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walkerwords · 4 years

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“Careful You” Part 1 of 2 - Shane x F!Reader, Daryl x F!Reader

PART II

Request from anonymous: A Shane x reader x Daryl where reader and Shane we’re together since the beginning but reader realized he’s becoming an ass and Daryl (who the reader secretly likes) says “I know you ain’t in love with him” pretty please??? Thank you!!!!

Word Count: 5063

Warning: Cursing, Violence

Song I Wrote To: “Careful You” by TV On The Radio

Note: So yes! This will be a two-part request story. I got hella carried away with this one and I didn’t wanna post the whole thing so part 1 today and part 2 tomorrow! I’m sorry if ya like Shane but hes an asshole in this at times. It jumps around a bit from the quarry to the cdc to the highway to the greene farm. The real emotional stuff is in part two so I hope yall like this. reminder: I may not fill every request, ill only pick the ones I know I can make somethin good, but still send them!

------

You began to notice a change in Shane when Rick Grimes was reunited with his family.

Before the world turned, you, Shane, Rick, and Lori were the best of friends. It was always double dates after work and the four of you planning Carl’s birthday parties. It was Rick and Lori and Shane and you, no matter what. Shane Walsh wasn’t an easy man to love, but love him, you did.

The first time you saw him it was at a bar in downtown Atlanta. Rick and Shane were out in the city for a weekend to celebrate some kind of achievement they got from the Academy. You had noticed his dark hair and dashing smile from across the room and as soon as your eyes met, you were done. Shane Walsh became your person and you never thought anything would get in between the two of you. And nothing did...until the end of the world.

You weren’t an idiot, you knew about Shane and Lori. Hell, you probably knew about his attraction to her before she did. You ignored it the best you could before the world ended, but now it was hard to ignore the fact that your boyfriend, the man you loved, was in love with another woman.

A married woman.

Then when Rick stepped out of that truck and Carl ran from Lori’s arms, the ground rocked beneath your feet. When you had hugged him once his family had let go, it was more than relief that cascaded over you, it was gratitude. With Rick back, there wouldn’t be time for Shane to gawk at his best friend’s girl, let alone sneak off into the woods with her. Hopefully, things would start to go back to normal.

However, whenever Lori was alone, Shane was still there. He would be watching her, looking out for Carl, and he’d do it right in front of Rick. Rick didn’t seem to notice and if he did, he ignored it and acted as if everything was the way it once was. It pissed you off to see him act so naive, but you figured he didn’t want to start anything. The last thing any of you needed was in-fighting within the group.

However, it didn’t take long for said in-fighting to start. Especially once Daryl Dixon came back from his hunt. You had met both of the Dixon brothers the day they arrived at the camp. Merle was an asshole and immediately began hitting on you. Shane had shut that down within a few seconds, making sure the older Dixon knew that you were his girl and to keep his paws and his mouth to himself. It was one of the only times Shane had claimed you in front of the group.

As for Daryl, you weren’t sure about where his head was at. He followed his brother closely and you figured he had been doing so his entire life. Daryl was his brother’s opposite. While he still had a mouth on him when he did happen to speak up, he didn’t purposefully inject himself into conversations or make lewd remarks at the women in the camp. He kept his head down and his crossbow up when it was warranted. He was also great at hunting and had taken the job of getting food for the group.

Carl had once told you that he thought Daryl was “cool”, but that he kind of scared him. You had laughed and assured the kid, whom you considered a nephew, not to worry. Dixon may be a bit rough around the edges, but he was harmless. Though you made sure to tell him to steer clear of Merle and Carl didn’t argue about that.

The other thing you noticed about Daryl was that he always seemed to know where you were. You had noticed him watching you in the camp. At first, it was simple glances here and there and then his eyes started to linger more and more. You considered telling him not to due to how Shane normally reacted whenever another man looked at you, but whenever you turned to look at your boyfriend, his eyes would be on Lori and you would give up and go talk to Andrea or Amy to pass the time.

You had only spoken to Daryl a couple of times. Once when you had run into him as he walked back to camp carrying rabbits on a line. You heard a rustle in the trees and pulled your weapon, a police-issued pistol Shane had given you after the Turn. Daryl froze as the barrel became trained on him. You dropped it immediately. “Shit, sorry,” you had said.

“Careful where ya point that thing, girl,” Daryl had scoffed. “Don’t need my damn head blown off cause ya trigger happy.” You had rolled your eyes and holstered your gun.

“Such a charmer, Dixon,” you told him and left him with his fresh kill. That night after your run-in in the woods was when he first started watching you. The other times you had spoken to him were just in passing and it was always when both Merle and Shane weren’t there. It seemed like your friendship, if you could call it that, was only acknowledged when the alpha males in both of your lives took a hike. And while it bothered you, you accepted it. It’s just the way the world was now.

On the day that Rick told you all that they had left Merle in Atlanta, you knew Daryl was going to be pissed and he definitely was. You watched from the doorway to the RV as Daryl yelled at Rick. The emotion was clear on his face as he thought about his brother being chained to the roof like an animal as he waited to be eaten by Walkers.

When Daryl had thrown a punch and Shane placed him in the chokehold, that is when you stepped in. You shoved Rick back and knocked Shane’s feet from under him. Daryl and Shane went down hard on the ground and Daryl shoved out of Walsh’s arms. “Stop it!” you yelled, getting between the men. “None of this alpha-male bullshit is helping anyone. Rick,” you said, looking at him, “you screwed up. Merle screwed up. It was bound to happen at some point! So instead of acting like idiots, do something.” You then turned and offered your hand to Daryl who took it and you helped him to his feet.

You watched as Daryl stormed off and without thinking, you followed him, ignoring Shane’s calls. You found him as he exited his tent on the edge of the camp. He was throwing things into a backpack and gathering up his bolts for his bow. “Daryl,” you said. He looked up at you and scoffed.

“Don’t need yer sympathy, girl,” he shot at you. “Don’t need ya fightin’ my battles either. I can handle yer damn boyfriend.”

“Never said you couldn’t,” you said. “Shane is a hothead and yeah, Rick can be an asshole, but they mean well.”

“Yer friend Rick left my brother to die!” he yelled, pointing over your shoulder.

“I know,” you said, trying to calm him down, but Daryl marched up to you, getting in your face and looking you over.

“You know nothin’,” he snarled in a low voice before pushing past you, knocking into your shoulder. You pushed your hands into your hair as you took a deep breath.

“(Y/N)!” you turned to see Shane walking towards you.

“What now?” you asked, not wanting to start another argument.

“You need to stay away from Dixon,” he said, crossing his arms.

“Excuse me?” you asked, mirroring his stance. “I don’t need to do anything, Walsh,” you said. “He’s pissed about Merle. What if it was me or Rick that was left on that rooftop? You’d be pretty pissed too.”

“Don’t loop me in with him,” Shane said with a touch of disgust. You rolled your eyes. “What?”

“I’m just sick of people acting like there aren’t worse problems out there than a few petty arguments or having to be with people you don’t like.” You relaxed your arms and reached for his hands and he let you. You squeezed Shane’s hands tight in your own, looking into his eyes. “Shane, there are monsters walking around and we need to start thinking about how to protect our people from them. How to protect the kids like Carl and Sophia.”

“What do you think I’ve been doin’?” he asked, his voice softer. “That’s all I’ve been tryin’ to do, (Y/N).”

“I know, but sometimes you try to take on too much by yourself. Let others take some of the weight, okay? I’m here and now so is Rick. You have Dale and Glenn who are always willin’ to help. Lori, too. Stop trying to be Superman.” Shane looked at you for a moment before he nodded. He then tugged you forward and kissed you firmly. When he pulled away, he leaned his forehead on yours.

“Rick is gonna take Daryl back, go look for Merle,” Shane said quietly.

“Are you goin’ with?” you asked.

“No, I’m stayin’ here to protect the camp,” he then leaned back and looked at you with a fierce look in his eyes. “And so are you.” You knew there was no point in arguing so with a sigh you nodded. He pressed another kiss to your lips before leaving you alone. As Shane walked away, you caught Daryl watching you from where he stood next to Glenn. You couldn’t read his expression, but there was an intensity to it that had you turning away from him.

However, there was a feeling that his eyes remained fixed on you even as you headed into the tent you shared with Shane.

-------

Of course, it wasn’t long until things got worse.

While Daryl, Glenn, Rick, and the others were out looking for Merle, Shane was following Lori around like a lost dog while you distracted Carl, trying to keep his mind off his father leaving again. When you had first met the smallest Grimes, he took to you immediately. You weren’t just Uncle Shane’s girlfriend, Carl considered you family as well.

It was Carl who you were sitting with when the Walkers entered the camp. You heard the screams of panic first and you moved. Grabbing Carl by his collar, you pushed him behind you as you watched Andrea’s sister, Amy, get taken down by a Walker. Carl clutched the back of your jacket as you pulled your own weapon, taking aim at the monsters that converged on the quarry.

Shane was there in a second and he took out all the Walkers that surrounded the RV. He then pushed all the kids towards the vehicle, locking them inside as the rest of you aimed at the Dead. Only a moment later, shots were coming from another direction. Rick and the others came through the woods, their guns blazing. Their sudden appearance caused you to miss the Walker stumbling towards you. You raised your gun as it grabbed your shoulder, but a bolt flew past your ear and struck the Walker that clung to you. Daryl ran past you, giving you a once over before taking aim again.

Snapping out of your shock, you finished off the rest of the Walkers that feasted on your new comrades. A cry pulled your attention as you saw Carol staring at her now-dead husband. You had no remorse for Ed, he wasn’t a good man at all, but the heartbreak on both Carol and Sophia’s faces made you pause.

Once the Walkers were down and people had calmed down, you searched for Shane. You found him by the RV, moving the kids out and away from the body that lay before it. You didn’t need to look closer to know it was Amy. You turned away, looking for Carl and felt relief when you saw him with his parents as the three of them embraced. Looking back over your shoulder you saw Shane and how he watched the Grimes family. The envy in his eyes made you uneasy. He looked at the man he considered his brother as a rival now even though Lori was never his, to begin with. Again, you shoved down your feelings and went to help move the bodies out of the camp.

It was morning by the time everyone had sorted between the Dead. Two piles. One for friends to be buried and the other full of Walkers that were to be burned. You didn’t see the point in either practice. You knew that if you walked down the hill and onto the roads, bodies were strewn everywhere. It had simply become the new normal. However, you knew it was their way of trying to find some normalcy in the new screwed up world, but you couldn’t see it the way they could.

Out of the corner of your eye, you could see Andrea as she knelt over Amy’s body. You knew that she would turn any time now. It was already happening and it made you sick to think about someone you knew becoming one of those things. It was all just a bit too much at that moment.

You excused yourself and headed to the far side of the camp, settling down on a log, leaning your forearms on your knees. You took a few deep breaths and tried to focus on anything that wasn’t the memory of the screams of people being torn apart. The log shifted as someone took a spot next to you. You figured it was Shane so you ignored him. However, when you spotted the crossbow on the ground between their feet, you relaxed and turned to look at Daryl.

“Thanks for last night,” you said, breaking the silence. He grunted a response that you had become accustomed to. “What happened?” you asked, not needing to elaborate further. Everyone noticed that only one Dixon brother came back.

“He’s gone,” Daryl muttered, “cut his own damn hand off to get out of the cuffs.” Your brows shot up at that, but you weren’t that surprised. It sounded like something Merle Dixon would do.

“I’m sorry,” you told him, turning your face back towards the camp as Glenn dragged more bodies through the camp.

“What she waitin’ for?” Daryl asked as he looked at Andrea.

“People cope differently,” you said. “Maybe she just needs to see it for herself.”

“Don’t make sense,” he mumbled.

“I don’t get it either,” you sighed, “Dead is dead. Whatever this is…” you waved your hand vaguely at the Walker corpses, “They just need to be put down. Amy doesn’t deserve to become a monster.”

“I could probably hit her from here,” Daryl said, toeing his bow, but you shook your head.

“She nearly ripped Rick’s head off when he mentioned putting her down. We don’t need any more damn fighting,” you said with a warning tone. Daryl nodded and then was silent for a bit.

“I agree with ya, ya know?” Daryl said after a minute.

“About what?” you asked.

“Nobody deserves to be a Walker,” he clarified. “I wouldn’t want someone to wait, ya know?”

“I do,” you said, understanding. “Make me a deal, Dixon. If I get bit, you shoot me right away. Don’t let me turn,” you said, offering your hand. Daryl looked at you and then took your hand in his, gripping it tightly.

“Only if ya return the favor,” he said and you nodded. You shook hands and then let go, feeling Shane’s eyes on you. “Yer boy keeps starin’,” Daryl said.

“Yeah,” you said before you stood up, brushing off your jeans. “I’m holdin’ you to that promise.” He nodded to you again and you left him alone to his thoughts.

------

When Rick and Shane decided to go to the CDC, you were less than thrilled.

The last thing you wanted was to go back into the city. Considering the things you saw there the last time you were there, it wasn’t the most desirable plan. However, you knew that you were outnumbered, and with Jim trying to fight the infection, you went along with it.

Everyone knew that Jim wasn’t long for the world. The fever took him fast and you knew there wasn’t a cure. If there was one, every street in Atlanta wouldn’t be crawling with Walkers and littered with half-eaten bodies. Again, you also knew that it was all about optimism and Rick felt that this was the right choice.

Sitting in the RV, you leaned against Shane. He kept his arm wrapped around you and rubbed your arm and down the side of your thigh. It was nice to just sit with him for once instead of feeling the distance that had began to deepen between the two of you. Shane rested his head on your shoulder, kissing the place your neck met your shoulder and you sighed, resting your head against his chest. Carl was making kissing faces at the both of you and you stuck your tongue at him causing him to laugh.

“You trying to steal my girl, Grimes?” Shane teased the kid.

“(Y/N) likes me better!” Carl joked causing Shane to chuckle. He gripped you tighter, wrapping his arms around your waist.

“Easy gentlemen,” you said with a smile. “I think we both know that Lori and I are the true soulmates.” Lori laughed at that.

“I’ll take that,” she laughed.

It was an easy ride from there on until Jim got worse. You all went from laughing and joking to feeling somber as Daryl, Rick, and Shane helped Jim off the road and under a tree. When they tried to hand him a weapon, Jim shook his head. Rick and Shane left him, giving him a final goodbye, but Daryl stalled, looking down at his bow and the dying man. He then turned and started to walk back to the truck. You stepped in his path, a pleading look in your eyes. He shook his head.

“It’s his choice, (Y/N),” Daryl said, knowing what you wanted to say. Daryl pushed past you as Jim closed his eyes. You fought the urge to yell as you made your way back into the RV. Instead of sitting back down with Shane, you went to the back and laid down, trying to drown out everything around you. You fell asleep as the RV rumbled beneath you, getting some decent rest for the first time in weeks.

Shane lightly shook you awake when the caravan finally came to a stop. The look on his face made you sit up quickly. “What is it?” you asked.

“Just...prepare yourself,” he said and offered his hand. You took it and he led you out of the RV. The smell was what hit you first and then you saw the source. Bodies were everywhere. Lori and Carol kept their arms around their children as your group moved through the rotting corpses. Daryl and Rick headed up the group while you and Shane took the rear, all of your weapons ready to fire if needed.

“I don’t like this,” you whispered to Shane as you stepped over another body.

“Don’t worry, I’ll keep ya safe, (Y/L/N),” he joked, poking you in the ribs.

“It’s not funny, Shane,” you chastised. “I don’t like being out in the open like this. We’re vulnerable, especially with the kids.”

“Everything is gonna be fine,” Shane assured you. He winked at you and you pushed ahead of him as you started to hear groans and shuffling of the Dead as they noticed you moving towards the shuttered building. Daryl began taking them out while Rick yelled at the cameras. Lori urged her husband to leave it. Rick continued to yell, begging that whoever was inside to open the doors because they had children and they were desperate. You wanted to yell at him to shut up as more Walkers kept coming out of the shadows.

You stumble over a corpse, nearly going down when Carol caught your arm and pulled you back up. Daryl stepped in front of you then, covering you, Carol, and Sophia. Rick was still yelling and that was when Shane started too. He called to Rick, trying to get him to retreat, but before any of you could make your way back to the cars, the metal shudders slid open with blinding lights. You gawked at the sight and then you felt hands tugging you along as Shane gripped your wrist and pulled you through the mess of dead bodies and into the safety of the CDC.

------

Doctor Jenner was an odd one and you didn’t trust him.

Glenn, however, was thrilled at the promise of hot water, and then when the wine was cracked open, everybody loved Jenner. Even Daryl had a smile on his face as he drank wine and laughed with the others, his Georgian accent getting thicker with every sip. Shane drank deeply as he sat at the table next to you, his hand gripping your leg under the table. Your glass remained full as you occasionally swirled it in your hand. You figured someone had to be sober when eventually everything went to shit.

Daryl filled up Glenn’s glass again as T-Dog went for thirds. And while you were worried about things and just trying to stay calm, it was nice to see your friends and family laughing for the first time in weeks. You offered Shane the rest of your wine and he drank greedily. “Thanks, babe,” he said, kissing you. You could taste the alcohol on his lips as he kissed you and leaned his head against yours. He downed the rest of the wine and you caught Daryl looking at you. When your eyes met his, he quickly looked away and took a long pull from the bottle in his hands. The whole back and forth was starting to get tiring.

Eventually, it was time for some much-needed sleep. It would be the next morning when Jenner started explaining everything so you all headed to your new beds for the night. You and Shane pushed into a vacant room, pulling off your boots. Laying in bed, you stretched out, enjoying the feel of a proper mattress under you for the first time since the world ended. Shane stumbled over to the bed, dropping down beside you. He rolled over and braced his elbowd on either side of you. He leaned down to kiss you as his hands ran up your sides, but you pushed him back.

“You’re drunk, Shane,” you said, pushing against his chest. He looked down at you with a frown.

“(Y/N)...,” he whined, kissing down your neck.

“Shane, stop,” you said, taking his shoulders and pushing him again. This time he relented and flipped back over. He sighed as his eyes pressed closed. His hand found yours, playing with your fingers.

“I love you…” he said, looking over at you with heavy eyes.

“I love you, too, idiot,” you said. Shane huffed and sat up. “Where are you going?” you asked as you watched him stagger towards the door.

“Gonna walk it off,” Shane mumbled. “See if Rick is still up.” Shane stepped out of the room, shutting the door behind him. You flopped back down to the mattress and then eyed the bathroom on the other side of the room. You figured you wouldn’t get another chance to have hot water in a while so you headed for a much-needed shower.

As soon as the hot water hit your body, you felt as if you were transported back in time. You stayed under the spray as long as possible, relishing in the feel of finally being clean after living in the woods for so long. You scrubbed your hair until it slipped through your fingers, free of tangles. Once you had your fill of the luxury the CDC had to offer, you shut the water off and grabbed a fluffy towel, wrapping it around your body.

After getting dressed and combing your fingers through your hair, you figured you should go find your boyfriend before he passed out in some lab or something. The halls of the residences were quiet as you moved through them, peeking around corners as you searched for Shane. When you turned again, you nearly ran into someone. They steadied you with their hands, grabbing onto your shoulders. Looking up, you saw that it was Daryl.

“Ya showered,” he said. You nodded slowly, trying not to laugh at his surprised expression. You then noticed the fine layer of dirty still adorning his skin.

“Yeah, you should try it, mountain man,” you teased, flicking a piece of dirt off his shirt. He scoffed at your words. He then realized he was still holding onto you and awkwardly let go. “Hey, have you seen Shane? He’s not exactly lucid right now and I don’t wanna find him passed out in a supply closet.” Daryl’s jaw went rigid at your words.

“Ya, saw him followin’ Grimes,” he said, looking away from you.

“Rick?”

“Nah,” Daryl grunted, moving past you, “Lori.”

-----

You didn’t bother to look for Shane after your run-in with Daryl. You went back to your room and tried to get some sleep. This time you did feel like an idiot. As if Shane would really leave her alone just because Rick was back. You stared at the ceiling, trying to stop your mind from creating scenarios about Lori and Shane in your head.

An hour or so later and the door opened. Shane glided into the room, clearly not as drunk as he had been. He pulled off his shoes and sank onto the mattress beside you. He rolled into your side, throwing an arm across your waist, his fingers playing with the fabric of your shirt. “I’m sorry about before,” he said, “you know I’m an ass when I drink.” You did know that which is why you had remained sober.

“It’s fine,” you said, which is what you always said when he apologized when he was being an asshole. His hand stilled on your stomach as his breathing slowed and he slowly fell asleep. A small amount of light entered the room from a crack in the door and as you looked down at your boyfriend you could see fresh scratch marks on his neck. You didn’t have to think too hard about whose nails had made them.

Your hand came up and carded through Shane’s hair. In his sleep, he nuzzled you closer and you had to fight the tears that welled up. You could do this, you could be there for him when he needed it because that is what you had always done for him. The end of the world didn’t need to change that. Right?

——-

The next day everything went from bad to worse.

Watching the MRI on the large monitor was horrifying. Even Shane was disturbed. As you all watched the patient reanimate, Shane had reached over and gripped your hand. The two of you hadn’t said anything about the previous night. At breakfast, he had played off the scratches as a drunken accident, but you noted the look in Lori’s face and you noticed that Daryl and even Carol were looking at her and Shane with accusatory glances.

When Jenner invited you all into the main theater for the explanation, hope was upon everyone’s faces as they urged the doctor to tell them about a cure. However, just as you suspected, there wasn’t one. Jenner explained that he was the only one left. He worked as hard as he could, but eventually there was no point.

Then, as soon as everybody started to realize what was happening, it was nearly too late.

The blaring red countdown clock was staring you all in the face as the CDC went into full lockdown. Sophia and Carl were stressed and Daryl was pissed. Rick and the others had to restrain the archer as he nearly decapitated Jenner with a fire ax. You, yourself, wanted to attack the man as well. You also wanted to beat Rick to a pulp for getting you into this mess in the first place.

Eventually, Rick convinced Jenner to let you out, but Andrea, Dale, and Jacqui were staying behind to succumb to the implosion. You rushed after the others towards the lobby. Shane pulled you along, nearly carrying you as you sped through the halls. With the metal shudders lifted, you could see the bodies of the dead even clearer in the sunlight now through the large windows. While you weren’t thrilled about going back into the world of the Dead, it was better than being incinerated.

You knew you were in trouble when the glass wouldn’t break. When Carol had produced the grenade, you could have kissed her. Rick set the charge and you all hit the deck. When the blast went off, you felt a body cover you and you knew immediately that it wasn’t Shane.

You didn’t say a word as Daryl used his body to keep you close to the ground. You just waited for the ground to stop moving before getting your bearings. Daryl hauled you up and took off towards the blown-out window without saying a word.

You helped with the kids as they climbed down to the ground, keeping them from the shattered glass. Then, following the others, you took off across the courtyard. Aiming your gun, you and some of the others took out Walkers that were drawn by the grenade. You all ran for the cars going as fast as you could. Entering the RV, you all hunkered down. You could see Daryl dive into his truck and Rick shouted at everyone to cover their ears.

But then Dale and Andrea came running out of the building. You crouched down again unable to see if they made it or not and this time it was Shane that held onto you. You covered your ears as a blast echoed throughout the city. The RV shook around you and when the smoke cleared and you stood up to look out the window, the CDC was gone.

#walking dead #the walking dead #the walking dead imagine #the walking dead imagines #walkerwords #shane walsh x reader #daryl dixon x reader #daryl dixon imagine #daryl dixon #shane walsh #rick grimes #season 1 twd #twd #twd imagines

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cherrytsukkis · 4 years

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streaming minecraft with the first years

- word count: 1.4k

- characters: hinata, kageyama, tsukishima, yamaguchi, yachi

- a/n: i made half of this on mobile and half on my laptop so,,, also i got way too immersed in this bc all i do is play minecraft (even tho i suck) anyways, enjoy this mess!! also ty to ppl on the rircus rerver for helping me with minecraft usernames!!

tsukishima made a server for y'all after you bribed him (also some of his viewers begged him to)

kageyama and hinata teamed up and killed tsukishima, not even a minute in

and you were just there like “:o chat yall seeing this shit”

yall spawned in near a birch flower forest biome thingy and you and yachi bolted over there

you asked yachi to be your minecraft gf and she accepted

as soon as she said yes, kageyama and hinata killed tsukki again lmao

you and yachi moved to a different voice call bc hinata kept screaming about how tsukki was after him now

you guys began planning on having a cute little cottage core home together

you go mining while yachi makes a farm + gathers animals

yachi screamed of joy when she found a chicken family

she also screamed when she happened to find a pink sheep

you guys are just talking about random stuff and were just vibing for the rest of the stream

the next time you stream on the server, you see that yams made a cute little spawn place and yams took you on an adventure to go see his home in the snowy mountains

tsukki logged on and you and yams proceeded to go try to find his home despite tsukki tell you to fuck off

for some reason, he starts giving you guys clues on where he’s at

you’re all like “omg friendship 🥰″

but in reality, someone donated like 50 bucks for him to kill you and he’s taking this opportunity to lure you guys

it turns night really fast and then a group of zombies gang up on you

you end up dying like four times before you baby rage and give up

you leave the voice chat and go back to being a wee farmer waiting for your lover, yachi, to log on

instead of yachi, you get hinata </3

hinata logs on and he immediately calls you

“hinata-”

“y/n!!! do you wanna go to the nether with me!!”

“no ❤️″

you hang up but then he calls you again

“i’ll give you a two pigs, i know you and yachi are looking for some”

thirty minutes later, hinata has gotten you lost in a soul sand biome

only plus from this trip is that you got a lot of glowstone

you ended up having to call kageyama and ask him to come save you bc yams was mining god knows where and tsukishima would never help you bc he’s a bully <3

kageyama was calling both of you dumbasses in the vc

hinata bc hinata is hinata and you for following hinata blindly

then he got lost somewhere else in the nether <3

and now the three of you were fighting as you ran away from ghasts and skele bois

“it’s the short height for me”

“it’s the abandonment issues for me”

“it’s the need to one up each other in every situation because y’all insecure for me”

this whole time your chats were telling yall to just look at coords so you could find each other but you guys are illiterate </3

yachi finally logged on and joined your call and she saved yall bc she was watching your stream this whole time and was like wtf

the vc was SILENT as yachi led y’all to the nether portal

you muted yourself in shame and starting thanking recent subs and just the chat in general

everyone in chat: ugh we stan a dumb queen 🤩

another time you go on the server, hinata has accidentally started a war against tsukishima and so like every five minutes you would see smth like “tinysun was blown up by moonshima” or “moonshima was shot by tinysun using schlong” (yes hinata is that guy)

speaking of names

yall clown kageyama every five seconds bc he made his ign ‘Setter_soul_x’ (bc his streamer name was taken </3)

he gets pissed off a lot and leaves the server bc everytime you guys start a fight, someone will be like “okay Setter_soul_x”

yachi has “yacchan” meanwhile yams had “yamagucci” and you can can decide whether you have a clapped ign or not

now to just talk about general stuff

i feel like yams and tsukki would be those bitches who make exp farms and shit

like one day you’ll log on and you’ll ask them where they’re at and they’ll be like “oh we’re making an enderman farm in the end” or “we just finished a villager breeder” or some shit like that

yachi would stick to farming and being a cottagecore gay and you would be the one to do most of the mining and shit

sometimes she’d follow you when you go to fight someone or just bother them

hinata made a giant netherrack meatball at spawn and inside of it is just pure hell

everytime someone tries to go in it, they get blown up by a creeper or smth bc its so fucking dark in there bc the dumbass forgot to put some type of light source in there

kageyama’s house is just a cube-shaped hole he mined somewhere and everytime he wants more space he’ll just expand the cube

you and tsukki end up teaming up together at one point and made a railroad to everyone’s homes and to different biomes

when everyone fought the wither, tsukki, yamaguchi, and hinata did most of the work you and kageyama were far away watching like “damn thats crazy” (yachi wasnt streaming at the time and just told you guys she didnt care if you did it without her)

when it was time for the ender dragon, it was a whole different story

tsukishima and yamaguchi were hella prepared and were calmly going around destroying the end crystals while you, hinata and kageyama were just trying to get away from all the angry endermen

yachi was just placing water down and making cobblestone huts y’all could hide under

once tsukki and yams finished destroying the end crystals, you joined them in shooting down the ender dragon

kags and hinata were still fighting endermen

like all you’d see is “ __ was slained by Enderman” messages as you listened to tsukki and yams talk to each other calmly

yachi said she wasnt fighting no dragon bc fuck that shit

one y’all did kill the dragon, hinata tried to claim the dragon egg and tsukishima yelled at him for like ten minutes bc hinata didnt do shit

and while tsukki fought with hinata and kageyama, you and yachi followed yamaguchi into an end gateway

you found an end city but then you fell outta the world </3 dont ask how, you just did

you decided to log off and that was that

another time you logged on, tsukki invited you to go with him to a woodland mansion bc he got a map

you thought he was being fishy but you went anyways bc content

everything was going well, you guys traveled there together, found a desert temple along the way, you tamed a cat, tsukki talked about conspiracy theories with you

but then you got to the mansion and you lost him

you were like tsukki where tf you’d go and he would tell you a place and you would go and he wasnt there

you were about to cry bc so many mobs were after you and u just boxed yourself into a little dirt hut in the corner and you kept yelling at tsukki in vc

he muted himself bc he was laughing his ass off at your pain heart been broke so many times

he finally came to get you bc apparently he already moved upstairs and just as you calmed down, tsukki betrayed you

you walked in front of him in fear of mobs hitting you from behind but tsukki ended up hitting you with a sword to death </3

you immediately logged off and then cried to your stream about fake friends for like ten minutes while listening to the inside out soundtrack

your chat convinced you to log back on and hesitantly joined the vc again and tsukishima apologized while trying to hold back laughter and told you that he put your stuff in your chest and you were like 🥺🥺🥺

overall the server is very chaotic but kinda nice bc family bonding ❤️ and even tho tsukki is a dick he along, with yams, help you and yachi out sometimes so your cottagecore aesthetic thrived

UNEDITED.

tag list: @kaoyuuuuu @macaronnv < it wont let me tag you :((

#haikyuu #haikyuu headcanons #haikyuu drabbles #haikyuu imagines #haikyuu x reader #hinata x reader #kageyama x reader #tsukishima x reader #yamaguchi x reader #yachi x reader #hinata shoyo #kageyama tobio #tsukishima kei #yamaguchi tadashi #yachi hitoka #haikyuu!!

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momo-de-avis · 5 years

Text

Wordtober Day 6: Build 2.0

Yall, I cheated. And am also late. I couldn’t get anything done with ‘husky’, so I decided to prolonge my previous prompt, as the last one didn’t give me room to fully explore my idea. So... be warned that this is... quite long. Possibly very long. I leave that up to you.

It’s a continuation of this one

𝚆𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚝𝚎𝚗 𝚊𝚌𝚌𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚝 𝚘𝚏 𝙻𝚞𝚒𝚜 𝙲𝚘𝚛𝚗𝚎𝚓𝚘 𝚛𝚎𝚐𝚊𝚛𝚍𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚒𝚗𝚟𝚎𝚜𝚝𝚒𝚐𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗 𝚘𝚏 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝙼𝚊𝚍𝚞𝚛𝚘 𝚙𝚛𝚘𝚙𝚎𝚛𝚝𝚢 𝚋𝚎𝚝𝚠𝚎𝚎𝚗 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝟷𝟿𝚝𝚑 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝟸𝟻𝚝𝚑 𝚘𝚏 𝚂𝚎𝚙𝚝𝚎𝚖𝚋𝚎𝚛, 𝟸𝟶𝟶𝟷, 𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚑 𝚘𝚗𝚎 𝙳𝚊𝚗𝚒𝚎𝚕𝚊 𝚍𝚎 𝚕𝚊 𝙿𝚊𝚣.

Dani and I had done this before, many times. We’d had our fair share of paranormal investigation—sometimes just plain investigation—and most of the times, it even amounts to nothing, if not a slight disruption of a picture or the ‘mysterious noises’ turning out to be either stray cats or a group of teenagers setting a horror movie set for strangers. But the Maduro case was peculiar to us. It was Dani who suggested we’d investigate the Maduro case, and she always did seem rather curious about the outlines of the case.

We did the needed investigation before we got there. Aside from some news articles, there was the original 1983 police report, which looks… sloppy, rushed, and honestly, not like they were even trying at all. The majority of the photos vanished, supposedly lost in mishandling of paperwork, except three—the ones well known—and both disappearances were chalked up under ‘runaway children’, despite the fact that Samuel Maduro was 15 and Aura 28 at the time of each of their disappearances.

We knew the house had belonged to Aura after her parents, and before that, to Amelia and Augusto Maduro, the grandparents, who used to own a quarry up until 1939, when they sold their part of the business to Mr Maduro’s partner. At the time, we couldn’t really find the reason why they sold it, though what we did conclude afterwards is nothing short of speculation, so we just assumed it to be some sort of financial strain. There was a civil war going on, though we couldn’t find confirmation on the Maduros’ political affiliations, nor is their village located anywhere close to where the war hit, but… War always does bring about hard times, so it wasn’t at all that inane.

What was surprising was finding our first clue that contradicted the original 1983 report. Though Claudia Maduro, mother of both Samuel and Aura, suffered from a lifelong heart disease and eventually died four years after her son’s disappearance—a time spent between check-ups and several psychiatric consultations—the father’s death, Francisco Maduro, does seem related to the case.

He appears to have lived the last ten years of his life as a recluse, and the only visits he ever had were a gardener—who helped around with the backyard—, a maid—mostly responsible for doing his laundry, some cooking and cleaning—, and a man named Antonio. He was the last one to see Mr Maduro alive, though his name wasn’t even mentioned in the original report.

According to Antonio, when he arrived at the house that afternoon, Mr Maduro was in a state of distress. He had set up a ladder to go up the attic and was going up and down frequently, to fetch several items, all of which he recognized as being used for construction purposes: toolboxes, measuring tapes, rope, sandpaper. Of this, Antonio reportedly joked for a while, asking him if he was building something, or maybe fixing a piece of furniture, but Mr Maduro was majorly unresponsive, instead appearing focused on his task. He simply kept mumbling: “The animals keep tearing it down.”

It must have been shortly after he left that Mr Maduro fell off his ladder, approximately two meters high, hitting his head on a rock and being found hours later by the maid, who had him rushed to the hospital, where he died an hour later.

Here’s what’s so appalling about this. Looking at the original police records, there were no interviewed. It looks like the police simply asked no questions to anyone, no acquaintances of the family, no friends, no neighbours. Every evidence was gathered from inside the home, and every conclusion reached without taking into consideration the village itself. At first, we thought they had been careless—ridiculously careless, mind you—but as our days went on and we tried speaking to others, it became clear just what the real reason was.

The villagers avoided the Maduros because they were afraid of them.

Overall, it seems neither Aura nor Samuel—nor their parents, for that matter—were particularly hated, rather ostracized by what the villagers saw as a need. The priest at the time, one father Ángel, even did his best to include the two children in his community, and we did find several photos of Samuel carrying the podium of Santa Marina during one of its processions. Both siblings appear to have been devout Catholics too: crucifixes and rosaries were found in both rooms, as well as prayer books and Bibles, they attended church regularly, got involved with the community and celebrated every day of the calendar.

The problem was not Samuel and Aura, nor Francisco and Claudia—the Maduros’ dark history was older than that.

There was one fundamental piece to their history that everyone completely overlooked, which wasn’t on records for reasons that, for a while, seemed mysterious enough, though it became clear as we unravelled the story. Francisco Maduro, grandfather of both Aura and Samuel, disappeared without a trace in 1939, immediately after selling his part of the quarry.

After searching through records, old newspapers and considerably angering the locals, all we found was one newspaper clipping, though not an article. It was an ad, an announcement, posted by the local police, asking villagers to please notify them if they new anything about Mr Maduro’s whereabouts. And nothing more. The only way to understand what had happened was by asking, and by now, we knew nobody would say a word about it, so we thought Antonio would perhaps collaborate.

By all means, it must be said: Antonio had a bit of a drinking problem, and we might have bargained in that sense. I’m not terribly proud of it, but in my defence, he looked desperate to talk, like he had kept something buried so deeply he waited years to finally speak up. Though I wasn’t expecting a confession exactly. After all, Antonio was, in his own words, Francisco’s best friend, though the two weren’t as close in adulthood as they had been in childhood. And like the Maduros—maybe because he appeared to be the only one in the village who didn’t fear going near the house—he was a bit of an outcast.

He told us that Amelia Maduro was far from being a heart-warming woman. He recalls her posture from childhood, which I think can be seen in the pictures found inside one of the locked rooms of the house: haughty, stern, impeccable. She seldom smiled, and her face bore something grievous to it, a chiselling of austerity that made children everywhere tell stories of her beatings and whippings. She was very pious too, at times too severe in her belief, and her doctrine was an imposing one. Antonio recalls an event from childhood, after visiting Francisco one afternoon: she had stopped a maid on her tracks, taken a step back and inspected her outfit; then, she had asked why was her skirt three fingers above the knee, to which the maid, flustered, replied she had to borrow her sister’s, who was younger, considering she had found a hole in hers that morning. Then, without warning, Amelia slapped the young woman across the face and said: “I will not have whores serving me.” And she fired her.

This might be explanatory to what truly seems to be the reason behind the quarry issue. Shortly before, Francisco Maduro became romantically involved with a supposed worker at the quarry, a woman who would bring refreshments to the men on the field every afternoon. It turns out, however, the woman was Pilar Deocampo, niece of Alfredo Deocampo—Francisco’s business partner. She became pregnant and decided to plan an escape with the aid of Francisco, who was supposed to meet with her after dealing with some logistics as to not leave his family with no support, but the plan failed when Amelia discovered their affair. When Pilar gave birth to baby boy in 1939, things took a grim turn.

From here on, Antonio swears, the story has become folklore, but the vast majority of the villagers strongly believe it to be true, and stands as the reason for them to stay away from the Maduros and their home. Amelia, without her husband’s knowledge—who was away for a few days—invited poor Pilar for some afternoon tea, under the guise of friendship and empathy before her condition—unmarried and with a son borne from a married man. How it happened differs, since nobody was present if not one maid who left the house immediately after, but on one thing all tales are consistent: Amelia killed the child in front of his mother, proclaiming that her act was justified before God because it was in God’s plans to cleanse the earth of sinners, and that the child was impure and shouldn’t have been born either way.

In a fit of rage, Pilar Deocampo attempted to injury Amelia, but failed to. As a result, Amelia inflicted several wounds on the grievous mother, who bled out in her living room. Many say Mrs Maduro watched, untouched by her very own gruesome actions, and in her dying breath, Pilar Deocampo uttered one last thing, something the village now chants as much as a curse as a reminder: Mi sangre marcará tu tierra, y mis huesos serán tu mausoleo. Por cada uno que pierdas, un otro quedará en sofrimiento, y como las árboles de tu finca, vosotros marchitarán lentamiente.

My blood will mark your land, and my bones will be your mausoleum. For each one you lose, another will stay in suffering, and like the trees of your property, you will wither away slowly.

Amelia then proceeded to force her very own maids into taking the body to the nearby forest, dig up a grave and bury them; then, she placed the two pillars with the chain to forbid anyone from going into the area, and never spoke of the subject again—until her husband arrived home the next day. Seeing the maids scrubbing blood from the wooden floorings, he inquired his wife as to what had happened. Amelia didn’t spare any details; in fact, many agree she was quite assured in her grim account, believing hers had been a righteous act.

Francisco Maduro then, in a frenzy of grief and despair, ran into the woods to see it for himself, to see the grave of his beloved and his child—and he crossed the space between the two pillars. He was never seen again.

Amelia would die less than ten years later, and despite everything, many agree she was incredibly grievous of her husband’s disappearance and entirely devoted to her faith. The Maduros then became a cautionary tale—it’s unclear to me whether or not Francisco witnessed this event, considering he would be around 18-20 at the time, but the tale became part of the villages’ folklore so much he became a person they willing avoided. Antonio swears, however, that both Aura and Samuel were entirely unaware of this past.

From the story came a legend, one the villagers believed to be real, from the case of Samuel and Aura Maduro’s disappearance. Anyone who crossed the space between the two pillars would find the secret burial place of Pilar and her child; keeping her promise, it seems a Maduro would always be bound to find the place in one way or another, and it was none other than Pilar who called them, leaving someone else behind to suffer for their absence, until no Maduros were left.

It seems Pilar achieved her goal, then.

This also explains something about the house, something Aura herself spoke of in her last journal entry: that there was an overwhelming sadness to it, something bittersweet that didn’t seem to belong there. If the path itself sent a shiver down our spines, and there always seem to be something lurking between the trees when we looked, inside the house we felt… safe. Dani even recalled feeling this sudden pang of sadness which she described as being ‘like a mother losing her child’. At the time, I laughed it off, told her she was just missing her cat, but after Antonio told us the tale, we… froze in dread, to be honest.

Energy like this is nothing new—the spirits of those who died inside the place always leave some speck of it behind, and we feel it like something external. We thought it strange at first because no Maduro had died inside the home that we knew of: Francisco at the hospital, Claudia at the local market, Samuel and Aura vanishing, and as far as we could tell, with Francisco also vanished, Amelia died while in mass of a heart attack. But it started making sense then: the only people who had died inside the house were not members of the Maduro. It was their pain we felt, and consequently, that Aura felt.

Dani and I weren’t sure what to expect of this, but it certainly explained why all those who had tried finding the clearing described by Aura never did—because they went around the two pillars, not through them. We had come all this way to find answers, so we figured there was only one thing to do.

I think we were naïve. We believed the tale was only a tale, and if any of it was to be taken for truth, it was certainly aimed at the cursed—the Maduros, not us, mere wanderers. But… we were wrong.

I took a recorder and a camera with me, while Dani took a photographic digital camera. For a while, we stood before the two pillars in silence and tried telling ourselves it was fine, perfectly fine, it was just a piece of local folklore based on Catholic devotion of two women, one a sinner, the other scorned. We’d heard many like that, and it seemed improbable the clearing even existed in the first place. So we held our hands—though why, I can’t exactly tell—and we leapt over the chain.

Every single one of Aura’s words travelled back to me. She was right. It was… daunting. Shapes hovered about, escaping my sight constantly, caught only from the corner of my eyes, and the dense vegetation closed around us. There was a horrible silence all around—more of an absence of sound—and we couldn’t even hear our own heart beats. The sun struggled to transverse the heavy foliage, and the air was thick and prickly. Dani snapped a few photographs as we trod on, but it was clear she was aiming at nothing specifically, just frantically moving her camera with a gasp and a jitter, frightened by a sudden movement from which came no sound. Even the snapping twigs and crunching leaves beneath our feet seemed muffled.

After thirty minutes, we stopped. Before us, the space opened widely, and trees sprouted from a bald batch of white and brown earth, entwining together above our heads like a gable roof. Dani stopped, her camera frozen between her hands, but her eyes were glazed into a sort of mania I had never seen before. With a shuddering finger, she pressed the shutter, but didn’t look into the screen, just ahead—contemplating, focused. Her arm lowered then, and I called her name; Dani jittered, blinked and looked down at the photo she had just snapped—frozen and pale.

When she showed me photos, my heart sank to my feet. Every single one of them was so corrupted almost all of them were unusable, but a few of them showed something buried beneath the static corruption. Shadows, figures, silhouettes. A pair of baby feet. Faces, hollow and daunting, frozen into a scream.

I pressed my recorder, but it didn’t seem to work; Dani pressed some buttons on her camera but suddenly halted, and her eyes—glazed once more—cast curiously all around. She gave a step forward, and another, and a few more—all considerate and cautious, though they grew, and unexpectedly, she took her backpack off her shoulders and threw it on the ground; she dashed ahead, her hands diving deep into a bush, rummaging through meshes of thorny foliage, and a faint yet vivid laughter escaped her lips.

I called her in screams, but she did not react. At this point, I was terrified and could not move; all I could see was Dani dashing back and forth, stacking sticks under her arms and wiping the centre of the clearing clean, hands covered in white and brown dust—until I realized what she was doing.

I remembered Aura’s account. She was building something.

I shouted again, telling her to stop, as loud as I could, but this time, I couldn’t freeze. I ran to her, wrapped my arms around her when she began to struggle, and with all my might, held her steady, face buried against my chest. She smacked her fists at me, but I persisted, desperately trying to keep her still. I thought then that all it mattered was that she wouldn’t see, she wouldn’t look at the clearing, at that spot where she was feeling somehow compelled to build. I closed my eyes shut, and wind gushed past—no sound still. And I waited.

I opened my eyes first, didn’t let Dani move, and froze again. Before me was a house—small, no higher than a meter and a half tall—made of something white, polished and scraped to precision. Bone.

Stood in a moment of suspension, my arms relaxed, and my fingers stopped gripping Dani’s clothes. Her body shuddered against mine, and her breath raged louder than the gushing wind around us, louder than any sound in that deathly and hollow clearing. Then, she screeched—a gasp that grew in timbre, a rising cadence that somehow seemed to come far slower than I took notice of, and she jolted herself. In a motion faster than I could have anticipated, her body escaped my grip, and she ran—she ran away from me, towards the bone house that rose before us, without really having actually seen it before turning her head with resolution and dashing away.

I tried to grab her, but she escaped; her hands smacked open at the door, and on her knees, she crawled; her panting, heavy and desperate, came like an omen. She was famished for whatever exited beyond it, and I tried to stop—I screamed and ran after her, but she was elusive and fast and set on getting through that door and into the darkness that sucked her in and in and in—and I was too slow. Inside the door, nothing but blackness—swirling, consuming blackness—and as Dani entered the daunting absence of it, she evaporated from her very being. It was like watching someone being devoured by an invisible mouth that swallowed her into nothingness, and her every gesture came with so much reassurance I finally understood what Pilar Deocampo had warned: one always stays behind to suffer.

It wasn’t just meant for the Maduros; it was meant for anyone who desecrate her grave.

When the door slammed shut with a hollow thud, I collapsed to my knees and screamed her name, over and over until nothing existed inside my throat but the soreness of my efforts and the saltiness of my tears. There was not a sound. The entire space around me was engulfed in nothingness. I couldn’t see nor hear Dani anywhere, and before me, the house made of bone appeared far too small for her body to fit inside.

I curled up, and though the terror that had consumed me and made my heart pound so harshly my chest hurt, I couldn’t move. I grabbed the camera, but was unable to turn it off. By my side, Dani’s backpack laid forgotten, tossed aside in a rush. I had studied the Maduro’s case to the smallest detail and I knew she wouldn’t come back. And I finally understood what it was that had consumed Aura in such overwhelming grief, enough to make her leave her home and never come back, until her father passed away and she realized—she must have—he too crossed the space between the two pillars. I finally understood what madness had possessed Amelia after her grim crimes.

It was knowing they weren’t dead, but sentenced to absolute nothingness, left to hover in a sea of absence and non-existence, spiralling down to possible madness. It was knowing they were better off dead.

I blinked my teary eyes open, cold and trembling, hands gripping the camera, and saw something. The house was still there, but next to it, someone: sitting on the ground, back turned to me, legs crossed and shoulders slouched forward, clothes ragged and torn, and in their long auburn hairs, small leaves and twigs were caught in the slender threads. Instinctively, I turned the camera and snapped a quick picture—but the figure didn’t move.

My eyes didn’t move away from the strange figure in front of me, and as I put the camera down, I realized it could only be one person.

“Aura Maduro?”

Her head rose slowly, as if she tried to have a look at the skies, hairs swaying behind her, but she said nothing. Then, I felt it again—that same pressing sadness we always felt inside the house, like a mass of air that swarmed around me, emanating from the spectre before me.

“Where is Dani?” My voice was low, considerate; I looked at the figure and I still saw who I had seen in Aura Maduro the moment I had arrived there—a victim, as much as I was now. “Can you please bring her back to me?”

Immobile. Time passed, though I couldn’t measure, couldn’t tell how long it had been, if it was night or day though the sun existed somewhere in the sky—of that, I was sure. Then, her voice floated in the air, a ragged tune, husky and dragged, but frayed by an overwhelming agony that consumed me like a gust of wind.

“She has to stay.”

My breath rose and whipped the back of my throat; I moved restlessly, but couldn’t leave the small batch of earth on which I knelt. “Please,” I pleaded. “Please, just let me take her home.”

“El sangre marca la tierra,” she spoke, “y sus huesos son nuestro mausoleo.”

“I know what Pilar did to your family.” Every word seemed senseless to me, as if I read from a book: reciting a prayer in order to save myself, though unsure I was there was any salvation left. I wanted to say more, let her know that I understood that misery that encompassed us both, that exuded out of her like a cold wind—but every word died.

“One always stays,” she said, “and the other feels pain. But I look after them.”

I felt my chest tear open in that same sweeping sadness—it was something carved deep into her words, something instilled in the worn-out tone of her voice.

“I look after them,” she continued—and in between her words, a dissonance came: of a woman that wept in silence, the distortion of a throat filled with swallowed tears, “so they don’t feel so lost.”

Defeated, I looked down at the earth beneath me, at last understanding what never-ending horror Pilar Deocampo had cast on the world, that projected grief that would never cease, a continuous cycle of pain and terror—meant forever to steal and burden those who lived, who came out unscathed, to unfathomable pain.

I thought there was something I had to say, though I sincerely don’t know what my reason was: “What can I do?”

Her hand waved in the air, and from the ratty long-sleeves of her jersey, a slender finger, bony and pale, pointed to her left. I noticed there was a watch, glass cracked and black bracelet, with gold rims around. “Take him,” she said. “Let Sam rest.”

The order was immediate, and somehow, I understood. I stood, paced slowly towards the area she had pointed at—below a tall tree, at a small mound covered in pine needles and dried leaves, a batch of golden-brown amidst a soft green. I knelt, pushed the leaves aside, dug my fingers into the earth, and shuddered at the touch of something cold, harsh and angular. A hand, made of bones entirely, no flesh left, emerged—and when I understood at last what she demanded of me, I nearly vomited—sure I was completely incapable of completing the task.

I didn’t look back; short of breath, lungs collapsing at every sweeping movement of my hand, I didn’t rest. When I was done, a putrid smell filled my nose and I covered it with one arm; I ran back then, to Dani’s abandoned backpack, and rummaged for something useful enough for the rest of the deed. We had both brought our sleeping bags, expecting to perhaps spend the night to collect some evidence—so I unrolled Dani’s, pulled the zipper open, and with a force I hadn’t felt before in my life, unsure still where it came from—an urgency of survival, perhaps, or something outside of myself, cast upon me by Aura Maduro—I grabbed the pile of bones and put them inside the sleeping bag.

She was still there when I was done, her hand resting on her lap again. I stopped, stared at her with a cold shudder—whether of dread or something else, I can’t say anymore. Aura Maduro—what was left of her—simply sat in contemplation, her head still raised as she stared at something ahead, and only then did her words echo in my brain in full meaning. I grabbed my backpack, put the sleeping bag carefully on Dani’s, and stared at her. I had almost forgotten about the bone house.

“Do not return,” she said. “You won’t resist next time.”

Somehow, there was an unpronounced message in the air, something that wafted by like a tune carried from the distance, something you only notice when you stop and listen carefully: I am sorry you will have to suffer like we all did. I am sure that was it. Somehow, the precision existed in the tone of her voice, exuding out of her like a radio wave meant to be captured; somehow, I knew.

I walked back—ran back—and once I leapt over the chain, almost instantly, the air was weightless, soft and comforting. But everything else—my entire existence—began to press against my shoulders into a burden that was only now beginning to emerge. Guilt. Terror. Sadness. Crushing, overwhelming sadness—and Dani’s inexistence, her sentence into nothingness, collapsed over me.

It goes without saying I never saw her again.

I buried Samuel Maduro in the backyard of the house, and with nothing to mark his grave, I simply left, on the mound of earth, a framed picture I had found in the house—of Samuel and Aura. In it, she was wearing a wristwatch, black bracelet with golden rims.

I left and never went back. Though sometimes there is a burning wish to grab my things and drive until I see them again, the two pyramidal pillars with that creaking chain between, I never did. I think of Aura’s words, her blooming sadness, and something about it breaks my heart to pieces. The last of a cursed family, unknown of what she carried. On the night she had finally returned to her brother, in 1983, she had sacrificed far more than I could have anticipated. Cast into nothingness forever, sentenced to exist in a limbo of non-existence, forever imprisoned in the blackness of the bone house, she had willingly become a guardian. A watchful soul over those who fell victim to Pilar’s treachery—unable to put an end to it, she had at least given herself to the chance of easing their burden, making that consuming nothingness a bit more bearable. The core of it is, however, what it means to the two last members of the Maduro family.

I was never religious. I still am not. But they were stark Catholics, born and raised between catechesis and Saturday mass. For them, being sentenced to a limbo that is neither death nor life, neither Heaven nor Hell, and something far worse than purgatory… It must be horrifying.

I destroyed my camera and the footage, as well as the tape recorder I took with me, though there was nothing in it. I couldn’t bear, however, to destroy Dani’s digital camera. It was a piece of her, and every little thing that attested to her existence, I just… held on to it.

It was only months later that I turned that camera on again. To my surprise, there was a picture I had never seen—the last one I had taken, of Aura Maduro herself.

I can’t describe it. I will leave it to your eyes to see what lacks words entirely. Perhaps you can understand what it that I felt that afternoon.

I wish I could tell Dani how sorry I am.

________

𝙻𝚞𝚒𝚜 𝙲𝚘𝚛𝚗𝚎𝚓𝚘 𝚌𝚘𝚖𝚖𝚒𝚝𝚝𝚎𝚍 𝚜𝚞𝚒𝚌𝚒𝚍𝚎 𝚘𝚗 𝙽𝚘𝚟𝚎𝚖𝚋𝚎𝚛 𝟸𝟶𝚝𝚑, 𝟸𝟶𝟶𝟷. 𝙷𝚎 𝚜𝚑𝚘𝚝 𝚑𝚒𝚖𝚜𝚎𝚕𝚏 𝚒𝚗 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚑𝚎𝚊𝚍, 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚠𝚊𝚜 𝚏𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚍 𝚘𝚗 𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚋𝚎𝚍. 𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝚊𝚌𝚌𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚝 𝚠𝚊𝚜 𝚏𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚍 𝚘𝚗 𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚍𝚎𝚜𝚔, 𝚊𝚕𝚘𝚗𝚐 𝚜𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚊𝚕 𝚙𝚒𝚌𝚝𝚞𝚛𝚎𝚜 𝚘𝚏 𝙼𝚛 𝙲𝚘𝚛𝚗𝚎𝚓𝚘 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝙼𝚜 𝚍𝚎 𝚕𝚊 𝙿𝚊𝚣.

𝙳𝚊𝚗𝚒𝚎𝚕𝚊 𝚍𝚎 𝚕𝚊 𝙿𝚊𝚣 𝚑𝚊𝚜 𝚗𝚘𝚝 𝚋𝚎𝚎𝚗 𝚏𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚍.

𝙰 𝚋𝚘𝚍𝚢 𝚠𝚊𝚜 𝚍𝚒𝚜𝚌𝚘𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚎𝚍 𝚒𝚗 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚋𝚊𝚌𝚔𝚢𝚊𝚛𝚍 𝚘𝚏 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝙼𝚊𝚍𝚞𝚛𝚘 𝚏𝚊𝚖𝚒𝚕𝚢 𝚑𝚘𝚖𝚎, 𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚑 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚍𝚎𝚜𝚌𝚛𝚒𝚋𝚎𝚍 𝚙𝚒𝚌𝚝𝚞𝚛𝚎 𝚘𝚗 𝚒𝚝, 𝚊𝚙𝚙𝚎𝚊𝚛𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚝𝚘 𝚑𝚊𝚟𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚋𝚎𝚎𝚗 𝚏𝚛𝚎𝚜𝚑𝚕𝚢 𝚋𝚞𝚛𝚒𝚎𝚍 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚙𝚛𝚎𝚜𝚎𝚛𝚟𝚎𝚍 𝚒𝚗𝚜𝚒𝚍𝚎 𝚊 𝚜𝚕𝚎𝚎𝚙𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚋𝚊𝚐. 𝚆𝚑𝚎𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚛 𝚒𝚝’𝚜 𝚂𝚊𝚖𝚞𝚎𝚕 𝙼𝚊𝚍𝚞𝚛𝚘 𝚘𝚛 𝚗𝚘𝚝 𝚛𝚎𝚖𝚊𝚒𝚗𝚜 𝚞𝚗𝚌𝚘𝚗𝚏𝚒𝚛𝚖𝚎𝚍.

𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝚖𝚎𝚗𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗𝚎𝚍 𝚙𝚑𝚘𝚝𝚘𝚜 𝚊𝚛𝚎 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚘𝚗𝚕𝚢 𝚘𝚗𝚎𝚜 𝚙𝚛𝚎𝚜𝚎𝚛𝚟𝚎𝚍 𝚘𝚏 𝙼𝚛 𝙲𝚘𝚛𝚗𝚎𝚓𝚘’𝚜 𝚊𝚌𝚌𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚝, 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚊𝚛𝚎 𝚙𝚛𝚎𝚜𝚎𝚗𝚝𝚎𝚍 𝚋𝚎𝚕𝚘𝚠 𝚊𝚜 𝚎𝚟𝚒𝚍𝚎𝚗𝚌𝚎.

_________________

Wordtober Day 1: Ring

Wordtober Day 2: Mindless

Wordtober Day 3: Bait

Wordtober Day 4: Freeze

Wordtober Day 5: Build I

#wordtober #writing #my writing #creative writing #fiction #my wordtober #ITS LATE and FAKE but hey #I am trying to be better at short stories so if i get a bit overly excited this is why #bc i really NEED to have more short stories

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hyperfixation-station-1234 · 7 years

Text

Shared Spaces

Alright yall. I’m seeing a lack of fanfiction for ACOTAR on my dash so I made my own. And I’m sorry but it’s Elriel, because despite loving Lucien, I’m trash for them as a couple.

The small garden outside of the new townhouse she shared with Nesta, in Velaris, was one of the most important parts of Elain’s newfound life. It was a sanctuary when Elain felt panic rise inside of her, when the memories of the war came back to her in full force. It hadn’t even been two years, yet. It felt like only yesterday, but also like she had lived five lifetimes. So much change packed into such a short amount of time can be devastating to a soul with no outlet. And there was so much to unpack from within her soul. Gardening, just like she’d always loved doing was a way for her to contemplate so much loss, and still give life to something else. Elain had her body change on a cellular level, had gained new abilities that still in many ways scared her to use, had found a mate and just a quickly lost him, and had not known anything about him. There was guilt from the many times she’d failed her family. She had death of people on her hands. But Elain had other things, as well. Elain had her sisters, now had a healthy relationship with both. She had gained a family, a loving, fun and humorous family. More than anything, Elain had Azriel. If any friendship had helped her heal most, it was theirs.

Their friendship was a quiet one. She had cultivated it - held it out to the light. It was quiet friendship, but it was strong. They were kindred souls that both suffered in silent pain. Strange, when a mirror is shown in front of your own face, it’s so much easier to see the truth and the hurt lying just underneath the surface. Azriel was her mirror. He showed her the pain and she reflected his own back. Together they had been able to wipe away the dirty smudges of their pasts and present. With soft smiles shared when no one was looking, patient lessons in knife throwing and planting, and with a hand holding hers when she would sit and cry in the garden when it was all too much the fear and pain were slowly being washed clean from her heart. From the beginning, he would give her quick smiles and gentle commands during training. He was what changed her mind so quickly about appreciating being Fae. His kind words and gentle hands guiding her arms into correct positions were what made her see that Fae were not in fact devoid of love. When she felt like her insecurities and loneliness was festering, Azriel is who soothed her soul.

A story for a story was how it all started. She told him the story of being taken apart and put back together as something alien and unfamiliar and the struggle to find air when the murky liquid flooded her lungs. She talked about when she died, how she felt that last drop of life leave her body and the blazing lightning bolt that brought her back. He told her of having his hands burned by his half siblings, of his first kill as the Shadowsinger for Rhys’ father, about being left in the dark so long that shadows became his only confidant. Elain, who tried so hard to make everyone see that she was adapting, that she was fine, was surprised when one evening Azriel followed her out of the small townhouse and into the garden. Everyone had made it a custom to have dinner once a week at someone’s house. She knew Feyre and Rhysand had a love so deep it was breathtaking, she would never begrudge them that. But seeing them in that moment had caused her heart to rattle in her chest. She had a mate, but they would never have the chance to know each other, never have the chance to experience that love. She quietly excused herself with a smile that she didn’t let fall until she exited the back door. She sat on the stone bench and closed her eyes, when she opened them again Azriel was standing with his back against the doorway, looking at her with his head cocked to the side like he did when he had watched her during training lessons. Worried, she gave him a shaky smile, “I was just getting some air.” Azriel slowly moved his head from side to side then moved gracefully to sit next to her on the bench, “You don’t have to lie to me.” Elain nodded her head once and glanced down at the folded hands in her lap, “It hurts sometimes to see them, to know I could be missing out on what they have. He died before I could even get to have a decent conversation with him.” A tear fell onto her hands. Quickly, she closed them to keep more from escaping. She felt gnarled fingers brush over her lightly and settle on top of them, her eyes popped open and she saw the blue syphon gleaming and she heard him quietly say, “It’s hard mourning something that never existed to us in the first place. When a dream dies, it’s almost as unbearable as losing a close friend.” She looked up at his solemn face and saw understanding. He saw through her façade of a pleasant face and a constant smile. So, she flipped her hand over and they sat in that garden in a comfortable silence surrounded by peonies, climbing jasmine, and poppies. Elain smiled at the memory as she gathered flowers from the garden into a small bundle. It was just turning dusk, now. Cassian had walked into the townhouse earlier and he and Nesta both vanished. Now, Elain wasn’t very experienced when it came to physical interactions with the opposite sex. But she knew enough to never want to see either of them in a compromising position that would most likely traumatize her for her entire immortal life. And so, she didn’t bother telling Nesta where she was going. Elain had taken it upon herself to put a vase of flowers in Azriel’s apartment whenever she could. She called it his own training. Just like he helped train her in the art of killing, she trained him in the art of keeping things alive. When she first arrived in Velaris, she felt uncomfortable walking the streets by herself, surrounded by strange creatures, but now she relished spending time in the community. She even sold flowers at a shop in the Rainbow. She smiled at those passing by her on her way to Azriel’s apartment, not seven minutes away. He lived in near the water, it was a small apartment but she always enjoyed the view of the Sidra. When she got to the door she knocked and waited. She always counted to ten. If the door ever wasn’t answered before ten, she usually let herself in. A few months ago, after the 3 vase left on his front door, Azriel decided to re-establish his wards so that she was allowed in whenever he wasn’t home. Not even Cassian had that privilege. She got to five when Azriel answered the door. She gave him a smile the others never saw. There was no mask between them. She took in his rumpled hair, the shirtless torso, wings untucked and black training pants, “Hello, Az.” He gave her a quick, sleepy smile, “El.” She looked at the weapons laying haphazardly on floor next to his bed as she headed toward the small kitchenette with the flowers, “Late night mission?” She heard his raspy voice following behind her, “Border Patrol.” Since the end of the war, Velaris wasn’t kept a secret anymore. Elain knew Azriel saw it as being exposed, she knew he worried about its safety. Reaching up on the tips of her toes she opened the top cupboard and felt Azriel standing behind her. She felt the brush of his wing against her hair and his shadows unfurl around them both as he reached up to grab the vase on the top shelf. She watched his muscles bunch in his side. Being this close to him was still a novel thing for her. Lately, watching him had been doing funny things to her insides she hadn’t expected. She reached out and stroked a finger down his wing. He shadows danced out to stroke her hand and he jolted with a hiss, almost dropping the vase she has bought. He gave her a cool side-eye and she smiled saucily back at him. Grabbing the vase from his hand, she turned to fill it with water in the sink, she could have sworn she heard his mutter, “Cauldron boil me,” in an exasperated tone and smiled to herself. After she put the flowers in water, she put them on the counter and looked at him, her eyes snagged on his abs and trailed up to his collarbone. “My eyes are up here, Elain,” she pulled her eyes away from his torso and smiled sweetly at him, “Just checking to make sure you didn’t get injured.” She heard him snort and his lips twitched into a smirk, then he said, “I have something to show you.” Elain gave him a curious smile, “Alright.” “But you have to close your eyes first.” Because she trusted Azriel more than anything or anyone else she closed them tight and held out her hands. She felt his calloused and gnarled hands clasp around hers and gently pulled her toward the back of his apartment, where his balcony opened out over the Sidra. His hands let go of hers and with the sound of the double doors opening, those same hands were back just as quickly but this time they came from behind. She felt him shift and, leaning his face close to hers, he said, “Open your eyes, Sunshine.” In front of her, spanning the balcony that was probably as large as his apartment, potted flowers were placed everywhere. A small plum tree was next to the doorway. There was a large sitting pillow to the right. She turned to him with rounded eyes, liquid like honey and stared into his own that were closely watching her reaction. “You did all of this?” He nodded carefully, “I know you love the garden at the townhouse, and with Cassian always showing up unexpected and running you off, you can a have a spot here. Something to help me grow, a place to spend more time.” his throat worked, “If you want.” She gazed at the face of the man she’d grown this close bond with, someone who so fully understood her need to cultivate. He had filled his private space with the things she needed to feed the humanity in her heart. Elain realized in that moment, that if this was what love felt like, she didn’t ever want to let it go. She turned to face him then, settling her hands on his shoulders, with every ounce of courage in her body she leaned forward and kissed the edge of his jaw, “It’s beautiful and I love it. If you’re okay with me invading your space even more than I already have.” Azriel bent his head down, she felt the edge of his nose skim across her cheek as he whispered, “It’s not an invasion if I want you in my space, Sunshine.” His arms came up around her, pulling her into himself. Then his lips were on hers, demanding and gentle, firm yet yielding. Her hands tightened on his shoulders and he brought her even closer. She wrapped her arms around his neck, her feet lifted off the ground. She squeaked and Azriel smiled into her lips. He walked backwards with her in his arms into the apartment. Lost in the kiss, she hadn’t realized until her back hit the mattress and Azriel broke their kiss that the sun was setting. He cleared his throat, “I want my space to be yours too, Elain. You’ve brightened everything around me,” his hand smoothed other her temple and tangled in her hair, “I’m greedy for every drop of light you can give me.” He considered her eyes hopefully. “It’s yours, as long as you give me your darkness. I want to feel the darkness that hurts you, I want the darkness that soothes you. Just share it all with me, Az,” Elain’s fingers teased the shadows rolling from his back. Smiling as she gazed on his face. He took Elain’s hand into his own and brought it to his chest where she could feel the strong thumping of his heart. “It’s all yours, Elain.” The rest of the night was spent in each other’s arms. Playing with shadows, whispering with healed hearts and quiet kisses in their shared darkness.

#elriel #acowar #acotar #azriel #elain archeron #elain x azriel #fanfiction #acotar fanfiction

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