#darksiders angst

[imagine-darksiders]

Not your time - A Darksiders oneshot.

Hey everyone!

A commission from the lovely and generous @humboltsquid, who requested a female Reader who barely survives an assassination attempt that's carried out in front of the Horsemen.

CW: Blood, guns, assassination attempt, mild descriptions of bullet wounds, aftermath, protective Horsemen, whump, angst, fluff, Death centric.

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A sudden flash of dazzling light bursts in front of your face, and try as you might to keep your eyes open, you just know that come Monday, there’ll be an unseemly photograph of you squinting out of the front page of a local newspaper.

“Perfect!” the photographer grins without casting so much as a glance down at the screen of her camera.

Blinking rapidly to disperse the shadow floating in front of your eyes, you take another look out at the crowd gathered on the square below the steps of Haven City Hall.

Most, if not all of their attention is rigidly devoted to you as multiple pens sit poised over tattered notebooks, though there are some people who throw envious glares at the photographer as she retreats back into their ranks.

You have to admit, you find yourself wondering where she managed to scrouge up a working camera.

It’s hardly been a few months since Humanity pulled itself out of the rubble of an unrecognisable Earth.

Word of the Apocalypse, its aftermath and the reasons behind it spread like wildfire – words that originated from your mouth, at the behest of the Four Horsemen, all of whom agreed that you’d make a fine ambassador for your species.

Death made it apparent that he and his siblings thought very highly of you after your involvement in clearing War’s name and surviving trials no human ever had before.

You’re starting to wish they thought a little less of you now, though. This is the seventh ‘press conference’ you’ve been subjected to in the past month. That’s without all the one-to-one interviews you’d been forced into with world leaders, heads of national security, historians, religious leaders, scientist… The list goes on.

Today is just more of the same; a whole lot of reporters clamouring to quote you for their articles in cobbled-together newspapers that have finally begun to crop up around the globe.

At a glance, it would almost appear that you're standing on the steps alone. But upon further inspection, it isn't difficult to spot four, hulking figures eyeing the proceedings from the shadows.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Death, Fury, Strife and War. Your guardians. And quite possibly the best friends you've ever had, no matter their quirks and social ineptness.

They've grown tired of the constant questions from your fellow humans, even Strife, and no doubt the only reason they're here at all today is to watch your back, despite how often you try to tell them that they don't have to worry about you.

You might as well be throwing words at a brick wall and expecting it to break.

In the corner of your eye, there’s another flash, and a split second where your heart starts to sink at the prospect of yet another photograph circling the papers. However, in less than a blink, something smacks into your abdomen with a dull, wet ‘thwack,’ forcing you to stumble onto your backfoot.

Startled, you drop your mouth open and look out at the crowd, dimly wondering why one of them had thrown something at you…

A rock, perhaps?

Strange…

You nearly jump out of your skin when there’s an explosion of motion all around you.

From one moment to the next, War hauls his immense bulk in front of you, dousing you in his shadow as he rips Chaoseater from its scabbard and swings the terrible sword out in front of him, shoulders bristling with a rage you can’t yet place.

At almost the exact same time, Strife appears as if from nowhere to your right, roaring like a wild beast and, to your horror, whipping Mercy and Redemption out of their holsters and pointing them out at the anxious crowd.

A woman screams, loud and shrill enough to hurt your ears, sending blood coursing through them until you’re left grimacing at the sound, only dimly aware of the tiny burn blossoming to life in your abdomen, just beneath your left breast.

No sooner have the brothers locked their legs rigidly into place than someone fills the space behind you– Fury, if the warm body pressing a little too firmly into your back is any indication.

“Strife! The rooftops!” she shouts urgently, and you can’t help but grimace again as her voice thrums through your head like a claxon.

Bewildered. you twist yourself sideways, meeting the stare of the last Horseman, Death. He was the furthest away when the rock hit you, though now he seems to warp through the air towards you with the grace and swiftness of a shadow moving across the square, and all the ferocity of a bull charging down its quarry.

Your mouth hangs open, lips twitching as the burn in your chest grows as if an insect has lodged its stinger inside your skin, and you’re about to ask what in the world they think they’re doing when you pull in a breath.

All at once, your chest hitches painfully, and you hurry to throw a hand over your mouth to catch the hacking cough that takes you by surprise. You pull a face at the sensation of thick saliva spattering against your palm.

It had been a sunny day not moments ago, but as Death approaches from your left, the temperature around you plummets by a staggering degree, as if you’ve been cast into the eye of a polar storm. Growing increasingly alarmed by the second, you pull in a smaller breath, one that rattles and wheezes in its way in, but doesn’t quite manage to fill your lungs as you move your hand away to call Death’s name.

The last thing you expect to see when you briefly glance down is the splatter of rich, glistening blood freckling the previously unblemished skin of your palm.

It’s only then that the thought occurs to you; it may not have been a rock at all…

“Death?” you whimper shakily, lowering your trembling hand and touching your fingertips gingerly to the spot on your torso that’s beginning to feel even worse, as though instead of an insect, a lit cigarette has been jammed against your skin with no signs of cooling.

You’d flinch away from the sensation were you not being tightly boxed in on every side by four, bridling forces of nature.

The eldest of them, Death, is upon you in an instant, dragging the shadows of buildings along in his wake as if, for just a moment, the darkness itself is beholden to none but him.

There’s a fire raging in the Horseman’s wide and simmering eyes that contradicts the icy hands that reach out to catch you by your shoulders when you take a faltering step towards him, only to crumple as the numbness in your legs makes itself apparent.

A familiar chill pours down your spine. One you’re all-too familiar with.

They promised you had nothing to be afraid of, not while you have Four of them in your corner.

But you can’t help it.

Right now, as War bellows a thunderous battle-cry out at some unknown recipient, and the breaths start to leave you in great clouds of billowing, white air, you’re scared.

 ---

‘No, no, no, NO! NO!’

Death’s ever-churning mind howls with outrage and disbelief, even if his lips remain tightly sealed beneath his bone-mask as he holds you upright by your shoulders, suspending you an inch above the ground in his haste to scan you for injury.

He’s mutely aware that the crowd of humans have already begun to scatter, though whether they’ve been driven away by the Horsemen’s sudden act of aggression or the culprit who has just made a foolish attempt on your life, Death can’t be bothered to guess.

He knows… As soon as he caught the flash from a broken window that overlooks the city hall, he knew. And he knows, for the rest of his wretched existence, that he’ll be trying to atone for standing too far away to reach you in time. For growing complacent.

They've all grown complacent, though he’ll shoulder the blame for his siblings because they – however unwittingly – follow by his example.

He thought this would be safe.

You weren’t supposed to get hurt, this was just another question-and-answer session you’ve done dozens of times before. Curious humans seeking gaps in their knowledge from you.

Who in their right mind would dare, would even have the nerve to try and hurt the human who has been so obviously afforded protection by the Four? Not even Samael, arguably their strongest adversary, would think twice before attempting to antagonise the Horsemen.

He can feel your warm breaths hitting the exposed skin of his sternum as he clings to you, rolling his eyes down until he spies the patch of crimson blooming outwards underneath your quivering hand.  

The acrid stench of blood – your blood – is quick to slip between the cracks of his mask and into his unwilling nostrils.

Death’s muscles bunch at the intrusion and he clamps his gnashing teeth down on the primal growl that tries to escape through them.

He’s aware that at any moment, his siblings are going to catch the same scent on the wind, and it’ll be all he can do to stop them from levelling the entire city, just to ensure that your would-be killer doesn’t get away. Hell, it’s all he can currently do to keep his own Reaper Form from tearing itself loose and raking up the souls of any human in the vicinity.

As unhappy as his siblings already are though, they’re about to raise merry Hell when he makes his next announcement.

“She’s been shot,” he spits, pulling the metaphorical trigger on three, loaded guns.

As if from nowhere, a maelstrom whips up around Strife, who only just manages to lurch sideways far enough to spare you and his siblings from being crushed as he erupts into the titanic, armoured beast; Anarchy, shaking out his mane and tipping his horned head back to screech up at the sky.

Steeling himself against your sudden whimpers of alarm, Death barks, “Seventh story window to the North. Go!”

And without needing any further spurring on, Anarchy launches himself into a gallop across the street, leaping up to latch his monstrous claws into the wall of the building and hauling himself straight up the side of it, hand over hand.

War and Fury don’t look as though they’ll be far behind their brother, but Death’s voice is enough to still them before they too can unleash their true forms and give chase.                                                                                                                   

“Fury.”

Snarling, his sister whips around towards him, her expression faltering when she sees how carefully he slides his arms beneath your knees and hoists you off your feet, cradling you against his unforgiving chest.

“Rampage is the fastest of our horses,” he continues, “Find Azrael, meet us at Y/n’s home.”

She looks as though she’s about to argue, far more interested in joining Strife to enact some well-deserved vengeance in your honour, but another glance at you reminds her that this isn’t the time for personal vendettas.

Fiery hair bobs as she gives a resolute nod, then turns on her heel and raises a fist in the air. “Rampage! To me!”

Death’s attention flits back to you, secure in the knowledge that at least two of his siblings have been distracted from going on the warpath.

Speaking of…

“Brother… Is she...?” War’s voice has dipped and bowed with rage, lending him the cadence of a beast.

Before he can say another word, Death speaks, his magics flaring about him like coiling snakes, though is tone is deceptively calm. “War, I need you to guard us as we ride.”

Without another word, the Horsemen summon their steeds, and Death is forced to relinquish you to War for a second whilst he hauls himself into Despair’s saddle, immediately reaching to take you again when his brother gently lifts you towards him. You scream as he does, trying to curl in on yourself until you’re deposited in the saddle between Death’s sturdy thighs.

Then, in a moment so rare, not even his siblings can remember the last time they saw it, Death slips his hand underneath yours, trying not to let his stomach squeeze at the feeling of your fingers latching onto his. He meets your eyes, loathing the wide, terrible pain that’s been placed inside them.

Pain has no place in your life, not so long as they’re here to protect you from it.

“Not yet,” he breathes, damn-near begs, spurring Despair into a thunderous gallop with Ruin snorting wildly at his heels.

----------

It’s the agony that wakes you in the end, a raging hellfire that ignites in your chest as you startle to consciousness, never recalling how you’d come to be unconscious in the first place.

As if the unexpected pain weren’t bad enough, your heartbeat thuds strongly in your ears, which are ringing with the shouts of several, booming voices, all far too close and spilling over one another in a furious rush, leaving you feeling as though you’ve been placed inside an amphitheatre.

“- the Hell wasn’t someone watching the buildings!?” Fury’s voice, easily distinguishable from her brothers’ and absolutely drenched in her namesake.

Gritting your teeth, you screw your face up when Strife almost roars back, “Keep lookin’ at me when you say that, and I might start thinkin’ you’re blaming me for this!”

“Perhaps I am! You’re the firearms expert, as you so often like to remind us!”

“Why the Hell should that mean-!?” He cuts himself off midsentence, granting you a second of relief before he promptly redirects his attention to one of his other siblings. “WAR! If you don’t stop pacing, you’re going out the goddamn window!”

Ah, you wince, so that wasn’t your heart beating in your ears.

War’s thundering footfalls come to an abrupt halt somewhere to your right, and he promptly responds to his brother’s threat with a rumbling growl, the kind that emanates straight from his chest and spills across the room like a roll of thunder.

They’re fighting about something…. Which isn’t unusual. But lately, they’ve been getting better at not doing it around you.

God your chest hurts. What the Hell happened?

“Mmgh, ugh…” You feel like you need a crowbar to pry your eyelids apart, but at least the pitiful sound you made is enough to stop their incessant bickering.

A new problem arises though, when they instantly start to exclaim anew.

“She’s awake!” Strife gushes.

“I can see that for myself,” Fury sighs, though not without a hint of relieved laughter.

War’s relief is quieter, but no less palpable.

Through the gaps in your eyelids, you spot a flash of red surging towards you as you try to heave yourself upright, but not a moment later, a strong, uncompromising gauntlet engulfs your shoulder, pushing you down to lay flat on your back.

“Stay there,” War’s baritone thrums, as gentle as you’ve ever heard it, “You’ll hurt yourself.”

Tears of pain are already trailing down your cheeks, but you suppose he means you’ll make it worse. Blinking to clear your vision, you peer up at the three, titanic figures looming over your head.

Strife’s eyes are the first you meet, glowing like raw gold from beneath his silver helm. They pinch at the corners, a telltale sign that he’s smiling under there. “H-hey, gorgeous,” he swallows thickly as if he’s about to choke, “Glad to see you’re awake again… Scared the Hell out of us back there, you know.”

You know it must have been bad if he’s admitting to fear.

“How’re you feeling.”

Before you can open your mouth to tell him that it feels as if your chest is being split in two, Fury scoffs, turning to shoot Strife a scathing look.

“She was shot, you fool. How do you think she’s feeling?”

“Sh-shot?” you croak, once more attempting to sit up, but with War’s gauntlet pinning you in place, you only succeed in squirming weakly on the-… Are you on your bed?

Your breath starts picking up, throat bone-dry as more tears spill down your cheeks. “I was shot?”

To her credit, Fury swiftly clamps her jaw shut, biting her lip and looking at least a little ashamed for blurting that out. War emits a troubled hum whilst Strife hurries to reassure you.

“Hey, hey,” he hushes, reaching out to drop his enormous hand over the top of yours, “It’s over. It’s over now. Azrael fixed you up. You’re okay.” There’s conviction in his words, but you don’t know if he’s trying to convince himself or you.

You roll your neck down slightly to look him over, and it’s only now that you see the blood smeared across his chest plate.

With a sharp gasp, your heart rate skyrockets.

War follows your wide-eyed stare and grumbles, “I told you to wash that off…”

Glancing down at himself, Strife quickly snaps his head up to offer you a shake of his head. “No, no, don’t worry about that. It’s not your blood.”

Despite his efforts, this does little to reassure you.

“It’s yours!?” you bleat.

“Nah, ain’t mine either. S’from the guy who shot you.”

 Your abdomen squeezes in protest as you strain out, “Strife! You killed someone!?”

For a moment, he falls silent. All of them do, flicking pointed glances between one another as a creeping chill begins to seep inside the room, reaching your skin even under the blankets that have been tucked around your neck.

“I gave the order.”

All eyes dart to the open door of your bedroom. You can’t help the aborted breath you draw in when you see Death filling the wooden frame.

His bulging shoulders heave up and down slowly, and that dark, brooding stare is adhered to your face, causing you to squirm uncomfortably as if you mean to escape it.

 “Finally decided to stop beating yourself up, have you?” Fury mutters under her breath, earning a glare from Death so frosty, you could swear you see her shiver.

“But… but I don’t understand?” you wheeze, furrowing your brow wearily and shifting to try and ease the ache in your lungs, “What do you mean you gave the order?”

“Some fool human made an attempt on your life,” War supplies, “Strife did what we all wished we could do.”

Once again, you try to sit up, and once again the weight of War’s gauntlet stops you.

Grunting, you argue, “But, you can’t… kill someone just because-!”

“-Because what?” Death snaps, stalking towards the bed an effectively silencing you in a heartbeat, “Because an overconfident zealot thought you deserved to die simply because you spoke a truth that didn’t align with his doctrines?”

He may be the shortest of the Horsemen, but that doesn’t mean that Death isn’t several feet taller than you, able to loom over your bed like a storm cloud.

“Were we to stand idly by whilst one of our own was threatened?”

You glance up at the others, taken aback by the ferocious, steadfast frowns on War and Fury’s expressions, and the familiar glint of steel in Strife’s eyes. Not one of them are contending Death’s bold declaration.

That you’re one of theirs.

It’s a hell of a claim to come from the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Ancient Nephilim of legend, laying claim to a human?

You wet your lips, but a response doesn’t come.

Death, however, seems only too ready to fill the space of your silence.

In a single, fluid motion, he lowers himself onto one knee beside your bed, and that action in itself is as poignant as his words.

Death never kneels.

The other three don’t look half as surprised as you’re sure you must, not even when their eldest, their leader, reaches out, hesitates, then rests the tips of his cold fingers gently under your jawline, directly over your pulse.

Wide-eyed, you can only stare into the sockets of his mask, breathing shallowly, missing the way his shoulders slump at the sensation of a strong, steady throb beneath his fingertips.

“You’re under our protection,” he states matter-of-factly, backed up by a concurring grunt from War on the other side of the bed, “And when the Horsemen have your back, nobody touches you. Is that understood?”

You press your lips together, both horrified and equally humbled that you could have earned the devotion of such powerful, ethereal beings.

Holding your gaze, Death firmly repeats, “Nobody.”

You still have questions. No end of them. But right now, frightened, hurt, and vulnerable, you’re wrenching heart seeks safety in one of the few places you know can offer it.

It hurts to raise your left arm, but you bite down hard on your tongue and slip your hand around what you can of Death’s solid neck.

The first sob escapes you when he leans towards you, pretending to be guided by your pitiable strength until you can wrap more of your arm around the back of his shoulders and push your damp face into the column of his throat, shivering slightly from the chill on his skin.

“I’m sorry,” you whimper against him, feeling his muscles turn lax underneath your touch.

In response, the Horseman nudges his mask closer to your ear and in a whisper that’s meant for you alone, he utters, “You’re not the one with anything to be sorry for…”

Unseen by you, the ancient Nephilim’s eyes glare holes through each of his siblings, daring one of them to comment on his moment of rare, uncharacteristic indulgence.

Per the norm, Strife is the one who struggles to keep his mouth shut.

“Aw, how come Death gets a hug?” Strife whinges petulantly, “He doesn’t even like ‘em.”

“And you believed him when he told you that?” Fury snickers.

On the bed, your grip just tightens around your guardian’s neck as his protective hand lays gingerly against your back, cold fingertips drinking up the warmth of your human body with a reverence known only to Death.

#darksiders #darksiders 2 #reader #whump #angst #protective Horsemen #fluff #commission

[yourfavoritehorseman]

Strife: *after a bad argument with y/n* Say it, then.

Y/n: Say what?

Strife: That you love me.

Y/n: Really?

#darksiders #incorrect quote #kinda angst #ooc #stranger things #okay so I do remember hearing this #in one of the earlier seasons of stranger things #but I was reminded of it #by a cod edit of keegan #lol well anyway

[x-eightball]

darkside detective fans hey look mcqueen angst come get

#detective mcqueen #darkside detective #patrick dooley #francis mcqueen #officer dooley #mcqueen angst #mcqueen is an emotional drunk change my mind

[scarletknightreterns]

Anger (1/??)

A mini comic of sorts that popped into my head.

Someone pissed Cinder off (which is very HARD to do) and Death knows that what happens when she’s pissed off is not a good thing. But he also knows how to get her to snap out of it— him grabbing her arms is actually a lot more gentle then his sharp words might imply. :333

#darksiders oc #darksiders #Death #angst #fluff #comic #he cares about her

[askthedarksidersfam]

Imagine in the hundred years Azrael was in his imprisonment, each soul infected with Corruption tainted him the smallest bit. Almost unnoticed to the Archangel as his magic kept him immune, at least for a time.

But as time passes on and billions of souls, a large percentage already infected have begun to corrode his immunity and sink its teeth within him. Slowly and painfully, almost like a punishment from the Creator, Azrael falls sick to Corruption. Growing high climbing crystals from his neck, back and chin, growing tall, almost looking like horns, a mockery against him.

He can do nothing as the oily ooze infects him from the inside out. His magic slowly loses its power, the purity and he can feel the grace lose his body. Veins turn black with the Corruption, and he loses his fleshy tone for something sickly and grey.

The once beautiful wings well maintained by Azrael lose their healthy shine, turning almost black like watching ink blend with water. Feathers fall at an alarming rate, never to grow back as Corruption seizes each and every delicate plume until nothing but an oily membrane remains.

But Azrael does not lose his sanity. It’s some twisted joke, the whole universe laughs at him as he can feel his whole body dying around him yet he will not perish, and he cannot simply fall into the allure of death and wake in the Dead Kingdom. He has to remember it all.

When War finally comes, Azrael begs for one mercy: to be put down.

#darksiders #darksiders azrael #azrael #angst #corruption #coming for throats tonight #:)

[doodlesdreaming]

100 years in Chains, either in the silence of the Void or before the Counsel, punished for a crime he didn't commit.

(I know I'm behind on some prompts, but I'm only now beginning to slowly dig myself out of a rough mental funk. So I apologize for inconsistencies, on my part, for Darksiders Inktober. But I'll try my best.)

#darksidersinktober2022 #darksiders war #darksiders video game #darksiders #four horsemen of the apocalypse #gothic fantasy #art prompts #drawing prompts #inktober #colored sketch #angst #fanart #my art #digital art #video games #damn artblock and everything in between T-T #but im trying

[prince-rowan-of-the-forest]

Dragon Heart

There are a few things that come with becoming a dark side, one of which takes Roman a little by surprise.

Fortunately, he has a fantastic boyfriend and a... maybe not quite as helpful brother to get him through it.

----

| Ao3 |

Warnings: Mild body horror, self doubt/self deprication, Remus being Remus, hurt/comfort.

Pairings: Romantic Roceit, familial Creativitwins

Word Count: 3993

Notes: This is a oneshot for my Darkside!Roman au, which you can find here with the tag #Darkside!Roman, if you so wish :)

Otherwise, happy reading!

----

"Help me!" Roman yelled as he rose up into the dark sides' mindscape, his burned pillow clutched tight in his hand.

"Woah Prissy! What happened to you! Finally embracing the arsonist lifestyle?" Remus called from across the room, accompanied with a giggle. Janus glanced up, noticing the pillow and making his way over. 

"What happened, Roman?" 

"I don't- I dont know I just- I was lying on my bed and then I sneezed and my pillow was on fire" Roman ranted, waving the pillow around as he spoke, "So I put it out obviously but I don't know what happened!" 

"Alright alright, calm down darling, absolutely everything is wrong," Janus soothed, taking the pillow from Roman's hands, "I don’t think I know what's happening,"

"What? What is it?" Roman asked, huffing only for a puff of smoke to come from his nose and startle him, Janus chuckled.

"Oh my goodness, you're adorable," Janus couldn't help but coo. Roman saw red.

"Don't call me ad-" Roman's voice cut off immediately and he let go of Janus' shirt, which he'd grabbed without even realising and stepped back, "I- I don't - I'm sorry I- I don't know what that was…" 

"It's not alright, sweetheart," Janus said with a small smile as he smoothed down his ruffled clothes, "Believe it or not, Remus and I both went through something similar, once,"

"Wha-" 

"It's growing pains! Ro-bro! You're really becoming one of us!* Remus cried, leaping over and punching Roman in the arm, for some reason Roman found himself having to control the instinct to attack his brother in a show of strength.

"What Remus means," Janus said, "Is that you're getting your creature trait," 

"My…' Roman paused for a moment, "What?" 

"Your beastie!" Remus giggled, sharp teeth on show, waving a summoned tentacle in the air, "I'm a kraken, if you didn't know," 

"Yeah, right, but-" 

"And, as I've so well hidden, I express snake like traits, though they are actually rather subtle compared to other dark sides," Janus said, "My 'beastie' as Remus put it, is a Naga," 

"But how does that relate to me?" Roman cried, clenching his fists, he was glad Janus had taken the pillow or he probably would have ripped it. "And why do I keep - doing stuff I don't want to do! These stupid - mood swings!" 

"You're getting your beastie, Ro-bro," Remus said with a grin.

"O-oh…" 

"The mood swings and weird instincts don't come from that transformation," Janus said, "But rest assured they'll remain this bad forever."

"Jan used to bite shit," Remus giggled, "like- if you put something in front of his face he'd just- *nom*! It was super funny, but I made him a bunch of those little chewy stim toys so he'd stop biting everything else," 

"Oh like you're much better," Janus rolled his eyes, "You spent two weeks at the bottom of a lake!!" 

"The webs were the worst though… y'know I usually like creepy crawly spiders cuz they pull webs outta their butts and scare people shitless but when I can't get into the imagination because of the mass of spiderwebs…." Remus shivered, "Never breaking a spider web again."

"Are you… talking about Virgil?" Roman asked with only the slightest caution, Remus nodded, "He… never did anything like that with the light sides," 

"The animal traits almost… fade away… when a dark side becomes a light side," Janus explained sadly, "So Virgil's more spider-esque traits faded away over time,"

"He still hissed though- and liked to climb high things," Roman said, before thinking, "Sounds more like a cat to me actually," 

Janus laughed, "You should have seen him when he was here… he had spider limbs and everything, made webs like you've never seen, and he'd attack anyone who touched them," 

*Now I see why Remus is scared," Roman snorts, before coughing up smoke, "God fucking damn this- eugh!"

"It's alright, Roman, you won't learn to control it, especially not after we work out what your creature is," Janus said, patting Roman's back until he recovered. 

"We won't be able to tell until the physical bits come in," Remus said, leaning on his shoulder, "Boy how Jan was surprised when he grew a second -"

"Oh Remus sweetheart isn't there a mess you should be making or- I don't know some poor light side for you to torment?" Janus interrupted, waving Remus away. Remus' eyes sparkled at the suggestion and he sank out. Roman couldn't help but laugh.

*So… I just have to deal with this?” Roman said, looking a little scared.

“Fortunately, yes… but rest assured you will be completely alone,” Janus patted Roman on the shoulder, we will not help you with anything you need,”

“Thanks, Jan,” 

—-

Roman was scared, of course he was scared, though admitting that he was scared was the scariest part.

He’d woken up that morning only a few days after their conversation to a throbbing pain in his head, which wasn’t a headache per say because it wasn’t in his head, more like on top of it, like someone had smacked him in the skull multiple times and left throbbing bruises all along his hairline. It hurt to all hell and left Roman wanting to do nothing more than curl up into his pillow and die a a quick and painless death.

Of course that wasn’t what he actually got, all he got was Janus coming into his room when he hadn’t appeared by midday and- once his boyfriend had realised something was hurting him- had immediately rushed to find some pain meds to give him for it. They hadn’t helped, not really, but Roman appreciated the sentiment. He’d especially appreciated it after Janus had offered to kiss him better and then spent the next ten minutes smothering him in affection.

The happiness hadn’t lasted long though.

Vaguely Roman was reminded of one time- his memories were a little hazy on the details- when some of Thomas’ extended family had hosted a reunion. His own family had made the unfortunate decision to stay over the night since the house where the party was held was much to far to drive after such a party. Roman remembered that Thomas had been kept up all night by one of his aunt’s screaming baby, the kid had been teething.

This particular memory was bought to the forefront of his mind at this very moment because Roman couldn’t help but sympathise with the child. Because here he was, curled up in the corner of his bathroom. He sobbed into a pillow in the hopes that it would muffle the noise as something grew right out of his head.

Janus had warned him about this, the physical traits of his… beastie… coming through. He’d been warned about how painful it could potentially be- Virgil had been bedridden for two days as his spider legs pushed their way out of his back, it had been horrendous, apparently. For some stupid reason- because Roman’s reasons always seemed to be stupid, that’s all he was, stupid reasons and stupid ideas- he hadn’t listened to Janus. He’d thought he could deal with it. Obviously he was wrong, he couldn’t deal with this whatever the hell was growing from his skull was just proving that to him.

It felt like he was growning new bones from his skull, for all he knew he was. There was absolutely no way he was getting up to check, he could barely move from the pain as it was. 

By the time the pain had died down even just a little Roman had cried himself out of tears for the time being, now he was just stuck with hiccups and sharp breaths that he was certain weren’t good for him but he couldn’t seem to get them under control. Every time he managed it there would be another throb and the whole process would start all over again. Not only that but the clock on his wall showed that it was 6:57am. He’d been here on the floor in his bathroom for over five hours. Fortunately the throbbing pain in his head made it easy to ignore the aches and pains in his limbs from sitting in the same position for way, way too long.

Tentatively Roman attempted to move, only to experience a shooting sensation of pins and needles- like his leg was being stabbed by a milion tiny little pins that had come just to make his already shit day- and mind you it was barely seven in the morning- a whole load worse. Especially, that is, when the surprise at the sensation caused him to jerk back and hit his- well he could only assume whatever had grown out of his head in the last five hours- against the bathtub and he had to clamp his hands over his mouth to keep from screaming.

It’s ok Roman, you’ve got this, just stand up and look in the mirror, it’s right there, not so hard.

Roman whimpered as he attempted to urge himself forwards with his thoughts, reaching up to grab hold of the rim of the sink and use it as leverage to help him up. This was so pathetic, he thought, needing all of this just because of a little pain. 

When he saw his reflection in the mirror he really did shriek. 

He had horns. Massive red horns that sprouted from just behind his hairline. Two shorter in the middle that pointed straight up, the colour fading from red to orange to yellow like fire.

And next to those smaller ones were larger horns, with the same gradient though these pulled back and down and around his ears so they curled around to point forward in line with his cheekbones. They would have looked majestic on anyone else. Any other dragon.

Because that’s what this was, these horns, it was unmistakable. Even if somehow he could try to convince himself that he was just a ram or- or some other animal with horns- he knew somehow in his heart that he was a dragon. 

And he hated it, he already hated it so much because dragons were evil beasts, evil, greedy, mean, horrible foes. Dragons were the ones that kept the princesses locked away, not the ones who saved them from their towers like the dashing prince he was supposed to be.

No, he wasn’t a dashing prince anymore, Roman thought, glaring at his teary reflection in the mirror. His eyes were rimmed red, cheeks stained with tears, the horns were there, plain and vivid on his head like a raging fire. Roman was the dragon now, the villain of the story, the one that killed the dashing knights who came for the princess, he was the one who hoarded treasures in a cave and threatened anyone who came near with fire and destruction. This just proved it, if his spirit was a dragon, then he was the villain. The one in the wrong. Everything he thought was true.

Roman watched in the mirror as his eyes filled up with tears once again, though this time they weren’t allowed to spill because there was a sharp knock on his bathroom door. Roman froze, staring wide eyed at the door behind him using the mirror. He didn’t make a sound, he couldn’t maybe whoever was there would just go away.

“Roman?” A carefully controlled voice called in. It was Janus, and his tone was soft and gentle and that alone made a tear slip down Roman’s cheek, “Roman are you alright in there? I heard- I heard you scream…”

Oh god, Janus had heard him. Roman whimpered, he couldn’t help it and he knew he was about to start sobbing again.

“Ja-” Roman tried, “Janus-”

“Roman!” Janus called, his voice sounding so relieved it sent a stab through his heart, “Can I come in?”

“Yes- you- yes you c-can-” Roman stammered out, he tried to hard to get his voice to smoothen out but it seemed to be in vain, the door clicked open and Roman couldn’t bring himself to turn, he could only watch in the mirror as Janus- still disheveled and in his pajamas from sleep- stepped into the room before stopping, eyes widening when he saw the state Roman was in.

“Oh sweetheart,” Janus breathed, and he sounded so worried, it almost made Roman flinch- it reminded him so much of Patton- hah, if only Patton would see him now, what would he say? Probably that Roman’s horns made him dishonerable, they were unprincelike.

“I…” Roman started, before trailing off, he really didn’t know what he was supposed to say. He could only turn slightly to see Janus who smiled sadly when they met eyes.

“You’re so… beautiful,” Janus breathed, stepping closer, before pausing and looking over Roman properly. Roman was certain Janus could see the evidence of the crying and- hell the guy had heard him scream, of course he was worried. And, well, Roman knew he didn’t really mean the compliment. 

“...My goodness Roman have you been up all night?” Janus said sadly, stepping forward and cupping Roman’s cheeks, Roman startled when he felt cool scales and skin instead of the familiar fabric instead of gloves, “It must’ve hurt so much… how are you feeling?”

“I- I-” Roman stuttered, glancing around but finding that the only thing he could focus on was Janus’ eyes, he suddenly felt such a strong possessive urge he almost physically moved, the strange urge to keep . Roman felt it so strongly that the only way he could find to deal with it was bursting into tears.

“Oh- oh, oh,” Janus mumbled nothing words, before taking his hands from Roman’s cheeks. He barely had the chance to whine before Janus opened his arms in and offering of a hug, “C’mere, yes that’s it, it’s alright,”

Roman practically collapsed into his arms and Janus pulled him tight. It was a little bit awkward, Roman couldn’t exactly bury his face in Janus’ shoulder like he wanted to because of the sharp points he now had to be careful of, so instead he hooked his chin over Janus’ shoulder. And Janus wrapped him up so tightly, four of his arms around Romans back- holding him close, another in his hair- stroking through the strands in a way that was incredibly gentle, almost too gentle, and his final hand found Roman’s and laced their fingers together. 

He rocked them gently where they stood, one of his hands rubbing reassuring circles onto his shoulders as Roman once again cried himself out of tears. He began to hiccup all over again and Janus didn't stop rocking them both. 

"Everything will be alright, sweetheart," Janus muttered, "Come, let's go somewhere more comfortable, alright?" 

Roman could only nod and let Janus lead him slowly back into his bedroom until they were both sitting down on his bed, he waited as the other side pulled one of his thickest blankets around his shoulders and took his hands.

“Alright,” Janus said quietly, rubbing circles onto the backs of Roman’s hands as he looked into his eyes, “You can nod or shake your head, or speak if you’d like to, but I’m going to ask you a few questions, alright?”

Roman nodded slowly, he didn’t trust himself not to start crying the moment he attempted to utter a word. 

“Do they still hurt?” Janus asked, Roman considered for a moment, before shaking his head as he realised almost all the pain he had felt had faded out. There wasn’t even any of that pinpricking pain left. Just the pain in his heart left, but he was pretty sure that wasn’t what Janus was asking about.

“Thats good, sweetheart,” Janus said, leaning forward to kiss his cheek, “And do you feel alright? Both mentally and physically,”

Roman wasn’t sure if he should tell Janus about everything he was thinking. On one hand, Janus had proved he would help before, when Roman first crossed over but also… he had almost been disappointed when Roman spoke badly about himself, and even though Roman now had proof that he was evil in the dragon horns on his head, he doubted Janus would be happy to hear that, so he shook his head.

Somehow, Janus seemed to know he wasn’t being truthful.

“Are you sure?” Roman nodded, but he was as certain as the sun rising in the east that Janus hadn’t believed him. He moved on anyway though, and Roman couldn’t help but be grateful for that. 

“Do you know what your- beastie- is?” Janus asked next, “I uh- me and Remus, when we first got ours, once the physical traits started coming on we could just sortof…. Get a sense of it? Do you feel that?”

This head shake was so frantic that Roman found it slightly difficult to stop, Janus raised an eyebrow. 

“...Why are you lying to me, Roman?” Janus asked softly, squeezing his hands, “You- you know I won’t judge you, for whatever it is, don’t you?”

Roman looked away, trying to blink away more tears, because somehow despite all he had cried by now he still had more in him.

“I’m… sorry,” Roman mumbled, “I just… you’ll be- you’ll be disappointed you were wrong…”

Now Janus looked slightly alarmed, raising his eyebrows in confusion, “What… do you mean, darling?”

“I just…” He paused, trying to find the right words, “Everything- everything you’ve tried to tell me about- about me being good- it’s- it’s not true…”

“Roman, I don’t understand,” Janus told him, “How is it not true? I thought we’d gotten past this…”

“We- we had but- this- this is-” Roman paused, pulling one of his hands out of Janus’ hold to wipe at his eyes before gesturing to his new horns, “Dragons are evil- and- and mean and horrible beasts and I- this just proves I- I’m- like- that too-”

“Oh, Roman…” Janus mumbled, a frown on his face, “Now I’ve never heard something so plainly false, and I’m the liar in this relationship,”

“Wh-what?”

“Roman, love, your beastie doesn’t fully represent you anyway, and even if it did, dragons aren’t all evil,” Janus told him, “Hell, do you think I represent fertility? Fuck no,”

Roman laughed, a meek, pathetic laugh, but it seemed to placate Janus just a little bit.

“But… Dragons are the enemies! The ones that have to be defeated to rescue the princess- or- or- the- the-”

“You know what, Roman,” Janus interrupted, tapping his hands to bring his attention back, “Will you wait here for a moment, there is something that I need to do,”

“Of- of course,” Roman nodded quickly, Janus pressed a quick kiss to his forehead before standing up and sinking out of the room after sending him a small smile.

—-

Janus was gone for just long enough that Roman was beginning to get worried that he wasn’t coming back. Maybe he had realised while he was gone that Roman really was evil, and he wasn’t worth the effort, so he was just going to leave him to deal with this on his own. And not to mention that now he felt that same tingly almost-pain he had felt in his head yesterday in his teeth now, he guessed that would be the next part of him to change. He was about to just accept that Janus wouldn’t be coming back when his door was kicked open.

“Hey Ro!” Remus yelled, running in and grabbing Roman’s wrists in a way that wasn’t gentle, but Roman could tell it was friendly, “Janny said you were feeling down ‘cuz of your beastie, so we’re having a movie day,”

“I- wait- but-” Roman tried to protest as Remus pulled him to stand up and began to drag him out of his room, Roman attempted to dig in his heels, “Do I get a say?”

“Nope!” Remus said, popping the ‘p’ as he grinned back at him over his shoulder, “You’re not allowed to be sad,”

“But- I’m-” Roman tried to protest, “Do you not even see what I am?”

“A big strong badass beastie for my big strong badass brother?” Remus said, blinking at him as if that was the most obvious thing ever, “I don’t see the problem!”

“But-”

“Oh shut it!” Remus said, turning around and slapping his cheeks, making Roman make an involuntary ‘pop’ sound with his mouth as his face was squashed, “You’re watching movies with us and you don’t get a choice, now sit down,”

“I- um- ok?” Roman said, gingerly sitting down in the middle of the sofa. Janus- with a soft, knowing smile on his face- sat down next to him and Remus through himself on top of them both and grabbed the remote, pressing play before any of them said anything. 

Roman knew even as the first few notes of the score played with the emerging dreamworks logo what they were watching and when he turned to Janus, he just smirked.

“What?” Janus said innocently.

“Why- why are we watching this?” Roman said slowly, as the film moved on to Hiccup describing Berk, showing scenes of dragons attacking the town.

“Because,” Janus smiled, “I believe you need to learn the same lesson as a certain Viking chief,”

“O-oh-” Roman choked, turning back to the screen. He didn’t want to admit that he was about to cry again as he watched Hiccup shoot down the nightfury, he knew this film, he’d watched it at least twenty times. Of course he had, it was an amazing piece of cinema and had the most spectacular music, but this…

“And afterwards we’ll be watching Raya and the Last Dragon,” Janus commented idly, “And then Eragon, and after that, if you still need convincing, we’ll be watching Mulan”

“Mushu is hardly a dragon,” Roman cried with a choked laugh, understanding the theme of their movie night, he also understood that he didn’t have a choice.

“He’s still a dragon!” Remus yelled, “And if you’re still being sulky after that we’re watching Shrek!”

“I- alright I- just so you know I um-” Roman said, before trailing off to watch as Hiccup cut Toothless free.

“What do we need to know, darling?” Janus said quietly, nudging his arm to catch his attention again. 

“The um- the tingly pain-” Roman said, “Like- like what I felt before these horns- um- appeared, it’s… back,”

“Where too! Ooh what’s next?” Remus asked with a gasp, leaning uncomfortably close to him, Roman attempted to laugh and gently pushed him away.

“My teeth,” Roman answered quietly. Remus gasped even more dramatically.

“All of them?” Janus asked.

“No I… don’t think so,” Roman said slowly, “Just some…”

“You’re getting fangs!” Remus yelled, way more excited about that than Roman could even think about being, “That makes all of us! We all get fangs,”

Janus smiled, before taking Roman’s hand, “It’ll be alright, but Roman?”

“Yes?” Roman asked, looking over at Janus, suddenly he was worried that he’d done something wrong.

“Next time you’re in pain, please tell one of us… don’t just hide in your bathroom all night, alright?” Janus said with half a smile, Roman went red and looked back at the screen.

“I’ll… I’ll try,”

“Good, now watch the film!” Remus said, shoving him, Roman shoved back and it very quickly turned into a shoving match on the couch before Janus looped his arms under Roman’s to wrap around his chest and effectively stop the playful fight in it’s tracks. 

“Now boys, no fighting on the couch, remember?” Janus scolded. Roman looked sheepish while Remus just grinned. 

“Aweee Janny! You love us really,”

“I hate you both very much, I just aboslutely love having a destroyed couch that I need to work out how to replace again after Roman set it on fire yesterday,”

“Hey! You know I couldn’t control that!”

“Of course, darling, but that doesn’t make replacing it any easier,”

“...That’s fair I suppose,”

#sanders sides #roman sanders #ts roman #roman sanders angst #darkside!roman #ts janus #janus sanders #remus sanders #roceit #creativitwins #sanders sides fanfiction #fanfic #famfiction #mild body horror #body horror tw

[andy-solo1]

Don’t You Love Me Too [Darth Vader x Reader]

Pairing: One sided Reader x Darth Vader

Warnings: Angst, character death, one sided love / unrequited love

Words: 1,146

- - - - - - - - - 

What defines a monster? Is a monster a fictitious thing invented by parents to scare their children into behaving, into fearing the unknown creatures lurking out in the night. Or perhaps it’s a creature of such utter grotesque features that it strikes fear into heart through looks alone. Perhaps it’s a combination of both. 

Darth Vader, to many, was a monster. A horror born of nightmares and fears sent to prey on the weak and abuse the strong. But not to you. To you, he was never a monster. He was only himself, and only doing what he had to do in service of his empire. 

When it started, you couldn’t say. But working on the Executor meant daily seeing the sith and seeing his displays of power. Perhaps it was during one of these times, when you watched him choke the life out of a man for letting the rebels slip away without ever once laying a hand on the man. Or perhaps it was during one of the times when the whole ship seemed to shake under his power as he roared in anger. Maybe it was then that you realised you loved the man, that you craved to be close to him. To be protected by his power. 

Since your revelation of affections for the sith, you’d been trying to build up courage to do something about it. One day however, you were summoned to meet with the sith himself. 

“You called for me Lord Vader?” You asked, your own voice sounding meek and timid to your ears as you entered the bridge where Vader stood waiting. Despite the techs on either side of you controlling the ship, it felt like only the two of you were there. Like it was a special moment, meant only for you and your Lord. 

“You are the head mechanic aboard this ship, correct.” Vader asked, though really it comes out as more of a statement, as though daring you to correct him, to dare say that he was wrong. 

“Yes sir, I am.” You replied, fixing your stance to give off more of an aura of control, to make it look like you were worthy of the attention from him that your heart so craved. 

“Good. I want you to bring on more mechanics and I have some specific requests for modifications I want done.” He replied, turning around to look at you. As you lock eyes with the blank, dark ones of his mask, you could almost swear he could see into your soul. See the passion within you. 

It made you yearn, it made you crave, but, yet, you were not ready to reveal your soul to him. No, you needed more time. You needed more time like this, with him. Make him learn to love you too, then, and only then, can he know your heart. 

“Whatever you want me to do my lord, it will be done.” You reply eagerly. Vader seems to like your answer and begins to tell you what he wants. 

- - - - - 

 Things began to become a routine, or rather like a game of chess, moving your pieces into play and slowly taking down his men, his guard, until the one true thing you needed to capture was left alone. His heart. Unguarded, unchained, only to belong to you. You were willing to play the game. 

You moved your pawns into place, having your mechanics do maintenance down hallways where the path Vader took would be blocked, leading for him to have to walk past your work station daily. There you would greet him and try to converse with him about his day (Which lead to varying degrees of failure). But you saw your losses as the pieces on the board, for every one he took, you would just have to try doubly hard to take one of his. 

Next was moving your knights into position. You did everything he asked without fail, without question, without a second thought in your mind. Was it blind devotion? Perhaps. Or perhaps it was simply showing him your loyalty. How if he could only give his heart back to you in return, you would do anything and everything for him. Afterall, you just knew in your heart, he’d do the same for you. 

Then it was the bishops and the rooks. You studied the man. If there was something to learn about him, then you made it your mission to learn it. You looked for the telling signs of what angered him, what frustrated him, what drove him. Seeing him walk past you in a hall and watching his gait, trying to gleam any bit of emotion from the cold blank stare of the helmet. And oh, the helmet. How you yearned to see his face without it. To look into the eyes of the man you know lies beneath the cold, sleek, blackness that sent shivers racing down your spine at a single glance.  

And so you did try. You snuck into his meditation chambers one day, just to see, just to catch a glimpse of the man. To see his soul laid out bare before you so you could your own out before him. In your fantasies he met you with open arms and confessions of love that could even make a happily married woman weep with want for something so pure and true. However, as you waited for his reveal, you lost your nerve. Your pieces were not all in place. It was not time yet. No, you had a few final moves to pull, then, and only then, could your wildest dreams come true. 

Finally, the day had come. Your final piece was being moved into place. The queen, your heart, your soul, your devotion. 

Vader had called you for another meeting on the bridge, and this was your time. You entered and felt your flutter when you saw him. His gaze was fixed out the window before him, staring out into the lights of hyperspace, but you knew it was just an act. A way to fool those around him. Afterall he couldn’t look weak, not that your love was weak, no, you were so certain of its strength, it’s power.  

“My lord.” You called out. You felt so much more confident in your tone this time. Just as your confidence in your love had grown. “I wish to speak with you about something after this.” You added as your newfound confidence coursed through your veins like fire. Your breath caught as Vader turned around and you were met with the black, cold stare of the mask. 

“You do not make such requests.” Vader hissed, and in your devotion you could not see the crew members around the bridge flinch away from him with their attention rapt on the scene unfolding before them. 

“But, my Lord, it’s important.” You pleaded. “It’s about us-” Your words choked off as the air left your lungs, a pressure crushing down on your throat. His hand raised towards you, and for perhaps the first time in his presence, a flicker of fear ran through you. But surely your love wouldn’t harm you? No. No. This was just a game, a test. To make sure your love was true enough to trust him completely. 

“There, is no us.” Vader announced, and even as the sounds of your heart shattering in your chest defend you, you could still feel yourself being thrown back across the bridge to land back near the door. Only now did you finally see the crew, like a jury standing behind Vader with their eyes wide and focused on you. Fearful. Warry. Blood-thirsty. 

Vader stalked towards you as you struggled to regain your breath. A red glow began basking over you as he ignited the saber in his hand and if you thought you had felt fear before, it had been nothing like this. Heartache and fear rolled together as tears began streaming unknowingly down your cheeks. 

“My lord please.” You pleaded, for what you didn’t know. It was like your soul was drifting out of your body, all the fantasies you’d envisioned, all the dreams you’d had, all the plans you made, played out before you only to be cut through by the searing pain of the lightsaber plunging straight through your middle. A choked sobb left your mouth as you stared into the blank gaze you loved. 

“Didn’t…you love..me?” You choked out. 

“No.” 

That was the last thing you heard as he pulled out the lightsaber and turned it off. Your world went dark as Vader snapped for someone to clean your body off the floor. 

Check-mate.

#darth vader #star wars #darth vader x reader #unrequited love #The darkside of writing #angst #character death #x reader #reader insert

[furiousqueenmarmaroth]

First Kiss Short: Death

"Close your eyes." It wasn't said in a particularly harsh tone, but with names like Kinslayer and Reaper, you knew every seemingly innocent demand had the potential to be final. In the pitch black of the darkened bedroom, this one had a particular danger about it.

However, you, like every Nephilim’s ideal love interest, were built with a little less self-preservation than everyone else, and made a show of gleefully closing your eyes and stuffing your hands in your pockets. You did a happy little dance as your skin tingled with fear as his hands threatened to engulf your face.

His thumbs gently brushed over your eyelids, possibly as a romantic gesture but more than likely to make certain they were closed.

“May I?” his breath touched your lips.

You weren’t entirely sure what was about to happen, but you regardless breathed back, “Yes.”

His lips touched yours with the precision and purpose that he embodied, but with a softness he showed only you in your most private of moments. You took the time to study him blindly, from the way his skin moved over his ribs to how his wet hair smelled like the last rain of autumn.

“You’re leaving.” You had known him too long for it to be a question.

“Yes,” he answered anyway.

“Come back.”

Reverently, he kissed both eyelids and then your forehead, “I have before.”

Even after you felt him leave, you stayed as he had left you, eyes dutifully closed, dreading that the next thing you would see wasn’t him. If this was your last memory, you wanted none of it to slip into the void beyond remembering.

#darksiders #darksiders 2 #death #first kiss #fluff #light angst #short #imagine #death x reader

[imagine-darksiders]

The Human Influence.

Samael X Reader.

This is a 10,000 word continuation from this little ask I received a while ago.

Summary: Lilith brings her Prince a 'gift,' all trussed up in a silver chain and collar. To her credit, if anyone were to ask her if she thought Samael had a soft spot, she would never in a million eons dream that the answer might be 'yes.' Unfortunately for the demon queen, Samael's little 'soft spot' just so happens to be attached to the chain she grasps in her sleek, black claws.

-----

Samael won’t even vaguely pretend that he’s pleased to see Lilith when she comes strutting with a purpose through the doors to his throne room, her pretty, painted lips black as night and twisted into that self-assured grin he so detests.

The demon prince’s cragged chin sits perched upon his knuckles as he lounges inattentively in the seat of his throne, tracing Lilith’s sauntered path towards him over the black, basalt floor.

Neither of them bothers to pretend they’re especially pleased to see the other, even if it has been several months since Lilith set foot in Shadow’s Edge. She, however, puts in just slightly more effort than Samael, lifting her lips into a sultry smile when she catches him looking her way.

Just as he begins to wonder what kind of favour she might try to curry from him today, something glints in the light cast by the moat of lava that surrounds the room, and he drops his gaze slightly to find a silver chain clutched between his mistress’s talons.

Thick and cumbersome, it disappears behind her inverted wings, pulled ever so taut, doubtlessly locked fast around the neck of her latest little plaything.

Heaving a great sigh through his nostrils, the prince casts a bored glance between Lilith’s coiled horns in an idle attempt to catch a glimpse of the unfortunate creature that’s stumbling along in tow.

If he weren’t such an expert in maintaining his impenetrable countenance, he might have lurched forwards in his seat and crushed the armrests beneath his claws at what, or rather who he spies at the end of his mistress’s chain.

As it is, Samael’s only outward reaction is in the barest twitch of his pointed tail and the quirk of a scaly brow.

Inwardly however, a spark ignites.

‘She didn’t,’ he seethes to himself as an ugly, howling rage begins to stir in his belly, whipped up like flames in the wind, ‘Not this human… Any human but-…’

You.

His little storyteller…

It can’t be you. Not so soon after the Horsemen took you back from him the first time.

Questions fly around his skull like rapid, biting gnats. It’s hardly been a full Earth month since you were here last. He’s been keeping close tabs on your movements, not to mention the Four have barely let you out of their sight for a moment – How could Lilith have sunk her claws into you!?

Mistaking the subtle shift of his attention as a show of interest, the demoness’s lips carve upwards into a sharper smile as she blows a lustful breath between her fangs, prowling to a halt at the foot of Samael’s throne with her hips cocked.

“My Lord,” she all but purrs, dipping into a low bow and very deliberately exposing more of her chest than Samael finds either tasteful or necessary, “It has been far too long~.”

Alluring, golden eyes flick up to peer at him through her lashes, yet her smile wavers ever so slightly when she finds that his attention is fixed elsewhere.

He can’t tear his eyes from your face.

Samael’s nostrils flare wide to inhale the tangy scent of iron on the air. He’d know that smell a mile off. After all, he’s well acquainted with blood. It rises above the chamber’s usual aroma of brimstone and dank moisture, with a source that his well-trained nose can trace directly back to you.

Lilith, it would seem, hasn’t brought you to him unscathed.

Even the Prince of Hell himself is taken aback as the anger churning in his guts starts to boil, bubbling up from his stomach like putrid smoke and rising to fill the crevices of his chest.

A trickle of scarlet blood runs a track from your swollen, purpling nose down over quivering lips to gather at the bottom of your chin, where it drips steadily to the ground by your feet with soft, little splats that permeate the silence sitting like a smog between you.

One of your captivating eyes has swelled shut behind a dark bruise, and from your other eye – the one he tries and fails to meet – streams a veritable river of tears, cutting a path through the dirt on your cheek and mingling with the blood in the dip of your chin.

Like an ancient building falling to ruin, Samael’s unshakable composure slowly starts to crumble. Lowering his fearsome, yellow eyes to your neck, he locks his sights on the metal collar that Lilith must have fastened tightly around your throat, causing every breath to leave you in tiny, pitiable wheezes.

The delicate skin below it has been rubbed red and raw…

Inhaling sharply through his nose, Samael barely manages to compose himself, ducking his head and attempting to catch your eye again. And yet, your gaze slides away from his, fixing itself resolutely on the ground below your bare feet.

Lilith must have snatched you away in the dead of night, if the white, cotton sleepshirt hanging from your frame is any indication.

She stole you when you were at your most vulnerable…

Coward.

Easing his clenched jaws apart, the prince aims a poisonous glare over at his queen, his lips curling down at their corners. “Lilith,” he utters, his voice like tar moving under the earth, low and dangerous, “What… is the meaning of-?”

“- A gift, my Lord,” she interrupts smoothly, proud as a cat with a dove in its jaws, “A present, in part, to…. apologise for the time I’ve spent absent from your side…”

Frankly, he muses, her absence in itself has been gift enough.

Twitching her head sideways to peer over her shoulder at you, Lilith’s expression suddenly contorts into a snarl that mars her attractive features as she gives the end of your chain a jarring, vicious yank.

Samael’s spine snaps straight as you’re wrenched forwards by the neck with a strangled croak, collapsing onto your knees and throwing your trembling hands up to claw feebly at the collar, but the hateful piece of silver has been cinched so tightly around your throat, you can’t even squeeze your fingertips beneath it to relieve some of the pressure.

Curling his enormous hand into a fist, Samael raises his chin and stares down at you, his burning, fire-laden stare aflame with anticipation.

As much as he dreads the thought, he half expects a groan of pleasure to tumble from your lips.

Lilith’s… obscene influence is as powerful as it is repulsive. It’s an ancient, inherent magic that can pervert the mind of even the most pious angel and turn them into just another of the demoness’s depraved and lustful thralls.

She’s tainted the sanity of far more powerful souls than yours, through no effort at all on her part. And yet…

And yet, to the prince’s astonishment – and surprisingly, his relief - there are no needy moans, no adoring looks at his mistress, no grasping hands that stretch out across the space between you and her skin as if you couldn’t possibly live for another second without feeling her scales roll beneath your fingertips.

All Samael can see in your eye is a bone deep terror, all he can hear from your lips are quiet, wheezing breaths. Your hands are still your own, still clutching and scrabbling at the collar locked around your throat.

As twisted as it seems, he’s glad to see your terror, but… How are you still in your right mind?

“Bow before your betters, Ape!” Lilith spits, hauling on the chain once more so that you’re yanked forwards, thrown off balance and landing harshly on your hands and knees beside her with a strangled sob, “Or else I shall feed your legs to the Hell hounds!”

Now, Samael is the furthest thing from a saint. His cruelty, depravity and occasional grabs for power might be considered by many to be on par with Lilith’s own, craven deeds.

He’s a Prince of Hell, after all. The enemies he’s slain could fill all the rivers of Eden with their blood.

But… you’re not one of Samael’s enemies…

You’re not even a political target, despite your affiliation with the Four Horsemen.

You’re just…

You’re you.

For what you’ve had to endure, during the Apocalypse and your journey alongside the Horseman, Death, to bring your species back from extinction, for being the foremost intermediary between Humanity and the rest of Creation, you’re worthy of respect. Not… this.

Seeing his little storyteller bloodied and broken, bound on your knees in front of him doesn’t stir anything in the demon except a… a heaviness in his chest. He’s never once given his cold, ancient heart much consideration, but he certainly notices it now when it gives a sudden and unexpected twist.

He can only think to attribute such a sensation to the rage swelling behind his ribs.

Fire ignites beneath his scales and burns a path through his veins until he’s contemplating simply tearing Lilith to pieces for laying her vile claws on you. But… that would be showing his hand…

And Samael hasn’t been on the throne this long by showing his hand…

If Lilith catches the slightest whiff of a weakness in him, she’ll try to exploit that weakness to her own advantage.

She could kill you if she thought for a moment that your death would get to him.

As much as he’s loathe to admit it, it would.

Unfortunately for her, Samael was always better at playing high-stakes games than she ever was…

Plastering a sultry grin on her lips, she watches as her Prince leans himself forwards in the throne, balancing his chin atop steepled fingertips.

She must think him a fool…

You were never intended to be a gift for him.

This isn’t her attempting to win her way between his sheets after several months spent away from his fortress.

All this is, is Lilith drawing the Four Horsemen right to his doorstep.

When he brought you here the first time and the Horsemen arrived to rescue you, the only reason he came out unscathed was because you yourself were unscathed. Unharmed. Untouched. He’d kept his word to you, and never once laid a finger on you in malice.

You’d even vouched for him when War exploded into his all-powerful Chaos Form and charged hell-for-leather at the demon.

“War! Don’t!” you’d pleaded shrilly, hurling yourself between the charging behemoth and a bemused Samael, “He didn’t hurt me! Look at me! I’m fine! Please, just… just take me home…”

You knew the demon wielded powers that could easily match those of the Horsemen, and you weren’t willing to risk the safety of your friends.

Samael had been counting on your intervention. Without it, he’s sure his fortress wouldn’t have been left standing in once piece after an all-out battle between himself and the Four.

But if the Horsemen were to turn up now to find you in this state…? And they surely will, because Death won’t neglect to investigate the prince’s involvement for a second time.

Well… Samael is sure to come out of it losing something, even if not his life.

The tenuous reinstatement of peace between Hell and the other realms would no doubt be ripped up.

The Horsemen would declare war on him in your name. You’re one of theirs, after all.

And Lilith knows that.

“Let me see if I understand your intentions here,” Samael rumbles, planting his massive palms on each of the throne’s armrests and curling his black claws into the stone, “You have brought me.. this human…“

He has to bite his tongue before he almost says your name, though Lilith gives no indication that she’s noticed the near miss.

Sweat has begun to bead between her scales, and the stench of it drifts into his nose.

She’s nervous.

“Not just any human,” she rushes to assure him, twisting her fist into the chain and hauling you -hacking and spluttering – back up onto your feet, “Allow me to introduce you to the little pest that belongs to those treacherous Horsemen.”

Samael’s fangs grind together as she extends a sleek, ebony claw and slides its point beneath your chin, pushing your head back, and for the first time since she brought you before him, your eyes finally lock with his.

He almost wishes they hadn’t.

Samael must favour you more than he assumed, because the look you’re sending him empties the fury in his chest until it merely feels hollow and cold.

Even with one eye wedged shut and blood painting your lips crimson, he can easily make out the betrayal pinching your expression. It’s an expression he’s well-accustomed to.

But on you, it’s hard to look at. Predominantly because there was a moment, however briefly, where you seemed to trust him, if only a little – which was a damn sight more than anyone ever has before.

It wasn’t… an unwelcome feeling, to have someone believe him at his word. Not even his own troops would trust him. Lilith – the very demoness who used to share his bed – knows better than to trust him. And, yes, while it was terribly naïve of you, Samael had ended up proving you right, in some small way.

You trusted him when he said he wouldn’t hurt you, and he hadn’t.

Until now, evidently.

He can understand why he’s getting this look from you now.

He once swore you’d never come to harm within his walls, not by his hand nor any of his ilk’s.

Of course, it would be Lilith who shattered what fragile and hesitant faith you’ve granted him. In your eyes, by mere affiliation, Samael is responsible for his former mistress’s actions.

“You’ve brought the Horsemen’s human right to my doorstep?” he growls heavily, pushing himself up onto his taloned feet.

His chest gives an unexpected twinge when you take a step back, though he’ll admit it’s gratifying to see the confidence drain from Lilith’s face as he rises to his full, imposing height.

“And what do you suppose they’ll do, Lilith,” he adds, “When they find their precious friend in this condition, hm?”

A heavy, thundering step carries him down the stone staircase towards her.

The demoness’s forked tongue darts out to moisten her lips. She matches his advancement with a backwards step that brings her up alongside you. “This,” she starts apprehensively, “This is your chance… to take revenge on-!”

“-Revenge!?” Samael’s thunderclap of an interruption stifles the last remnants of cockiness in her tone and she hastily retreats as he draws closer, letting a few links of the chain slip through her slender fingers.

As soon as it goes slack, you take the opportunity to stagger sideways, putting as much distance between yourself and the two, massive demons as the chain will allow, your wary eye affixed on Samael, as if he’s the greater threat.

“And what offence have the Horsemen cause me that would warrant revenge?” the demon prince demands, endeavouring to keep his gaze trained on Lilith.

Her slitted pupils shrink as badly concealed irritation flashes across her face and her lips twitch with the beginnings of a snarl. It must have occurred to her, at last, that she isn’t fooling anyone.

This was never about Samael’s tenuous alliance with the Horsemen. It’s only ever been about Lilith, as always. Once again, her desire for vengeance for what the Four did to her Nephilim children has superseded her common sense.

Even thousands of years after the massacre at Eden, she still seeks retribution.

She always has been a master of manipulation - Pit the Horsemen against the Prince of Darkness, and no matter which of them emerges the victor, it’s Lilith who ends up reaping the spoils.

If Samael succeeds, she’ll have finally had her revenge on the Horsemen, but if the Four succeed, she’ll be free to move in and take the prince’s throne.

She certainly knows how to play the game.

It’s just unfortunate for her that he’s been playing it a whole Hell of a lot longer, and he always has so hated to lose.

Her first mistake was taking him for a fool.

Her second, and far more grievous, was taking you at all.

She’ll face retribution, for that he’ll make certain, though her punishment won’t necessarily be for the reason she expects.

Lilith’s mouth twists. He can already hear the venomous words curdling on her tongue, no doubt readying a jab at his cowardice for being unwilling to face the Horsemen’s wrath. She never gets the chance to voice whatever cruel sentiment rises behind her gorge.

Without warning, Samael’s hand snaps out, his fingers curled over and aimed straight at his former mistress. Before she can even utter a squawk of alarm, a dark, festering tendril of magic slithers into existence, ripped from between the fabrics of space itself and sent to coil around her neck like a serpent, crushing in on her throat with a pressure that only increases with every flex of Samael’s fingers.

At once, and as he’d hoped, Lilith drops your chain to throw her hands up and scrabble uselessly at the magic strangling her. But magic, by nature, is intangible. Her claws can’t make purchase.

“What say you, Lilith?” he growls, a vindictive smirk revealing two rows of gleaming, wicked fangs, “Is this still as gratifying as you remember?”

The demoness’s mouth hangs agape as she collapses heavily onto her knees. ‘There,’ he muses, letting a wave of sick satisfaction roll over him, ‘At last.’

Poetic justice if he’s ever seen it.

The feeblest sound twitches his ear, and he stills, flicking his gaze down to the human in their midst.

A single, undamaged eye shines back up at him, sparkling in the firelight that glints off the tears rolling down sodden cheeks. In a lone blink, Samael’s dark magic falters and the snarl on his lips withers as he studies your face.

You’re still crying… A sight that should have gladdened and satisfied him only renders the demon unpleasantly hollow. Perturbed, Samael tries to shake off the unexpected weight of your distress piling up on his shoulders… He soon finds, however, that he can’t.

Lilith’s wheezing gargle that sounds a little too much laughter snaps his attention back onto her and he growls, his fingers quivering with the pressure of closing the magic coil even more firmly around her throat to cut off any other, sinful sound she tries to make.

Sudden movement to his right draws his scorching glare down to the spot you’d been hunching in mere seconds ago, only to find it empty.

Inverted, leathery wings stiffen as he whips his gaze up and finds you stumbling away from him as fast as your wobbly legs can carry you, heading in a backwards run for the exit of his throne room to the corridors beyond. The silver chain rattles along in your wake.

It’s only by a fraction... just a fraction… but Samael’s wild and wrathful gaze starts to soften.

Heaving a sigh, he turns his focus back to Lilith once more.

She’s still on her knees, still choking on the magic locked tight around her throat, but her eyes are fixed coldly on the prince’s, her pupils narrowed to thin, catlike slits.

He knows then that she saw it. She saw the malice fade from his snarl as he looked at you…

Bristling, Samael peels his lips back and bares his teeth down at her. He can tell she’s trying to do the same, throwing as much hatred into her glare as she can, despite the agony that no longer seems to bring her any semblance of sick pleasure.

Right now though, he has more important matters to attend to.

“Begone from my sight,” he hisses. And with a final, dismissive flick of his wrist, he disperses the band around her neck.

Lilith’s gasp is loud enough to echo through the cavernous chamber.

Crumpling forwards onto her hands and knees – just as you had only moments ago – she greedily sucks down several lungfuls of air as Samael sweeps past her, his nostrils flaring, hoping he’ll catch your scent before you can run too far.

He barely makes it to the entrance before a cold, breathless chuckle reaches his ears.

“Oh~” she rasps in a haggard voice, “Oh, isn’t that precious…..”

Like a dark moonrise, Lilith picks her head up and spins it over a shoulder, glaring maniacally after his retreating back.

Samael doesn’t linger to hear what else she has to say, but the fortress rings with the shrillness of her cackles, her voice chasing his shadow as he in turn follows after the trail of blood droplets you’ve left to seep into the cracks of the basalt floor.

“The Horsemen will hear of this, my love! They will know! Who would have guessed that a human will be your doom!?”

-----

If nothing else, at least the stench of blood is easy enough to track.

Samael is not the kind of demon to hurry, but he’s well aware that his fellow demonic hordes can sniff out a wounded human from a mile away. So, if his thundering footsteps fall a little more hastily that usual… well, that’s his business.

For someone so injured, you’ve made good ground.

Unrelenting in his pursuit, the prince follows your scent up a winding, spiralling staircase and along a vast corridor all the way to a room that had seen much use just last month.

“Ah,” he muses aloud. Of course, it would make sense you’d come back here.

He finds himself standing outside the doors to your old prison.

The bed chambers he’d kept you in after he stole you from Earth.

His fortress is large and labyrinthian. It’s likely you fled along the only path you could recognise.

The moment he ducks his horns through the entrance and steps into the dimly lit room, he’s struck by an acrid concoction of blood and terror.

The bed to his left sits innocuous and innocent, perfectly unassuming.

But he’s the one who had it put there, so he knows of the small space between the springs and the floor, just enough of a gap for a human to squeeze themselves into, should they be so inclined.

Turning towards it, he carefully lowers himself onto a knee, breathing a sigh as he reaches for the silken, burgundy sheets that hang over the side and drape all the way to the ground.

“I wish I could tell you I’m not glad to see you again so soon, little one,” he rumbles, pinching the sheets between his thumb and forefinger and raising them slowly off the ground, “But in truth, I’ve been hoping our paths would cross again, though perhaps not under these circumstances…”

Stooping low, his burning gaze illuminates the dark, dusty space between the mattress and the ground, and there, in the shadows, he finds you.

“There you are…”

Curled into a tiny ball, you peer up at the demon’s colossal face, your pretty eyes blown wide with horror. That wretched, silver chain is still digging like teeth into your neck, rendering each breath that passes your lips small and lacking.

The prince’s browbones dip into a frown. “Come here…” he utters, neither commanding, nor passive. Just a request.

Yet still, you flinch at it despite its gentleness.

The smell of liquid iron – once so tantalising – now itches at the insides of his nostrils. You’re still bleeding freely, but…

That isn’t all that troubles Samael.

He doesn’t know how long Lilith has held you, and you haven’t yet said a single word to him.

He doesn’t like this silence, not from you.

A sudden urgency strikes him in the chest, though he mistakes it for impatience, and he emits a low growl from his throat, a sound of frustration, not anger.

Without giving you a moment to prepare, he promptly slides one, enormous paw beneath the bed frame and simply tips the entire thing up onto two of its legs, exposing you completely to his searching glare.

Recoiling in shock, you immediately heave yourself off your stomach and try to get your feet underneath you, only to find the escape attempt thwarted by a gigantic, leathery hand that closes swiftly, yet gingerly around your torso, plucking you up off the cold ground.

Samael’s shoulders drain of tension once he has you safe in his clutches. Swallowing back a throaty rumble, he raises you towards his chest and stoops to lower the bed once again, all the while subjecting you to his unflinching scrutiny.

The demon’s lips peel back to reveal his teeth as he takes a closer look at the swelling around your eye and the crookedness of your bleeding nose. At the sight of his fangs lingering dangerously close to your face, you utter a pitiable whimper and clutch frantically at the fingers circling your waist, making a valiant, yet futile attempt to shove them away from your night shirt.

You may as well be trying to bend steel beams.

“Did she touch you?” he suddenly urges, his voice strangely thin and ragged.

He needs to know… He needs to confirm for himself that Lilith hasn’t spoiled his little storyteller’s soul.

Your struggling pauses briefly as you tip your head back and fix him with an incredulous, pinched look, your bruised eyelid twitching as if to say, ‘What the Hell do you think?’

‘Ah…’ he realises, ‘You misunderstand.’

“I can see she has hurt you,” he elaborates with an uncharacteristic patience, lowering his gaze to that intimate place that’s safely hidden behind his fingers, just below your naval, “I need to know if she touched you…”

Perhaps the angle of his stare is a little crass, but at least you catch on swiftly, and begin to squirm unhappily in his grip.

The fact that the fierce shake of your head is delayed does little to ease his flaring temper.

“I need to hear your words, little storyteller,” he murmurs in his low, resonant timbre.

Your good eye grows wide as he raises the forefinger of his free hand and brushes it over the silver collar wound around your neck.

The anticipation screws your face up tight and you flinch back, eye squeezing shut. Yet rather than pain, you’re instead hit with shocking and blessed relief.

At the demon’s touch, the collar comes apart with a jarring snap and the whole thing slides from your throat, rattling down to the ground below your dangling feet.

A gasping breath is sucked down into your lungs too quickly, causing you to lurch forwards over his thumb with a grating cough, lifting your hands up and stroking at the tender, red flesh left behind with trembling fingers.

Without the chain obscuring them, Samael is given an uninterrupted view of the dark band of bruises that have been burned like a brand around the circumference of your throat.

Sparks of white-hot fire burst from his lips as he spits a curse in the demonic tongue.

You’re still breathing raggedly, choking on each grateful sip of the tepid air.

Samael’s tail coils and lashes as he waits for you to catch your breath before his patience runs thin and he bites out, “Do not make me ask you a third time…” Raising you up to dangle in front of his fiery eyes, he makes sure you meet them. “Did she touch you?”

“N-No!” you finally manage to gasp, watery and weak, thumping at your sternum, “Jesus, not… not like that.”

You shrink as best you can within his fingers as a hot breath washes across your face, averting your attention to the ground beneath him when he spins himself about and sinks down on his haunches, lowering you both onto the bed. The demon’s tail drapes across the silken sheets and a tension he hadn’t yet acknowledged drops from his mighty shoulders.

Mortified at the relief your words lend him, he furrows his brows into a scowl, his eyes fixed on your neck.

“You… lied…”

He blinks at your words, flicking his gaze to your face as a sardonic laugh, devoid of humour, bubbles up and falls out of your mouth. “Of course… you did,” you continue, shaking your head, “Prince of Lies, right? Can’t believe I trusted you…”

It’s an expected remark, but it still hits the demon like a hammer to the chest.

He’d worked damn hard to maintain that tiny little flicker of innocence. To have lost it feels like a devastating blow.

A prince of Hell never apologises, not even to the object of his… concern. But he will at least try to explain himself.

“If I had known what she planned,” Samael begins, carefully lowering you down to his bent knee and settling you onto it as gently as a brute like him ever could, keeping his fingers coiled securely around you lest you try to wriggle free, “I would have tried to stop her.”

You snort sceptically, though you soon cut yourself off with a gasp as the motion sends a shock of burning agony shooting through your nose bone. “Ah! Shit,” you hiss, tugging an arm out from the cage of his fingers and dabbing your own underneath your nostrils, feeling about tentatively for fresh blood.

The most abnormal urge nearly seizes him then, an impulse to bend down and brush his lips tenderly against the skin below your broken nose, using his coarse tongue to wash you clean of blood as he might have done when he first begun courting Lilith, aiming to show her that she’d be well-taken care of should she choose him.

That was, of course, before he discovered how much she abhorred a gentle lover.

Which was a pity. For all his strength and power, Samael rather prides himself on his ability and inclination to remain gentle between the sheets.

Still, he can’t imagine you’ll appreciate the gesture of a cleaning, regardless of his benign intentions.

As swiftly as the urge arrives, he’s beaten it back and sealed it behind a wall of stoic self-restraint.

Perhaps he ought to be less concerned with how you’d react to his courtship, and more concerned with why he’s considering courting a human at all.

A conundrum, he decides, that can wait for another day.

Right now, there’s damage to be undone, not least that which afflicts your nose, eye and neck.

Samael would rather not have you despise him, not after he’s had the fleeting taste of what a cordial rapport with you could feel like…

He begrudgingly finds himself shying away from the term ‘friendship’ because demon lords don’t have friends, especially a lord with his grim and destructive duties.

Absently, he lifts his unoccupied hand up and aims to crook a long, warm finger beneath your chin. His movements pause however, once you catch sight of the claw in your peripheral vision and throw your hands up, catching the tip of his approaching finger before it can come anywhere near your throat.

“Don’t!” you snap, aiming for stern but landing on squeaky.

Samael’s pupils expand to soft, round pits of darkness in a sea of gold as he takes in the miracle of your comparatively tiny hands pushing back against just one of his fingers. A wayward rumble sputters to life in his chest and threatens to travel up his throat where you’re sure to hear it, but with a hard swallow, he smothers the sound of contentment before it can gain traction.

That could have been embarrassing.

He presses his finger closer.

“Don’t touch me!” you reiterate with a particularly hard shove that gets you nowhere.

It’s almost a relief to see the spark of fire behind your eyes. There’s still fight in you. Lilith hadn’t managed to snuff that out either.

“You think I mean to hurt you?” he hums curiously.

Quick as a flash, you retort, “I wouldn’t put it past you.”

Hm. He supposes that would be fair… if it were anyone other than yourself.

Scolding eyes flare with dangerous luminosity as they scan across your face, and the damage his former bed mate has left behind like cruel reminders of his failure.

“Contrary to popular belief, I hold very little sway over Lilith’s actions,” he points out, “I did not orchestrate what she’s done to you.”

With a resentful huff, your arms sag and he’s allowed to freely bring his fingertip to your chin, tilting your head back to take some of the pressure off your nose. You’ve been hurt – badly – because of him, which is……

… disquieting.

“Perhaps,” he begins slowly in that bone deep murmur, “You would allow me to amend her transgressions against you.”

Suddenly, you grow very still between his fingers, sitting rigidly as suspicion creeps into your brows. Squinting up at him dubiously, you ask, “Why… would you do that?”

Honesty has never been Samael’s favourite policy, and even now, he avoids answering you directly, instead opting to tell you just a fraction of the truth.

“You were not hers to take,” he growls, the undertones of a possessive prince almost broiling up to the surface. He can see your brow furrow even further as you no doubt try to read his expression in that way humans are so adept at, but Samael won’t allow you to ponder too long.

“Do you know any healers?”

Blinking, you fling your eyebrows up at his unexpected query. “Do I…. I’m sorry? What?”

By way of an explanation, the demon flexes his hand on the bed sheet and flicks his tail, grumbling, “I imagine it won’t surprise you to learn that I’m not well-versed in healing magic… So, if you can think of someone who is, I’ll…”

His statement remains unfinished, hanging like a hushed confession, bright and glaring in the air between you.

He’ll take you where you want to go. All you need to do is ask.

What you can’t figure out is why.

There’s a reason the Horsemen are so wary of Samael, why they were all so agitated when they got you back from him the first time. He’s dangerous. You knew that when he took you, and you still know it now.

What does he have to gain by letting you go?

Peeling your tongue from the roof of your mouth, you decide to ask him as much. “You’re… gonna let me leave?” Though you tremble in his grasp, you manage to jut your chin out at him in what little defiance you dare to show.

Samael has always privately commended you for your courage, or at least, your ability to pretend that you’re brave. He knows you’re afraid of him.

Wise. And yet, ironically, you’re perhaps the sole human in existence who has the least reason to fear him.

His great, horned head dips slightly and you don’t miss the throaty hum that sounds far too much like a purr to suit such a brute.

“If that is your wish,” he breathes across your face, raising the hairs on the back of your neck.

His gargantuan face looms even closer, unblinking, yellow eyes peering into your own with unnerving scrutiny that renders you suddenly and painfully shy, enough that you drop your gaze to the massive expanse of scarred flesh that stretches over his chest.

“I… don’t need a healer,” you mutter, “I just want to go home. Please?”

‘Please.’

How could he refuse you when you continue to be so genial with him, despite your pain, despite being back here in this dreary place? He’s never been granted kindness so freely before - kindness without an ulterior motive hidden behind it like the blade beneath a matador’s cape.

You are… an interesting change to the monotony of his gloomy existence.

It isn’t a change he doesn’t intend to lose.

While he’d much prefer to keep you in his fortress a little longer and let your laughter and stories chase away the lonely shadows, Samael’s pragmatic side reminds him resolutely that it would be far more beneficial in the long run to return you to your true home on Earth before the Horseman come kicking his door down.

The demon’s nostrils widen and close as he draws in a long, lazy breath, inhaling the soft scent of your shampoo that sits just below the smell of blood… You must have bathed only a few hours before Lilith took you...

If home is where you want to be, then that’s where he’ll take you.

“Very well,” he announces, raising his unoccupied hand and turning his palm to face the wall nearby.

He doesn’t need to look at your face to know it’s fallen slack with shock. Apparently, his easy acquiescence wasn’t expected.

Smirking to himself, he concentrates on pulling the threads of the Universe apart at their seams to create a hole – a doorway.

Deep in the depths of his mind, an image of your house emerges – your second house, the one the Horsemen had hurriedly moved you into because they thought the old one was compromised with his knowledge of it.

He latches onto the image fast, feeding powerful and ancient magics into the tips of his fingers, sensing the air around him grow hot and charged with energy.

After another moment of letting his magic build, he finally releases it in a rush.

The portal swirls into life right in front of him. One moment, there was nothing, and the next, a large, glassy surface ripples and hums gently on the opposite side of the room, beyond it, the unmoving image of your den beckons.

The change in you is immediate.

“That- that’s my house!” you exclaim in disbelief, leaning forwards over the demon’s thumb to stare gobsmacked at the view beyond the portal.

Flicking his gaze down at you, Samael grants himself the luxury of a rare, genuine smile.

By the time you twist around in his grasp to peer up at him, his usual frown is back in place.

“Shall we?” he asks.

-----------

“Samael?”

“Mm?”

“How’d you know they moved me here?”

All at once, the demon’s long tail ceases to drag itself back and forth across the plush carpet of your bedroom, plunging everything into a heavy silence.

He doesn’t turn to face you, though he can feel your eyes drilling a hole into the back of his skull.

Samael’s own gaze stays adhered to the little bookcase that sits proudly in the corner of your room, its shelves filled to bursting with dog-eared tomes and well-loved stories you couldn’t part with for all the world.

He should have known you wouldn’t miss such a glaringly obvious detail.

The Horsemen had moved you to a new house a little further out from Haven’s suburbs after they got you back from Shadow’s Edge last month. It was laughably easy for your former captor to track you down again – solely for the purpose of keeping a watchful eye on you, of course…. Though look at the good that had done, in the end…

Still, for once, he doesn’t think it’ll make much difference if you know the truth.

“I’ve been watching you,” he hums casually, swinging his clawed hands behind his back, clasping them together just below the juncture of his wings. As he starts to haul his body around to face you, the tips of his spiralling horns scape the ceiling, forcing him to duck his head a little to spare the plaster.

He’d asked, upon setting foot inside for the first time, why it seemed a place more adequately suited to accommodate a maker than a human. It came as little surprise for him to learn that it was, in fact, makers who built the place, and it had been at your own request that they fashioned a home that could easily fit all manner of guests, regardless of their size or species. All of your usual amenities – your bed, your kitchen, are perfectly suited for human use. But the ceilings, doorways and even the windows are grand enough that even Samael can move almost entirely freely inside without having to bend-double to avoid piercing the ceiling with his horns and leathery wings.

Once he’s turned towards the sound of your voice, he has to suppress a smirk at what he sees.

You’ve just emerged from your adjoining washroom, face clean of blood and dressed in a new set of fluffy, blue sleep clothes. In addition to your fresh ensemble, you’ve slapped a bag of frozen vegetables over your bad eye, apparently to relieve the swelling, or so you claim.

And yet, despite the amusing state of dress, you somehow still find it in you to look downright affronted.

“You’ve been watching me?” you echo accusingly, taking a bold step across the room towards him before you seem to think better of squaring up to a prince of Hell and halting in your tracks, “What, it isn’t bad enough you kidnapped me, now you’re keeping tabs on me too?”

A look of abject horror passes across your visible eye and you hasten to glance at each corner of your room as if you’re going to find something heinous lurking in the shadows. “Oh god, have you bugged the whole place?”

Samael hasn’t heard the term, but he can connect the dots.

“I can assure you,” he says, “I have only caught the occasional glimpse of your home from the outside…”

A half-truth. Those ‘occasional glimpses’ had turned into hours of lounging on his throne whilst gazing through a window into your world as you pottered around it. When the weather was fair, he’d see you in the allotment beside the house.

He found it restful to watch you go about your tasks, digging your trowel into the soil, gasping in delight if a bird were to land on the fence nearby.

You’re his own little taste of nepenthe.

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” you huff, pulling the bag of vegetables away with a grimace, “God… why are you even… Why are you doing this?”

“Doing what?”

“Watching me!” you wheeze, throwing a hand up in exasperation.

You may have gulped down a couple of painkillers the moment you got back, but straining your voice still twinges your damaged neck. “Why bother!? I’m not a threat to you! Or are you just keeping an eye on me because you plan to steal me again?”

Admittedly, he’s been tempted to do just that several times, but each time, he’s refrained, if not to spare himself from the Horsemen’s wrath, then to keep himself as endeared to you as possible.

“You have nothing to fear from me,” he hums.

“That’s not what I asked.”

You stare him down for several seconds through one, narrowed eye, when all of a sudden, your face breaks apart into a wide yawn that seems to catch you wildly off guard.

Throwing a hand up to cover your gaping mouth from view, you half turn from the demon, fighting off the uninvited wave of fatigue.

With the grace of a predator but not the intent of one, Samael pads towards you over the carpeted floor. “You’re exhausted,” he remarks coolly.

Giving your head a rough shake, you sigh and grumble, “Yeah, well… It’s been a long night…”

His encompassing shadow falls across you, blocking out the light from the fixture overhead. Whipping your head around, you glance up and blanch upon realising he’s crept close enough to snatch you.

However, rather than make a move to sweep you off your feet, Samael only flicks a pointed glance down at your cozy, inviting bed. “You should rest.”

“I’ll rest when you’re gone,” you retort, crossing your arms.

‘Fine,’ he snorts to himself. And that’s when he finally makes a move.

All at once, you’re sent stumbling backwards towards the bed as he drops onto his large hands with a thud and begins to prowl towards you like a wolf stalking a doe.

“Woah! Hey!” you bleat, all bravado vanishing in an instant, “What’re you doing!? Stop that!”

The backs of your knees hit the bed and you tumble backwards onto it, dropping the vegetable bag in the process as you scramble to pull yourself upright again, raising your legs off the ground and retreating towards the headboard.

“Perhaps…” Samael growls – or does he purr? “… I am not yet ready to leave…”

He lays one, colossal paw on top of the mattress.

The bed groans suddenly under his weight as he pulls his upper body onto it and begins to settle down amongst the crumpled duvet. Letting out a rumble of contentment, he folds his arms beneath his chin and slumps heavily onto the mattress, causing the springs below you to buckle and screech in protest while he merely gives you a lazy blink.

The sight is so strikingly familiar, you feel the fear drain out of you with a whoosh.

‘Son of a bitch…’ you gripe to yourself, ‘The overgrown lizard’s just getting comfortable for story time…’

Slowly, your brows ease into a flat, unimpressed frown. “Are you serious? Right now?”

Samael only offers a warm chuff and sticks his nose into your heaped duvet, drawing a massive lungful of your smell into his airways.

‘Ah…. There you are…’ he muses.

It seems you’re the only one to have slept here, which he’s glad for. The sheets don’t stink of another’s flesh, nor can he detect the scent of sex…

The prince’s pleased hum is powerful enough to rattle the bed knobs against the wall.

“Don’t you dare start getting comfortable,” your voice pipes up warningly, and he drags a half-lidded eye up to meet your defiant glare.

“I’d like to go to bed,” you forge on, “And I’m not your prisoner anymore. I don’t have to tell you another story for as long as I live.”

You know this routine of his all too well.

When he’d held you captive, he’d often crawl up onto that gigantic bed and drape himself across it whilst you lay in your little corner beneath the silk sheets with his chin resting near your feet. For hours, he’d laze there like a massive, deadly lion, his tail flicking idly as he listened to the stories you’d spin for him, those you could remember from books you read and retained as a child.

You never thought, for one minute, that he’d want to continue that practice outside of his fortress walls.

“I mean it,” you hiss, shoving your legs under the covers and prodding his heavy arm with your toes, as if you might be able to nudge him off the bed, “Thank you for bringing me back, but I am still in a lot of pain, and I’m not in the mood to entertain you tonight.”

Blinking his luminous eyes at you slowly, Samael disregards your protests and utters, “You never finished your tale of the little monarchs by the creek…”

Something in your expression shifts at that, a mote of surprise soothing the wrinkle of your brows.

“You… you remember the Bridge to Terebithia?”

It was the last story you tried to tell him, recounted from memory on the night the Horsemen finally tore the doors down to save you.

“I remember every one of your stories,” he thrums deeply.

“Well… They’re not mine,” you point out, “I just told you what I could remember of the books I used to read…”

“Will you indulge me, little storyteller?” he presses, cocking his horned head sideways until his cheekbone rests upon a broad, scaly forearm, “The tale intrigued me. I’d like to hear how it ends.”

It’s selfish of him to do this, to stay when you’re in dire need of rest… but once the Horsemen see your injuries and inevitably convince you to tell them what happened to you, he anticipates that he won’t be seeing hide nor hair of you for a long, long time. If Death is sensible, he’ll take you off-world and stash you somewhere even Samael can’t reach you. Maybe to that family of makers you’re always gabbing on about.

This moment here and now may well be the last chance he has to speak with you until you persuade the Four to return you to your home on Earth.

“Tell you what,” you grumble, taking him off guard by kicking away the covers and sliding your legs over the side of the bed, “You can read what happens for yourself. I’ve got the book right here.”

The demon raises his head, watching as you cross the room to your bookcase. Drawing to a halt in front of it, you run a finger delicately along the collection of spines before you eventually stop and dig out a book that’s nestled snugly between a pair of thick, glossy tomes.

Flicking this pointed ears forwards, the prince chuffs softly in his throat - a sound born of instinct intended to call you back to the nest. He barely even registers having uttered it.

Soon enough, you’re slipping back underneath your duvet and retrieving the bag of not-so-frozen vegetables, pressing them tenderly to your eye once again.

As Samael lays his head back down, you toss the book across the bed where it lands with a dull thwack beside his chin.

“There,” you huff, sagging backwards into the pillows, “Happy?”

You nearly let out a loud groan when the book is promptly nudged back towards you with the tip of his forefinger.

“Oh, come on, big guy,” you complain, oblivious to how the impromptu nickname sends a spark of interest shooting up the demon’s spine.

“I want you to read to me,” he sighs and settles down again, allowing his eyelids to droop halfway shut, his pupils blown wide like black holes in a thin ring of gold.

“Ugh!” Exasperated, yet more than aware that the prince isn’t one to take no for an answer, you snatch the book off the duvet and start thumbing irritably through its pages. “Why do I have to be the one to read it?”

Your fingers pause briefly, however, when Samael shifts and a warm, solid knuckle suddenly alights upon your arm.

The breath catches in your throat. You hardly dare move. Frozen, you dart a glance down to see his colossal, red hand hovering beside you, the back of his forefinger stroking a gentle line down the bare skin of your shoulder.

His voice reverberates up through the bed, deeper than the purr of a motorcar.

“I like the sound of your voice,” he utters.

The words fall softly, like a prayer sliding off a sinner’s lips.

Hesitant, your gaze moves up to his cragged face and you have to swallow a gasp, admittedly startled by the look you’re receiving.

Why is he staring at me like that?

The demon’s knuckle rolls up to the top of your shoulder again, sending the hairs along your arms standing to attention.

He’s watching you closely through hooded eyes, his smile lopsided and his pupils abnormally large and round and...

Oh dear.

Oh dear, this… could be bad.

Perhaps it’s just your imagination, but… It might explain the gentle looks, the lingering stares, the rage in his eyes when he took in your bloodied face in the throne room… It would definitely explain why he’s still here in your room, and the slow stroke of his knuckle up and down your arm.

You don’t want to even entertain such a foolish notion.

‘I like the sound of your voice.’

Your stomach twists itself into anxious knots as you start to wonder if Samael likes more than just your voice…

Wetting your dry lips, you try to give your arm a slight shrug under the guise of opening the book, conveniently shifting backwards closer to the wall and pulling away from his tender strokes.

“Um, in that case, you’ll have to remind me where I left off…” you manage to eke out, clearing your throat.

If the prince of Hell is stung by your subtle rejection, he makes no mention of it, though his pupils shrink by a fraction as he lays his palm down on the mattress beside you, exhaling warmly across your face.

“The young human… Jess,” he mumbles into the scales on his arm, “He had just returned from the gallery with his tutor…”

Good memory.

“Yes,” you reply quietly, “Yes, that’s right.”

Trying desperately to ignore how suddenly suffocating the demon’s proximity has become, you prop the book up in your lap and start to read.

-------

“The boy was right.”

You startle awake from a light doze, jerking upright on your pillows with an undignified grunt.

‘Did I fall asleep?’

The book sits open in your lap, held loosely between limp fingers.

And Samael is-

You have to resist the urge to kick out your legs when you raise your eyes to find his colossal face resting peacefully between your parted knees. You’ve never been more thankful that you’d put your legs under the covers earlier, though suddenly the duvet doesn’t feel like such an adequate barrier against monsters as it used to be when you were young.

“Huh?” you blurt eloquently, still in the clutches of sleepiness.

Two walls of flesh shift on either side of you, and it’s only then that you realise you’ve been more or less surrounded on all fronts.

A pair of thick, muscle-bound arms are curled loosely on the bed to your left and right, close enough that you can feel the demon’s preternatural heat radiating off his skin. To your back is the bedroom wall, while ahead of you lays Samael’s red, rough-hewn face. The black horns jutting from his chin create deep divots in the mattress where they’re pressed.

“The boy,” he repeats, prying an eyelid apart and casting a yellow glow over your face, “He was right. She should not have trusted that rope.”

Oh… Right. The story…

Raising your hand, you nearly pinch the bridge of your nose before a painful throb reminds you not to do that. You’ll have to take some more painkillers soon…

Emitting a sleepy hum, you flop back down amongst the pillows and give a rough exhale. “Wasn’t the rope’s fault it snapped.”

“… Her caretakers did not blame him.”

Ugh. If this is going to turn into another long-winded discussion like the Rainbow Fish….

“Of course they didn’t,” you sigh, tilting your chin down to meet his gaze, “It wasn’t Jess’s fault either.”

“But he could have prevented her death.”

Samael’s probing insistence drags you a little further into the waking world and you start to sit up, propping your weight on your elbows to squint at him.

The demon’s face is like stone, hard and cold. “He could have asked her to accompany him,” he adds in a growl, “But his selfish infatuation with the older human kept him from doing so.”

A gentle frown tugs at your brows. “Jess wasn’t to know what would happen,” you point out, wondering why Samael seems so fixated on the matter.

Lifting his chin off the bed, his nostrils flare and his eyes flick down to the bruises on your neck, staring at them unblinkingly as he retorts, “He knew the rope was untrustworthy. He could have kept her away from it.”

“Well… Sure but… then it wouldn’t have been such an effective story.”

“Mph,” he grumbles, scowling at the wall behind your head, “I seem to recall telling you that I prefer stories with happy endings…”

You chew on that for a minute before closing your eye and offering him a drowsy shrug. “Good stories don’t always have to have a happy ending,” you tell him, your voice thick with fatigue, “Happy endings are nice, but it’s important that we’re told stories that… you know, like, challenge our morals and stuff.”

“… Go on,” he nudges when you fall silent.

Heaving a sigh, you whine, “I don’t know. I am way too tired to be having in-depth discussions like this at the crack of dawn.”

“Why read stories of tragedy and death? The tale only upset you.”

“Oh my god,” you whisper in exasperation, resigning yourself to the conversation, “I guess, because… if all we’re consuming is clean and good and happy, then when bad stuff does inevitably happen to us, I don’t think we’re ever really prepared for it. If that even makes sense.”

Samael’s lips quirk up at their corners, and he slides his gaze down to you again. “The way your mind works never fails to intrigue me.”

“Pft, it’s not working much at all at the moment,” you huff.

He hadn’t realised before meeting you, that this is what his relationships had always lacked. This is what he’s been missing.

Dialogue.

Nothing more than that. The simplest thing of all.

This sleepy conversation with you is ten thousand times more preferable to the cold, empty silences that would stretch across the massive void of bedsheets between he and Lilith.

His smile fades slowly as he finds himself drawn, as ever, to the band of bruises around your neck.

He knew not to trust Lilith. He should have kept you away from her. But he didn’t.

“The boy,” he murmurs deeply into the quiet of your room, “Do you suppose he was right to blame himself for what happened to her?”

“Right?” Humming, you lean back on one arm and exhale a slow breath. “No… Not right. Normal, though? Yeah. I reckon it’s normal that he’d blame himself. I think most people would do the same in his shoes.”

“Does that not then make them right?” he puts, “If that is the general consensus? To blame oneself?”

After a longer pause, you eventually shake your head and reply, “No.” Then, parting your jaw in another wide and toothy yawn, you add, “It just makes them human.”

Human…

How can blaming himself for what Lilith did to you make him like a human?

Hmm… While not the feel-good ending he’d been hoping for, it wasn’t necessarily a bad one either, and once again, whether knowingly or not, you’ve given him much to ponder over. He plans to do just that while you sleep. Already, those dainty eyelashes are fluttering against your cheeks as your head droops, exhaustion proving a fierce adversary on this long night.

Perhaps it’s time he let you rest. Of course, that doesn’t mean he’ll be leaving your side just yet.

Tyrants are seldom granted solace. Most would argue that they don’t deserve it.

Ironic, that it almost feels sacrilegious for Samael to be laying here on your bed with his mouth resting a mere foot from the most confidential part of you, and doing nothing but talking to you in soft, dulcet tones. Talking… it’s more intimate than the depravities he’s performed with his former mistress.

How laughable.

It’s inevitable, then, that the prince’s wonderous moment of peace should be so rudely shattered by the dull thud of a door closing downstairs.

Samael’s head shoots off the mattress with a snarl so quickly that it startles a yelp out of you.

Heavy footfalls – too heavy to belong to any human – pause in the room directly below your own. Then, all at once, there’s the unsettling sound of them starting up again at a far more urgent pace.

Your yelp hadn’t gone unnoticed.

The demon’s tail twitches irritably as he glares hard at the door.

… Just when he was really getting comfortable…

“War…”

The name whispered breathlessly from your lips draws Samael’s focus back down to you, silencing the growl in his throat. You’re staring at the bedroom door, brows screwed together in worry.

For the Horseman? Or for him?

Somewhere a few rooms away, metal boots begin to thunder up a flight of stairs.

Samael parts his lips and flicks a hot, red tongue over his canine, lowering his gaze to your exposed neck. He knows he has to leave. He isn’t about to let your night be ruined by a brawl in the middle of your bedroom. But… there’s one last thing he’s compelled to do.

Demons don’t apologise.

Not aloud, anyway.

Trapped below his bulk by enormous arms, you tear your eyes from the door and shakily raise them to his, swallowing a thick lump of apprehension that sends a dull ache through your bruises.

You don’t like the way he’s suddenly staring at your throat, the points of his fangs gleaming out from behind barely parted lips.

He looks agitated.

He looks hungry.

Your heartbeat steadily begins to reascend the mountain it had worked so hard to climb down from.

“Samael?” you peep.

The footsteps are on your landing now, shaking the foundations of your home with their weight.

Towering high above you, the demon’s fiery eyes flash with intent, like a predator tensing to pounce.

You aren’t even given a second to admonish yourself for letting your guard down before that mouthful of wicked, sharp teeth lunges for your neck, stealing a final cry of alarm.

It’s instinctive when you throw your head up and to the side so as to avoid having to see the enormous fangs flying in your direction.

You brace for agony.

However, what you feel instead is the furthest thing from it.

… The gentlest press of rough, warm lips lands upon the column of your throat, directly over the purpling bruises stained into the flesh.

Your good eye wrenches itself open like a shot.

You’re too stunned to turn your head, and your chest feels tight with the breath you’re keeping trapped inside it, afraid of what the slightest exhale might provoke.

The corner of your vision is almost entirely swallowed up by Samael’s head and horns. His flared nostrils glow with internal fire as he puffs swathes of hot air across your jaw, whilst the scratch of his lips tickles your skin when they seal together into a tender kiss just below your bobbing gorge - far too tender and painless to be given by a demon, let alone one of his size and reputation.

Up until now, you might have been able to convince yourself that the prince’s attentions had been born of mere curiosity.

Now though? The hope that you’ve just been misinterpreting his advances flies out of the proverbial window.

Samael, prince of Hell, Head of Satans and Chief of Devils… is placing a kiss on your bruised throat so gently that the only coherent thought flashing through your brain is that you must still be dreaming.

A resounding ‘boom’ alerts you to your bedroom door being kicked viciously off its hinges and the clank of metal announces War’s entrance.

The unswollen eye in your head swivels away from Samael and for one, damning moment, your fearful gaze locks onto the wild, infuriated blue shining out from beneath your Horseman’s crimson hood.

"Something to remember me by..."

The single lap of a scorching tongue coaxes a gasp from you when it eases over your bruised neck, and then, in a flash of fire that sends you screwing your eye shut against the intruding light, the pressure on your throat, and the weight on top of your bed vanishes, as if a demon prince had never been there at all.

#darksiders #darksiders genesis #samael #samael x reader #one sided attraction #unrequited crush #fluff #whump #angst #Lilith #Blood #Demon x human #monster/human #reader #possessive Samael #Protective Samael #Protective Horsemen #suggestive themes #Bridge to Terebithia #It'll make sense

[monkeythefander]

@thatsthat24

Click to see more if you’re interested in seeing a Roman angst drawing based on the TikTok mashup of the songs “Jealousy, Jealousy” by Olivia Rodrigo and “Pacify Her” by Melanie Martinez. The drawing features both Light Side Roman and Darkside Roman.

I’ve had the TikTok mashup of the songs “Jealousy, Jealousy” by Olivia Rodrigo and “Pacify Her” by Melanie Martinez stuck in my head for a while now. So here’s a Roman angst drawing based on the song. The layout of this drawing was inspired by the many Gacha Life/Club memes for this song. This drawing includes Light Side Roman and Dark Side Roman.

#sanders sides #fanart #roman sanders fanart #roman sanders #darkside roman #roman sanders angst #digital art #jealousy jealousy x pacify her #sanders sides fanart #darkside roman sanders #dark side roman fanart #roman sanders angst fanart

[the-makers-daughter]

*slides Nyörun a hunk of roast meat* 🍖

Been looking for an excuse to draw her without her disguise and this was perfect. Thank you!

#Darksiders #Darksiders 2 #Darksiders 3 #Elder Eideard #Eideard #Nyorun #anon ask #digital art #Darksiders oc #the makers daughter #themakersdaughter #angst #oc angst #original character

[cyberramble]

I found this idea when listening to Erase Me by Ben Folds Five lol

DARKSIDE PATTON IDEA

In this au Patton has been basically "replaced" (xe can never be replaced in my heart) Janus but none of the others want to admit it.

Patton having another breakdown (just like LilyPadTon but without becoming a frog) but instead of lashing out at the others, xe goes to xyr room and starts shouting and ripping up pictures of xem and the others and destroying xyr room <3

screams internally

#sanders sides #patton sanders #thomas sanders #patton angst #Darkside Patton #Dark Patton #mmm #Orange Patton #it's not talked about though #Breakdown #Erase Me #nonbinary Patton #angry Patton #Patton snaps #This was infact inspired by an orange L animatic. We dont talk about though.

[missjeedx]

"Das bist du" Sagte die Stimme in meinem Kopf als ich das Bild entdeckte.

Ich habe Angst.

So schreckliche Angst.

Angst vor mir.

Angst vor der Welt.

Angst vor dem was mir die Welt noch alles antun wird.

Ich will manchmal einfach aufgeben. Nicht mehr stark sein. Wie ich es hasse stark zu sein. Aber ich muss stark sein. Ich darf nicht aufhören. Ich darf nicht egoistisch sein. Ich darf nicht einfach alles aufgeben wofür ich bis jetzt so hart gekämpft habe. Also sitze ich auf der Schaukel. Blicke auf den Abgrund unter mir und sehe zu wie ich langsam verblute. Wie meine Seele verblutet. Doch ich will meine Verletzungen nicht heilen. Ich will mich nicht um mich kümmern, denn erst dann wird der Schmerz real. Ich sehe das Blut. Die klaffenden Wunden. Ich merke wie die Kraft immer mehr aus meinem Körper weicht. Aber den Schmerz spüre ich fast nicht. Auch wenn mal ein leises Flüstern, ein kleiner Aufschrei aus den Abgründen entweicht, ist dieser nach wenigen Sekunden wieder in den Abgrund gestürzt. Verschwunden aus meiner Wahrnehmung. So als wäre er nie da gewesen. Doch was bin ich? Bin ich wirklich noch das Mädchen auf der Schaukel? Bin ich der Abgrund selbst? Oder bin ich die Schaukel, die dem verletzen Kind halt gibt und sie zugleich noch mehr verletzt? Und wenn ich das Kind bin. Wie kann ich es schaffen mich noch länger zu halten? Mich noch länger unter Schmerzen vom Abgrund fern zu halten anstatt mich in ihn hinein zu stürzen?

#darkside #horror #depression #angst #tw #borderline

[askthedarksidersfam]

Infandum renovare dolorem

"To renew an unspeakable grief."

Tags: Whump (like really heavy whump), hurt/no comfort, angst, death of a child, graphic violence, taking liberties with the Nephilim, Eden's invasion, mentions of OC, dead dove do not eat, dissociation.

Summary: After War summons the others to Earth, the Four take refuge in Eden where the human survivors have been hidden. Strife is forced to relive his past as he sees the realm he tried to leave behind, and its ghosts. Finally Strife tells War the story behind the dagger he buried, and the heavy sin it carries.

“There are things from before. When the world made sense…”

“You don’t know me, War. I was a killer before this all went down.”

“No, this shouldn’t be here…”

“This deserves to be buried here among the dead…”

“Someday… I’ll tell you everything…”

Those words have long since echoed in the brain of the gunslinging Nephilim all those millennia ago spoken to his youngest brother in arms. In the deep pits of Hell and the derelict ruins of Eden did Strife confess to a deeper confines of his history that he wished he could cleanse from himself completely like dirt in a raging river. But despite how much he suppressed his memories, how much he tried to forget, Strife could not erase the inky blots in his soul of a sin so foul even Death himself would shudder in horror.

Suspended high above the scarred world where the last survivors of humanity lay in refuge, far away from prying ears and searching eyes of the humans Strife once spent his own hiding in as his time as Jones the Deserter. How long had it been since he had seen the very bones of the realm he had long since set fire to in the name of Balance?

Eden. The birthplace of humanity, now the only place they can call home. If this sad hovel of a place could be called a home.

Earth was in ruins, and worse for wear in the near century that had passed. The Destroyer’s armies had ravaged the planet, even as nature tried to take back the land. In the ten years Strife had abandoned his mission given by the Council to hide as the Human by the alias of Jones, he had seen firsthand the irreparable damage done to the species. Families and friends ripped apart, the grief of a parent losing their beloved children, and oh Creator, the innocent confusion of children wondering when their parents will find them again.

It made him want to scream.

Even though Strife did what he could to help the survivors in any way he could, it felt as if it wasn’t enough. Hunting and scavenging to provide for the encampment, his poor human medical expertise provided little in the way of a higher survival rate than doing nothing at all.

One thing stood above others though, something so painful to him, yet it brought joy to another. His care for the young ones who’d been placed in the Haven tree, for the children without their mothers or fathers. What made his heart ache was how young everyone in Haven really was, the oldest barely reaching their third decade. The children are a true testament of humanity's youth, and not just about those who survived, but in the eyes of the Universe. So young and to have been destroyed so soon by those who hold the power they don’t.

What a bullshit fate.

In Haven, Strife truly learned the unfairness of it all. The distant memories of humanity’s infancy trudged back up in his brain of when he so stupidly lead the humans to a metaporical slaughter, the tarnishing of their innocence and corruption by demon magics. He was responsible, so caught up in his grief, in his self loathing he didn’t recognize the signs of something greater afoot.

And look where that got him instead.

No less guilty as before. Those stained hands that wish they could wipe his ledger clean by “good deeds” in a dead world.

“There’s a reason you’re named Strife…” something utters in his brain, hissing vehemently as a serpent, slithering in the deep caverns of his dark psyche. He wishes he could disagree, but deep down he knew this was true, try as he might to deny. He’s meant to bring forth chaos in his path and upset the waking world with each breath he takes.

He’d have better chances of sprouting wings and flying than bringing peace.

Whether he meant to or not, Strife didn’t stop thinking of one of the young ones that he had come to raise. A young girl with a gentle manner and an even shyer disposition. But behind those eyes of hers, he could see a fiery spirit most admirable. She had a desire to live, to fight and do things even other humans feared to do. She saw beyond her instinctive fear and saw the beauty where others found an foe, and with time she convinced those around her to trust in those feared creatures. From strangers into beloved friends and companions.

She reminded him so much of…

‘No!’ Strife shakes his head, the chin of his avian helmet scraping against his chest piece as he tries to lose that treacherous thought. But it clings to him like a limpet to a rock. He can’t no- he won’t about them, not now at least.

‘It doesn’t hurt to still grieve over the past.’ Something more gentle whispers, soft as rain, the more sentimental, bothersome half of him tries. He recognizes the voice as one of the humans who’d been adamant on consoling him in his time as Jones, ‘Grief means that you loved, and it’s not wrong to love.’

But that’s just it isn't it? Strife, Rider of the White Horse, the Spirit of Discord and Enforcer of the Council, er- rather just Spirit of Discord, shouldn’t love. He’s supposed to be one of the most feared creatures in existence, there’s no room for such a dainty, silly concept of “love”. He’s a pillar, not a person.

Then why, despite all the eons of being who he is, does it hurt so much?

“Something troubles you brother?” The unmissable voice of War sounds from behind him, he can feel his heavy steps tromping through the grass. The soft ground partially muffled his strides which was probably why the gunslinger couldn’t hear his approach.

The back of Strife’s boot knocks against the little cliff he’s nestled on, curling in on himself now conscious over the fact his concern is so easy to read even though he’s faced away from the world. Damn War and his stupid concern.

So desperately Strife wanted to lie to War, brush him off with a well placed stretch and claim he’s “just tired”, it worked so well with the humans when things got too quiet. Deflect the conversation into something else, but that beautiful arctic already was mastered by Death and not him with his clumsy tongue. He couldn’t lie anyways for War in all his stubborn nature would try and pry it out of him somehow.

Still doesn’t make it any easier to tell him, even if there’s a lift of an invisible weight from his sagging shoulders. “Yeah, you could say that.” Brushing his hand through the stiff spikes for hair akin to that of spines rather than luscious hair humans or even War possessed. A demonic trait.

Either from a rare treat of sentimentality or from being away from prying eyes, War places himself to Strife’s side before gently settling beside his brother, a leg pulled flush against his chest whilst the other tucks under the gap of the bent leg. War keeps his arm propped on his knee as the other supports his immense weight. War seemed relaxed enough to put himself in this position, and secretly Strife appreciated that from him, as it gave him a false sense of security that this was a place to be fully vulnerable.

Tapping a claw on his armored thigh, Strife pretends to ignore the inquisitive raised brow War sends him, instead feigning interest in the distant ruins of Eden currently filled with the huts and houses of the refugees. The sunset painted the sky a heavenly hue of gold and oranges that seemed absolutely lackluster when compared to the bursting colors of Earth’s own sun. Eden may have been the magnum opus of the realms made by the Creator for His treasured humans but here it felt as if Eden were a cheap copy and Earth the masterpiece. ‘Not anymore’ he thinks bitterly, an acrid taste left in his mouth.

“Tell me,” Strife began, the faint creaking of leather telling Strife his younger brother in arms is listening, “did you ever think we’d ever see this place again?” He gestures to the place before them, recovering from the age-old battle with the lush overgrowth of Eden’s native flora that can be seen nowhere else. Although he knows the answer, it won’t do any harm in getting the old lug to talk a bit. Creator knows War almost never speaks, let alone about feelings.

Maybe the humans have rubbed off on him a bit more than he suspected. He never would’ve talked about feelings before, it's more likely he would rather put a bullet to his head before talking about his past. The present him however, is more… different from the one from millenia ago.

“No,” War starts, looking at the spanse of land before him, “I never imagined I’d ever set foot in this place after the war. This realm was supposed to be lost to the Universe, and its ghosts left behind.” Strife huffs, resting his elbow on his knee. “Doesn’t seem so lost to me,” he snarks, but the humor is lost on War as he solemnly stares in the distance, silent. The elder of the two then sighs, deflating like a popped balloon, “Though, I supposed it’s for the best. The humans need it more than anything. Even if we don’t like it, we have to just… deal with it.”

‘Though it still doesn't sting any less.’

“Strife, if I may be direct, Eden isn’t the only reason for your mood is it? There’s something else…” War trails off, prodding the metaphorical beast enough to elicit a response. He doesn’t answer immediately, feeling that War’s question hit him head on as if he were in battle and not just speaking. The silence in his hesitancy to answer is nearly suffocating. He doesn’t even pretend to hide his apprehension, his hand coming up to rake through his hair, turning his head away until War was no longer in his peripheral.

“It is, the humans you saw? The ones who greeted you and Fury when we arrived?” There it is, hitting the head of the nail.

Of course War didn’t know, being imprisoned for nearly a century, away from all that transpired on Earth. In the short amount of time the Four had been reunited, there was a lot to catch up upon. But it was rather hilarious to watch War and Death’s face when the survivors came to Fury, and she didn’t reject their greetings with a snide remark.

So much has really happened to everyone involved.

“Or perhaps, it was that one young human girl, the one who embraced you. She was especially fond of you. May I inquire as to why? You’ve been quiet ever since you saw her.” Strife nearly wishes the ground beneath him to swallow him up. A nice cozy grave where all the rest of his people lay. Ironic.

Strife can feel those blueish eyes trained right on him, waiting expectantly now that a can of worms has been opened and he can’t shove the proverbial worms back in the tin confines and throw it across the cliff. Try as he might, he doubts War would appreciate the notion of him trying to toss him off the edge to avoid this topic he was at the best, hesitant to speak about.

“She was from, when I was on Earth. When I was Jones. After I abandoned the mission from the Council,” he spat that word out as it were rot on his tongue, “I went incognito, made a glamored disguise as a human and became a refugee.” He can feel War’s icy stare bear into him, likely not truly understanding his motive completely given his viewpoints of always going through with what he must do. But he continues anyway, “After a while, I found Haven, a safe space made by Ulthane and some other Makers who took in any survivors. That’s when I met the kid.” Something akin to tenderness washes over the old Nephilim as his golden eyes glaze over with memories.

“She was so young, War, I still can’t believe she survived on her own for months before she found others. I saw here and I just, Creator, I was reminded of…”

It’s then does Strife’s tongue glue to the roof of his mouth, his throat clamping up to near suffocation to stop the words from escaping. His own body protects him from saying the next few words that bring back the worst of his memories, the lowest a Nephilim can go. He wishes- nay prays he could swallow those words that fly into War’s awaiting ears, but it’s too late as the younger tilts his head, opening his lips to ask yet another, damning question.

“Remind you of who?” Those words were a blow to Strife’s black heart, and it felt as if the breath in his lungs was forced out in a brutal punch. His skin felt hot, yet freezing under the sweat that broke all over his body.

There’s no going back now.

Heaving a weary sigh, Strife puts his heavy head in his clawed hands, composing himself into something less of a train wreck. Maybe something shy of the verge of running head first off the cliff would be better before he finally opens his mouth once again, tongue dry as cotton as he rasps.

“Remember what I told you, the last time we were here. That one day that I’d tell you everything from before we met?” He can still hear the echoes of the past reverberate through the land the more he feels the memories bubble up from the deepest crevices of his eternal past he long since locked up. It’s so powerful he can almost feel the tickle of hair and the sweet smells caressing his nostrils. He hates that he can almost see their faces in the dying light.

“Yes, you did.”

“Well,” Strife sniffs, looking up to the retreating sun and the stars that peek through the growing darkness. “You remember that knife I’d buried…” his heart lurches in his throat, as does bile rise, the acrid taste coming to taint his tongue, Strife swallows down the last of his worries, as he lets the last of his resolve dissolve, thankful for the darkness that covers the sight of tears freely falling down his cheeks.

“That knife wasn’t for some assassination gig. It was personal.”

_______

The order of the Council echoes in his head, it’s as if he was hearing it for the first time and not countless hours ago.

“As your first mission as the Horsemen, you must eradicate the Nephilim from Eden! They invade the realm and slaughter defenseless humans in their wake! Not one soul is to be left unclaimed!”

Four pairs of hoofbeats galloped through the bloodsoaked battlefield, leaving behind nothing but carnage and death in their wake. Souls shriek and wail as they are ripped from their weak bodies and redirected into Death’s awaiting Amulet, sealing them away in a restless cage. The cries of the thousands strong army ring past the lush vegetation caked with human and Nephilim blood.

The heart of the battle wasn’t where the White Rider lay his gaze, but to the outskirts where stragglers, possible runaways fled for their own self preservation. His hawk-like sight honed in on the retreating figures, mostly those tasked with spreading word to those in other stretches of the realm, warning to either take arms or run. Not that they lived long enough to have the chance when he raised his pistol and eyed them through the sight before pulling the trigger.

None escaped the Sharpshooter.

The job was far from done. Strife knew this well, as his head swiveled to the far horizon where more and more Nephilim marched in a huge wave, splitting off into two huge groups around him. Likely attempting to outflank his brothers in arms as they forced their way through the defenses.

He’d let the others deal with the army, as they wouldn’t miss him too terribly as his orders were given. It’s for the best that he gets to the encampments Death had mentioned where all the others lay, those who didn’t join the fight. The very few who stayed behind that is.

“It’s for the best.” He utters to no one in particular. But he can’t find himself to believe those words as he sends his horse, Mayhem into a frenzied gallop, charging onward to reach one such encampment miles away.

Everything was a blur, as if peeking through a layer of thickly woven wool. All he could remember were the screams and the gunpowder as he reached the site, laying waste to all who charged forth in challenge. It wasn’t until Strife ventured further into the heart of the grounds did he realize that those left were nothing more than soldiers tasked with carrying out Absolam’s orders when more warriors poured in, given the scrolls of scrawled out messages. Warnings of their counterattack and a call to arms for all able bodied Nephilim to march forward in the name of “claiming a home”.

What a lie.

Lifting his head from the strewn corpses, he turned his attention to a most familiar sight. A Nephilim portal. The swirling mass of bluish purple magics, ripping a hole in the air enacting as a doorway. If doorways were meant to warp space-reality that is…

This is it. The gateway for the endless masses, or at least, one of them given Absolam was no fool.

As Strife commands his steed to move towards the portal, Mayhem snorts from underneath, unsure about this as he paws at the ground nervously. Pulling at the reins, Strife sucks a breath through his teeth to soothe his own galloping heart.

“Easy now.” But it’s unknown if it’s to the horse, or the rider as they both stare down the awaiting doorway. Shoving down the last of his nerves, Strife does his best to keep his brain from fogging up as he orders Mayhem forward, slipping into the swirling magic, the darkness enveloping them both.

_____

Although he’s done this thousands of times, there’s something that’s different about jumping into this portal. Strife had long since ignored the pulling apart of his cells, the electric buzz that floods his nerves and the kaleidoscope of sounds and colors that ensue traveling across the Universe. But this time, he can feel the pain in his atoms, the tingling leaves his body numb yet shaking and the cacophony of sound and sight that sends his brain into a frenzy. As if the Universe were punishing him for his actions against his own people. However, he attempted to ignore those thoughts that plagued his mind.

It’s until the pull of gravity weighs him down does the Sharpshooter open his eyes.

Dead ahead, a large village lay vastly deserted, the fires between several degrees of extinguishment, smoke filtering through the air. Golden eyes scanning over the expansive stretch of the land, searching for any signs of life to extinguish before he has to move on to the next mark.

Clicking his tongue, Mayhem obediently marches forward to the site’s outskirts, making wide berth to avoid an abandoned smoldering fire pit, plates of cooking food thrown aside and deep footprints in the slightly wet dirt. Likely those who were here heard word of them coming and rose to arms, even if it meant to disregard dinner.

Within his chest, Strife’s heart clenches as if it had been squeezed by a thorny hand. Even though so many Nephilim marched to Eden, not all had been alongside the Firstborn during the raid. Instead, they were just living their own lives, the very few who didn’t yearn for bloodshed. Which makes the sorrow in him rise like great tidal waves as those orders keep repeating from Death’s lips from over the battlefield.

“Ride on past the battlefields and to the old settlements. Eliminate everything and return.”

He hated how within Death’s tone, it had never been so steady yet strained.

Maybe he’s just reading far too much into it.

A piercing neigh tears Strife from his thoughts, forcing his eyes to refocus from the blur that they fell into to see Mayhem has stopped at the first set of huts surrounding them on both sides. Rising high above their heads, the sharpshooter takes the time to stay still in the ghosttown of a settlement, yet he can’t shake the feeling of being watched.

Muscles quiver under pounds of metal, loosening the tension of tense tendons. Hopping off his horse, Strife pats Mayhem on the neck before sending him away with a mental command, and he dissipates in a cloud of purple mist leaving the rider alone. “For the Balance” he tries to chant like a mantra as his feet carry him forward into the first house.

It’s what he tries to convince himself is right as he points Mercy’s muzzle right in between the eyes of two bright eyes that innocently gaze back, full of youth and promise.

He tries to not think about anything else, eyes trained to the floor as he squeezes the trigger, a resonating bang silencing the question that passes by the young Nephilim’s lips.

___

Deeper into the village, Strife kept his hands on the pistol’s handles in the case of an ambush should any who remained got brave enough to do so. Then again, the only he’d encountered so far were old warriors and a few children.

These facts did not sit well in his stomach the more he thought about it.

Near twenty souls he had claimed by the hands of Mercy and Redemption, but the job wasn’t over as he still had a few more homes to search before he had to inevitably ride back to Eden to rinse and repeat this process. With each pull of the trigger he can feel something inside of him be ripped apart.

But he must carry this out. Humanity needs a protector lest they all be slaughtered before the night ends.

There’s something that sends Strife’s heart dropping to his feet and tumbling down into the center of the planet. A most familiar gentle tinkling sound of a windchime in the soft breeze, and he knew who this belonged to as no other Nephilim in existence owned this peculiar object.

No, no, no, no! This can’t be!

Eyes wider than saucers, Strife’s gaze turns to the suspect of the sound and prays, he’s on the verge of getting on his knees and begging the Creator from this not being true. Golden eyes land on a strung up stick tied with delicately made clay bells decorated with wooden beads and teeth. The rungs clink peacefully against the clay domes, but to Strife, it feels like a death toll in his ears. He not only recognizes this home, but he knows it like the back of his own hand.

This is the home of his family.

He’d rather shoot himself in the head right now than step in there with the malicious intent he’s carried alongside him with every cursed step he took.

He could just… turn tail and leave. Run as fast as his legs could carry him until he collapsed or was killed. Anything but turning his own pistols against his mate Kasos. Yeah, he could just pretend that he got everyone, tell Death that everyone was taken care of and live forever without seeing her again. He’d rather live with that guilt than carry out some stupid mission.

‘But I’d never see Toka again, my sweet girl…’ Something moans.

‘You need to carry out this mission, or the Council will let them suffer the consequences of his actions.’ A sterner, more serious voice commands, tough and sharp as steel. It eerily sounds like War’s authoritative tone than his own.

‘Who’s to say they’re even here?’ another argues, scrabbling between the infighting of his psyche.

Yeah, don’t get too far ahead. Just check in there, and if they’re in there, I’ll figure it out later.

Though he doubts his options will be very glamorous for him either way.

But if he can take the wrath in exchange for their safety, he’d gladly take it.

Sucking a breath through his teeth, he finally takes a step towards the house’s curtained doorway, his legs felt as if they’re tied by lead weights, each more heavy and hard to lift than the last. Stepping in the domain feels as if he’s violating sacred grounds with his very presence and not returning to the home that is his.

Brushing the curtain aside, Strife sucks in a shaky breath as his hands begin to tremble. A million possibilities run their course, each scenario worse than the last as he steps into the familiar structure of the main room. Everything left the same as he could remember, or as well as it can be considering the Nephilim being a nomadic people left little in the way for permanent placement of furniture or anything else.

This hut, unlike some others, was larger with extra rooms, and left many possible places for his mate and child to be hiding. If they’re still here that is.

Letting his guard down in the form of his shoulders slackening and his hands falling to his sides and not hovering over the hilt of his twin pistols. He almost falls into a sort of trance as his eyes glaze over with the memories that litter this domain, the ghosts of the past practically dancing before his eyes behind a misty veil that only he can witness.

As his eyes follow the invisible child dancing through the den, the dopey grin across his face drops as he takes in the sight before him. A small, expertly crafted doll next to a well known, at least to Strife, knife. The weapon lies harmlessly in its leather sheath, but underneath, Strife memorized every curve and detailed carving engraved in the rare metal as it was his knife. A gift from his mate for when they officially decided to live as permanent partners, a rare and near unheard of practice. He had used it plenty of times in the past so much it never left his side, not even in sleep. Until today that was.

He had ultimately decided to leave it behind as to completely sever himself from all sentimentality when he came before the Council. They would like to see a cold blooded killer who flinched at nothing he put himself to be instead of a fidgety, loose cannon of a Nephilim who smiles at the thought of his partner and daughter. They needed iron handed enforcers, not silly fathers.

Boots thumping as he traverses over to the two near sacred items to Strife, his hands come to shakily pick up both the weapon and doll that seems near tiny in his armored hand. Two bead eyes black as coal peer innocently back at him, the head flopping cutely to the side in a questioning tilt. He’s never felt more mocked in his life. Those eyes kept glaring into him unblinkingly, casting a judgement only he would be under, weighing the potential of his crimes.

“Will you do it?” It screams at him.

Something within him snaps, as his clawed fingers clamp together in a tight fist, squeezing the doll into a near inch of its little inanimate life. The fabric strains to hold in the stuffing, those little eyes pointing to different directions, near to the point of popping free of its sewing. Just as Strife’s hand starts to quake with an unnatural amount of strength, he lets it go. He watches the little doll return to its normal, not squished state, save for a little distortion from his strangling.

He can’t stop the guilt that creeps up on him, as he thinks about the loving gentle hold the doll had always been subject to in Toka’s embrace.

Toka… Kasos…

He has to get them out of here.

Damn everything to the deepest depths of Hell’s lowest caverns and pits. In fact, who’s to say that what he’s doing is right? Absolam’s to blame, not those who didn’t march to Eden. Yet that didn’t stop him from slaughtering the others.

“You must eradicate the Nephilim!” The order echoes, leaving a foul taste in Strife’s mouth.

“RRRRAAAAAAAAAAAGGGHHHH!!!!”

A feminine shriek sounds off from Strife’s side, and just as quick as he is to hear the scream, he’s tackled from the side, tumbling down to the ground in a graceless heap. The wind is knocked loose from his lungs, stealing any sound he can make as the attacker begins her onslaught of brutal punches and clawing, scrabbling away to peel his armor off. In his own panic of blurred vision and no air, Strife began his own retaliation by dropping the doll and bashing his assailant on the head with a fist.

Despite the solid punch, she remains determined as she keeps tearing into him, even though the efforts are useless as claws do no damage on steel. In an attempt to throw her off, Strife attempts to lift his hips as to buck her off, but her heavy weight keeps her steady as her legs are locked onto his. He can’t reach his pistols this way, not without giving her an opening to either claw his helm off and scratch his eyes out or wrestle the knife out of his hands in order to kill him properly.

The knife!

Completely at the mercy of the woman, Strife lets his free arm come up to enact as a brace as he lets the other dagger wielding hand fll aside to fling the leather hilt off. But by doing this, she’s able to see what he’s attempting to do, and clamps her own hand over his, wrestling him for the weapon.

“You filthy traitor!” She bellows, digging her claws into the softer material of his armor does Strife unintentionally take pause as his brain goes into overdrive.

It’s Kasos. His beloved mate.

In just the few seconds he is still, Kasos wrenches the dagger free in one fell swoop, and points the tip downwards before readying for a strike at his throat. In record time, Strife’s reflexes catch up before his brain can comprehend anything else, saving himself from metal piercing his esophagus, even just barely.

“You tratious bastard! Think you can just come into my home and kill us like you did everyone else here?! I’ll have your head on a pike after I tear that disgusting mask off your wretched face and see who you are!” Kasos bares her sharpened teeth, green eyes glittering with rage as she watches him in power, huge arms straining to push the blade down.

His eyes widen as those words finally dawn on him. Kasos doesn’t know it’s him. Of course not, as the Nephilim never knew who exactly the Four are, or were beforehand, save for Death. They’d all been given new identities as Horsemen, abandoning their past completely. To Kasos, he’s but a stranger.

It makes his heart drop.

But he still had to stop Kasos, lest he end up dead and her heart full of regret. In a desperate attempt, he swings his leg up until the tip of his boot meets with the back of her head, momentarily stunning Kasos enough for Strife to scramble free from under her. He keeps the weapon in his grip as he puts space between the two of them. Kasos screams fiercely at the loss.

What he does next, Strife will never know what possessed him to do so. Before Kasos could properly charge at him again, the gunslinger rips his avain helm off in one fluid motion, and casts it aside as he stares Kasos down with wide eyes. Now there’s nothing between them.

It seems to work like a charm as Kasos stops her stampeding, nearly tripping over herself as she stares at him with those glowing eyes of hers, so bright and full of horrified confusion. In his years with Kasos, she never seemed so vulnerable until now. He watches the terrified look on her face turn into confusion, then realization.

“Serjal?” She whispers.

Strife flinches at the name. ‘Not anymore.’ He thinks mournfully, not meeting her eyes.

“Serjal, w-what are you doing?!” She cries out, voice cracking. He never wished until now for the floor to eat him whole. He can only offer a pitiful glance, lips tugging downwards, not even able to form a half assed explanation. Shameful.

He can only stand there as Kasos slowly connects the dots, her eyes darting between him, the helmet and the pistols strapped to his hips. Her beautifully rugged face morphs from her befuddlement to unrestrained fury he’d come to love and just as equally fear. And even now, he still felt the same.

“Serjal you… WHY?!”

He tries not to choke on his next words. “The Nephilim… are a threat to the Balance. Eden is being invaded by Absolam as we speak. It’s my mission to ensure no one else is left.” Oh Creator, her eyes never have been filled with such agony.

“No one?! Including me?! Including our daughter?!?” Kasos roars, shoulders heaving with each raging breath she takes.

“I don’t want to kill either of you.” He confesses simply. “I thought about whisking you away somewhere where you can’t be found-”

“THAT DOESN’T MATTER! YOU TURN AGAINST US, AGAINST OUR PEOPLE!! I saw you in the village, the people you slaughtered. The children you slain! They did not deserve what you did!” Each word is filled with more and more venom and hatred that seethes in her very being. Deep down, Strife agrees with every word.

“You will not touch Toka. Because I’ll kill you first!”

Kasos launches herself forward with a newfound hellish need to kill and maim, unleashing the most primal and raw scream Strife had ever heard. Jumping into action, Strife falls into a familiar sensation of combat, his years of training catching up before his emotions can logically stop him. His feet brace for the oncoming impact, and he awaits for the right moment to strike, and he gets it.

Just as Kasos wraps her arms around his abdomen and reach for his pistols he comes to raise his armed hand and strike at her. Piercing her vulnerable neck with the very dagger she so lovingly carved and gifted for him as a present. Is most treasured possession in Creation. When cold metal stabs into flesh does Strife break out of his reverie does he realize the greatest mistake he can make. Even worse than accepting the Council’s invitation to take the mantle of the White Rider.

All he can do is collapse to the floor, right on his backside as Kasos lands atop of him, gurgling on blood. Blood is colder than ice, it ceases all movement as the male can only wrap his hands around Kasos’s head, cradling her so gently it’s as if she’d break. She doesn’t even struggle in his hold as the life in her is rapidly draining from her dying body. A wet warmness snakes down the sides of his face. Tears he realizes dully. Here, he lies still as the dead, apathetically wishing he could join them.

“Da?”

No…

Can’t for once the Universe grant him a break? He’d do anything other than hear that quivering, well known voice. Bile rose in his throat as the dark haired Nephilim pathetically turned his head over to see the visage of his young daughter at the door leading to his and Kasos’s shared bedroom. Toka’s eyes are wide and he can see their green tint behind her black bangs that she inherited from him. A tiny hand is covering her mouth as she trembles like a leaf in the wind.

He wished he could wipe those tears away.

“Da… what did you do? W-why did you do that to Mother?!” More tears fell down as he pushed himself up, ever so delicately he laid Kasos down, but not before removing the dagger out of habit. He wouldn’t give Toka such an impersonal death with a bullet, if he had to resort to it.

“Toka, dearest. My Sweet, I didn’t mean to-” he takes one step forward, but Toka steps back, afraid. It hurts more than any pain he experienced. “Please, let me explain…”

“No! NO! You hurt Mother!!” Then turning on her heel, Toka breaks into a dead sprint right past him and into freedom. Strife follows suit, keeping pace with the child as she tries to navigate through the village.

Even as he keeps on the chase, what’s stopping him from just letting her go as far as she can go? Give her a chance to live, even if she ends up alone and the last Nephilim beside him and the others. Sounds absolutely cruel, but is it more barbarous to slay her with his own hands? And rob her of the life she’d just begun to live? A life of what? Killing and conquering that he’d so carnally enjoyed? Constantly on the run if he decided to let her go?

If the Council found out, they’d hunt her down and she’d pay a terrible price. That’s if the bastard Angels don’t find her first.

It all was so hard to choose, but the more Strife put thought into it, the more obvious the answers became hate it as he does.

As his feet come to a still, he doesn’t look up as he unholsters Redemption and lines up the shot as Toka continues to run. Leagues ahead of him by now. But she can’t outrun a speeding bullet. He squeezes the trigger, feeling the recoil rock through his arms as a single sharp explosion cracks the quiet, a shrill whistle rockets past the air before meeting its target. Toka’s distant scream sounds off, sending Strife to hurdle into some unknown downward spiral. Just as he heard the scream, everything around him felt as if it were a vivid hallucination.

He doesn’t even recall commanding his feet to carry him forward, nor does he even seem to comprehend that the world around is moving when his vision is blurred and suspended in time. All Strife is ale to pick apart in this haze is the sky is slowly growing black with approaching dusk and the downed figure of Toka is gradually growing larger.

At last Toka is in full view, laying on her belly as a bullethole is marked in his backside, just at the thoracic vertebrae where her ribs start. Though her upper body frantically strains to carry her forward, her legs are completely useless, dead weight. ‘Paralysis’ he numbly notes.

In a great heap of clunking metal, the regretful father collapses beside his agonizing daughter who can only sob as he places a hand on her back. Right now to him, they are the only two people who exist in this very moment. Him, Toka, a sky full of stars and full twin moons. Actually quite a beautiful sight.

“Toka,” the girl stops her fighting to wearily sniffle and raise a heavy head, “look at the sky full of stars. It’s beautiful isn’t it?” She weakly answers as two hands come to envelope her torso, lifting her up into a seated position, leaning against her father’s chest as they both look to the sky together.

“It is…” She meekly responds, tears falling down her cheeks as one hand comes up to caress her hair, fingers carding through her locks as the other hand slowly raises with the dagger.

“Toka, my Sweet, my whole life, do you know your Da loves you so much?” Faintly, Toka chokes on a sob as she nods her head. Internally, he’s crumbling into dust. Nephilim never confessed about love, but here he was spilling it out, plain and simple. Why hide this away any longer?

“Da loves you so much. I love you more than there are stars in this Universe, I love you more than you can imagine. You are my everything, and you always will be. No matter what. I will look to the stars and always think of you and your mother.”

“Da…” Toka croaks, one arm weakly reaching out to the one that’s entangled in her hair, her fingers intertwine with his as the blade's edge comes to kiss her throat.

“I’ll miss you Da…” She squeezes his hand one last time.

“Me too.”

The blade meets her throat. After a few moments of Toka’s struggling, she finally slackens, her hand letting go of his as she stares into the starry night. Half lidded eyes void of their bright life that once brought pride to the old Serjal.

Bowing his head, Strife places a singular kiss on Toka’s forehead as he finally lets the dam within him burst.

Even after night turned to morning, Strife hadn’t left from his spot. Not caring for the eventual questioning to follow after he returns to Eden.

#darksiders #my writing said ✨dramatique✨ #strife #war #Darksiders genesis #angst #whump #hurt no comfort #really getting into the feels #non reader fic #don't mind me just traumatizing Strife even more than i should #drabble #dead dove do not eat #sad music puts it together

[doodlesdreaming]

Human survivor headcanons and sibling angst.

#darksiders #darksiders 2 #darksiders death #darksiders war #four horsemen of the apocalypse #video games #ocart #Ava #headcanons #sketches #fanart #my art #digital art #had a really horrible nightmare the other night #ended up doodling angst to help me cope