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frosted-night · 3 years

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Jack Frost Designs Review

Yes it’s finally his time. This is going to include his book designs including previous incarnations in said books. There are more movie concept designs than book so, let’s dig in shall we?

This was in fact the first ever Jack Joyce designed while he came up with The Guardians Of Childhood. He even comes with his own backstory! (Which was cut. Sorry Joyce posts walls of text so it’s a girthy read.)

So instead of a young mischievous trickster, we got a much more depressing story of Jack. (Jack by default is sad obviously) but this one... It kind of hits differently and almost reminds me of the story he crafted for Pitch. A dad who tried to defend his family but through tragic events was ripped from them and changed completely. Design wise, he’s a lot more tree than snow. There doesn’t exist a colored version of this so we’ll never know if he sported winter and dull dead leaf colors rather than grassy greens.This Jack has a weird presence to him, I can’t put my finger on it. Rating: 6/10 He’s really neat! Just a little too Autumn feeling rather than a blend of both Autumn and Winter.

Nightlight feels like the baby evolution if Jack was a pokemon and that's what I’m gonna stick with. Below is a more recent version of him colored.

In all honesty that one is easier on the eyes proportion wise because sometimes Joyce has ‘interesting’ anatomy choices but we aint going into that today. It’s interesting how his hair somehow looks shorter and longer than Jack’s at the same time. Could be because the longer strands float seamlessly but star boy hair physics what can ya do. It’s a little hard to tell what is his skin and what is his armor, so that is a casuality in making a character only have one or two colors in their color scheme. I love other artist’s depictions of Nightlight but the canon one feels a little weak color wise. Rating: 5/10 Sorry, get some better LEDs and then come back.

Here we have a book Jack but I can’t entirely recall if this was used in the books or not. I digress. This design looks like him still wearing very Nightlight-esque armor/clothing and slowly growing into his new persona as Jack Frost. The intricacies are hard to make out but we’ll work with it. This one is very interesting to me because he very much looks like an older teen close to young adult. His hair looks very fluffy too. Not many complaints about this one but not much praise either.

Rating: 6/10 Not great but doesn’t stand out that much.

Remember when I said Joyce had ‘interesting’ anatomy decisions? Jack looks like he has half a head here and it bothers me GREATLY. This is the adult Jack design he went with. Supposedly he likes the opera and he sure looks it. This! Exists!! Kind of wish it didn’t. The outfit is nice but it just doesn’t fit Jack as a whole. This just screams to me that it’s someone else with a similar-ish hairstyle.

Rating: 3/10 Guess he’d be the...Phantom Of The Opera. (I’ll go home and so should he.)

And finally the final Jack. This is the one that almost exactly resembles the Jack we got in the movies(Probably because it was made after the movie but w/e) but just add a cape on him. I can’t really tell if hes got a hoodie and a cape, or just a cloak+hood on top of a sweatshirt. It isn’t too important because my thoughts on this one are obvious. Rating: 10/10 Edna Mode would have a field day with you boy.

MOVIE DESIGN TIME

Joyce claims this is a design he drafted when Leonardo DiCaprio was considered to voice Jack and I can kind of see that with how his face is drawn here. This Jack looks a lot more like a warrior and less of that trickster look. I can’t say I’m a fan of the weird antenna his hood has but his sword is really cool looking.

Rating: 4/10 Nice bow and sword but it can’t save your fashion choices.

This looks like a lanky 11-13 year old who would put rocks or slugs in my shoes and relish in my disgust. He has the exact look of a snot nose kid and I’m unsure how to feel about it.

His various hairstyles drafted here sort of make him softer looking or just more of a snot nose, no in between. Maybe even an Anime Protagonist.

The top right one almost looks like Hiccup from How To Train Your Dragon if you squint. It’ll be a little hard to rate them all as one individual but why not.

Rating: 5/10 I don’t hate them but they aren’t my cup of tea.

AH- IS THAT A FUCKIN GREMLIN?

Oh wait no it isn’t he looks like a 10 year old. Whatever don’t feed him after midnight. The staff’s design of not being shaped like a G is an interesting tidbit but the whole design looks like he’s really young or like a troll etc. This Jack looks like he thinks girls have cooties uses outdated slang.

Rating: 4/10 This is me being generous.

It honestly looks like he hiked his pants up all the way to his chest. A late teen with horrid fashion choices once again. Not many other thoughts here.

Rating: 2/10 Get a sweater on or something.

This is one is very interesting looking to me. His clothes looked a lot more leather based and very human-like. The tatters, tears and frays all make him look like he was a victim of an accident that never changed his clothes. It makes me wonder if this Jack had the same death as the final movie Jack or something else entirely. Either way, this one looks like hes a mid to late teen which really adds to my intrigue.

This was another image that greatly resembled the design so I included it here. It almost looks like his skin is blue here which is pretty neat to me at least. He’s also got leaf motifs here, which from the first Jack design Joyce made, we can see a pattern here.

Rating: 8 /10 I was originally weirded out by his head but now its not so bad.

This Jack is definitely dressed more like a nature boy rather than him having human influenced fashion and it’s an appealing touch. The tiny leaf sprouting from his staff is also kind of cute since the designers seemed to want to put leafs somewhere on his designs. His hairstyle is also very cute but it reminds me of Sasuke Uchiha in a sense. (Not a setback for me at least)

Rating: 7/10 13 year old Jack is going thru a phase.

I thought this Jack didn’t show up again in story boards but I was wrong!

They look a little different from each other but just similar enough to pair together, so bare with me. The first one obviously has looser pants, slightly longer sleeves and got his leaf motif going. This second Jack is a VERY green. It gives the impression that this Jack made his clothes out of plants and natural materials. Again I’m not wholly sure if greens fit his color scheme but they sure went for it for a while. I can’t say I’m a fan of it because it heavily reminds me of Peter Pan.

However a very similar looking Jack could be found in this storyboard. It doesn’t look as green as the other storyboards made it out to be and looks more like dead grass. Which is a pretty nice touch.

Rating: 5/10 I don’t hate it but it just doesn’t vibe yknow.

Speaking of a vibe...hoo this certainly has one. This Jack isn’t old but certainly doesn’t look very young, maybe in the 20-30 range, thats just me. He has facial features that remind me of Pitch but resembles the Jack Frost of Santa Clause 3

That being said, I wondered if him looking similar to Pitch was in the storyline of them being brothers.(Which was a scrapped thing, who knew.) He’s a bit more menacing in this design but certainly seems like he relishes in his work.

Rating: 4/10 I’d make it a lower score but I gotta give it props

NOW THIS JACK IS KINDA INTERESTING. This one looks like he’s 16 and going through a grunge phase. He’s gonna play Nirvana loudly and not turn it down even if you tell him too. His staff itself has mini icicles hanging off of it and leafs look stuck to his shirt. Did you glue or staple those on Jack? His hair also looks much longer than his other designs and I kind of dig it( Shut up I’m bias.) I’m not wholly sure why else this design has stuck with me but it just has something about it that I just love. I wish there was a full body drawing of it.

(He also kinda has the same hair as the Jack Frost in Runescape but I wont go on about that hoo hoo)

Rating: 9/10 *Bad Boy by Cascada plays in the distance*

This one definitely feels like middleschooler trying to be in a band. His sticks just resemble drumsticks to me what can I say. I’m a big fan of his shoes and his color scheme screams a hibernating tree in winter. His hair also looks like it’s covered in frost rather than it being wholly white, which is very neat!! He looks like he wants to fight but has slight hesitance. Overall a very balanced Jack.

Rating: 8/10 He’s ready for band practice

Not many thoughts here, I just found these tiny Jack designs cute. His hoodie being a jacket instead just adds to the charm of this one.

No talk to him he angy.

Rating: 6/10 fun sized boi

Now this Jack resembles the one earlier that dressed entirely in leather brown colors, however he clearly is different than that one. I’m gonna say it, he looks like a zombie or undead in this design and its pretty fucking gnarly. I don’t know whats going on with his hair but I’m gonna assume it’s just the wind making it look like that. He just has the vibe that he was once human but was turned into something else entirely. It isnt in uncanny territory but borders that. This version of Jack meeting Pitch and the others would have been *very* interesting. Rating: 7/10 Eat a twinkie Jack you’ll feel better.

The final design! I can’t complain much about this one. The way his staff subtly has a G shape and a hexagon(his signature shape) is a wonderful touch. Additionally, the way the frost is gathered mostly where his hand is such an intricate detail. His signature hoodie is iconic at this point so I can’t bad mouth that either.(I can’t anyway because there's no complaints from me here.) Although, I never understood the leather straps that his pants had or their functions. I couldn’t find any colonial outfits that resembled Jack’s pants so its a total mystery to me at least.

And I can’t go on about this design until I mention the snowflake pattern in his eyes

Pure beauty. It’s at a hue of blue that almost looks impossible to have, combined with the electric blue color of the snowflake in his eyes. The amount of detail in this movie amazes me to this day. Rating: One Great Blizzard <3/10

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daryl-dixon-daydreams · 3 years

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Words: 8,912 Pairing: Daryl Dixon x Reader Reader pronouns: she/her Era: Alexandria Warnings: Language, sexuality, anxiety, fear, nudity, violence, gore, death of a character, typical TWD A/N: Here we are! The very final part of this series and it's a long one. It's definitely bittersweet. 257 page document and almost 130,00 words. Thanks for sticking with Y/N and Daryl this whole time. Hope you like it. A/N: This is part of a series! Find the previous parts on the Masterlist! Summary: Y/N and Daryl head to the meeting place to try and put an end to Negan and The saviors.

Your name: submit What is this?

Daryl was staring over at you beside him in the bed. The sheet was swirled around your hips, allowing him to memorize the delicate angles of your shoulders blades and to trace the shadow of your spine down to the dimple in your lower back. You were sleeping soundly beside him somehow, probably just out of exhaustion. The two of you had practically torn the house apart last night tearing into one another feverishly with desire and scenes from it played on a loop in his head; your legs wrapped around his hips as he pressed your back into the wall, sweat beading up on both of you, your head thrown back and your eyes closed as you gasped in pleasure, completely letting go and surrounded only by sensations of him.

Daryl had pressed kisses and nipped at practically every inch of your soft skin, knowing some would leave faint bruises and reveling in the surprised noises his lips and teeth were eliciting from you. He could practically still feel your fingernails down his back, your lips crashing into his, your fingers in his hair. He could hear your laughter and see the fire in your eyes and blush in your cheeks when you’d both clattered into the nightstand as you tore each other’s clothes off and sent the lamp shattering on the floor. It had been a whirlwind of desire and passion and was borne of both of your fears and anxiety about what was coming. It was needy and full of love. It was heated and wild. Daryl had never experienced anything like it and neither had you... The feelings and sensations had been all-consuming and almost overwhelming. Unstoppable.

But afterwards, once you’d laid spent on the bed for a time, tangled with each other, you kissed him so softly and tenderly and with so much love he’d melted into warmth, and he’d returned it and told you how you were everything to him, how much he loved you, how he needed you to breathe, to live. And you’d returned every word. He was bewildered and still in disbelief that you felt the way you did about him. Your eyes drank him in and then you’d pulled him gently under a warm cascade of water and showered together, washing each other’s hair, caring for the bumps and bruises you’d inflicted on one another earlier in the lustful crescendo and physical venting of your frustration and worries, smoothing the rich lather over one another, refusing to part for a second. And this was delicate and tender. Your hands were light on each other. Your kisses were soft but still full of heat.

You’d collapsed against him in bed, completely content with his arms around you, but Daryl hadn’t been able to sleep a moment. Now it was almost time for him to wake you. It was nearly 3 am, and the plan was to meet Rosita at the gate at 3:30. You’d travel under cover of darkness to the place where Negan was to meet you that afternoon, allowing them both to conceal themselves in the trees on opposite sides of the field. And then you’d wait.

Daryl adjusted the sheet over himself as he rolled closer to you, needing to feel your skin against his. Both of his hands smoothed over your back and you felt so small and delicate beneath them. You stirred a little beneath his touch and he kissed your shoulder and swept your hair aside to kiss your neck. You let out a soft sigh and sleepy moan and Daryl wanted so much to stay hidden with you in his arms forever. Why the fuck did this goddamn world have to be the way it was? How was it that he’d only found something this good when everything else was utter shit? The constant shit coefficient, he thought to himself. Something Merle used to say.

“Do we have to wake up?” you breathed quietly, turning and curling into him, your fingers finding his bare chest and moving down his side to hold gently to him.

“Yeah. S’time,” he drawled. Your eyes flitted open and for a moment Daryl thought he saw a flash of fear in them, but the next moment it was gone.

“Okay,” you said.

The archer reached out and smoothed his fingers through your hair. Your hand covered his and you laced your fingers in between his.

“It’s almost done,” you said. But Daryl didn’t find that reassuring. You saw that he looked careworn and worried and pressed his hand over your heart so he could feel it beating. “Hey. Everything is going to be fine,” you said. “I love you.”

Daryl felt a swell of emotions, everything all mixed together at once. It was dizzying. “I love ya, too.” You leaned in and kissed him softly. The next moment you both rose and dressed and soon you were outside the gate with Rosita, on your way to the meeting place.

It was still almost pitch black when you arrived, except for the faintest glow of a lighter blue on the eastern horizon. The three of you walked the area in silence, shoulder to shoulder. There were a few walkers and you put them down like a well-oiled machine. You all picked the spots where Rosita and Daryl would post up with their scoped rifles. Daryl gave Rosita a boost so she could climb up into a large oak tree. She settled into the crook of two diverging branches and nodded, glancing down at you. “It’s good. I have a good view.” Her camouflage clothing made her nearly impossible to see against the leaves and bark.

You walked with Daryl across the open clearing and into the small copse of trees on the other side. After you’d found a suitable spot, he gave you a long look, frozen with his hand on the strap of his rifle.

“There’s still time,” he drawled. “Ya ain’t gotta do this. We can find some other way.”

You stepped close to him and rested your hand on his strong chest, feeling the beating of his heart beneath your fingers and the expansion of his lungs with each breath. “I do have to do this,” you said. You stared up into his blue eyes. “Everything is going to be okay,” you reassured him.

His eyes flickered between yours but your reassurance didn’t relieve the pit in his stomach. He cupped your face and kissed you, pouring everything into that kiss and soaking you up, breathing you in. “Alright. Let’s get this done.” He knew there was no talking you out of it.

You pulled your pistol and handed it over to him. “Just hold this for me for a little while,” you said. But you kept your knife in its sheath for now in case a stray walker wandered by. “Daryl Dixon. I love you. More than you know,” you said, taking one last long look at him.

His forehead was deeply lined with worry, but his voice was steady. “I love ya too.” And then he watched as you headed into the darkness to wait in the clearing while he took his place. _ _ _ _ _ _

The wait was agonizing. You were practically sick with strenuous anticipation but finally, after what had felt like an eternity, you heard a vehicle in the distance. You rose from your seat on the ground and stood in the small circle of depressed grass left where you’d waited. Your jeans felt damp with moisture from the morning dew that hadn’t yet evaporated and you squinted in the direction of the road. Eventually a tall, lean figure, immediately recognizable as Negan came into view. Despite the heat of the sun, he was wearing his characteristic leather jacket. You were surprised but relieved to see he was without Lucille. You began approaching him cautiously, aiming to meet him halfway, knowing that would be a good spot for both Daryl and Rosita’s fields of view.

You were about a third of the way there when he suddenly froze and spoke. “Y/N, is that a goddamn knife I see on your hip? What in the fucking hell did you think unarmed meant?” he growled. His voice was deepened in anger and booming across the open space to you.

You pulled it from the sheath and tossed it out away from you over your shoulder. “I needed something in case of walkers,” you said. You eyed him suspiciously but he seemed to relax. You noted that he had a pistol in a holster at his side.

You both resumed your approach but something over his shoulder caught your eye and every muscle in your body tensed. “I said come alone!” you spat at him. “I said no one else!” You started to back away but far from looking concerned, Negan simply laughed.

He whistled and Dwight came into view, but he was entirely different than when you’d last seen him in Alexandria, when he’d come to pledge to help you fight against The Saviors. He was now clothed in a filthy sweatshirt and sweatpants that looked like they could have been the very same ones Daryl had worn, and his face was covered in bruises. “This? Oh, this isn’t someone, Y/N. This is my new dog, Dwight.”

You gulped and your heart started to race. Oh, fuck. He knew. “What did—"

“Can we not lie to each other, Y/N?” he growled, interrupting you. “I fucking know that you know what he did. I FUCKING KNOW!” he roared at you, his usually handsome features distorting and his face burning red with anger. “Did you really think that I wouldn’t FUCKING figure out what sneaky little rat cunt was feeding information to Alexandria? How goddamn fucking stupid do you think I am?”

You were paralyzed and were praying that Rosita or Daryl would pull the goddamn trigger. They had to know something was wrong. Was Negan far enough into the field now that he wasn’t blocked by other trees?

“Get the FUCK DOWN and get the FUCK over here, dog!” Negan growled at Dwight. Dwight fell to his hands and knees, his head down, and he crawled the rest of the way to Negan. When Dwight reached his side, Negan glared down at him. “Now stand the fuck up right here, right next to me and keep your eyes on the goddamn ground.” His voice was dripping with contempt. Negan looked back up at you. You realized that Dwight standing next to him was, in all likelihood, blocking Daryl from taking a shot at Negan. “Are we doing this or what?” Negan said. “Come over here so I don’t have to fucking yell and you can tell me why in the hell I shouldn’t just wipe all three communities off the goddamn map.”

Somehow you steadied your nerves after seeing Dwight so changed and you walked the rest of the way toward him cautiously. Negan seemed to calm as you came closer and you caught him looking you up and down. “Lift your shirt up, Y/N,” he said.

“Fuck you,” you spat back at him.

He rolled his eyes. “I said lift it up, not take it off. There’ll be plenty of time for that later if you’re interested,” he said with a grin. “I want to see your waistband. Make sure you’re not hiding some cute little peashooter.”

You begrudgingly lifted your t-shirt up enough so Negan could see the waistband of your jeans. “Turn,” he said, moving his forefinger in a circle. You scoffed, but complied and turned around so he could see you weren’t hiding anything.

“Good,” he said as you came to rest back in your original position.

“I’m surprised you didn’t ask to frisk me,” you snarked at him. He let out a chuckle and that wide goddamn smile grew on his face as he looked at you.

“Holy shit. I do miss you, Y/N,” he said. “And not just for the great ass.” You were taking a breath about to open your mouth to say something snarky back when suddenly Negan pulled his pistol and shot Dwight right in the fucking head. You watched the blowback of blood splotch Negan’s face like it was in slow motion. The cloud of gunpowder drifted lazily on the heat of the afternoon air. Dwight’s body crumpled to the grass in a heap like a wet towel and you stood paralyzed, in shock, staring at the place where that living man had just been standing. Your hesitation from the shock of what the fuck you had just watched only lasted for a split second but it was long enough for Negan. Dwight’s body hadn’t even finished falling when Negan lunged forward and grabbed you, spinning you roughly and pulling you back against his body, one arm looped around your neck.

There was nothing you could do. He had you.

“Fool me once, shame on you,” he hissed into your ear. “Fool me twice…” His arm around you was tight. You could feel his tensed muscles straining as he pulled you back against him. But there was a sharp biting to the muzzle of his gun pressed into your back. “Now what did I fucking tell you, Y/N? I said no goddamn Daryl, didn’t I? And you just can’t obey me, can you? I know he’s here. There’s no way he’d let his little lovebug come out here on her own.” Negan suddenly roared and his deep voice was so soaked with bone-chilling anger it completely paralyzed you. “Get the FUCK out here now, Daryl! Or I’ll shoot her in the fucking heart!”

Sweat was dripping into Rosita’s eyes as she peered through her scope. “Shit. Fucking shit!” The only thing she could see was you in the crosshairs. There was no way she could take the shot without risking hitting you instead.

And Daryl’s view was no better. His stomach had plummeted into the fucking depths of hell. When Negan roared for him to come out, the archer tried to think fast. What the fuck were his options? None. He had none. Maybe he could bargain for you. He’d go with Negan as his prisoner if he just let you go. He had to try. He had to try something. He was nearly hyperventilating. Calm. He needed to be calm for you if he was going to get you out of this.

“I’m not fucking playing games, Daryl!” As he roared angrily, his arm tensed and tightened around your windpipe.

Daryl squeezed his eyes shut for a moment and drew in as deep a breath as the paralysis in his diaphragm would allow. Then he shouldered his rifle and grabbed your pistol instead, stepping out from the copse of trees with it aimed in Negan’s direction.

Negan laughed into your ear and then you felt his teeth on it, biting. You tried to recoil from him but his arm held you tightly in place. It was terrifying how the man could go from roaring in anger to chuckling like he was having the time of his life with the flip of a switch. Daryl was still a way off, approaching with your pistol aimed. “Who’s your other friend?” Negan hissed into your ear. “The one over in the trees to the right.”

How the fuck could he know? How the fuck could he possibly know?

“I asked you a goddamn question, Y/N, and I fucking expect an answer.” Another squeeze on your windpipe.

“Why does it matter?” you wheezed out.

“Hmm. Good point. I’ve got everything I need right here,” Negan said. He pressed the gun into your back, eliciting a painful hiss of air through your teeth.

“How’d you know?” you asked, your hands gripping his strong arm in an attempt to lessen the pressure on your neck.

“Because I fucking know everything. You should have learned that by now.”

You were up on your tiptoes and the way he was pulling you back arched you into him, pressing your body against his. You were repulsed by the feeling of him against you. He laughed again, seeming to sense that you were raking your brain trying to figure out how he knew Daryl and Rosita were there. “That boy Eugene can build just about anything when given the proper motivation,” Negan said. His voice was silky and low. “When you said you wanted to meet, I tasked him with coming up with a way to make sure you really came alone. And you know what that son of a bitch came up with? Modified a camera to read thermal heat signatures. Now, I’m not even gonna pretend to understand how the fuck that works, but he did it. So, all I had to do was pull up, turn that shit on, and survey the meeting place. And with little Dwighty-boy under my thumb there was no rat to run off and warn you! And wouldn’t you know, when I fired that baby up there were three human-shaped heat signatures instead of just one. You must really think I’ve lost my touch if you thought I was going to take you on your word…” Your whirling mind was interrupted by soft footsteps in the grass nearby.

“Let her go,” Daryl growled. He was close enough now that Negan could talk to him without raising his voice. Your pistol was still aimed at Negan in Daryl’s hand but with the way Negan was holding you, you couldn’t imagine that Daryl could actually get a clean shot.

Negan laughed heartily. “That’s cute. You do know I have a gun pressed into your dearheart’s spine, right?” You felt the muzzle of the gun leave you for a moment as he showed it to Daryl, but a second later the bite of the steel was back. “Looks like we’ve got ourselves a little Mexican stand-off!” Negan said. “But there is one thing I have that you sure-as-fucking-shit don’t. Leverage.” Negan leaned down and you felt his face in your hair. He drew in a deep breath and let it out dramatically. “Mmm-mm-mm! Smells sweeter than I remembered.”

The muscles in Daryl’s jaw flinched as his teeth clenched. “If ya let her go, ya can take me instead. Hell, ya can kill me right now,” Daryl said.

“Daryl! No!” Your eyes went wide and round with fear. “Daryl—” But Negan’s arm tightened against your throat and you fell silent.

“I’ll put this gun down and ya can kill me right now,” Daryl said again. “Just let her go.”

Negan was smiling a self-satisfied smirk and chuckled again. “Oh, how I love having you both by the short and curlies,” he laughed. “Now, why the fuck would I want to make a trade like that? I can get out of here with Y/N and fucking kill you later. Besides, the idea of me having little Y/N here,” he pressed the gun to your head and his arm unwrapped from around your throat and you felt his hand running down your side to grip your hip. “Me having her would torture you in ways I can’t even imagine. That’s so much better than just, pfft, shooting you in the fucking face.”

“Fuck you,” you spat at Negan. Angry tears were burning in your eyes but you were determined not to let them spill out. “You can take me but I won’t give myself to you ever again. And I know that’s the one rule you’ll keep. Willing ass only, right?”

The gun bit into your back again and Negan’s fingers swept the hair off your neck and then gripped around your throat. His hand almost reached all the way around your neck. “Oh, give it time, doll… The things I have in mind for you, you’ll be begging to be my wife again in no time, just to have some light, some sound, some warmth, something to eat besides tinned cat food. There’s something called learned helplessness. You ever heard of it, Daryl?” Negan’s voice was casual now, like he was having a friendly conversation over a beer. “These psychology researchers would deliver a tone before shocking rats in a cage. At first, when the rats learned that the shock came after the tone they’d try to escape as soon as the sound played. They’d scramble and run, looking for a way out.” Negan’s fingers drifted down from your throat and swept to your collarbone. “But eventually, when they realized they couldn’t escape, when the tone came, the rats would just freeze. They’d just wait for what was coming. They’d learned they couldn’t escape and they accepted it.”

Daryl’s hand started to shake a little with rage. If looks could kill Negan would have been dead ten times over. “I ain’t lettin’ ya take her. And ya won’t hurt her,” he growled.

“Now, why the fuck would you think that?”

“Because you’re obsessed,” Daryl growled.

“Ever heard the phrase ‘If I can’t have her, no one can?’” Negan’s tone was dark and for the first time you truly realized he might kill you. Your stomach turned. This was so fucking stupid. How had you been so fucking stupid? You were blinded by your desire to save lives, to protect the people you cared about, and to just get this whole fucking mess over with. “This is me. I’m Negan. If it ever comes down to me or someone else, even Y/N here, I will be the one to fucking walk away.”

“Daryl—Daryl, look at me,” you said. The archer’s narrowed blue eyes met yours. “Just shoot. Just shoot. You have to end this. It’s okay... Just shoot,” you said. “You can—you can shoot him through me,” your voice broke as you urged the words to fall from your tongue.

“Wow,” Negan exclaimed. “Holy fucking shit! That is some goddamn insane shit you just said, Y/N! Fuck me! No wonder I like you so much. That takes some massive gonads! Can you feel my cock getting hard?” he asked, pressing his pelvis into you. “Goddamn…” He let out a low whistle and looked up at Daryl, still laughing. “Oh, you can’t do that though… Can you, Daryl? Kill the love of your fucking sad, pathetic, little hillbilly life just to get the Big Bad Wolf?” Negan laughed into your ear again and you squeezed your eyes closed as you felt his breath on your neck. He pressed his lips to the sensitive skin just below your earlobe, knowing this must be killing Daryl to watch, and the stubble on his face was rough against your skin. “He can’t do that to you, baby. What the hell were you thinking spouting out that—”

But Negan never finished his sentence.

Daryl couldn’t explain it but despite the rolling boil of rage in his chest, or maybe because of it, time seemed to slow down in front of him and his hand suddenly had never felt steadier. He saw Negan as a target on the other end of the sight on the barrel of the gun and knew in his core that if he pulled the trigger at that exact moment that the bullet would find the intended target. And he squeezed off a round and watched through the hazy cloud of powder smoke as the bullet buried into Negan’s head.

What he hadn’t expected was the sound of a second shot.

It took him a moment to understand just what had happened. Had Rosita fired too? But as Negan’s now lifeless body crumpled beside Dwight’s, you fell too. Daryl expected you to bounce back up, to rush away toward him, but when you fell you just were lying there still on the soft grass.

Then he was a blur of movement and was beside you instantly on his knees. “Y/N? Y/N!” Your eyes were shut. Daryl’s hands immediately lifted you to cradle you against him, trying to rouse you, and that’s when his hand came away warm and wet and crimson from your back. He stared at it in a cruel realization. When he’d shot Negan, perhaps as some reflex on dying, Negan had squeezed the trigger of his gun and a shot had gone into your back.

Rosita was tearing across the field as fast as she could, her lungs on fire, and when she arrived beside Daryl on the ground she looked down in horror at your still body. “Oh my God. Oh my God,” she gasped. “Daryl—”

But her presence and voice seemed to snap him back to action. “Go get Negan’s vehicle. It’s closer. Go!” he roared. She pushed Negan’s corpse over and found the keys in his pocket before running as fast as she could to the waiting Jeep.

Daryl was still trying to rouse you. “Y/N! Y/N, open your eyes! Y/N, open your eyes dammit!” he roared. “Look at me! Y/N!” But your head simply lolled a little as he jostled you. He hesitated only one more second before pressing his fingers to your neck. Pulse. You had a pulse. He let out a rush of air, or maybe it was ripped from his lungs. “I’m not lettin’ ya die, dammit! Ya ain’t—ya ain’t dyin’ on me! I need ya!” He tore his shirt off. He lifted you enough to see the blood soaking the back of your shirt and dripping onto the grass beneath you and he pressed the bundled fabric of his clothing as hard as he could to the spot that seemed to be the origin of the crimson river.

The roar of an engine behind him pulled his eyes from your paling face and Rosita came roaring into view in the Jeep, which slid on the grass a little as she stomped on the brake pedal. Daryl stood, lifting you in his arms like you weighed nothing and Rosita hopped out to pull the back door open. The archer slid inside. Rosita rushed to grab the guns from near Dwight and Negan’s bodies and threw herself back into the Jeep, slamming it into gear and turning in the direction of Hilltop, her foot to the floor.

Daryl could feel your blood soaking through his shirt. Every passing moment his terror grew and you showed no signs of stirring. He cupped your face with his free hand, wincing as his fingers left smears of your own blood wherever he touched you. He huddled forward and pressed his forehead lightly to yours and Rosita could tell he was talking to you, whispering, but she couldn’t make out the words. Her stomach lurched every time she glanced in the rearview mirror.

She pressed her foot to the floor and the Jeep leaped over the pavement, but still she willed it to go faster…

_ _ _ _ _ _

Daryl sat slumped over, his head in his hands, frozen. He vaguely registered a door opening somewhere behind him and he straightened up enough that he caught sight of his hands and saw the dried blood all over them. In some spots it was thick and flaking off while in other places it filled all the lines of his palms like someone had purposely painted it there, a red wash over his skin. He stared down at his hands, his vision going in and out, blurring and then sharpening, blurring and then sharpening…

The door opening had been Rosita entering the medical trailer. She hesitantly made her way over to Daryl and lightly touched his shoulder. He flinched, startled, and turned to look up at her with a dazed and desperate expression. She gulped and gave him a sympathetic look, her brow drawing downward over her eyes, but he didn’t seem to really be registering anything. He looked completely unlike himself. She pressed a damp cloth into his hands and he mechanically began rubbing away the dried blood on his skin, moving simply because she’d prodded him.

Her eyes drifted over to the bed Daryl was slumped beside and her throat constricted. It didn’t even look like you. Your skin was so ashen. Her stomach twisted. She should have stopped this—should have pushed back about the plan, but she’d been so blinded by her own hunger for revenge and this was where it had led. “Daryl—you should let the doctor give you something… some fluids, some medication—”

“No,” he croaked. The towel in his hands, now smeared with rusty red, fell to the floor carelessly.

Rosita gulped and rested her hand over the wrapping around the crook of her elbow absently. As if on cue, Dr. Carson appeared around the curtain divider. His eyes fell on you lying on the bed first and then drifted over to Rosita again.

“She probably is going to need another transfusion soon,” he said softly.

Rosita nodded. She, luckily, was blood type O negative, the universal donor. “Anything she needs,” she agreed.

Daryl’s eyes lifted and fixed on the doctor. “Why ain’t she awake yet?”

“Her body went through a lot of trauma with the gunshot and then the surgery… that with the medication, the painkillers, anesthesia still wearing off it could take a while.”

Daryl slumped again and rubbed his hands over his face.

Rosita glanced at Dr. Carson. “Can I talk to you?” she tilted her head away from the curtain divider and he followed her around it to the other side. “Tell me,” she said. “How is she? Really?”

“She lost a lot of blood. The bullet hit her right scapula and shattered it but that also stopped it from going clear through. If that had happened, she probably wouldn’t have even made it here. I was able to get the biggest bullet fragments out and I had to put in some plates to stabilize the area. My best guess is that everything will be fine. She’ll wake up, and except for some residual pain in that shoulder and maybe a little reduced mobility, in all likelihood, she’ll be just fine after she’s completely healed.”

Rosita wanted to heave a sigh of relief but she knew there was a qualifier. “But you’re saying there’s a chance she won’t wake up, that she lost too much blood,” she said.

“Yes. There’s a chance,” he said. “You should prepare him for that if you can.”

She shook her head. “There’s no preparing anyone for that,” Rosita said. “How long until we know?”

“If she doesn’t wake up in the next day or so I’ll start getting concerned,” he said quietly. “But all her vitals are trending in the right direction.”

“A day. Alright. Thanks,” she said. Dr. Carson breezed away and Rosita stepped around the curtain again. This time Daryl was right at the side of the bed and he had your left hand pressed between his, his eyes closed. If she hadn’t known better, she would have thought he was praying.

Rosita pulled up a chair and set it slightly back from the bed you were in, feeling like she needed to be there but also needed to give Daryl some space with you. After everything their family had been through, all the people they’d lost, she’d never seen him like this. She was never a religious person, especially after the apocalypse, but at that moment, looking at how Daryl was with you, she sent a prayer into the ether.

_ _ _ _ _ _

Daryl had finally collapsed on the edge of your bed out of pure exhaustion. His will had been strong to stay awake, to sit a vigil beside you, but his body eventually had other ideas and finally gave up.

But the slightest movement of your hand in his and he was sitting up stock straight, staring down at it and wondering if he was imagining things. His heart was hammering with renewed hope. There was a soft noise that fell from your lips and he knew he wasn’t imagining that. Daryl was instantly on his feet. “Doc!” he roared, and Dr. Carson was there in an instant. Daryl watched as a grin widened on the doctor’s face and he finally felt his body relax some.

Dr. Carson pulled a small penlight from his shirt pocket and clicked it on. You were moving your head a little on the pillow, but more than that, your left hand was squeezing onto Daryl’s and your grip was strong. “Y/N? Can you open your eyes?”

It seemed to take some effort but they fluttered open and Daryl gripped your hand in both of his and let out a gasp of relief.

Dr. Carson flicked the light over each eye and straightened up with a smile. “Normal pupillary response,” he said, grinning at Daryl. “How are you feeling?” the doctor prodded you.

You gulped and seemed to take stock of the moment. “Like hammered dog shit,” you rasped.

Dr. Carson and Rosita chuckled while Daryl let out a gruff laugh and squeezed your hand in his. He smoothed his fingers through your hair and you turned to look at him, your eyes meeting his.

“There you are. You’re here,” you said softly. Dr. Carson and Rosita, who was still hanging back, both stepped around the curtain divider to give you and Daryl a moment.

“Course ‘m here,” he drawled, still stroking your hair gently. “And so are you.”

Your eyes closed for a moment and you drew in a few deliberate breaths. “What—what happened? Negan—did he get away and—”

“He’s dead,” Daryl said. Your eyes snapped back over to his face. They were a bit round and unsure.

“What did you just say?” Your brain was a bit foggy. You wanted to be sure you had heard correctly.

“He’s gone. Dead. I—I shot him,” Daryl said. “With your gun.”

“You shot him,” you repeated.

“Mhm,” Daryl said, nudging his nose up in a nod at you.

You finally glanced over at your right side, the apparent source of the pain that seemed to be radiating in waves. Your arm was in a sling and fixed close to your body. “You shot him,” you said again. “What—what happened to me?” you asked. “Is my arm broken?”

Daryl chewed on his bottom lip anxiously for a moment. “When I—I shot Negan he squeezed off a round from that pistol he had. It went into your shoulder. Shattered your shoulder blade. Ya had to have surgery. Dr. Carson fixed ya up. Put some hardware in.”

You stared at him with your brow drawn slightly down but eventually nodded to show you understood. “So, I’m bionic now, is what you’re telling me.” There was a somewhat playful look in your eyes, but Daryl didn’t smile.

“Y/N—‘M sorry. S’my fault ya got shot,” Daryl said and you could hear the tension, the anguish in his voice. “Ya almost died. Ya coulda died…” Now his blue eyes turned downward and he couldn’t or wouldn’t look at you.

“How could you think this was your fault? If it was anyone’s fault besides Negan’s, it’s mine,” you said. You squeezed his hand as tightly as you could but you were feeling weaker by the second. “The whole plan was mine. And it was shaky at best but I—I didn’t care. I just thought I could end it. It’s not your fault. I told you to shoot him through me, remember?” Your voice failed and you leaned back into your pillow and closed your eyes. “I feel really tired…”

Daryl looked up at you again, guilt still swirling in his stomach. “You lost a lot of blood,” he drawled, his stomach twisting with fear again as he remembered how his shirt had soaked through with your blood and then it was running all over him and the back seat of the Jeep. “Just rest now, alright?”

But you forced your eyes open again and looked over at him. “What happened? With the rest of The Saviors?” Daryl could easily read the anxiety on your face but he shook his head.

“Rick and Michonne came back. With the scavengers. It’ll be over soon. Ya ain’t gotta worry,” he said, hoping to soothe your fears. “Everyone is safe back home. Some of The Saviors tried to get to Alexandria but those bombs you and Rosita wired up? Blew a bunch of ‘em to hell. Don’t worry about anything. Just rest.”

But you gulped and started to shift in your bed, grimacing with every movement but apparently determined. At first Daryl’s heart sank. It looked like you were moving away from him. But when there was as much space as you could create on the bed your eyes found his again before glancing at the created spot next to you, and he understood. “Come up here. Please,” you whispered. Your voice was a little raspy again. “I need you.” There were tears glistening in your eyes. It was settling in how narrow of an escape this was.

“I don’t wanna hurt ya,” Daryl said, worried about bumping your arm. The bed was narrow.

“Then get up here,” you said again. “Please.”

How could he deny you that? Daryl toed off his boots and very carefully settled in next to you on his side, facing you as you pressed back into your pillow. He rested his hand on your uninjured arm and studied your face in profile. Your eyelids were growing heavy again and each blink lasted longer and longer. “Daryl…”

God, his name leaving your lips was still the most wonderful thing he’d ever heard in his life. “Hmm?” he hummed, his finger drawing idle circles on your soft skin.

“I love you.”

Daryl’s breath caught in his throat and he wasn’t sure he’d be able to get the words out without his voice breaking. He leaned up on his elbow and kissed you when you turned to look at him, gentle but yearning. “I love you,” he said quietly when he pulled back. “Now rest.”

And now, having heard those words and with the weight and warmth of him beside you, the familiar smell of leather and the outside air and smoke, you did.

_ _ _ _ _ _

A few days later You were sitting up in your bed with Rosita on one side and Daryl on the other. You fingered the cards on your lap and gave Daryl a long look. There was a pile of poker chips on the table beside you and you pushed them onto your bed and looked at Daryl again. “I think you’re bluffing,” you said. “All in.” You gave him a satisfied smirk. His blue eyes narrowed and stared back at you.

Rosita let out a scoff and threw her cards down. “I’m out. I fold,” she said, leaning back in her chair, her arms crossed over her chest.

“Well?” you prompted Daryl. “Show ‘em.” You flipped your hand. “Two pair.”

Daryl let out a low growl and turned his over. “I got nothin’.” You laughed and grinned at him.

“I knew it!” You started to gather the chips up with your uninjured hand, piling them on the side table again, adding many more of Daryl’s to your stash.

“Considering how well she can apparently read you, it’s amazing it took the two of you so long to figure out you were crazy about each other,” Rosita pointed out.

Daryl shot a glare at her. “Ain’t quite the same,” he said.

The game was interrupted when Enid came around the curtain divider with a huge bouquet of tulips in her hands. “From Ms. Thompson,” she said, shuffling some things aside to make room for them.

You let out a small, uncomfortable groan. “Can you tell them to stop?” you asked Enid. “It’s getting embarrassing…” You trailed off glancing around at all the flowers and cards and other gifts covering every available surface.

The next second, as if on cue, Jesus stepped in with a loaf of some sort of bread in his hands eliciting another groan from you. “What the heck…” you trailed off. He laughed heartily.

“This one is from Mr. and Mrs. Devon. I think she said beet bread, but honestly I’m not really sure,” he said, setting it down and eyeing it uneasily.

The two of them, Enid and Jesus, were staring at you expectantly.

“…what?”

Enid grinned. “Are you in the mood for more visitors?” she asked. You gave her a questioning look.

“Uhh… I guess… as long as they aren’t bringing more strange vegetable loaves…”

“What about a lot more visitors?” Jesus prompted.

“What is—?” But you didn’t even finish your sentence before Aaron rounded the curtain, with Gracie in his arms. Your breath caught in your throat and your eyes immediately welled up with tears to see your dear friend. And he was actually smiling. “Aaron.” It was all you could get out. Daryl was looking at you fondly and got up from his place beside you to make room.

“I can’t even tell you, again, how mad I am at you for doing something so insane, but also how glad I am that you’re alive. And I wish I could hug you, just one giant bear hug, but I won’t,” he said, nodding at the sling on your arm. He adjusted Gracie in his arms and beamed at you, nodding. “It’s over,” he said.

You wiped away a tear that managed to leak onto your cheek. “It’s over.”

Aaron grabbed your hand in his and gave it a brief squeeze before moving down the side of your bed to stand by Daryl, who he did grab into a one-armed hug that made you laugh. The next thing you knew, the small area of the medical trailer you’d been occupying, already adorned with gifts and notes from the Hilltop residents who remembered you from your time there, was filling with… everyone. Daryl’s family, now your family, was filing in. Michonne, Sasha, Carl, Rick and Judith… all of them were there and whole, looking extremely relieved to see you awake and alert, but obviously also still worried about your condition. Maggie came in too. You glanced around at them, a little overwhelmed, and your eyes landed back on Daryl, who was standing at the end of your bed and had one corner of his mouth twitched up in a smile. He turned to look at Rick.

“Hey—Didya get it?” Daryl drawled.

“Oh, right. Carl, take Judith for a minute,” he said, handing off the bouncy little girl to her older brother. You watched, puzzled, as Rick disappeared around the curtain for a moment and then reappeared with a bag in his hands.

“Normally, we would have wrapped it better for you,” Michonne said, “but, you know, the apocalypse and all,” she joked.

“I wish we could honestly say it’s from all of us, but it’s mainly from Daryl,” Aaron said.

Rick set the bag down on the bed and you gave Daryl a questioning look as you managed to use your one good hand to unfurl the scrunched brown paper top and reach inside. You froze when your hand closed on a familiar feeling bundle. Your eyes zipped back up to Daryl’s face and the little smile he’d been wearing grew into a knowing smile at the look on your face.

“Are you shitting me?” you asked. Aaron let out a hearty laugh and it warmed you to hear it. You hadn’t heard him laugh since Erik’s death. You pulled out a sealed bag of coffee beans and stared at it, before glancing back at Daryl. “Where in the hell—” You upended the bag and poured out about seven more bags of coffee beans. “I don’t—what—” You shook your head in disbelief and grinned at the archer. “I mentioned this to you once… like… I don’t even know how long ago…”

Daryl shrugged and hummed a noise of acknowledgment.

“Where in the hell did you find these?”

“Figured that asshole probably had a stash of ‘em in The Sanctuary,” he drawled. “Asked Rick to go look. I was right,” he drawled.

You shook your head as you stared at him, your heart brimming, completely full. “I feel a little bad about rubbing how bad you are at poker in your face now,” you joked, eliciting laughter all around.

Rosita stepped forward and gave you a look. “No, you don’t.”

“Yeah, okay, maybe I don’t…” you said. “I don’t—thank you,” you said, glancing around at everyone. “This is—I mean, it’s just coffee but… thank you. And I’m just glad to see all of you.”

Dr. Carson poked his head in. “Alright. That’s enough excitement for one day. Y/N still needs to rest. Everybody out.”

Aaron gave your good shoulder a gentle squeeze as he passed. “We’re staying a bit. So, we’ll see you tomorrow. Oh, and Carol is on her way from The Kingdom.” You leaned back against your pillow and nodded, suddenly tired.

“Good. Tomorrow then.”

Everyone filed out except Daryl, who helped you repack the unexpected gift and clear away the remnants of your poker game. You sighed as he sank down in the chair at your bedside. “When can I get out of here?” you asked. “I want to sleep in a real bed with you.”

The corner of his mouth twitched up again and he nudged his nose up in a nod. “Couple more days.”

“I can’t believe you found that coffee,” you said.

“Should last ya a bit, right?”

“Yeah, probably, like, a whole week maybe,” you joked. Daryl let out an amused huff and smiled at you. He grabbed your hand and raised it to his lips, pressing a kiss to your fingers.

“I wanna sleep in a real bed with ya too.”

“You can go sleep in a real bed without me,” you said. He’d been sleeping in the chair beside you since you’d arrived and you couldn’t imagine that it was at all comfortable.

“Nah. I couldn’t.” He leaned up and pressed his lips to yours. You kissed him back eagerly.

Epilogue

“Shoulder sore?” Daryl’s voice behind you followed by the feeling of his arms around you and then his body pressing into yours. He’d caught you out on the porch, watching the rain, rubbing your shoulder absently with the other hand.

You nodded. “Little bit. Probably from the storm.” You had a mug in your hand and there were curls of steam drifting up from the surface. Daryl peered over your shoulder into it. It was coffee, and he smiled. “But check this out,” you said, moving your injured arm so your elbow lifted slightly above the level of your shoulder.

“Progress,” he said. You were still working on getting full range of motion back. Dr. Carson said you may never be back 100%, he’d had to reconstruct so much after the destruction by the bullet, but you were determined. Daryl swept your hair aside and pressed his face into the crook of your neck and left a kiss on your skin, breathing in your smell. You were wearing one of his old flannel shirts and he pulled it down to reveal your bare shoulder, leaving a kiss there, too. You leaned back against him, content. He could see the very end of the surgical scar and his fingertip traced it before his lips found that too.

“You know what I just realized?”

“Hmm?”

“We both got shot in the right side. Dwight shot you, Negan shot Dwight, you shot Negan, Negan shot me. It’s like some fucked up connected cube of shooting.”

Daryl let out a huff and shook his head. “But we’re the only ones left standin’.”

You set your mug on the railing and turned into him, facing him now, your expression pensive, matching his. “What are you thinking?” you asked him.

He shook his head. “Honestly? Nothin’.” His hands went gently to your lower back. “You?”

“I’d like to go back to bed with you,” you said. “It’s storming. We don’t need to hunt in this.”

Daryl nudged his nose up in a nod. “Ain’t gotta tell me twice,” he said. The next second he scooped you up in his strong arms and you laughed as he carried you back into the house and up the stairs, your mug forgotten outside. He set you gently down in bed, minding your shoulder, and then collapsed beside you, moving into you needily. His hands immediately slipped under your shirt and smoothed over your soft skin and you met his lips urgently with yours, tangling your legs with his.

Life since The Saviors was largely peaceful. There were still struggles. People needed things, the communities needed supplies… The walkers were still out there. But without the threat of Negan lurking somewhere in the shadows of your mind it felt like an entirely new world. It felt the way you had always felt when you were only with Daryl, but now it felt like it all the time. There was nothing else you could ask for. The two of you would have been content with each other and nothing else.

You knew there was likely to be another fight someday, but you also knew that the worst of your life was behind you. And Daryl had realized the same thing too. Neither of you could understand how in the middle of the fucking shitstorm of a zombie apocalypse, with the insanity of Negan, you had found each other and managed to make it through. It was something you talked with Maggie about a lot, and your heart ached that Glenn had been taken from her so cruelly, now knowing what they had because you had it yourself.

You were coming home after one such visit. Maggie and Jesus had made the trip and you all had gathered at Aaron’s, watching with delight as Gracie and baby Hershel cooed at each other. You found Daryl in the living room and gave him a curious look. He had an expectant expression on his face and you laughed and cocked an eyebrow at him. He pulled his bottom lip in between his teeth and ducked his head for a moment. “C’mon in here,” he said, his eyes flickering up to meet yours again.

“Okaaaay… you’re kind of freaking me out,” you said. You wandered over to him and his hands went to your hips reflexively. He seemed nervous but you couldn’t understand why. “What is going on?”

Daryl cleared his throat and then shoved a hand into his pocket. He opened his palm flat and you stared at what was sitting there. A delicate, silver ring. Your eyes shot back up to meet his. “I ain’t gonna get down on one knee or anything stupid,” he said, rubbing his free hand a little nervously over the back of his neck, “but, uhh, I want ya to be mine. Will ya?” He braved a glance back up at your face and caught the stunned expression melting away into a brilliantly happy smile that immediately sent his heart fluttering.

“Is that even a question? Daryl, I’m already yours,” you said.

“Well, I just… want to make it official,” he drawled. “If ya’ll have me.”

You gave him a somewhat teary smile and offered him your ring finger. He slipped it on. It was a perfect fit. “It’s official,” you said, grabbing him and sinking into a kiss. When you pulled back, you glanced down at the ring on your finger. “How’d you know what size? And where the hell did you find this?”

“I made it. Melted some shit down. Aaron helped me actually.”

Your eyebrows lifted in surprise. “You’re telling me Aaron knew about this and managed not to give it away? Wow… That’s actually shocking.”

“Anyway, the size… I measured your finger with a bit of string while ya were sleepin’,” he admitted. “Ya know, s’funny, ya sleep much deeper now.” You gave him a look. You hadn’t had a single nightmare since the end of the war.

“Yeah, I wonder why that might be,” you said sarcastically. No Negan, and Daryl always next to you? A recipe for a perfect night’s sleep.

The End.

#daryl dixon fanfiction #daryl dixon twd #the walking dead #twd fanfics #daryl dixon drabbles #daryl imagines #daryl dixon x reader #fanfics #writers of tumblr #twd drabbles

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saanphoenix · 3 years

Text

“Why do so many old-school FFVII fans think that Cloud took Zack’s memories?”

Alright, so first things first. We gotta start from the beginning. We gotta start with Jenova.

Jenova is the name given to the alien entity known as the Calamity. “Heaven’s dark harbinger.” This being, assumed to be female because of the body she was in at the Crater, was basically godlike in her natural abilities. Historically, she was able to shapeshift. She was telepathic. She had a nigh indomitable will. And she used her abilities to infect the race of human(oid)s that happened upon her crash site--the Cetra.

Now, Ifalna, within the English translation of the OG, states that Jenova turned the Cetra into monsters, nearly wiping them all out, and that the wee few that remained basically had to be sacrificed to seal Jenova away before she could do anymore damage to all life on the planet. The notes Sephiroth finds within the Shinra Mansion seem to corroborate this version of events, as he tells Zack that the Cetra chose to fight the Calamity while the other humans “hid”, thus being spared Jenova’s shenanigans, allowing them to become the dominant race on the planet, but ultimately being cowards unworthy to be the shepherds of any star, to quote Emet-Selch from FFXIV. Stay with me now.

We also know that the notes Sephiroth reads within the Shinra Mansion do not, in any way, call Jenova the Calamity. They still refer to her as a Cetra. Meaning that those notes are outdated, before the discovery of a living Cetra, a Cetra who is 2000 years removed from her own people’s history. Right? So.

(’Ah, but what about Genesis point-blank telling Sephiroth the truth? He knew what was up!’ Yes, because Hollander and Hojo found out from Gast’s recordings, and Ifalna herself, what Jenova actually was, and then Hollander told Genesis, who then said some stupid ass shit to trigger Sephiroth into looking into the wrong information, and now Nibelheim is not Nibelheim anymore and Cloud is missing one more family member than he was when he joined Shinra. Also, fuck Genesis. Anyway.)

HOJO, yeah? Hojo, in two separate novels written by Nojima himself, states to Aerith and Tseng separately that Jenova 1) will inevitably infect all life on the planet with her “cells” because of the very nature of the Lifestream and 2) turned the Cetra against each other via subtle manipulation and illusions of their loved ones, dead or alive, conceived from their own memories. She didn’t show up looking like the Eldritch horror with the eyeball nipple, she showed up looking like a run-of-the-mill Cetra. And she would further disguise herself as people a Cetra knew in order to gain their trust. And then, after she had gained that trust, she would say shit like, “Hey. Your friend over there hates you,” or, “Hey. Your friend over there wants to kill you.” And thus the Cetra, at the very least morally but probably also physically, became monsters and tore themselves apart.

You ever wonder why everything the Cetra had was booby-trapped and hidden behind riddles and self-sacrificial bullshit like their Temple? My guess is because Jenova made it so they couldn’t trust anyone, even themselves.

“Why did I read all that? What does that have to do with Cloud voring Zack’s memories?”

Because we gotta understand the mechanics of this bitch first so that we know what to look out for.

Now, we have an alien in stasis--presumed dead but definitely not--and a buncha scientists who really want a coveted spot sucking President Shinra’s dick as head of the Science Dept. who all think that taking the genetic material of a Cetra and splicing it into a modern-day human’s DNA will give them a Geiger counter to the Promised Land. Which they want to use as fuel because only some of them really understand what mako is and the others are just fucking stupid. Anyway, my guess is that they archeology their way to Jenova’s still-kinda-alive corpse and do some DNA testing and go, “Ah! We’ve found a Cetra. It has to be one! She’s by the crater, after all, and that’s where some of them were nuked by a Meteor! :) We’re geniuses!” And Jenova, in the Lifestream, went, “GOTCHA, BITCH!”

And through the power of dino DNA, out pops a lot of nonviable lifeforms, some monsters, and, eventually, a relatively normal kid with a flare for the dramatic who will become wholly obsessed with apples and very boring literature that he will insist on repeating every five goddamn seconds. As he was no Geiger counter to the Promised Land, out pops another relatively normal kid who will grow up to have dreams, and honor, and steal food from his neighbors because he was so damn honorable that he just could not ask for a handout.

With Hollander and Gillian’s experiments not producing anything of note other than children that need love and support, Hojo and Lucrecia decide to take a slightly different sample of Jenova’s cells and just start sticking them everywhere. They’re in Lucrecia. They’re in Lucrecia’s fetus. And...something strange starts to happen.

Lucrecia starts to feel the effects of Jenova. Lucrecia’s mind and body start to kind of deteriorate. Not the way that Genesis’ and Angeal’s do later on, but she is plagued by shit like severe depression and fatigue. She falls out on the floor multiple times. Her bodyguard is a little late on pulling the trigger of the gun aimed at her husband and, instead of doing anything productive about her husband proving he’s an amoral murderous fuckhead, she just decides to play doll with her kinda undead bodyguard, get even sicker, and then, finally, pops out a very strange looking baby. In fact, he looks a little alien.

“No, seriously, what does this have to do with anything?”

Genetics. How Jenova cells work. Whatever clump of cells they injected into Lucrecia, clearly different from those used in Project G, seemed to focus more on the mental fuckery aspect of Jenova than the physical, shapeshifting aspect of Jenova. I would also argue that one of the reasons Lucrecia was so adversely affected by the cells and Gillian was not is their mental well-being. Gillian, even when we meet her, seems very upbeat and doing pretty okay despite her husband having died from exhaustion a coupla years back. Lucrecia was depressed and very subservient even before she married Hojo. Losing her mentor--Vincent’s father--probably exacerbated that. And, later in Advent Children, that sort of mentality--hopelessness and despair--is what Sephiroth’s Geostigma feeds off of. That and thoughts of death/dying. But that is more speculation than anything.

So, Sephiroth’s cells are different from Genesis’ and Angeal’s, and they were all three bred differently, but they’re all kinda chimeras of Jenova’s. And once Genesis learns about his origins, it’s like the lightbulb goes off. This guy’s creating clones by infecting his 2nd and 3rd Class SOLDIERs with his own cells. And when he does that, their physical appearance becomes his own. As does their will. Whatever Genesis wants, the clones also want. And then he just grows a wing for shits and giggles. Once he tells his BFF Angeal the sitch, behold! He’s got monster clones--maybe because he realizes how fucked up overwriting a human being with yourself is--and wings, too. ...Why?

The power to do all of this shit was always there. It was genetically always there. They just had to be made aware of it, to have the puzzle piece put into place. When Sephiroth dies, that puzzle piece is put into place. And then he starts fuckin’ with shit. And turns into monstrous angels. And then dies again. And then comes back and finally grows himself his own wing. He did it, fellas. He’s a big boy now.

But we’re not here to talk about Sephiroth--ignore how much I talked about Sephiroth and his mommies previously--we’re here to talk about ZACK and CLOUD.

“What’s up with Zack and Cloud?”

First, what we must realize is that even though Hojo says that both Zack and Cloud are failed clones because they 1) didn’t take on any physical characteristics of Sephiroth, 2) didn’t seem controlled by Jenova (or Sephiroth) and, 3) didn’t exhibit the other signs of a Reunion impulse like the other clones in Nibelheim that does not mean that Sephiroth’s cells, Jenova’s cells, are not working on them.

As we’ve observed in other 1sts, abilities do not always manifest immediately or even noticeably. Clearly, Sephiroth’s physical appearance is a bit of a hint, but Genesis and Angeal look pretty damn normal and, if it weren’t for their mako injections, they probably wouldn’t be showing that much of an increase in physical capabilities. Theoretically. Maybe 10-year-old Angeal had biceps the size of a man’s head. I mean. Pff.

Zack’s tolerance to Jenova was strong due to his previous exposure in the SOLDIER program. Cloud’s mind broke pretty early on. Neither of these results matter to the fact that they both now have Sephiroth’s cells within them--just as Genesis’ and Angeal’s clones had theirs--and that their very wills are now going to be affected by Sephiroth’s. But they are also going to be a little bit like him in terms of power.

Zack’s hair, when ingested by a Genesis clone, a clone of a Type-G SOLDIER, transforms that clone into a monster. Zack doesn’t even have to do anything. The Jenova/Sephiroth cells within his body can just Do That, cause that change in another life form, of their own accord. I’m honestly shocked that, whenever they gave Zack these S-cells, HE didn’t turn into a monster. But that’s neither here nor there. I wanna talk about Cloud.

Cloud has mako poisoning, which the Remake describes as his spirit/soul being stuck between his body and the Lifestream. Weird. Anyway, he’s not fully aware of his surroundings at all times, and he clearly can’t control his body that much. He somehow has the ability to kinda get his feet shuffling, and I’m going to go on a limb and say he can chew whatever food Zack gives him, but most of the time, he’s a puppet with cut strings.

But he is also still recovering from a mind break caused by Jenova cells. The same cells that are just chilling in his body, like they are in Zack’s. And all the months Zack is dragging his ass across a continent, an ocean, and another continent, they and Cloud are listening to whatever the fuck Zack is saying. Cloud is also constantly in physical contact with Zack.

In The Kids Are Alright: A Turks Side Story, Kadaj has the power to not only read surface thoughts and memories just by being near someone, but he can also read deeper ones by making physical contact with someone. Because Jenova. And Sephiroth, whose cells Cloud and Zack have, in the OG demonstrates that he, too, can glean thoughts and memories from others. Because Jenova.

If this power is a genetic trait, as it is with Genesis and Angeal, then, sitting pretty underneath their skin, Zack and Cloud have this ability. Dormant. Snoozing. Kinda like the 1st Class Trio’s wings.

But Zack has a high tolerance and a high ignorance to Jenova and just what he might be capable of. Cloud’s mind is floating in and out at best. He’s not in control of himself. And when you have a situation like that, it is very, very easy to come to the conclusion that Cloud’s Jenova cells are passively absorbing the memories of Zack’s time in Nibelheim. That they are knitting these memories together with what little remain in Cloud’s head. That when Tifa comes across Cloud at the train station and calls him by name and remembers who he is that Cloud’s Jenova cells latch onto those memories in Tifa--as Sephiroth tells them they did--and they knit those memories with Zack’s and Cloud’s and the end result is the man we get at the beginning of the OG.

Because Cloud has visual memory of shit he never saw. It’s not just a visual medium telling a visual story. You wanna know how I know that for a fact? Because, in the Remake, Cloud remembers Sephiroth walking up to Jenova’s tank in the reactor from Sephiroth’s perspective. He is looking through Sephiroth’s eyes, through his memory, up at “Mother.” In that moment in the Remake, Cloud is Sephiroth. He’s not Cloud anymore.

Cloud sees Sephiroth delivering the speech of being an Ancient. Cloud wasn’t there. Cloud didn’t see that. Zack did. That is Zack’s memory.

The man writing the Remake is the same man who’s been at the head of MOST FFVII writing. He was on the OG, he wrote Advent Children, he wrote the novels, he wrote Crisis Core, he’s writing the Remake. He knows what these cells can do because he’s crafted this world-building for decades.

Cloud didn’t take all of Zack’s memories. He didn’t need to. Kadaj, in the novel, doesn’t glean everything from someone right off the bat. Because he doesn’t need to. Only when he needs to learn something else does he go digging. The same is probably true for what Cloud’s cells most likely did to be able to know what he knows. Hell! Kadaj gets punched in the novel and he ACCIDENTALLY picks up the emotions and memories of the guy who punched him. He didn’t want ‘em but he got ‘em!”

There is evidence within the OG, and even more within the Compilation, that lend weight to the theory that Cloud unintentionally read Zack’s mind when it came to the events of Nibelheim.

For years, people have wondered, “How the hell does Cloud know that if he wasn’t there?” For years, people have wondered, “How can he use the Buster Sword if he was just a little grunt that used a gun all the time?” The logical answer is, “Because of his Jenova cells. They can just do that shit.”

#long post #ffvii #ffvii spoilers #zack fair #cloud strife #jenova #sephiroth #jesus christ i wrote a novel

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highdwightofmylife · 3 years

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i lost someone real close to my heart a while ago and so i have been feeling rather empty it's even been hard to eat or sleep well. But bc I have alot of free time now i tend to think how would some of the killers react to someone they care about being like this? maybe Wraith, Deathslinger, Suzie, Joey, Bubba and maybe Pyramid head? or something. Love your work.

Four characters is my limit but I'll let it slide. I don't know how recent you lost someone, but I know how it can feel. I wish I could assist in more ways than just offering you these basic hcs, but I hope they at least make you crack a smile! It gets better, even if it really doesn't feel like it will. It will likely always hurt, but overtime we learn how to cope. Stay safe, hon. Please take care of yourself.

HCS For a Depressed/Grieving Reader

Bubba Sawyer

Bubba has dealt with something similar. He understands more than you think, though he reacted a little differently during his time of grief.

He hates seeing you upset. He hates seeing you stare blankly. He hates seeing what this has done to you.

So he spends most of his time attempting to offer up distractions, thinking it'll help you cope. He reaches out to shyly hold your hand and looks down at you with those big puppy eyes. He tries to get you to craft things with him; bracelets, other jewellery.

He likes to take you outside and sit in the flowers with you. Sometimes the cornfields. Just... somewhere quiet. Flower crowns, flattening the earth with dumbass snow angels (without the snow obviously), tickling your face with tufts of grass.

At night, when you can't sleep, he'll make you curl up into him and he'll rub soothing circles into your back and you'll feel his breath settling on the top of his head.

Really worried you're not eating as much. You gotta stay healthy and strong! He keeps making food for you and will try and hand feed you, but he won't force it. He's just... very encouraging.

Deathslinger

Let's be real, Caleb isn't the best at dealing with shit. He unfortunately gets lost at the bottom of bottle when he's feeling low. He see's you're down and he offers a drink. He always offers you a drink. It's not healthy, but it's who he is.

But that ain't gonna solve anything. Even he knows that.

He makes you sit on his lap. He puts his hat on your head and pulls you deep into his chest, where he calmly shuts his eyes and just... Chills. Just exists with you. No words, just company. It's nice.

Have you noticed how pretty the sky is at the saloon? Imagine sitting on the steps of the saloon and just. Staring up at the sky. He'll lean back on his elbows and just watch you out of his peripherals. And then he'll probably crack a smile and say somethin' dumb to catch your attention. "Funny how your stealin' all the pretty from the stars, huh?"

Joey

I've said this before and I'll say it again. Joy's first order of business when you're upset is to take off his hoodie and pull it over your head. It's so warm.

He drapes himself over your back and kisses at your temple and tells you it's okay.

Encourages you to talk about how you're feeling. Will offer small comments here and there in a soft tone.

Plays music for you. Literally makes you a whole mixtape of songs he thinks might lift your spirits.

Encourages you to eat every now and then. Offering you small bites here and there. If you cant take a full meal, he understands. He'll just discreetly offer you some of his own food. He worries.

Pyramid Head

Pyramid Head isn't a being of... Emotional Help. He exists to dispense judgement. And. Other things.

But somehow he's attached to you, and when you're down, then... Then he feels like something isn't quite right.

For some fucking reason, PH thinks that putting his hands on your head with comfort you. But like. Imagine two hands on each side of your head, holding you from behind with a grip that's not enough to hurt, but... It's strong. It's grounding. He's just letting you know that he's there.

Holds you. Breaths in your general direction with those alligator ass chuffing noises.

He doesn't really sleep and even if he does, it's very rarely and just for short power naps. So he never presses you to sleep because not sleeping is normal for him. But it's nice to rest against him as your body will finally make you sleep after a long ass time.

Susie

Hugs!!! Hugs all around. Wants to hold you constantly, thinking it will make you feel better.

Keeps slipping her hand over yours.

She takes your mind off things with a lot of chatter. She can talk for hours.

When you're upset, she'll curl up against your side at night. She coils her arms around one of yours and hold on tight, almost as if she's afraid to let you go.

Insists you eat and regularly brings you food, but won't force you.

Wraith

Chilled fingers resting on your skin.

Smooth circles rubbed into your spine.

Imagine being sat on the forest floor with him. Your sat between his legs and he leans over to show you what he has. Hanging from long fingers is a small little flower. He gently presses it into your hands and then taps your chest, right where your heart flutters beneath your skin. Just telling you he's here. And he cares for you.

Worried about your health a lot. He presses you to his chest for hours as designated sleep time, even if you don't sleep. He'll just pat your head and muzzle your face into his chest and lie there with you. Offers you small snacks in the hope of igniting your appetite a little.

#dbd headcanons #bubba sawyer #philip ojomo #caleb quinn #susie #joey #pyramid head #dbd pyramid head #dbd deathslinger #dbd joey #dbd susie #dbd the legion #dbd the cannibal #dbd the wraith #ive been writing this for like three hours while watchinf youtube #can you tell i ran out of steam #please take care i love you

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deep-and-personal-thoughts · 3 years

Text

Happiness

Happiness…

A commonly used word, however… No one seems to truly understand the meaning of it. What is happiness? It is one of the most basic questions asked by pretty much any psychiatrist, or even just any person. I once sat down, and properly thought to myself,

- What is happiness? Is it when we feel the happiest in our life? Is it that warm feeling you get in your stomach each time you laugh? Or is it the feeling of satisfaction when something goes right?

Life is a bit like poker. You get dealt a hand, you might just end up with something shit that you feel like you can not do anything with, to win the game. Some people get lucky, they get dealt that royal flush right from the get-go. Some people fold right at the beginning of the game. Others decide to play for the long game, I am one of those people. I will admit to you, I might have been given a pair of two, but I managed to mess it up. Sometimes it left me open-handed in fact, but I am working on it. Most people’s personalities are decided by what cards are in their possession. The ones with the royal flush do not really have to work for most stuff in their life, they can sit back and do something purely because they enjoy it. The ones with nothing, have to work much harder, to fight for that queen of hearts or the really lucky ones, the ace. They have it tougher since the odds are already against them, they are designed to lose so to win they gotta work hard and take risky bets to get their cards. People handed a card or two that helps them are a bit stuck in between classes, they might end up in a one-room apartment in Birmingham, or they might end up in a two-floored penthouse in the middle of L.A. It all depends on the player really, and how hard they are going to fight to win the round. Now they might lose some, they might be left with only one chip, but then you have the choice, to keep going, to fight on, or you can give up, you can fold your hand and accept the loss. To that, I simply say; fuck that. Life is not all rainbow and sunshine, unfortunately, I am sorry to be the one to burst your bubble in case you were not already aware. Took a bit of time myself to realize that. Life is not your friend, it spends every day trying to kill you, to make you give up. We are our own friend, you decide every morning to get up, you decide what cards you are going to play next. Life is the dealer who tries to trick you and fool you, to make you fold, but you do not.

Now, learning this lesson was not an easy task. It took a lot of hits, a lot of punches before I even turned my head to think:

-Why? Why do I keep ending up hurt, more than before? Is there no being happy for me? Am I not meant to feel happy?

The first punch was a big one, it was the closest I ever got to folding my hand. I got close, so close to listening to that dealer, to give up.

It was a chilly spring morning. The snow had finally started melting, it was almost so I could see the thin grass strays peeking out from the white cushion covering the ground. I woke up to the birds chirping right outside the window. I packed my bags, ready for yet another day at school. I was happy, I was excited to see my friends, to see my teachers. I picked the first outfit I could see in my closet, it was a suit. A white shirt with a brown blazer, black jeans, and a nice red bowtie to go along with it. Yet, when I went to close the jeans, there was suddenly a resistance of some sort, I struggled to get it closed but eventually, you do. It is as if the jeans had gotten smaller somehow, but they fit me perfectly just a week ago… I thought nothing of it though, I got them on, nothing more with that. I put on your blazer, yet, as I stretched my arms out, it was as if the arms have been cut off an inch. Once more I shook the thought out of my head. I hopped on the bike and excitedly raced off, trying to be the first one to arrive just so I could show off about having been there first. The day passed by and I was laughing and running, I was having a good time. As the day came to a close, I was just about to have a snack along with the rest of my class, but as soon as my hand touched the sandwich, I heard my friend speak up.

-You are really big now, you look like a hippo.

My friends laughed, I simply looked at him confused, and then I remembered… The pants, the shirt. I had recently gotten bigger, I had grown in all kinds of places and I did not know why. My mum had told you briefly that when a girl becomes a woman she grows but I did not want to be bigger, I did not want to be different. I decided,

-Best to skip the snack today, maybe then I will shrink, and I will look like my old self again.

But as I kept eating normally I saw myself growing bigger and bigger. Eventually, I was the tallest and biggest in my class. My friend called me “hippo” as a joke, but yet each time he said it, I felt like a knife had just sliced a line across my heart. This feeling of a black hole built up in my stomach, just like an empty pit, and this desperate feeling that I needed something to fill it.

My twelfth birthday came along. I was happy, I spent the entire day with my family, getting to make my one wish per year. That year I wished for one thing, that this year I would be happy and thin, that I would get the guy that I liked, and he would look at me and say he liked me too, after all these years together. As one might have expected, my dream did not come true, some dreams are just meant for fairytales I suppose, I had just really hoped just that one would come true. Instead, I grew, my friends had started growing too but I was still the one without a flat belly, the one whose thighs jiggled when she touched them. My nickname, still the same as before among other nicknames such as “biggy” “elephant”, the pit in my stomach grew deeper, emptier. I needed something to fill it, but it obviously could not be with food since that was what made me big. So I stopped filling it. Two weeks went by till my parents caught on and forced me to start eating again. The pit came back, this time I needed another, less obvious method. So I unscrewed my pen sharpener and went drawing. Fleeing is the most cowardly yet common way for people to confront their problem. Drawing on my arm was me fleeing, being too afraid to face my problems and to admit that I was for the first time in my life feeling so upset that it simply would not stop, that pain, that empty feeling, it would not go away, no matter what I did, what I said, I would continue being teased, I would continue to grow, nothing changed.

The drawing became my secret until I one day fluttered my eyes open and found myself in a white silk bed, a needle in my arm, a few drops falling from the top of the container every few seconds. The drops following a plastic straw all the way into my arm where it forced itself into my system. I looked out, I had a nice ocean view, I could see the birds flying across the water, chirping just as they would any other day. The water looked still, but I could see some fog left from the night before. To my left, on a little sofa that was placed in the room my mum was sat, her eyes bloodshot as if she had been crying for hours, and purple bags under her eyes as if the last time she got to sleep was years ago. She looked at me, with the biggest face of disappointment and sadness, almost a sense of… pity. A bang shot right into my heart, that was the moment I told myself:

-You get your shit together right now, for her right there, and for yourself. She deserves better than that, and you fucked her over.

I meant one person, then I met another one, and another, and lastly another one. I tried talking to four separate people, to make them understand how I felt, a scream for help. Yet it was as if my voice had been cut off, as if each time I tried asking for help, nothing more than a strained groan left my throat. And yet, I always got the same response.

-You’re depressed.

-You have anxiety.

-You are a teenager.

-You need this medicine.

Well, I had gotten a diagnosis, so… was I okay now? Do I keep going with my life as normal? But, how can I do that, I can not simply forget what happened.

I was swiped away from all my cards that day and left with a simple pile of nothing. I did not want to be dealt another hand, afraid of what that hand might be of. But I had to, for my mum, because I could not hurt her like I had that day. As so I found myself asking for another card. It took time, of course, it did. But then again, so does everything in life, unless you are given that royal flush, you need patience, you need practice to win.

The thing about happiness is that a lot of people do not even realize when it is there, or when it is not. Sometimes we even manage to convince ourselves that we are happy when really in fact we are not. People think that telling themselves that they are happy, makes them happy, but what it actually does is make us even more miserable than we actually were. By telling ourselves that we are okay, that we do not have a problem, we push away any sort of help that we could have gotten. It is like this demon is hanging over us, tricking us into thinking that we are okay, but for each time you tell yourself that, it is just like you are feeding it more and more until eventually, you collapse until you break down, and then it is back to square one, up until that moment when that demon gets hungry once more and pushes you down those stairs to start all over again. You need to find that control over your own demons because if you do not, they will kill you. You do not find that control and that will to tell yourself that you actually are not fine, and you will keep falling down those stairs, and you will keep doing the same routine over and over again till one day when you find yourself six feet under and then what do you do? By that point, there is not starting over, there is no trying again. Happiness does not come without pain, for some more than others. Our happiness is decided by how we handle that pain, how we cope. Some handle it by confronting the issue, some handle it by ignoring it in hopes of it going away or just simply because they do not see it another way.

Many times did I feel that way as if there was no way for the pain to stop without me stopping. A feeling as if no one could understand or simply comprehend what I was feeling, I was alone and the only way I could get rid of my pain was alone. I tried isolating myself, I figured others were the cause of my pain. The kids at school who called me names, every guy who had my heart broken, my family mocking me, they were the reason for my pain, and so I shut everyone out. If I had no one, no one could hurt me. But for some reason, even when I thought I had everything figured out, I felt pain like nothing ever before. I had left everyone. I had broken up with my then-boyfriend, I had stopped hanging out with my friends, I avoided my family. The feeling of being alone hurt more than any name I had been called, it hurt more than any boy breaking my heart, it was a pain that simply could not be explained. So many times did I think the whole world was better off without me, that I was going to be alone forever. But I was wrong, so very wrong. That day I ended up at that hospital, it was as if someone had woken me up from a dream. Seeing my mum cry next to my bed, telling herself that she was a failure. Seeing my friends in shock at what they had heard, asking me if I am okay, not letting me bullshit them by telling them everything is fine, made me realize, it is okay to not be happy, it is okay to not be fine, and it is okay to be open about it.

No person is a hero, we are all just… people. On aeroplanes, they always tell you, put your own mask first and then your child’s. You can not be responsible for every person's happiness because it will just end up with you in the shit. Helping others was my way of fleeing, it still is. By helping others I felt pleased that I was the cause of someone else’s happiness, but I never once asked myself if I was okay, if I needed help. I had myself in this sort of mindset where I thought as long as I do not think I am sad, as long as I keep helping others I will be happy, and yet each time it ended up with me more miserable than before. As much as I wanted to be the hero, to help everyone, I simply could not. Each time I could not help someone, I felt the pain I had felt that day before I ended up in the emergency room. Each time I could not help, I fed my demon, letting it tell me that I could not help because I was not enough, I was not worth my place here. Where you end up is decided by whether or not you listen to that demon, if you let yourself be pulled on strings or if you can admit to yourself that you are not okay, and that’s fine.

You are not your own responsibility alone. You have so many people out there that do care about you, even if you might not see it. And I know that telling them about your problems makes you feel as if you are putting your burden on them, as if you are bringing them down with you, but you have to see that doing it by yourself will not work. Maybe you know that already, and simply just chose not to tell people because you believe it is better for both you and them that way, but by not telling anyone, your demon keeps telling you the same bullshit over and over again until you slowly start to believe it, even though you have tons people around who would in a second tell you the opposite. But you do not choose the truth, it is easier that way, to simply be alone. Sometimes I wish I could cast some magic spell to make the sadness go away, to make every person I care about feel happy again, I truly do. I care about others more than myself, and that is a flaw, I know that, but that is my way of coping. I can not stop until I know that, that person is okay. At that moment I forget myself, actually, I chose to ignore myself completely, and all my needs, I dig myself down that whole cause I think my well being is not as important as others. But it is, and it took me almost eighteen years to realize that. Some people go their whole lives without understanding that.

I suppose what I am trying to say is that happiness is not something that magically appears after a certain amount of time. It is not something that is given to us just like that, even it seems like it. To be happy, we have to be okay with us being said, with us being in pain. If you simply chose to ignore your own scream for help, you are just going to dig yourself down deeper and deeper until you can not see the top anymore, until everything around you is dark and cold.

Happiness is in one way complete bullshit, it will never stay. It is like a traveller, it comes every now and again but can not force it to stay there because eventually, it has to go for a while before coming back. You can not achieve happiness alone, no matter how many you tell yourself that. No matter how many times you tell yourself that you will be fine, you do not have to talk to anyone. Sure, you will feel okay eventually for a couple days, maybe weeks, but then you will end up at the bottom of that hole again, and it will be deeper than it was when you left it last. You need to find that will, that person, that thing that will lend you a hand to crawl up that whole, to help you.

Happiness is everything around you that makes you hold on, it is everything that gets you up in the morning and keeps you going. May it be a friend, a lover, a book, a place, it is happiness. But you will not see it until you can allow yourself to feel that pain, to feel that sadness because if you do not, you can not be happy. You can pretend you are, just for a moment, but you will end up right where you started. So many care about you, so many love you, I know that sometimes that might not feel like it is enough, but you are lucky if you even find that person that cares, that will be there when you are down, that will do anything they can for you. Hold on to that, it will give you a lifetime. Happiness will come, you just have to want it, and you have to fight for it. I know it is tough, I am not some dumb little girl, I have been through shit, maybe not half of what others have, but I still know, I can still understand. I made mistakes, I ignored my problems, but I made it, I learned. And so will you, you just need patience, you need to make mistakes or you will not learn. But you will find happiness, eventually.

#happiness #sadnnes #anxious #mental instability #depression sad #helpful

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writingkitten · 4 years

Text

L!Joker x Reader: Dogs

Note: pure fluff, v short, and super inspired by a post I saw awhile back about the three (? I think three) Rottweilers being loyal to J and all that. Also I’ve been busy working on this other project that I kinda let this one have not-as-great quality, but it was cute so there. Double also, pls forgive formatting, both the shitty paragraph spacing and the lack of italics. Tumblr fucked up the format and I don’t feel like fixing it lmao

Warnings: like, swear words? And some graphic descriptions of violence? But that’s it, not too sinful

In the dwindling hours of the day, dusk heavy on the horizon, you trudged home. Exhaustion plagued your body, the frigid air and harsh winds further driving your desire to get home. It wasn’t far from your work, only a few blocks, but it was on days like this that you cursed yourself for not taking a car. Even the thick mauve sweatshirt you wore couldn’t keep the cold away.

You had been out since 8am, almost 10 hours ago by now. Your throbbing head told you that cooking dinner tonight was a no-go, and so you’d stopped to pick up some warm comfort food. A treat for you, and a nice little surprise for J.

He’d been away all day yesterday, leaving before dawn and never returning. It did worry you a bit, but J had disappeared for much longer in the past, either running a scheme for days on end, or staying at his other hideout — an abandoned warehouse just outside of the city limits — to avoid leading whoever was after him this time back to you. Still, you worried, your mind racing with every bad thing that could’ve happened, like a kid whose mother was taking too long at the store. J knew this, though he continuously tried to convince you he would always come back. He knew your anxiety was far too engrained into your very being to not imagine the worst case scenario, but he still tried, if for no other reason than the hope that his constant reminder would dig itself deeper into your psyche than the anxiety.

But that had yet to happen, and so J had taken to other means of calming you. Keeping you informed was first and foremost. He’d call to tell you where he was, or text if he was in a rather boring meeting with mob bosses. He’d perfected the art of maintaining eye contact and taking part in the particulars of the conversation, while simultaneously writing a text with his phone under the table. Always a new phone, always a new number, but he had yours memorized, and you knew who it was when a message from an unknown number popped up.

That’s why, despite the apartment being empty when you left this morning, you knew he was there, waiting. It had only been about ten minutes since you’d left, so, by the time you headed home, he’d been there all day. Alone. You hoped he had caught up on his sleep, but you knew him better than that. You knew he was too bored sleeping alone, as wild of a concept as that seemed. No, instead you’d probably come home to see parts of makeshift weapons on the coffee table, or maybe the kitchen torn apart like a rabid raccoon had broken in.

At least he’d be home, you thought.

Finally standing in front of your door, you couldn’t unlock it fast enough, your feet aching, begging to be given some reprieve.

“J?” you called out as you entered.

You heard him say something, his voice too quiet to make out anything legible. Just as you were about to ask what he’d said, a massive black form sprinted towards you. Screaming, you dropped the bag of food on the floor, holding your hands out to stop whatever it was.

You eyes were screwed shut, but nothing happened. At least, not what you expected. Instead, you felt something prop itself on your shoulders. Hot breath hit your face, smelling of peanut butter. If that hadn’t given it away, the hassling sure as hell did.

Opening your eyes, you were met with the dark glassy eyes of a Rottweiler, standing on his hind legs, front paws gripping your shoulder.

J said something, this time louder, though you still didn’t hear him through your shock. The dog jumped down and ran back to the living room.

Ripping yourself from the frozen stance that you had been put you had been stuck in, you followed the Rottweiler.

On the floor sat J, his coat and blazer off, sleeves rolled up. There were strange stains on his pants. Peanut butter. Several dog toys lay around him, and two giant buckets of dry food and water sat in the corner. Most surprising, however, were the two other dogs that sat next to him.

J hadn’t looked up to greet you, busy filling some kongs full of peanut butter, seemingly the only treat he had for them.

“Uh, J?” you said, mouth agape at the sight.

“Hiya, doll,” he said, finally looking up at you, “I like that color on you.”

You had no idea what has happening, you didn’t know how to react. All you could really do was laugh.

“What the fuck is happening?” you asked.

“Uh, peanut butter time?” he said, as if it was obvious.

“J, why are there three massive dogs in our apartment?”

J sighed dramatically, “Well, I was just attending a little meeting with the Russian guy. And, wouldn’t you know, somehow he got locked up in their cages, and they just ripped off his limbs and ate him! Really fuckin’ weird cowinky-dink.”

Your eyes widened, “You fed him to his own dogs?”

J looked up at you in disbelief, “Didn’t ya listen to the story, doll?”

“Right, because you’re known for telling the truth.”

J growled, “...I’ll feed you to the dogs.”

“Ha,” you said, knowing full well that J would rather feed himself to the three than put your life on the line.

You left J on the floor as he passed out the stuffed kongs, taking the food out of the bag and setting it up on the table. Well, you were, until J turned around and watched you with an eyebrow raised.

“Uh, doll, I’m eating with them,” he said, as if it were obvious.

“...What.”

What the hell is happening?

“I’m building trust with these guys, I gotta show ‘em that not everyone is an abusive prick.”

You were silent for a moment, staring at J. Compassion was not a common experience to have with him, at least, not for other people. Towards you? He was very compassionate, even if he showed it in his own gruff way. But anyone else was lucky if they didn’t get the business end of J’s blade shoved through their throat.

Then again, that was still the case. He hated people, despised their selfishness and callousness, especially after experiencing that evil when he was still young and innocent. But animals? They were pure, only acting on nature with no societal influences. They were loyal as long as you were loyal to them, something that couldn’t be said for many people. That was one of the things he liked about you, your loyalty. You knew what he did, even if you didn’t know specifics. You knew he killed people, tortured them, destroyed the city and disrupted “society”. Yet you stood by him, loving him without question. Why you did, he’d never fully understand. But you did.

Instead of just bringing J his food, you brought your own, as well.

“I still wanna eat dinner with you,” you said, sitting down next to him.

“Aww,” J said, his voice mocking.

As soon as the containers were opened, the dogs abandoned their treats and sat around the two of you. Their eyes bored into you, pleading for a bite. Having all three of them up close now, you could see their bones, and thick scars that broke through their fur.

J tossed food at each of them, all three catching it mid-air.

“Good boys,” he said, reaching out to them and scratching around their face and neck.

“So, I assume they’re yours now?” you asked as you ate.

“Ours, bunny. They’re guard dogs, they’ll protect ya from, uh...bad guys.”

“Like you?” you asked with a smirk.

He grabbed his chest, feigning pain, “Shot to the heart, doll!”

———

After dinner — which J pretty much ate as much of as the rottys, giving them most of his food — you showered and got ready for bed, too tired to stay awake any longer. J stayed in the living room, working on a new idea, and, you had assumed, training the dogs. However, it seemed as though he was testing them now that you were home. Everywhere you went, you had three massive shadows following you. They stayed in the bathroom while you showered, laying next to the door, watching you. It felt as though they were ready to both protect you from an intruder, and come to your aid if you slipped and fell.

J couldn’t have trained them that much by now...right?

Once out, they practically escorted you to your bedroom. You got in bed, laying on your usual side. The three followed suit, taking up J’s space. One snuggled up by your feet, resting his head on your legs, staring up at you, while the other two did their best the lick your face. After the first few swipes, your face had practically been rewashed.

You laughed as they licked, “Oh, you’re so sweet! Thank you, thank you! Sweet babies!”

“So, am I gonna have to actually sleep in the dog house, now?”

J stood in the doorway, watching you laugh and love on the dogs. He mouth twitched, a quick smirk gracing his features when he saw the look of pure happiness on your face. It wasn’t something he got to see often, most of the time your happiness being qualified by some cloud of negativity. Depression, anxiety, self-loathing...it was a welcomed sight to see your unhindered smile.

He said a quick command, something in Russian that you couldn’t understand, and the dogs jumped off the bed. It was only then that you noticed three massive dog beds lining the wall next to yours.

“They’re so sweet,” you said to J, watching them curl up, getting as close together as possible.

“Yeah,” he drawled, climbing into bed beside you, “that guy got what he fuckin’ deserved. He kept them hungry, beat them, locked in cages too small for ‘em...”

You could see the anger rising in J’s eyes, his jaw clenching with malice as he stewed in his thoughts.

You reached out and took his hand, “They’ll have a good life now, J. We’ll spoil them.”

J looked over to you, “You know, that one that was at your feet was actually a service dog. Saw it in the papers the Russian kept. He’s trained for depression and anxiety.”

You perked up, “Wait, so I can take him around with me?”

“I’d want you to take all three, in case someone wanted to mess with ya and I wasn’t around. Bu-t you can have him with you at work and all that.”

The thought of having a dog to stay by your side at all times — and two more to come home to — was already making the knowledge of J leaving again much more bearable. That night, you fell asleep wrapped in J’s arms, him squeezing you far too tight to his chest as always, feeling invincible with your boys by your side.

#joker #joker x reader #l!joker #tdk #heath ledger joker #im sorry its short and shit quality #all of my creativity has been going towards my script and my brain was hurting itself writing this #it was supposed to be a nice little break #but fuck me in the ass it was NOT #also forgot that they were rottweilers and not dobermans #so if you see doberman in there its my bad because im stupid

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widowsofchaos · 4 years

Text

Kool Aid, i

summary: One phone-call is all it takes to unravel regret.

pairing: Winterwitch (Bucky x Wanda) x black!reader

warnings: mentions of drug abuse, vulgarity, domestic abuse, childhood abuse, mentions of mental health; eventual smut, angst.

a/n: Beta the glorious @heli0s-writes aka mom. Thanks for your incredible insight, and commentary; and for teaching this rusty writer to be better!

ao3 // kool-aid masterlist

do not repost my works.

Inky indigo falls over Pennsylvania.

Moonless darkness cloaks the fifty-acre land. Skittering stars twinkle and gleam in the night sky like uncut diamonds - crickets chirp across the freshly cut lawn. The low hum of security light sensors buzz around the perimeter as patients sleep off their detoxed bodies.

Security guards slip into hazy slumber in their seats at the front lobby. Jumpy crickets ignite sensors and the white light filters through the one-window of a shared room painted creamy white, rays of artificial light flares upon two bodies.

“I burned and ached for wings. A child born from hate learns to self-loath like a badge of honor.”

A watery sigh infiltrates the deafening silence, interrupting your overflowing thoughts. “Jesus - that’s heavy.” The crumpled paper held between two brown spidery fingers, handing it back to you, you huffed a hollow chuckle, as you retrieved the tiny note-pad.

Beyond crumpled due to constant refolding, an anxious tick you never quite kicked, you mumbled a genuine thanks.

It’s difficult letting strangers read your poetry, you feel as if your skin was peeled off, and exposed raw for the salts of judgment. Writing has always been an escape from reality, releasing pent up emotions onto paper. Unfortunately it wasn’t enough to stop the binging.

But with MJ, you never felt more safer. You were comfortable. You read her lines of Shakespeare, both sharing books and music. She taught you odd historical facts - recites buzzfeed unsolved mysteries to exact memory, facts about serial killers, and feminism -- observant, bold, honest -- a whizz this spitfire is.

It’s been a long-time since you felt the comfort of another person, just a year ago - you were abandoned, thrown out into the cold by the very ones who promised a better future. How naive, you actually started to joke that the drugs were finally starting to rot your brains for believing such bullshit.

A cruel joke, all the day-dreams, obsessing over the tiny details, because when you’re in love, all the tiny minuscule moments of the ones you yearn for is pure brilliance. As if they could do no wrong. Mesmerized with moon eyes as your beating heart bleeds over the stitches in your fore-arm.

Love is a monster. A beast that feeds on the mush of your scrambled brains. Destructing your flesh, ripping your skin apart with its claws, gnawing on bones, till finally it reaches your soul - that's love.

You fall hard, deep within hell’s pits, but it’s agonizingly slow. It doesn’t bring the best out of you, because life is unfair, and humans tend to savor evil acts of betrayal.

Layers of trauma, and depression unravel - the strings that attached your leaning limbs are flailing, you become yourself a clingy, and needy little beast. Bury it under grave dirt, the maw of pure unadulterated pain. The falsehood of euphoria dwindles from a ball of sunshine, to a dying star particle.

You lost what made you years ago.

Moving on a greyhound to PA to a pristine rehabilitation center was meant to recover, maybe learn how to be independent emotionally - recover from drugs, you weren’t too sure.

You shouldn’t have talked to MJ, confess your dirty secrets, insecurities, the relationship with your parents - except for a particular one - that one needs to wither in ashes.

MJ understands. The pain, and the emptiness. She’s been there, one in the same. No one understands, especially your parents. Not for the lack of effort, or so you think. Mom, and dad supported you physically: put clothes on your back, fed your belly, gave you your prescribed medicine - although muttered chastised indirects on how pills were unnecessary, you weren’t ill enough. If you’re not dying, or suffering from broken bones and bruises - you’re not ill.

They were your parents - it’s their obligation by default.

It’s duty, not love.

The addictions crept slowly over the years, progressing into aggressive vices - suffocating, but balms of comfort. You became a masochist to your demons: you would hurt in the aftermath, but kept running for more-- that one moment in time - as if you were floating into emptiness.

No one can hurt you there - where you are nothing. Weightless nirvana. Self-hate festers in your mind, you don’t even feel like your breathing. Then it happens - the fall. Your breathing slows down, rapid choppy spurts - your limbs become numb, your mind fizzles like TV static.

You know a lot of people hate you, and you understand that - you hate yourself too. If you could turn the hands of time, and change yourself, you would. You don’t do it for yourself, but you do it for your mom, and your dad - although you resent them at the best of times, but ever so the people pleaser. And now for MJ.

“You’re beyond talented. I wish I was good at something -”You cut her off, “No, don’t say that. You have so much potential. You just have to unlock it. I never met a person so intelligent.” You turn your head facing her side profile, admiring her button nose, and the smooth slope to the tip. MJ side-eyes you, her face straight forward, a curled smirk before she winks at you. “You really think so?” Hazily smiled at her, you nodded.

“I know so.”

You mourn for the girl you used to be.

You wish you were like a girl like MJ.

Beneath a snarky girl is revived dreams. With her brains, beauty, intellience - yet tenderness; she will make it far in life.

You? You’re surprised you made it past eighteen. Maybe God is gonna snuff you out at thirty. Damn, you hope so.

It’s all in your head.

Maybe you’re not trying hard enough?

You don’t want to get better hard enough - you’re lazy. If you did, you would be feeling better now.

You want to get better - but how? Fake it till you make it, right? Crying spells, and the dissociation hidden from the outside world. Exhaustion from laying in bed all day, the copious amount of shedded weight, the purple hues under your eyes - one time, you couldn’t leave the bed for days.

Refusing to relieve your bladder, all the urine just building - the cramps were monstrous. Got a uterine infection, and spent a few days laid up on a hospital bed.

Why bother? Why try? You’re too hurt to give one single fuck - your garden is barren any fucks to give. Slowly die, just lay in bed, and do nothing. Maybe one day, you’ll disappear. What a miracle that would be.

Cause quite frankly, you’re just fucking exhausted.

“Hey-” a poke on your ribs, “Where did you go?” MJ has been trying to gain your attention, but you slip hazily into that decrypted space, as always in that depressing bubble. It worries MJ, but doesn’t surprise her. Not anymore anyways.

“Nowhere special.” Your tongue turning sour from the kool aid you had earlier, nervously rubbing against your teeth. You wiggle your body more into your old navy blue university sweater, skin seeking desperately for warmth.

Like a child seeking their own personal woobie blanket - your bird-nest hair sticks to your face, too tired to brush it, MJ usually badgers you for her to detangle the curls and braid it.

MJ’s nimble fingers caress your hairline, weaving it’s travel into your matted curls, “Do you wanna talk about it?” Not yet. “Later, I’m really tired. Can we just rest a bit?” you ask, a bit breathless. Panic of abandonment sores through your veins. Your throat constricts, as your first tear of the night threatens to fall.

Your body instinctively twists, and shifts into MJ’s caring arms. “Sure.” A loving embrace, a friend. Finally a fucking friend - while your old ones spilt to find their own purpose, and sobriety.

All contact cut off - because of that one night. That fatal night. A croaked laugh slips from your plump lips, the cracks of your shield splinters, and shatters. Tears form at your squinted eyes, a smile reaches your ears, stretching your brown cheeks, and it hurts.

All of it hurts.

MJ shushes you, engulfing you in her arms, the smell of laundry detergent floods your lungs. It’s a certain smell your nose is familiar with; a homebody smell - anonymous in description, and name but nostalgic.

Smells of the past - you nuzzle your nose into her loose fitted shirt, the flaps of her red checkered plaid shirt curtain your face, a quick kiss on the forehead.

Wrists tucked against her shirt, afraid to let go. Please God, let me have just one friend.

“It’s okay.” MJ, a Queens girl, forced here by her parents, has seen pain like you have. Thin razor scars on her arms, and thighs tell stories of a frightened girl who seeks to feel alive through pain. Cuts, and slashes - to remind herself, ‘Hey I’m still here.’

Rubbing circles on your scalp, “I gotta brush your hair soon.” She understands, and does it with sincerity. Encourages you what you need to do to take care of you, and somehow you listen to her advice. Listens to your troubles, and instead of mindless efforts to move, she says things like ‘It’s okay, take your time. I’m here for you.’ ‘You’re important to me.’

The only good thing rehab has done for you is bring her into your life. All the droning repetitive phrases uttered out of that tyrant therapist of yours, ‘How does that make you feel?’ ‘Um, shitty. As always. Now can I please get some fucking valium?’ The kumbaya bullshit in group therapy is - no, not for you.

The fake closeness, holding hands for inner strength and even passed judgement bestowed by fucking assholes who abuses the same drugs as you, but different reasons - upon each other. It makes you forget how to breathe - the compulsive urge to count your breathing has gotten worse over the weeks.

Family workshops? Choke. Die. Rebuke it. You screamed, and threw furniture across the facility like a feral she-beast - shouting on the top of your lungs that you rather sodomize yourself with your own detached right arm then confront the very ones who fucked you up since birth.

Two needles of tranquillisation settled your lungs, and brain - that was a spectacular one-woman show of mental deterioration. You slept it off for a day, and a half.

Nine months of being rehab buddies turned into a full-fledged friendship.

Thank God for MJ.

A disembodied voice beckons you out of a dreamless slumber, bracing above you as you clutched onto a knocked out MJ. The blinding fluorescent tubes shine through the dreary dark room. A constant call of your name. Through bleary vision, you croaked, “Yes, God?” A low timbre of your name. Scolding an overgrown child. “Y/n, there’s a phone call for you at the main desk. It’s your mom.” You grumbled at Ms. Brown, a nurse administrator.

There’s an edge to her voice, it’s odd - she’s usually patient, and speaks in kind tones.

“Okay.” You groaned, your eyes too dry, and groggy to roll back to the base of your skull of annoyance. Carefully detaching your arms, and legs that were tucked in MJ’s petite frame, crawling out of the nest of wrinkled paper-thin sheets, as Ms. Brown awaited with her hip leaning against the door-frame.

Padding out of the room in white socks, black shorts, and an oversized pull over. Trailing behind the massive presence of flesh and bone, like a baby chick to a hen, down the hall to the main desk in the lobby. Embarrassed by your repulsive state, you hide your ratty hair in your hoodie, and stash your chewed nails in the pockets. Ms. Brown picks up the black rotary phone that laid on its back on the shiny desk. Was that pity in her eyes?

You searched for the clock that hung above on the wall, 3:38 am. You snarled, your mother must have a good reason to bother you.

It’s been about five months of no contact with her, your spine crawled at the anticipation to hear her voice. Clutching the phone between ear, and shoulder, “Hi, mom.” you deadpanned.

A sniffle, then a sob. Your brows furrowed, “Mom, what’s wrong?” mindlessly your fingers toy with the curled extension cord. “It’s your father, baby.” Your chest began to cave, your eye twitched, “What’s wrong with daddy?” your chapped lips spoke closer to the speaker, your knuckles whitening from caramel brown.

“Oh honey -” cut the theatrics, and spill it. “He’s dead.” A light in your head went out, your pupils widened, your breath stopped, your lungs shriveled to ashes, “How?” you wheezed.

Is this shock? You couldn’t tell - your mother’s nasally voice drowns into white noise, unshed tears form at the brim, all you heard was heart-attack - perhaps two funerals are at the horizon, you’re tipping at the iceberg - a potential asthma attack.

Ms. Brown keeps ushering the words, ‘focus on your breathing.’ A caring hand placed between your shoulder blades, rubbing in circles.

“You have to come home.” You wretchedly spit on the marbled desk, dry-heaved on the spot at those words, and Ms. Brown quickly snagged the phone from your hand, holding your trembling form in her soft doughy arms. “She needs to lie down for a moment. It’s three in the morning, so she needs some sleep. I’ll make sure she’s okay …” all the bulbs in your head burn out, an empty cranium.

You have to come home.

Back to Brooklyn.

Ms. Brown leads you back to your room, constantly asking if you’re okay. You reply robotically, yes. Tending to you, tucking you into your own bed as if you would fall by the sims. Cocooning you in the white blanket, reaches up to your chin. You close your eyes, trying to numb yourself.

You wait.

Till her footfalls fade, with a click of the lock. Wait at least sixty seconds, brown hues open with a careless flutter of the lashes.

A moment of peace - now search. Perked on the tips of your toes sinking into your mattress, you skillfully remove the ceiling tile above your bed, your hand snuck inside, c’mon, c’mon, where is it? Aha! Stretched fingers glide a plastic packet out of its hideaway. A little jiggle between your fingers, white powder of delight - a morning snack.

Skip over to MJ’s bed, you grasped her arm, and draped it over your shoulder. “What happened?” MJ mumbled, her eyes still shut closed, a beat of silence. “My dad is dead.” MJ’s eyes peel open at the news, “How?” You love that she doesn’t ask if you’re okay, because you’re far from it.

“Heart-attack.” MJ hugged your body tightly against hers. “The last time I talked to him, I screamed that I hated him.” Your voice wavered, muffled at the crook of her neck, “I never got to say goodbye.” MJ harshly swallowed the bile at her throat, she didn’t say a word. There’s no need, the impassive cadence was enough confirmation - the grief hasn’t fully ingrained in you.

“You’re gonna save some for me, right?” A half-hearted joke.

The packaged cocaine still hidden in the confines of your pocket bellows for your nostrils, to rub it against your teeth and gums - your parched tongue.

“Of course.”

You blink.

Another blink.

You sighed a distant exhale, your swollen heart dying against your cavity, and you blink.

All you can do is blink.

#buckybarnesplumwhore wrote this #winterwitch x reader #scarlet witch x reader #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x black!reader #bucky barnes smut #scarlet witch x reader smut #scarlet witch smut #marvel fanfic #modern au #avengers x reader

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