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yandere-toons · 6 months

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IN MY DEFENCE

Bakugou Katsuki – Platonic Scenario

WARNING: yandere, strong and bloody violence, guns, swearing throughout, morally ambiguous reader, toxic mindset.

WORD COUNT: 4.195

"Does he even want us on this mission?"

From out the darkness overhanging an awning slunk a blending of scales and skin. A man below the neck; a viper above; a triangular skull bisected by diamond-shaped eyes; a forked tongue undulating and licking; a rounded crest mottled and flared—nature's grotesque experiments had found a new beast to assemble.

He wound a coil of tongue around lead, colouring it morbid yellow, before stuffing it into the top of a magazine and locking it in place. A ring of light spiralled off the barrel as he took aim, the oblong proportions of his head forcing his neck to twist hard.

A lone bullet whistled low before the crack alerted Katsuki; and you collapsed at almost the same instant to one knee, and thence to the road.

Kirishima dove to catch your head before it split on the asphalt, and the skin on his arms metamorphosed into flesh-coloured rock. He hunkered down close against you, his back to the noise, his body crumbling to grit, then growing back stonier by the second.

A fever of resentment cooked inside Katsuki as though he'd been fed hot charcoal fresh out of a furnace. "What the hell did you do?" his voice rose ten decibels with each syllable, and the skin on his cheeks turned purple as he bellowed out a heap of breath on the last word.

Many a young heart cried out in fear at the depth of his rage, which flowed without ceasing, as foam at the mouth of a rabid dog.

Katsuki charged the villain faster than he could blink, arms outstretched to the point of aching, palms up to reveal the flex of his hands. There ignited the essence of a bomb, the biological incarnation of a lit match, of flint against steel, glistening and accumulating sweat in obeisance to him.

A thunderous roar and hiss on par with artillery fire wrested peace from every eardrum in the district. The maw of this inferno drank up the earth's light, engulfing it in a near infinite storm of colour. The sun returned swiftly, but the spectre of the bomb danced still in the eyes of each observer, clawing out bursts of black and white that fuzzed round the edges like sparking wires.

You shooed away the hand of another and hovered your own above the gaping wound. There arose the song of metal bending, and the bullet levitated from where it had lodged in your femur. The sudden collision with bone shattered the bullet into tiny, gore-drenched chunks.

Kaminari went rigid as a drop of blood snaked along the bullet, bloated at one end and splattered down. He reeled towards Kirishima, his hands spread wide, grasping at the air. "Can't you do it? Your Quirk makes you way better at this kind of thing than me!"

A few metres away, an explosion devastated the road, and a golden glow of embers flashed across Kirishima's serrated teeth. "Listen to me, you gotta man up!" his expression hardened by the sobering reality of the battlefield, but his voice remained clear and true: the sound of encouragement passed from friend to friend. "I've only got two hands, so I need you to pick up the slack!"

Gulping his last protest, Kaminari crossed his hands over the wound and steeled himself against the slippery flow of blood. "Bakugou's gonna kill me." His chest heaved with a breath so deep he seemed keen to disappear underwater, and he dove into the mess of blood gushing from your thigh.

Kirishima listened to the string of obscenities running amok, some he'd heard before, others mixed in with profanities he'd never imagined in his darkest days. "I think he's a little distracted."

Blood spurted from the wound, bubbling over his fingers, lapping at them with a warm tongue, and Kaminari struggled to keep down the lump in his throat. "Gross," he whined, scrunching his face to the brim with wrinkles. "I so wish I had gloves right now." Kaminari glanced wistfully at Katsuki, whose hands lay shielded in puffs of cloth.

The laughter of the nearly departed wheezed out from under your haggard breathing. "I'll remember that when you take a bullet."

As the pallid white waves swept across his cheeks, Kaminari pronked with a start, his mind's eye now teeming with grisly visions. He let out a weak laugh, almost choked with comic horror, and hoped the levity would ease your pain a little. Every hinge of his smile begged to collapse, but Kaminari forced his muscles to hold it together until you once again propped your neck against Kirishima's arm.

With a flick of your hand, the bullet reversed its course and sliced clean through the wasted left ear of he who had fired it.

A drizzle of red encircled the road beneath his feet as the villain wrenched wide his mouth, hissing, teetering towards escape.

Before Katsuki could bound forth and give chase, Kaminari leapt in front of him and pressed both hands to his chest. His whole body spasmed at that moment, and Katsuki jumped back, his fists twitching. He swallowed down the urge to knock Kaminari out of his way, wrenching a shred of control from what burned through his entrails.

"Dude, we got him! He's totally on the run!" Kaminari laughed goodhumouredly. A glob of blood hopped from his palm, smearing his fingerprints on Katsuki's costume, but as Katsuki fidgeted, the shape mangled into confusing streaks.

Shame churned in his stomach as Katsuki watched the blood fall and answered for himself who had spilt it.

A whisper laden with groans drew his attention over his shoulder, where you had wormed your way into the fetal position. Kirishima knelt at your side and took your hands in his own, sweat trickling down his face. "Squeeze as hard as you can, buddy, you know I can take it!"

"I'm not done yet," muttered Katsuki, dazed by the state of the mission and your deteriorating health, his eyes fixed on the retreating figure's battered form. He seized Kaminari by the back of his jacket and flung him to the pavement. "Until I blow his fucking head off!"

Kaminari braced, rolling until his elbows pressed against his chest and his screams of terror faded into the air. He winced at the scrapes on his hands as he slammed his palms down and lurched to a stop on his belly, the shock propelling a jolt across his spine as he reached out for Katsuki.

The path forward, now unobstructed, promised the sweetest opportunity to crush and dominate his enemy, and it thrilled Katsuki; the ambition to inflict upon this villain a pain like none had suffered before, or indeed ever would again, rampaged ahead of all other desires.

His pulse throbbed in every limb, threatening to burst from his neck, and the details of the world round him warped in and out of focus. Hearing nothing but his own breath and heart, he threw his arms back, splayed his fingers, and bent his knees.

Blast after blast sent Katsuki sprawling into the street, each one picking up speed and hurtling him closer to the villain. Smoke and flames streaked across the Musutafu skyline, obscuring that entire part of the world, the black of the smoke and the red of the flames as intense as a sunrise after a moonless night.

The villain had fled into an office building, the door riven and clashed shut, pinned with a chair. He walked backwards into a cubicle, counting the seconds, pistol trained on anything that broke through the barricade. Yet putting his other hand on the grip to steady the first hand seemed too great an effort;—sweat beaded on his palms, turning his limbs to mush.

Katsuki wove in the air with the tenacity of a guided missile, landing with such force that steam billowed everywhere. He pulled himself up to his full height, rolled his shoulders, and cracked his neck back and forth over one shoulder. But first, he thrust a laugh between his teeth, then heaved in another breath and took aim.

Bricks and mortar flew into every corner of the office on wings of smoke, one smashing into the villain's face. The trauma ripped the pistol from his hand the instant after his index finger clenched the trigger on impulse. With a scuff of his shoes on the concrete, he tumbled backwards, his skull caroming off the floor.

The muzzle blast revealed the dark spread rushing down his chin, the numbness of his dislocated jaw, and the silhouette rising from the edge of the rubble in the distance. In the darkness of the ruins, everything touched by sunlight appeared fulgent and blurred.

The demoniacal passion that beat in the throat of anyone bold enough to summon it drove Katsuki's voice to the brink of distortion. "Come out and fight me!" every remaining window in the building cracked at the sound of his challenge.

Katsuki stuck his boot atop the heap of rubble nearest to the entrance and listened, controlling every breath and holding every upset. Amidst the rustling of dust, the injured man's grunting stirred the blood in his veins, and Katsuki let out a yell and leapt towards the source, releasing every bestial urge he possessed.

Two explosions, one from each hand, propelled him higher, reaching their apogee above the murmurs of pain. There, Katsuki swung his arms overhead, blasting the ceiling with precision, setting it ablaze, and plunged downwards with his legs outstretched, poised to stomp the life from the voice. Instead of the crunch of bones under overwhelming pressure, he heard the sound of splinters.

The concrete fissured beneath his feet and a shockwave went up in a puff of smoke, followed by a faint scream from ten paces away. Katsuki lifted his head to see the outline of the villain, who shuddered before him and scrambled in the opposite direction. Periodic whimpers and curses escaped from the gap between his fingers, and each time Katsuki seemed to take pride in this weakness.

Every few seconds, his hand snapped with a crackle of sparks. A mist of light draped in ribbons across his face, the glint of burning orange shining more clearly than ever against the sea of black. At that moment, his canines shone prominently, baring and grinding his teeth until his mouth vibrated with menace.

The villain looked into the abyss of smoke, and in the eyes that looked back, there was no reflection of the hero, only the light of a mind that shrieked with primal hatred and fed on vile fantasies. The same red colour that poured from his nostrils floated in the darkness, shadowing him.

Katsuki swung his arm, puncturing the column of smoke and drawing it back as a curtain. The longer he beheld the villain, the more veins bumped along his temples and muscles bulged like sinewy ropes in his neck. There came the sound of an old record scratching and a firecracker popping, flanked by a flash of light on either side of Katsuki.

As soon as the villain staggered away, a gloved hand struck him in the chest; that horrible moment of death pierced him and the inescapable realisation that he was seeing his own through the eyes of another.

The force of the blast doubled in intensity, pain and heat flooding through his body like a grenade, splintering his sternum and filling his ribcage with shrapnel. A crater opened up in the wall behind him as concrete slammed against his spine, and his feet lifted high enough to never again touch the ground.

Through the din, the hero roared in a trance of vengeance, his voice growing more and more animalistic. Katsuki reached for the villain's heart, his arms tremulous, barely able to catch his breath. He struck with all the strength of his body, his eyes bloodshot from the smoke that sucked the air from his lungs.

From the inside of his gauntlet protruded a metal pin;—as he bent his finger to hook it, an instantaneous surge of rage shot through him. When he loosed the pin, a single word, "Die," burst forth, a word that packed a lifetime of contempt and rancour.

A swirl of the most vivid reds and oranges, hot and unquenchable as the core of a forest fire, tasted the air through the tubes of his gauntlets and soared infernal. An explosion more powerful than the loudest clap of thunder rang out, and everything opposite Katsuki burst into embers and spatter.

A whirlwind of flame and smoke pushed the unburnt pieces of concrete into darkness. Thick soot and ash blackened each window, and with a loud crash, shards of glass rained down into the street. The hiss and echo of shrapnel cascaded through the air, flying on the wind, before the explosion waned to a booming rumble.

Sizzling steam wafted through the air, exhaling the sticky fumes of sweat and blood. The hard soles of his combat boots thudded against fissures in the pavement. Smoke arose from his slick forehead, stinking at the hero as he stalked through the clouds of dust, and the threads of his costume stretched as his chest grew heavier.

These huffs and puffs fell short of his eyes, which glowered at all before them. The wildness that had possessed him withered to its usual ache once the sun gilded his face. With each step more driven than the last, the gloom of the wreckage and those whom it buried slipped further and further from his mind.

Katsuki hovered as close as he could without stepping on you. Dollops of blood dripped from the spikes of his hair and stood vibrant against the black of his costume.

"Hey, Bakubro!" Kirishima scanned the street in the vain hope that he would find the villain handcuffed, not reduced to the meat paste one wiped from their shoe. "Where's the villain?"

The muscles in Katsuki's face contracted, as did the muscles in his fingers, which curled inwards to throttle even the memory of the villain. For a moment, a sour calm passed over him, and the twitching in his cheeks subsided. "I blew his ass to pieces."

"Serves him right." You spat out a glob of blood and phlegm onto the asphalt.

A swell of pride drew from Katsuki a chuckle both brief and spirited, for his eyes lit up as the glow of his brightest explosion. The primordial anger that boiled within him gave way to the triumph and bloodlust espoused only by those who relished the battlefield.

Kirishima, whence he sat with hands clasped about your own, slackened them and recoiled a tad, his face blanching and on the verge of contortion. "What? But we can't just..." he bit his tongue as Katsuki swooped down on him.

"We made a judgement call, shitty hair!" He swung his arm wide. "So back the hell off!"

Another wheezing gasp escaped you, but it shrank to a torn, guttural pant as the moribund life inside failed to regain its strength.

As the short distance from the pavement drew his eye back and forth, back and forth, Kaminari eased his hands about your underarms and hauled you up to his chest. The first step to the pavement shot through your body a convulsion of spitting, flailing, and snorting. Froth and drool gelled in your mouth, and blood emptied from your nose into your throat.

The instant Kaminari dropped you and flinched back, wincing at his own carelessness, the skin on his arm erupted with invisible flame and rocketed closer. The centre of his face seemed to cave in on impact, spewing viscous strings of snot in blood and saliva in tears.

Katsuki struck him hard on the wrist, and Kaminari fell over backwards, cracking his nose with his own hand.

"Dumbass!" thundering footfalls commanded his attention, snarling out a venom that would give even the fiercest of beasts pause. "What the hell are you doing?" Kaminari shivered at his reflection, for in the same eyes that brooded over him, there lay a familiar glaze of fear.

With one hand clamped over his nose to stymie the flow of blood, Kaminari squinted through tears. He pulled his knees close and curled into a ball, his side to Katsuki. Despite the congestion in his throat, which Kaminari fought down to the best of his ability, he looked Katsuki squarely in the face.

"We have to move them! We can't just leave them in the street!"

A howl of an outburst so rancid it transcended words, a drive to demolish anything that moved, poured out of Katsuki between teeth squeezed so tight his jaw cried for relief. Nightmarish tension warped the muscles of his face, and he pivoted away from Kaminari, intent on checking your condition.

"Shut up and let me think for a minute!"

You had fallen into silence, the fatigue taking over, the road seeming fused to your skin, the agony so sharp your heart thrashed and stole the light from your vision.

"Go for Recovery Girl! Tell her we need a medevac!"

Kaminari slapped a hand on his earpiece, flooding every hero channel he could locate with a distress signal.

Katsuki spied it moments before Kirishima drawled his name: the swirl of fog over your eyes as Death trotted near.

He snapped his head up and fixed his most intense stare, a mixture of madness and wrath, on Kaminari's back. "Now!" Katsuki lunged for Kaminari, who cowered back, gnashing his teeth and pushing out searing breath. "I don't care who she's with! Bring her here now!"

A miniature explosion shimmered and evaporated from his palm, which Katsuki shoved into Kaminari's face. A line of froth trailed after each word and splashed Kaminari, who wrenched one eye shut and turned to block the droplets with his hand.

Upon seeing Katsuki towering over him, blotting out the sun, Kaminari hunched forward to make himself smaller.

In that instant, as another frantic shout dangled from the tip of Katsuki's tongue, a wretched terror stole the sound from his world. The shrillest ringing, like bullets raining down on him from all sides, shook his sanity, and a cold sweat plunged down his spine. Warmth drained from the most blistering explosions, and chilling tendrils writhed in his stomach.

The phantom pressure of breathlessness, of a sharp heel against his chest, dug at his heart.

Where reinforcements should have charged in unison, the vacant, lifeless road stretched on, beguiling his wide eyes into staring, twitching with the sickness of a revelation most dire. As Katsuki watched the bend in its infinite, absolute distance, one thought of dreadful proportion stuck in his mind: "No one's coming."

The cacophonous voice scratched at his ears again, but the sharpness of his adrenaline-fuelled senses directed him towards the smell of blood.

Kirishima opened his arms as a final, desperate obstacle, lips drawn narrow, flesh bared and hardened. "Bakugou, you saw what happened with Kaminari! If you move 'em now, they might die!"

Katsuki stopped short, reaching one upturned hand. "Take a look at 'em, shitty hair! They're dying anyway!"

First casting his eyes behind, Kirishima meditated on the truth in those words.

The metal shells of his knee guards skidded across the asphalt as Katsuki shouldered Kirishima aside and hurled himself on the ground before you. Freed of all hesitation, he cradled you for a moment, secured you on his back, and made sure to keep his eyes forward.

Black blood, curdled and rancid like old soup, matted his gloves. The tremor in his legs and the stone in his throat came not from his nauseous spring up, nor from the sweltering rush on which he arced through the sky.

* * *

Katsuki paced a uniform sea of white sandstone, staring into the distance at an unreachable target, a target that chased him from sterile wall to sterile wall. He cursed under his breath, as if chanting a spell, at himself for not acting sooner, and at all the scum that abandoned you on the field. His gauntlets rattled with every swing of his arm, skin smeared with soot and blood.

Every three or four laps, a new wave of doubt seized him, and Katsuki paused to watch your breathing, assuring himself that it hadn't ceased or grown errant. Each time, he searched for the barest hint of consciousness, and each time, the pressure of frustration clenched his chest a little tighter.

His shadow loomed over your bedside, slathered with debris and reeking of scorched death, silent as though he could menace the wound out of you.

At the faint creak of a handle turning and a door sliding open on its hinges, Katsuki wheeled round on the entrance and flung out his arm. A light that rivalled the sun bathed his palm with sweat, but Aizawa's dark eyes peered out still from beneath a veil of shaggy hair.

"Where the hell were you?" Katsuki thrust his hand forth, each word aloft from the bombilation of sparks.

Shota Aizawa, a man whom the undead would welcome into their ranks, faced this threat with reddened eyes half overcome by slumping lids: "Your actions today broke more laws than I can count."

Katsuki swiped a ribbon of smoke through the air and neared the foot of the bed, a strip of muscle in his cheek bulging and pulsing. "I ain't apologising for shit! That bastard got every bit of what he deserved!"

A glimmer of scarlet flared to life from deep behind Aizawa's eyes, and the tips of his frayed hair began to levitate. "If you value your career, I suggest you stand down immediately."

Recovery Girl trudged over, her eyes closed in exhaustion, her legs still moving with an impeccable sense of direction. She trailed the hem of her coat on all the dust of the hospital floor. "I told him to take a break I don't know how many times, but he won't leave his friend's side."

The pulp of Katsuki's stomach knotted, and the hairs on his neck bristled. "We're not friends!" He dragged on the last word, voice heavy and exasperated, as though it were an accusation he fought off daily.

Recovery Girl scolded him, pursing her lips and shaking her head, then took up with Aizawa, who lingered on him for a minute.

"They're just some idiot on my team." Katsuki turned to you again, eyes frozen and puffy, haunted by the thought that your hollowed skin looked fit for a casket.

All signs of the convulsion had been wiped from your mouth and dumped inside a steel bin. A blanket, bleached and prone to tangles, pooled thinly over you, and Katsuki drew it forth into a more complete covering. "Hey," he called, as though pulling you out of training, "I know you're hurt, but don't die."

There was a gentleness of mien then, followed at once by a droop in his posture. "Okay?"

The chatter of flapping gums and popping saliva was a needle down his ear, and Katsuki stiffened, his face gnarled once more, before rounding on the noise. "Old lady, get your ass over here and fix this!"

* * *

The head of the academy, his white fur neatly tucked behind his suit vest and chequered trousers, crept up the slope of the chair. A diagonal scar ran from the centre of his forehead down his right cheek, exposing a stripe of pink skin, dulled with time and deprived of fur. A cup of steaming tea in hand, he sat no taller than a small child.

The autumnal air flowed in, cool and refreshing, through the ajar window that Aizawa had hastened to shut.

Principal Nezu replaced the sound with a most pleasant and disarming one, his voice lowering everyone's blood pressure until it cheered death and destruction. "Bakugou's conduct was no doubt reckless, and we shall assign him extra duties for the remainder of the month."

"That's it?"

A forepaw shot out, silencing him.

"We all agree it was excessive force, but young Bakugou acted in defence of a fallen comrade. The fact of the matter is, villains outnumber heroes ten to one, and they will only grow larger unless we as a school do our part." Principal Nezu set his teacup down carefully on his saucer, his head bowed and his eyes closed.

His beady eyes turned black as stone in the reddish haze of dusk. "It falls on our shoulders to train the next generation. Like never before, we need students who can meet this threat. Students who can push the limits of what heroism means."

Nezu slid forward with his elbows, linked his forepaws, uplifted his mouth with permanence, threaded each finger through the others, and rubbed his hands. "We must never encourage lethal force, but if our students are to succeed, they need also recognise when it may be necessary."

Aizawa took one last look at the after-action report before pulling himself to his feet, leaving the folder open to the description of the villain: "Unidentified, body recovered in pieces from a ten-kilogram detonation at close range, all other remains vapourised in the blast."

Do anything you want with my work, but never make me boring!

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saturnalmoss · 8 months

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ARM-WRESTLER

CHAPTER ONE

A curious case of littering

Master Post

An arm was what had caught York’s attention.

He was taking his daily jog around Fancy Town. There weren’t much in the way of alleys here, but the older parts of town had some number of dark nooks and crannies. It was here that York noticed an odd shape on the ground.

It was still there on the second lap. He stopped and looked around. It was getting to be evening, but the brownstones remained quiet, curtains drawn or maybe empty. The irregular lots between them like rotten teeth grew wild with weeds and garbage.

York walked up to the thing on the ground: an arm - as he had thought. He had felt the call to wrestle in his hindbrain before his eyes had even registered it, but if they were lying on the ground, they probably hadn’t got the energy for a good armwrestle. That’s what he had decided on his first lap.

Now, he realized, this arm would never wrestle again. He stood a little longer, then pulled his brand new, refurbished, little flip bone out of his jacket pocket. He was reticent to get an iBone when he couldn't be bothered to memorize a bone number but Rosé way struck with inspiration after their last adventure.

York carefully pressed the buttons marked with stars in the order of the constellation. He had even written orcish on them to help practice the foreign numbers. He figured, in for a phalange in for a femur.

“York!” Rosé said happily.

“Rosé.” York said. “I found an arm.”

“Uh.”

“It’s on the ground, and ain’t attached to no one.” He wanted to hold it up, but Jancy had drilled into him that the crime scene was not to be touched until photos could be taken, and his iBone did not have picture capability.

“Oh no. Uh. Okay, Jancy isn’t in the office - she went to talk to a potential client. UH.”

“Can you call her?”

“Potential client! Her bone is on silent.”

“Can you call Grandma?”

York listened patiently as Rosé muttered something about holding and groups and beep boops.

“Grenda Highforge speaking.”

“Grandma, I found an arm.” York said. There was silence on the other end while Rosé thought of how to rephrase.

“...It’s by itself, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. Also Rosé is here. On the bone, not with me. Rosé, I don't know where you are,” York crouched down on the ground to examine the lone arm again.

“Hi, Rosé!”

“Hi. I'm in the office and Jancy isn’t in the office so we don’t know what to do. Can you do your best Jancy for a minute and tell us what to do?”

“Uh! Yeah. Uh. Don’t touch anything!” York nodded; accomplished. “Secure the area?”

York looked around. Still not a soul, as far as he could tell. “Next?”

“Maybe draw a chalk outline?” Grenda suggested.

“I don’t got chalk.”

“Oh, I do! Well, with me.”

Rosé chimed in, “Grandma, I’m heading over there. Let’s all meet up.” York nodded again, unseen.

“Good idea! Where should I go?” There was a sudden silence on the other end. Rosé stopped in her tracks.

“Uh. Yeah. Uh, what do you see nearby, York?”

York listed them the landmarks nearby. The city folks insistence on naming all the places they go instead of just going was still weird to him. Then again, Northern Tribe orcs didn’t tend to plan to go places together so much as just run into each other sometimes.

The other two tell him to stay on the iBone, maybe look for a blood trail.

“Ain’t no blood.”

“What.” Grenda said.

“Don’t like that.” Rosé said. York peered closer.

“Actually, I don’t think this thing ever had blood to begin with.” He held it up triumphantly. “Yeah! It’s metal! It’s a metal arm!”

“What like a prosthetic? Or a mannequin?”

“Or a crash test dummy?” Rosé added.

“A prosthetic?” York said derisively.

“A prosthetic is a replacement limb!” Grandma told him helpfully. A dog yipped in the background.

“I know what a prosthetic is! But this ain’t no prosthetic. It doesn’t even have spikes.”

“Northern Tribes do prosthetics differently, eh, buddy?” Rosé said.

York turned the arm over in his hand. “Yeah! You just stick a weapon in there! Whose gonna make a whole fake arm to put on your arm when you can stick an ax in there?” He looked at the arm again. “Oh, shit.”

“What?” Rosé asked

“Even for a leg?” Grenda said at the same time.

“Uh, no, hammer’s best if you lose a leg.” York said distractedly, putting the arm on the ground gingerly. “Swords and axes’ll just stick in the ground.” He pushed the palm a little, then pulled it back again.

“What if you just lost the front of your foot, could you get a dagger and do sick kick flip stabby stabs?”

“Yeah. Classic.” York muttered.

“I’m here!” Rosé said and York stood up sharply. She looked at him, then the arm. She raised an eyebrow. York stared.

“Ooh, in stereo! I’ll be there soon. Plus, I have a client! Maybe she can do a little sniffing?”

Rosé, Grenda, and York stared down at the hand together. A dog panted happily nearby, tied tightly to a stake. A little bowl of water glittered. “So, no blood. No body.” Rosé said. “Does that mean this is a lost item, not a murder?”

“It could still be a missing person!” Grenda said helpfully. “You never know.”

“It’s definitely a prosthetic, though? Even though it’s not a weapon?” York asked.

“I mean, I could knock someone out with that.” Rosé said. “Not that I would, because I am a good girl.”

Grenda nodded. “See the bits here? I think it’s so the arm can move. And the fingers have grippies for... gripping. And up at the end it’s kind of softer? To stick to the person. Not a mannequin, Probably a prosthetic. Definitely missing! I bet someone wants this back.” Grenada beamed up at their friends.

Rosé hummed softly, and stroked her chin. “The rules are different for a missing belonging...” York nodded, Grenda smiled. “So... what if we hunted down the owner and returned the arm?”

“And fined ‘em for littering.”

“Wouldn’t Jancy be proud of us?”

“So proud.” Grenda said.

“So proud.” York agreed.

#poscamarkers #drawfee #multi media #fanfic #writing #drawtectives #long post #saturnart

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captain-mj · 1 year

Note

I want the zombie roach AU we discussed.

I am holding your femur hostage.

This is exactly what I'm talking about. Steal my bones guys

Ghost remembered the exact moment he knew Roach had died. He woke up in the hospital, still nursing a bullet wound, with luckily only scant burns. Pain had followed him in a straight shot through his body, an overwhelming sensation.

Price had come in. Or maybe he had been in there a while and Ghost had just now noticed.

But Price hadn't looked happy to see him. He looked like he had been crying and Ghost knew immediately what it was. Ghost didn’t want to ask. He wanted to bury himself in those pillows and never ever know the truth. That way, he could pretend. Pretend Roach was alive and well and somewhere else.

But Simon couldn’t put things away that easily.

"Roach..." His voice sounded shot. Hoarse and harsh. Probably rubbed raw from smoke inhalation. It made him stutter and fall over his words, something he thought he had gotten over as a child. They wouldn’t leave his throat, but he managed to say the name and from Price’s expression, it was more than enough.

"He's gone, Simon. We found his body along with his dog tags." Price sank to his level since Ghost was still laying down. “Burned in the same fire that almost took you.”

"How do you know... Maybe Shepherd just..." The look on Price's face made Ghost trail off.

"I took off his mask, Simon. It was him. I'm sorry, but he's gone." Price was gentle with him. So gentle. It was more than he deserved. He let him die.

"Ah..." Ghost needed to lay down. Maybe forever. He felt Price's hand on his shoulder but it was distant.

"Rest, Ghost. You're hurt."

"Can you get Johnny for me?"

"Yeah… I can get Soap for you. He already knows. Been helping me with arrangements." Price left and it was agonizing wait until Soap came. He sat next to him on the bed, gently tracing the new burns on his body.

Ghost didn't cry. He physically couldn't thanks to some injuries to his face, along with a lot of psychological stuff. But he felt it regardless. A burning behind his eyes and along his nose. He leaned heavily into Soap, into his lifeline.

Soap had clearly been crying. His eyes rimmed with red and there were small tear tracks down his face. But for Simon, he still held it together, not wanting to lose him to Ghost due to grief.

"I really am so sorry."

Ghost felt shaken. The idea of Roach.

His Roach.

Gone.

He hid his face in Soap's face and shook hysterically. Soap hugged him close to him, petting his hair.

"I know. I know." Johnny held him. "They think it was fast. He would've been dead before the.. the fire..."

"How bad is his body?"

"You're not going to want to see it." Soap told him gently. "I found it. And you're not going to want to see it."

Ghost continued to lay with Soap for a long time. But he knew already that he wasn't going to let Roach go this easily.

He would do something. Anything.

Ghost was discharged two weeks later. It was excruciatingly long. He counted the days slowly.

His bullet wound healed in 10 days. The perfect, typical timeline of a bullet wound. It almost made him sick.

One of the nurses offhandedly mentioned how lucky he was. That the burns were healing so well, stitching themselves back so easily. And that he avoided third degree burns. She seemed so surprised by it.

Ghost bit back a harsh word about how his gear was there to prevent those wounds or maybe a sharp retort about how having his Roach die was not by any means lucky.

His…

So he did the only thing he knew how to do.

Ghost went to a bar and started drinking. He made sure Soap and Price didn’t see him because he knew they would want to stop him and he wanted to put himself in a fucking coma. Maybe he’d get alcohol poisoning and die. If he kept drinking, he could die by morning from it.

Death didn’t like him though. He knew it didn’t. If it did, he would’ve died in Vernon’s grave. Or in the scorpion’s cage. Or by his dad’s hands.

Instead, he had to keep living.

He downed the bourbon and stared at the screen that was playing above his head. He wasn’t actually sure what was playing, but he hoped that between his tattoos, his mask, his size and also the fact he was clearly busy, no one except the bartender would pay him any mind.

The bourbon burned. After a moment, he ordered a virgin pina colada. He made sure the stupid umbrella came with it and he pushed it to the empty seat next to him where Roach would sit. Roach didn’t drink. Ghost had no idea why.

Maybe he was a flirty drunk? Or he had bad experiences with it?

Ghost got another shot and downed it too. The burn went down his throat and he could feel it in his stomach.

Someone sat next to him.

“Waiting for someone?”

Ghost turned to the man sitting next to him. He was… hmm. Tall. Older looking. He had a face similar to Pedro Pascal, if a bit taller with blue eyes. More facial hair like he didn’t have time to clean it up.

Ghost had daddy issues. Never said he didn’t. And right now, he was all alone. He had been dancing around his feelings towards two of his sergeants but one was dead and the other was not here.

This guy was giving him attention and he was maybe a little too drunk. All the wrong things.

A one night stand might help where the alcohol was failing.

“Not anyone that’ll show up.”

“Really? Stood up on a date?”

“No. He’s dead.” Ghost downed the shot, noticing the guy take the straw in his mouth and drink. His dark eyes focused on him. Dark brown around pupils. Something about them made him feel uneasy. Weren’t they just blue?

“Ah. Shame. What’s his name?”

“Gary. Though I never used that. Always called him Roach.”

“Military?”

For a moment, Ghost felt a skittering paranoia before remembering his dog tags were out. Laying on his chest. They were slightly burned. He knew how to clean them. Or even just get a replacement. But he hadn’t. And he wouldn’t. It had burns just like him and Roach.

“Yeah. Military. You ever serve?”

“Can’t say I have.”

“Don’t. Don’t let anyone you know join if you can help it.”

“If you could leave, would you?”

“No. I don’t have anything else.” Even Soap, Johnny, Sergeant MacTavish, as much as Ghost romanticized the soft idea that he’d have him, was so intrinsically tied to the military. Roach had been as well, but Roach was more intrinsically tied with being dead now. If he left, he’d have nothing. No family. No home. No one to know. He’d start over and at the ripe age of 28, he couldn’t do that. Didn’t have the energy for it. “That’s what the military does. It’s like a toxic partner.”

“I see. So your buddy Roach. What would you do to get him back?”

“Fucked up question to ask a drunk person that’s grieving.”

“I know.” The man leaned in. He smelled weirdly sweet. An overwhelming, almost toxic sweet smell. Ghost remembered being in the coffin. He didn’t know why but the smell brought him back.

“What cologne are you wearing?” He mumbled.

That man smiled and Ghost’s vision grew a tad blurry. Shifting around like he was black out drunk and yeah he hadn’t been counting his shots but he was a big guy and he doubted however much he had drank would’ve been enough. “I’m not wearing cologne, Ghost. You’ve killed a lot of people haven’t you?”

“Try not to think about it.”

“Saved any?”

“That’s the hope. I like to think I’ve saved more than I’ve taken, but I don’t let the numbers keep me awake.”

“I’m going to ask again. What would you do to get him back?”

Ghost thought about it. “I don’t know what I wouldn’t do.”

“You should go visit him.”

“He’s in the morgue. They said I shouldn’t.” His vision was blurring more like they were filling with tears.

The doctor examined his face, looking at him with scrunched eyebrows. A surgical mask covered the bottom half of her face.

“You suffered some horrible injuries. How did you drag yourself across Mexico to get here?” Her accent was thick. Undeniably Texan.

“You’re safe now, sweetie? Okay?” He could see it. The pity. He hadn’t seen himself yet. He didn’t know how bad the scarring was. Simon was not aware that he had died in that desert. Not yet.

He smiled. And this time, Ghost noticed that he had a few too many teeth.

“Go visit him and tell him how you feel.”

“He’s dead.” Ghost bit out. “I don’t know what sick fuck you are, but he’s dead.”

“Is he? Have you seen his body? Do you trust everyone that much?”

Ghost trusted Price and Soap. He did. Didn’t he?

No. No, he did not.

Ghost was suddenly moving. He went to deck the guy but he was gone.

Somehow, he did find himself walking to the morgue. It was attached to the base. He didn’t know why. The army hospital was right next to it. That was probably why.

He found himself looking through the different metal cabinets. Trying to find him.

Roach looked unbearably tiny. If Ghost remembered correctly, they had embalmed him, but not held the funeral yet. They wanted Ghost to be up and at em before they did it. The embalming kept him from rotting. But it didn’t make him look alive.

He shouldn’t be exposed like this. The thin sheet over him wasn’t enough.

Ghost grabbed a trash can and threw up. He blamed it on the alcohol and not the scent of formaldehyde.

Crying was never something he wanted to do before. But he wanted to now. He wanted a way to get all of these stupid emotions out of his body.

There was a rustling. Probably one of the attendants finding him here. That was going to be an awkward explanation.

A hand on his shoulder made him finally look up. See the pale flesh of Roach’s arm. Even paler than normal thanks to the embalming fluid now running through his veins instead of blood.

His head tilted unnaturally and his eyes had a whitish tint to them, but it was clearing as he blinked.

Ghost felt like throwing up again, but there was nothing to throw up. He stood up slowly, towering over him. Roach blinked a few more times before smiling at him. The scars on his face tugged slightly with it, just like they always did.

“Roach?” Ghost said slowly.

Roach raised his hands, his fingers trembling. Simon. He signed it. Like most people who used sign language, he had a special sign for the closer people in his life. Ghost’s was the sign for ghost where instead of holding an F sign, he held an S. It was an odd thing, but it was so clearly Roach.

Ghost wrapped his arms around him. He felt so cold from the cabinet.

“Are you cold?”

Roach nodded. He was also very naked. He looked like he was made of glass.

“Let me get you to my room.” Ghost slid his jacket off and put it on him. He tugged it so it covered as much of Roach as possible. Hysterically, he worried he’d get a cold.

Ghost pulled him along gently. Roach followed him, looking up at him with shaking legs. His eyes get drooping like he was tired and Ghost didn’t even think before trying to lift him before stopping. Roach felt so heavy in his arms. Way, way heavier than normal.

Apparently the embalming process added some weight. He instead just ushered him faster and gently put him in his own bed. Ghost wondered what this was. If it was some cruel hallucination or delusion.

Roach made the sign for him to lay down and Ghost did without question. He pressed into him, his freezing body leeching warmth from Ghost. Ghost didn’t care. He’d freeze to death if it meant whatever this was would last longer.

At some point, he fell asleep.

Soap yelling woke him up. He sounded horrified at first before something shut him up.

Ghost reluctantly pulled himself together enough to open his eyes to look.

Roach was standing up. Dressed luckily. He had Soap’s face in his hands and Ghost couldn’t see his expression but judging by Soap’s it was a calming one.

“I saw you die. You died. You were…”

Roach made the sign for Soap. It was the regular sign for soap but he made the sign for J with his hands. Just like on Ghost, it worked like a charm.

Soap pulled him close, crying quietly. Ghost noticed that Roach was still pale and he reached over, feeling his skin. It felt wrong. Not as cold as before, but more of an ambient room temperature.

Roach shoved them both away and rushed off to Ghost’s bathroom. He could hear him hacking something up. The sound of liquid falling from his mouth.

“How.” Soap looked at him. “Being dead for a few minutes can destroy a person’s brain. A few hours? They’re wrecked. Resuscitation is almost pointless because its a miracle if they even start breathing let alone have a quality of life. He was dead two weeks. Two full weeks. And that’s just counting the time in the morgue. That’s not even considering that he was next to your unconscious ass for who knows how long.” He was speaking so clearly, suppressing his accent as if using Scotts would make Ghost not be able to understand him. Ghost already couldn’t understand him. He didn’t get the question.

“I don’t know. I just… went down there. And he woke up.”

“What did you do Ghost.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“Ghost. This doesn’t… make sense. He was dead a while.”

“I know. I don’t get it either. But he’s awake.”

“We’re…” Soap ran his hands through his hair. “This is fucking insane.”

Ghost stood up and grabbed him. He cupped his face in his hands just like Roach did. This was madness. Mania to the goddamn extreme. He knew, deep down, that he shouldn’t be taking this so easily. But they were all alive. After two weeks of being confined to a hospital bed, forced to do nothing but think and think and think about the missing part of himself, he didn’t want to think anymore.

He had his pieces.

Ghost was whole again.

Simon kissed Johnny, not lifting his mask to do so. He could feel Johnny’s lips through it and that was enough. “We’ll figure it out.”

Johnny stared at him. Maybe it was because he didn’t want to crush Ghost. Or because he also wanted nothing more than to have everyone alive and kicking. “Okay. We’ll figure it out.”

Roach had laid awake the entire night. He didn’t feel like sleeping. In all honesty, he was very confused. One moment, he had been shooting at an enemy with Ghost. Then he was alone, somewhere very cold with a sheet over his face. It was even more confusing when he stood up and his body felt like he was wearing his gear even though he was naked. There was also this chill down to his goddamn bones.

Roach kept having to get up to cough up all the embalming fluid. When he left the bathroom, Soap and Ghost were there. He felt lighter now. Finally having rid himself of most of it. Under his skin, he could see the very start of pink as his body tried to make more blood to replace what was drained.

Ghost left the room. Soap sat with him, moving closer. Roach leaned into him, still so very cold. Soap wrapped his arms around him.

“What happened?”

Roach didn’t fucking know. He made the sign for the idiot and Soap laughed, though he was clearly tense.

“Sorry for asking.”

Ghost brought back food. Other than the bacon, Roach couldn’t really stomach it. He did drink down the tea Ghost brought him though. It felt so warm.

Ghost sat on his other side and it felt so nice. They felt so nice.

They smelled really, really nice.

Roach blinked. Huh. That was weird.

During the night, Soap stayed in Ghost’s room, which he thought was cute. He couldn’t fit in the bed so the two of them had a small disagreement over who would take the floor and who would take the bed. Roach tried to offer and they glared so hard into his soul he thought he’d drop dead again.

After an hour of watching the two of them sleep quietly, Ghost managed to argue that he had the bed the night before so Soap laid next to him, Roach got… impatient. He was too bored for this.

So he got up and went outside. The smell wasn’t helping. His own body had the horrible chemical smell that a shower hadn’t gotten rid of, but his…

What were they? Friends he guessed. His friends smelled divine. It made him so hungry. He knew the kitchen wouldn’t have anything worthwhile but his card had a lot of money on it, like his friends, he didn’t really use it for anything, mostly just hoarding it all for retirement.

Roach found a diner and after looking through the food, he settled on a steak. The waitress didn’t know sign so he had to point to it. Luckily, the waitress had a good head on her shoulders because she held up her hand and pointed to her fingers, saying the different doneness so he could just hold up the finger he wanted.

She was nice. Short and accommodating. She put the food in front of him and he had took his mask off to eat it. He had asked for medium rare, but it was very well done. He thought of complaining, but the idea of having to both get her to realize the mistake without being able to verbally explain along with bothering her was … He decided against it.

Roach bit into the steak, not bothering with a knife because it was getting on his nerves. He sank his teeth into it. The inside was red.

Roach was in the diner’s kitchen, holding someone’s arm. Their body laid out on the floor with several giant chunks missing.

The waitress laid just a few feet away. Her shirt had been ripped open and he could see the empty chest cavity where her torso should be.

After a moment of thinking, he kept eating. Finally, he felt warm. Their blood replacing his own. He didn’t feel so hungry.

Their lungs tasted bad. He ended up skipping over them and going to the muscles in his chest. They melted like butter.

He’d have to order his steaks bloody.

#cod mw2 #call of duty #call of duty modern warfare #call of duty modern warfare ii #ghost x roach x soap #roach x soap #soapghost #soap call of duty #johnny soap mactavish #roach x ghost #ghost x roach #gary roach sanderson #simon ghost riley #ghostsoap

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myloish · 6 months

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the zombie matt comic feat frank (cw gore cw gore CW GORE) has devoured my evening. i'm so mad i didn't read it before tonight because a halloween fic of the missing scene where frank actually plants the bombs would have been so. would have been soooo...

like, do you think frank hauled him out of the pit? or maybe he lowered himself in, boots snapping humerus and femur bones that groaned beneath his weight.

do you think he had to pin matt down? matt's handlers shuffle him around on a dog pole but matt- what's left of him -had seemed agreeable to frank's plan. maybe matt seems willing. maybe frank secures him down anyway.

i think frank chats while he gets to work. he talks to fill the space, to smother the throaty groans and hisses that split between the dead man's teeth.

he's probably not too neat when he gets down to the work of it. slits him down the middle with his KA-BAR from the throat to the belly, ignores matt's jerking movements and snapping teeth. tells him to hush. bemoans that even now he has to get a word in. smiles as he says it.

no blood rises up beneath the blade as he works, the skin pallid and white and cold to the touch. somehow even now his body is lean and muscled, still well-trained to fight. beneath the skin, rotted muscle and fat and ropes of intestines hold up in a facsimile of themselves, and something in frank's brain shifts. guts and bones and old, black blood- this ain't matt. not anymore.

he's faster after that, sloppy. grabs one explosive and shoves it in after another, ignores the creature's snarls and groans that punctuate his movements until the bag is empty.

it's not the first time he's ever patched up the skin beneath the daredevil suit, but it's certainly the most careless. he shoves the needle in, through skin and fabric alike, looping the thread upwards in fast, jerking movements. he wants to be done with this, wants to be out of here, away from him.

he sews and sews, from the bottom of matt's belly up to the top of his throat. he pulls the stitches tight, leans back to appreciate his handiwork. it's ugly and possibly obvious, the explosives jutting out at odd angles, the stitches messy and uneven. still, can't say he looks any worse than he already did.

frank frees matt from the restraints, then moves to haul his ass out of the pit. he's in the process of doing so when matt- when the zombie-- when frank's wrist gets grabbed. frank jerks away instinctively, hand reaching towards the pistol tucked into the waistband of his pants, but he's the only one moving.

matt's just standing there, unmoving, something like staring. is it a thank you? one final admonishment for the road? hard to tell.

and i don't know if frank chances a kiss on the back of matt's glove before he pulls away and keeps moving. but i'd like to think he does.

#mattfrank #fratt #daredevil #hampy holloween ?#long post /

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coffeeangelinabox · 6 days

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Whumpril #28 Fight/Flight/Freeze

Fight

Unbelievably stupid to get caught. Jemma has completed far more dangerous missions. She once single handedly took down a whole platoon of guards; she’d survived a standoff with Fenrir, the last of the Elite-ids (after Darrow, but he doesn’t count); she’d crashed spaceships and moon buggies and drop ships and, one memorable occasion a life pod which was supposed to be impossible; she’d shot her way out of a dozen besieged strongholds, on a couple of occasions with little more than a water pistol…

This should be easy.

But they hadn’t been expecting the state of the art security, not this far from the core words and lightyears from the high profile rebel activity they’ve been stage managing for the last year, for the sole purpose of making this station an easy, undefended target. They’d had biometrics and voice prints and forged security guards. Jemma had studied shift movements and Darrow had drilled her ceaselessly on commands and codes.

But coded checkpoints and active blood scanning. It’s her own damn fault. She should have called for evac when it was clear that this wasn’t going as planned. Arrogance, pure and simple, had kept her at her post. Worse, the blood scanning has shown her enhancements, so they come at her in force, well armed.

Her only saving grace is that they want to take her alive. That and her strength and speed and durability.

She’s just as susceptible to pain though, and they use that to their advantage.

Jemma fights and screams. Shots hit their mark, a squad worth of bodies, but they are a whole space station and she is one. It’s too late now to call for back up, all that ill happen is she’ll doom whoever (Gene) comes for her. When her power pack runs dry, she throws the gun with a force that cracks a face plate.

She resorts to physical defence, flurries of punches and kicks and holds; and then to dirty street fighting she learned in cantina brawls. She uses every skill she has. Their eyes trick them, expecting certain things of her size and physique, whereas she is actually much more powerful than the next three of them put together. The gouges out eyes, castrates more than a few, pulverises knees and breaks wrists, fingers, femurs.

But they just keep coming.

Flight

The manacle is loose.

The thought drifts slowly across her mind and it takes her sluggish thoughts precious seconds to grab hold of it. The manacle is loose. Not very loose, not unforgivably so, but enough to give her a finger width of leverage. She can yank it off the table, she can break herself off this bench.

The thought holds her mind together as the electricity courses through her body, then as the needles rip into her skin. She bares bloodied teeth and snarls like a wounded dog, and uses the promise of the loose chain to keep her cries silent. She will tell them everything eventually, everyone does, and when she does they will have her sent to the quarries or the ice chasms or the organ banks.

At least her enhancements mean they can’t touch her mind.

But she will not give in today, not with escape so close.

Still, when her torturer steps outside for his midday meal and a sit down with the news feeds or sport updates or insipid broadcast media, whatever he needs to unwind after the stressful morning, she cannot bring herself to prepare for a fight. Once (when she was captured, yesterday, this morning) she would have ripped her arms free, pulled out the tubes, killed whichever security burst through the door with the tray of instruments and the secretary outside for good measure. She would have aimed for the shuttle bay of the station, leaving a trail of bodies in her wake, carving a bloody path through them so they would know their error in hurting her, in trying to use her against her family.

She can’t blame lack of strength either: she pulls the thick, imprisoning chain from the mooring as easily as snapping a necklace with a too-careless tug. But she fears losing, fears the consequences of ending up back here for punishment as well as questioning.

And so, shamefully, she prepares for flight. She removes the wires slowly, carefully, using every trick Gene ever taught her to keep the monitors from shrieking her disobedience. She finds discarded scrubs and even a medical mask that covers her face in a locker. She can’t do anything about the wrenched open door, but fashions together a clipboard from a disconnected tablet screen and a stylus. She tidies her hair and washes the blood from her neck. She can do nothing about the bruises on her wrists or her bare feet, but hopefully her disguise is enough to protect her long enough to run.

Even hypoxia on an uninspected spaceship is preferable to another day of this.

He’s waiting outside the door, picking his nails with the scalpel he’d peeled the skin from her calf with.

“I thought you hadn’t the strength to pull free. I’ve been waiting all morning.”

Freeze

Jemma’s first response is - has always been - to attack. To fight her way through whatever obstacle has set itself against her and shred it to its component pieces. Failing that, she will run. That’s what she’d done when pulled out of the slave pens, when she’s finally crawled free of the interrogation block.

She is not an indecisive person. She lacks Darrow’s sheer magnetism, but she is by far the best leader aboard. Jemma can plan and think strategically and people manage. She thinks quickly on her feet and is both strong and clever enough to see her plans enacted.

And on top of all that, every experience she has ever had has simply sought to reinforce that a single hint of weakness is little more than blood in the water to tempt circling sharks. Strength and solidity and certainty are a better protection even than blasters and blades.

Yet, here, in the doorway of the cell, she falters. Because Gene wasn’t alone, there had been someone leaning over him, someone with her hands on him, and he’d been crying, panicking. She’d shot before she’d even thought about it. No one has the right to touch her people and cause them that amount of pain, and Gene least of all.

Now though, the second after the simultaneous thought, action and reaction, she has time to look. Really look.

And it isn’t the cell, smelling of vomit and unwashed man. It isn’t the marks on Gene - less than hers and far more enraging. Isn’t the sight of him covered in blood, though she knows already that that sight will return in her nightmares for some time yet. It’s his aggressor.

Familiar slight stature. Familiar tousled blonde hair. A face she sees in the mirror every day.

All Jemma can do is stare at Gene as he looks in horror at the corpse across him. Her corpse. His mouth moves, soundlessly at first, then she is able to pick up the rapidly whispered, “Not again, not again, not-please, not…” Then the words trail away to a long wounded note. And Jemma stays where she is, frozen with horror in the cell door.

#my writing #whump #whump prompts #whumpril2024 #coffeeangelinabox's space opera ocs #torture #capture #interrogation #whumprilday28 #fight/flight/freeze #introspection

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tma-entity-song-poll · 1 month

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Battle of the Fear Bands B3R2: The Flesh

Knives Out:

“A song about cruelty, about not knowing anything else.”

youtube

An Interlace of Bones:

youtube

Lyrics below the line!

Knives Out:

I want you to know He's not coming back Look into my eyes I'm not coming back So knives out Catch the mouse Don't look down Shove it in your mouth If you'd been a dog They would've drowned you at birth Look into my eyes It's the only way you'll know I'm telling the truth So knives out Cook him up Squash his head Put him in the pot I want you to know He's not coming back He's bloated and frozen Still there's no point in letting it go to waste So knives out Catch the mouse Squash his headPut him in the pot

An Interlace of Bones:

Take my flesh and shake it out Put it in the washing machine My heart is drying on the line While my skin is spinning clean Skeletons are hard to sleep with Bones are all that we have left Shin bones, pelvis, heavy femurs The chuckle of your fingers leaves me bereft I feel the cutting of your cheekbones On the temple of my skull The empty space of unlocked ribcage Once our hearts had made so full And in the morning we'll wake early Leave the curtains closed again Slowly wrap our muscles round our bones We'll take our organs from the wash Freshly laundered, clean as new And carefully replace them in their hollows Because this night will be our last We felt the need to wash the marks Of all the secrets shared together From our bodies and our hearts The teeth-bite bruise on lips and necks The sharp caress on shivering limbs If left too long after we're gone Would fray the fabric of our skin And in the morning we'll wake early Dress our skeletons again Trying not to catch each other's eye We'll smooth out wrinkles, settle seams Rewire our newly polished veins Cause we've already said our last goodbyes Over and again, over and again, over and again I'm just a bag of bones now Over and again, over and again, over and again I don't want you to go now Over and again, over and again, over and again You say it's better this way Over and again, over and again, over and again I'm just a bag of bones now Our memories of love are washed out, we're strangers now (Our skeletons remember) Lace and tie and zip our flesh back into place (Even if our love is over) Put on our clothes (I don't want you to go now) Open the door (You say it's better this way) Sharing secrets no more (I don't want you to leave me) I'd rather keep these memories instead of being clean and empty When we're clean and finally spotless, I give you one last kiss There's nothing, no response From the clean, soft flesh that used to be your lips

#the magnus archives #tma #poll #the flesh #radiohead #the forgetmenauts #Youtube

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canis-or-cannotis-lycaon · 8 months

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TIMING: Current [After This Conversation] LOCATION: Gael's House PARTIES: Gael (@lithium-argon-wo-l-f and Siobhan (@banisheed SUMMARY: Wanting to keep Regan from getting abducted, Gael tells her to give whoever's giving out seemingly free bones his address. Siobhan shows up. CONTENT WARNINGS: self harm, Siobhan keeps calling Gael's coffee pot a bong

Siobhan remembered when boneios were first introduced to Saol Eile; it was the forties and she didn’t think anyone would like them. But, when she poured it for herself, watching little oat grain femurs and skulls and sternums tumble into her paper bowl, she knew it was something special. Not just because it was leagues better than the cream of bone soup, which had been introduced by the end of the nineteenth century, but because it was something so distinctly banshee. It was home. It was them. It was unmistakable and undeniable and even far away from Ireland, Siobhan needed to have them. Her convoluted trade system to get herself some boxes had served her well and as soon as Regis was stuffed into the back of her car, she’d treat them both to a fresh box. For now, she shook the box she’d brought, turned stale as she’d already opened to fish out the free-born-in-every-box, as she knocked on Gael Córdova’s door—whom she was sure was just a strangely specific alias for Regis, who would be on the other side of the painted wood. Who else would want Boneios?

In her other hand, Siobhan held a large velvet box which housed one vertebrae of a sauropod—the “free bone” of “free bone giveaway” fame. It wasn’t the most impressive dinosaur bone she had, but if Regis wanted nicer bones, she’d have to agree to be kidnapped first. It was decorated with a red bow but the prettiest thing was, of course, Siobhan herself. She knocked again, then remembered that doorbells existed, and rang that. Before the door was even open, her practiced speech was leaving her lips: “Hello, I’m a representative of Free Bone Giveaway here to deliver your lonely bone and complimentary box of Boneios.”

—

He was sore and he was anxious. Those were two things that never worked well together and one of them wasn’t often in Gael’s mind at all. Ever since Regan had told him of her going back to Ireland, especially if she didn’t seem like she wanted to and it was implied that it wasn’t even her choice, he’d been particularly on edge and astute when it came to her online interactions. Granted, Regan wasn’t a child but that was part of the problem, wasn’t it? She wasn’t a child and yet she reminded him so much of one sometimes; her childish competitiveness, her childish frustration when he had an emotion or an experience that she didn’t like. The way she carried herself and gave him looks when she was upset without telling him that she was upset. And those were all reasons why he felt the need to increase his vigil over her. He couldn’t keep her from leaving, he knew that but at the same time, he could watch over her to the best of his abilities short of insisting that he stay with her until that time came. Gael wasn’t her guard dog but he was a guard dog of sorts; Ren, Van (though she hated it), Felix, even Wynne, Ariadne and Cass. Regan was just another on his list of people he wanted to protect, make sure they were happy or at least fulfilled. And Regan was special to him, though he smothered anything that could’ve threatened to blossom into something more than ‘unwitting friend’. Everyone had someone. He just didn’t have his. And he didn’t think he would find it with Regan; she was ascended. She was a banshee. So he smothered the bud, didn’t want it to grow or breathe even if he told Alex that it was healthy to do so.

Nonetheless, despite being tired and sore and anxious, Gael sat uncomfortable on the edge of his couch, which was a far cry from how he normally sat when he was expecting company. His dark eyes stared at the door, wondering who would appear on the other side of it wanting someone like Regan. As per usual and perhaps more obviously than normal given his alertness, he heard footsteps before the knocking– then the knocking again. Then the doorbell. He exhaled, recognizing the steps as heels which… he didn’t want to say helped but he thought maybe he didn’t need the bat that leaned casually against the arm of the couch. “Coming,” He called as he limped to the door. When he opened the door, he certainly wasn’t expecting a statuesque woman, taller than him and with striking features from her dark eyes, porcelain skin and thick locks that tumbled over her shoulder that was covered in black material. Gael blinked, clearly taken aback and his own eyes danced over her. “Hi.” He said before clearing his throat and registering what she’d been saying partially through the closed door. “...Hi, sorry; what did you say your name was?” He asked before adding “is there– anything I should sign?”

—

Regis didn’t greet her. Siobhan couldn’t hide the way her face fell, features dropping as if her skin was melting off her face. She blinked, she stammered nonsensically, she spun around once just in case this was some fun trick. He was still there when she turned back around. He was shorter than her with messy salt-and-pepper hair and a purple ring around one of his sunken eyes. He looked familiar, the way a face often met in passing did. She swallowed. “I didn't say my name.” Her fingers curled tightly into her palm and her frown, in a flash, transformed into a tight grin. Somewhere, maybe inside the house, was a woman who didn’t realize how much she meant. How careless could one person be to leave someone chasing their shadow? “Gael?” She asked despite knowing the answer. What did Regis mean to him? Did he chase her too? She knew the answer to this too: if he appeared somewhere that Regis was meant to be, then he possessed something that Siobhan did not. The knife she carried inside of her jacket suddenly felt a little heavier. “Lovely home.” Siobhan used his weakened state to her advantage and shoved herself between him and the door, inviting herself inside.

The interior was as plain as the man: whites, beiges and browns, minimal and clean. She could have mistaken it for a showroom if not for the tail that slinked behind a corner. Siobhan turned her hot gaze on him, trying to sear flesh with each dart of her pupils. She noted his uneven stance and thought about how funny he’d look tumbling down a flight of stairs. “You can do me a favor, actually. I need a little deal from you.” She grinned with her jaw clenched tightly. “You see, we can’t just send these lonely bones off to live with just anyone. I need to make sure they go to a good home--the right home. I need you to answer a few questions for me…” Her words dissolved as her eyes continued to trace the edges of his house. She strolled into the kitchen, staring at the cupboards and drawers and… “Bong?” She pointed to a device of glass jars and gold pipes. It looked like a titration set, the likes of which she saw in old laboratories, but no one just has those laying around. A bong was more probable.

—

If Gael didn’t know any better, and he did, he’d think that whoever this person was standing at his door certainly wasn’t expecting a middle-aged, masculine guy to be there in the place of the female, pale-haired medical examiner. The stammer and surprised expression certainly helped and for a moment, as the woman spun on the spot as though to see if it would magic the professor away, Gael found a sense of accomplishment. She didn’t say her name, duh, but as her frown turned into a teeth-clenching smile, her frustration nonverbally evident to him, she did say his. “Yeah, that’s me.” They both knew that, but what Gael didn’t know was how willing this stranger was to push past him into his house. He was put on edge as he allowed himself to stumble back, giving himself the presentation of being someone too weak to fight back if a fight occurred - he was sore, for sure, but he knew that he’d be able to put up a fight just as well as he knew that she could. “It IS a lovely home.” He agreed instead as she looked around it, then over to him. He could tell she was glaring daggers, perhaps in an attempt to throw him off or get him to wither but as far as he could tell, he was the barrier between this woman and Regan, the barrier between Regan staying there and being forced to go back to Ireland.

He returned her piercing glare with his own narrowed gaze, thick eyebrows furrowed but with a half-smile on his angled face. It wasn’t going to work. The guard dog had its hackles raised but it wasn’t going to attack unless provoked. “Questions? I can do questions.” Gael said in a friendly enough manner, though how much of it was a farce was something of a mystery to him. “I don’t do deals, though.” Indeed, as she wandered around his house, he listened carefully and found that her heartbeat was very similar to Regan’s; slow, a murmur almost as though threatening to simply stop. He wasn’t sure what she was but part of him wanted to guess ‘banshee’ just to be safe. In any case, he wasn’t a dealmaker anyway, let alone to strangers who shouldered into his house looking for the people he cared about. “What? No, it’s a coffee maker.” He scoffed. “Why would I have a bong sitting on my counter?” He shook his head and took unsteady steps towards the island. “Okay, what are your questions? Since apparently my house doesn’t look well-kept enough to warrant taking care of those… incredible bones you’re so generously offering to the right person.” Gael thought his house looked perfect for some bones, if only through coincidence. Apparently she might need more convincing.

—

“You don’t do deals?” Siobhan scoffed, a sharp smile crawling its way over her lips. Wise humans knew better than to announce so plainly that they knew—that someone had told them that making deals with a certain group of people was bad. There was no other explanation for the sentiment; humans made deals all the time, for food, for money, or nauseatingly mundane decorating choices. “Then, just a question: as long as I am in this house asking you questions, can you provide completely honest answers to my questions? Will you agree to do just that?” She didn’t need to say it was a deal to make it work, she’d lived enough years as a fae to make do with less obvious phrases. She pulled her leather gloves off her hands, one finger at a time, and set them down on Gael’s kitchen island, outfitted with a marble countertop that did impress her. Some things hadn’t changed much over the years: marble still implied wealth. The box of Boneios followed her gloves but she kept the vertebrae tucked safely under her arm.

“Well.” She shrugged. “Where else would you keep your bongs?” Siobhan pressed her palm to the cold counter, staring at the thick webbing of pale scars across her knuckles and those new ones, gifted upon her disgrace, down the back of her hand. She squeezed her hand into a fist and set the velvet box holding the bone down finally. “You aren’t who…” She tilted her head from side to side, as if there was water in her ears she wanted to dislodge. “…who I spoke to online, we both know that. Bones are very sensitive, they don’t enjoy being lied to and they get scared when they change hands too often. All they want is a stable, loving home.” The lie bubbled in her stomach, quickly awash by her years of practice saying nonsense. With a delicate finger, she lifted the lid of the box open. The hinges squealed and the lid snapped into place like the jaw of an alligator and there, on blue silk, was the bone. She spun it around to face him. “Can you tell me what this is? What bone? From where? From when? Don’t touch it.” The thought of his human filth getting on to the fossil set her skin on fire. Where was Regis? All of this was meant for Regis.

She thought she felt something clicking in her head, like gears refusing to lock into place or a lighter trying to spark. What purpose did a banshee have for this layer of security? Click, click, click. Siobhan stared at him again, hoping the answer would come to her. How close did a man have to be to a banshee to be entrusted with bone delivery? Click, click, click. “Are you two fucking?” She asked plainly as though it had been just another question. “You and…” Click, click, click. “…the woman I spoke to online.”

—

She circled the area still, slow and methodical and Gael crossed his arms at the followup question. He wasn’t stupid. Foolish, maybe. Emotional, definitely but he didn’t accumulate two PhDs for not thinking critically. That being said, the question gave him pause. Before moving to that town, he probably wouldn’t have thought twice about it so… he applied the question to outside the town. He pictured his sister or a friend in place of Regan - if he were approached by a stranger, who then barged into his home looking for one of them and wanted completely honest answers from him, would he oblige even if there wasn’t some form of magic involved? “...I will answer your questions to the best of my ability.” After Beau, after Ren, after Regan, after losing his name and that chunk of time that was supposed to be a date, he was apprehensive. Gael didn’t want to get caught by something and as he recalled the recent conversation with Regan, accompanied with how he felt in the forest the day they went to get the femur, he was reminded again that fae - or at least banshees - weren’t human. “Also I wouldn’t keep a bong anywhere,” He replied as his eyes found her scarred hands, immediately curious about what had happened to warrant them. He had a scar twisting around his own hand from a night he could only remember in chunks. He could only assume hers weren’t; she seemed too… meticulous. It wasn’t about his coffee maker but he couldn’t be sure if she was trying to get under his skin with the comment. And as she spoke about bones in the same possessive, understanding way that Regan did, Gael felt whatever uneasiness that had bubbled in his stomach solidify into a stone. And yet, at the end of her micro-speech, he wanted to look her in the eye and say ‘they’re just bones’. Speaking of, after removing her gloves and setting the box of cereal down (much to his surprise that they actually existed), eventually the velvet box came after. She opened it, the unexpected noise from the hinges causing his brow to twitch in discomfort, and he was presented with a bone, very large indeed and not what he expected. At least it was a bone… he thought. “It’s a bone, obviously.” He started, starting to display his bravado and penchant for appearing confident even though he was completely out of his element. “It’s… a vertebra and usually those come from spines. Aaaand…” He puffed his cheeks. “Sometime before now. Probably at least dozens of millions of years ago.” He couldn’t charm his way out of that one. Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, Gael didn’t have to think about his answers for long when the stranger abruptly asked him if he was having sex with Regan. Immediately he felt his face heat up, betraying how collected he wanted to appear and it was his turn to stammer. “Wh– No??” He asked incredulously, the thought sending something pulsing up and down the length of his body - embarrassment, maybe even a little shame that he didn’t completely abhor the idea. She didn’t need to know that, though. No one did. He wasn’t for her anyway– what was happening right now. “No. No I’m not and even if I was that’s not any of your business, skelady.”

—

Again, he danced around her fae magic and Siobhan hissed. Someone had told him something or some sloppy fae had ruined him for the rest. Siobhan didn’t like that; it meant he knew more than he let on and worst of all, she would need to work to get answers out of him. Normally she would have relished the challenge but her mind wasn’t where it ought to be these days, and it had turned dull like a worn knife. All the more reason for her to go back to Ireland, sharpen herself. She watched his gaze drop to her hand breitling and wondered what he felt. Did he pity her? Was he curious? When he removed his gaze, she couldn’t tell what had passed through his mind. She thought she saw a question form in the brights of his eyes but everything seemed to be swallowed by the darkness that sucked them close to his skull. At that moment, she thought he looked especially pitiful and it was her that felt sorry for him instead.

Impressed by his accuracy, basic as it was, Siobhan smiled and nodded, snapping the box shut, the power of the hinges could have crushed a finger but Siobhan wasn’t interested in hurting him…yet. Anyway, it seemed someone else got to him first and Siobhan didn’t like having someone else’s leftovers. If she was going to hurt someone, she wanted every bruise, scar, wound, ooze and shattered bone to be attributed to her. She could never be loved but to be completely loathed by someone sent a shock of desire across her limbs; it was the next best thing. She squeezed the countertop, putting fantasies of dismemberment away. “Good job,” she said, flicking open the box of stale, flaccid Boneios. She held it out to him. “Try some. You won’t get to ever again.” For the first time in her life, she hadn’t meant that as a threat; banshees simply weren’t known for their generosity. The adage ‘sharing is caring’ that humans seemed to imbue their greedy toddlers with had never been passed around Saol Eile and with an entire month dedicated to pilfering bones, what would any self-respecting banshee do? It was best not to get between a banshee and her Boneios, which, to the human man, would taste like stale cheerios—the bone shapes added a better texture, in Siobhan’s opinion. There was the faint aroma of bone on them, though, but that was a taste all banshees loved.

She dug around the box and shoved a handful of Boneios into her mouth. She didn’t expect him to react that way, and instead of dissuading her, he had unknowingly convinced her she was correct. Siobhan pictured the narrative in her head, a banshee running away from her duty, her family, for the love of a man. The thought should have repulsed her but something else was clicking in her head, again; memories of a little girl who sat by candlelight with Austen open on her lap, soaking up words of drama and sensibility and, Siobhan had liked this part the most, romance. How many times had she read Captain Wentworth’s letter? She couldn’t understand it, she didn’t want to interrogate herself, and romance the likes of which her juvenile mind desired would never be achieved by her but more than fantasies of violence and gore, the idea softened her—turned her into something mutable. She should have chased it away but it was her defect that she couldn’t, that she didn’t know how to anymore. All the more reason to go back to Ireland; she needed it. She couldn’t become this sloppy, sentimental thing.

“Do you have romantic feelings for her?” Siobhan asked softly. It all made sense, Regis running away, the use of this man’s address in place of her own, the bong. His injuries must have been sustained during a rough bout of lovemaking; it all made sense. Their romance was doomed, but she respected Regis for trying. Although, whatever respect she had was lost with her choice of man; boring and in bong-denial. “Her…Ah, what was her name? It’s on the tip of my tongue. Re….Re… It starts with an ‘R’, I’m sure. Something like Reg something-something Ca…” Her unspoken question floated in the air.

—

Did this woman just hiss at him? The levels at which Gael was trying to anticipate being attacked was fluctuating at a level he wasn’t used to or comfortable with, which was saying something given his incredibly easy adaptational skills. So, instead, he just kept his arms folded as he continued to look at her stunning figure, the expressions flitting to and from her face as they were replaced with false impressions of forced politeness. His own face slowly settled from the blush it’d taken moments before as he recovered his emotions; he couldn’t let this stranger get under his skin, not when he considered what was at stake. Satisfied enough with his answers, she snapped the box shut again like a beartrap that was carefully tread over; Gael could feel the metaphor. He also inhaled as she gave him what he presumed was empty praise - he’d spent long enough around Regan by that point that he knew better. What was new to him, though, was her holding out the cereal to him and offering it to the professor to try. A pause; was this another attempt to drug him? It’d happened a couple of times before but he didn’t want to be… rude. This whole scenario was weird and he just kept thinking about how different it would’ve been if it were Regan in this scenario, difficult as that was sometimes. He took a tentative handful of the cereal, which looked to be like cheerios but bone-shaped as how he thought they’d be. However, Gael didn’t eat them until his company did… if they were poison, surely she wouldn’t have eaten any, right? Assuming she was fae, surely their physiology wasn’t that different and he did have a hearty immune system so as he observed her, he reluctantly ate his own handful. Stale. Flavorless.Dry. …It TASTED like regular cereal. When she suddenly asked if he had romantic feelings for her, Gael managed to keep from choking on the cereal and instead he inhaled through his nose, glancing down at the marble countertop pensively as the crunching could be heard in the air. He knew that maybe… the answer was both right and wrong, something he hadn’t thought about too extensively for obvious reasons. Something he couldn’t think about, something he was sure Regan certainly didn’t think about if she was able to. He wasn’t for her. “No, I suppose I don’t.” He said just as quietly himself. “Or rather, it doesn��t really matter.” Now that was the honest truth, the only thing he could’ve said to not be a lie. “Her name is Reine.” Gael glanced across the island at the other woman, his eyes earnest and rather softened, despite the inherent danger of his situation. “It’s French for “queen”. That’s where she’s from.” A lie, easy enough to tell the woman and with enough hope and confidence behind it that he hoped she’d buy it.

—

Again, Siobhan took his answer to mean she was correct. Where she now expected and hoped for repulsion, she found herself still and her roaring mind quieted. She thought of Austen’s Wentworth: you pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Of Keats: still, still to hear her tender taken breath, and so live ever—or else swoon to death. And of Dickinson: I had been hungry, all the years. Her throat tightened. When she dreamed as a little girl, sometimes her flights of romantic fancy took the shape of a nameless, faceless void of a person that would come whisk her away from her troubled youth and fuse together her wounds until she became someone whole. Mostly, romance wasn’t a person: it was an idea. It was lush green fields, birdsongs, lazily grazing cows and old trees with thick trunks that had never been scarred. There were blue skies and clouds shaped like bones and a house, not unlike this one, coated with the warmth of life and comfort. Siobhan had lived over a hundred years in a sort of damp darkness, the locked cellar under someone’s better, brighter life. She envied Regis and then, as it so often happened with envy, she hated her.

The woman had taken her better life— her protective lover with sunken eyes, the gold bong, the brown house— and left Siobhan desperate. She didn’t know how much she kept away from her, she didn’t know how much of her happiness relied on her. She was the one tugging Siobhan along on her leash, she held the power, and she didn’t even have the courtesy to know it. She gave her someone else’s name. She sent her to the wrong address, or at least, at the wrong time. And yet she knew what Gael saw her as, as a new fake name tumbled from his lips; she was the antagonist here. She squeezed the Boneio box, thin cardboard wrinkling under her grip. She was accustomed to playing the villain but finally, the idea twisted her insides. She wanted to scream. “A cute name for her. It’s rather romantic of you to call her that: la reine.” Her hand snapped out, clutching the velvet box. “But the bones don’t like liars. If you can lie about someone’s name, you can lie about how well you will care for them. You know I can’t leave this with you, right? You’re doing a bad job of proving yourself worthy.” It wasn’t for him.

“You do like her.” Siobhan tried to steady herself but she still spoke through a tightened jaw. “What do you mean it doesn’t really matter? If you feel for her, you feel for her; affection matters. Affection has always mattered.” Her scarred knuckles turned white under her grip. Whatever she told this man would likely make its way back to Regis and so, she had to be careful. Forty years ago, when wings were still on her back, she might have been able to be more careful. “She’s entrusted you with her bones. Do you understand what that means? And you stand there and give me a fake name as if I’d believe you. As if they make Boneios in France.”

—

Something he said had gotten under her skin, though Gael wasn’t sure if that was a good thing - prying the aloof surface off just to find what musty secrets and hidden intentions were potentially under the veil often led to the danger of the unknown, the misunderstood and the emotionally volatile. On the other side of the coin, however, her reaction via both crushing the box of cereal and pulling the velvet box closer to her, back to coveting it like it was more precious than anything he could’ve known, seemed to set his mind at something of ease. “Then don’t leave them with me. They aren’t for me.” Gael didn’t look at the velvet box or the box of Boneios, he looked at her, unfaltering but not angry. “None of this is. This is all for that woman, whose name you don’t even know so how can you be sure it’s not Reine?” The soapbox was threatening to come out; the longer they stood there, exchanging false pleasantries, the more riled up he became and he could feel it starting to thump in his heart, against his aching bones and weaving through the bite wounds in his old scar. “Whoever sent you here to retrieve her couldn’t even bother to give you a name?” Uncalled for but he felt like it needed to be said. He uncrossed his arms and placed them on the counter as he kept his dark-eyed stare on her. “I know what it means to be entrusted with things that are precious. I understand what bones and death mean to her. What they mean to you, Professor Dolan.” As they interacted, Gael was able to recognize her as the archeology professor at the university. They’d never met in person - and he wasn’t even sure if she actually taught anything - but he remembered seeing her face and the obvious respect she had for the bones in conjunction with her obsession with finding Regan by any means necessary connected the dots in the man’s head.

“Yes, I do like her.” He admitted. “And I don’t want to dislike you.” It was the truth. “Why is it so imperative that you take her back? What is the goal? What do you want?” How frequently phrases and words came up in Gael’s dictionary; he’d asked so many people this same exact question, so many people who put their wants, needs and desires aside from some perceived ‘greater good’ or out of some misplaced sense that what they wanted wasn’t important. “Can I make you some tea? We can talk about this.”

—

Gael’s words crashed into Siobhan, exploding on impact. She stumbled, slapping the box of Boneios down on the counter, sending a few cereal skulls and pelvises flying. She released the box, gripping the counter instead to steady herself. She wanted to hurt him, the desire was an overwhelming miasma across her mind, and her hand slipped under her jacket to fondle the sheath of her prized knife. She knew it was an immature reaction; violence always sprang up when unpleasant emotions toiled inside of her. She dropped her gaze as shame burned her cheeks. She had walked into the house at a disadvantage, she knew that, but to have it laid out so plainly was humiliating. “Her name wouldn’t be French, it would be something with Gaelic origins, like Regan.” But it wasn’t Regan, was it? Either way, they all— Regan, Regis, Reine— meant the same thing: king, queen, ruler. And she was safely tucked away in her castle while her knight did her bidding, vetting the strange ‘free bone giveaway’ lady to make sure she wouldn’t stuff her into a burlap sack.

“I had a name,” she mumbled. Siobhan raised her hand, mimicking the way she’d held the piece of paper before she soiled it. The first time she read it, she’d been too drunk to remember it well and when she woke up, wine had smudged the name into illegibility. She had the ‘R’, which remained, and the vague remembrance of the sounds that followed it. She squeezed her hand into a fist, crushing the imaginary letter. “And then I lost it.” Proof of her inadequacy. She had lost the precious thing entrusted to her before she even had a chance to try and keep it. He knew who she was; she’d already lost. Likely, she lost the moment she showed up at his door. She had no reason to fear becoming something pathetic, she already was.

When he asked her what she wanted, she perked up, staring at him under the cover of loosened strands of her brown hair. His cruelty was sharp—no wonder Regis and him shared in a passionate love affair. “I want to be happy.” Siobhan quivered as she exhaled. “I want my life back.” Her eyes burned. There was nothing she wouldn’t do to get it back but she couldn’t hurt him, not if Regis loved him. She might have been the monster coming to throw Regan back into a life she didn’t want, but she possessed standards. No one would ever appreciate them, but it wasn’t her place to be appreciated. “No tea. I’m not going to let you poison me. And you’re not the person I want to talk about this with.” She traced the thick scarred line across her palm, so old and fused to her flesh that it looked more like something that had always been there rather than a transformation her body had taken. She traced its mirror image on the other hand too. “You wouldn’t understand. You couldn’t understand. I don’t have a choice, I’ve never had a choice. I am what I am and I do what I must. On rare occasions, my desires align with what must be done. Like this. These are powerful motivators: want and need. You cannot change my mind; you may remove the want or the need but you cannot dissolve both. And as long as one exists, I will have her. I will take her and you’d have to kill me to get me to stop, but I’m not a fool. I understand why I was chosen. If I die, I am their alarm—they come here, they know where she is, and now they have righteous fury to fuel them. I don’t matter but I can… if I bring her back. I matter. It has to be me. I need it. I want it. I am nothing without her.”

—

The name was on the tip of her tongue, she even said it. But she didn’t know it, not for sure. And Gael wouldn’t be the one to tell her, no matter what she would’ve answered with in response to his questions. She had it, with him able to gather through her body language that it was written down before something happened to render it illegible or unavailable. He also assumed that she hadn’t wanted to let them know that happened because of her pride. Siobhan didn’t want tea, he didn’t blame her. She also didn’t want to talk about it with him which he also understood but as she spoke about how she didn’t have a choice, about how she was what she was and how she had a specific purpose, dragging Regan away from Wicked’s Rest and back home presumably under instructions from her overbearing grandmother incensed him. Gael was zero for two now on banshees who felt like they had a greater calling, that things weren’t about what they wanted though, to be fair, the woman before him had actually told him what she wanted, even if it came at a cost to Regan and what she wanted. His brow furrowed as she spoke with conviction, about how she’d have to die before stopping in her purpose, about how her death would be a siren and a blip on the map for some supposedly greater force to come swoop Regan away. ‘I am nothing without her.’ “That doesn’t have to be true.” Gael gulped as he looked at her, his eyebrows starting to twitch in the middle as they were pulled by empathy. “I’ve heard about where you two came from. I’ve heard about how you don’t feel like you have a choice, about how it’s not about what you want. I’ve been told about the harsh practices, the drilling of information, the implication that you don’t deserve things.” As he spoke, he lowered his head though he still kept his eyes looking up at her, his eyes soulful. “You can be happy. You live longer than us humans; surely there’s enough time to give yourself grace and do what you want to do, right?” He wasn’t speaking about Regan anymore, even if he wanted to say these things to her. And Gael wasn’t sure if the banshee was even listening to him but the soapbox was out. “You do matter, Siobhan. You and your choices matter. Your happiness matters.You are here right now, living with an instruction in your head that is keeping you from experiencing that happiness. You are something. And you said I can’t change your mind - God knows I can’t seem to change hers either - but you also can’t change mine.” He gave a steady inhale through his nose. “No one’s happiness should come at the cost of another. And if there’s something I can do to help you, something that’s realistic, then I’d like to. But I can’t tell you her name.”

—

Siobhan was listening. She didn’t want to be and most of it felt like the babbling of a child, but she was listening. She wondered if he knew he was wasting his breath and decided to waste it anyway. She wondered if he knew she wouldn’t carry his words with her anywhere, that they would die right where they were born, and decided to bring them to life anyway. Humans could be tenacious in their futility. Sometimes people, and especially people like Gael, were just dogs chasing cars. Poor things. Didn’t they know what happened when they stepped out in the middle of a road? Siobhan lifted her hand to him, splaying her fingers until the scar ribboned across her palm bulged out. “Have you seen hers? You should ask to see it one day and while you think about how many times you must run a blade across flesh like ours to leave a mark like this, I want you to think about me. I want you to think about how much thicker mine is, I want you to think about every inch of my body that you can’t see and think about your stupid fucking speech and be enfeebled by the weight of your ignorance.” She snapped her palm shut like the heavy lid of the velvet bone box.

“Her happiness can be found in new places but my life is over. Her life is flush with possibility; she ran, and someone still wanted her back. Even within the confines of our way, she is still the one that hoards freedom. What you understand from her eyes, whatever she has told you, you cannot begin to fathom from mine. There is only one way forward for me. There is only one person that can grant me my livelihood and she doesn’t want to go back because her boyfriend can’t follow her. Do you truly think her decade of misery will be more terrible than my lifetime of condemnation? I have lived what she fears. I was born into what she fears. I am what she fears. And you? Gael, you’re just a dog.” Siobhan’s lips twisted into a wide grin, cracking her face in twain between the severity of her eyes and the glee of her mouth. “Honk honk,” she said and then she screamed.

The house rattled; glass popped and Siobhan felt the world quiver underfoot. She didn’t want to kill him, she didn’t even want to permanently wound him, but she wanted his ears to ring and the following migraine to contort his existence into a labor. Most of all, she wanted to ruin the insipid gold bong he kept on his counter. When she was done, the sound still echoing in the air and her bones still vibrating with warmth, she spoke softly, just to taunt him. “You can have the Boneios, maybe they’ll remind her of home.” She snatched the velvet box and tucked it under her arm. “But I’m keeping the bone.” Picking glass out of her hair, she started to walk away. He wouldn’t appreciate the fact that she spared him the worst of her power—the scream was the equivalent of a yawn—but that was for him to figure out when his brain started working again.

— It was a peculiar thing, the soapbox that he felt empowered on when he was giving pep talks and speeches to people he felt could use them. Gael was so rarely stopped from standing on it, so seldomly dissuaded from what he was saying, being allowed to continue as long as he wanted, that over the years he was under the impression that they actually did anything. It was peculiar because as soon as one were to look down, they’d just just that - a soapbox. A soapbox holding up a short man who thought he was making a difference to whoever he was talking to. He didn’t feel that often, obviously, and he was unaccustomed to the rejection of it all. He knew that the second she lifted her hand and began to talk back to him, as his dark eyes danced on the thick scar on her palm, it was a waste of his time and energy. Of course it was; this was a woman who was tasked with taking Regan back, so delusional in her single-minded goal that she could die and that would be preferable to living without attaining that goal. She was talking and Gael wanted to listen, both with his sharp hearing and his gentle mind, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t stand to hear what strong convictions spurned her to act the way she did, he didn’t want to entertain whatever counterargument she could provide. He tried to be accommodating. He tried to understand as many angles as he could - that was why he still communicated with Emilio, with Regan, with Ren. But he also quickly came to the conclusion that whatever Regan was, whatever she told him about banshees, really was a perception colored by her experiences at Wicked’s Rest. She had a higher calling, she had a purpose and a clarity but it paled in comparison to the creature that lectured him across his marbled island countertop. He knew Siobhan was insulting him but Gael had managed to tune her out until she was little more than a buzz in his ears. His expression fell and a look had crossed his gaunt face, something almost akin to a dissociative state as he waited for her to finish her own speech so he could tell her to get the hell out of his house. She was done here. He was done here. The professor didn’t look back up at her until she seemed to come to a close on her ramble, turning his hearing back on so he could understand the words that were coming from her mouth. ‘I am what she fears.’

Gael knew that.

‘And you? Gael, you’re just a dog.’ He knew that, too. That’s all Gael felt like sometimes, following people around, approaching strangers to see if they needed help. Coming when called, excited on behalf of others, often not even thinking about what he wanted or needed to the point where he wasn’t sure what to tell them sometimes when they asked. He rolled over (most of the time, anyway) in the interest of wanting to make sure everyone was okay. He said things he didn’t mean and snapped sometimes but he was always the one who apologized first after realizing how antagonistic he was being because he didn’t want people to be mad at him. He wanted to protect who he cared about. He didn’t want to be alone, not when he couldn’t be sure what he even was anymore.

‘Stay. Good boy.’

These were a flash in his mind as Gael saw her expression contort and snap into an unnatural smile, wide, with too many teeth and nothing but hatred in it. ‘Honk honk’. Okay, that caught him a little off-guard and he felt his brow furrow slightly. He opened his mouth to tell her that they were done when her own mouth opened and–

The sound was immediately unbearable. He didn’t want to call it a scream as it was a siren that effortlessly pierced his eardrums, the screech of metal that shook the house, shattered the glass of his coffee maker and the window that sat behind his sink. With an involuntary yelp, Gael’s hands flew to his ears as fast as they could, yet they were agonizingly slow as the sound rattled in his brain, filling it with razor blades. He crashed to his knees, his vision swimming in tears and finding himself completely unable to hear anything but a pitched whine that drilled through him. He couldn’t focus on her, he couldn’t focus on the warmth oozing from one side of his head, he couldn’t focus on how effectively helpless he was at that moment in time.

She said something but he couldn’t even begin to understand what it was; it didn’t matter anyway. None of this mattered. Gael felt nauseous. He breathed heavily, pinching his eyes closed as he felt his fingers pressing against his skull in an attempt to assuage the simultaneous pounding, slicing and ringing. “Get out.” He said, unable to hear the occlusion that normally sounded off in one’s head when they spoke. “Take your calling and your purpose and choke on it.” He wasn’t sure how loudly he was speaking, but he didn’t care. He opened his eyes slowly and looked up at her with his dark gaze that glistened with tears, a small release of the pain that made his head sway unsteadily. Where uncertainty was in his body language and deafness was deafening in his ears, his tone, possibly shouting, carried everything he needed to convey to her.

“You’re not getting her.”

#wickedswriting #writing: Great Listening Skills #writing with: Siobhan #self harm tw #//Siobhan's a treasure #//And Ria's a treat

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cornybunbun · 9 months

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A Broken Doll, Chapter Two

Summary

Under the gaze of the Bone Tower, all are equal. Human, Demon, Fae... Death does not discriminate.

Sebastian has a job to do: he is to infiltrate the Human Realm and find out the source of their magic. The easiest way to get access to the Human Realm is by arranging a marriage and then seducing the human pitiful enough to be bound to him.

However, on his wedding night Sebastian finds himself collared by a child with magic burning in his eye and contempt written across his face. Now he is Ciel Phantomhive's dog, and although he wants to carry out his job for the Demon Realm he finds himself entranced by the way his new husband commands him to kneel.

Chapter Two - Daybreak

The Bone Tower was a permanent sentry watching over the three Realms. It skewered the earth and stretched up into the air, disappearing into the clouds so not even Sebastian could see the end of it. Defying any kind of geometry, it pierced the centre of the Demon, Human, and Fae realms equally. No doors. No windows. Just a complex lattice of ribs and femurs and skulls with no beginning or end. No matter where you were, it loomed at your back. A reminder that no matter who you were - Devil, Human, Fae - death would claim you in the end.

The story went that the Bone Tower had been constructed when the demons and fae had been introduced to the concept of death. Before that, they had lived however they'd pleased and fought countless bloody wars that ripped up the Three Realms and left human bodies scattered behind them. But the first shinigami had taken the remnants of those humans and spun them into threads that had been wrapped around the souls of the immortal demons and fae. Now they were tainted with the mortality of humans. They would age, they would bleed, they would sicken. Until their physical bodies crumbled away to leave behind their chalky white bones, ready to be collected and added to the Bone Tower.

Who knew if that was actually true.

Sebastian stood in his new home, the door to his husband's chambers closed behind him and the Bone Tower looming outside the window. The high of his orgasm had vanished and he was now in a more analytical mood. This was the first time he'd left the Demon Realm, and the Bone Tower was as prominent here as it was there. Sticking up from the mess of roofs and chimneys and turning cogs, the same way it stuck up from the shadows and spider webs of his home.

#sebaciel #black butler #sebastian michaelis #ciel phantomhive #black butler fanfiction #sebaciel fic #my fic

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weaselle · 1 year

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There’s like. A lot of death in my life right now. And somehow, the imminent euthanization of one of the dogs I walk is what is breaking me.

It’s as if the other grief is too much, if I start to really feel it i’ll fall completely to pieces so I have it all locked up. Fred the standard poodle doesn’t engage those inner defenses tho -- and once i start feeling sad about Fred it pulls the rest of my grief out. It was all i could do to not collapse sobbing yesterday while doing my mid-morning dog walk. Several times my knees buckled and i had to hold my breath to keep from crying violently on the side of the road.

Fred was one of my first clients. I met him and his person and her other dog a little over two years ago. She told me he was a street dog his first year and a half of life, and she explained that he is easily scared and doesn’t trust people while he backed far away from the door and barked and growled at me.

Much to her amazement I had him bumping noses with me in five minutes, and won his total trust by the end of the first week. Souls that need extra care sometimes recognize each other like that.

He. She told me he was trying to jump up into a very tall truck and fell backwards and his leg got caught in the step-up thing that is sometimes on those vehicles. The way he fell twisted his leg in a way that basically shattered his femur like glass. He’s a healthy 11 and i would have expected him to make it to 15 or 16 easily, but at his age he’d spend most of the rest of his life in significant pain trying to recover and. They’re not going to do that to him.

What a heart breaking situation. I’m going to say goodbye to him tomorrow.

People I love are dying around me, and I can’t afford to fall apart about it, I have to drive on the freeway, I have to smile at clients, I have to do my job, and be present for my friends who have their own hardships they’re going through.

So I lock up my grief for the dead and dying. But my sadness about Fred keeps wedging that door open and my heart is very close to breaking into a million pieces, i’m walking a tightrope to stay upright and this is unbalancing me.

Three years ago I was so depressed I couldn’t do anything but lie in bed refusing to consider making my own exit from life.

I found an inner strength through that experience, but it feels unfair to have my spirit tested so harshly when it is still trying to heal from the previous testing.

That’s a lot of words to say I’m having a very hard time.

#rant #screaming into the void #my life

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nevadas-night-time-novelist · 2 years

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Main 3, Sheriff - Dog shape-shifter reader

CW: Alcohol, food and reader getting hurt for Sheriff’s part

Hank

2BDamned had informed him that you were slightly different to a normal grunt, all of your senses seemed to be far superior. You could hear a pin drop from the next room, could sniff out ammunition from the scent of gunpowder alone, you could even see in the dark, and that wasn’t even mentioning your agility. Hank thought he was light on his feet, but you even put him to shame.

There had to be a secret to you, you’d arrived as blank slate, an untraceable person, and Hank was adamant he needed to figure it out. You’d never know a moment of peace till he figured you out. You could feel his eyes on you, the hair on your neck standing on end every time those monster’s eyes bore holes into your back.

One of your missions had been thrown awry by that fucking clown, always screaming out when he was close. “HAAAAAAANNNNNNK!!!!” You’d grown to loath him more than fear him, a constant nuisance just playing his own game, craving a fight from your teammate.

Bursting from underground, he instantly went for the mercenary, slamming his stop sign into Hank’s rib cage and impaling him to the wall. You could feel the change ripple through you, jaw aching as it snapped and reformed, protruding outwardly, rounded teeth falling out, in their place jagged new ones sprouted from your gums.

Fur burst from your skin, matching your natural hair colour, coating your body as your former outfit shredded during your change. Hank wheezed in shock, and Tricky snapped his head around.“WHH-WHAT THE FU-FUCK?” Oh this was new. “WOAH- DOGGY!” All of his previous animosity flew out the window, and the clown’s hand were all over your face. “PRETTY PUPPY! CLOWN DIDN’T KNOW HANK HAD A DOG.”

Hank was about to correct him, he doesn’t have a dog, he didn’t know where the hell this dog had come from-until his eyes met yours, familiar and knowing, and his gaze fell to the shredded remains of your clothes. Oh. Oh that explains a lot. He pulled that annoying stop sign from his body and kept a firm grip on it, primed to use it the moment Tricky snapped back to brawling mode.

“DOES DOG KNOW TRICKS? SIT? BEG? FETCH??” This was invasive as all hell, and Tricky had no idea, you were so tempted to bite him, but he’d likely lash out at you, and if Hank couldn’t survive this clown, there was no chance for you.

“…Yes. Dog.. Eh.. Sit.” You stared into Hank’s goggle and he slowly nodded, a silent plea. ‘Just do what the clown wants, maybe he’ll leave us alone.’ You obeyed and Tricky let out a soft squeal. “WOW!!! SO GOOD, GOOD DOG!” His clawed hand lunged into the nearest body, tearing out the femur and holding it out for you to take.

You did, taking the femur into your muzzle, staring up at the giggling clown. “SO COOL!!! CLOWN WANTS TO SEE HANK’S DOG MORE OFTEN. CLOWN WILL FIGHT HANK ANOTHER TIME. BYE DOGGIE!” And with that he snatched his sign from Hank’s hands and plunged into the earth, racing off again.

Now alone, Hank gestured at you, demanding an explanation. You spat the bone out and huffed. “Well, for starters, I’m not human.” “Yeah no shit. What the fuck are you?” You pawed awkwardly at your rags. “It’s complicated. I’m not really one thing, more like many constantly changing things. Err, a shapeshifter if you will.”

“And this,” He waved his hand up and down. “is some kind of.. normal thing for you? Where the hell did you come from, how the hell can you do this?” Plain and simply, you didn’t have an answer fitting for him. “Don’t know really, I was born this way? I’m guessing one of my parents must’ve been like me. Or maybe both. I’m not sure.”

He scowled in thought, bringing his hand to his chin. “Does Doc know?” “No. No one but you knows.” Hank paused as he processed this. He really should tell 2BDamned about this, but at the same time, it should be your choice to speak up on it should you want to. The silence was long, apprehension crawling up your spine, until he spoke again.

“Can you turn into a cat?”

Deimos

Supply runs with Deimos were fun, he always found a way to goof around while still doing his job. On this occasion, he’d just so happened to find a squeaky bone discarded in the area, and he scooped it up, hoping to sneak up on you (unlikely given your heightened senses) and scare you with it.

And yet the opportunity did present itself, so focused on sifting loose bullets together from the bottom of a box, he’d crept up, and-

SQUEAK!

Your ears pricked up, long bushy tail bursting from your pants and wagging back and forth violently, down on all fours and primed for play. Deimos dropped the toy in shock, stumbling backwards, he tripped over one of the boxes on the floor. “What the fuck-”

By the time you recollected your thoughts, you already had the toy in your mouth, squeaking if furiously and shaking your head, ready to play. “Ah hell nah. There must’ve been something wrong with my last cigarette. Laced with something.” You dropped the toy, a mixture of embarrassment and shock hit you at once.

“I-I didn’t mean for you to find out-” You awkwardly shifted back to your human form, picking up your discarded and torn clothes to cover yourself. “You mean I ain’t tripping, and you definitely did just turn into, well whatever the hell that was?” The cold air rolled over your exposed skin, sending goosebumps up your flesh. “…Yes.”

Deimos took his jacket off and draped it around your nude form, averting his eyes to allow you some modesty. “Why have you kept that secret? That’s fuckin’ badass!” “Because you can’t keep a secret, Dei.” He laughed. “Dude, what is Ford gonna think?” “And that’s why I didn’t tell you.”

His smile faltered for a second. “Wait, really? Look I can keep this under wraps if you ask me to, I swear. But it’s a really cool thing, and I think the guys would love to know about it too.” You shook your head. “I don’t want them to know, I don’t want them thinking I’m some kind of freakshow.”

“Don’t be silly babe, you’re not a freakshow. We’ve all got stuff that sets us apart. Hank is a patchwork of loose parts, Ford is hench as hell, Doc’s got them big chunks missing outta his cheeks, and I got this, remember?” With a flick of his thumb, a flame sparked to life on his hand. “Our defining features set us apart, but they don’t make us lesser, y'see?”

He was trying his best to be reassuring. “Yeah,” You nod. “You’re right. But all the same, I don’t want this getting out, not yet at least. Not until I’m ready.” Dei’s usual smirk came back. “'Course, my lips are sealed, I promise. Cross my heart, hope to die. Now err… Can you turn into the dog again? I wanna get a good look at you. I’ll even throw the toy.”

Sanford

You were curled up in the cabin of the truck, fast asleep in far off dreamland while Ford was driving. The radio was on low, some crappy tunes coming through to disrupt the silence, but not enough to wake you. He loved these quiet long drives, nothing but the open road ahead and the warm evening air enveloping him.

He glanced at you out of the corner of his eye as you softly mumbled in your sleep, shifting around in your dreams. The passing glance became a longer stare as you fidgeted more intensely, arms and legs kicking out, deep in your dreams, running on all fours in an intense chase.

Sanford was about to shake you awake with one hand, but your body transformed and he pulled back in shock, slamming his foot on the breaks, jolting you forwards and into the realm of the living. “WWHU- What’s wrong?!” “YOU- YOU’RE A DAMN DOG-” You were about to snap at him for being rude, but caught a glimpse of your arms-or rather legs.

Your ears darted backwards. “Ah fuck-Um.” He was at a loss for words, mouth opening and shutting again like a fish, trying to get his head around this, and failing. “Look I can explain-” “You can explain why you can turn into a dog?”

“Uh… Kinda?” Of all the group members to slip up in front of, you were glad it was Sanford. He was the most predictable, and you meant that in a polite way. Always a rash reaction followed by a prying desire to understand more, turning on his usual comforting and fatherly manner. The silence was thick with tension, both waiting for the other to speak.

Ford took charge, albeit reluctantly. “Okay. So. You don’t have talk about it now if you won’t wanna. But this is something we are going to need to talk about in future.” He started driving again, you squirmed awkwardly in your seat.

“There should be a blanket behind your seat so you can cover up.” Sure enough there was, and you wrapped it around yourself. “I’m a shapeshifter.” You finally admitted.

“I always thought they were just folk tales. Guess they’re based more in reality than I thought.” He drummed his fingers on the wheel, questions darting around in his head, all begging for an answer, and yet held back by his own restraint. You’d divulge information when you wanted to, and he believed he had no right to press for it, however gently.

“Yeah well.. We’re real. Pretty good at hiding it usually. I mean it’s been how many years since we’ve known each other? It’s not really something we put out there, mostly for our own safety. Imagine what the Auditor would do if he got his hands on someone like me.” Sanford nodded once.

“Don’t reckon that’d end well for anyone.” Silence settled once more. This time, you broke it. “You.. you won’t tell the others, will you? I.. I’m not ready for them to know. Truth be told, I’m fucking scared of them finding out. What if they think I’m a traitor, that what I am makes me a threat to them?”

“My lips are sealed, you’re allowed your secrets, we don’t have to share everything with them. And they wouldn’t think that.” He reached a hand over, giving one of his trademark reassuring shoulder squeezes. “The guys love you, you’re in with the pack for life.” He snorted suddenly. “Okay, that pack comment was unintentional.”

You offered a weak laugh in return. “Listen four paws-” And here come the nicknames. “I mean what I said. We do love you, and I know for a fact the others will embrace this side of you if you ever want to show it to them. But, the choice is always yours.”

Sheriff

There were rumours floating around town, a monstrous beast ambling on four paws, jaws wide enough to devour someone in three bites, claws capable of slicing through bone, hunting those wandering around at night. Of course Sheriff had heard of them too, concerned citizens coming to him to see if the rumours were true. He was clueless however.

Until one day, where he found himself on the outskirts of his town at night, the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end, that distinctive feeling of being watched. His head was on a swivel, seeking out the perp, paranoia gnawing at him when he couldn’t see anyone.

He would never know peace from that night onwards. Always checking over his shoulder, more so than usual, feeling those eyes burning into him, piercing his skin, seeing into his soul itself. Taking solace in a bar, he nurses a cold beer while pondering how he’s going to catch and kill a beast he’s never seen. No one could seemingly agree on what the beast looks like, other than its size.

You watch him from behind the bar, deciding to spark a conversation since you can see how stressed and worked up he is. “Tough day out there cowboy?” He doesn’t look up from his glass. “Ain’t it always. Y'see I’ve been ponderin’ how I’m 'posed to chase down this wolf fella we got pokin’ around town. Thing is, I ain’t even seen the thing m'self, don’t have much 'a clue to go off of.”

You nod sympathetically at his plight, offering your own opinion. “Whatever it is, it doesn’t seem to be actually hurting anyone in town.” “Y'eh, but how long’s that gon’ last? First time that fleabag gets it teeth in someone, whole town’s gonna lose their goddamn minds. Gon’ have to set some big traps to catch the furry fella, that’s for sure.”

And sure enough, before long the outskirts of the town is rigged with bear traps, tempting morsels of cattle as bait. The hard failure that follows pisses Sheriff off. “An’ I don’t get it, furbag took all the meat, an’ never set off any of the damn traps. Outwitted by some dang mongrel.” You slide him another beer, he raises the brim of his hat. “I ain’t order another.”

“On the house, consider it a thanks for trying. I’m sure you’ll get 'em sooner or later Sher.” He tips his hat, a faint blush creeping on his cheeks. “Well thank ya kindly.” His job was a thankless one for the most part, and no act of kindness, no matter how small, was passed over. “An’… Thank ya for listenin’ to my troubles. Know it ain’t in yer pay-grade to hear me ramblin’ on about this.”

“All part of the job boss.” You wiped down the empty bar area, Sheriff keenly watching you work. Admittedly he found you attractive, you had a way with words that soothed his worries, plus you were easy on the eyes.

Liquid courage now coursing through his veins, he decided to shoot his shot. “Say… How’s about you an’ me go out tonight.” “Shouldn’t you be hunting the beast?” “Got my boys baiting the traps, waitin’ on some special equipment delivered from Auditor. It’ll be dealt with.”

Something from the Auditor? Either Sheriff was a special case to Auditor, or Auditor was eager to get this beast caught or killed. You felt a lump growing in your throat, this could get dangerous fast for you. “Well?” “Not tonight, but I’ll definitely take you up on that.” You needed to form a plan, to be careful. You could see him sink in his seat, slightly dejected.

Later that night, you carefully padded around, avoiding the baited traps this time. You were wandering further from town, hackles raised in anticipation, danger was thick in the air, and it didn’t dissipate the further you went. The smell of flames licked your nose, in the distance was a fire.

The beast was on the hunt, and was in turn being hunted. Sheriff stalked behind, his gun poised and ready to maim the town’s terror. He was taken off guard as a bandit smacked him in the back of a head with a bat, he hit the ground hard and was dizzy. The bat came around his neck, he was about to have his neck broken, but the beast came.

The bandit was tossed aside, mauled and partially devoured, Sheriff’s blurry vision made it hard for him to see what was going on, he managed to grasp his fallen gun. He raised it, blasting a bullet into the shoulder of the beast, and it howled in agony, in a familiar voice.

Sheriff kept the gun trailed on the beast, blinking the tears out of his eyes. “P-please Sheriff-D-don’t.” He flinched, head pounding furiously. Surely he’d suffered from head trauma, this beast hadn’t just spoken to him. And yet before him, the beast changed, taking on the much smaller and frailer form of his dream partner.

“What in tarnation?” He stood over them in shock, the beast was the person he’d fallen in love with, and he’d just shot them. “Oh my god-god I’m so sorry, I-I-I did'nt-” “Just-help me. P-please.” He wrapped you up in his arms, turning back to town and sprinting back, desires to helping his crush in anyway he can, ignoring his own injuries. Guilt would envelop his mind forever.

#madness combat #madcom #madness combat x reader #madcom x reader #madness combat reader insert #madcom reader insert #x gon deliver to ya #hank #hank j wimbleton #hank x reader #sanford #sanford x reader #deimos #deimos x reader #sheriff #sheriff x reader

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lifblogs · 5 months

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My World

I've only read this twice so far, and it's probably not finished, but I wanted to share what my brain aneurysm scare was like. WARNINGS: Suicidal Thoughts, Grief, Mentions of Death, and Violent Murder, Bullet Mention, Dog Attack Mention, Mention of Severe Injuries, Small Mentions of Ableism, and Medical Negligence

Loki’s white and tabby fur was softer than usual today; he must have cleaned himself. A rare event. Either way I intended to cuddle with him for a long time yet. (I’d cuddle him if even he swore off bathing entirely.) There wasn’t really anything else to do while I didn’t feel good, and he was right by my face, primed for his 876th kiss of the day.

My brother was with me to keep an eye on me, which at this point I was very much used to. For the moment it was just good knowing he was there. I focused on Loki, smiling at him, taking in the way he was squinting. He was content, and it made my heart feel too full, like maybe my love would explode out of me.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

The worst thing in the world happened to me.

One moment I was generally fine (my usual low level of fine), and then my head exploded with the worst pain I’d ever felt in my 25 agonizing years of life. It was unimaginable. I’d been attacked by a dog, I’d gotten two herniated discs in my spine, I’d broken my femur, I was still healing from a broken jaw and cheekbone, and yet…

There was no pain scale, as doctors often asked me about. None. The ten had been absolutely obliterated. The numbers were bleeding everywhere, and drowning in this… Pain doesn’t come close to summing it up. The scale was non-existent. There wasn’t a number. There wasn’t anything. Nothing else existed.

Imagine getting smashed in the head with the end of a wooden beam.

There, now you have it

I couldn’t move.

I couldn’t think.

I couldn’t make a sound.

What human sound of agony could even encompass the sheer breadth of what I was feeling in my head?

Screaming, which I had done plenty of with my broken leg, meant nothing. Not even a groan could make this known to the world.

Was I breathing?

Was I a person?

What was going on?

I think I mentioned I was going to throw up.

I remember zofran after zofran breaking up under my tongue, my body lifted up so I wouldn’t choke, a bucket placed in front of me.

I remember dry heaving.

I remember… something. In hindsight I think it was thankfulness for the zofran, or else I would have been throwing up endlessly.

There was talking, a phone call. I don’t know.

I needed help.

I needed help with everything I had. Every part of me wanted to beg for it so badly in my quiet excruciation.

I remember… not feeling. Not feeling the left side of my body. At least, not all the way. I remember my brother asking me to do things (he was still on his phone). I think I had to smile, to say some nonsensical words.

It wasn’t a stroke.

I didn’t care.

I didn’t care I wasn’t having a stroke because what the absolute hell was going on? What was wrong with me? Something was seriously wrong with me, and I could barely even tell anyone.

Thoughts tried to form, words drifting in what I now was. Sentences tried to string themselves together, but kept breaking up in the agony in my head.

If I even so much as managed a groan it shook my entire skull, the inside of my brain.

I don’t know if you’ve ever had a severe injury, but say someone broke every bone in your wrist an then shook it madly like it was caught in a dog’s mouth, then that was what a groan did to me.

That was what movement did to me.

I didn’t have a name anymore.

I didn’t have goals, or desires, or anything mildly human about me.

I had pain, and fear that this was it. This was all I would experience, forever and ever. There was even a passing thought of what could be wrong, of what there was to fear.

Images of blood trickling down the left side of my brain near my forehead came to mind before it was blasted away.

There were words I’d read, a story I now connected to. A name.

Emilia Clarke.

Fuck.

Her… her brain aneurysm story. Was this…?

Was it…?

Brain…

Annnnneeeeeeuuurrryyyysssmmmmm?

The thought was slower and more viscous than mud.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to think it or know this truth, I just could not think.

I don’t really remember it, but there were lots of men in my room suddenly.

They wanted to move me.

My body wanted to throw up my actual stomach.

My brain was bursting.

Where…?

Oh.

Where was Loki?

Loki?

Looo…ki?

I knew one thing. My cat.

Where…?

There were stairs, darkness, flashing lights blindingly strobing in that darkness, slicing through my skull. A child watching.

Time didn’t exist. Not much existed.

What could exist when so much pain filled up the world?

I was in a hospital.

A waiting room.

And then I did know something. I started to get dizzy. My vision blurred.

I kept dry heaving.

I was hot and cold and tingly and…

Something was squeezing my damaged brain, squeezing my roiling stomach.

I wanted to die. I really, truly wanted to die with every cell in my being… If I even was a being of any sort anymore.

I passed out.

It’s hard to explain how I know I did.

I felt the world slide away, some miniscule part of me aware of what that meant.

For some reason I remember a nurse yelling at me for having my bag on the floor. In that strangely stark moment I was aware of my body flailing, my head jerking, my teeth trying to bite my tongue.

Black.

Nothing.

How does one explain the absence of something, that missing time?

When I came to I ached, my head was still being squeezed, pressure building and building.

Somehow the world was more wrong than it was before.

I’d had a seizure.

Perhaps I had another one too. The clusters all blend together sometimes.

At one point, when I wished I could speak so I could ask the triage nurse to kill me, or to perhaps get a doctor to do it, I saw my brother.

He… he hadn’t been there before, right? Was he real?

I was alone.

So alone.

And there he was.

I had another seizure. I know the words I had another seizure don’t quite explain what happened, what that suffering was like, but there weren’t words. My brain was getting destroyed, obliterated through a meat grinder within my very bruised skull. And that meat grinder with my brain in it was also getting shredded.

I didn’t understand why no one was killing me.

I could hardly groan, so how could I even ask them to do so? What human being wouldn’t kill someone in such pain?

My brother made sure I got a room.

I seized again. I remember a doctor pulling back my right eyelid.

He didn’t kill me either.

I was too busy wishing for help or death—something to end this immediately—to be disappointed.

A nurse came in. I managed to notice that she was wearing pink.

I was able to feel some shock as she tied a tourniquet around my left arm, and started flicking it all over…

And I didn’t feel it.

I have severe fibromyalgia. Tourniquets hurt like they’re going to squeeze my limb off.

The needles came.

I didn’t care because they didn’t help. They didn’t kill me.

And I didn’t feel them.

By that point I was dry heaving, and crying.

And both those activities rattled my damaged brain.

I knew time existed.

How could it not exist while this pain still existed? While I was alive?

Something had to be keeping the pain going. Time.

So much time.

I fumbled some words to the doctor’s questions.

I forgot them as soon as I answered, or sometimes halfway through answering.

I wanted him to know that it felt like someone had hit me in the head.

Did my brother hold my hand? Even typing this I’m not sure.

Someone was groaning. Someone was groaning and I wanted them to stop because it was like pellets thudding into my skull, or a bullet..

Courtney.

A bullet in her brain.

Blood everywhere.

It was me. I was groaning.

And, and…

And.

There was pain medicine, which brought back more of my thoughts, and I just wanted the doctors to kill me, to let me die, and now I could form those feelings into full sentences. And yet… why couldn’t I just die? Shouldn’t it be so simple when my head was broken?

Blonde curls. A bruised head. A dead body in a morgue where my mémère should be.

My head wasn’t broken like hers.

It wasn’t…

Someone—someone had hit me in the head. They had hit me in the head! Why could no one see? Why weren’t they listening! I had been hit in the head. I was going to throw up, and never stop. Please, just please…

Please.

Please kill me.

Kill me, please.

Pleeeasseee…

There was…

There was a CT scan.

The laser was a painful and blinding flash, another strike to my head.

My body burned.

The whirring of the machine echoed my stomach, and made it worse. What was the point of this?

It hurt. It hurt!

Don’t try to save me. Please. Please, just…

I was back in my room, finally able to thrash since my pain had gone from perhaps 100 to 76. I could groan. I could ask my brother why no one was killing me.

Time.

Incrementally, the pain began to fade. (You know that story about the bird sharpening its beak on the diamond mountain and the first second of eternity?)

I could think.

What…? What was going on?

Why was I in a hospital?

How had I gotten here?

The doctor came in, and practically curled in on a sigh as he proclaimed, “No brain aneurysm.”

Okay. Okay, good.

But then what in the actual fresh hell was fucking wrong with me?

The pain meds worked. I went home with my headache at a 10, a tiredness in me that I had never known before.

I went to sleep asking, What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with me?

And can this happen again?

I woke up with a headache.

Hell had apparently decided not to end.

Even that headache at a 10 scared me. It gripped my marrow and whispered, This can happen again. That pain can happen again. You’ll be nothing again. And no one will kill you.

I sat there, lost in the memory of that pain, barely breathing, waiting, and waiting for it to come back, for that wooden beam to smash me in the head once more.

It was a timeless moment. There was just that torture, that agony, a hospital bed, not being able to feel half my body.

My head ached.

And ached.

Loki meowed.

The world came back, and it pranced over and rubbed against my legs. And for just a small moment—a moment that was surely one of the purest, most wonderful moments in the entire history of the world—I forgot about my headache.

For perhaps two or three seconds I didn’t remember, and I didn’t feel.

There was Loki, and the way my heart overflowed at the sight of him.

#writing #original fiction #my writing #personal

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