the vegetation. She took a moment to admire everything, noting how you would’ve loved a space like this until she heard a growling sound from behind her and her guard immediately went back up. Moving the pipe so it was tightly grasped in her hands like a baseball bat, she held it defensively and slowly crept closer to the source of the growling. The large crater in the ground made her sick, reminding her of the tragedy that happened less than a year ago when the government tried to kill as many people as possible in order to ‘save humanity from itself.’
As she got closer, she raised the pipe over her head, ready to strike at any moment. The growling of the monster got louder as she approached and she prepared herself to swing until-
“He won’t attack you.”
Eun-yu turned around, facing the new voice and seeing the same girl from before. She lowered the pipe, letting it hang loosely at her side as the girl took slow steps toward her. Since she was almost positive this girl would have nothing to do with you, she instead asked about Yi-kyung. “I’m looking for Yi-kyung. You know where she is, right?” The girl stayed silent, gradually getting closer as she continued with her measured footsteps. “I have to meet with her.”
The two girls stared at each other as the younger girl approached. Silence stilled the air until it was broken.
“Mom… the people… they’re all bad.”
“Did you say ‘Mom’?” Eun-yu questioned, her face portraying her confusion and shock.
‘She couldn’t mean Yi-’
“You’re no different,” the girl concluded, taking her last few steps forward more quickly and launching Eun-yu down into the hole behind her. Feeling the ground disappear from below her feet and the wind rush through her hair, she screamed.
A scream.
A scream was what stopped you from continuing your washing of Hyun-su and your clothes. You snapped your head in the direction of the noise so fast you were worried you got whiplash. Unconsciously clutching the current piece of clothing you’d been washing in your hands, you started sprinting in the direction of the noise. As you got closer, the area around you got brighter and you noticed it becoming increasingly more familiar to you. It was when you saw the familiar metal canisters that you realized you were near the boat.
It was also when you realized the boat was on fire.
You gasped as you saw the flames licking away at the deck in the distance, pushing your body past its limits as you forced yourself to go faster, faster, faster. You were beyond terrified at the implications the fire had.
‘Was this the bad feeling Hyun-su had?’ You asked yourself. You tried your best to stay as positive as possible until you got there but it was difficult with all the possibilities swirling in your mind. However, there was one possibility you clung to: while the boat burning was bad in itself, maybe nobody was on it.
Maybe.
When you got to the stairs of the boat, you climbed them as quickly as you could, ignoring the pain in your foot when you slipped down one and ended up stepping on it wrong.
‘That’s a problem for later.’
You got to the top, not seeing anybody in the burning embers surrounding you. Quickly covering your mouth with the still-damp piece of fabric in your hands and thanking yourself for unconsciously holding onto it, you ran around the top of the deck, looking for any signs of life while simultaneously praying for none. Seeing nothing, your mind ran at a hundred miles per hour as you tried to decide if that was a good or bad thing.
“Cha Hyun-su!” You screamed out, the use of his last name representing your evident panic. “Seo Ah-yi!” It was when you circled the captain’s quarters that you saw a familiar lean body. “Seo Yi-kyung!”
You rushed forward, sliding down to your knees as you reached her and turning her onto her back. You winced as you saw the burn marks and ash littering across the side of her face. You brought the wet clothing down from where it covered your mouth and nose, quickly replacing it with the cuff of your jacket as you used the wet fabric to cover Yi-kyung’s nose. The fire caught onto your pants and you scrambled to put it out, letting out muffled screams into your sleeve as it burned your skin.
You watched as the small baby monster you knew to be Ah-yi’s friend approached you and Yi-kyung. You were mainly confused about why it showed up here willingly, usually, monsters were terrified of fire and would avoid it at all costs but that didn’t seem to be the case.
“Go away! Get out of here!” You screamed at the baby but it just babbled at you, running up to you and setting out the fire on your pants. Then, it began to circle around the two of you, using its body to roll out any fire that got too close. You quietly sobbed, your tears feeling like ice against your flaming skin. “Thank you,” you whispered to the small creature, feeling so grateful yet guilty for the way it was putting itself in danger for you.
Suddenly, as you felt yourself fading out of consciousness, the exhaustion from the run over, and the pain in your foot getting to you, you heard a familiar voice call out for you.
“Lucky!”
Hyun-su...
Eun-yu screamed out as she fell until she quieted, accepting her death to be by falling down a large hole while not knowing if her only friend was dead or alive. Just as she lost all hope, the sound of something whipping through the wind above caught her attention along with a familiar large wing made of bone and muscle only. It was only for a moment that she caught a glimpse of the boy’s face before his arm wrapped around her body and they shot up.
Reaching the top, Hyun-su swung around so his body would take the brunt of the fall and they crashed. Sliding across the concrete, he used his wing to slow them down as much as possible and keep her as unharmed as he could. Barely taking a minute to breathe when they came to a stop, Hyun-su opened his arm and rolled Eun-yu off before standing back up.
“Cha Hyun-su,” the girl tried, struggling to lift herself from the ground. Receiving no response as he continued walking toward Ah-yi, who was watching curiously from the other side of the crater, she tried again. “Cha Hyun-su!” She finally made it to her feet as she screamed.
Hyun-su let out a breath. He took a moment to force his eyes to return to their natural state instead of the endless void that would consume him when in his monster state before slowly turning around to face her.
“Are you really just gonna leave like that?” She asked him, more quietly this time as he faced her. His wing flapped lightly at his side, whistling through the wind in an ethereally beautiful way.
At least, that’s how you would often describe it.
“Were you expecting a hug or something?” He asked her in a blank tone and she looked at him with exasperated annoyance.
“Yeah, I was. I expected at least a ‘Glad to see you. How’ve you been?’” She retorted back at him, getting angrier by the moment at the completely blank look on his face.
“But I’m not glad to see you,” he told her and she couldn’t help but expect it. She knew they weren’t close. Nowhere near as close as you were with Hyun-su. You always tried so hard to make him feel included, to fight for his rights even when Eun-hyuk kept you as far away from him as possible. After you tried to break the lock of the door that one time, he gave strict instructions to everyone who had a guard duty that they were not to allow you near the room. You would always leave Eun-hyuk with the same phrase after each failed attempt to see the boy.
“You’re a coward. You won’t go up the stairs to retrieve the residents’ items yourself and then you treat the man who does do it like scum. I can’t believe you.”
It was what made her like you in the first place. While she knew you and Hyun-su had known each other for a brief period before the apocalypse, she couldn’t help but admire how you stood up for the boy without a second thought. She was pretty sure she realized your feelings for him before even you did.
“You weren’t supposed to know how to leave the stadium. You should’ve just stayed away,” Hyun-su’s voice broke her out of her brief flash of memories.
“It was you all along…” she started, taking a stuttering step toward him. “That night with the rope… all the times she tried to kill herself… it was you who saved her, wasn’t it?”
By the lack of surprise or questioning on his face, she knew her answer. They stayed silent for a few more seconds, Eun-yu waiting for an answer and Hyun-su trying to provide one. Though his face remained monotonous, he was trying to come up with an answer that wouldn’t give her too much information but would satisfy her concern and need to know.
“We crossed paths. I figured since we weren’t strangers I might as well help her out. I know what it’s like. She doesn’t deserve that kind of a death. That’s it. Nothing more,” he looked at her, making sure his words weren’t just floating in one ear and out the other. “You understand?”
Without waiting for her to respond, he turned around again, rolling his eyes.
‘I have to get back to-’
“That’s bullshit and we both know it!” Eun-yu yelled from behind him, interrupting his thoughts. She took fast purposeful steps toward him as she continued to speak. “You’re in love with her, she was your everythin-!”
Hyun-su brought his wing down and scraped the concrete behind him, only a few feet away from where Eun-yu was standing. She held her breath, waiting for his next move and cursing herself for the shiver of fear that ran up her spine at his actions.
‘You would never fear him like this.’
Seeing him not make any more moves, she tried again. Prying her feet off the floor from where the strange acid was kicked up by the large appendage, she started walking again only for Hyun-su to slam his wing down again. This time, the toe of her front boot had melted off and she could see the black socks she wore underneath peeking through. She mentally slapped herself for how the breath she let out was shaky. Forcing herself to peel her boots off the ground again, she tried to take another step when suddenly a hand latched onto her bicep and pulled her back, sending her tumbling to the ground.
“Are you trying to get yourself killed?” The large man, Ho-sang+ asked. His shoulders were draped with a homemade camouflage outfit made of grass and hay. The man raised his shotgun, aiming it toward Hyun-su who had still yet to turn around. “You monster piece of shit, what are you doing here?” The boy turned to look over his shoulder at the new voice. “Get gone!”
Right as Hyun-su turned back around to keep walking, Eun-yu spoke up again.
“Wait!” She scrambled to her feet, intending on running over to Hyun-su but the older man grabbed her shoulders and held her back. “Cha Hyun-su. Cha Hyun-su!” He came to a halt again and it was enough of a tell he was waiting for her to continue. “She…” she began, hesitating to tell him this in case her gut feeling was wrong. “She’s been missing for months. Do you know… I mean… is she…” She couldn't force herself to get her words out, only able to speak in between shaky breaths as she started to think of the worst possible outcomes. If her gut feeling was wrong and you weren’t really with Hyun-su, she didn’t know what she would do.
Hyun-su turned back around to look at her over his shoulder. Keeping eye contact with her for a few moments as he debated whether to tell her or not, he relented.
“She’s alive.”
Turning back around, he could hear the breaths of relief Eun-yu and the older man both released, albeit for different reasons.
Following Ah-yi, they both walked away from the two humans. He waited until they got to the edge of the river to start talking.
“Why did you do that?”
“I don't like her,” Ah-yi responded.
“So why don't you like her?” He pushed,
“Every human is the same. She’s no different,” she yelled angrily before her voice dropped to a mumble he was just barely able to hear. “The only human to be an exception is Unni.”
Hyun-su looked at her when she stopped, the anger being shown clearly on her face and he was confused about why she was so riled up. The quiet atmosphere was only interrupted by the hooting of the owls in the nearby trees.
“I was curious about humans at first… because both Mom and Unni are human. So I said ‘hi’ and they…” She took a shaky breath in before continuing. “They hurt me. They yelled and they pushed and... and they hurt me too. And they killed all my friends and monsters!” She screamed out, her voice heavy with raw emotion. “Leaving just me.”
“They were just scared,” Hyun-su tried to soothe her anger and pain as her eyes filled with tears. “Afraid of losing someone.”
“Then I'll give them a reason. Show them how scary it was,” her heavy breathing slowly evened out and Hyun-su sighed. He knew you would be able to help her with a situation like this better than he would. From the very first day, you always seemed to have a way of calming her down and helping her through the more difficult times.
“Let's get out of here. Yeah?” He suggested as tears began to fall down her cheeks, hitting the pavement below with an imperceptible plop.
“There's no place for me. My house is gone,” she told him.
“What… do you mean?” He asked after a few silent beats.
“I… no longer need you. Not you, or Mom…” she paused to calm herself but couldn’t stop the sob that came with her next words. “Or Unni. Not anymore.”
Hyun-su let out a slight gasp before sprinting in the direction of the boat. He hoped his suspicions were wrong. He hoped Ah-yi wouldn’t do that to her mother.
But he knew she would.
He’d heard the countless nights you spent with her in your arms as you consoled her and reassured her about her mother’s love when she was positive it no longer existed. He knew how much she hated the woman who gave birth to her, hated her for the love she once had but lost on that fateful day.
Hyun-su ignored the sharp pain in his lungs as he sprinted toward the boat, cursing lightly when he saw the fire engulfing it from afar. Finally reaching it, he ran around looking desperately for Yi-kyung and screaming her name.
It wasn’t until he found both her and you lying on the ground that his panic started to take over.
“Lucky!” He screamed, running towards you and dropping to his knees. He quickly picked both of you up, the weight not a struggle for him but the positioning of your bodies being a bit awkward. He ended up with Yi-kyung on his back piggyback style and you being held in his arms like his bride. Seeing the small creature passed out only a few feet away, he picked it up too and put it on your lap as he walked off the boat, letting the home full of memories burn itself to the ground forevermore.
Hyun-su walked towards the swan boat about a quarter mile away from the boat. Gently setting Yi-kyung down first, he placed you down with your head in his lap. He cursed himself. He couldn’t believe he had just left you alone. He couldn’t believe you would go into such a dangerous place willingly.
But then again, he couldn’t be surprised. You were like that, so selfless and kind. If you saw the boat on fire you would never allow yourself to stay behind while there was a potential of the people you loved being on that boat.
He was thankful you at least were smart enough to cover your nose and mouth when you were there. The ripped and slightly scorched shirt covering Yi-kyung’s mouth was one he recognized to be yours. And although it wasn’t a great replacement, he saw how the cuff of your jacket sleeve was loosely placed over your own mouth, slipping once you’d fallen unconscious.
As he was picking the bits of seared wood and singed fabric from your hair, a small whisper of his name drew his attention behind him to Yi-kyung.
“Hyun-su…”
He turned around, making sure not to jostle you around too much as he looked at her. Her face was burned, fresh wounds scarring the flesh of her cheeks that would forever alter her appearance.
“Are you okay, Yi-kyung?”
“It’s all my fault it’s like this,” she started. Hyun-su stayed silent as she continued. “I just wanted her to be safe like you were,” she whimpered, it was unclear whether it was from the pain on her skin or the pain in her heart. “All I wanted was for her to…” she sobbed but no tears came out yet. She was dehydrated and wounded and it was clear she wouldn’t make it without medical help they no longer had.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Hyun-su refuted.
Yi-kyung groaned as she sat up, leaning heavily against the edge of the swan boat.
“I should’ve killed her.”
Hyun-su’s eyes widened at her words. While he knew that was what she had wanted when her baby was first born, he didn’t know it was still something she thought about.
“In the back of my mind, I always had that thought. I know she must’ve felt it when I had those thoughts,” she breathed heavily, her breaths sounding gritty and labored. She looked at the girl lying in Hyun-su’s lap, feeling angry, regretful, and jealous, but mostly grateful. Grateful she had at least you to look up to and show her the way when she couldn’t. “I know she would always tell her about how she hated me,” she pointed at you weakly. “I know she always saw her as more of a mother than she did me.”
“You’re wrong,” Hyun-su protested. “While Ah-yi loves Lucky, she needs you as her mother. I know because I was there too through all those days,” he looked down at you, eyes still shut and sweat clinging to your skin. “So was she,” he breathed out a sigh and looked back at Yi-kyung. “You said you were a bad mother, but you know that’s just not true.”
“The fault is all mine,” tears fell down her cheeks as she spoke, a soothing touch to her wounded face. “I was the one who made her like this,” she blamed herself, Hyun-su’s reassuring words either not registering in her brain or being completely ignored. “No, this is good,” she accepted. She knew her end would be soon. “It turning out like this is for the best. This way, I… I don’t have to kill my daughter.,” she sobbed.
“Were you really going to kill her?” He asked incredulously. At her lack of response, he continued. “Why? You’re her mother! So why?”
“I don’t deserve to be,” she cut him off. “I could never be worthy of her, not when I treated her so differently than you did. Than she did,” she explained. She couldn’t fathom saying your name, feeling unworthy of being near you when she always had those terrible thoughts of hurting her own flesh and blood. You had always treated her so much better than she had, treating her like your own daughter, whether it was by blood or not. “I had the same thought hundreds of times. ‘Why is she cursed like this?’ Why?” She started sobbing again, the guilt and blame she put on herself for the past year torturing her soul. “It’s all my fault. My awful thoughts and desires turned her… into a… monster.”
Hyun-su scoffed. “Yeah, so what?” He looked at her and the surprise of his words stopped her crying. “Are monsters really all bad?”
Yi-kyung sighed and just as Hyun-su was going to continue talking, the soft babbling of the baby monster sounded out again, drawing both their attention to the mini creature. He gently picked it up, holding it in his arms as he spoke again. “This one saved you. Saved both of you. Saved you because you’re family…” his eyes filled with tears but he refused to let his voice break. “You see, monsters feel and recognize people. Because they were human once too.”
He hugged the monster to his chest, and the conversation ended when Yi-kyung faded out of consciousness.
The group sat around the campfire, Ha-ni snuggled up against Chan-young’s side while the other two sat alone.
“So, which is it?” Eun-yu asked. “A brother? A boss? A dad? What are you to each other?”
“Why the hell does it matter? Just eat and get lost,” the older man evaded the question.
“Um… why don’t you come back with us? You’ll be safer there,” Park Chan-young offered and Ha-ni’s head perked up in excitement.
“Are we getting married then?” She asked, moving closer to his side and resting her head against his shoulder.
“Uh, that’s… that’s not what I’m saying,” he repudiated.
“Safe? You guys have just been lucky,” the older man rolled his eyes at the suggestion. “That, or you don’t know better.”
“I think you might be underestimating some of us.”
“I don’t trust humans, okay?” He concluded.
“I’m not surprised. But you don’t trust monsters either?” Eun-yu integrated herself into the conversation once more. “And what about her?” She asked, tilting her head at Ha-ni. “You trust her?” He didn’t respond and it was silent for a minute. “Sure seems like it.”
Ha-ni, noticing how the atmosphere was turning strange and uncomfortable, interrupted. “Let’s go with them. Let’s go together, teacher, hmm?” She insisted, leaning forward in her seat to emphasize her wants. “Hey, let’s go!”
The older man looked thoughtful for a moment, considering his companion’s words before noticing something in the distance.
“What are you doing here?” He screamed accusingly, raising his shotgun threateningly toward the figure approaching.
Hyun-su walked forward. Yi-kyung was tied against his back using the long-sleeved shirt you used to cover your mouth in the fire meanwhile you were held in his arms, cradled against his chest protectively.
He raised his head slightly to look at them, continuing his stride forward despite the threat of the gun in front of him.
In the blink of an eye, Ha-ni appeared next to Ho-sang as he held the gun and moved his arms, forcing it to face the ground just as he pulled the trigger. It hit the rocks harmlessly and she looked at Hyun-su curiously.
Taking a deep breath, he slowly lowered himself to his knees and placed Yi-kyung on the ground after untying her. Keeping you in his arms as he rose again, he held you close as Eun-yu rushed forward. Stopping just a foot in front of him, she looked down at you in shock. She reached her hand out to caress your cheek but stopped herself at the last second.
“Please help,” Hyun-su begged and Eun-yu lifted her chin to look at him. “This was the only place I could turn to.”
Both Chan-young and Ha-ni walked over to where Yi-kyung was lying on the ground, kneeling down to properly assess the damage on her body.
“How did she get like this? And the kid? The girl who left with you?” Eun-yu asked before looking down at you still in Hyun-su’s arms and finally allowing her fingers to skim along the feverish skin of your cheek as she whispered your name, stunned. “And what about her? Is she okay? Why isn’t she awake?”
“First, let’s get them both inside,” Chan-young stopped her questioning before Hyun-su could respond. Ha-ni helped him prop the woman on her back, fully intending to bring her into the trailer until a gunshot sounded.
Eun-yu froze in shock, paralyzed by seeing Hyun-su stumble back with a gunshot to the shoulder. He fell to his knees once more, his grip on you loosening but refusing to let go. He gently set your lower body down onto his lap, his now free hand going to hold his wounded shoulder while the other held your upper body to his chest. He ignored the anger that stirred in his chest when he saw how close the shot came to your face, just missing by a few inches. Clenching his eyes closed tightly and blocking out the sound of everyone talking and screaming around him, he forced the familiar feeling of his monster down. When he finally looked up and opened his eyes he saw Eun-yu holding Ha-ni against her chest with blade centimeters from her neck.
“- and I’ll cut her fucking head off.”
Ha-ni scoffed at her words with an annoyed smile but didn’t try to fight back or move away.
“Way to prove my point about humans,” Ho-sang told her, not lowering his gun. “Pulling this shit after I saved your life is rich.”
“I said I’ll take him with me. I said I’ll take them so just… what's your problem?” Eun-yu begged the man, tears forming along her waterline as the situation continued to go downhill.
“You’re with monsters,” Ho-sang explained, glaring at her from his spot. “That makes you a threat. And you call yourself human? Jesus.”
“You call yourself human when you just almost shot a girl in the face? He might not be human but she is!” She screamed at him and continued when she saw the flicker of guilt in his eyes. “And what makes you special? How can you be sure you’re gonna stay immune?” She questioned but he stayed silent. “What if you were to start showing symptoms? Seems a bullet is your only option. Since monsters have to die.”
Hyun-su groaned in pain before trying to stop her from baiting the man. “Stop it,” his words were spoken weakly as more blood spilled from his wound. He covered it with the fabric of his shirt, trying to avoid getting as much blood on you as possible but the splatters of blood across your forehead and cheeks told him it was already a bit too late for that.
“And her?” Eun-yu continued, ignoring the boy’s warnings and protests as she started to speak about Ha-ni. “Could you put a bullet in her?” Her words were spoken softly but Ho-sang heard it loud and clear. He stayed quiet again, not willing to speak of the situation he feared the most. “How about I save you the trouble?” She offered.
“Oh, yeah. So this is who you are,” he finally spoke, nodding in disdain at her actions.
“Stop it,” Hyun-su tried again but again was ignored. “Don’t do this Eun-yu,” he begged.
Suddenly, Ha-ni grabbed the wrist holding the knife to her throat, and twisted it away from herself, spinning around so the knife was now in her possession and the tip was pointing directly at Eun-yu’s neck. There was a collective gasp from everyone watching and Ho-sang lowered his guns in shock. “Ha-ni!” He yelled at her as she stuck the point of the blade in Eun-yu’s neck, causing a trail of blood to leak out.
After a moment of tense silence, she pulled the knife away and dropped it to the floor where it clattered against the rocks loudly. Pushing her forward, she walked over and entered her car, entering it and called for Ho-sang to join her.
“In this life, we weren’t meant to be,” she started, talking to Chan-young as her companion got into the car and started it up. “Maybe the next one. Get rid of the girl though.”
The group watched as the two drove off before Chan-young turned to Hyun-su. “Are you okay to move? How’s your shoulder?”
Hyun-su pulled his hand away, the wound already having closed and the blood surrounding it was the only reminder that it was ever there in the first place. He nodded. “It’s okay.”
Chan-young took a few steps closer to him before kneeling beside him and looking at where you rested in his arms. The pain from your ankle and slight burns showed on your leg but you luckily didn’t seem to have any difficulty breathing or major damage. “And her? Are you still okay to carry her?”
Hyun-su nodded once again while he moved his empty hand to once again rest under your knees and stood up. “Yes, I’m okay.”
“I think we’d better go. Monsters may have heard the gunfire,” Chan-young concluded and walked behind Hyun-su as he started the path to his chosen destination, whatever that place may be.
Eun-yu kneeled down to grab her bag and knife before looking back at Hyun-su. “Let’s go.”
He sighed as she started to walk behind him, taking a moment to look at you and make sure you were alright before he followed. He would have to wipe his shoulder down and clean the blood from your face before you woke up. He didn’t feel like worrying you about his injury just yet.
Sighing once more, he turned around and started to follow the two.
They arrived at the destination Chan-young had brought them to. It was a hospital, or at least it used to be. As they got inside, there was broken glass everywhere and scratches from an unnatural creature lining the floor. It was clear it was no longer the medical place it used to be.
Setting Yi-kyung down on the hospital bed they found, Chan-young turned to Hyun-su and asked, “What happened to her?”
“A fire started where she was staying,” he started to explain, still holding you since all the other hospital beds they could find were not exactly clean. At least the one Yi-kyung was lying on didn’t have any blood stains on it. He didn’t mind though. “I think there was no way out. She was already unconscious by the time I made it in.”
“It’s carbon monoxide poisoning,” Chan-young concluded from the evidence provided before standing up urgently and turning to Eun-yu. “Something like a small gas tank should be lying around. Go look for some,” he then turned to Hyun-su who was getting ready to stand and help them. “You should probably stay here,” he told him and Hyun-su stayed silent for a moment as he looked at you in his arms before nodding in agreement. He moved to lean against the wall as the other two went off in different directions to search for the gas tank.
After a while, there was the faint sound of someone yelling, “I found one!” Soon after, both Eun-yu and Chan-young returned to the bed, the boy carrying a gas tank in his hands which he set up next to it. Expertly, he plugged the tube into the tank and turned the air on, testing the pressure and how much oxygen was left in the tank.
“Does it work?” Eun-yu asked just as the arrow pointed to ‘REFILL’ and Chan-young sighed. “What? What is it?”
“It’s out of oxygen,” he explained.
“So what happens now?”
“Her organs will start to fail without… without a steady supply of oxygen,” he told them before his head fell forward. “Fuck me.”
“Enough of that crap. Is there any other way?” Eun-yu begged, unwillingly to give up so soon.
“It’s already too late.”
“Don’t say that unless you’ve tried everything,” she told him seriously, she then moved over to start picking Yi-kyung up by her arms. “Park Chan-young, help me carry her. Let’s get her to the stadium. We have to leave now,” she ordered but he didn’t move and Hyun-su just buried his head in your hair emotionally. “I said help me carry her!” She sobbed, setting her back down when he still didn’t try to help her and covering her face with her hands.
The group just finished moving both you and Yi-kyung to another room, this one finally having another bed that wasn’t stained with blood and smelling of a rotting corpse. Chan-young helped Eun-yu carry Yi-kyung to the room while Hyun-su held you close, only letting you go when they found the bed for you to lie on.
Despite how his monster body protested, he allowed Eun-yu to have a moment alone with you and Yi-kyung in the room, choosing instead to wait on the bench outside. He saw through the crack in the door how she held your hand gently and spoke words he couldn’t hear. He watched as she set your hand down across your stomach and retreated from the room to sit on the bench with him, leaving an empty seat between them.
“Are you feeling better?” Hyun-su asked her once she sat down. She sighed quietly and he took that as her response. “We did the best we could.”
“Are you comfortable with this?” She asked him, not understanding how he could be so calm in a moment like this. “Is leaving her to die like that really the right thing to do?”
“Now that I think about it… I think it’s what she wanted,” he construed and she turned her head to look at him.
“What?”
“Her boat was deliberately burned, but she chose to stay aboard.”
“Why, though?” Eun-yu whispered. “Why would Yi-kyung do that?”
“I wanna ask you something,” Hyun-su told her and she stayed quiet as she waited for him to speak. “How’s everyone doing? I’ve tried asking Lucky but she always gets really quiet when I do.”
Eun-yu’s lips quirked up minutely at the familiar term of endearment but the memory of her grief overwhelmed it. She took a few deep breaths to compose herself before answering him. “Hye-in and Su-yeong are dead. And Yoon Ji-su, too.”
Now Hyun-su knew why you would never talk about it, why you would always get quiet and have that far-away look in your eyes when he asked. He always figured you just didn’t know, that maybe you got separated at some point, but somewhere deep down he knew that was just wishful thinking. While he hated that you didn’t confide in him, he understood where you were coming from. Even a year isn’t always enough time to heal enough to talk about something so tragic.
“Just like that, they’re all gone,” she continued in a whisper. He turned his head away from her as a tear fell down his cheek before she spoke up more loudly this time, masking the emotion in her voice with false confidence. “Now let me ask you a question,” she said. He turned to look at her but she was looking in the direction of where you lay on the hospital bed, head tilted to the side as you breathed easily. “How is she doing, really? Is she better?” Her voice almost broke as she unwillingly thought back to how you were feeling during your time in the stadium but she was able to mask it with a cough. While she was hoping you were doing better now that you were with Hyun-su and hopefully didn’t blame yourself for his disappearance anymore, she had to be sure.
“She’s doing good. She still has her bad days but overall she’s doing better.”
She breathed a sigh of relief, a single tear falling down her cheek. “Thank you.”
He turned his head to look back at her and saw she was now staring at him. “Hm?”
“You brought her back to me. I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t at least see her one more time. If I didn’t make sure she was still alive. So thank you.”
He nodded. “Of course.”
“I also,” she continued. “Want to thank you for returning to her,” she shot him a watery smile as her eyes brimmed with tears. “God knows she deserves it.”
When you woke up, the first things you saw were the blaring lights of the white lighting fixture above you. Groaning, you brought a hand up to cover your eyes and turned your head only to gasp when you saw the burned face of Yi-kyung on the bed next to yours. Quickly throwing your legs over the side of the bed and standing up to check on her, you let out a yelp of pain as you stepped on your wounded ankle and crumpled to the floor.
Breathing heavily, you cursed yourself before hearing the sound of fast-paced footsteps entering the room you were in. You leaned up on one hand and saw a face you’d longed to see for weeks.
“Eun-yu?”
The girl snapped her head to where you sat and gasped out your name, running toward you and crouching down. She grabbed your arms and helped you stand up, making you sit on the edge of the bed so she could check out your foot.
“How are you feeling?” She asked, concerned but all you could think about was the woman breathing unevenly on the bed behind her.
“Fine, fine,” you said dismissively, only half listening to her concerns. “How is Yi-kyung? Is she okay?”
Eun-yu slapped your arm lightly. “You were passed out for half a day, let me worry about you.”
You gave a small chuckle at her words, reaching your arms out to wrap around her shoulders. “It’s good to see you, Eun-yu. I’ve missed you.”
She exhaled slowly, wrapping her own arms around you and letting herself relax in your embrace.
“Wait, what am I doing here?” You asked as you softly pushed her away from you. “What are you doing here? Why aren’t you at the stadium? Are you okay?” You gasped, firing questions at her like a machine gun prior to grabbing the sides of her puffy jacket sleeves and pulling her a few inches closer as you looked her over for any injuries. Other than the small wound on her neck, she seemed to be relatively unharmed.
“That doesn’t matter right now,” she scolded lightly and lifted your wounded and swollen ankle up. “First, we should fix this up. I’m sure there’s some tape or something around here,” she started to walk away but turned back to look at you. “Don’t move,” she scolded with a finger pointed at you accusingly. You held your hands up in a surrender motion and laughed.
After a while of looking around the room, she walked back with a wad of medical tape in her hand. You watched in awe as she started to expertly wrap your foot with the medical tape in a way that would help keep it in place. Noticing your stare, she explained. “I used to do ballet. I sprained my ankle and had to do this every day.”
“Well lucky me then,” you told her with a smile that she returned once she finished. She then cut the ripped pant leg off at the knee and cut the singed parts off. Using the burned-free part of the fabric, she gave you her hand to squeeze as she poured the clear liquid inside a bottle of vodka on your burns. You screamed and stuffed your sleeve into your mouth, both stopping yourself from breaking your teeth and muffling your pained noises. After finishing disinfecting the wound, she got to work on wrapping the cut fabric around your burns to prevent any further dirt from entering it.
Breathing heavily through your pain, you grabbed the nearly empty bottle of vodka after she set it down and lifted it to your nose.
It looked like vodka.
It smelled like vodka.
Taking a sip, your face scrunched up in displeasure.
Definitely vodka, although something was off.
“Why is it so watery?” You asked her. Eun-yu’s head snapped up to see you bring the bottle to your lips again to take another sip.
Grabbing the bottle away from you, she smirked and brought the bottle to her lips, drinking the last of the liquid while you whined. After sighing overexaggeratedly, she smiled at you and handed the bottle back to you. You shot her a glare “For one, when are you ever going to find a steal like that again? Had to make sure it lasted!” You laughed. “And second, regular vodka is too potent to use as a disinfectant by itself, you have to water it down so you don’t burn away your nerves.”
She secured the fabric with the medical tape and tapped your knee to signal she was finished. She helped you down from the table and let you wrap an arm around her shoulder as you limped over to the bench outside of the room. You thanked her just as you saw another familiar face appear around the corner. “Park Chan-young? What are you doing here?”
“Ah, you’re awake! How are you feeling?” He asked instead of answering your question.
“I’m feeling okay, my ankle hurts a little but not too bad,” you told him with a smile before it faded and your head turned to look at Yi-kyung through the still-opened door. “She’s not going to make it, she?”
You heard the two of them sigh behind you and you let out a shaky breath. Tilting your head up, you tried to stop the tears from falling.
It was silent for a while, the only sounds were the ragged breathing from Yi-kyung in the next room until Chan-young spoke.
“Cha Hyun-su, was it?” He asked and your head snapped up to look at him while Eun-yu who was sitting beside you didn’t even flinch. “That’s the monster that killed Mr. Kim, right?”
You opened your mouth to ask what he meant when Eun-yu spoke before you could.
“It gets on my nerves when you use the word ‘kill’.”
He sat down next to her and leaned forward in his chair with his elbows resting on his knees. “Well, nonetheless, that’s how it went down.”
“Your curiosity will cost you someday,” at his silence to her words, she sighed and continued. “Mr. Kim was displaying symptoms.”
The news of this story was no surprise to you. While you weren’t there when it happened, you do remember how Eun-yu had relayed the story to you only a few nights after the incident. You didn’t know she knew it was Hyun-su though, and to be honest you felt slightly betrayed.
“I don’t know when it’d begun.”
“Wait,” Chan-young started, gasping at the new information. “But why didn’t you say anything? You were branded as a murderer.”
“The Chief and I have had… a long-standing grudge. Yet we all lived because she opened the stadium to us. I can’t deny that. I just couldn’t screw her over like that.”
You quietly gasped. Despite the information not being new to you, you hadn’t known the reason she never spoke up was because of that.
“Lee Eun-yu,” Chan-young said softly.
“Eun-yu, you shouldn’t have done that to yourself,” you scolded her quietly.
“Don’t get me wrong. That wasn’t the only reason,” she continued, leaning back in her seat. “I didn’t know it was Hyun-su, but… either way, I didn’t want to tell Crow Platoon.”
Oh. So Eun-yu didn’t know it was Hyun-su. That definitely made you feel better than the idea of her knowing this entire time and just not telling you.
When a sudden gasp was heard from the room Yi-kyung was in, all of your heads snapped up and Chan-young and Eun-yu rushed into the room. You stood up, hopping over to lean against the entrance when you slipped.
Just as your hand missed grabbing the frame of the door, you felt an arm wrap around your waist and pull you back up. Turning your head to look at your savior, you were surprised to see Hyun-su with his arm supporting you and Ah-yi standing beside him, looking at you with just as surprised eyes as you were at her. The boy moved you so you were propped up against the door frame before he stepped into the room.
“Could you step outside for a moment?” He asked the two as they stood beside Yi-kyung’s bed. They hesitated but eventually made their way out of the room. As Hyun-su walked up to the woman, leaning over her as she breathed raggedly, you wrapped your arms around Ah-yi and brought her into a hug.
“Oh sweetie, I’m so sorry,” you expressed your condolences before pushing her away just enough so you could see her face. “How are you doing?” You asked her as you caressed her cheek and brushed a strand of hair behind her ear.
She shrugged her shoulders, looking away unconvincingly. “I’m fine. She hated me anyway. I only came for Oppa.”
You tsked and brought her back into your embrace. “You and I both know that’s not true.”
She didn’t respond and Hyun-su turned back to look at the two of you, motioning for Ah-yi to walk in. As she passed by you, you smoothed down the back of her hair and squeezed her shoulder reassuringly.
Hyun-su walked past her, letting her have her final moment alone with her mother on her deathbed. Instead, he walked over to you, wrapping his arm around your waist to help you walk as you all moved further down the hall to give the girl some space. Once he decided it was far away enough, he moved you over to the wall so you could lean against it and stood beside you. You leaned your head against his shoulder, wanting to give and gain comfort from the action. You all stayed there, silently, for a few minutes until Ah-yi walked down the hall.
Hyun-su popped off the wall and she turned to face the two of you, mainly Hyun-su as he started to speak. “Why are you out here already?”
You leaned forward, grabbing onto his arm to support you as you looked at her. “You should stay with her a while longer,” you insisted softly. Her eyes fluttered down to where the medical tape peeked out above your shoe and the pant leg was taped in place around your calf before she fluttered her eyes back up to yours.
“Mom’s not going to die. So stop crying, please.”
The way she said it gave you a bad feeling and the clattering that came from the direction of the room didn’t help to ease it. Hyun-su turned, making sure you were balanced before rushing over to the room. You glanced at Ah-yi before heading that direction as well, having Eun-yu and Chan-young help you.
“Yi-kyung!” You heard Hyun-su exclaim just as you all got to the doorway. When you looked into the room, you saw Hyun-su on the ground with Yi-kyung held in his arms while tears fell down his cheeks.
You covered your mouth in horror as your own tears started to form. You stayed there, supported only by the door as you all cried over the loss of your friend.
Your eyes shot open when you heard the sound of bones cracking. Her head was thrown backward and her back arched to the point where you were sure that was the bone-breaking sound you heard. The skin on the left side of her body started to turn black, almost as if ash had been painted across it. She started thrashing around, her body contorting inhumanely and her skin releasing a dark, unnatural smoke. As she rolled onto her stomach the bones in her back crunched loudly and she shot up.
You barely had enough time to move out of the way before she ran into the door you were leaning on. Disoriented and dizzy, you couldn’t bring yourself to focus on what was happening around you until you heard the ringing of a gunshot and Yi-kyung’s half-monsterized body fell backward at the waist.
“No, don’t do that!” Hyun-su screamed, rushing forward and moving Chan-young’s hands away while he held fast to the gun.
“It’s too late for her. She’s already gone!” Chan-young yelled at him.
You looked back at the woman to see the gunshot wound already gone, now covered with the same black markings that covered one half of her body. “H-Hyun-su,” you whimpered weakly and both men turned to look back at Yi-kyung. You let out a soft sob as you saw the tear slide down her face.
“Yi-kyung,” Hyun-su whispered and she raised a hand toward him. Reaching for him, she started to walk forward before her other arm, the remaining human arm, reached out to grab her own hand, almost as if to pull her back. “You guys should go back,” he whispered to you all. “Take Lucky with you, she can’t walk on her own.”
“No! Not without you!” You protested but Hyun-su didn’t turn to face you. Eun-yu looked at you hesitantly before turning back to him.
“What about Yi-kyung?” She let out through a sob. “How could she turn so suddenly? She wasn’t showing any symptoms.”
“Her daughter did this to her,” he explained hurriedly.
“Ah-yi…” you whispered in realization.
“She turns people to monsters?” Chan-young questioned, still aiming the gun at Yi-kyung. “Monsterization is uncontrollable by humans.”
“She’s not a human,” you said lowly.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Eun-yu screamed at you just as Yi-kyung rushed forward to jump out the window of the room behind you.
“Leave! Now!” He yelled at them before jumping out the window after her.
“Hyun-su, no!” You cried out, trying to lift yourself to your feet to no avail. Eun-yu and Chan-young, ran to the broken window, looking out as you continued to struggle. “Eun-yu!” You screamed at her and she turned around to face you with widened eyes. “Please! You have to help him! Don’t let him get hurt, please,” you begged her.
She nodded, determined. Turning to Chan-young, he nodded at her and they set off in the direction of the stairs to the bottom floor.
You sat against the glass doors of the room Hyun-su was resting in. For the first hour, you were in there with him, holding him while he cried. After he fell asleep, though, you decided to give him some space. You waited outside, leaning your head back against the cool surface of the glass with your uninjured leg bent and held to your chest while the other was extended outward.
Down the hall, you could see Eun-yu watching you until Chan-young approached her. You looked away as you saw them staring at you. Both had sympathy lacing their gazes that you couldn’t stand to see. Sympathy meant you had something they felt sympathetic towards. You didn’t want to think of what that thing was. All you wanted was to be back at your shed, doing laundry with Hyun-su while Ah-yi sat down on the edge of the river bank with her feet dipping into the water.
But those days were over, at least for the time being.
“What are you gonna do now?” Park Chan-young asked Eun-yu, her gaze still locked onto your form curled up across the hallway.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I found her, and she’s alright. That’s good enough for me. I know she’s in good hands with Cha Hyun-su. I don’t want her to come back to the stadium with us. Not when she was so miserable there,” she told him, thinking for a moment before giving a conclusive answer. “I’m gonna wait for Hyun-su to wake up. I’ll wait with her until then. Then I’ll say my goodbyes and return to the stadium. You?”
“I should get back there,” he decided. “I’ve been gone for too long.”
She nodded in agreement. “Yeah.”
Chan-young gave a final look back at where you sat now with both your knees bent and your face buried in your arms. “Send them my regards, both of them,” he told her and she nodded up at him. “I’ll see you at camp.”
With a moment of hesitation, he turned in the direction of the stairs and started walking toward them.
It had been a couple of hours since Hyun-su fell asleep. Eun-yu had dozed off about an hour ago but you couldn’t bring yourself to shut your eyes for too long. So you sat there, your eyes staring off into the distance, unfocused and blurred. It wasn’t until the sun started to set, the light shining through the blinds of the windows and casting a golden orange glow onto the tile floor that you snapped out of your daze. Carefully bringing yourself to a standing position, you turned around, opened the door, and walked through. Your eyes immediately went to where Hyun-su was previously lying down, but when you didn’t find him there, you panicked. Raising your eyes, you let out a breath of relief when you saw him sitting on the bed next to the windows, leaning back on his right arm and swaying slightly.
“Hyun-su?” You asked softly but received no response. Walking closer, you saw his eyes were closed as he continued to sway. It seemed like he was barely conscious and his body kept falling right before he caught it, over and over again. Reaching the point that you were standing right in front of him, you reached up to place your hand on his right cheek, a feeling he immediately leaned into. “Oh, lovely,” you whispered. “Let’s get you back to bed.”
About to pull your hand away from his cheek to clear the pillows and blankets piled on the bed behind him, you stopped when his left hand shot up and grabbed onto your wrist, keeping you in place. Confused and concerned, you brought your other hand up to hold his other cheek. “Hyun-su?” You asked. “Are you okay?”
He slowly opened his eyes and you gasped once you saw them.
You’d only seen him like this once before and it was after he protected you from a particularly strong monster. Halfway through the battle, all of his mannerisms changed and he moved completely differently. It wasn’t until the monster ran away, Hyun-su covered in its blood yet not a scratch on him, that you saw his eyes.
You weren’t scared. You could never be scared.
Not of him.
Never of him.
But it did surprise you.
After he returned to his normal self, he told you about how he tried to never go into that state of being because he wasn’t in full control. Despite the honest way you told him he would never hurt you and that you trusted him, he still kept the monster side of him tucked away as much as possible.
It seemed that wasn’t the case right now, though.
“Why are you here?” You whispered to him, your voice not at all accusing or scared, not even a little bit tentative.
“You don’t want me here?” He questioned. It was so strange to see Hyun-su’s body and hear Hyun-su’s voice but know it wasn’t him, at least not completely.
“I didn’t say that,” you told him, your eyes lightly scolding him in a way that made his lips quirk. “I just asked why you were here. Is he…” you hesitated, still unsure of how to fully phrase questions when he was in this state. “Are you okay?”
“He’s hurt. Let him rest for a bit,” he explained as he leaned more into your palm. His grip on your wrist hadn’t been all too tight to begin with but it still softened to a loose hold as he kept eye contact with you.
You nodded at his words, brushing your thumb along his cheekbone and your lips curving into a subtle smile when his eyes closed contently. “Is that why you’re here?” You whispered, not wanting to break the calm atmosphere. His eyes opened again and he stared at you. “To help him with the pain?” He nodded and you sighed. It wasn’t the physical pain on his body either of you meant, and you both knew that. The pain of losing Yi-kyung, and then losing her again at his own hands was too much for him. It most certainly would have been too much for you, so you couldn’t blame him. Not that you would have anyway.
He tightened the grip he had on your wrist and gently brought it away from his cheek before releasing it completely. He turned his head to look forward in the mirror in front of him and used the hand once holding your wrist to move the collar of his shredded jacket away from his shoulder. You winced as you saw the wounded skin there, bringing a hand up to do something but hesitating. Instead, you looked around the room before your eyes lit up as you found what you were looking for. You released his face from the hand still holding his cheek and turned around, taking a step forward with your good foot. He leaned forward, leaning off his right hand and using it to grab ahold of your wrist. You looked back at him.
“Stay,” he said simply and you smiled.
“I’m not going far.”
He held onto your wrist for a while longer before softly sliding it down to the tips of your fingers and slowly releasing you, all the while keeping eye contact. You felt the heat rising to your cheeks and turned before he could tell how flustered you were at the simple action. Taking another step, you tried to hide the limp in your walk and mask the pain on your face as you grabbed the materials and returned to where he was seated. Setting the medical supplies down next to him, you reached for the pillow behind him and took off the pillowcase surrounding it. Grabbing the mostly empty bottle of rubbing alcohol, you poured some onto the pillowcase before using one hand to pull the collar away to reveal the dirty wound underneath.
You raised your gaze to his eyes only to find them already looking back at you. “This’ll probably sting,” you told him sorrowfully. You waited a moment for him to acknowledge your words but he just continued to stare at you with a blank, yet almost soft, look. You used your other hand to hold the alcohol-soaked pillowcase and bring it up to his wound where you carefully started dabbing away the blood and dirt. Looking over at him every few seconds to see if he was in pain, you found none each time whilst he didn’t take his eyes off you. Once the blood was cleared away and the pillowcase was thoroughly stained, it was clear to see the wound was much smaller and less serious than it originally seemed. A fact that made you sigh in relief.
Before you could reach for the bandages to cover his wound with, Hyun-su grabbed your waist and pulled you to stand in between his legs.
“Wha-?” You started to question but stopped when his arms wrapped around your waist in a hug. His head turned to the side and he rested it against your stomach. It didn’t take long for you to return the hug, albeit a little confused and startled.
“You know I love you, right?”
The sentence sounded slightly muffled, and you weren’t sure which version of Hyun-su was speaking, but regardless, you answered, “I know.”
His arms tightened around you, a comforting and promising squeeze. “And you know I’m never letting you go again,” he paused, turning to look up at you. It was both a surprise and yet not when you saw one of his eyes was still the bright blue he had in his monster form, but the other had returned to his natural brown. “Right?”
You placed your hands on his cheeks, leaning down to leave a tender kiss on his forehead.
“I know.”
#sweet home#sweet home 2#cha hyun su#cha hyunsu#cha hyun soo#cha hyunsoo#cha hyunsu x reader#cha hyun su x reader#sweet home netflix#sweet home x reader#sweet home imagines#cha hyun soo x reader#cha hyunsoo x reader#hyun su x reader#hyunsu x reader#hyun soo x reader#hyunsoo x reader#ah yi#ahyi#lee eun yu#lee eun yoo#park chanyoung#park chan young#song kang#sweet home fanfic#sweet home fanfiction#sweet home imagine
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The Red Flags of Ruby's Suicidality Throughout The Volume
It should be obvious, but this short essay will cover heavy subjects of suicide, so if you're uncomfortable with this subject matter please don't read this.
The first red flag was in episode 4, where Ruby contemplated erasing her current self due to her failures, after talking to her 'past self'.
This gets reinforced by the lyrics of Trapdoor, which is about how worthless and unneeded Ruby feels.
One common mindset among suicidal people is this: what if I'm useless? What if my friends don't need me anymore? What if they don't care about me? What if I'll keep ruining everything? Would the world be better without me?
Suicidal people are usually full of self-loathing and blame.
Even in the episode 7 fight Ruby felt useless after seeing C-PTSD red flags (they're not Neo hallucinations because she didn't see the Schnee manor grounds struggle with hacked Penny). In her eyes, the others are fighting well without her, so she's useless.
Another set of red flags is snapping at your loved ones, pushing them away and driving yourself into isolation. We see ALL these in episodes 7 and 8, with Ruby snapping at her friends and running away, and even pushing Little away.
And on top of it she feels like her friends don't care, the world is against her, etc. which is YET another red flag.
(Massive disclaimer that this is NOT anti WBY and they, especially Yang, tried to reach out to her throughout the volume.)
I'd like to mention that if your loved one attempts and you tried to help but couldn't do it, it is NOT your fault. We're not all experts and we try our best, so do not ever blame yourself for these things.
It's not uncommon for suicidal people to refuse help, and on top of it Ruby has always been selfless to self destructive levels.
And the last thing, her self blame over her loved ones dying. While Penny and Pyrrha were apparitions, they still reflected her self blame. And Little dying? The final straw.
So her suicide attempt in the end was being built up all volume.
All I can say is that I hope Ruby somehow gets rescued and also recovers from her mental health problems because JESUS CHRIST.
This was a bit hard for me to write, especially as someone with BPD and frequent suicidal tendencies. This topic hits hard for me. However, I'm not an expert and this post shouldn't be taken as gospel. There may be details even I missed, so feel free to add your own observations.
And remember that if you are suicidal as well, you're not alone. You'll always have people who care about you, and resources to help out.
#rwby#rwby spoilers#rwby9#rwby9 spoilers#rwby volume 9#rwby volume 9 spoilers#ruby rose#rwby analysis#rwby meta#suicidality#tw suicidality#dani.txt
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While Your Lips Are Still Red
Summary: You suffer for what's happening in your life and you tried to put an end to it, but Astarion saved you.
Notes/TW: I wrote this fanfiction thinking about my Tav (female), but I wrote it gender-neutral so you can think about your OC (or you!) without any problems. The theme of suicide is the focus of this story, so if you are particularly sensitive to the theme and don't feel okay, please don't read it! I chose this topic because it is particularly dear and close to me. No one deserves to suffer and if you need it don't hesitate to contact a hotline. You are not alone!
There's also a bit of romance.
Please remember that English is not my native language.
Your sight grew darker and blurrier.
The bright stars in the sky, your only companions on nights when nightmares seemed to prevail, now seemed like many small, confused, and meaningless dots — the last, silent judges of your ruthless act.
You had decided to end everything: the story of the tadpoles, the absolute, the emperor... it was too much.
Your life had never been peaceful from the beginning, but the limit to how you could tolerate pain had become increasingly thin. You had tried every loophole possible, including considering joining Shadowheart in her crusade for Shar's honor; but just a few days before, you had convinced her to abandon the Lady of Loss and embrace her loving sister Selune. Because for her, your best friend, there was still hope, a glimmer of divine light ready to welcome her.
But not for you. Each fight had become more exhausting, each rescue mission more violent, soaked in innocent blood. The harpists, the tieflings. Children who would never play again, men and women who would never love again.
You should have rejoiced that you were still alive. To still be able to enjoy that great gift that life was. Yet now, cradled by the cold waters of the lake, not far from your sleeping companions, unaware of everything, your injured wrists let the red blood stain that crystalline liquid.
After making sure everyone was asleep (or in a trance, or on patrol, in Astarion's case), you had pulled your dagger from its sheath and used it on yourself right on the shore. You wanted to stab yourself and get it over with as quickly as possible, but you couldn't.
And now, at the mercy of the sweet waves, you waited for your moment. The moment when it would all end. You had managed to isolate the Emperor thanks to Gale, with the excuse of "I need a spell that silence everything for a few hours, or I won't even sleep tonight". A little suspicious, the wizard of Waterdeep finally granted your request. This way, none of your group would have the slightest signal from the tadpoles.
Your head felt lighter… it was like being drunk. A bitter smile spread across your face as your limbs grew numb, and your body grew colder and colder. The eyelids, however, became extremely heavy, as if there were a stone holding them down, and his heartbeat pounded in the eardrums like a war drum. The body became lighter and lighter but also heavier. The arms wanted only to go down, further down, towards the depths of the lake.
Your vision became almost completely blurred, your heartbeat infinitely slow: it was the end. One last breath and everything would have ended, if it hadn't been the rippling water and the cold hands (but warmer than your skin) that tore you away from the agonized embrace of death.
Thump-sounding words filled your head, but you didn't understand their meaning. A pale blob stood in front of you, squirming like a madman. A gasp came from your mouth as you recognized the figure. It was Astarion, visibly panicking. Perhaps thanks to the adrenaline of seeing him so agitated, you managed to understand his words.
"What the hell did you think?!" he almost screamed, lifting you out of the water to hold you. His gaze fell to your wrists which continued to bleed and you saw him swallow and clench his jaw. "I… one thing at a time. Now I have to think about getting you out of here, damn it." He rolled his eyes so as not to focus too much on your wounds, a temptation for him, especially after his failed hunt earlier. You didn't have the energy to reply, so you just let the elf pick you up, your eyelids too numb to allow you to look at him. You could only see his worried look, his milky white eyebrows furrowed.
Once you reached the shore, you felt Astarion spinning around. “If I take you to camp like this they'll think I bled you dry before you even let me explain,” he whispered. The companions were not within earshot, although relatively close, but it was normal for the vampire to operate in the shadows. You felt your body hit the ground and when you had enough strength to open your eyes, you noticed that he had found shelter in the forest. Your back was leaning against a large log, your legs stretched out on the damp ground.
“A…Astarion?” you whispered. "What…?"
“We'll leave the explanations for later, darling. Give me your wrists,” he ordered. Your tired eyes reflected fear. Did he want to bite you? Finish you there?
Noticing your hesitation, he took them both in his cold hands. "I do not want to hurt. Let me save you." His voice was calm, but his eyes hid a nervousness you had rarely seen. He swallowed, and bringing your wrists to his mouth, he licked them. His red eyes glowed like rubies and his breath trembled against your veins as a short, strangled moan escaped his throat. He seemed to struggle against himself, before placing your wrists on the ground, perhaps with a little too much force. You almost heard him growl as his jaw muscles clenched and his fingers trembled.
The wounds were gone. You blinked several times, lifting your arms with difficulty. It was as if they had never existed!
“I… thank you, Astarion. For saving me. Because of this. It must have been diff…”. Your head was spinning fast, so fast. You felt like the ground was disappearing from underneath your body and you almost fell to the side, if it weren't for the vampire, who grabbed you, preventing your head from hitting a stone.
“Do you want… me to hold you?” he asked with an apprehensive look, his voice a little more serious than usual. Maybe it was the lack of blood that made you see misleading things because he didn't look like Astarion at all. However, by now you didn't care about anything anymore, for all you knew he might as well be a shape-shifting monster ready to make a single morsel of you. You nodded your head and Astarion pulled you into his arms, resting your back against his chest.
"Better?" he asked. His breath tickled your neck.
“Mh hm” you replied. "Listen…"
You felt his arms become firmer around you.
"I am sorry." His voice was a whisper. “I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner. Maybe all this wouldn't have happened."
You frowned, tilting your head slightly, which made it spin even more than before, confusing you to the point of making you feel drunk. "What…? What didn't you tell me...?”
The pale elf peered at the now distant black lake through the trunks of the forest. He didn't have the courage to meet your gaze.
“That I love you, my dear. Or rather, I told you that time as a joke, at the camp. Those words that I said to all the victims before taking them to Cazador." His gaze finally found its way to yours, glossy for the tears you were trying to hold back. Your heart, slow at first, began to thunder in your skull like a hammer, your breath became shorter and you tried to move away from him.
It wasn’t possible. It couldn't be. Was he taking advantage of that situation? Was he joking? Was it a demon, perhaps Raphael, ready to extort some contract from you?
"I do not believe you". Your voice trembled with fear and weakness, but even if you wanted to, you couldn't escape. You couldn't feel your legs anymore and the breath burned in your lungs. Even if you wanted to scream no one would have heard you.
Your panic didn't come from the fear of being eaten, but from the fact that Astarion had been the last bastion of salvation for you before you thought about harming yourself. You had feelings for him for a long time now, and your eyes often drifted over his slender frame as you tried to fall asleep in your bedroll as he drifted further into the darkness. When you allowed him to drink your blood, his bites and lips continued to torment you in the night, but far from unpleasant reasons. However, convinced that you were not reciprocated and considering his ambition for power and the constant flirting during missions even with bears, those words looked fake to you. You bit your lip, curling up as much as you could.
“No, no, don't be like that... look at me,” he said while lifting your chin with one hand. You didn't want to, you didn't want to accept the reality and feel terribly stupid for almost throwing your life away when the one you loved maybe actually reciprocated your feelings. When your eyes finally met, you saw him for what he truly was.
A fragile creature. His look was desperate, the mouth curved in an expression of infinite sadness. His other hand caressed your hair... a pleasant contact, which made you relax a little. "Listen to me. I know I don't have the easiest of temperament” he confessed, a bitter laugh, with his typical accent, changed his expression for a moment. “And I want you to know that everything you see of me is not… true. It's that bastard Cazador who turned me into a monster. But you made me feel something that in two hundred years, under his control, I had never felt.”
You rested your face in his hand, now cupping your cheek. You decided to trust. If it was a dream or a near-death hallucination, you wanted to live every minute of it.
"What?"
"Free. I feel free” he murmured, and his lips rested on yours in a sweet, delicate kiss. They were surprisingly soft and tasted vaguely of iron and mulberry, but that contact was enough to feel a new, powerful rush of adrenaline bringing you back to the present.
It was really happening. You were in his arms and he had saved you from certain death. And now he was kissing you in the sweetest way possible, both of his hands cupping your face as if you were in danger of breaking at any moment.
It seemed like an eternal, perfect kiss that you wanted to leave suspended in time. When you opened your eyes again, you found his. So vulnerable, so desperate. He ran a finger over your lip, before being grabbed and hugged like his life depended on it.
"Stay with me. Forever."
#baldur's gate 3#astarion#baldur's gate iii#baldur's gate 3 oc#astarion x tav#astarion x reader#astarion x you
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Dying
Poly!marauders x reader, James Potter x reader, Remus Lupin x reader, Sirius Black x reader
Summary; the marauders had known their girlfriend smoked to dissipate the pain from her abusive family. They just didn't know how bad it could, and would get
Words; 1,400+
Warnings; serious TW, mentions of abuse, toxic asf family, drug abuse, weed, alcohol, whiskey, underage drinking and smoking, substance abuse, self harm, cuts, abuse (ish?), depression (not mentioned but apparent), seriously bad mental health
If you are easily triggered I advise you do not read this as it covers very serious topics.
I will be making a part 2 with a happy ending, because they exist and you deserve one, no matter how deep you've dug yourself into a hole.
Pt. 2
If you are struggling with mental health issues and need help call or text 988 to get in touch with the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. If you are struggling with substance abuse and or mental health and need help call 1-800-662-4357 to get on the phone with an employee of SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. If you are being abused or neglecting by family members or someone else and need help call 800-799-7233 to get on the phone with some from the National Domestic Violence Hotline.
If you need help please reach out. Whether it be to one of the resources above, a trusted adult or friend, or me. I cannot speak for others around you but I can for me and I am here for every single one of you. You can talk to me no matter how small, large, serious, "dumb" ("" bc no problem is actually dumb), no matter what. I will sit and listen to you for hours. Almost everything mentioned in this story are things I have experienced. Abuse. Self harm. Substance abuse (smoking and drinking). And pushing away the people who want to help. I understand and will listen. You matter, and you are loved. It will get better, I promise. You can take my word for it. I love all of you, no matter who you are, and I beg you to reach out of you need someone to help bare the weight the world has given you. I'm here for you, and I'm proud of you for being here today, no matter how hard to was.
You are not alone.
When James, Sirius, and Remus first found out their girlfriend was a borderline stoner, they seemed fine with it for the most part. James was indifferent, believing she wasn’t consuming a dangerous amount. Sirius was impressed and baffled, he spent weeks trying to figure out how she snuck the drug into Hogwarts, which had a strict policy against the use of substances. Every once in a while Sirius even joined Y/n in a smoking session. Remus, however, seemed to be the only one who was slightly worried, he knew all about unhealthy coping mechanisms and how addictive they are, but he chose to trust his girlfriend and left it alone, something he felt very guilty about later on.
Everything changed after the summer before sixth year. The four had kept in frequent touch, mourning over the fact that they couldn’t find a time to get together. Mid August Y/n had stopped responding to letters sent by her boyfriends, which worried them immensely. And when she arrived at platform 9 ¾, looking sickly pale and high out of her mind, they knew something was wrong.
Stubborn as usual, Y/n proclaimed she was fine. Having lied and said that this was her first time doing any illegal substances, which includes alcohol and other drugs, in weeks, and she was just enjoying it. Each of the boys had a pit in their stomach, their girlfriends usually cheerful aura completely gone, seeming to have faded over the summer.
Sirius was the first to notice the problem with your smoking. He took into account the changes in your stash when he would join you every once in a while, the amount you had from one session into another completely decimating your lie about only smoking once or twice a week.
Remus was the one who noticed your drinking problem. He had invited you on a study date with just him, James and Sirius being busy with quidditch practice, and you had showed up late. He didn’t mind, knowing you weren’t the most punctual person, but what he did mind was the strong scent of alcohol you had attempted to cover up with a spell. It hadn’t worked.
Now, poor oblivious James was the one to uncover the self harm scars on his beautiful girlfriend's body. It had been a rare time where you had decided to hang out with the boy, as you had been pulling away from the three at an alarming rate. So, James decided to make the most of it, not knowing the next time this would happen. His way of making the most of it was laying down in bed, bodies pressed up against each other and your chest steadily rose and fell. He had fallen into a light sleep before he was woken up as you adjusted your position, throwing your arm out to the side. He looked at you with a tired smile, grateful for this moment as his gaze traveled up your arm. His smile fell as his heart dropped. When you had stretched your arm out the sleeves of your jumper had ridden up your wrist, revealing the angry red cuts protruding from your skin. James felt tears prick his eyes, not knowing what to do.
Today was a particularly rough day for Y/n. She had received a letter from her parents, informing her that they wish she was never their daughter, and that she would find some creative way to die to rid them of their burden of a disgraceful daughter. It was no exaggeration to say she was out of it. Anyone with any common sense could tell as she stumbled through the Great Hall, smelling greatly of whiskey and weed, and anyone with a good nose (Remus, due to his furry problem, and Sirius, due to his furry gift) could sense the metallic smell of blood coating her skin.
“Oh, for Merlin’s sake.” Remus mumbled, standing up from his spot at the table, James and Sirius looking up quizzically. “I’m over this. We need to talk to her. Now.” He said and the boys nodded, standing up with him and walking to the girl. Sirius gently touched her shoulder, leading her out as she made a face of disgust at his closeness, causing his heart to twang.
She had been so mean lately, and it was slowly shattering the boys’ heart, however, it was affecting Sirius the most. He missed his girl. The one who always cheered him up and provided him bucket loads of support when he was thrown to the curb and disowned.
They carefully led the girl into the boys’ empty dorm, and the three were thankful Peter decided to eat breakfast this morning instead of sleeping in. Y/n sat on the bed, reaching into her cloak and pulling out a shiny silver flask.
Remus scoffed and grabbed the flask from her hands, “Fucking no, Y/n.”
Anger flashed across the girls face, “The fuck is your problem?” She asked, crossing her arms over her chest.
He waved the flask in front of her face angrily, “This shit is! And the weed! And, baby,” His voice softened. “We know you’ve been cutting. Why won’t you let us in?”
She scoffed and stood up, snatching the flask from the boys hand, “Because it’s my fucking mind and you guys have no right to pretend you deserve to know what’s going on in it.” It was Sirius’ turn to scoff and Y/n looked over with raised eyebrows. “What, got a problem, Black?” She asked again.
“Yeah, I’ve got a fucking problem. You’re being a bitch.” He said angrily.
“Excuse you? I’m being a bitch?” She took a step closer. “Says fucking you, Sirius. The only bitch here is you. With your endless manipulation and fucking lies!”
“Okay, you need to calm down.” Remus said before Sirius could speak.
The only sound that could be heard was Y/n’s loud laughter. It lasted a moment before abruptly stopping as she threw the flask down and neared Remus.
She placed her hands on his chest, smoothing down a wrinkle, “You guys are the ones freaking out when I’m.” She pushed him back, his eyes widened. “Fucking.” Push. “Fine.” His back hit the wall and James, who had been silent the entire time finally stepped in between the two, anger covering his features.
“Back off. We have done nothing but love you! We don’t deserve this shit, Y/n. You don’t have to tell us everything but a simple fucking explanation is due! Even if you won’t give us that you have no right, no right, to lay your hands on us, and I will not put up with this bullshit.” He said and it was silent. The boys held their breaths, hoping James’ speech got through to the Y/n as her and James had a staring contest.
Y/n smirked, “Look at you. The little bitch finally comes out of his shell, and spews utter bullshit.” She said flatly, moving to grab her flask and her bag which she had previously set on the bed. She walked to the door and paused, “We’re over, by the way. I’m leaving your sorry asses.” And she walked out.
The moment the door shut James' body shook with silent sobs and Remus wrapped his arms around the boy, resting his head in between his shoulder blades. Sirius joined the hug, squeezing tightly as a few stray tears of his own left his eyes.
The three stood there, hugging each other tightly as they cried in each other's arms. They had no choice now but to watch the girl they loved most slowly kill herself, for a reason unknown to them.
Unbeknownst to them, the girl slid down the backside of the door, hand covering her mouth to silence her sobs. She knew it was getting bad and she knew those boys cared about her and wanted to help and she fucking pushed them away, afraid they would turn out to be like her parents. Cruel and abusive. She regretted leaving the moment the door slammed shut, her mind immediately sobering up as she realized what she had done. She just lost the three most important people in her life, people who loved her, if they still could after her cruel words. In that moment she realized the most terrifying thing. The thing that haunted her nightmares and fueled her addictions. In all her attempts to cut her parents from her life and forget about them. She had become them.
#aanoia#romance#the marauders#marauders map#james & peter & remus & sirius#james potter x reader#sirius black#sirius black x reader#remus loves sirius#sirius x reader#remus lupin#remus lupin x reader#poly marauders#poly marauders angst#poly!marauders x reader#poly!marauders angst#poly!marauders#angst
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I do think the disclaimers from authors about NOT ENDORSING!!!! certain behaviors in fics is pretty funny, but I’ll admit I do it too. Oddly I only put warnings for abuse of the self, not the abuse of others. I write a fair bit of fic that “romanticizes” (or seems like it does) suicide/self harm/eating disorders to the point where it can almost be a tutorial of how to do it if I’m graphic enough. So in those I normally just add dead dove tags and put a disclaimer about how the trigger warning is no joke and you shouldn’t do the things that the characters do in the fic. It’s not like a Lifetime Movie end credits where the authors note is filled with hotlines and stuff, just a quick little note that, hey, yeah, if you’re considering this, don’t do it.
Oddly, I don’t think that behavior comes from fandom itself but rather from a completely different corner of the internet — when I struggled with the same stuff that I write about, it was pretty common for everyone’s bio to say that they “don’t promote” or they’re “not pro” and I guess old habits die hard. (Whether or not certain types of depression/SH/ana blogs etc really DONT promote or those words are just a please-don’t-ban-me card is a completely different discussion.)
It’s pretty ironic actually because when I’m on the other side of things (as the reader), reading about it is really cathartic in fic, but triggering (not in a fun way) in “real” books. Like there’s several books I had to DNF or shelf because it got to be too much, but oddly enough fic actually helps me a lot.
WOW that was all way heavier than I intended to get when I first started typing this ask! But yeah, that’s my own personal relationship to “I do not endorse” and I didn’t realize how odd it actually is until I started reading some of these other asks! I don’t think any type of “this is bad, actually” authors note is ever necessary honestly, but I also don’t think they’re that big of a deal — if a note from the writer about how they’re ~totally against the “bad” thing they’re writing about~ really takes you out of the fic that much, I don’t understand that either…it’d be one thing if they rambled on and on but even then I don’t think it’s that big of a deal 🤣 Annoying maybe but no one is required to read the AN.
My general threshold is “would a movie/podcast/real™️ book have a similar Viewer Discretion Adviced notice? If so, your A/N is likely fine and not virtual signal-ly or OTT at all.”
--
Heh. I think you're assuming a very different type of PSA from what other people are.
From what I've read, self-harm, suicide, and disordered eating are some of the topics that are a bit Monkey See, Monkey Do. Even support group discussions may increase the desire to cut, for example. It's still not 1:1, and we should be able to make art about serious topics, but a PSA doesn't feel totally absurd here. There are plenty of scientific studies showing measurable increases in people hurting themselves IRL after consuming certain material. Even if you did include a hotline, most people's objection is like "That number isn't valid for where I live", not "No one should ever do this".
I think if you polled people, you'd find that many of the PSA-haters are actually totally fine with "Hey, this fic contains serious depictions of mental illness. Make sure you're up for that today." and similar warnings.
But what people are actually talking about in 99% of "PSAs suck" discussions is rape fantasies.
Some clown writes a fic that is blatant fap material for people who like bodice ripper ravishment, and then they plaster it with "Rape Fantasies Bad" commentary that shows that they're judging themselves and their readers in a puritanical way that's a mega-buzzkill, completely out of keeping with the tone of the fic, and completely out of keeping with the actual scientific evidence.
Rape fantasies are commonplace and not a big deal, and to the extent that any depictions are demonstrably harmful, it's things like mainstream Hollywood movies reinforcing very standard cultural narratives, not somebody's sex pollen fic that's probably full of "It's so wrong, so why is it so hot???" anyway.
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Your wish is my command.
Thanks to @samgazm for requesting!
TW suicide, mental health issues. This post deals with very sensitive topics and if you can relate to these mentioned subjects, please view at your own risk or rather skip this one. Here’s a list of hotlines you can call if you’re currently struggling with these kinds of thoughts:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suicide_crisis_lines
You deserve to be helped and to be happy!
How I would fix Shisui Uchiha
There’s actually a lot that can be done with Shisui’s character, since we don’t know much about him from the canon.
Characterize him as a kind soul who’s intelligent and well intentioned, but susceptible to being manipulated. Since manipulation has “worked” for the people in his life (Danzo) before, show how he thinks manipulating the will of Fugaku by using Kotoamatsukami is the only way to achieve a false sense of peace.
What’s with his parents?
His grandfather is Kagami Uchiha, isn’t he?
We can assume his family is more on the side of Konoha than most Uchiha. Show him being in a constant conflict with the part of him that is aware of the discrimination of the Uchiha and the part of him that favors status quo of Konoha.
You can flesh out this inner conflict to a degree where it becomes understandable as to why he would end his life. The reason why someone decides to commit suicide are incredibly personal and individual, and for quite a lot of people suicide is not just dying for the sake of it, but as an escape from their current existence. I can see that being Shisui’s motive as well.
Show us how on the surface, he’s that ball of sunshine full of zest for life and then cut back right to the despair-ridden teen with broken dreams who was forced to mature way too early by a dilemma with no control to change the situation.
In his last moments, make him doubt his loyalty to Konoha and the shinobi system that it runs under.
Flesh out his relationship with Itachi, even after his death. Make Itachi resent him for leaving him alone with this incredibly hard decision. (Which isn’t even a real decision)
Even if Itachi is the gentlest, most loving person, even he’s allowed to resent and mourn his best friend.
#naruto headcanons#naruto shippuden#naruto#naruto imagines#naruto scenarios#naruto fanfiction#headcanons#fanfiction#shisui headcanons#anti konoha#anti shinobi system#danzo shimura#shisui uchiha#shisui
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Hello, I’m Bee, I do writing requests, art, and oc stuff.
Requests are open!!!
About the writer/artist
Name: Bee
Age: 17 (THIS IS IMPORTANT PPL) (day of birth is feb 10)
Pronouns: She/her
Sexuality: Straight
I play a lot of video games, draw, and like writing sometimes. I play a lot of Soulsborne games, my art will consist of references sheets, doodles, shit posts, and ocxcanon/selfshipping.
Im open to having mutuals, dm me if ya want lol, I also will do RP sometimes.
PLEASE READ BEFORE REQUESTING
To make a request put
What pronouns you want used
What character you want
If you want a oneshot or headcanons
And a prompt if you have one <3
I can write
Fluff
Angst
Hurt/comfort
Platonic
Gore
Content that regards mental issues(I’m studying psychology, and can hopefully depict them as how they are)
Canon x canon
Oc x canon (if you send me stuff about them I could figure it out lol)
Coming out fics, (don’t worry pookies, I will ask my friends what it’s like)
Oc x reader (anything with my ocs really-)
Yanderes
I will not write
Smut/suggestive(I can I just don’t want to.)
Glorifying/romanticizing mental illness.
Glorifying/romanticizing sensitive topics(rape, suicide, abuse(this does not include yanderes but remember if someone acts like a fictional yandere irl, RUN)
Cheating fics
Anything transphobic, homophobic, Aphobic, xenophobic (etc)
Fandoms I write for
Payday 2
Souls games(other then sekiro I have not played that one) (my fellow souls lovers are starved)
Resident Evil
Day shift at Freddy’s
Hotline Miami
Faith the unholy trinity(I will not write any minor characters.)
Cotl
Bg3(mainly my Tavs/Durges)
Stardew Valley
Cookie run(kingdom and ovenbreak and the ocs i have posted!)
Other stuff
Discord is horror_bee_ing
TikTok is this
Main blog/spam blog is @horror-bee-ing same pfp as this blog
You can name yourself if you want :)
And enjoy the blog.
Read my friends stuff @hunterwritesstuff
#hazbin hotel x reader#hazbin hotel lucifer#hazbin hotel adam#hazbin alastor#hazbin hotel#elden ring#bloodborne#chaggie#hazbin hotel vaggie#hazbin hotel adam x reader#adam x reader#husk x reader#bg3#bg3 durge#bg3 tav#bg3 astarion#hazbin angel dust#hazbin charlie#hazbin vox#bee writes stuff#bee draws stuff#cookie run x reader
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youtube
ASMR | Elisabeth das Musical - Der Tod x Listener SFW Death Becomes Entranced And Seduces A Lonely Prince
[M4M/GF4M] [Prince! Listener] [Seduction] [Manipulation] [Kissing - no character death, lore here is Death's kisses can kill if it's 'your time' but if it's not they don't but they're still cold and cause temporary frostbite-like symptoms] [TW implies the listener is depressed and has been experiencing suicidal ideation, Death at points advises the listener to kiss him which would kill them, please skip this audio if you think these issues could affect or trigger you and if you are affected by these issues please seek help and contact hotlines in your country. This audio is fictional, Death's attempts to be a voice of suicidal ideation should not be taken seriously nor applied to real life.]
I've been wanting to make this audio for so long. While I've left it ambiguous enough to be enjoyed as an original audio, this character is actually from my favourite musical 'Elisabeth das Musical'. It's a German-language dark queer historical romance where Death (Der Tod) is drawn to those who think about him, in particular it follows the life of Elisabeth, Empress of Austria, and her son Rudolf. The musical does deal with serious mental health topics and some historical events from that time including the rise of fascism so please know that going in, but if you think you can handle such topics then I couldn't recommend the musical enough.
The original 1992 Vienna production is on Youtube with English subtitles, that is my favourite production and means a lot to me as Uwe Kroger as Death is just... perfection to me, very much gender envy and has been a big influence on me and helped me with accepting myself and my gender expression, and his characterisation of Death as this genderfluid, pansexual otherworldly being is just beautiful. And if you enjoy then I'd also recommend the 2005 Vienna production which is also on Youtube with English subtitles mostly for the few extra added song and Serkan Kaya's performance as Lucheni.
For those of you in my Patreon Discord server, I streamed this musical last Sunday in there for you guys and it finally felt like the perfect time to bring this audio to life. And if Kronprinz is still around, I know you were requesting a Der Tod audio for a long time and I hope you're happy with this one. The listener in this audio series takes the place of Rudolf, but you don't need to know anything about the musical to understand these audios. I chose to present them more like my original royalty series audios as Elisabeth das Musical is not very well known outside of mainland Europe and Japan, so I hoped by framing it this way with a photograph of myself cosplaying Death from a couple years ago would entice more people who aren't familiar with the musical.
I love this musical so much, European musicals in general are my biggest interest and if you go searching for them it wont be long until you find my sfw account @emptymasks posting too much about them. If you're interested in learning more I have some masterlists and info posts pinned on my emptymasks Tumblr, but also as part of my subathon rewards I am doing a stream on my Twitch explaining about infodumping about European musicals and I've been working on some video essays for years that I hope to get finished this year that will be up on my emptymasks Youtube channel. I also run @europeanmusicals . If any mutuals or followers from my main or side blogs finds this... well hello there, I find myself nervous to drop this in the euro musical tags, as if people are going to find this format of fanwork weird but well... I had fun, I hope you guys are nice about this (nice doesn't mean you have to like it, but please don't be mean about it if you just don't enjoy asmr or audio content).
Something something if I had a nickel for every time Prince voiced a personification of Death from different fandoms I'd have three nickels.
.
Old public spicy audios on sound gasm (link in pinned post).
2 Exclusive spicy audios on Patreon every month.
I also stream on Twitch every week @ dervampireprince .
[minors + ageless blogs dni. this blog is for 18+ only.]
[do not repost/reupload/edit any of my content]
#elisabeth das musical#todolf#der tod#european musicals#der tod x rudolf#death x rudolf#der tod x reader#der tod x listener#the vampire whispers#royalty kink#Youtube
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ok ok ok. incoming tw for sui ide mentions and correlating depression mentions, but i feel like this needs to be said
those posts that say "this is your sign to stay alive !!! you are loved !!!" are all good and well meaning, but as a fellow sufferer of the Big Sad, at least for me, these are quite unhelpful. they dont know you. they dont interact with you. its like filming buying a homeless person a $1 mcdonalds coffee.
so im gonna share some tips and general thoughts that have helped me.
when you want to hurt yourself:
-get a rubber band/hair tie, wear it around your wrist, and snap it. my psychiatrist actually recommended i do this. it stings a bit, but ultimately, it's better than taking a knife to your arm.
-draw with a red marker on the body area you want to hurt. stitches are my go-to, but it can be literally anything. try not to use the super thin tipped markers if you can help it because you could start digging them into your skin, and thats counterproductive.
if anyone else has tips for this specific section, feel free to chime in.
when you're having serious thoughts about killing yourself:
-write. journal, story, ramble. just write. write your thoughts and feelings in a notebook. project your feelings onto a fictional character (try not to get too attached to the character you're killing). depending on what you write, it can also be distracting and help get your mind off the Thoughts (comedy, romance, the like).
-text/call/talk to someone. doesn't have to be a professional at first. doesn't have to be about suicide either. text a friend, try to talk about other topics (jokes, fandoms, music, literally anything). if they notice something's off/if you want to tell them outright, TELL. THEM. more likely than not, they want to help you help yourself and will tell an adult, or even call a hotline, for you.
-tell your parents. im sure i'll get backlash for this, but no matter the situation, most parents genuinely do not want their child dead. they will help you. if they dont, burn them to the ground go back to the previous point, and try talking to a friend instead.
-keep the lights on. being such a raccoon myself, i enjoy sitting in the dark. it can be comfortable. but it can also be dangerous. i dont know if there's some science behind it, but for me, turning on my bedroom lights and/or opening the window blind has at least distracted me from the more serious Thoughts.
these are all the coping mechanisms i can think of off the top of my head. i might edit this later if i think of more. this is a heavier topic than what i usually talk about, but what with recent personal events and other things, i generally wanted to get this off my chest.
additions to the lists are appreciated, but i judt wanted to try and help other people yk
make sure you know your hotline numbers and hospital locations, and stay safe. 🫶🏻
#tw sui ide#depression tw#rant/vent#lord this took me forever to type i kept making typos it was so ANNOYING#idk how to like end this post so uh#drop kicks this post into the void
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Content Warning for s2e34:
dndads season 2 episode 34 includes a string of jokes based on strong suicidal ideation. No one makes any attempts or talks seriously about making an attempt, but if you have any discomfort around these kinds of jokes or if this is a trigger for you, you can skip the follow times (in the first chunk I also included a string of general mental illness jokes, just to be safe). This doesn't include all of the talk about the topic, but it's definitely the place of strongest sentiment.
ad-free (Patron): 31:22-33:16 and to a much lesser extent 34:06-34:22
main-feed (as of 5/23/23, may change as ads update): 34:33-36:28 and to a much lesser extent 37:17-37:33
You can absolutely skip these parts without losing overall context of the episode. You will not be missing out, give you FOMO a warm drink and prioritize yourself. I'm not an expert on crisis hotlines, please feel free to share info in the notes of this post, but if you live in the US remember that you can call 988 for the 24 hour suicide and crisis hotline.
#dndads#dungeons and daddies#dndads 2#it is a VERY good episode#these parts just made me uncomfortable in a way that like#this show gets Real sometimes#and I don't want anyone caught off guard#a character making suicide jokes def has a place in a narrative#but i have my own feelings about whether or not theyre funny#anyway!#me talking#psas
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Hope this don’t feel like a vent!!but any advice how to manifest w worsen mental health.
Mental health and manifestation
Hi love, I'm so sorry its taken a bit to respond I've been under the weather and I wanted to answer this when I had the brains for it.
I have a post about this topic in particular because it's something I come across a lot in this community:
Here is the link I'm gonna try not to just repeat it, so please take a look, it handles this topic better.
A lot of people interpret law of assumption to mean if they want to manifest they have to force themselves to be happy, this is an unfortunate misconception and a harmful one.
Living in the end does NOT mean you have to magically erase all the pain you're feeling. You can feel like you have a hole through the middle of you and still be living in the end.
You can cry your eyes out and still manifest everything you want, you can feel defeated and sad and still manifest everything you want, nothing you feel is going to stop you from manifesting.
Someone who is mentally ill may struggle to "just live in the end" so I would probably recommend robotic affirmations instead. No feeling required. Just saying affirmations over and over. Your feelings are not the authority on your reality, you are.
I'm not qualified to give mental health advice but here are things I personally find helpful as someone who is depressed:
Vitamin D. I know it sounds really trivial but I swear this can make or break my mental health.
When I am unstable I commit to ONE thing. A big part of mental health is shame from being unable to complete as much as you would like to. I decided that it didn't matter what I did or didn't as long as I completed one thing every day. For me, that thing was showering.
nervous system regulation. I used to have an hour everyday where I turned off the lights and did nothing.
I'm autistic and struggle to understand why I am feeling bad a lot of the time and sometimes I use this website to help me take care of myself because I have to be told lol. TW one of the questions asks whether or not you have eaten.
national suicide hotline can be dialed with three digits 988, if you need someone call someone.
tips for emotional regulation
#loa blog#loa tumblr#loa#loablr#loass#loassblog#loassumption#neville goddard#manifesation#manifestation#law of manifestation#manifest
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To add to the pile of questionable tumblr behavior as of late, and as a psa at large:
I searched a mental health related tag last week and I got immediately a message from a bot called Koko. It intended to put me through to "people who are interested in mental health topics". In this tumblr message format, they didn't immediately facilitate hotlines, specific mental health care services or professional help, just "people".
I didn't respond to it. It's a bot. I didn't block it because I was interested to see where it would lead, but I didn't talk back. In the following days, it kept sending me messages, trying to get me to use their service.
Among the messages, they told me how it works, not that I had asked:
So, it sounds like a recipe for disaster in the making to me. My personal mental health information being passed through random tumblr users and getting a reply from someone who, not only isn't a professional or part of any sort of mental health care group I could get informed about, but they also will provide unsupervised answers to topics of great importance to someone who was looking into related tags.
But, tumblr user thewindandthewolves seems to endorse it, so let's check them out and see what they have to say.
Well. I'm posting the responses in chronological order, but I guess the raving review from a tumblr user was actually a kid who didn't give them consent to use their words as endorsement. Great look.
Today, I got a new message. Again, unprompted.
Second review person has apparently deleted their blog, so no background information on that one. If that's you, let us know.
I decided to look at their blog and read people's comments on their posts. The tumblr userbase came through with the receipts and linked this very detailed article about not only the bot and its founder but the sketchy study it uses as a foundation:
Here's an important quote from this article regarding the study in which Koko is founded as a clear notion of what consent means to them:
Morris [Koko's founder] declined to say whether he thought the subjects had meaningfully consented to the study. He told Motherboard that his goal was to establish a new best practice, where he would be able to transparently show his results to social media platforms. However, when asked if he felt that the experiment was transparent to the participants involved, he said he’d needed more time to think about it.
It's not a tough one to respond to, Morris.
I suggest you to please read the whole article but the way in which these people perform verbal gymnastics to try to justify the lack of consent from people involved is alarming.
About Tumblr's involvement, the article didn't get comments from them on it:
Stony Brook's IRB [Institutional Review Board] and multiple people tasked with overseeing the IRB did not respond to multiple emails from Motherboard about the study or the process. Facebook, Discord, and Tumblr responded to Motherboard’s initial emails but did not provide comment. Telegram did not respond to Motherboard’s request for comment.
The article also read the fine print of the Terms of Service, the only thing they provide as any type of consent to users, and the previous situation of using tumblr user posts without them knowing is illuminated further:
The current dynamic between Koko and its users more closely parallels the relationship between most tech companies and their users than that between a mental health provider and patient. Its Terms of Service, for instance, state that, “You grant Koko a fully paid, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, transferable and fully sublicensable right (including any moral rights) and license to use, license, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt, prepare derivative works of, publicly perform, publicly display, and otherwise fully exploit Your Content.”
As an editor, that sounds more like a US release agreement form for intellectual property, which should not be used as any form of mediation for personal data. It also alarms me to no end that the "Content" in question, in the example we have was, according to OP, a post they had made on their own blog about Kokobot and not a response or quote provided to Kokobot itself which, in tow, signifies that the data collected could come from anywhere and not only what you actively provide them. But what do I know.
I did more digging by myself and found even more articles denouncing the behavior of this bot and company, this being another interesting one:
This one included the following thing about the peer-counseling aspect of it and the use of AI to craft the supposed "people" responses:
During the AI experiment—which applied to about 30,000 messages, according to Morris—volunteers providing assistance to others had the option to use a response automatically generated by OpenAI's GPT-3 large language model instead of writing one themselves (GPT-3 is the technology behind the recently popular ChatGPT chatbot).
Apparently, Koko has been around for a while, with articles discussing it as far as, at least, 2017. Still, I had never before received unprompted, unwanted, invasive messages from it on tumblr until now.
If you post or search tags related to mental health, it's very likely that you'll get this bot in your messages or you already have. There are many layers of breach of ethics in this situation, in my opinion, each one worse than the last one.
Before using it or sharing any information at all (with any bot ever), I'd advice you to look into it beforehand. I know we are the "trust no bots" website and the fake ladybots have taught us well on how to spot them and protect ourselves, but this one in particular seems very dangerous to me.
I can't talk about whether or not this has helped anybody, I'm not coming anywhere near it, but the sole concept of this sounds like a bad idea. The advice provided doesn't seem to come from selected professionals the platform is endorsing legally but by random people (and/or AI) who are not only not trained for it, they aren't being compensated for work made for a program, which is probably making good money out of all the social media platforms it's working with. It also allows them to not be responsible for the advice given, to some extent.
Even if people with mental health concerns can discuss things between them in very productive and helpful ways, there isn't genuinely transparent communication if it's anonymously mediated by a company and there isn't a proper professional care that can accompany them from someone who is trained to facilitate it. You can talk to a friend without having to provide data to a company that could identify you since, according to the first article:
There is, further, no easy way to wall the collection of such data off from actual subjects, as anonymized datasets can often still be traced back to specific individuals. (A 2019 study found that 99.98 percent of Americans could be correctly re-identified in any dataset using 15 demographic attributes.) This is why privacy experts have been vocal about the exploitation of data privacy and the unreliability of an anonymous dataset.
I'm not here to tell anyone what to do or not to do but I'm here to share this because I know that I would appreciate the information if someone else had come across it instead. Make decisions with all the information you can get.
Throwing a wild idea for the hellsite but maybe staff and ceo should be a little less occupied in persecuting trans folk and more into reading the fine print of the unethical companies they're signing with, who are exploiting their userbase's mental health, especially that of literal children whose quotes are being used to endorse their business without any legal consent, aside from a terribly worded TOS. But what do I know.
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Learning To Reverse the Golden Rule
Today I’m discussing why I hold myself to a higher standard than I hold everyone else. I want to think about how to let go of this unhealthy habit and start treating myself with more kindness and compassion. And since I know this is something I’m profoundly Not Alone in, I’ll share what I’ve learned.
Note: I talk about suicidal ideation and post-traumatic stress in this post. If you don’t feel ready for those topics, maybe skip this one! And if you struggle with suicidal thoughts, please call 988 for help and resources from the Suicide and Crisis Hotline.*
Keep reading.
If you found this helpful, consider joining our Patreon.
#compassion#mental health#self-care#service#the golden rule#depression#anxiety#PTSD#tw suicide#tw suicidal ideation
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tumblr as a non USAmerican is really like:
"everyone remembers [USAmerican experience]!"
"here's 30 posts in a row about fucked up USAmerican problems and don't you dare scroll past or not care about them!! what do you mean your country has problems too"
"here's a post about an interesting topic! [only cites USAmerican specific statistics]"
"post about an incredibly serious internationally important event. make sure you call your representatives!! whatever the fuck those are!! make sure you go to these listed protests that are *only* in America!! if you don't do either of these you're a monster!!"
"here's the [USAmerican and *maybe* Canadian if you're lucky] suicide/trans help/etc hotline"
"here's a genuinely really helpful piece of advice that could change so many people's lives!*
(*it only works in USAmerica. no we won't mention that in the post itself you have to scroll through to the bottom where it's casually mentioned)"
"here's another post about an incredibly serious internationally relevant issue. that immediately finds a way to link it to USAmerica because God forbid we arent the protagonists for five seconds"
"fearmongering about some incredibly USAmerican specific problem that a majority of the world doesn't have"
"I know we're all looking at [x] from an American perspective-"
"the only time we bring up other countries politics is when they're entertaining"
"USAmerican cities getting mentioned as CITY, STATE (or sometimes just CITY) as if that's meant to mean fucking anything. every non USAmerican city just gets CITY, COUNTRY"
"every single price is listed in USD unless mentioned otherwise. no we won't clarify"
"everyone knows what a dennys/trader joes/wal mart/costco/ whatever the fuck else yall come up with is"
#im so so so tired#me.txt#milo hater moment#because if i dont vent it out harmlessly im gonna kill the next american i come across
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Hi ;) I don't know if you're currently accepting requests, but if you do, may I request a Malcolm Bright x Reader fic please ? TW : Self-h*rm, anxiety, depression, ED, mental illness.
Reader and Malcolm are very close friends so they both lovingly care about each other. Reader hasn't been answering any of his calls and messages for a few days, which is unlike her 'cause she always picks up the phone when he calls her. He starts to grow more and more worried, especially because he knows about her mental health struggles. So naturally he decides to go check on her. When he arrives he finds her in a very bad state : depression, anxiety, ED and Self h*rm have been hitting her harder that usual. He stays in at her house for a few days to take care of her, which includes reassuring her when she gets panic attacks, telling her that he strongly cares about her and that nothing will make him leave her, laying beside her to help her sleep, hugging her etc. Eventually she starts to feel a bit better.
I know it's very emotionally charged, both with dark stuff and comfort/care stuff, so if you feel like you can't do it, it's totally okay, I understand. Do whatever makes you feel the most comfortable.
Please take care 🤍 Sending you hugs.
To Make It Through
(Malcolm Bright x Gender-Neutral Reader)
Warnings: Insinuations of self-harm, ED, depression, anxiety, and mental illness.
Word Count: 1203
A/N: I wasn’t sure how to begin writing this. The most important goal for me was writing this with respect to those who suffer from self-harm, depression, mental illness, ED, and anxiety. I have never experienced the first four, but I’ve dealt with mild to moderate anxiety, I believe since I was young (I’d like to add, I’ve never been diagnosed by a doctor for anxiety). I have no idea what someone who lives with these struggles goes through. I wanted this to be a comforting story, one that hopefully brings a little light to everyone who reads it.
I didn't want to include too many details that could be triggering or potentially disrespectful to those who deal with the topics above.
And to anyone who is suffering and in need of help, below are different hotlines and resources.
National Eating Disorders Association
988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline
The Trevor Project
National Institute of Mental Health
Malcolm unlocked your front door with the extra key you gave him.
It’d been three days since he last heard from you—no responses to his texts. No calls or video chats, not even a dumbass meme. And he was worried.
You were religious in your response time to him. Honestly, he had no idea how you could send a text off so quickly.
First, he noticed the dishes on your counter. A few days' worth. Then, the blanket was on the floor instead of folded neatly over the couch. Your curtains were drawn tight, and the couple of plants you had were a little less lively than when he was here last week.
He slowly pushed your bedroom door open so as not to startle you.
It was difficult to see through the darkness, but from what he could tell, clothes were thrown around the room. And he could make out a thin layer of dust on your bookshelf.
He took in your curled state under your comforter. Only the top of your head peeked out.
He didn’t need to ask you what was wrong. You’d known each other long enough for him to recognize the signs.
After slipping his shoes and coat off, he gently lowered himself beside you. He didn’t move the covers or speak, only placed a hand close enough to your back so you could feel him while not being touched.
He didn’t know if you were awake, but that didn’t matter. He’d wait however long it took until you were ready to acknowledge him.
He wondered when you last ate—those dishes were probably older than he thought. He tried to recall if there were any warning signs he should’ve picked up on when he was here last time. But you seemed fine.
You were also very good at hiding it.
About an hour later, you shifted to face him, still beneath the blankets.
It wasn’t much, but it was enough.
He whispered your name. You didn’t move.
He tried again. “Can I do anything for you?”
You sniffled, and his heart nearly broke.
“Can I move the blanket, honey?” he asked.
The top of your head moved slowly in a nod.
He hooked a finger and pulled down carefully, revealing water-lined eyes with bags under them.
He thought as much. When things worsened, you never slept well.
“What do you need?” he whispered as gently as he could.
You didn’t look at him as your hand emerged to clutch your pillowcase.
“I don’t know,” you mumbled.
He nodded. He couldn’t let you stay like this.
“Then, could you do something for me? I know you won’t want to, but you can come right back. I promise.”
You glanced at him, then looked away. As much of an acknowledgment as he would get.
“Go take a shower. Take as long as you need,” he said.
You didn’t fight him, didn’t argue, and he took that as more of a bad sign than anything.
Once your bathroom door closed, he stripped the bed and threw everything in the washer. After replacing the sheets, he put the discarded clothes in your hamper and tossed any trash he spotted. He kept the blinds closed. Baby steps.
He was finishing putting the dishes away when you walked out in a towel and back into your room to change.
You didn’t ask what he was doing or tell him he didn’t have to do it. You almost ignored him.
You had already returned to bed when he entered. This time, you were against the headboard, staring off into space.
He sat beside you.
Your hands rested above the covers, wrists on display, and his shoulders relaxed.
It hadn’t gotten that bad.
He let you have your silence. Sometimes it was what you needed.
“Why are you friends with me?”
Sometimes it wasn’t.
“Because I need you,” he said.
It was all he thought to say. Superficial compliments wouldn’t stop your mind from spiraling. Hopefully, you’d believe him.
You shook your head. “You deserve better.”
He wanted to shield you from your own words.
“(Y/N), I need you to look at me,” he said. And when you didn’t, he repeated himself. “Please?”
You glanced at him, rubbing the hem of your shirt between your fingers.
“Have I ever lied to you?” he asked gently.
You shook your head slowly, hunching your shoulders.
“I will always always tell you the truth,” he said. “You’re my best friend. That’s never going to change, okay?” He carefully pulled your hand between his. “I care about you so much, (Y/N). You’re never going to get rid of me.”
You sniffled, glancing at him through your lashes.
Tears lined his own eyes, threatening to spill forth.
You were his best friend. He’d be lost without you, and he needed you to know that he’d never go anywhere, that he belonged by your side. You made him feel seen. You made him feel sane.
Whatever you needed from him, he would give.
“Can you…Can you hold me?” you whispered, trying to keep your voice from breaking.
He answered by laying on his back, waiting for you to settle on his chest, hands still connected.
“Get some rest,” he whispered. “I’ll be right here when you wake up.”
—
Malcolm stayed with you for the next few days. He even called Gil and said he had to take a personal day, much to Gil’s surprise and pleasure. Thankfully, Gil didn’t ask any questions. Malcolm never would’ve broken your trust like that.
Today was the first day you had gotten dressed. Malcolm considered that a massive sign you were starting to feel more like yourself.
“How’re you feeling?” He took in every feature of your face, searching for the most minute twitch.
“I’m…I’m better.” You nodded slowly. “I’m not okay. I know that, but I’m better than I was. Not everything’s as…dark.”
The corner of his mouth tilted up in a sympathetic smile. His fingers found yours, holding them lightly.
“All healing takes time. And I’ll be right here whenever you need me.” His eyes stayed locked with yours, nothing but sincerity in them.
You swallowed. “Thank you.”
He shook his head slightly. “You never need to thank me for doing something I want to do.”
It brought tears to your eyes—how kind he was. Malcolm was the only person you could trust with everything. He knew what it was like to be trapped in your own mind, to hate so many parts of yourself that you want to rip out.
And each time you were on the verge of relapsing, he’d pull you away from the edge. As you’d done for him.
“Why don’t we take a walk? See how many squirrels we can feed,” he said, offering you his arm.
Your face lifted, not a smile, but not so melancholy as it had been.
“Okay.”
Grasping the crook of his elbow, you interlocked your fingers there and let him lead you outside.
The sun's warmth sunk into your skin as Malcolm launched into what his mother was trying to rope him into. And when the first chuckle in a week passed your lips, the darkness didn’t feel so encompassing anymore.
Taglist: @phenomenal-bird
If anyone would like to be added to my taglist, please comment or message me and tell me which character you'd like to receive updates on.
#Malcolm bright#Malcom bright angst#Malcolm bright fluff#Malcolm bright x reader#Malcolm bright x gender neutral reader#Malcolm bright x gn!reader#Malcolm bright imagine#Malcolm bright oneshot#Malcolm bright fanfic#Malcolm bright imagines#prodigal son imagine#prodigal son imagines#prodigal son oneshot#prodigal son fanfic#prodigal son#prodigal son angst#prodigal son fluff#prodigal son x reader#prodigal son x gender neutral reader#prodigal son x gn!reader
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