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nyoomerr · 5 months

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For the drabble request, I can never get enough shixiong!SY bingqiu. But only if you're up to it :)

ok it turns out i'm fundamentally unable to write a drabble as short as theyre meant to be, so here's over 4k words of shixiong!sy for your perusal 🤡 (+ a decent helping of cranky peak lord sqq and his wayward head disciple sy)

---

Shen Yuan… has possibly let himself become a bit too relaxed, since he first transmigrated. He used to spend every day on high alert: every cute little kid might be the protagonist, every mistake he made might have been logged somewhere for a petty revenge side plot later. He wouldn’t dare miss anything plot relevant, not when it might cause his doom. After all, ‘Shen Yuan’ wasn’t even a named character within PIDW - he was well and truly canon fodder!

But then, ah… Then Shen Yuan was accepted as a disciple on Qing Jing, and then he was a personal disciple of the notorious Shen Qingqiu, and then -

Well, not even Shen Yuan can keep up that sort of hyper vigilance all the time, okay!! He’s the scum villain’s head disciple - basically a henchman! If he lived in fear for every moment he might be condemned, he’d never have a second to rest!

It isn’t Shen Yuan’s fault that the best way to relax in this world is to go on years-long expeditions off peak!

…It might, maybe, be just a tiny bit my fault, Shen Yuan thinks, staring at Luo Binghe with horror. How does he manage to take such a long vacation that he misses the protagonist’s arrival onto Qing Jing? What kind of fake fan is he, ah?!

Luo Binghe has not introduced himself as such, but there is no way he can be anyone but Luo Binghe. His hair falls into perfect curls around a face so cute and round Shen Yuan wants to squish his cheeks until they turn pink, and he’s wearing an expression so determined and focused that it puts Shen Yuan to shame as the head disciple.

And he’s chopping wood. That’s the most recognizable part, obviously.

Shen Yuan forces himself to step forward into the small glade he found Luo Binghe in, clearing his throat awkwardly. Luo Binghe whips around, and Shen Yuan nearly cringes at the nervous apprehension on the boy’s face.

“Ah, I didn’t mean to startle you…” Shen Yuan trails off. Luo Binghe stares at him and says nothing. Shen Yuan’s perfectly nice and friendly smile starts to slip. “I don’t think I’ve seen you around before…?”

“Apologies to Shixiong, this one will be sure to cut wood further away from the main peak buildings, so Shixiong doesn’t have to see me again.”

“Wha - wait, wait, that’s not what I meant!” Shen Yuan cries, becoming increasingly concerned about just how long he’s been away from Qing Jing.

For Luo Binghe to already be this wary of any Shixiong who looks his way… ah, Shen Yuan has basically already failed every single one of his loose plans to keep Luo Binghe from blackening! He wasn’t even there to witness Luo Binghe’s initial perfect white sheep days, let alone keep him out of the warpath of bullies and bitter Shizuns!

“This Shixiong is Shen Yuan,” he says, taking a few slow steps closer to Luo Binghe. Somehow, he gets the feeling that he has to be ready to catch Luo Binghe by the scruff if he tries to run off or start a fight while Shen Yuan is just trying to introduce himself, ah!

“This one is Luo Binghe,” Luo Binghe replies, dipping into a perfunctory bow.

“Yes!” Shen Yuan says. “I mean - well, it’s a good name.”

Luo Binghe’s expression only grows more wary.

“And ah, how long has Luo Binghe been on the peak?” Shen Yuan asks, even though the look Luo Binghe is giving him makes him want to slink back off into the bamboo forest. He has to know - if he’s lucky, it’ll only have been a year or two, and Shen Yuan can -

“This one has been a disciple of Qing Jing for over three years, now,” Luo Binghe says.

“Hm!” Shen Yuan says, because what he really wants to do is yell but he can’t do that with this customer service smile plastered on his face.

Inwardly, he allows himself to monologue out a list of swears that would’ve gotten his old online accounts temporarily locked. Over three years is too long!! The blackening has already started!! Luo Binghe has already started damaging his meridians by following that cursed fake manual, has already started training under Meng Mo, and most importantly has already given up hope of being accepted here and started farming resentment instead!

Shen Yuan is fucked!! What sort of half-assed blackening prevention plan starts this late!?

“Ah, so Luo-shidi must already be 15, or nearly there,” Shen Yuan says aloud, laughing nervously. “Are you, um, sure?”

Please, please tell this pitiful Shixiong of yours that you just misspoke!!

Luo Binghe looks at him like he’s an idiot. Shen Yuan can feel nervous sweat beading along his forehead.

“It’s just - well, Luo-shidi is quite small, for being 15,” Shen Yuan says, and then nearly bites his tongue in an attempt to correct himself. Who is he to call the protagonist ‘small,’ ah!! “Not quite small! Only a bit! Only - uh, only slightly smaller than I’d expect! It’s only that I’m already 19, and Luo-shidi is much - I mean only a little! - shorter than I am, so -”

Shen Yuan makes himself shut up. You’re making a fool of yourself in front of the protagonist, you idiot!

“This one will be sure to train more to get bigger,” Luo Binghe says, though it sounds a bit like he’s talking through gritted teeth.

“No, no, you’re training plenty!” Shen Yuan rushes to say. “Uh, that is - admittedly, I’ve been off peak for some time now, but when I was Luo-shidi’s age, things like chopping wood were a group chore, so if you’re managing it all by yourself, surely you’re… big and strong…”

Shen Yuan shuts up again. Luo Binghe stares at him some more, but there’s something in his expression that seems more considering that it had been just a moment ago.

After a long stretch of awkward silence, he seems to come to some sort of resolution, and takes a hesitant step towards Shen Yuan.

“Forgive this one’s ignorance,” he says, slow and careful. “The other Shixiong said it was a chore best done alone to build strength. Is that wrong?”

“Very wrong,” Shen Yuan says, nearly beside himself with relief.

Good, very good! Luo Binghe hasn’t lost all hope for his time on Qing Jing Peak just yet, after all! Given the chance, he’ll still try to carefully raise the issue of his bullying to a responsible Shixiong to take care of!

Shen Yuan can so be a responsible Shixiong that takes care of reports of bullying for Luo Binghe!!

“Oh,” Luo Binghe says, edging even closer to Shen Yuan. “Then what does Shen-shixiong think I should do?”

“Luo-shidi doesn’t have to do anything about this,” Shen Yuan says firmly. “This Shixiong will take care of finding out who’s meant to be sharing this chore with you and make them do the rest of it.”

“There might be multiple people,” Luo Binghe offers, still speaking with a caution that makes it quite clear how likely he thinks it is that Shen Yuan’s assistance will vanish as soon as Luo Binghe complains too much.

“Because Luo-shidi has been made to do this chore alone for many days, now?” Shen Yuan asks.

Still looking a bit wary, Luo Binghe nods. Shen Yuan sighs, having expected that answer, and takes the final steps needed to get within arm’s reach of Luo Binghe. Luo Binghe watches him closely, his hands curling tighter around the ax he’d been using to chop the wood.

Moving slowly so as not to spook him, Shen Yuan raises one hand to place gently on Luo Binghe’s head. He really is too short for 15, but Shen Yuan knows all the details of ‘why’ - having to work too hard with not enough rest, having meals withheld from him or being served with spoilt ingredients - any kid would be a bit small, when under those conditions.

Luo Binghe had gone stiff under Shen Yuan’s touch, and Shen Yuan takes a moment to pet the top of his head for a moment before saying anything else, hoping to get Luo Binghe to relax again.

Ah, I really did mean to try and keep you safe, Shen Yuan thinks to himself, feeling regretful. He’d come to Cang Qiong with the intention of finding Luo Binghe early, after all, and had worked as hard as he had in order to be ready for Luo Binghe when he came.

But then he had worked too hard, and Shen Qingqiu had promoted him to head disciple, and suddenly Shen Yuan thought he might go insane if he wasn’t able to get off Qing Jing Peak and stay off for as long as he could possibly get away with, and -

How stupid of him. Luo Binghe must have been taken in during the disciple selection the very same year that Shen Yuan had taken off on his extended field trip. How very, very stupid of Shen Yuan, to think that things wouldn’t go upside down the second he looked away - this is Luo Binghe’s story, after all, and it’s always been a bit of a tragedy.

“Then this Shixiong can only apologize to you,” Shen Yuan says softly, with perhaps just a bit too much sincerity. “And in the future, if you’re given this sort of work again, I’ll chop wood in your place.”

Under his hand, Luo Binghe peers up at Shen Yuan with wide, hungry eyes. Shen Yuan gives him a final pat before withdrawing his hand, and plasters his friendly smile back on his face.

“Now, why don’t you get cleaned up, hm? I’ll meet you again later - this Shixiong of yours still needs to report back to Shizun that I’ve returned from my trip.”

Luo Binghe nods, still watching Shen Yuan with an intensity that would feel more at home on an emperor than a scrawny 15 year old, and Shen Yuan beats a hasty retreat.

Despite all the pretty promises he made to Luo Binghe, he’s going to have to think of something clever to actually be able to fulfill them.

After all, not even all of his meta knowledge combined would be able to save Shen Yuan from his Shizun.

---

Shen Yuan has been pacing outside Shen Qingqiu’s bamboo house for ten minutes now. Nothing he can think of is good enough to convince someone as petty and stubborn as Shen Qingqiu.

Once, at the start of his time on Qing Jing Peak, Shen Yuan had tied his disciple robes wrong, unused to wearing anything quite so complex. Shen Qingqiu had sneered at his mistake in the moment, and then for every major event in the next five years straight he’d made a point to comment snidely on how well Shen Yuan has managed to dress himself.

That’s the sort of mean streak this man has!! If he doesn’t like something, he’ll keep harping on that one thing for years, even after that thing isn’t around to bother him anymore! How is Shen Yuan supposed to coax Luo Binghe out of the jaws of a man like that?

Ah, forget it, forget it! Shen Yuan would just - he’d come back another day! Greeting Shen Qingqiu wasn’t really necessary, Shen Yuan could just -

“I was under the impression that Shen Yuan was a head disciple returning from field work, not a child trying to avoid bedtime.”

Shen Yuan whips around, the hair on the back of his neck standing on end like a spooked cat. There, kneeling elegantly on his front porch not ten meters from Shen Yuan, is Shen Qingqiu.

“Shizun!” Shen Yuan cries, trying to force his grimace into a nice, polite smile. “When did - I mean - this disciple means -”

Shen Qingqiu closes his fan with a harsh snap, and Shen Yuan shuts his mouth so fast he almost bites his tongue.

“Well?” Shen Qingqiu asks dryly, and Shen Yuan hurriedly drops into a bow.

“This disciple greets Shizun!” Shen Yuan shouts, his ears burning with embarrassment.

Shen Qingqiu hums, and Shen Yuan risks peeking out from his bow to look at him.

He does not look especially pleased.

With all the elegance of a wild cat, Shen Qingqiu unfolds himself from his kneeling position on the porch and glides over to Shen Yuan.

“Too low,” he says, slapping at Shen Yuan’s wrists with his fan. “Or was Shen Yuan hoping there would be a replacement head disciple waiting for him by the time he came back from his trip?”

“Ahahaha,” Shen Yuan wheezes, carefully correcting himself into a bow of a slightly higher ranked disciple than the one he’d originally slipped into. “Of course this disciple is honored by the position and very very grateful for Shizun’s benevolence in leaving it to him even during his absence…”

“What advice does Shen Yuan think his Shizun has for him?” Shen Qingqiu asks sharply, and Shen Yuan winces.

“‘Talk less,’ Shizun,” he recites dutifully. It is advice that Shen Qingqiu has given him many, many times.

Shen Qingqiu sniffs haughtily and walks a slow circle around Shen Yuan, inspecting him. Shen Yuan tries not to sweat too profusely. He really had been hoping that Shen Qingqiu may have forgotten about Shen Yuan in his years away, ah!

Finally, Shen Qingqiu completes his inspection, stopping once more in front of Shen Yuan.

“What sort of pathetic creature has Shen Yuan carved the bones of to make his hairpiece?” He asks, using his fan to prod at Shen Yuan’s hairpin.

“A Hundred Year Crystal Tortoise, Shizun,” Shen Yuan answers.

“And the leather of your belt?”

“A Golden-Footed Acidic Bear, Shizun.”

“And did you even bother to remove the -”

“- the needle hairs beneath the Bear’s skin before treating the pelt,” Shen Yuan interrupts. “Yes, Shizun.”

Shen Qingqiu scoffs. “How bold you’ve gotten, interrupting your Shizun.”

“...Sorry, Shizun,” Shen Yuan mumbles, deflating a bit.

“Still,” Shen Qingqiu sighs, and Shen Yuan peeks back up at him again. “You did decent enough, I suppose.”

Shen Yuan perks up, half-standing up out of his bow. “Thanking Shizun -!”

Shen Qingqiu whacks him over the head with his fan. “If Shen Yuan’s trip had been only a single year, instead of nearly four!”

Shen Yuan very quickly gets back into the proper deferential position.

“Fleeing so quickly after being promoted, only to stay away for this long - I hope Shen Yuan is comfortable sleeping on the ground, because I’ve long since given up keeping the side room in my house for an absent head disciple. I filled it with cursed artifacts and dusty books two years ago.”

“Shizun -!” Shen Yuan protests, starting to stand up again. He’d liked that little room, damn it! It was the one decent part of being promoted to head disciple in the first place, even if it meant sharing a roof with this asshole!!

Shen Qingqiu whacks him again, and Shen Yuan obediently shuts up.

“Foolish boy,” he scolds, before promptly turning on his heel to stalk back to the bamboo house. “Hurry up, then,” he calls behind him, “I want to see if you still make tea as dreadfully as you did before.”

Shen Yuan makes a face at Shen Qingqiu’s back. Without looking behind him, Shen Qingqiu uses his qi to send a single leaf flying to Shen Yuan’s head, slapping him on the forehead right over where Shen Yuan’s brows had bunched together.

Shen Yuan smooths his face out into a perfectly polite smile once more. This asshole, he curses inwardly, he really is scum!! The lowest of the low!! A bully!!!

“Tea, Shen Yuan,” Shen Qingqiu calls once more, and Shen Yuan hurries to catch up.

---

Later, after Shen Yuan has dutifully given a retelling of his adventures over the last few years, and after Shen Qingqiu has grilled him on every mistake he made and how stupid that was of him and how shitty his tea still tastes, Shen Yuan finally manages to bring up Luo Binghe.

“This disciple met someone new this morning,” he says, pouring Shen Qingqiu more of his apparently awful tea.

“Was Shen Yuan sure they were new? Perhaps it’s been so many years your brain has started to forget the faces of the idiots here in favor of whatever foolish beasts you’ve been studying.”

“Someone new,” Shen Yuan confirms, pretending to ignore Shen Qingqiu’s very pointed glare. “He was a disciple even younger than Ning-shimei, and you only picked her out the year before I left.”

“Ah,” Shen Qingqiu says, and all of a sudden Shen Yuan thinks that perhaps his Shizun has never been truly irritated with him in the past, because this expression is far more acidic than anything Shen Yuan has seen before.

“A-ah…?” Shen Yuan says, stupidly.

Shen Jiu sets his cup down with a harsh clink. “Shen Yuan should ignore that little beast. He won’t bring you any good news.”

“Shizun, this disciple likes beasts best,” Shen Yuan says. “Is he so bad?”

“Ignore him,” Shen Qingqiu repeats frostily.

Shen Yuan swallows. This… there’s no way that he’ll be able to convince Shen Qingqiu to give Luo Binghe an honest shot in this one conversation. He can’t bet on being able to eventually wear him down, though, either - even if he does eventually convince him, if it takes a year to do it, that’s also not any good. Shen Yuan needs to be able to help Luo Binghe now.

Okay. This is fine. Shen Yuan has - he has so many very good ideas, all of them very well thought out and full of strategic benefits. He can use any one of these very good and smart ideas.

“I understand, Shizun,” Shen Yuan says, “That beast won’t be a shidi of mine, then.”

“Good, now -”

“But what about as a pet?”

Shen Qingqiu stares at him. Shen Yuan stares back.

“A pet,” Shen Qingqiu repeats.

“A pet,” Shen Yuan agrees. “Shizun, I already said that I like beasts best - if I can’t raise Luo Binghe to be my shidi, can’t I raise him as my pet instead?”

“Don’t be foolish,” Shen Qingqiu snaps. “Beasts aren’t for keeping.”

“Sometimes they are - Cang Qiong has a whole peak dedicated to such a thing,” Shen Yuan points out. Shen Qingqiu’s scowl grows more fierce.

“Qing Jing is above such dirty work,” he spits.

Shen Yuan swallows again, his hands clenched tightly in his lap. He’s already started down this path; he may as well place all his bets on making it through.

“Then perhaps Qing Jing is not for this disciple after all,” Shen Yuan says, trying to keep his voice steady. It still comes out a bit reedy, but at the very least, his voice doesn’t crack over the words.

Shen Qingqiu’s eye twitches. “Speak plainly - Shen Yuan has already spent several years neglecting his duties. How much farther do you intend to stray?”

“Shizun so graciously held the position of head disciple open for this one,” Shen Yuan hedges. “On that topic, isn’t it possible for head disciples to choose to spend a decade or so on a different peak of their choice, to encourage diversity in education and cross-peak relationships before the head disciple becomes beholden to their peak as a lord? Perhaps I could take in a pet on a different peak, with such a method.”

“That’s a custom reserved for older disciples,” Shen Qingqiu spits, “intended to benefit them in the years directly leading up to their ascension as a peak lord, not when the head disciple is just a little whelp with a century ahead of them before they can wear a lord’s crown.”

“No such rule is written anywhere, Shizun.”

“Then I’ll write it,” Shen Qingqiu hisses. “Shen Yuan, you’ve had your fun these past years - now you are to stay on this peak.”

“Then I want a pet,” Shen Yuan says, tilting his head up defiantly. “It’ll benefit Shizun, too: you won’t have to feed or clothe him anymore, nor train him to be a cultivator.”

Not that you were doing any of those things for Luo Binghe before, ah!! Shen Yuan thinks, trying to focus on that feeling of indignation. If he just thinks about that - about the horror of coming across Luo Binghe in that clearing earlier, too scrawny to be 15 and yet wary enough of the world he may as well have been an adult - then Shen Yuan can hold his ground.

If he just thinks about Luo Binghe as a neglected kid, and he just thinks of Shen Qingqiu as that child’s abuser -

If he just thinks about that, then Shen Yuan can meet the eyes of the man who has taught him and promoted him and housed him in the side room of his house, and he can demand this one thing.

“With what funds would Shen Yuan be able to feed and clothe his pet?” Shen Qingqiu asks sharply. “With what free time would he train him not to bite?”

“This one is the head disciple of Qing Jing Peak,” Shen Yuan says. “If a head disciple couldn’t manage that much, they certainly couldn’t deserve to ascend as a peak lord in the future.”

Shen Qingqiu falls silent, unfurling his fan and raising it high up his face until only his eyes peered out the top of it, watching Shen Yuan. Shen Yuan’s hands twist in his lap, but he keeps his gaze steady.

“A head disciple does not run away from the position,” Shen Qingqiu says.

“Nor does a master run off from their pet,” Shen Yuan agrees.

There’s another moment of quiet as they both watch each other. When Shen Qingqiu speaks again, his voice is firm, like someone reciting basic peak rules and not the terms of the most batshit insane agreement Shen Yuan has ever brokered.

“You will stay on Qing Jing,” Shen Qingqiu says, “and you will accept the head discipleship position without fuss.”

“Yes, Shizun.”

“No more trips. No more pretending to forget to introduce yourself as my head disciple. No more pushing your pathetic disciple brothers at me with paperwork that you clearly filled out in some sort of foolish scheme to have me consider them over you.”

Shen Yuan winces. “Yes, Shizun.”

“You will not receive any additional allowance, for any reason, outside of the funds normally provided to a head disciple. Any pests you pick up will not sleep in my house, nor will you be allowed to request room in the dormitories for any such creature. Those resources are for disciples, not beasts.”

Shen Yuan hesitates. Luo Binghe can’t sleep in the rundown woodshed forever, and he wants to protest the idea that the dorms are for disciples, as if Luo Binghe was ever allowed in there in the first place.

Shen Qingqiu taps one finger on the table. “Answer, Shen Yuan.”

“This disciple agrees under one condition,” Shen Yuan says. “Using his personal funds, this disciple would like to request permission to make moderate renovations to a peak structure in order to improve the quality of kept wood.”

Shen Qingqiu scoffs. “Disciple Shen Yuan’s personal funds will be drained by feeding an animal - you will not be able to afford the standards that Qing Jing exacts for renovation projects.”

“This disciple has been collecting favors from An Ding. They will be repaid, and this disciple will be able to afford the project.”

“Shen Yuan had best not be caught collecting any such favors forcibly,” Shen Qingqiu warns, which is very distinctly a ‘don’t get caught blackmailing people’ warning and not a blanket ‘don’t blackmail people’ one.

“Of course,” Shen Yuan agrees. “This one is the personal disciple of Peak Lord Shen Qingqiu - how could I get caught in such a way?”

Read: you’ve made sure I understand how to not get caught when doing something shady, at the very least!!

Shen Qingqiu waves his fan once, twice - he’s irritated, but doesn’t necessarily disagree.

“Fine,” he says at last. “Permission for a renovation to that ugly woodshed is granted. And Shen Yuan’s answer to all other stipulations?”

“This disciple agrees.”

Shen Qingqiu slaps his fan closed in one palm. “Then Shen Yuan is allowed a pet. I won’t interfere further.”

Shen Yuan nods. He expected as much; Shen Qingqiu won’t egg on any further bullying, nor will he stop Shen Yuan from taking any measures he pleases when it comes to Luo Binghe, but he won’t help Shen Yuan dissuade the current bullying.

That’s fine - already, this is enough to help Luo Binghe.

“Thanking Shizun,” Shen Yuan says, bowing his head slightly. “This disciple will not disappoint.”

After all, how hard could raising the protagonist be? This world revolves around Luo Binghe; all Shen Yuan needs to do is make Luo Binghe’s everyday life a bit less miserable, give him just one person he can trust. Luo Binghe will manage the rest himself, by nature of being who he is - what he is.

Yes, this - this is the best way.

---

Outside the bamboo house, crouched beneath a window so still his muscles ache and his head feels woozy from how shallow he’s kept his breathing, Luo Binghe listens to his Shizun and Shixiong move on to discuss cleaning out the side room now that Shen Yuan has returned to the peak.

A pet, he thinks, his eyes blown wide, his fingers digging deep into the ground beneath his knees. He can feel dirt caking the underside of his fingernails, and the scars he leaves in the ground are very much like an animal, indeed.

A pet, he thinks again, over and over on loop in his mind, his pretty Shixiong’s voice fading to background noise. He thinks of Shen Yuan gently patting his head like one might coax a dog, and he thinks -

Yes, a pet.

#please forgive any grammar/flow issues w this if i tried to edit it i would have come to you w a 6k oneshot instead of a 4k one LMFAO #i'll probs clean it up and post it on ao3 after rent a bingge is done! for now tho enjoy uwu #svsss #bingqiu #scum villain's self saving system #fic drabble

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squish--squash · 5 months

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The best Sherlock Holmes adaptation (that people hardly know)

The stories and adventures of Sherlock Holmes is probably one of the most well-known, most referenced, and most recognizable series out there, as well as one with an insane number of adaptations. Hell, Sherlock Holmes even holds the world record of being the literary character with the most screen adaptations.

This has led to many, many people making ranked lists of their favorite adaptations, and I've looked at a lot of them to see if my favorite one appears. It doesn't. Not here, here, here, here, here, here, or here.

On the Wikipedia page for Sherlock Holmes adaptations, it is listed...in the external links section, at the very bottom of the webpage; it's only visible by expanding the "screen adaptations of Sherlock Holmes" panel

On here, under the three names it's regularly tagged as, there are a collective 13.9k followers (the breakdown is 5.2-1.9-6.8). In comparison, the "bbc sherlock" tag has 47k followers, "sherlock" has 644k, and "john watson" has 13k followers. Pretty underrated, if you ask me.

And so, you're probably wondering what this adaptation is, and why I think it's the best. Wonder no further!

The best Sherlock Holmes adaptation (at least, to me) that is criminally underrated is called Yuukoku no Moriarty, or Moriarty the Patriot. (and before you ask, yes, it's a manga! with its own anime!)

Now, because this post is already long enough, and because there is going to be A LOT OF BIG SPOILER WARNINGS, I'll be defending my claim under the read-more. But with that out of the way, let me begin...

Reason #1: Wait, Moriarty??

Moriarty is well-known to be the arch nemesis of Sherlock Holmes. He's the big baddie of the original series. So why in the world is this adaptation named after the villain? Because the plot is focused around Moriarty. As far as I am aware, this could be the ONLY adaptation so far that has done this (please correct me if I'm wrong! I'd love to find more). Furthermore, the "James Moriarty" in question is actually three brothers: Albert, Louis, and William (the "main" Moriarty), and the overarching plot follows their schemes as "the Lord of Crime" to... change 19th century England for the better?

Reason #2: The Premise is INTERESTING as FUCK

Yeah, you heard me! The big baddie in this adaptation is trying to do what they deem as "good"! It's called Moriarty the Patriot because William, Louis, and Albert are trying to make England a better country in their own ways; they view the class system of 19th century England to be, quite frankly, shit, and want to lessen the abuse and dehumanization of the lower class caused by the nobles. And, well, they do this by killing corrupt nobles. Or, well, more accurately, they help people commit crimes to kill the nobles, and stage it to look like an accident or make it extremely difficult to solve. It's actually really fun and cathartic to watch imo, especially in the early episodes of the anime and the early chapters of the manga. I'll come back to the plot later, but for now, I think it's time to get back to the characters.

Reason #3: The Gang's all Here!

The three Jame Moriarty brothers aren't the only characters: you also have the baker street gang (Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, and Ms Hudson), the Baker Street Irregulars, Mycroft, Sebastian Moran from the original series, Lestrade, Irene Adler, Herder (another character from the original series), and interestingly enough, Billy the Kid (in the manga). And these characters aren't just one-dimensional name-drops, but characters with so much personality, backstory, and motives. Take, for example, Sebastian Moran: he's a sniper who works for the Lord of Crime, yeah, but it's because he has a long-earned loyalty to William; both of them have a keepsake from the other, and after William's supposed death during this adaptation's version of "The Final Problem", it's the keepsake he gave to William that saves him from a dark path (there's much more to this story in particular, but you'll have to find out more yourself if you're interested). Also, there's Moneypenny in the manga. But why the hell is she here?

Reason #4: His name is James. James Bond (and he's trans!)

NAME ONE OTHER FUCKING SHERLOCK HOLMES ADAPTATION THAT HAS JAMES BOND, I'LL WAIT. YOU CANNOT. But yes, James fucking Bond is in Moriarty the Patriot, and is one of the best characters for many reasons. One of them? We actually meet him as a woman. And who is that woman, you might ask?

Irene Adler.

(note: the version I read calls him James Bond, but from what I've heard, his name is actually spelled "James Bonde" to avoid copywrite issues. However, for this post, I'll use "Bond") It's...incredible. The entire arc introducing Irene Adler and her arc into becoming James Bond is one of my favorite arcs in Moriarty the Patriot. It takes the original "A Scandal in Bohemia" and sprints with it. Like, the entire Bohemian-king-wanting-that-photograph with Sherlock and Watson is just a ploy, so Irene can be under the protection of public-hero Sherlock by tricking him into thinking he blew up her house with his smoke-bomb trick. Because she stole ENGLISH GOVERNMENT DOCUMENTS SO CLASSIFIED, THE GOVERNMENT WANTS HER DEAD. It's just the way the series builds off the original works by Doyle in a way that not only stays true to the original, but is also its own thing. Because yeah, we don't see Irene Adler again after her "scandal" is solved; and that's because she fakes her death as Irene, and starts working under the Moriarty brothers as James Bond, now a man. Additionally, Moriarty the Patriot handles Bond being trans in an amazing way. Him being trans is no joke! The Moriarty group accept him as a man the moment he tells them (except for Sebastian Moran, who's confused about it at first before he warms up to it; in all actuality, it's his confusion and reluctance that's joked about, not Bond's manhood, which is a refreshing thing to see as a queer person myself). Even when reuniting with Sherlock, John Watson, and Ms Hudson, the three are respectful and understanding. Oh my god wait a minute I just realized I haven't even mentioned Sherlock yet-

Reason #5: Benedict Cumberbatch WHO

Sherlock Holmes in this adaptation is the best Sherlock, hands down. Why? Because he's fun, goddammit! So many Sherlock adaptations see the genius personality of Sherlock Holmes and see nothing else. They make him cold, uncaring, calculative. A lot of Sherlocks would shoot a man dead for a lead on a case. But not this Sherlock. Is this the face of a man who's cold and uncaring?

HELL FUCKING NO! And he's literally presented with the opportunity to shoot a man for a lead on a case, and he turns it down! Because he's good! Yeah, he's prideful. Yeah, he can be a prick. He treats Scotland Yard like a joke. But he's also silly. He's kind to the people he cares about. He wants to help people. He's hilarious with Ms Hudson and Mycroft, and his interactions with William Moriarty is one of the best things to read about in this adaptation, because their cat-and-mouse game matters so, so much in this story.

Reason #6: Cat and mouse; puppet and puppeteer; friend and...friend?

Sherlock has a very interesting role in Moriarty the Patriot as a whole. Sure, he's the detective. But he's so much more. When he's introduced (in episode 6 of the anime, mind you!) to the story, the overarching plan of William and his brothers shift to include him: William wants him to be the hero of the play they're setting for the country, because in the end, William plans to be defeated as a common enemy of the people. And so, the game begins. The Lord of Crime starts setting up crimes for Sherlock to solve, so he gains publicity. So he's recognized as the hero. He's the only man smart enough to solve the trail of breadcrumbs Moriarty leaves, after all. Sherlock starts as just a puppet in the plan of things. Led along on strings from crime-to-crime, slowly piecing things together. And Sherlock hates it. But...Sherlock and William meet outside of being a simple detective and criminal. They meet on a ship, and for the first time, William finds his mind not drafting up plans or thinking as the Lord of Crime the first time they speak to each other. And for the first time, Sherlock finds someone with a mind equal to his own. They meet again, on a train, and solve a murder together (one William was NOT behind). And behind this game of cat-and-mouse, behind the puppet and puppeteer, something blooms. When Sherlock learns that yes, the William James Moriarty he's grown to known is indeed the Lord of Crime, he's not mad. He's...glad.

(note: Sherlock calls William Moriarty "Liam", beginning with their meet on the train; he's the only character in the series who does this. Not even the other Moriarty brothers call their brother "Liam")

He's glad it was William; it couldn't have been anyone else, in his opinion. It wouldn't have been worth it otherwise. It all comes to head in this series' version of "The Final Problem", where Sherlock finally confronts Moriarty, once and for all. It's where William plans to be defeated by his nemesis, the hero. Because he's the self-proclaimed villain. "Catch me if you can, Mr Holmes", is what he challenged to Sherlock on the train, after he joked about William being the Lord of Crime. And Sherlock catches him, in the end. But not as a detective. He catches him, as a companion, after William jumps to his death into the river Thames to set his defeat to Sherlock in stone.

Reason #7: What Comes After

The anime ends after "The Final Problem", but the manga continues. And this is where I really, really think this adaptation shines its brightest, with the aftermath of everything the series has been building to. The main reason Moriarty chooses his death is because of the bad things he's done his entire life. He never enjoyed killing people, but felt he had to, and felt his death was the proper "punishment" for it. But through Sherlock, he finds that that isn't the answer. It's obvious that Sherlock would live through the fall into the Thames. But what about William? In most adaptations, he dies. In the original, he died. But in this? They both live. They both survive. Some big ideas floating around before "The Final Problem" involved revenge. An eye for an eye, if you will. Judgement, and delivering it. But afterwards? It's atonement. It's forgiveness, and the lack of it. It's growth, and redemption. They're saved and taken to America to recover and start new lives. William Moriarty finds ways to atone for his actions without choosing death. Sherlock does too, for his own crimes. They decide, together, to begin anew, find new purposes.

and it's beautiful. When they return to England, three years after their disappearances, their growth is obvious and amazing to see; the other members of the Moriarty gang have also chosen their own paths of redemption, and seeing it all come together is something I'll always enjoy rereading over and over. And the redemption and reunion with England is just the end of part 1 of the story. There's more to be made with this series.

Reason #8: Made With Love

It's so, so obvious that Moriarty the Patriot was made with love for the original series. The way details of the original stories are kept and built off of to work flawlessly as it's own story is something I will be continously impressed by. There was so much thought, heart, and soul put into this adaptation, and you can tell it by reading and watching it. There are so, so much more I could go into—like the music in the anime, deeper dives into the arcs of the main cast, how well the relationships between characters are formed and established—but I think it'd be better for you to just find out all of these things by yourself.

So please, if you've gotten this far, give Moriarty the Patriot a try. Let it prove to you how good it is. Let it show you that it really is the best Sherlock Holmes adaptation out there.

#moriarty the patriot #yuumori #yuukoku no moriarty #sherlock #sherlock holmes

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leohtttbriar · 5 months

Note

I think Michael like for all that she is she is definitely an anthropologist like I think she takes a very great cultural lense before a scientific

you know, i think you are absolutely right! thank you so much for bringing this up! i wasn't even thinking about her academic specialties when i wrote this post. her first question being about "praying" could very easily just have been the way she was trained to meet alien peoples where they are first before obnoxiously being like "what is that, tho"

and, to your point about the cultural v scientific lens:

for better or worse, i'd say star trek collapses the boundaries between a lot of academic disciplines. "hard" v "soft" science doesn't seem to be a distinction in the star trek speculative world, where linguistics and anthropology are as much about physics and biology and no one is going to pretend like learning languages is a different kind of Study to learning chemistry. this sometimes does not work, imo, because sometimes the writing will accidentally slip into an unexamined essentialism with the alien cultures, which renders the whole of the allegory sort of silly and potentially all kinds of offensive. but it sometimes does work.

discovery, from what i remember of the first two seasons (i'm only just now starting the third, bc i lost my cbs account between 2 and 3, alas! etc), seems more able than other series to collapse the distance between disciplines and walk the line between what is cultural and what is material culture informed by biology. like saru constantly talks of his alien species and how their history of being hunted on his planet manifests in a perpetual anxiety and tamed-curiosity for him but also lends a level of care and sensitivity that he excels in---all of which fleshes out the character while giving him the awareness and consciousness to know why he may be acting a certain way compared to others and why he shouldn't ever be demeaned for it and where his body and his body's millions-of-years-old natural history can be challenged with that consciousness and how his consciousness can be valued precisely for its origins.

the klingons and vulcans, while not as sophisticated as the character saru, also seem to be largely cultural products that are informed by their specific biology. michael, somewhat caught between the cultural product and her own biological reality, can affect vulcan mannerisms and is very often portayed as thinking like a vulcan, while remaining very recognizable to us. her phrasing and her pattern of speech, while not monotone, are normally utterances that move from established fact to logical conclusion. I have nowhere to go back to...the only thing I can do right now is trust something, she says, upon being thrust nine-hundred years in the future. it's the statement of a stoic philosopher (probably one of the "vulcan" influences). she is concerned with what is material and what is real and what is real to others.

which is why i really like what you pointed out about her anthropology expertise--culture is real and often naturalized to those who live in it. michael is definitely someone, what with her studies and how she was raised, who is intimately aware of how the alien can be made familiar, how bodies can't be denied but you can learn to know them, how consciousness is strange and existence-in-causal-time stranger, and how people (all creatures included) are never all one thing or another.

obviously there's no perfect speculative fiction creating speculative cultures. the hurdles of making a sell-able show and the ingrained biases and limitations of the writers are not insignificant. but the storytelling here is engaging with conceits concerning the preciousness of life and the immutability of that preciousness--even if you don't understand it.

(also i just love michael burnham with all my heart. don't think it was a coincidence she was named after the angel who carries a sword.)

#star trek #discovery #guess i'm going to have to go rewatch the first two seasons now!!#i used to consume media that wasn't star trek #michael burnham

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throwaway-yandere · 2 years

Text

500 Year Long Identity Crisis (Yandere!SAGAU Various/Reader)

A/n: Advanced happy birthday Ayaka/2nd anniversary everyone!!! I put quite the effort into this fic to celebrate lol.

Characters present in this chapter: (Main Focus) Traveler!Aether, Baizhu, Dainsleif. (Briefly Mentioned) Yelan, Albedo, Kaeya, Zhongli, Venti, Abyss!Lumine, Enjou

Cw: yandere self-aware genshin au, "impostor" reader, gn!reader

Unreliable synopsis: The traveler received a strange commission indirectly from a government official. Although, it seems their azure-glasses-wearing guide is far more interesting than the quest itself.

Hysteric Humanoid (Yandere!SAGAU):

Side Story I - The Longest Devout Believers (this short story will be uploaded in a few days.)

Chapter 1 (You're here)

—---

"He who leaves a good name does not die poor. Remember that well, Your Grace!"

------

Everyone you encountered in your travels wondered what you would look like without your azure-tinted sunglasses at some point in their lives. Whether it be random passersby or your "closest" confidants, not a single soul knew what you looked like underneath the accessories you wore. This eccentric trait of yours made plenty uneased, for each time someone tried to pry into your privacy, you were quick to quip more riddles for them to lose sleep over.

As expected, today's appointment with the traveler was no different.

Aether couldn't tell what to make of you when you entered the restaurant. You covet too many cultural accessories, more so than Tighnari's infamous mess of a getup. Yet the only somewhat recognizable article of clothing was the fur scarf around your neck. However, this is only because a certain Mondstadt cavalry captain wore something similar. Only this time, this scarf had more love put into its handiwork than Kaeya's.

At least you balanced his abysmal first impression by offering to pay the bill.

"I'm sorry to keep you waiting. They call me "Jianfeng". I'm a temporary tax accountant here in Liyue. It's a pleasure to be working with you."

The traveler noticed your gloved hands extended. Almost every part of your body was covered, indicating that you made a concerted effort in covering everything up. He couldn't tell what color your eyes were underneath those glasses. You don't fit in in the bustling main metropolis of Liyue Harbor, let alone Wanmin Restaurant, and Aether doubted that you'd be able to blend in anywhere else.

You looked like an eccentric Fatui Agent. Almost. But even bad guys in uniform had better fashion sense. Are you trying to look worse than criminals?

The traveler didn't like you right off the bat.

If he were to guess, people “call you Jianfeng” because they don’t know your real name.

"It's... Nice to meet you too." Aether hesitantly shook your hand. His eyebrows furrowed.

Your hands were as cold as Albedo's.

That fact alarmed him.

Not long ago, he discovered Albedo's true nature as a homunculus and met his clones. In that handshake, he felt your flesh holding his, and he might dare say that you have unique human characteristics, yet your rigidness makes you appear more like an entity. Aether eyed you quietly.

What if you were one of them? What if behind your blue-tinted glasses, your eyes are composed of chalk?

Aether doesn't believe you are human. He had already concluded who you were after this little discussion. You're either a doll, a clone, or an exuvia. However, he couldn't explain why he thought it was the third guess.

"They call you Jianfeng? So, is that not your real name or...?"

Paimon asked what he was afraid of saying.

He didn't even notice that you already pulled your hand away. Aether's hand was trembling.

You used up all the self-restraint you had left so you won't narrow your eyes at her. He's already suspicious enough. You know that look well. His sister had that expression, too. Their faces bespoke knowledge and experience that free-spirits have. This is no time to let your guard down.

The traveler is a lot more perceptive than you thought.

You felt a tiny hand grabbing your hood.

"Do you need to wear all these clothes? You're not weak to the cold, are you?"

You flinched as you came face to face with a starry-eyed "pixie" tugging your earrings like a newborn baby. You gently smacked her away with one hand. Have you been slacking on training so much that Paimon, of all people, nearly yanked your hood off? You must have given her a menacing look since the cowardly critter scurried behind the traveler right after.

She's a lot nosier than you guessed.

"P-Paimon!!!"

Aether's eyes went wide as he slammed his hand to cover his traveling companion's mouth, not even bothering to look behind him. If he wasn't already a famous figure, you would've noted that the two traveled adequately enough for him to hit her lips intuitively.

He may appear shocked, but he is nothing but calm in assessing your character.

So, you don't like it when people grab your clothes. You're hiding something.

"I'm SO sorry about Paimon!" The blonde man squeaked. "She can be a bit tactless."

"No, no. It's fine. I enjoy talking to blunt people." You chuckled. "Makes my job run a lot smoother, especially during busy seasons. Though, I would greatly appreciate it if neither of you would strip away my clothes. We don't have an intimate... friendship."

You shook your head, realizing that your reply sounded like something Kaeya would say.

"I hope you're not assuming that I'm here to talk about tax return preparations. I won't press you about anything related to taxes. Besides, I'm a bit off schedule and I don't have time snooping into your business."

Paimon audibly sighed, Aether not so much.

"So you're not going to ask about tax evasion...?" He muttered.

You didn't quite catch that. "What?"

"N-Nevermind that!" Paimon giggled suspiciously. You've heard the traveler had done around Inazuma and for the sake of keeping his heroic ventures alive, you turned a blind eye in this case.

It's not like you can jail a video game protagonist for tax fraud anyways.

"I asked for your audience because I would like to hire you for a special commission."

You cringed for a brief moment before clearing your throat.

"Actually, no, that doesn't seem right. SOMEONE from The Civil of Ministry Affairs wants to hire you for a special commission, and I happen to be nearby for SOMEONE to dump this workload without consent. I have a life of my own, so expect me to make this quick."

"Civil of Ministry Affairs..." The traveler glanced at Paimon.

"Ooh! Ooh! Is it Yelan?!"

The small creature loved to hog the conversation, but her slip-of-a-tongue proved to be quite helpful in this instance.

"Yes, precisely. Huh, I thought I'd have to make a roundabout excuse as to why I can't disclose who your client is."

You slid the files onto the table's surface. Aether didn't seem phased by the enormous red CONFIDENTIAL text stamped on the folders and quickly took a look without your authorization.

"You have three days to decide. Look for me at Bubu Pharmacy at around six to ten pm. See you then."

Yelan often visits the pharmacy in disguise, so if she ever doubts you, you might as well prove her wrong. You stood up. You can't be bothered to stay longer, lest you want Mingbo's ire.

"H-Hey, hold on, Paimon can't understand this!"

"Then hire someone that can. Yelan insists that it's an important mission. It's imperative that you must perfect this task."

Your departure was as quick as your arrival, and you spared not a single second more to entertaining the traveler's questions.

Was it out of false confidence that he could decipher scholarly pages or pure indifference? Neither Paimon nor Aether knew. What bugged them more was not the fact they couldn't understand the files without Paimon reading through a dictionary for the foreigner, but the proverb you whispered right before you disappeared.

"Remember to paint the dragon, then dot the eye."

-----------

Cursed hands roamed the severed threads of your hood... until they slowly traveled down your neck, squeezing lightly.

"Your hair, your face, your body, your eyes..."

You shivered.

As you've heard, eyes are a telltale marker of neoteny. It speaks for how you've aged without saying a word and expresses everything humanity desired. Nonetheless, you did not pay attention to these sermons. What you heard is nothing more than a dirty craving for eternal youth, similar to a corrupt man's desire to deflower what is absolutely still and Celestia's desire to demolish a prosperous nation.

Man or Heaven– it did not matter which, they all wished you gone.

All you have left is him. For he remains as your soft glow at dawn and the sword at your side.

He spoke into your ear. Strands of his light hair stroked the nape of your neck, enticing you with his closeness. He shades your view of the burning nation in front of you with one gloved hand. Someone as frail as you, in his opinion, should not squander their eyes viewing a despicable final act.

His somber voice was an epilogue– a closing narration to humanity's greatest achievement.

And Khaenri'ah's end starts with you.

"Every inch of you is under my protection."

His breath was uneven, much like his tearful visage. You did not permit him, but his head rested on your shoulder, soundly defeated. From that moment forward, you were the only person he could touch without feeling guilty about his curse, for better or for worse.

"But we must continue this path. It's far too late to stop…

"I beg you, My Lord. Don't go anywhere without me."

-----------

"Are you sure the traveler will say no? I must say though, you're very bold for tampering with Yelan's files, (Player Name)."

"Stop calling me that," you gritted your teeth. "You know damn well I despise that name, doc."

The person who asked you was a slim doctor who ground some medicinal herbs on the countertop. Considering how he says the name (Player Name) without any thought of divine retribution, he's a bit of a heretic, like you.

The doctor's name is Baizhu, renowned for his work in the Bubu Pharmacy.

He appears fragile but make no mistake: disagreeing with his methodologies is futile. Baizhu is by no means a friend but you wouldn't want him as your enemy. He's the only one who knows of your "unique" constitution, and therefore the only one who can tinker with your body. At least, the contract says so.

Baizhu met your eyes with a small, scheming smile.

"In all honesty, Jianfeng, your hatred for The Creator will bite you one day. You can't hate them forever."

You grunted.

Yes, yes you can.

The crest of Khaenri'ah rests in your pupils, daunting and pure. Looking at the mirror feels awfully naked without your glasses since your reflection haunts you. The symbol weaved in your eyes echoed the voices of those who were there long ago.

You were naught but a primordial being shaped like the one that played behind the "screen". You were a Khaenri'ahn offering, an homage to this "player" figure you'll never understand. This flawed birth process is your bane. You were molded into their ideal human Lord, one who wielded power beyond the Archons and Celestia itself...

The Creator.

(Player Name).

Your homeland revered this one entity. In fact, your master made you in their image, not as a person but as a walking sculpture. Nonetheless, you aspired to be The Creator whom anyone would be glad to share a room with. You worked hard to be considerate and kind... But playing the role of a saint is pointless in the nation of agnostic men.

Khaenri'ahns do not rely on Archons or their doctrines, but they recognize that your very existence was blasphemous.

It would've hurt less if you hadn't deluded yourself that you had a chance. It didn't matter how much love you offered when those sentiments did not reach the masses' hearts.

Because you'll never be their image of (Player Name). Even if you inherited their intellect and insights of the future.

You would've loved your countrymen as they grew wrinkly and unrecognizably older. You would've given them the kindness they deserved. You would've forgiven them for all their flaws. Because you know you see them as who they were.

But why couldn't they have thought the same for you?

Oftentimes you wondered if it was their eyes that stalked you when you first left your cage. More often than not, you lie awake at night wondering what made (Player Name) so valuable and what made this human, an imperfect and mortal thing, more adored than you will ever be. Try as you might in racking your head for an answer, dead men tell no tales.

And where did all the love that you gave got you now? Scared of your own faux body. Paranoid and pitiful.

You just want to be loved.

By anyone.

"... Jianfeng? Are you crying?" Baizhu said in disbelief rather than concern.

You sniffed and hastily smudged the tears behind your glasses. Baizhu made his way towards you with a hand that eagerly patted your head. Changsheng, who's normally abrasive, slithered on top of your shoulders and gave you a cold hug. They didn't ask why you were crying. You spilled your heart out to him long ago, and he's not a forgetful person, unlike his little helper.

You snickered weakly.

By the looks on both their faces, you could tell that they know your true identity.

But you don't care.

After all, it was Baizhu who gave you your new name. And "Jianfeng" suits you just fine.

"Me? Crying? You need new glasses." You sniffed.

"Hmm? Oh but darling I think my diagnosis is spot on."

"If I was crying, shouldn't you realize that you're the problem?" You half-heartedly quipped.

His smile faded. Before Baizhu could say anything witty in response, Qiqi, with her stubby legs, opened the door in her tippy-toes.

"Jian… the traveler is here…"

You gently patted Changsheng's head, silently motioning her to go back to her master.

"Will be there in a sec."

---------------

Aether was curious as to why you chose this to be your meeting place, but after seeing Baizhu trail behind you, he formed a concrete assumption as to why.

The doctor had a hand draped around your shoulder. You two must have an "intimate friendship."

"Before we give you an answer, Paimon has a few things Paimon wants to ask!"

You expected as much. "Sure, go on then."

The traveler sat in one of the free chairs and you did the same.

Baizhu took a seat behind the counter. Given his frail constitution, he isn't the most imposing man in the room, but his look was something else entirely. The doctor observed the traveler and his companion stealing your attention.

Paimon may be dense, but Aether isn't.

Aether couldn't speak when Baizhu's snake-like eyes tilted like a blade under his chin.

"Are you from Mondstadt?"

"Huh? Er... No. Why did you think so?"

"You have the same scarf-thing like Kaeya– he's The Knights of Favonius’s Cavalry Captain."

You've met him. The Creator knows him as well. They frequently controlled his body before swapping to someone else after "wishing." Aside from that, you two correspond letters frequently. Kaeya sends notices whenever a certain fellow countryman concocts drinks at his brother’s tavern. Hence, you consider him a close confidant.

But you'd rather not share that information.

Kaeya likes to keep his friendship with you as one of his dirty little secrets.

Last time someone found out about you, the cavalry captain knocked him out. You never saw Connor again after that.

"Maybe we have similar tastes. I did visit old Mond before, but that was because I wanted to see the Great Wolf, Andrius..." You sighed.

Paimon quickly moved on. "Are you sure you're a tax accountant? The traveler hasn't seen you on Liyue's list of graduates."

They must have obtained the information through Keqing. That lady has reservations about everything, from your golden shrimp balls to Rex Lapis and The Creator. You were skeptical of her at first, but she welcomes any criticism that borders on blasphemy. It made you wonder why she only revealed that information now and never interrogated you before.

"This carp had jumped the dragon's gate before you arrived in Mondstadt, pal. I studied in Fontaine and got my license a few years ago." You sipped your chamomile tea, lazily pointing at the papers on the table. "See? I'm rather upfront about what I do."

Except for the fact you graduated nearly fifty years ago, under the name "Faust."

"Paimon thinks it's because you don't exactly look like a government worker, Jianfeng..."

"What do I look like then?"

"Well, uhh... Paimon can't say..."

"Exactly," you sat up straight. "A man cannot be judged by looks, much like seas cannot be measured by a cup."

"Another Liyue proverb..." Aether muttered.

Jokes on you, they DID hire someone to simplify the documents. In addition, he asked Zhongli what your departing words meant moments prior... Admittedly, Aether's not ready to sit through another thirty minutes of him discussing what you meant this time. One literacy lesson is enough for one week.

You wouldn't know about all that. You avoid Morax– he calls himself Zhongli nowadays– like Hilichurl camps. His new appearance does little to fool you. Based on The Creator's insight, he had faked his death. The last time you had talked to him, he tried to kidnap you, so the only Archon you have the slightest semblance of trust for is Lord Barbatos.

Speaking of Lord Barbatos, you're sure he'd love what you'll say next…

"Do you want a Fontaine proverb? Sure, here's one."

The travelers muffled their groans. Baizhu laughed heartily while Paimon pressed her head on her palm.

You chuckled.

"The robes don’t make the monk. If you can't label me from my looks then I shall do it for you. You're travelers, yet you've not seen all of what Liyue has to offer. This is what Jianfeng, a humble tax accountant, looks like, and other people in my profession can appear similarly if they chose to. What matters more is how we perform. The end."

The two travelers looked dumbfounded.

Good. What you said was total horseshit.

"Paimon doubts it's as complic– umm, easy as that..." She droned on.

The Creator's insights were right. Paimon is the noisest character in this "game." By then, you couldn't care much about what more she had to say. Instead, you handed the traveler a pouch.

There's no other choice than to send them on a wild goose chase.

"Yelan told me that you have no deadline in tracking The Creator down," you squinted. "But I'm no kind person. As the Liyue saying goes: return a loan on time and borrowing again will be easier. I'll only give you a daily allowance for two months. That's the only favor I will grant you."

Paimon floated near you, a lot cheekier this time. "But won't that be a pain for you?"

"How come?" You tilted your head.

"You're... Joining us, right?"

You went silent.

"Huh?"

Baizhu chuckled. He and Aether sidelined the entire conversation, yet they caught on rather quickly.

The traveler spoke, his voice was subtly smug.

"Mx. Accountant, Yelan put your name in the contract as our travel guide. And you already signed it."

------

Great, now you’re part of the wild goose chase too. Damn you, Yelan. Damn you, Wupei, for dressing up as a Good Hunter delivery boy. You can't believe she outsmarted you. Why did you even sign it– food deliveries don't ask for signatures and Mondstadt is miles away. Just because you've seen most of Teyvat for the past 500 years does not mean you have the qualifications as a travel guide– much less for a place that's a giant underground cave full of unanswered questions. Or a cave where the souls of your countrymen loitered, more specifically.

Baizhu was concerned about this and, uncharacteristically, offered to accompany you. You explained that he would be a liability if he joined, and he reluctantly agreed. But not before doling out an inordinate amount of medical herbs to make you smell ancient (and you are.)

Nevertheless, the three of you squandered the hours skulking around the cramped confines of the Chasm. So far, you've provided minor historical context and directed them to a few shortcuts as the traveler brandished his weapon.

It's also worth mentioning that, when compared to his sister, Aether's swordplay falls short. As Lumine would say, "Aim for the neck." He swings more defensively than she does, and his range is shorter. You're no expert, but after more than a century of traveling with two fierce sword masters, you couldn't help but nitpick.

You grilled him about his sword abilities a few times, and he responded with sugar-coated remarks about your unusual outfit. His attempts to discredit you were poor, but hearing him speak is a rarity enough. You didn't mind his comments. In comparison to Lumine's snarkiness, he is more straightforward and pleasant.

"The coast is clear– This should be the place the Creator was last seen," you muttered. "Allegedly."

"Ooohhh!!! Paimon is so excited!"

Aether grunted, sharing her sentiment as a typical voiceless protagonist. His childlike wonder makes up for his lack of speech as he walked past you.

You watched him run without looking back for both you and Paimon.

Unsurprisingly, he was most excited– he's the twin The Creator chose. You would be ecstatic too if the person who set you out on an exhilarating journey came returned. The difference is that you would probably curse them for it.

"You don't look happy for someone who's gonna see The Creator, Jianfeng," Paimon said. She nearly tugged your hoodie before stopping herself when she noticed you glaring.

"Um. You okay?"

"Ah, sorry. I didn't mean that– I'm fine." You palmed your forehead. "Just a bit light-headed."

"Do you wanna take a rest for a while? It's not good to force yourself. We can't greet The Creator if we're exhausted! You gotta look like your best self! You don’t want Them to see you like this, do you?"

You smiled weakly.

Just shut up, Paimon.

"Right. Right."

"Hey, is this the location?"

Aether pointed to a place with a light source.

You gulped.

“That's right.”

“Oh wow! Paimon heard that They like these mysterious white-blue flowers! Paimon doesn’t know what it's called though…”

As Aether knelt to examine the odd flower meadow, you attempted to mask your uneasiness. The flooring in this spot was soft and fragile; approaching the flowerbed risked breaking it. Yelan's reports were correct, but they shouldn't have been. After all, these are--

“Inteyvats.”

Paimon and Aether looked at you.

Your eyes didn’t tear away. You were frozen from your spot.

“These are called inteyvats.” You said, lips trembling. Your forehead creased and you grabbed your arm while looking at the batch of flowers, tense. “They are Khaenri’ah’s national flower… They're a symbol for wanderers far from home–”

Your face paled and your hand began to sweat.

It seems like the Chasm-Yaksha story quest happened before "Requiem of The Echoing Depths." But why?

How come Aether knew who Yelan was, but doesn't know what inteyvats are?

You shook.

Stop talking. Stop talking. Stop talking.

If they’re here then... Maybe That “Creator” is actually around here too.

You've never met Them before. Strange how not once did you both cross paths when you supposedly share the same face. But just because you haven't met them yet doesn't mean you want to.

All your muscles tensed up while your eyes squinted as if searching for a dead nation from far away.

You stepped backward.

"Hey, watch out!"

You had a mini heart attack as the steps gave in. Aether reached out. You were unable to grab his arm and Paimon's futile attempt to pull you up by your hood failed.

You tripped.

Unsteadily kneeling up, you unusually saw the world had taken colors way beyond an azure hue. It took you seconds before realizing your predicament.

You went completely still.

Your azure spectacles are cracked and out of reach. Your hood was lowered. All that was covering your head was a cotton face mask. The luminous stones gave your (h/c) hair an unwanted spotlight and your imperfect (e/c) eyes displayed fear in full view.

They could see your eyes– your face. No words were further spoken.

… Oh.

Aether's eyes widened and his chest sank as it heaved at the realization of who he was blindly following into the depths. He stepped forward and his dull blade clanged, subtly reminding you of his repertoire.

"JIANFENG IS THE FAKE CREATOR?!"

It all happened way too quickly.

Paimon screeched as she lividly floated beside Aether. She had been stomping on air with her clenched fists. Neither of you truly heard her.

Because from then on, you were enemies.

…

Aether unsheathed his dull blade.

You drew what you thought and hoped was your last breath. It had been more than 500 years, and you longed for a moment of respite.

If you were just another body that got in the way between the protagonist and his goals, then so be it. You'd gladly throw yourself into his blade and die as you've been dutifully commanded by the threads of fate.

"Jianfeng…" The traveler spat your fake name with malice as he sprung toward you in a single step.

He managed to slice your thigh.

"I shouldn't have trusted you."

You winced.

You've compared how different he acts compared to his sister the entire time, but this was the first you've seen their startling resemblance.

Aether looks just as numb as Lumine when placed into the role of a villain. He didn't look like an animal that wanted to tear you to shreds– he looked disappointed.

You reluctantly walked backward, gritting your teeth as he skillfully slashed in your direction. His attack on your leg stung, and your hand flew to conceal the wound.

As expected from a silent protagonist, he seems to know that the smallest sentences bite the most. But his words are meaningless. You knew Aether only said it because of the rumors about you. He wouldn't know the wishes of those who died with lingering regrets as much as you and your previous traveling companions.

All he has is lip service and surface-level heroism. A facade that is slowly deteriorating ever since Inazuma.

You could dodge his attacks easily. In one flick of the wrist, you could bounce him off, but…

Many moons ago, you made up your mind on how you wished to go. You will not cower away and accept judgment with resolve. Retribution is coming to pass and with livid breaths, you'll let Aether draw his blade. You longed for the sweet release of death to be under this world's rightful protagonist.

…

However, in a blink of an eye, a fluttering grey cape obstructed death's view.

CLANG!!!

Blonde hair.

A dark violet mask.

Unmistakable starry eyes.

And a long, pointed cloak.

"How... How did you get here?" You whispered breathlessly.

He must've emerged from the wormhole below this platform.

The blonde gave you an all-too-familiar look that says he knows all that he needs to know.

The traveler froze in shock while the third person dashed in to capture your waist before he scooped you up in one quick motion. His body felt cold against yours, much to your dismay.

He briefly exhaled through his nose; his stamina unaffected. "I'm always watching."

"Tch."

You'd call him out for being arrogant, but you know he's telling the truth. This man gathers knowledge as if his life depended on it- and you wish you had a better comparison because there is no life within him other than an amalgamation of pure jadedness.

The blonde man keeps this world's secrets, and no amount of proverbs will make you more seasoned and knowledgeable than Dainsleif, the Bough Keeper.

And this all-knowing yet curious individual appeared both pissed and enamored.

First and foremost, he is furious at Aether for performing such an atrocious "stunt." To draw a blade against the one to whom he vowed vassalage served to make his heart race for the worst reasons. Yet, Dain still has his patience, courtesy to his immortality, and you by his side.

His eyes searched yours. Longing for some shred of blissful recognition you might've felt after meeting him again but couldn't ignore the engulfing dread that settled in your irises. You could tell he was fighting hard not to melt under your touch.

Dainsleif promised before that he would never disobey his lord’s commands. He was true to his word and never once appeared in the past few centuries

But seasons change.

He made his choice. Dainsleif pulled away.

"My memories have all but faded, but I know that underneath those clothes, you're still the same person, my Lord."

His gaze was smoldering. The Bough Keeper did not take one step closer, but the way he stared at you already felt suffocating. He didn't and he won't come close. His Khaenriah'n eyes sufficed in expressing the loneliness he dealt with when he traversed Teyvat without you. He didn't have to hold you tight. His presence is intense enough.

You thought you were the one monitoring his actions through Kaeya, but Dainsleif had always been the better stalker.

You don't know the hell you put him through by leaving him on his lonesome.

Dainsleif smiled delicately. Had you never traveled with him, it would've been an unpredictable expression. As much as you hate reminiscing about that era, you know that he reserves that look for you alone. He was elated when he saw you wear the scarf he gave you.

Skinning that cryo abyss mage was a lot of work.

You should've thrown it away, but you couldn't, not when it was one of your good memories with him and her. Not when he worked tirelessly to master sewing just for you.

Now there's no way he won't assume that there's more to it than keeping warm.

"Lord (Y/n)..."

Dainsleif's voice was still soothing.

Aether gave him a strange look. He didn't think of him as the kind to address someone by that title, but then he remembered that Dainsleif was once an honorable knight. He just didn't know that the Twilight Sword used to serve you. Nor did he know that (Y/n) was your real name.

"Stop." You commanded, but your shaky voice betrayed you.

You haven't heard that name in a long time.

"... At last. It's been a long time, hasn't it?" Dainsleif awkwardly spoke as if you both lacked time.

How dull. The three of you always had enough time.

And you have already picked a route to follow. Having the Creator's wisdom already gave you an advantage in predicting what would happen, and each day made you wonder when your paths might diverge. You didn't deny fate when it arrived. Lumine chose the Abyss Order, while Dainsleif seek to oppose it.

They were both suffocatingly possessive. If Khaenri'ah shunned you as a heretic creation, Dainsleif and Lumine prized you as their hysteric humanoid. They both desired you, but neither was willing to share. They tugged and pulled as if you were not capable of thinking for yourself.

And what did you do? You opted for a strategic retreat. You have no malice against Teyvat but no will to save it either. After knowing that your old companions represent these two sides, you wanted nothing to do with their metaphorical coin.

As a creature abandoned by its nation, can you be blamed for having no plans of carrying the burden for those who died and survived?

You shook your head.

"You reek of corruption, Twilight Sword."

He grunted, and yet he pretended not to hear you.

Dainsleif pushed you behind him, eyebrows knitted together as he glanced at your leg.

"Don't act tough," he said, despite tracing traces of his curse with his free hand. "Stand back, you're hurt."

Aether struck first.

"HIYAH!!!"

Dainsleif parried effortlessly.

He smiled, realizing what he had done.

When alone, he's the Bough Keeper, but with you, he stands firm as the Twilight Sword.

"Why are you helping them...?" Their swords clashed against each other in a temporary stalemate. "They're the impostor! They're dangerous!"

Despite his grievances, you were somewhat proud that Aether took your advice to heart when he swiftly aimed for Dainsleif's neck. Even if his efforts were futile.

He's no longer angry, just confused. Aether thought to himself that if Dainsleif is keen on protecting you, then are you his sister’s enemy as well?

But Aether wasn't sure if his views aligned with his sibling.

"Not to brag, but your form is poor." Dainsleif retorted, pointing vaguely at Aether. He pursed his lips, unamused, before slashing Aether's defenses in one strong cut.

Dainsleif kicked him down, forcing him to gasp sharply. His heel dug into the flesh of his cheek. Paimon shook afraid as she watched her companion weakly grab his opponent’s heel.

The Bough Keeper’s eyes darkened. He only had one thought in mind while Aether pathetically wormed under him.

Any man who believes in baseless rumors does not deserve to bask in your presence.

"If my memory serves, My Lord could barely pick up a claymore or hunt a boar. It would be hopeless for them to try and beat you in a spar.” He said with a faint but recognizable teasing lilt. “I'm simply standing in for them."

You could disagree with his claims if you wanted, but he'd reply with a subtly sarcastic "that would be a miraculous development, indeed." Dainsleif never trusted that you can protect yourself because that's what he was there for. But you're done using his services.

Aether pushed Dain away and distanced himself. His bruised cheek and bloody nose could not deter him from his new mission.

The traveler tilted his chin upward. “Dai–”

"Kill me, traveler."

The men flinched.

You walked to your fallen enemy, not caring for how Dainsleif caught your wrist.

"Take my life– before he tries something funny."

After sending Dainsleif an accusatory glance, he pushed you aside forcefully.

"Traveler, your battle is with me."

“I’m your target!"

Dainsleif's face hardened, glaring at you.

You smirked. You can't help but wonder how much 300 years alone had impacted him. He used to be so careful not to offend you and so remorseful when he did. Seems like the captain would bare his fangs with just about anyone that stood in his way. Including his old master. You were happy about this development, yet sad all the same.

You’ve grown tired of everything too, haven’t you, Dain?

"Paimon is so confused, please stop it!"

No one listened to her.

“Traveler, you’re looking for the Creator, right? They’re not here. I lured you here to kill you.”

Dainsleif sneered. “They’re lying. It's possible that everything is under your sister's orders to redirect your path.”

“Lumine has nothing to do with this. I’ve lied about many things but this is not one of them.” You lied nonchalantly.

Aether faltered.

"You know Lumine?"

Dainsleif gripped your shoulder. “(Y/N).”

You huffed and elbowed him. “Shut it, Dain. Your corruption is beyond saving. Don't butt in like this is about you."

"Ngh..."

Dainsleif's eyes softened, visibly stung by your words. He bit his lip and looked at the floor for a brief moment.

Aether and Paimon were speechless. They did not expect you to speak so harshly nor did they expect to see him look hurt.

You looked back at the traveler.

"Traveler, why don't you prove yourself worthy of being the main character and take us both out?"

Paimon shrieked and palmed her cheeks.

"W-Wait! Why don't we all just talk instead?!" Paimon screamed.

"Paimon's right."

Aether sheathed his sword back. You and Dain met each other's eyes, before staring at the traveler, confused.

"Jianfeng..."

His hand shakily pointed to your leg.

Saturated blood oozes from your open wound. No means a regular sight and unwise to call it a vibrant hue.

Your blood glitches.

It spills, yet evaporates into thin air. You stared at your wound as if it wasn't yours. You forgot that you were supposed to cover it, but–

Would a normal person's blood look like red-black cubes?

There's only one other person Aether knew had red-black cubes.

And it was the Sustainer of Heavenly Principles.

"Was I wrong…?"

Aether's knees buckled, shaking. His eyes stared up apologetically, mouth agape.

"Are you… The real Creator?"

...

Dainsleif went rigid. He felt the air shift but he needn't look behind. The Twilight Sword knew you didn't like that question at all.

Your expression dampened.

The Traveler had successfully provoked you.

"My Lord, please stand back."

…

The silence was unbearably long.

And then, you clicked your tongue.

"No." You said firmly. "No, I don't think I should."

You stomped your foot.

And the Chasm trembled.

The floating mushrooms scurried for a place to hide as the unstable foundations of the upside-down city crashed their weight down. The floating debris shook and fell in the sudden momentum– asphalt slimes shriveled and the cave's miniature plateaus slipped like pencil shavings with a thunderous thud.

Rubbles echoed every moment or two, threatening to collapse.

You can't think of a better way to answer him than this.

In one stomp of your foot, the underground mines shook as much as an ancient dragon's tantrums. There was no visible effort put into causing this phenomenon.

The air began to weigh heavily.

You stole Dainsleif's sword without him noticing before pointing it beside Aether's neck. You looked down on him with your chin up.

There was no divine work in play, no illusions, no elements. Every Archon both dead and alive knew that your measly power cannot summon the elements.

But gravity is in your hands.

"Enough." You commanded, voice cold and piercingly authoritative. "Just kill me, traveler. Kill me and go on your merry way, before I end this game right here– before the Chasm crumbles."

"Your Grace–"

Aether begged, kneeling on small shaky pointed rocks.

You let out a guttural groan, exasperated. He heard your throat strain itself as you answered him bitterly.

"WRONG. I am Their Impostor. Teyvat had abandoned me long ago. I bore no "divine" power nor "will" of my own, instead, Rhinedottir molded me to Their likeness."

If you told him that at the restaurant, Aether would've believed you. Your aura was akin to Albedo's, but there was something the chief alchemist lacked.

Divine blood.

You inched the blade closer. The blood that spilled from his neck was unlike yours. It was red. It was shapeless. They were not cubes.

"T-That doesn't sound right!" Came Aether's shaky reply. "You HAVE to be The Creator, Y-Your Grace! No one else can replicate your blood– and the way you shook the Chasm just now it's–"

Aether speaks like Lord Barbatos.

"And so what?"

"H-Huh?"

Enough.

You've heard this multiple times from Kairos.

Your blood began to boil.

Stop talking. Stop talking. Stop talking.

"So what if I look like Them? If I have Their powers?" You said, eyes lifeless.

"So what if I'm The real Creator? Do you think I'd come back? After how this world had treated me? That I would graciously fix this realm's problems. Am I a tool? A plot device like you? Do you think I'll motivate the Knights, help Morax find a replacement, reverse Inazuma's grievances, reinstate Rukkhadevata's form and dignity with the oh-so goodness of my heart?"

Aether gulped. He did not speak. You were right.

The Chasm continued to shake.

You gritted your teeth. "The greed in your eyes disgusts me. You've traveled far enough, surely you know how inherently selfish this world is? Aren't you tired, Traveler?"

There's one more thing hidden within his eyes that you forgot to mention.

Aether cried.

It was regret.

You put away Dainsleif's sword, clanking it down the floor. You smiled crookedly and cupped Aether's cheek,

before reaching for his neck.

"If you can't bring yourself to kill me, why don't we both stop breathing, together?"

"(Y/n), that's enough!"

Dainsleif ordered.

The vibrations stopped.

You didn't know what came over you. Was it survival instincts? Baseless hope? The desperation in his voice? Or a fragment of trust you had left from when you traveled with him?

Dainsleif reached his hand out. His frown was not a display of toughness, but genuine concern.

"It's no longer safe here. The Abyss Order has sensed our movements and I can tell they're heading our way. We'll leave. Now."

His hand looked welcoming, warm, and enticing, but your heart was not in it.

Your eyes wandered elsewhere.

You recalled a distant memory from long ago. Barbatos often told you that "He who leaves a good name does not die poor." and you wondered why. And so, you foolishly lived more than a hundred human lives in search of a proper answer. Immortality devours the soul, and you expected that after the fifteenth life you may not grasp the true meaning behind his ramblings.

But at that moment, you looked at Aether’s pained eyes and got your answer.

Ah.

"I got it."

You took a step back near the cliff's edge, facing the two men. Dainsleif gradually prepared himself for a sprint. The faint crunch of your shattered glasses resonated through the cave, and if you took another step, you'd fall.

Yelan's reports state that there should be a portal below this platform. It should be the same place Dainsleif warped from.

You're uncertain that it's still open.

But hey.

Haven't you always wished for something that only has a 50/50 chance?

"This is my farewell as Jianfeng, a tax accountant."

You jumped off with a big stupid grin.

For a brief moment, Dainsleif felt as if icicles were pressed against his internal organs. His eyes widened.

"LORD (Y/N)!!!"

He did not hesitate– your most loyal retainer dashed forward like a wild animal and jumped with you.

Aether watched how his Creator sank deep into the Chasm from above in pure horror.

You lost yourself.

This was the stupidest asspull you've ever done in the past 500 years.

You roared with laughter as Dainsleif pulled you close to protect you from the fall. He longed to hear your laughter, but this sound was disjointed and airy– an inexpensive imitation. Dainsleif closed his eyes and groaned almost inaudibly. He's been starving for your touch, and he can no longer hold back.

Dain snuggled against you, his fingers tangled in your hair. You smelled like violetgrass.

"I'll never leave you alone again." He whispered desperately, wanting to add that this was his new oath but couldn't due to lack of air, something you had plenty of. You did not hear it. All you heard were the flaps of his cape.

The air pressure prickles into your skin. As you both plunged into something similar to the abyss, his hands roamed around your back, keeping your scarf in place as he planted a soft kiss on your forehead. You did nothing to stifle your misplaced laughter.

You wanted to tell her that you finally understood Barbatos' proverbs, his everything.

The portal should close soon, but you'll both make it.

Should your body rot away in the depths of Chasm's shallow wind, you hope to witness the endless cycle of life again without those azure-colored lenses–

"You can't leave me. Never."

–as no one else but Lord (Y/n) (L/n), and their most loyal retainer, Dainsleif, the Twilight Sword.

—-----------

“Your Highness, it appears that Dainsleif had captured Your Grace.”

“Traitor, but he kept his promise.” She spoke, not in a way that betrayed any emotions. The Princess said it as what it was: a fact.

In one hand, the Princess poured herself a glass of wine, elegantly gulping the contents in one go. She couldn’t be bothered to hold it with both hands when the other held a priceless artifact. Once she placed her empty glass on the silk-covered table, she lazily beckoned the Abyss Lector forward.

“Burn all the inteyvats left in the Chasm.”

The Lector, Enjou, hesitantly raised his head. “But Your Highness–”

“I did not cultivate them for my brother to find.” She said, looking at the cracked azure shards sitting on her palm. “It was for Them, and you failed to lead Them there.”

The Abyss Princess lovingly kissed the broken shards.

“I wonder…” Lumine looked up.

"What is it like to finally see the world without these glasses, Your Grace?"

821 notes · View notes

maxwell-grant · 7 months

Note

Could I hear more of your thoughts on Doc Savage and the archetype he created? How does it relate to modern superheroes more specifically Reed Richards? (I know that you dislike Doc Savage, so sorry if this bothers you.)

Sorta like this, if we take a look at how Doc's archetype was formed and consolidated, and how that affected the Superheroes and Reed Richards specifically. (also please don't apologize, you all can ask me questions about whatever, seriously)

"Doc Savage" is recognizable in lots of other characters but there is a difference between specific pastiches or tributes or parodies of Doc (Doc Samson, Edison Rex, Jonas Venture), and characters who are evoking Doc Savage as his own archetype to draw initial inspiration from (Tom Strong, Bane, Clark Kent), and if we pull at Doc's roots we're gonna get to prior characters like Tarzan and Sherlock who were the ones to introduce or codify much of what are now commonplace superhero traits or the ones to introduce much of what Doc was originally pulling from.

I wanna draw some lines in the sand separating what is it that these characters brought to the table, in the road to get to Reed Richards and what exactly is it that Reed and Doc have in common vs things they have that are mainly taken from characters before them/grandfathered in their respective mediums. So let's go over the Archetypes here:

The Sci-Fi Superman: Coined by Peter Coogan. Through some strange birth or scientific intervention, these characters have superhuman powers and abilities that set them irrevocably apart from humanity, nearly forcing them to usually fall into the roles of saviors, rulers, destroyers, or ostracized/self-imposed hermits. Unless they find a purpose requiring said abilites, they cannot be permitted to exist and usually meet a tragic demise or is stripped of said power. Formative example is The Creature from Frankenstein (Mary Shelley), and others include Hugo Danner from Gladiator (Phillip Wylie) and Bill Dunn from The Reign of The Superman (Jerry Siegel). Coogan considers John Carter the first wholly positive and heroic SF superman, which is disputable, but more on Carter later.

Pulp Ubermensch: The Great Man turned do-gooding adventurer with a prosocial agenda. A human who is physically, mentally, and/or morally superior to those around him as a result of training/upbringing, skilled at everything the story requires him to, who applies his talents and abilities near-exclusively to fight evil. Formative example is Nick Carter (created by John R. Coryell and penned by Frederick Van Rensselaer Dey), who established much of what would eventually become pulp hero and superhero convention consequently.

The Great Adventurer: I'm naming these as a counterpoint to The Great Detective, the fantastical globetrotting adventurer/explorer hero who can go anywhere and do anything, who takes to the world as the detective takes to the city. The idea of a wealthy, offbeat, yet good-natured pulp hero who goes around righting wrongs with like-minded assistants. Formative example here is Rocambole (Ponson du Terrail), in most ways a definitive early Pulp Ubermensch, and arguably the first proto-superhero to assemble a gang of odd companions with a variety of talents and backgrounds to aid him, which is what both the Fabulous Five and the Fantastic Four can trace roots back to.

Pulp Supermen: Offshoots of the Sci-Fi Superman as adventure protagonists in serialized stories, where their superhuman natures and status are alleviated and redirected by the need of their capabilities somewhere or in service of something, and thus they get around the ruler/savior/destroyer fate by being heroes with a social calling akin to the Pulp Ubermensch, dedicated to use their powers near-exclusively to fight injustice without rocking the boat of society by their presence (or if necessary, assert dominion ONLY in a setting outside of human society, such as the jungle or Martian civilization). Distinguished from the Pulp Ubermensch by their greater larger-than-life explicitly superhuman abilities, that they don't need to be morally/mentally superior to the extent of a Pulp Ubermensch, and by the fantastical settings and tone of their adventures. Formative examples are John Carter of Mars and Tarzan of the Apes (both created by Edgar Rice Burroughs), with Tarzan quoted by Lester Dent as a specific influence on Doc (there are others but we're skipping most of those not relevant here)

The Science Adventurer: A frequently-used name to describe Doc Savage and Doc Savage-alikes. Doc Savage can be described, in archetype word salad terms, as a Pulp Superman who calls upon the Pulp Ubermensch's great man-ness and urban social calling, and who combines a Sci-Fi Superman origin and physical traits with The Great Adventurer's explorer disposition, righteousness and band of companions. The main thing that sets him apart from the characters listed prior is his focus on scientific prowess, technology, reasoning and polymathic skills, the importance of the "Doc" part of his name as it where.

The Superhero: you already know what these are and how they relate to the above. I've written a couple of things about the differences between pulp heroes and superheroes and it's a subject I'm of constantly mixed opinions on even regarding stuff I wrote, so I'm linking these two written a year apart if you want an idea of where those differences are.

And so we get to Reed, who I'm naming a Science-Adventurer Superhero as a merger of the last two. Both Stan Lee and Jack Kirby mentioned several times that they read Doc Savage aplenty during the Depression and it shows in elements such as the Baxter Building (an expansion of Doc's headquarters in the Empire State Building - instead of just the 86th floor, The Four get the entire skyscraper), the specialized aircraft and vehicles, the fights and antagonism between the cantankerous and anti-social Ben Grimm and the smart-mouthed Johnny Storm mirroring the bickering spats between the bestial Monk and the silver-tongued Ham, and of course Beast from X-Men being more closeled modeled on Monk's ape-ish traits and scientific expertise (there's a fairly large argument to be made, that I think accounts for some of why Beast is, like that, in recent comics, that Ben Grimm and Hank McCoy both divided Monk Mayfair's every trait between themselves and ultimately flipped the script in the long run before taking it to the farthest extremes possible as polarized opposites of each other, with Ben initially getting most of the bad parts and making them the best ones, and Hank initially getting all the good ones and making them into the worst ones)

As far as I know, Reed Richards was not consciously modeled after Doc Savage (although Jack Kirby and Joe Simon's Private Strong used the origin story of a professor raising his son in a lab to be perfect in total isolation of other humans, which Lester likely may have pulled from Phillip Wylie's The Savage Gentleman to begin with), although it's commonly said that the direct precursors of the Four, the Challengers of the Unknown, were modeled after Doc Savage and the Fabulous Five's make-up. The members of the Fantastic Four are all based on 50s sci-fi archetypes, with Reed as the quintessential scientist, the grey-templed pipe-smoking patriarch frontman of the expeditions, and some creators over the years seem to have drawn upon Doc Savage as a model Reed. I'm thinking specifically of Mark Waid here, who openly named Doc Savage in his pitch bible:

The eternal problem with Scientifically Inclined Genius Adventures, the reason they don't ring true, is because in real life scientists spend all their damn time in the lab. Not Reed.

F'r pete's sake, we know he undertook all sorts of Indiana Jones missions as a younger man, we've seen that he actively enlisted in a war, and oh yeah, he stole a rocketship and tried to take it to the moon."

Tommy B put his finger on it when he suggested I stop thinking of Reed as the Professor from Gilligan's Island and instead think of him more like Doc Savage. When Reed encounters mental or logistic obstacles in his quest for knowledge, he thinks through them.

Doc Savage, of course, isn't the perfect model - he's a little more blood-and-gristle than Reed, more invested in the search for justice than for knowledge, and a little more "in the moment" as a general rule. Reed's more like Peter Weller as Buckaroo Banzai, they have the same aloof, detached nature. Unless active danger is staring him right in the face, Reed often seems a bit distant and not completely here because his mind is ten minutes in the future.

That addresses the Science-Adventurer aspect, which leaves us with the Superhero side of the equation.

With Doc Savage you of course have one of the, if not the, main archetypal pulp heroes, a character that both Superman and Batman would take a great deal from, and "pulp hero" in itself is a term that exists to define these characters more so in relation to superheroes than what they were actually like in their own stories, time periods and mediums. The superhero as a concept is founded on Superman and Batman and their dychotomy. Costumed Avenger vs Ubermensch, mortal and immortal, light and dark, Dayman and Nightman (AHH-ahhh-AAHHHHH!), and that dynamic is specifically a result of Superman and Batman being direct descendants from Doc Savage and The Shadow respectively, who were Street & Smith's (and by extension the American pulps) Big Two, the top dogs of 1930s hero pulps, and direct opposites to each other.

Doc Savage was created in response to The Phantom Detective (who was the first successful Shadow imitator and thus defined it as the thing everyone was gonna have to do or respond to) and was in many ways a modernized revamp-almost-copy of Street & Smith's Nick Carter during his heyday, in origin and first case and super strength and omnicapable skills and general Great Man-ness and gadgetry and mission statement and so on. Doc was co-created by the editor of Nick Carter Magazine, John Nanovic, and the first response to the Phantom Detective that S&S planned was a reboot of Nick Carter as a generic hardboiled detective, published on March 1933, the same month as Doc's debut, and obviously Doc would go on to achieve much greater success and thus would popularize those traits again with himself as the figurehead archetype of them (not unlike what Superman and Batman would later do).

Unlike The Shadow, Doc Savage does not operate under a secret identity or mask. He is not the hidden master of the city and has no division between his alter egos, and because he performs in broad daylight as a celebrity, is theorically held to social scrutiny, and is fully sanctioned and approved by law enforcement and works with the authorities with public transparency (minus the crime college but let's just, not, for now), it greatly upends and affects the approach he takes to fighting crime. He only has one identity, the greatest man of all time as the stories will remind you at every turn, by his author's own words he "manifests Christliness", and while not much separates Doc Savage's skills from Nick Carter's, he is explicitly and textually framed as superhuman (even a "superman", that term was deployed a few times), and he operates in a contemporary, urban setting that most Pulp Supermen cannot touch without veering into Sci-Fi Superman territory.

Within the hero pulp format that S&S started with Nick Carter and renewed with The Shadow, with the scientific explorer angle, you could argue Doc Savage, in almost exactly the same way as he does in his stories, worked out the solution to an unfixable problem: Turns out you can be as over-the-top super as you want, so long as you have a procession of equivalent super menaces to fight, don't upset society (and if you do it, not where the public where can see, keep it a secret that you can be blackmailed over by crooks you will inevitably silence okay look I'll stop now), have whatever incredible miracle cures and achievements and charity you do work on take place off screen where you never have to deal with them too seriously, and know how to pick your fights.

His service to others resolves the ruler/savior/destroyer conundrum. Savage aids individuals who face problems beyond their control, does great work in advancing medicine and science, and alleviates suffering through charity work, but he leaves the institutions of society in place.

He faces a never-ending succession of villains threatening society, an eternal frontier of gangsters and super-scientific menaces who play the role that Indians take in frontier narratives. The unresolvable nature of crime makes this frontier eternal, so Savage can place his superiority in service to the community and never risk turning into a ruler, savior, or destroyer because he can find challenges sufficient to absorb his energies.

The Savage solution—the hero position would be adopted by the creators of other prosocial supermen to come, including Superman, although only the adventures of Superman would be set in contemporary America.

Thus instead of marking an end to the bourgeois domination of society, as Nietzsche foresaw, the superman serves to protect that domination through myth-narratives. - Superhero: The Secret Origin of a Genre, by Peter Coogan

Reed Richards, in turn, is defined (INCORRECTLY, I say, feeling a plasma crackle barely miss my skull) as the smartest man on the planet, a mental superhuman who operates on a level above and beyond that of everyone around him, and a freak accident during a space travel grants him physical superhumanity to match, with his body able to morph and bend under his will. He alleviates the ruler/savior/destroyer conundrum Coogan described in much of the exact same way described above, kept busy with an endless procession of strange dimensions and aliens and supervillain challenges, and Mark Waid's famous confession scene in Fantastic Four #489 addresses the fate that looms over the Sci-Fi Superman directly, with the "very arrogant man who did something very stupid" pointificating to his toddler child just how necessary it was to ensure that the world would not fear and destroy the people he'd irreversibly mutated as a result of hubris, what is even the point of his grandstanding title and colorful outfit and public adventures and all that.

The life of superpowered adventurer celebrities was a necessity, and his superhero persona, Mr Fantastic, is a tabloid-catching act of penitence to mask his ultimate shame and to compensate the people he loves most. He lives for science, he craves discovery above all, but as far back as the Lee/Kirby stories, he still drags the team into awful intrusive press conferences none of them want to go but must, he sits through meetings with hardass generals to buy his team more leeway and trust, he takes the time to stretch across the city to visit sick children in hospitals and say hello to passing helicopters, he has to be the stick-in-the-mud dad who stretches himself thin to keep Johnny and Ben from ditching the team or seriously hurting each other (those first Johnny and Ben spats get way more violent than you'd expect), and he has to make difficult and even manipulative and harsh decisions even then to save the most lives he can. He carries a responsability to his family and loved ones first and foremost, and fashioning himself and them into superheroes is how he lives up to that responsability. It's what allows them to exist and thrive in-universe as much as out of it.

(We're not gonna play catch-up to the "why doesn't Reed Richards cure cancer" conversation but even that, in itself, is an extension of a thread that we can trace back to Doc and the Sci-Fi Supermen before him, when seams in the fantasy start showing with the introduction of consequence, a trend that particularly catches up to these scientist superhero characters who followed in Doc Savage's wake, and obviously caught up to Doc himself several times by now, for reasons @artbyblastweave describes as "a consequence of contemporary writers being Allowed To Notice And Unpack Things" and elaborates on very neatly here)

As a superhero, Reed Richards exists in conversation with Superman and Batman, same as every other character within the superhero "genre", which means he also exists in conversation with those traits borrowed from Doc Savage, and The Shadow, and all these other guys listed who were crucial in their development and a lot of others I'm leaving out of the conversation for now. A crucial part of that conversation and where the Fantastic Four figure into it is the fact that they were designed to not be traditional superheroes but to flip most if not all the conventions established on it's head, a part of that being their initial lack of uniforms (and when they did get uniforms they were just that, uniforms, rather than costumes), the lack of a secret identity, and the fact that the Four are scientists and explorers first, and crimefighting superheroes a distant second they're forced to frequently make a close second or first priority. Marvel made it's big defining pop culture splash with the Fantastic Four by turning superhero convention on it's head and doing as much as they could to do the opposite of what Brand Echh was doing.

And that's kinda the main reason they end up inviting similarities with Doc Savage and other pulp heroes, because they're going out of their way to imitate and subvert traits and tropes that Superman and Batman were already imitating and subverting from those guys in the first place, that they in turn were imitating and subverting from guys that came before them, and etc.

Archetypes are breakthroughs, and no breakthrough happens in a vacuum. In the end, a lot of these strands and connections between these characters are less specifically the result of writers consciously following in the footsteps of Doc Savage and those that came before or alongside him, and more so with the fact that there's only so many left turns you can take before you just end up in a circle, or reinventing the wheel as it were.

#replies tag #pulp heroes #pulp fiction #superheroes #marvel #marvel comics #doc savage #lester dent #reed richards #fantastic four #stan lee #jack kirby #mark waid #comics

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amethystfairy1 · 27 days

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Hi there, new anon here bc I don’t use tumblr like, almost ever. apologies for the rambling about how I love ur AU’s that’s incoming. Or if I did this wrong. Idk how to use tumblr.

Ok SO, I’ve been following your AUs on AO3 for the past few months and first of all, love it, I love your continuity with metaphors or specific descriptors that span across works, like Grian’s banded wings, glamor as heat haze on tarmac, scott having hair like spun sugar, just AUGHHHH so good I love. Little details like that make me as a writer and ofc fanfic enjoyed foam at the mouth. It’s so vivid I can picture it in my mind, I love the eclectic feel of the undercity, the mechanical lore things like wagons in Traveling thieves or rail carts and labs in TTSBC! Don’t even get me started on the peice about Doc and Etho in the depths, that one is so so good.

And your phenomenal foreshadowing? Like first read through never guessed that avian at Fremeere’s was skizz, but I went back after your recent upload and wow it totally is! Or how first read of TTSBC I never thought the two directors were the same because I hopped around in the reading order, but now it’s wayyy too similar! And now I get why a past and long dead antagonist would have such a specific and recognizable speech pattern… eerie. I love it. Can’t wait to learn more about that storyline!! I wonder how much Tango knows about Doc’s history with the labs and if he realizes the connection after talking with Zedaph. Zedango my beloved! Or just tango content/lore in general hehe. (Also, I find it humorous that Grian and Tango’s boyfriends have almost the same trauma as their dad, lol) Also, love how close the characters are to being reunited in Traveling Thieves!! They’re so close!

Anywhoo, just stopped by to say that Cub is litterally providing scar/Hot Guy with weapons in Scar’s new episode, only to see that you already saw that ofc. I was litterally kicking my feet and squeaking about it bc it’s just like TTSBC and your AU makes me so genuinely happy to read and has me in a chokehold. But the rocket arrows?? That are Hot Guy brand color coded! And expensive and I can see character!Cub being exasperated about scar’s trigger happy use of the rockets in the same way he doesn’t call the lab the Hot Cave, hehe. Or Scar showing off to Grian that he’s not the only one who can shoot sparkly projectiles!

so yeah, ik you already saw that, but i wanted to share that it’s so perfect for TTSBC or else my brain would not leave me alone lmao

DON'T APOLOGIZE FOR THE RAMBLES

I LOVE RAMBLES!!!!

I'm so glad you love my little tells for the characters! Heat haze on tarmac, hair like spun sugar, stuff like that just feels like it helps make a certain trait pop and so I try to make sure every character has at least one of them! I'm so glad you enjoy the mechanical ascept of the AUs! Both TTSBC and TT have their own little things, moving parts that keep the worlds going!

I love trying to layer in foreshadowing when I can! Skizz appearing, but I purposefully didn't tag him as a character because, thanks to avian culture, he doesn't use his name, and so it's not until we get to see from his POV that we actually get confirmation that's him!

I have no idea what you're talking about with the director, tho, because she's totally dead! She died 24 years ago during the Anarchy! Any odd vocal ticks and specific dislikes for hypothesis is completely coincidental and should be, should be, should be disregarded. 😑

They do, don't they? Whoops. I guess Doc has a lot to relate to when it comes to his future sons-in-law, huh?

CUB IS THE GUY-IN-THE-CHAIR CONFIRMED!!!! AGGGH!

Thank you so much for your rambles I absolutely loved reading them!!!! 💖

#fanfic #ao3 fanfic #through the sky blue cracks #traveling thieves au #worldbuilding

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jo-harrington · 3 months

Text

As Above, So Below - Chapter 5: Via Domus

Previous Chapter: Chapter 4 - Malum Malus

Summary: You wake to find yourself in the Upside Down and discover a world-altering revelation.

Word Count: 13.8k

Pairing: Eddie Munson/Fem!Original Character (Written in 2nd Person POV - You/Your - No Use of Names of Physical Descriptors)

Warnings/Themes: Van Helsing Inspired, Kas!Eddie, Religious Themes, Criticism of Religion/Catholicism, Fate vs. Free Will, Death and Injury, Graphic Depictions of Violence, Mentions of Major Character Deaths, Grief, Mourning, Yearning, Discussion of the Upside Down, Supernatural Encounters, Angst, Smut, Fluff, Unprotected PinV Sex (he's undead it doesn't matter), Oral Sex (F Receiving), Bloodletting, Biblical and Other Literary/Media References

Note: Sorry this is a little late but this snow storm had my internet down right as I went to post. There isn't much to say but...this moment has been one 10 months in the making and I might not have edited it...but I don't care, I'm literally the proudest I can be. I'm sure there's people to tag and thank for their support. I'm so ready to sit back and reread this. I didn't write it; it just came through me like a prophecy. And that isn't condescending, it's the truth.

This series will not be for the faint of heart, nor is it something that was written with a general audience in mind. Please check the above warnings and ask yourself if you are in the correct headspace to proceed. I am happy to answer any questions via PM or Ask.

You can find my masterlist here.

Please do not interact if you are not 18+.

Enjoy!

“The devil doesn't come dressed in a red cape and pointy horns. He comes as everything you've ever wished for.” - Tucker Max, Assholes Finish First

November 6, 1983 October 15, 1987

Everything was wrong.

From a dreamless sleep, consciousness hit you like a freight train and drug you to the land of the living under its wheels, one painful mile at a time.

You were aware of every nerve, every bump and bruise, every cut.

Every bite.

Because surely there were more than just the ones on your throat now.

And when you finally opened your eyes, you burned.

Not just your body; the very essence of you sizzled and popped like hot oil in a pan.

It was overwhelming, overstimulating.

There was both an absence of feeling--of being--and an abundance of it.

Images flashed through your mind. Memories. And not just yours.

Leaving Hawkins the first time.

Kas, the brides, and their seduction and subsequent attack of you.

Billy--a different one than the one you knew now--screaming and clawing his way up a rickety wooden staircase while a creature lurked just out of sight below.

A man in tattered and bloodied white clothes, his skin burned and mottled. Blind in one eye. And a creature that met him and allowed him to--

The smell was next as you finally remembered to breathe. You swallowed great gulps of air then choked as they burned your lungs and tasted like a mix of wet, cloying mold and dry, putrid battery acid.

Finally, a high pitched ringing as your spirit finally settled back into yourself. You clenched and unclenched your hands--stretched your fingers and toes--to regain some kind of recognizable feeling back into them.

As you tried to recognize who you were now, in this body.

In this world.

Everything was wrong.

No...when you woke up, everything was different.

The first coherent thought through your head was that you were dead and this was surely hell. Proven not only by the pain and the affliction of your body and mind, but because the skies overhead flashed and burned bright red with infernal lightning.

The brides had drained you dry and this was your eternal punishment. It was the only explanation.

If you steeled yourself and turned your head, would you see your father's face--frozen in an eternal scream--staring at you?

You wrenched your eyes closed for a moment, steeled yourself to test the theory, and you winced as the bites on your neck pulled and stretched.

When you opened them again, you screamed. It was a weak, strangled sound, and echoed as you shuffled away as much as your sore body would allow.

It was not your father's face that you found beside you, but it was a face nonetheless.

Petrified.

Screaming.

Flesh half-rotting off a skull, petrified golden hair layered with soot and muck. There was a neck and torso too--arms--and the further you dragged your eyes down the body, the more decayed and damaged the bones became. The skin and flesh sloughed off.

Until they all tapered off--melted off--into bone, then into nothingness, where the ribs ended abruptly in a half-jagged, half-charred state.

It was where the ground ended too, the body teetering on the precipice.

"Mother...fuck..." you hissed and swallowed thickly.

You weakly melted into the ground again; your eyes slid shut so you could take stock of yourself once more.

Sluggishly, you returned to your senses. Head, torso, limbs all accounted for, even if they were a little worse for wear. You'd survive. You'd heal eventually...hopefully.

Before long, your abilities jumpstarted from cold at the proximity of a dead body. Great. Though you supposed you'd almost considered yourself grateful that they were returning, if not for the phantom fingers that scratched at the back of your mind; the lingering spirit that belonged to this body wanted to communicate but didn't quite know how.

You didn't have the patience to ferry the remnant of someone's soul closer towards consciousness right now.

But it was a reminder.

There were no bodies in Hell. No death in Hell.

For all intents and purposes, the damned would be considered alive.

So no, this wasn't Hell.

This was--

You forced your eyes back open and stared at the gaping, mangled maw of jagged walls that stretched and reached into the roiling, starless sky.

--an attic.

There were visible slats and support beams, boxes and furniture covered in sheets, and burnt, decayed vines clinging to the walls and along the floor. Most notable was the fact that the structure--this house--was simply broken. Shattered. Not only was the roof broken, as though a giant had torn into it--peeled the slats and shingles open and left them rent and tattered beneath their hands--to curiously peer inside, but the whole structure was as well.

The side of the floor you and the body were on tilted at an awkward angle; not unnavigable but still odd as you found the strength to hoist yourself to your feet and stumbled at the unevenness. Once you were upright, you could see the other side; across a strange valley that revealed broken beams and wide structural mouths that promised rooms below, there was a set of stairs that led downwards.

Uneasy with the minimal strength you currently possessed, you used your power to send some sort of signal down through the jagged, rotten foundation to ask the earth for help. And not just help, you asked for a sign of where you were and what happened to you. However, you were immediately turned away. A hiss at the back of your mind, that settled adjacent to that incessant scratching, warning you from trying again.

This earth was not like the earth you connected with regularly. It was incompatible with you, but only just so.

There was a blink of a thought in your head that you could make it bend to your will if you really wanted. If you were tempted enough.

But temptation was what got you here, wasn't it? Your jeans were still unbuttoned and you felt some kind of internal, medieval shame as you fixed them and fastened them back up. Shame, not only because the brides had fucked you if you could call it that, but because they'd gotten the better of you. They'd used your weaknesses against you--used Eddie against you--and now they'd stolen you away to the Upside Down.

That's what this place was right?

And it wasn't a stretch to guess the why's here either.

Kas had used them to bring you here so he could finally be rid of you.

Well, you weren't going to sit here and wait for your death like a lamb to the slaughter. If Kas wanted to kill you, you were gonna put up a fight.

The fires of wrath were stoked inside you and you let them restore your strength and fuel your journey onwards. You readied yourself to make the jump across the broken floor.

Suddenly, the scratching at the back of your mind got horribly loud. A voice, a young man's voice, strained and croaked inside of you.

"Help me. God, please help me."

The broken remnants of the being you'd woken beside finally found its voice.

You scowled as resentment decided to mingle with your wrath.

"No one's going to help you," you grunted and shuffled your foot into the side of its rib cage. You kicked the body into the gulch below and as you took your leap, you delighted in the sounds of the bones shattering as it impacted the ground below. "God is dead."

The descent was precarious.

Despite the strength you had gathered, your body ached and your movements were clumsy. It was like you left a part of yourself behind and struggled to continue without it. Additionally, as you progressed along the path, you found that the house itself was broken in ways that defied logic.

Hallways switched back upon themselves or dropped down into a deep burning abyss, floors tilted upwards and then stopped abruptly, doors opened to brick walls, and then, your favorite, a ticking grandfather clock seemingly floated in the air on its own.

Did physics exist in the Upside Down? Gravity? Or was it like Superman, where differences developed without the interference of a certain color sun?

Eventually you made it to what you believed to be the ground floor, and although there was a looming sense of dread that only got worse the further along you walked, your footsteps felt sure and stable. It felt better, safer.

There was a crack in one of the walls you passed where you spotted the shadow of tree limbs, and just up ahead you could see the sky over a half-demolished wall.

Once you rounded this corner and that to reach your supposed freedom, you found yourself faced with what could only be described as an altar. Some site of a wicked ceremony. The walls of the house split open and revealed the expansive red and grey waste of the outdoors, but instead of finding dead grass and trees like you thought, there were structures made of stone and vines and twisted tentacles, just like you remembered from the tunnels.

Towers.

Stalagmites.

Pillars.

Something rustled behind you and you turned on your heel to find the source of the noise, only to find the dank hall you'd just exited empty. It rustled behind you again and you spun back to face the pillars, but you were still alone.

You were being taunted now, teased. Surely that was it, wasn't it? This was a game; you survived the pitfalls and traps of this nightmarish house and now the hunt was truly on?

"I know you like to play with your food motherfucker," you hissed aloud. "Let's play."

You progressed confidently, unwilling to let yourself falter as the ground underfoot transitioned from wooden floorboards to decorative checker tile to uneven earth and the air became heavy with ominous anticipation.

Despite that, you took a moment to inspect the pillars as you passed them, only to be met with an even stranger sight.

Chrissy. Fred. Patrick.

They were eerily still, petrified even; faces serene, as though they were sleeping. The pillars seemed to encapsulate them; a wing melted into the stone here, claws elongated into branches there.

There were four pillars...but three Brides.

You vaguely recalled a flash of Max's memories, of her running through a red landscape almost exactly like this; you took the chance and reached out to touch the empty pillar, only for your suspicions to be confirmed. It was meant for her. The pillars were the final resting places for all four of the victim's of Vecna's curse.

A place for their bodies to be displayed like trophies, signifying his triumph.

It was a sickening thought, but brought about further revelation that this place didn't belong to Kas, but the Lich himself.

The Creel House.

"I was right," you huffed a small laugh of victory. Your hunt for Kas had led here; if only fate hadn't tempted you off the path to the cemetery, you would have been that much closer to defeating Kas now.

Fresh off a small win and with your body primed for psychometry, you moved and touched each pillar curiously. You witnessed each Bride's transition from the husk of a body to the monstrous beings they were now. They hadn't meant to be the puppets of an atrocious master when they were resurrected; it had all been done in an act of defiance. Their forms had been carefully crafted by his clawed hands, and life breathed back into them by a hopeful heart.

That heart was broken here too; those same clawed hands were formed on the very floor behind you...

"No," you tried to shake the thought off you. You didn't want that; didn't need that. Didn't need to empathize with Kas...right?

Still...the intrusion continued.

You wanted to connect to this earth didn't you? So you must gain all manner of information, whether you want it or not.

More images flashed against your will; you didn't need to touch the silt and soil beneath your feet for it to reach out and touch you. The blood that soaked this ground leeched up from the depths to provide you hair-raising clarity of the brutality committed a mere few feet from where you stood. No care had been taken when a body on the brink of death was implanted with bones and teeth and claws. You watched the flashes in unblinking horror until screams suddenly echoed in your ears, terrible and ear-splitting; you were witnessing a transformation--a metamorphosis--from something to nothing then back to something again.

"No!" you shouted and your voice echoed, into the eerie night. Wings flapped and a creature roared in the distance. The images fled along with them, and you heaved several labored breaths as you settled back into yourself.

There was a rustle behind you again, and you froze; you were so lost by the intrusion of the birth of a monster in your mind that you didn't notice said monster approach you.

This was it.

You'd faced monsters before, countless times. Of course, you'd always been armed with weapons, your powers. Now you'd been stripped bare; the brides had rid you of your weapons, and this dastardly dimension had denied you access to many of your abilities as you recovered from your weakened state.

Unless they were useful to the Upside Down itself, so it seemed.

Still, your eyes honed in on a glint of silver beside you. Brilliant amongst the squalor of the Upside Down and folded neatly in Chrissy's claws that rested across her chest:

Your crucifix.

Your hand shot towards the cross of its own volition, but as your fingers caressed the carved hyacinths, you suddenly doubted yourself.

Was Chrissy's grasp on it truly that strong or was it just a trick of the mind? If you couldn't even resist her and Patrick...how could you possibly fight Kas?

Except, you'd already fought Kas hadn't you? Already got the one-up on him. That's why he'd relied on so many cheap shots to get to you. You would make it through this, with your teeth gnashing, your bare hands, and your raw faith. Or you would die trying.

"Lord, I am not worthy to receive you," you whispered as you pried the relic out of the harpy's hands. "But only say the word and my soul shall be healed."

Footsteps slunk closer to you, audibly clearer now, and you readied yourself, focused on all the holy light within the sludge of your corruptible human body. When they finally stopped just inches behind you, you could feel cold breath cascade over you, and you knew it was time.

You pivoted on your heel, sneakers crunching the ground beneath them into dust, and you raised your hand to brandish your cross at your assailant. His hand clashed against its other side and stopped it dead between both of your faces; your eyes went wide as he gripped it tight and it burst into flames in front of your eyes.

You wrenched your hand away and backed into Chrissy's body as Kas let out a mighty, wretched wail.

You were so singularly focused--horrified--as you watched the symbol of your family's legacy burn and melt in his hands, so expectant of his form being consumed by holy flames as he crumpled and bent at the waist and screamed in agony, that you didn't really look at him until it was too late.

The fire extinguished suddenly and Kas flung the remnants of your crucifix to the side, and as he stood, you could feel all the blood rush to your head. There was a buzzing in your ears and you swore the dark circles that crowded your vision were only to spare you from the sight.

Whatever vision you had in your head of Kas was gone...and in its place was suddenly something both old and new at the same time.

There was a smirk carved into his face, so smug and triumphant, and made only more pronounced by the deep scars that went from the corners of his mouth and back along his jaw towards his ears. Still, his enticing lips twitched, failing to bely a smile. His deep eyes were locked with yours, abyss-like, but warm and welcoming in this otherwise unforgiving world as he stared at you with a fondness that you couldn't fathom.

He was tall--taller than you remembered--and even taller still as your legs failed you and you collapsed to your knees before him; he took two rapid steps forward, hands stretched out as though he would try to catch you before you hit the ground. All you could focus on were the sharpened, blood-stained points of his fingers though, and when you flinched as they got too close for comfort, he stopped in his tracks.

Your breathing got heavy and your shoulders and chest heaved the longer you witnessed him. Because it truly was the witnessing of something beautiful and terrible, wasn't it? Something you'd wished for over and over again until you simply couldn't take it anymore.

"No, no, no," you couldn't stop your mouth from its fumbling repetition. "Nononono. No. N-no, no, no!" Over again the word erupted from you until you were shouting. Until you were sobbing.

You covered your eyes with one hand to stop yourself from seeing, and your mouth with the other to keep what remained of your soul from spilling out.

You shook with grief--three years worth of grief that only became more surmountable with each day that passed--then anger.

How dare he, how dare Kas use this final thing against you, how dare you let him?

But that was just an excuse wasn't it? Some kind of excuse so you wouldn't have to face the reality that was just on the other side of your hands. One that you would cling onto to help your poor heart survive.

You would deny it, until you couldn't any longer.

"Sweetheart." You shook your head at the decadent rasp of his voice; your ears strained to catch more but you couldn't handle it. Tears began to leak from your eyes and collect in the creases of your fingers as you pressed them harder into your face. "Angel, please."

The urge to roll your eyes at the ironic nickname battled against the need to bask in it.

You could feel him get closer, feel his massive form invade your space. Your aura buzzed excitedly as it brushed against his with the proximity and your heart beat in your ears; your body knew what your mind refused to accept. It made you feel lightheaded.

Don't fucking pass out.

The claws worked their way beneath your fingers and you resisted as much as you could until you simply couldn't hold on any longer.

And once they were away, there was nothing that you could have done to stop yourself from responding to him.

The you that you had been just seconds earlier no longer existed. That being, forged by resentment and pain and grief and the will to succeed beyond all hope, was torn apart by those claws--gently peeled apart bit by bit--and as your eyes opened, you were suddenly the you that you were before. Or maybe, more accurately, the you that you were beside everything.

Despite everything.

The being that only existed with him.

You.

You were here with him.

Eddie.

And he was here with you.

Alone together and together alone.

No one else existed but the two of you as you opened your eyes and your gaze washed over him once again.

Lightning flashed overhead as you absorbed the sight before you.

Hands. Eddie's hands. Calloused from hours of guitar playing and scarred from that one time he got too eager pulling a stouffer's lasagna out of the oven and forgot the gloves. Only now they were scarred further, with lines along his phalanges and razor-sharp talons at the tips of them.

Hair. Eddie's hair. Soft and curled just so and sometimes shiny, but oftentimes just a frizzy mess from head banging so hard. It would get in his mouth, leaving him spitting and sputtering as he got some idea mid-headbang. Only now it was held up and out of his face by a fluffy green scrunchie, and only his bangs and a few loose pieces framed his features.

Face. Eddie's face. One that looked at you with so much relief and gentle love. Your memories couldn't hold a candle to having him here. Your eyes went blurry with tears again at the fact that he was actually here just inches from you. His eyes and lashes and his round nose and his kissable lips. Lips you needed to kiss like you needed air. Only those lips started to move to form words again and as they did, you spotted the sharp tips of fangs.

He looked the same, exactly the same...but simultaneously different in every way that counted.

Time stopped.

You thought about being in the trailer with Chrissy and Patrick, all the words that you had excused in the moment, as you allowed yourself to be tempted by Kas.

In actuality...had it really been Eddie? Words that had been borderline insidious suddenly took on a much more intimate connotation.

"You're not real." You breathed shakily, one last attempt at pulling back the veil at some trick of the mind. "I can't...I can't..."

On the other hand, you remembered the graveyard, the way Eddie had been there in a way...beyond your sight, refusing to be seen by you. Refusing to be known by you. And again countless other times. Including the day he'd...

"I can't look at you," you said weakly. "I'm not supposed to look at you."

What had he said to you then? That he'd never really left? That he would wait...as long as it took...and here he was now. That hadn't been Eddie; how could this suddenly be him? He was...

"And why not?" he chuckled gently. "I think we both deserved to see one another; I've crossed the oceans of time just to see you again."

"That's..." you stared at him in disbelief. Tremors wracked your body and his gaze went from fond to worried again.

Your mind went a mile a minute trying to come up with something, some way to deny all of this. Rapid fire, you thought. About Vecna and the Upside Down and the earthquakes. You thought about Wayne and Dustin and Max. Over and over, ideas flashed as all the pieces finally clicked together. Vampires that weren't vampires, and the Brides; the trailer and the visions and the grave and...and...and...

He was alive.

"That's..." You began to laugh, the small shakes of a giggle turning into big, bright guffaws that shook you. You grabbed his face with your hands and squished his cheeks together, gleefully watching as it smooshed and shifted in the way only his play-doh-like features could. "That's not the quote, you big dumb idiot."

Home had been an abstract concept for you for some time.

For most of your life, when you thought of home, you thought of your Nonna's house. Her flat, just downstairs from yours; you spent most nights there anyway, your father's childhood bedroom repurposed for you. You had a home in the dinners you'd cooked together and late nights where you'd watch Johnny Carson until it was time to hold hands and pray together before bed. Home meant turning the key in the lock of her door and her giving you big cheek kisses.

Tesoro di Nonna.

Her treasure. She was your treasure too, your best friend, but she, herself, was not your home. At least not anymore.

You found that when you came to Hawkins. When you met Eddie. From the moment you met him, he had been that warm place of comfort and love. When you left, and even when you believed him to be dead, going home meant returning to Hawkins.

Returning to him.

So when you both overcame the euphoria which accompanied the realization that you had found each other once again, and he said "let's go home," you knew that there wasn't far to go.

You were already there.

There was something about returning home after a long time away, though. Things changed and it didn't take very long for you to notice the changes in Eddie.

He held your hand as you walked through the barren waste of the Upside Down, and it was actually quite a long walk. Practically across the entirety of Hawkins, and you were truly in awe that it actually was Hawkins. You walked down familiar streets, through the town center that was fully intact unlike its decimated state in the real world, and Eddie even pointed out the windows of your old apartment over the deli, as if you forgot.

Very few words were shared between you at first, aside from short and fond little tidbits to reminisce old times spend together--something that you'd constantly been doing since your return; your heart ached to think that your ghost had followed him around, both in Hawkins and here, reminding him that you'd left him to this fate.

There was not much more conversation than that though, and while you basked in the sweet memories, especially being reunited, you couldn't help but wonder why he was so...uncharacteristically quiet. The Eddie you knew was never at a loss for words; why was he holding back asking you questions? Telling you how much he missed you?

You held back your own thoughts, questions, and admissions too if you were being honest. Something about being so open in this dimension, something about the strange din of silence due to the lack of life made you feel...strange.

You wondered if he felt the same way?

If you could feel the creatures that shuffled just out of your line of sight, given what you knew about the hive mind that existed between them, you knew Eddie could as well.

But if that was the case, he didn't show it. You supposed Kas he was the master of this realm; he didn't need to be afraid of it.

In fact, the more you observed him, the more you noticed how at ease he was here. He'd always been confident walking around Hawkins, shoulders straight and head held high despite the suspicious stares and whispers that seemed to follow him just because his last name was Munson. But now Hawkins--the Upside Down--seemed to bend to him the further you walked, proving his mastery over it.

Down one street, the tentacle vines slithered and shifted as Eddie led you ahead, and when you dared to look back they returned to their original places. Shadows at the corners of your eyes shifted as he pointed something out to you with a fond smile and a laugh. Finally, when you reached the woods, gnarled and dark as they were, his presence seemed to cause a group of bats that had been resting there to stir.

Instinctually, you flinched, divine sense tingling in response to their unnatural energy as they began to fly overhead; Eddie even squeezed your hand to calm you down, but your defenses were up now. You readied yourself for an attack as they circled and swooped down a little too close for comfort.

You watched, dumbstruck, as Eddie tsked and then reached up with his free hand; one of the bats got lower and its many flailing tails brushed against his fingertips before it screeched and then soared away. You felt that there was something more to it, though; there was something else there as his fingers twitched against them.

A yearning, maybe; a desire to...what? Join them?

"It's alright," he reassured you softly, an undertone of happiness in his voice. "See, they're harmless."

"Harmless?" you scoffed in disbelief, having witnessed their devastation first hand. He looked back towards you and lowered his arm, brow furrowed in confusion at your tone; you felt a strange rumble, an undercurrent, just beneath the surface of his skin as he flexed his hand around yours again. "I..."

"Sweetheart. Just trust me. What are you--"

Like that, the illusion was broken.

It hadn't taken that long. A couple of hours, mostly spent in silence and the overwhelming awe of being in one another's presence again, but suddenly you realized he was different.

Of course, you were different too.

You never really fathomed a moment like this; you'd always thought--hoped--you'd be reunited in Heaven. That everything would work itself out there. All wounds healed, all sins forgiven.

But this was not Heaven, and you'd never imagined your reunion like this.

You looked at him again, really looked at him this time. Tried to look past your Eddie, to see what had become of him here in the Upside Down. You started with his hands, the long scars you noticed just a short while ago, and you traced a finger along them. It was almost cathartic as you felt a phantom ache in your own hand, as you began to truly digest and understand what had happened to him.

Dustin had refused to tell you...and with good reason.

The ache burned through you the further you went. His arm was covered with the sleeve of his leather jacket, but still your fingers traveled, touch penetrating the worn leather; he looked and felt...bulkier somehow. Even his skin looked too tight on him. Gone was your noodley, human boyfriend and in his place...something else. Broader shoulders, a thicker torso, and a slightly elongated neck that proudly bore scars as well.

Just like your own bites, you thought, as Eddie's aches were momentarily replaced by your own. You both displayed the healed remnants of shredded, devoured flesh.

The memory of the pain they once brought him practically sang through his skin the further you went and you couldn't help but listen and absorb it. Unlike your scars, even the most recent ones from the Brides, that had been the product of your will to survive, Eddie's were the evidence of something dastardly that sought to destroy and consume. In fact, they had succeeded; you felt the burn of a thousand mouths filled with sharp little teeth ripping through flesh. Ripping through his flesh.

The longer you held on, the more you felt and understood. Mouths led to claws, consumption turned to torture, and eventually he was ripped further--pulled apart--until he was left broken, raw, and screaming.

Just like you'd seen back at the Creel House.

Vecna cut him open and emptied everything that made him him, and filled him with darkness and malice and--

You wrenched your hands away from his and rubbed them together as they tingled, suddenly numb. All of the echoes of his pain vanished and instead you just felt...conflict.

"What's wrong?" Eddie stepped closer, worry etched deeper creases into his face now. "What did you do?"

"I--" you flinched away from him and he paused.

This wasn't just Eddie anymore, your Eddie who survived a few scrapes and bruises and came out of any conflict--large or small--with a few choice words for his assailant and a story to tell.

This was Kas, forged through the burning flames of Hell to fight. To destroy.

And if not by name, then by acts.

Acts done with Vecna's influence, at first, and now atrocities in their own right.

Eddie always knew when your mind buzzed with a thousand thoughts; he'd say that you were thinking too loud. Time hadn't changed that, it seemed. He still knew exactly how to read you.

"Listen," he started carefully, treating you like a spooked animal because that's exactly what you were. "I know you have questions. We just need to get home first."

Unfortunately, you were also a stubborn piece of shit.

"Where is home?" you questioned. "What...Eddie...how?"

"I'll tell you everything," he promised. "But you're hurt...and I'm sure you're hungry. Thirsty? I could only bring you so far before--"

"Before?" you urged.

"The hungrier I get," he began. "The harder it is to control everything. Control myself. I couldn't be around you like that. But now you're awake...and I have to get you home. We need...to get home..."

You wanted him to explain it all to you; you'd seen the fangs, witnessed the Brides and other vampires feeding, it wasn't a secret that he must hunger for blood too. You just needed more. But he needed something too. There was a singular, desperate focus that edged his words--the need to get you home, get you safe--and you knew you weren't going to get answers unless you obliged his request.

If he could be patient...so could you.

You gestured ahead and the two of you continued your journey.

However, you made sure to keep your hands to yourself this time, unwilling to inadvertantly see more of his becoming, and Eddie clearly noticed.

"My hand is pretty cold," he said after a short stretch of silence. His eyes slid over to you and he wiggled his fingers. "Sure is a shame that there's nothing to warm it up."

You scoffed and your heart ached; this was how he got you to hold his hand in your coat pocket during the winter as you'd venture out and about. It was his thing, refusing to wear his gloves so he wouldn't fumble with them when he wanted to smoke, while also taking the opportunity to feel your hand against his.

It was one of your favorite bits of attention that he gave you; he was still your Eddie. You knew that, and deep down inside you only wanted to know that.

But things were different.

"Ed--"

"What? You don't love me anymore or something?" he teased; however, when he glanced over at you, there was a real worry in his eyes. "Don't want to hold my hand? Hmm? That it?"

"Come on," you scoffed. "Don't. You just said we'd talk once we got home, wherever home is. We've been walking forever."

"Well we're not there yet," he bristled and laughed; it was a bitter, condescending chuckle. One you'd never heard come out of him before; not to you, at least.

"Can't you just tell me where we're going? To...Rick's or..."

"It isn't in Hawkins."

"You can't expect us to walk to Muncie," you attempted a joke.

There was a tense pause and he turned his head downward and quickened his pace.

"Don't worry," he said, tone stiff. "We're almost there."

The confidence you'd noticed earlier was suddenly gone, and as he walked, he seemed to make himself smaller.

You really fucked this up.

You tried to reach out for him, abandoning your resolve of keeping him at arms length, but he failed to notice.

He just kept walking.

Before long, the town seemed to melt away.

Everything did.

Gone were the buildings, the trees, even the roads. Until there was a vast grey nothingness, accentuated by floating particles and a swirling, cursed sky. If you thought the Upside Down was a wasteland before, this only solidified that thought.

After some time, even looking back didn't seem to help things; there were no milestones that you could ascertain. Just flat terrain, the sky, and the horizon.

And Eddie.

You tried to stave away the hateful thoughts that this was a trap, that there really was a Kas out there and he was manipulating you again. Or, even worse, that Eddie was the one manipulating you.

What good did those thoughts do? Except negate the elation that still bubbled hopefully within you, elation you were also trying to hold back.

You were here now; he could kill you any time if he wanted. You weren't dead. Yet.

Lost in thought, you failed to notice that he stopped, and you walked right into his back. You shook yourself off and stepped around him, only to find a decrepit-looking ranch-style house. The attached carport's roof was partially collapsed, the siding a little cockeyed, and the mailbox was broken; it looked unremarkable, and still...

"We're here," he pressed his lips together and gestured towards the house. "Home sweet home."

"I don't recognize this place," you remarked as he led you forward.

"You wouldn't," he shook his head. "I never brought you here; it doesn't exist anymore, actually. They tore it down to build some fancy condos in...what...80? 81? Only place you're gonna find it now is up here."

He tapped against the side of his head and then waved his hand around.

"This is what it looked like the last time I saw it. Broken, a little sad. Right before it came down.”

"Why is it here then?" you asked.

He sighed and looked around.

"Let's just get inside."

The interior of the house was worlds different.

Well...comparatively.

It was bigger on the inside, the walls somehow taller than they had been just moments before you stepped through the threshold. You entered into an open concept living room that was attached to the kitchen, not unlike the trailer. Both rooms were wood paneled and there was a carpet that was split-pea green, making the already drab atmosphere darker.

Eddie brushed past you to get to the kitchen and you moved ahead to the sofa, weariness of the day finally catching up to you. You collapsed onto the brown faux-suede loveseat and laid your head against the granny-square blanket that was draped over the back; beneath the musty, mildewy smell of the Upside Down, you could faintly detect something lighter and sweeter.

Your mom wore orange blossom perfume just like this. Aqua Manda. Your father brought a bottle home for her on her birthday one year.

You cleared your throat and chalked it up to a trick of the mind; you were tired and hurt, of course little things like that would escape your psyche.

Eddie shuffled around in the kitchen for a few minutes and when returned, his hands were filled with packaged snack cakes, a six-pack of grape crush, a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, and a roll of cloth bandages. He fell onto the loveseat beside you and dropped his plunder between you.

"Wayne," he stated simply and gestured to everything, as though that explained it. Maybe it did, to him; on your walk you figured that everyone knew that Eddie was here and alive, Wayne included. It didn't make you as angry as you expected yourself to be. Not as angry as you'd been when you read about Kas in the Dungeon Master's Guide.

What use was it to get angry, when you just wanted answers?

You stared at Eddie expectantly, hoping that he would start talking, but instead, he moved to pick a package of Raspberry Zingers from between you. You watched, in slight awe, as he flicked his thumb against the plastic and the sharpness of his claw sliced through it quicker than any knife. He did the same with one of the pop cans, puncturing the aluminum instead of using the tab.

You, knowing these were some of his favorites and having seen him inhale more of the sweet treats than you dared count, expected him to tuck in. Instead he placed the open package and can in your hands with a longing look, careful not to touch your skin, before he went on to unwrap the bandages.

You said his name gently and he ignored you.

"Eddie," you dropped the zingers and grabbed his hand to stop him. He was the one to flinch now, but regardless, he looked you in the eye. "I need you...to tell me where we are, and tell me what's going on. Everything. We're here now...you promised."

His eyes darted between yours rapidly; if he felt that your thoughts were loud before, his were blaring right now. Broadcasting panic and worry; confusion as to what to say and where to begin.

He opened his mouth and inhaled, but his sharp fangs glinted in the low light of the room and your gaze, naturally, was drawn to them. He planted a hand over his mouth and after a second, rubbed over the scars that stretched over his cheeks.

Finally his hand dropped to his lap and he shifted in his seat; he leant back against the cushions and got comfortable.

"Before I lived with Wayne," he started, "before mom died, we lived here. It wasn't big; big enough for the two of us, a little less when my dad was still out. Everything looks a little bigger, but I guess everything does when you're younger. This...this is just how I remember it.

"That's what this place runs on. Memories. Feelings. It...generates them but also cannibalizes them. Nancy Wheeler said something...before...about it actually being 1983 here. Really, it can be any place and time you want. Henry...Vecna...showed me that. So when I started needing space...away from him, I came as far as I could past the outer limits of Hawkins and I made this place. Where he would have a harder time finding me. Where I could be alone.

"With you."

"Me?" you questioned.

"I can't explain it," he shook his head. "I can't explain any of it. It's...fuzzy. Who I am now...and who I was before...I'm not the same person.

"I was hurt so badly when you left...I thought I hated you for a while. But then...you were there, in everything I did. I had hope because you gave me hope Sweetheart. Every day I thought about getting in that van and...finding a way to find you. Some way. But I had patience and I could wait for you to come back. On the toughest days, though, you were there. You were there when the blankets on the bed felt especially warm. Or the frozen lasagna I put in the oven tasted especially cheesy. Or when I'd have a bad dream and go to get cookies out of the cupboard. You were there, and it was ok. I could hold on until you made it back to me.

"You were even out there at Skull Rock with me," he smiled. "The night...after Patrick died. I was wet and cold and so god damn traumatized and when I closed my eyes, I swore I could feel you there. I heard you tell me it would all be alright. You're the reason I didn't give up."

You knew that feeling well; more than you could really put to words.

He went on and gave you his account, his perspective and feelings, about what happened last year. Told you about witnessing Chrissy and Patrick's deaths, about running and hiding, about being hunted. He stopped to make a joke about how brave “the kids” were, braver than he was. And then his tone turned fearful and distant when he explained how he decided to be brave for them in return, brave for Dustin.

You of course knew some, but hearing all of it, especially the role he played in it all, was devastating. The what-if's returned; what if you hadn't left, what if you could have been here to save him--save all of them--what if he hadn't died. Of course the last one was void now. Still, as he closed his eyes in pain and you felt it choke you up as his emotions projected outwards again—voluntarily this time, instead of you plucking pieces off of him—you thought:

What if you could have spared him this suffering?

"He took everything," Eddie whispered. "I thought the bats were bad enough. The pain. They were just hungry but the pain. The others were supposed to kill him, to chop his head off or something, and the bats fell and the pain stopped. It was supposed to be over.

"But then he found me."

"Vecna."

"I thought I was a goner," he bared his teeth painfully, somewhere between a grimace and a smile really. "Death took forever, sweetheart. I do not recommend it. Not a bit. I don't even think I died. One minute Henderson was crying over me and the next, Vecna was tearing through my head. I always thought...well, you know when Obi-Wan tells the storm trooper these are not the droids you're looking for? I thought that I could resist that. Turns out, I was just as weak-minded as the rest of them."

He recounted his torture, the mental and the physical, and you felt it again. More acutely this time. His memories projected onto you felt fuzzy and strange, though, as if he hadn't even been there for it all himself. You recognized, through the echoes of agony, that was only so much the human mind could take, and Eddie toed the line of survival through sheer luck. He had gone through Hell, and came out alive in the end; how had he done it?

"It's because I had you," he explained. He leant in closer, voice hushed like he had a secret; he made the edges of your being feel tingly with his proximity. "Just like I told you. You were there; I know it. I held on because of you."

"Please, Eddie," you whispered. Please...what? You didn't know.

Please don't try to lessen the guilt.

Please don't try to make you feel better that you left him to this fate.

"It's true," he continued. "Vecna could take everything away. Made me hate everything, everyone. Made me kill for him. He made me his monster, his beast, his weapon..."

You swallowed painfully. How karmically poetic; a weapon of good and a weapon of evil...in love.

Fate was cruel.

"...But he could never take you away from me."

You saw it then, a flash. Some recollection of his, some coping mechanism that he'd used to survive. You saw through Eddie's eyes, felt his body; there was something quite...off about him. Shoulders broader, arms longer, fingers wet with blood.

Wings? You could feel them jutting from his shoulder blades. But he didn't have wings...

And in front of him, instead of some poor innocent soul...there you were. Strange, once again, seeing a version of you that you didn't recognize. She looked...younger...more lively than the one you saw in Billy's mind. She was smiling, eyes bright.

Speaking of eyes, you could see his reflection in your own eyes; you strained to decipher it, because it simply did not look like Eddie.

Not the Eddie of your memory. Not the Eddie who sat before you now.

You gasped and it was gone, and you were back in the living room with Eddie again. You stared at him, really took stock of him, trying to reconcile the different images of him that floated in your mind to truly accept who he was in front of you.

Broken but seemingly still whole. Alive.

Human...but not.

And that's what made you hesitate.

"Eddie," you licked your lips nervously. "Dustin said...that you couldn't leave." His brow twitched.

"I can't," he answered through gritted teeth, entire demeanor changing in the blink of an eye. He clenched and unclenched his hands, grasping at something that was beyond the fabric of reality. "I'm stuck here."

"Do you know why?"

"No. It's driving me crazy; I just want...to leave. Vecna couldn't leave either. He needed Max."

He noticed the way you stiffened at his words and his eyes went wide with fear. All of the tension that had built up within him was released again and he held his hands out to prove he was harmless.

"I don't...I'm not...I don't think that's what it is for me. The Upside Down doesn't want me to leave; I'm just not strong enough somehow. Not ready. I feel like...if I can figure out what I need, it'll let me go. I just don't know what that is.

"I did enough to save lil Red, though, twice," he ran a finger over his heart in a cross, in promise. "Not gonna just throw that all away and kill her."

"She's afraid that you are."

"Well, you'll just tell her I'm not."

"You've killed other people though," you rebuffed, almost too quickly.

It was at the forefront of your mind. Your dumb boyfriend who fed stray cats and raccoons around the trailer park...ordering an army of dark creatures to kill; it didn't make sense.

"You've killed too," he scoffed, a challenge in his eyes. "Don't act like I haven't watched you out there, angel. I've seen everything; this whole time."

"I thought you were a vicious monster," you argued.

"Who says I'm not?" That threw you for a loop. "I've told you my story, it's your turn now."

"No, we're not done with you," you reached across and jabbed a finger into his chest. "You send the bats...the Brides--nice name by the way--" You sneered sarcastically.

"Thanks," he grinned widely. "Got it all from Sven."

"--into Hawkins every day to feed. To kill."

That made him falter.

"No," he denied. "Not every day."

"Every day."

"Every three days, every week. Not every day."

"Tell me how that's possible," you narrowed your eyes. "When your friends back in Hawkins have gone out every day since I've been back for their clean up brigade, and they've been attacked every time. I've heard about it and I've seen it."

Eddie got quiet; he blinked once and his eyes became unfocused. He stared through you for what felt like ages and at some point you contemplated waving a hand in front of his face to get him to come back to you. You were about to raise your hand to do just that when a thin, opaque membrane slid sideways across his eyes, and then retracted back into the corners of them.

You thought it was a trick of the low light for a moment, then it happened again. A blink, just like a bird did with their third eyelid.

"What the fu--"

"They haven't," he interrupted you, consciousness casually sliding back into his body like he hadn't just vacated it. "They've only been leaving through the gates when I tell them to. It's been three days."

He shifted and shook the sleeve of his jacket further up his arm to reveal his wrist, then carefully unfastened the watch that sat there.

"They need to feed," he explained as he fiddled with the buttons. "I need...I need to feed again too. Otherwise I don't have control. And I need to be able to control them. They take their fill, and whatever they can spare, they bring to me. Since I can't leave. What uh...what day is it?"

"The fifteenth," you answered stiffly.

"Of?"

"...October."

"Hmmm..."

"What?"

"Guess I hadn't...nevermind." He cleared his throat. His hand shot out and grasped your wrist, then he carefully fastened the watch on your arm. "There. They're supposed to go out tonight and then you can see for yourself. Three days. Wayne will be by then too; I'll ask him to bring you your things. I know you left them behind."

"Because you...because your Brides cornered me...they...Fred...Chrissy...ugh..." You wrenched your hand from his grasp and scrubbed them over your face. "I...Eddie...I need to know why...why you---"

"I think I've told you enough," he interjected with an air of finality. "I've been trying to get to you, trying to find you, ever since I saw you back in Hawkins through their eyes. And now you're here with me where you belong, and it's time I got some answers too, sweetheart. It's been long enough. I deserve to know the truth."

So you told him.

Eddie was right, he deserved to know the truth, and you'd been itching to tell him since the moment he kissed you after your very first date.

Now was the chance to get it all off your chest.

You told him everything, and not just the condensed version that you told Mary Victoria. You bared your cursed soul to, probably, the only person on earth that had ever seen you. Really and truly seen you.

Despite all that time apart, he still saw you as though no time had passed at all.

He had no qualms interjecting when you told him about your family history and about the curse. He questioned everything and you had no doubt that if it wasn't for the conditions you were in now--if life had not been as cruel to the two of you as it had been--he would have had his Hellfire notebook open and been furiously writing ideas for his next campaign.

Better yet, he would be the one figuring out the way to break it. He would have every fantasy book from the Hawkins Library checked out and spread across the floor, just to save you.

When you got to the more contemporary parts of your story, when you filled in all the gaps in your life that you left when he first got to know you, he was pensive and empathetically quiet. He still made his little jokes here and there, tried to make you laugh at the parts where all you wanted to do was cry, and he didn't hesitate to bridge the gap and hold your hand when you needed to find the strength to keep going.

And keep going was all you did.

For hours.

You told him about every monster you faced, every demise you escaped, every person who used you as a tool and held your salvation over your head to get you to act on their behalf.

Your story couldn't hold a candle to his when it came to personal agony, but he made you feel like everything you'd endured was just as soul-splitting.

Maybe it was.

But this...getting everything out in the open...it was so freeing.

Gone were the shadowy secrets that lurked in the corners of your mind, gone was all the doubt you felt in yourself.

You cracked your chest open, pried out every rusting nail you had driven into you to keep it shut, and let Eddie see all of you--see your heart--and still he stared at you with awe and resplendent devotion in his eyes.

Just like he always had.

"Not gonna lie sweetheart," he started once you'd reached a lull in the story. "That was all, uh...pretty fucking metal."

"Fuck you," you slapped the back of your hand against his chest.

"All this time you let me go on about demons and the devil and Hellfire," his tone was teasing and a smile threatened the corners of his mouth; he couldn't fight it for long and neither could you. "And really you were out here studying the Lesser Key of Solomon and the Necronomicon for fun?"

"Not for fun. For survival" He grabbed your hand and held it against his chest, used his leverage to tug you closer. He stared at you in awe.

"My girlfriend! A real life paladin!"

"God damn it Eddie!" You giggled.

"Protecting the masses, no wonder you wanted to play as a rogue, you would have been bored as a paladin. Can you smite people?"

"I swear to--yes, I guess so."

"So many secrets! And then you told me all of your little stories and lessons--"

"Eddie I swear.”

"--let me believe you fucked the Mothman?"

"Excuse me," you erupted into a cackle. "You came to that conclusion all on your own."

He stared at you with hooded eyes and a fond gaze, humming his doubt.

You shifted the hand that he held, moved your palm across his chest from over his jacket to the thin, threadbare t-shirt he wore underneath. At first, you felt for his heartbeat, to reassure you one last time that it was really him...that he was really alive.

It was a flutter, but it was there. A soft thum pum, thum pum that transferred from his chilled skin, through the shirt, and into yours. His hand enclosed your wrist and squeezed tightly, and you wondered if he was doing the same. Feeling your pulse, making sure you were really there too.

He huffed a breath as you shifted closer; your fingers brushed against something hard that was just under the collar of the shirt as you had made your little search, and upon closer inspection, you discovered a cross on a silver chain.

Your necklace.

"You kept it?" you asked.

"Mmhmm." You shook his hand off your wrist and you ran your thumb over the tiny metal flowers; your crucifix might have been gone but this was still here. "The day you left...I was so upset I threw it. Threw it in some random corner of the trailer. When I realized that it was one of the last things I had left of you I went to try and find it, only to realize it was gone. I kicked myself, cried to Wayne...I was so fucking stupid.

"Then after everything, after Vecna was gone and I healed Max back up...I found it. Here in the Upside Down of all places. Must have fallen through when the gate opened up...but it made its way back to me. Just like you."

"You're a sap," you whispered.

"Guess what? So are you."

"I am," you laughed. You felt yourself choke up then, happiness turning to sorrow in an instant. Well, maybe it was still happiness…just the sad kind. "Hmmm."

"What is it?"

"Nothing, nothing," you cleared your throat to try and let it go, but it got the better of you and tears began to prickle at the corners of your eyes.

You couldn’t help yourself, you touched him again. You’d denied yourself for too long; you needed to be as close to him as you could for as long as you could. You touched his face. Beneath his bangs, over the crest of his eyes, ran a finger over his lips, even shoved your fingers over his fangs to inspect them, to see how dangerous they were, much to his displeasure.

“Don’t,” he hissed. “I have to feed, I could hurt you.”

”I don’t care.” The words burst from you. “I don’t.”

“Sweetheart,” he said in a warning tone but you ignored him.

“I spent all this time thinking you were dead and now here you are, right in front of me. Something I never thought I would have ever again. So excuse me if I don’t care that you might bite me. Hurt me. Nothing could compare with the hurt I felt when I lost you.”

“I get it.”

“I burnt down a building.”

“That’s—”

“Pretty metal, I know.”

“I was gonna say it sounds a little crazy,” you snorted. “Cmon? You burned down a building for little old me? With a lighter and gasoline?”

“With that smiting power you were so interested in earlier,” you explained.

“Ok well…shit. That’s pretty hot.”

“Fuck. Off.” You laughed wetly.

“You keep telling me to fuck off, I’ll leave you here.”

You could tell he was trying to make another joke but you didn’t have the patience for it.

“I’m trying to kiss you right now, Ed,” you told him matter-of-factly.

He was shocked, mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water, like the thought of actually kissing you, actually being with you, hadn't crossed his mind either. As though he hadn’t just used the brides to bring you to completion through the mental bond they shared. To be close to you, to share in pleasure and proximity, together again.

You were about to back down, about to say it was ok, especially if his hunger--fuck, you were gonna have to keep that in mind now, weren’t you--made him nervous. Instead, he surged forward, lips mashing into yours.

It was clumsy and a little painful at first. Both of you were out of practice, it was obvious, and there were, of course, extra teeth to be mindful of. Still, once you crossed the divide and settled yourself in his lap for easy access, you found your rhythm again.

It was as though you hadn’t been apart for a single minute, let alone three years.

Kissing him was nice, it always had been; tender sweetness, even in the throes of pleasure. You always used to joke that if Eddie could find a way to meld the two of you together with his mouth alone, he would; now was no different, as the plush pillows of his lips caressed and pecked at yours.

It didn't take long for the spark that was ignited between you to grow into an inferno and you couldn't really tell who was the needier of the two of you as breathing got heavier and tongue and teeth began to explore. All you knew was him. A sensory experience, being surrounded by each other again, and it was one that you had to learn all over again because it was different. Gone was the smell and taste of cigarette smoke and cheap laundry detergent and soda or bazooka bubblegum he enjoyed, and in its place something more visceral.

The bite of arctic air and nature and musk and dirt and blood.

Aside from the few times you'd bitten your tongue or split your lip, you'd never experienced the taste of blood before, and certainly not blood other than your own. Tangy, but not unpleasant. You could get used to it blooming along your tastebuds if it meant you never had to leave Eddie again.

He departed your lips then, as though he could sense the thought and didn't want you to endure it any longer than you had to. He left one, two, three pecks to the corner of your mouth before he descended down your cheek and along your jaw. He tsked as he reached your neck.

"What did they do to you huh?" he muttered and pecked and laved over the tender, ravaged flesh. He vacated one side of your throat for the other, inspecting the damage there; it was the side that Barb had bitten too, and you knew that it was surely worse. His tongue slithered out and he growled as it slowly ran along the ridges of each wound; the sound transferred from his body to yours, a rattling chittering vibration that sent chills up your spine.

"I didn't tell them to do this. When I realized..." he began an apology, but you stopped him.

"It's ok," you huffed a weak smile. "I'll heal. I always do."

"Hmmm."

He nudged his nose against yours, a soft rub of its bulbous tip, before diving back into your mouth.

From soft touches against faces and shoulders, hands suddenly moved to grip hips and thread into hair. The scrunchie was quick to go and his curls cascaded over his shoulders; you immediately buried your fingers in their depths, steering you where you wanted him to go, on the off chance he didn't already know.

His hands moved then to settle on your thighs, and gravity shifted as he hoisted you into his arms and stood. You broke away and stared at him in question. Where had this unexpected strength come from; was it more the result of this transformation in the Upside Down? You'd found unbelievable strength as your abilities developed over the years too.

Moreover, where had he found the idea or desire to carry you anyway?

You could spend as much time here on the loveseat as you wanted; it's not like you hadn't fucked on a sofa before.

"Where are we going?" you asked as he took his first steps.

"Bedroom."

"My legs work."

"They won't before long," he grinned and you rolled your eyes. Vampire or undead or whatever amalgam of an upside down creature as he was, Eddie was still your boyfriend who would quote bad porn just to annoy you.

He brought you down the short hallway to a bedroom; it was unremarkable and had a look and feel about it that was similar to his room in the trailer in some ways...but still not at all.

There was a poster on the wall, and Sweetheart sitting on an amp in the corner--had he been the one to play Sympathy for the Devil that you'd heard on the radio; you hadn't been going crazy--a stack of t-shirts and clothes sat on a broken dresser, and a dented old thermos rested on the windowsill.

He laid you down on a mattress that had been placed on the floor and was laden with pillows and blankets. He started to rid you of your shoes and your jeans, taking as extra care as he had been not to rip into them with his claws; as needy as you were, you were also curious, and you took that moment to inspect this bed of his further.

One of the pillows was stained with blood, some of the blankets shredded to ribbons, and, buried amongst a soft comforter...two long bones that were sharpened to points.

Eddie faltered in his movements as you lifted them closer to your face to inspect and he immediately pulled his hands away from you; his arms crossed over his torso and he shrugged.

"Guess I'm a little messy," he explained sheepishly. "There, uh...might be some more in here...somewhere. Be careful."

There were a million thoughts racing through your mind; where did these bones come from, what did they belong to, had he...eaten some creature? Once again, you needed to internalize all of it quickly. This was just going to come with the territory of having Eddie back, wasn't it?

"It's...ok," you swallowed thickly and turned your eyes back to him. "I can just use it to stab you in the heart if worse comes to worse."

He snorted and licked his lips to stop himself from smiling; in the end, you both failed. You were giggling and you let out a honk of laughter that you hated but Eddie adored; he'd told you so many times. You covered your face with your hands to hide from him, but he was quick to kneel down in the cradle of your thighs to pull them away.

"I want to see you," he whispered. "I need to see you."

He kissed your hands, one, then the other, and then pulled you to sit upright; you helped him remove your jacket--he recalled it had been Mickey's...and then noted that Mickey had died by his hand as he thumbed the rips in the shoulders from Chrissy's attempted-abduction of you in the square--then your t-shirt. He was extra cocky as he used those talons to slice through your bra.

"You're an asshole," you muttered as he ducked to capture your lips again.

"Remember," he pressed a kiss and then backed off to grin, "when I kept fumbling with the hooks."

There wasn't much talking after that, as you began your true reunion, your worship of one another.

He knew where to lick, where to kiss, to get the sweetest and most desperate noises out of you. Of course, he also had his favorite little places to put his hands and his mouth.

He was careful of your throat, but that didn't mean he couldn't suck a hickey to your jaw, or your collarbone, or the side of one of your breasts. He sniffed your skin and sighed dreamily every now and again, pressed his face into the softness of your chest and your belly and just rested there for a moment, before continuing his descent.

He didn't leave an inch of you untouched when it came to these new discoveries and devotions.

He paid special attention to each prominent scar he found. Whispered words of apology, of understanding, as he bore witness to all the ways you sacrificed yourself for a God who'd essentially abandoned you. Abandoned both of you.

Every nerve in your body was alight; not because he kept pulling pleasure to the surface, but simply because of the proximity. You luxuriated in having him there, in carding your fingers through his hair, in hearing the timber of his voice and feeling it as it hummed along your skin. Even when he got too carried away and his claws scratched you or punctured your skin, as blood began to pool to the surface, you found some sense of joy. The little zings of pain only added to the pleasure.

For Eddie, though, they simply seemed to test the strength of his willpower to tame the beast within.

He finally reached the crux of you, and instead of touching or kissing as you expected him to, bringing you pleasure that way--something he'd always enjoyed before--he got to his knees and began working the belt off his jeans.

"What are you doing?" you demanded breathlessly, desperately. "You were..."

"I just...I'll..." he fumbled over his words, head still ducked as his hands worked. His voice sounded muffled and he refused to look at you. "We...we'll just finish up here and then I need to go."

"Go!?"

"I want to make you feel good, baby, I just...I can't stay. I'm already hanging on by a thread as it is."

You thought that he just meant that he needed to find his own release, which was understandable, but to need to leave? He flung his belt off to the side, and as he did, you saw. Really saw.

His eyes seemed more sunken in, surrounded by shadowy-bruises, scleras bright red. His fangs, which had just been two lone points in his mouth, seemed to have multiplied; four sharp teeth, now elongated, on his upper jaw, and two on the lower.

You called his name once, then again more forcibly, to get him to stop as he shed his jacket. He froze, and then stared at you, practically ashamed.

"They'll be back soon and I'm hungry," he explained. He let the jacket drop to the ground and then stared hungrily at his hands, at the fresh blood at the points of his nails. "I'm so...hungry."

He had mentioned that, that he'd been hungry, before. Which was why he couldn't be there when you were brought to the Upside Down.

But he said that he'd fed days ago; how long had you been here?

Was it just the drawing of your blood that had him hungry again? Needing to be sustained.

You spoke instinctually.

"Feed on me."

His eyes widened in shock.

"Sweetheart--" he tried to warn you, but you stopped him.

"Chrissy and Patrick already did," you rationalized. "Barb did. You're not going to do anything that they didn’t; just...try to be gentle and don't kill me."

"I'm trying not to kill you."

"I know," you encouraged. "I trust you. Drink my blood. Feed on me."

You held your hand out and nodded to your wrist; your neck was already bitten and healing. You both would probably have a better...uh...experience if he fed from there instead.

Eddie released a long breath and rolled his head backwards, hands coming up to his eyes as though it was the most difficult decision in the world. The only decision that mattered.

But, faster than your eyes could see, he was on you, lips and tongue caressing your wrist, lavishing over your pulse. You closed your eyes for a second...until it felt like his tongue elongated and wrapped around your wrist entirely...and they shot open again.

He was too quick though. Another blur of movement, and your underwear had simply vanished and Eddie was nuzzling the softness of your thigh with his nose, smelling the path your arteries, smelling the musk of your sex. You strained your neck to watch him--settled on his stomach, half off the mattress, with one of your legs thrown over his shoulder--but you couldn't hold it for long as he caressed your slit. As he stroked his fingers through your wetness and found your clit, slowly and torturously, as his nose followed the path upwards.

A delicate caress was all it took for the pleasure to invade your senses, ready as you were from all of the foreplay. Your body was primed for more after being starved for so long and only given a taste of salvation from him and his puppets previously. He rolled his fingers over and over, bringing you higher; he was mindful of his claws with each touch and caress, still you felt the cold huff of his breath chuckling when you bore down on nothingness as he rasped the sharp edges over the softness of you just so.

It had always been a game with you, pushing each other further to see who could hold out longer and who would break first--a delicious give and take--but it seemed he was focused on one thing now: a delicious prize for the both of you.

And needed to get there as quickly as possible.

You whined as your body tingled; your pleasure climbed and he hummed, his ministrations getting quicker. Sensing you were close to the edge, he pushed a finger into your heat, then a second, and your hips bucked. If the rasp of his claws outside had created a mix of pleasure and pain, inside it made you question everything. And as he pistoned his fingers once...twice...and pressed on your clit, you found euphoria.

You found Heaven.

And so did he.

You barely registered him biting into you at first, such pleasure raced through your body, but the sting of the first mouthful of blood being pulled from you brought you back to reality.

You rapidly came down from your high, so pleasantly numb, to the sounds of his lewd slurping and gulping of one mouthful then the next. If you had the capability of higher thought, you might wonder if you'd built some sort of tolerance to being feasted on like this, but your focus was on the remnants of your pleasure...and on him.

Eddie let out a delicious groan with a particularly painful pull, and you winced. He mouth released from your thigh with a satisfying pop, and, like a predator, he turned his gaze to meet yours.

Half hidden by the slopes of your body, you could still see the way his nose and lips were stained red. He bared his teeth at you--in a smile or a warning, you couldn't tell for sure--then set his sights back on your center.

Blood made an interesting addition to your own slickness, as he lowered his mouth onto your pussy; you twitched as he licked your essence away, one hunger sated and replaced by another. Gone were his fingers, as he moved your leg off his shoulder and spread you open to feast once more. You bucked against him as he stoked the fires within you again, tried to fight him so you could grind against his mouth, but he didn't let up.

"E-Eddie," you whined and he moaned, tongue thrumming against your clit and then sliding to your entrance to collect the ambrosia that you blessed him with.

You didn't want to beg, especially when you would gladly take every ounce of attention he bestowed upon you, but you wanted him. Wanted all of him. Wanted to see him.

Wanted to be with him, as one.

And the fucker hadn't even taken his clothes off yet.

"E-eddie, please," you cried, unable to convey exactly what you wanted. "I need you."

He clearly took that to mean more and more is exactly what he gave you, enough that should have made you surrender, made you melt for him.

He rolled his tongue against your sensitive nub, let his fangs rasp over you, before he began to suckle your clit and you had to grab his head and tug to try and get him to stop.

This was everything you wanted. But maybe not everything you wanted right now. The denial would be delicious.

Your nails scraped his scalp and pulled at the long strands of his hair until he finally finally released his focus from your quivering cunt.

Both of you heaved and gasped heavily.

He cuffed a hand against his chin to try and wipe off the mix of your blood and slick and you groaned; he didn't have to look so enticing doing something like that.

"So bossy," he grinned naughtily.

He didn't have to look so enticing saying something like that either.

"I am," you told him. "Because I need you--"

"And I was about to let you come right there, sweetheart."

"I need you...I need to feel you," you told him.

"Hmmm, tempting," he inched his way up your body, pressing bloody kisses to your mound, then your stomach. He stopped and rested his chin there.

There was some spike of unidentified emotion inside of you. Wrath, maybe. Annoyance, definitely.

"Don't tell me," you hissed at him. "That you're not looking for your own release."

"I am," he nodded and kissed up. Further and further. Your ribs, your breasts, laying his head there now. You couldn't help but caress his forehead, push his bangs out of his eyes as he stared up at you like you hung the stars.

You could feel him shift, feel the hardness of him straining against his jeans as he squirmed against you.

"Don't tell me that you don't want to fuck me," you whispered. "Don't tell me that you aren't just itching to come inside of me Eddie."

He kissed once against your clavicle, once on the hickey he left on your jaw and then hovered over your lips...

"Please," he whispered. "Let me fuck you."

You grabbed him and pulled him to you, lips crashing and hungry as you took what you craved from him.

Frantic movement on shaky limbs as you both knelt on the mattress and stripped him of his clothes between the clashing of your mouths in desperation.

It wasn't until you needed to part so you could pull his shirt over his head that you paused.

Tension.

It was sudden and suffocating as you finally saw all of him. Your hungry eyes found his cock first, lengthy and hard and fisted in his hand as he rolled his head back on his shoulders with relief for the first time all night. Which was funny because he was not shy about humping a bed once upon a time; had he learned some kind of virtuous patience in the years you'd been away? It was almost impossible to fathom.

But then, your eyes were drawn to the rest of his body.

Your hand went to your mouth in horror as you finally witnessed all of him. Witnessed what came out of the other side after he'd been chewed up and spit out by Vecna and his minions. By the Upside Down.

It was the bite scars that caught your eyes first. Maybe because you had felt the ephemeral echo of the assault for yourself, maybe because they were wide swaths of mangled flesh. Layers and layers and wrinkles and valleys. A piece of his torso practically gouged out on one side, his pectoral muscle shredded on the other, nipple missing.

When he had been attacked, he had been Eddie; when the attack was over he was just...meat. And this was the evidence of that. Some parts had healed to silver or pink, both others were left angry and red. If you didn't know better, you might think he was still hurt; that they were still bleeding.

He had kissed your scars and apologized; he was truly the one who deserved the apology.

The seams were next. Down his limbs, at each of his joints; like he'd been ripped apart and put back together again. Strange lines that carved into him like a dissection. Vivisection, if the screams that you'd heard through his memories were true. There were two prominent ones along his ribs that looked...particularly vulnerable. Then again, it could have been because he bulged strangely there.

He didn't look like your Eddie anymore. Maybe it was because he wasn't.

Well, he was...all of him was. All of him...belonged to your heart. Or, more accurately, your heart belonged to all of him. Been through Hell, and survived.

You'd always thought--and you'd told him once and he'd laughed in your face--that he looked like one of the statues that you loved at your favorite cemetery back home. Carefully carved through time and patience, flaws intentional, but made to be witnessed and celebrated and have people kneel before them.

Yes he made a cocksucking joke.

Now though...he was like stained glass in the chapel. Overall whole, one beautiful piece of art that was made to let the resplendent light shine through. But so obviously complex, evidenced by the thousands of little pieces that made it up. Each one so important to the greater whole.

Different, but still beautiful.

Eddie finally noticed the state of you and he paused; you could feel the waves of doubt come off him as he looked down at himself in shame.

"I'm sorry, I should have wa--"

"No," you closed the distance between you. "Stop. It's...I just...I..."

"It's horrible," he told you. "And there's so much more that you...that you don't know."

"It isn't horrible," you replied. "We have plenty of time; all the time in the world. I'll find out the rest eventually, Eddie. But no matter what...I love you."

His eyes shifted between yours, that unsettling red tinge still there but made less intense by his feast; you knew he was looking to see if you were lying to him.

You hoped he knew that you could never lie to him. Especially about something like that.

If there was something that didn't change about Eddie, it was his smile. Sure his teeth might have been comprised of fangs, and his cheeks stretched in a slightly tense way...but the way his eyes crinkled, the way--even in the darkness--he seemed to light up from the inside. That would always stay the same.

You pulled him to you and kissed him again, soft and full of intense devotion. His hands found you and he guided you back down to the mattress, sweeping away the extra blankets and pillows and remnants of previous carnage, and he settled onto you.

Into you.

He guided himself to your center and with one last glance to make sure you wanted this--you always would, always--he slid into you, and found himself where he truly belonged.

Home. With you.

One hand held him above you and the other roamed, caressing over the slopes and curves of your body, running over your cheek and over your heart for a moment, until it settled at the crux where your bodies met. Your hands searched him as well, determined to commit all of his scars to memory--if not tonight, then one day--when they finally landed on a set of scars along his shoulder blades. Thick and deep, he closed his eyes and you could feel his body twitch with pleasure as you lavished them with attention, your delicate touch dancing over the raised skin.

His pace quickened and he grit his teeth; his fingers danced over your clit to carry you to the peaks of pleasure, caressing your cunt worshipfully as you caressed him within.

As you accepted him--all of him--over and over.

It was a marathon that tested your stamina and willpower but neither of you would let up or stop; you needed this. You both needed this, together; finally with each other.

You could feel it rising within you, your limbs tingled and you began to see stars. You refused to close your eyes, even as Eddie got desperate and ducked his head into your shoulder, hips stuttering as they chased his release, fingers relentless as they chased yours.

You couldn't blame him when he bit your throat, when his fangs slid through the already-abused flesh as you inevitably came. You couldn't be too sure that you didn't pull him into you yourself. The bite, the sting, and the pull of your blood took your rapture to an intensity you'd never experienced before.

You saw the strings of fate, floating around him in that moment, connecting him to you; sparkling lines that shifted and tangled over his skin and onto yours. It was blinding and brilliant, and it made you finally close your eyes to bask in it all.

There was some old story, that humans used to have 4 arms, 4 legs and two heads. And some God thought them too powerful, so They demanded them split for the rest of eternity; those humans spent the rest of their days searching...searching for their other half until they could be one again.

And as Eddie's hips stuttered into yours, as he lost his stamina and finally spilled his release inside of you, as he finally made you his--fully and completely for the first time in what felt like an eternity--that search was finally complete.

“I love you. Even if the Fates unraveled our destiny, I would find a way back to you.” - Scarlett St. Clair, A Touch of Ruin

Next Chapter: Revelation

#aasb #as above so below #eddie munson fluff #Eddie munson x oc #Eddie munson smut #kas!eddie munson #Eddie munson fic #Eddie munson stranger things #tw: blood #tw: smut #tw: violence #tw: mentions of death

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