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uglymanchronicles · 3 years

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Ugly Man Chronicles Reignition Book 2 Chapter 2: My Breakfast With Evan

Just a couple dudes getting to know each other.

“If you must know,” Evan sighed, spearing a glistening sausage on the end of a flimsy plastic fork, “my jackass older sister thought it would be hilarious to give me a cupcake she'd baked with about a dozen powdered viagra for my fifteenth birthday. I wound up passing out eventually. Burst a lot of blood vessels. Damaged the erectile tissue beyond usefulness.”

Titus froze mid-coffee-sip. “Seriously? What a bitch!”

“Buddy, you don't know the half of it.”

“So... no signs of life down there?”

“Nothing for twelve years.”

“I think I would literally kill myself.”

“It's not so bad, I guess. At least I don't have to drain the blood out of it any more.”

“Eugh! Fuck! Did not need to hear that!”

“Well, maybe you shouldn't ask questions you don't want the answer to.”

“Do you get, like, blue balls all the time, then?”

“That's basically my ground state of being.”

Titus whistled flatly, avoiding looking Evan in the eye. He settled for staring at the table. There wasn't a lot of Evan's face that he felt comfortable looking at; every part seemed to at least be adjacent to some unpleasantry or another. About the only safe area was his right eye, which, as luck would have it, was directly opposite Titus's 'good' eye. Titus rallied and met Evan's gaze again. “Alright, your turn.”

They'd agreed on a sort of mutual interview process, taking turns asking questions to suss out what the other was capable or if he was worth having around. Evan took a bite out of the sausage and chewed thoughtfully for a moment.

“Who's Moreno?”

Titus hissed through his teeth. “A real piece of shit.”

“I'm going to need more than that.”

“I'm getting to it. He's basically, like... a freelance henchman? Like, sort of a mercenary criminal. Sells his services to the highest bidder.”

“And why's he matter?”

“That's another question.”

“No, it is not,” Evan said, quiet and serious. “Do not argue with me in bad faith, Titus. I have very little patience for it in the best of times.”

Titus regarded him for a long moment. The man across from him was wider than the table they sat at. His muscles were so pronounced in some points that Titus could tell when he was about to move by the way they bulged and contracted. Yet he gave the impression that he was constantly trying to pull himself inward, to make himself smaller. He spoke quietly and with a simple formality, but only hours before Titus had watched him single-handedly beat down some of the nastiest people he'd met in the past month.

Hmm.

“Fine. Moreno matters because I'm after the guy he's working for. You see, Moreno isn't just a normal scumbag. He works for people who need nasty things done. Not like regular nasty, either. How much do you actually know about magic?”

“I've got some... notes. So far I'm not able to find a lot of coherent rules. It mostly seems like it relies on things that nobody would normally do.”

Titus snapped his fingers and pointed at Evan. “Hit it right on the head. Rituals, reagents, that kind of thing... the reason—well, one of the reasons—magic doesn't just happen all the time by accident is that it's all weird little things. A lot of the more heavy magic relies on some pretty elaborate and obtuse shit to get it going.”

Evan momentarily thought back to the Book of Fate and his ritual in the woods. “So Moreno does these things for people?”

“Yeah. Thing is, though...” Titus stopped raising a forkful of eggs halfway to his mouth and set it down again, as if he'd momentarily lost his appetite. “The people who use his services generally practice some pretty vile magic. Real depraved shit. And to empower depraved magic, you need depraved rituals. Moreno is the guy you go to when...”

“I think I get it,” Evan interjected, since Titus seemed to be struggling with deciding whether to continue. “Your turn.”

Titus tapped his fingers on the table for a moment, then looked Evan in the eye. “How smart are you?”

The scars on Evan's face squirmed around as he actually smirked. “What kind of question is that?”

“Hey, we agreed no 'whys'.”

“Alright, alright. Well, there's really no objective metric for it, but... I have Master's degrees in computer science and theoretical physics, Bachelor's in those in addition to mathematics and electrical engineering, and associate's degrees and certificates in everything from EMT training to ballet. I should have my doctorate in physics, but...” he said, with a bitterness that Titus made a note of, then changed gears. “Oh, and I also speak Mandarin, Spanish, Japanese, French, and Arabic pretty fluently. I also know ASL. I can get by in German and Russian, too. I don't know if any of that is what you meant but--”

“Jesus, I get it,” Titus muttered, rubbing the side of his head. “How the fuck do you make money?”

“Software consulting, mostly. I specialize in security and processing efficiency. People pay me to break into their systems and then patch the holes, or to make their code run quicker or make their programs smaller. I've got a few patents I've licensed that bring in most of my income nowadays, though.”

“Anything I would have heard of?”

“If you've used a computer made in the last four years it probably has something I wrote integrated somewhere into it. I also helped develop a protein-sequencing program that helped develop a vaccine for this nasty SARS variant that broke out in China last year. They say if they hadn’t nipped it in the bud it could’ve spread worldwide and we’d be looking at millions of deaths by now.”

Titus scrunched up his face. “Oh yeah, just say that like it’s no big deal.”

“I’m just glad it turned out not to be one. What I'd really like to do is get my compression algorithm out there, but if I do that, somebody's going to try to hoard it all for themselves.”

“Are you talking to yourself or me?”

“Look, I... a few years ago I figured out a way to compress memory down by a exponential factor of six with zero loss. All it takes is a couple software plugins that don't take up much room themselves. Essentially, I could make a gigabyte fit in a kilobyte with very little trouble, now that the math's figured out.”

“Holy fuck, that's insane! Why haven't I heard anything about this?”

“Mainly because I don't tell people. If I put it up on the market, some ISP would buy it and bury it. If you make information smaller, you make it faster. Can you imagine what it'd do to internet access if dial-up and barebones cellular networks suddenly had the bandwidth of fiber optics? It would... maybe not revolutionize our society, but it would level a lot of playing fields. Bring a lot of underdeveloped areas of the world—hell, this country—up to modern levels with no extra cost. The telecomms would crash and burn so hard. But I don't have the means to get it out there without going through someone else. Yet,” Evan added. “So I basically work watered-down versions of the compressor into the software I make. Nothing that can be duplicated, and nowhere near its full potential, but enough to get me hailed as some kind of genius and pay the bills.”

“So why aren't you on your own private island or something somewhere instead of puttering around God's Ashtray in a shitty old Bug?”

“Hey, the Beetle is not shitty,” Evan said, defensively. “And I'm just waiting for the AC in my RV to get fixed or I'd be driving that.”

“Oh hot damn! Now that's the way to live!”

“Not the one I'd choose voluntarily, but it could be worse.”

“How come you're doing it, then?”

“I think it's my turn to ask,” Evan said, mildly.

“Fine,” Titus said grumpily, crossing his arms.

“How do you make money?”

“That's easy. I'm basically a freelance bailbondsman. I just roam around, drop my advertising around bars and courthouses.”

“You get many clients that way?” Evan asked, cocking his remaining eyebrow.

“Oh, you'd be amazed how desperate people can get,” Titus said, shrugging. “Of course, they're usually not the most responsible people, so when they bounce, I track 'em down myself, drag ‘em back to jail, get the money back. My eye usually makes it super easy. Sometimes they don't even see me before I get the cuffs on 'em.”

“Why did you feel the need to rob a bunch of drug dealers, then? The thrill of it?”

“I had a pressing need for a large amount of cash that my normal work doesn't bring in. That got me enough to hold it off for a while. My turn.”

Evan waved down a waitress for a refill of his coffee, trying not to take it personally when she gasped upon seeing his face. “Go ahead…”

“No, no, hang on.” Titus waved a hand dismissively. “I want to try something. Take your hair out of the ponytail.”

“What? Why?”

“Humor me.”

Evan groaned and reached back, removing his hair tie. After shaking his head, his hair fell over his face, obscuring everything but his nose and mouth. Titus pursed his lips and regarded him seriously for a moment.

“Can you see?”

“Yeah, I guess. Well enough to not walk into things, I think, and I could probably read if I had to.”

Titus snapped his fingers. “Good. Go with that from now on.”

“Why?”

“Because now you don’t look like God’s mistake. Now you look like a big, dumb-but-lovable goon. Like Jack Black would voice you in a cartoon.”

“And that’s a good thing?”

“Do you like seeing people contemplating their own mortality and the general cruel absurdity of the tragic farce that is human existence when they get a glimpse of your face?”

Evan felt his cheeks burn and was actually grateful his hair was covering most of his face. “…not particularly, no.”

“Then there you go. You’re welcome. Okay, question time. Uh… how did you get your powers?”

“Which one?”

“Oh, now who’s arguing in bad faith? Fucking all of them, you thick-lipped gargoyle.”

Evan had the feeling he hit a sore spot. Titus's easy-going, jocular tone had bled away from him, leaving behind the hard-edged razor-blade of a man that had ambushed him the night before. He decided not to belabor the point.

“I don't know why I can rege—why I heal so quickly. No, I'm serious, as far as I know, it just started happening sometime in the past few months. I can't remember. Don't look at me like that, I'll get to that in a minute. When I was younger I recovered from a lot of injuries a lot quicker than the doctors thought I would, so maybe it's something I was born with and it just got stronger recently for some reason.”

Evan took a sip of coffee, mainly to buy a few seconds to think of how much to explain for the next part.

“The ability to shut off powers... that's part of, well, I guess you'd call it a magic ritual, because I don't know what else to call it. I found a weird old book that said it contained the key to making someone an instrument of universal justice, or something of the sort. Since then I can see... I guess they're souls? Maybe? I can sort of move mine and when I run it into someone else's it seems like I can shut off their powers. Or... take them entirely, if they're dying.”

“Horseshit!” Titus scoffed. “That's... that's like meta-magic. I don't even know if that's real.”

“No, seriously! I don't think it's just magic powers, I think it... 'normalizes' things.” He briefly recounted his encounter with the pain monster.

“Are you kidding me? That...” Titus took off his hat and ran his hand through his hair, exhaling slowly and loudly. “Look, I don't know much, but the fact that you even ran into something like that, let alone survived... those odds are astronomical. And you say you negated not just its powers, but its whole form?”

“Yeah. Once I... reached into it, like I did with you—oh don't make that face. Grow up—I kind of disrupted what made it... different, I guess? Like I cut it off from its special qualities. Like it was...”

“Disjuncted,” Titus cut in.

“Yeah, that's a good word for it. Like the old Mordenkainen spell?”

“Fucking nerd.”

“Eat my ass. Anyway, after I killed it, I was able to reach into its... soul? Animating force? Aura? I don't know what to call it. I was able to grab something and pull it out and it just got pulled into me.”

“Not aura.”

“What?”

“Aura's a different thing,” Titus said, dismissively. “So what did you get from doing that?”

“I.. I feel pain differently. I don't flinch or get adrenaline rushes from injuries that don't actually impede my ability to function. I think I have a better sense of what is actually dangerous to my body now. It still hurts, but I don't react to pain like people normally do. It's like...hmm.” Evan drummed his fingers on the table. “Do you know anything about video games? Fighting games, specifically?”

“I used to fuck around on an old Alpha 3rd Strike cabinet when I was a kid. Why?”

“Do you know what 'super armor' is?”

“Isn't that where a move can't get stopped by being hit when you're doing it?”

“Right. I'm kind of like that now. Pain doesn't interrupt me.”

“Fucking nerd.”

Evan's fist involuntarily clenched. “I'm trying to put this in terms you can understand, you stupid reprobate. My experience with your judgment thus far hasn't given me much faith in your intellect.”

Titus burst out laughing. “So he does know how to banter! I thought you might be one of those Rainman types.”

“Oh sure, call it 'banter' to try to excuse the fact that you've been insulting me for the past half hour. Do you say you're ‘just joking’ when people get mad at you for saying stupid shit, too?”

“C'mon, lighten up! We're partners now! Tell me more about this soul thing. I still think you're full of shit.”

Evan sighed through his nose, then held up his left hand, forming his fingers into a circle and peering through them.

“Yours is... a sort of cross between a sea green and an oil slick. The tendrils of it keep reaching out and snapping back, going all over the place. It seems to keep expanding and contracting. It's almost flickering, like... it's indecisive. Very chaotic. The tendrils that aren't snapping around seem to be kept pretty close to your body, wrapping around you like... I can't tell if it's protective or restrictive.”

Titus's expression slowly became serious. “What does that mean?”

“I don't know. I have a lot of theories, but nothing solid to go on. I'm not sure if it's allegorical or a literal representation of a person's... power, maybe? Yours definitely looks a lot different than most people's.”

“I don't believe this for a second. Let me see.”

“How would I do tha—hey!”

Titus grabbed Evan's wrist and held his hand up to his eye. “Ho-lee...”

He pulled back from Evan's hand, staring at him. Then he looked around the room, mouth slack as he took in the diner's other occupants.

“Huh. Did you know it keeps working until you blink?” He said after a moment, a faraway tone to his voice.

“I didn't even know other people could do it,” Evan said, awe in his voice. “Hey, wow, you're right!”

“Jesus, yours is, like, really blue. It looks like... a bunch of steel cables. It's weird, I felt like I both could and couldn't see the edges of it...”

“I can kind of move it, but I'm not sure if I can do anything with it beyond interfering with people's powers. It's like learning to use a muscle you didn't know you had.”

“Huh.” Titus was again silent for a long moment. “Your turn.”

“Can you do anything else supernatural? Besides your time-eye?”

“Don't call it that, it sounds stupid. And... sorta. I seem to have whatever innate talent you need to actually do magic, but it's not like it's easy to find instructions. Most of the people I know who can use it just dabble with half-broken magic items—wands, amulets, charms,” he pulled the silence charm out from under his coat and bounced it at the end of its chain. “I guess I'm sort of a dabbler. I know a few tricks, I can use a lot of magic tools, I can sense magic pretty well, I can dowse... Most of the time I really never have to use anything besides the eye, though.”

“Is the eye all-or-nothing?”

“Yeah. It's not nearly as useful as you'd think, but any edge is an edge.”

“When I turned off your power and it was coming back, though, you started speeding up—or, I guess, everything else was slowing down? You were moving faster, one way or the other. You were able to touch me, and those punches hurt.”

“Huh, yeah, you're right.”

“Do you think there's a way you could learn to only partially activate it?”

“That'd be great, wouldn't it? Thing is, just using it is a huge strain, and that time spend outside of time adds up. Going by normal calendar time I'm only 26.”

“Fuck, I'm 27!” Evan laughed.

“Yeah, well, I'd rather be prematurely gray than what you've got going on. My turn. Uh... huh, I can't really think of anything else. Uh... are you gay?”

“Are you fucking serious?”

“No, but the question still counts.”

“I'm bi,” Evan mumbled, crossing his arms across his prodigious chest. “Not that it matters. And before you ask, no, you are not my type. We're done talking about this.”

“Huh. You ever sucked--”

“We. Are. Done. Talking about this.”

“Fine, God. Go.”

Evan mentally circled back to an earlier question he felt hadn't been properly answered. “Why are you after Moreno?”

To Evan's surprise, Titus didn't hesitate. “I'm actually after his current boss. He's just the best lead I have to go on.” He took a deep breath, then started talking with a rushed, deadpan pace, as if he was eager to get the words out as quickly as possible so they wouldn't be in his mouth very long.

“Moreno is working for a guy only known as the Soultaker. He has an innate supernatural ability to pull a person's soul out of their body. When that happens, the person just... shuts down, usually. No motive force behind them. Eventually they just die of dehydration, usually. I've seen some people so set in routine that they keep going without a soul, but... it's not really life.

“It seems like the extraction process takes a while, so he can't just walk past you on the street and pickpocket your entire essence. So he needs people rounded up for him, held until he can do his nasty juju. So that's where a degenerate like Moreno comes in.

“So when he pulls out a soul, it, well, it looks like this.”

Titus pulled a battered, faded Crown Royale bag out of his jacket. It bulged strangely and made a quiet clacking when he set it on the table. He pulled out what looked like a large marble, or maybe a dull pearl, and handed it to Evan.

Evan brushed his hair out of his eyes and peered into the milky depths of the sphere. After a few moments of staring, the murky clouds inside the thing seemed to clear and a face floated to the surface. A black man, maybe in his late 40s, going thin on top. His eyes were closed and he appeared to be sleeping, but his expression had a look of discomfort to it, as if he was having a bad dream.

“Jesus Christ,” Evan whispered, “I've seen this guy... Martell Calloway? I saw some news article about how his family found him tied up in his apartment and completely comatose! But he didn't have any injuries beyond being a black eye... so he's dead?”

“Life support,” Titus said, taking Mr. Calloway's soul back from Evan's unresisting fingers, “technically, he's one of the lucky ones. They found his body before it wasted away to nothing, and I was able to intercept his soul before it got to a buyer.”

“Why would someone buy something like this? What use is it? Can you fix him?”

“A human soul is a damn near exhaustible arcane battery,” Titus said gravely. In the split second between sentences, Evan noticed something—after he'd put the bag back into his jacket, Titus surreptitiously touched a pocket on the other side of his jacket, as if he was making sure something was still there.

“If you know what you're doing, you can power a lot of magic using a soul. And you can reuse them as long as you don't overdo it. If you know what you're doing, you can wring all but the last drops of essence out of a soul and let it heal or recover or whatever, and it'll eventually be back to full strength. Very resilient things,” Titus continued. “I don't think they're conscious in there, but... anyway, it's supposed to be really hard to extract a soul. But this guy was born with or spontaneously developed or somehow figured out a shortcut to the whole process. So the market is getting flooded with torture-batteries and ECUs are getting flooded with vegetables. And families are winding up with loved ones who are as good as dead, without having any idea why this happened to them. Dozens of them have been taken off life support in the past few months. Half these souls have no body to return to. And no, I can't fix it. At least not yet,” he sighed again. “I was hoping once I found him, I could somehow get the secret out of him or force him to put them back, or... maybe I thought if I killed him it'd reverse the effect. He needs killing, either way.”

Titus's eye widened as a thought struck him and he looked Evan in the eye for the first time since he'd started the story. Evan realized what he was thinking and looked down at the tattoo on his left arm, flexing his fingers.

“If you can take people's powers after they die...”

“...then we can save these people.”

Titus put a hand over his mouth and for a moment Evan thought he saw his eye well up.

“I'm in,” Evan said, a sense of righteous purpose welling in his heart. “I don't really know what the universe wants, but I doubt... I know it's not this. We'll find him, we'll stop him, and we'll save as many of these people as we can.”

“...thanks,” Titus mumbled behind his hand. He swallowed hard, then seemed to come back to himself. “We're back to square one, though.”

“You said you could dowse? Like, for real?”

“Yes, for real. I can find things and people with the pendulum method. It's handy for tracking down bounties.”

“Why don't you dowse Moreno?”

“Why didn't I think of that?!” Titus said incredulously, smacking his forehead. “Because he's warded. He's not magic himself, but he's collected enough gear through his career that my normal methods don't work.”

Evan rubbed his chin. “What if we used an abnormal method?”

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

An hour later, they were in the RV. Titus was poring over the collection of Evan's notes and the strange papers he'd bought from Delmann's shop. Evan was very carefully slicing a strip of skin from his own ankle up all the way up his leg. The Guiding Light—the Finder's Follysat on the table between them, filled with fresh blood.

“Even if this works, he's going to know we're coming,” Titus muttered, engrossed in the pages. “Remember what I said?”

“That's why we're not going to look for him,” Evan said, adjusting his grip on the potato peeler. “I don't know how we'd even write his name. Can you read that, by the way?”

“Kind of. This is... most of this is written in, like, arcane pidgin. Who compiled these notes?”

“I did, I think.”

“You think?”

“Oh yeah, I forgot to clarify on that. Apparently a couple months ago, before the ritual, I drilled a hole in my own brain to erase some kind of very dangerous memory.”

“You what.”

“That's not a metaphor or anything. Really did it. I could show you the video.”

“I'll pass. So you don't remember where this came from?” Titus shook the Book of Fate at him.

“Nope.”

“Jesus shit, do you have any idea--”

“How reckless that was? Yeah, yeah, I'm still here and I'm the answer to your fuckin' prayers, aren't I?” Evan gave a whoop as the peeling skin reached his thigh. “Got it this time!” he said cheerfully, snipping the flesh-ribbon off with scissors.

“God, that's so fucking gross. Anyway, you haven't explained how we're going to use that thing to find Moreno.”

“We don't set it to look for him. We look for somewhere he's been. Maybe the last place he slept. Do you think you can describe him well enough in that language for it to work?”

Titus looked like he might actually be impressed, but he hid it well. “Yeah, probably.”

“Good. I've got a dictionary I've put together on that tablet next to you, but I'm not sure how accurate it is. Maybe it'll help?”

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

Two hours later, they had it.

Find where a man born between the 27th and 28th north parallels during a new moon under the sign of capricorn with black hair and green eyes who has killed at least 10 people slept in the past week.

They really had to squeeze the letters in, but when Evan put a flame to the wick, it sprung to life, wavered for a moment, and then pointed east. Both men cheered. Evan threw Titus the keys.

“Drive! Drive north until I tell you otherwise!”

While Titus started the engine, Evan spread a map of the United States on the table in front of the lamp, then produced a protractor and a notebook from a drawer. “Okay, you bastard... let's see where you've been hiding...”

It took three days—one spent driving north, one spent driving back to where they'd started, and one spent driving south. While Titus drove, Evan made meticulous notes of the flame's direction, marking angles on the map. Finally he threw the pencil down triumphantly.

“He's in Salt Lake City.”

“Well, that narrows it down a little, I guess. So what, do we just go there and hope this thing points us in the right direction?”

“Too slow,” Evan called, stepping back into what used to be his bedroom and sitting at his computer. “Now I work my magic.”

After parking, Titus walked back to look over Evan's shoulder. The half-dozen monitors on the wall were flickering between rapidly-changing pictures of faces and what appeared to be CCTV footage.

“What is this?”

“This,” Evan said with dramatic pride, “is Blaccat. Facial recognition algorithms that the CIA wishesit had. I actually started working on it years ago before I thought about the implications of it, but I shelved it. I figured since I may be needing to, uh...”

“Be Batman?”

“...yeah...that I should get back to work on it. Right now it's comparing faces to the description you gave me and cycling through every damn security camera in the city looking for it.”

“How illegal is this?”

“Soooooo illegal.”

“Oh, hey, can you get into police department records?”

“Does the Pope shit in the woods?”

“See if you can get into the Las Vegas mugshots from... February 2019. Run your face-recognition thingy there.”

“Alright.... and... is that our boy?”

A handsome Latino man in his early 30s with shoulder-length jet-black hair and piercing green eyes stared at them from over a booking clipboard.

“That's him,” Titus breathed.

“Perfect! Now I just have to feed that into... wow.” Evan made a gesture and a black and white video popped up on the biggest monitor. The man in the mugshot was walking along the street, flanked by a short stocky man in bandanna and a lanky man with the ugliest white-boy dreads Evan had ever seen.

“That's him! Where is that? When is that?”

Evan grinned up at Titus. “That's live. I can track him and put us at the nearest intersection.”

Titus smiled, eye overbright, and began breathing heavily through his nose. “We got him.”

Evan met his eye and nodded. “Let's get him.”

#my writing #urban fantasy #ugly man chronicles: reignition

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havetheavengersdoneanythingwrong · 3 years

Text

Act 2 — Il Dottore pt. 1

'Home,' and 'leadership.' A cowardly Master finds himself in a situation far larger than he could expect -- with only a moment's rest.

A doctor would be perfect, to get his mind off it.

—

“…Who are you?”

The young woman’s eyes stared into mine for a moment, before she took one step — then another, until she were facing us all.

As Ritsuka tried helping up Caster, Mash stepped in front of them preemptively — even though the lady held no weapons, being certain was impossible with all we’d seen.

Cursing myself under my breath for not preparing more casual dress for my allies in advance, I found myself forming a tale off the top of my head — as I jumped up in a moment, stepping in front of the woman to mildly obscure the less human aspects of Gorgon and such — after all, hiding that wasn’t exactly easy, but she couldn’t just enter spirit form now that she was spotted.

“We’re… cosplayers. We came from a Renaissance Fair not far from here, but we got a bit lost and our ride ditched us.”

“…My, what a story.” The woman closed an eye, tapping a finger to her cheek in thought.

“And yet, there hasn’t been any recent Renaissance Fairs about these parts, friend.”

…

…Sh—

“—He calls it that to sound cool. He’s never actually been to a ren’ fair, so we let him off easy. It was a small thing between us and a few other online mutuals, but well. Things went south pretty quick.”

…Thank god for Ritsuka. The other Master came in strong, having seemingly adjusted their form slightly — though I couldn’t quite tell what. Regardless, the orange-haired Master stepped forward beside me, fully blocking off the line of sight for Gorgon’s tail and allowing her to stand with the others. While I could only hope she’d make her tail look artificial too, it was a bit difficult to see how she’d do that.

Even so, the lady laughed softly, and extended a hand.

“Aren’t you both a curious group? My name is… Tessie. Tessie Quin — I’m just an actor around these parts. And you?”

‘…Quin.’ Didn’t that name seem..?

Regardless, I shook her hand carefully — and Ritsuka followed suit, after sparing a glance my way to ensure I wasn’t poisoned or something, probably.

“Nice to meet ya! I’m Ritsuka, and my buddy here is Cadence.”

“And the rest of you?”

“…We’ll, uh, introduce ourselves a bit later. They’re a little hammered, so they’re a little too dedicated to their roles right now.”

A glance from Ritsuka back to our other teammates was all they needed to keep quiet and act the part — Tlazolteotl silently directing the four, alongside Mash, to seem a little bit dazed to keep Ritsuka’s story intact.

“…What an odd brigade indeed. And you said you all were lost, right? In this forest?”

Tessie curiously inquired, after gazing over our group as though double-checking our alibis — raising a finger to the forest’s edges around us, that grew more thick, and harder to see through, especially in the night. Even the moon’s soft light did little to actually illuminate the area.

‘…I’m finding myself counting us lucky for landing in the outskirts.’

As I tried to ignore the hassle of Mash trying to tell Caster not to act hammered as well, I placed my hands into my pockets — so they could ball up, and relieve a bit of stress — and spoke.

“Yeah. We tried to take a shortcut home, but that went pretty bad pretty quick. It turns out a bunch of hammered cosplayers and a baker don’t excel in navigation.”

The lady nodded, though furrowing her brow after a moment.

“…Did you all simultaneously trip or something? When I saw you, all of you were on the ground.”

…Shit.

“—Well, again. A bunch of drunkards aren’t going to excel in balance, either. There was a tree root nearby that set the lot of them off balance.”

“…You seem sober enough.”

…Shit. (Again.)

And yet again, my fellow Master steps in to save my ass. Ritsuka laughed a bit at Quin’s words, leaning back a bit.

“This dude? He’d trip over an ant, let alone an obvious tree root. He’s a baker, but he’s horribly clumsy in the vast outdoors.”

…Quin paused for a moment in thought, before laughing a little bit.

“He certainly seems the type. My… You all really are an interesting group, huh?”

'...Do I really seem like a klutz?' I had to ask myself before preparing to respond -- but then again, I didn't exactly look like the type that could walk a tightrope.

"Something like that."

I finally managed to speak up, as Ritsuka took that as their cue to take the step back.

"As of now, we're looking for a place to stay and catch our bearings. Maybe see some sights here while we're at it."

Doing my best to follow the 'background' Ritsuka laid out, I took each moment in between these sentences to breathe. 'In, and out.'

It was all I could do. As something reached out, as though intent on returning its grasp to my neck as I tried to match Ritsuka's tale, I needed to breathe carefully to scare it off.

"I was thinking, since the lot of us are already here, that we take some time to enjoy it before we head back. Would you know where a hotel or something is?"

Tessie only raised an eyebrow, crossing her arms in thought. Her eyes turned upwards, closer to the sky -- as though the stars would spell out where to go.

"On this short notice? That is a lot to ask for."

"That's true, but we do still need to go somewhere. Even if we can find a free room in a ramshackle inn, or something..."

'Ramshackle? What kind of old man am I?'

As I internally chided myself, Tessie's gaze snapped back to the two of us -- and she'd uncross her arms to snap her fingers together.

"I've got it. Come with me, all of you -- I know a place."

An hour-long walk placed us on the outskirts of the city. Looking back, I could faintly see the forest we'd come into this Singularity in -- from afar, it certainly had looked rather large, taking up the vast majority of the southern end of this place.

The faint sound of blowing wind moving through the grass of the outskirts proved to be one of the only things that kept this place from utter silence -- despite the light polluting the environment, lighting up the innards of the city even from where we were, not a single sound could be heard.

Even so, however -- no matter how quiet the city was, or how 'normal' its greyish buildings and lamps looked from afar, there was one little caveat that was alerting us to something wrong.

To our left sat a hotel, suspended by chains.

"Here we are! We call it the Float Apartments, but they only have a couple rooms filled. I think you can rent out some of the rooms as you would a hotel."

Tessie's bright voice drew my attention for a moment, watching her point to the 'apartment' as though all were perfectly normal.

True to her words, the place was 'floating.' Despite the flat environment surrounding the city, there seemed to be a chunk of rock hovering impressively high above the ground. Even trying to look for some sleight of hand, something holding that chunk of land above the ground, nothing seemed to show itself -- not even so much as well-placed fishing wire to partially explain what was happening.

The apartment itself didn't hold much answers either. If one ignored its floating qualities, it did only look like a mildly ramshackle, two-story complex, more wide than long -- with off white walls, a tan flat roof, and silver chains placed on its sides to hold it up. While its entrance was at least accessible thanks to a slight hill leading up to its front doors, it seemed just as much hovering as the rock -- though one could assume the rock were holding up this hotel, that seemed about the only thing that could be answered.

And even if it could, one question still remained.

"...Why?"

It took a solid few moments to note that Ritsuka was already preparing themselves to enter -- with Tlazolteotl taking a spare few moments to record something in her notebook, eyeing Tessie carefully, before clamping it shut and following suit.

As for Tessie herself, in response to my question, only smiled.

"The King allowed for a lot more aesthetic design, as of late. Before he vanished, he bestowed upon our Capital some interesting properties!"

'...The King.'

It's not a name I was unfamiliar with -- although Ritsuka froze in the middle of their trip to the entrance, looking back at Tessie with an expression best called 'shock.'

"The what?"

"The King, don't you know? My, I suppose they don't talk much of them outside the province after all. They rule over Canada, and maintain peace."

Ritsuka furrowed their brow, but nodded and kept moving -- gesturing to me, and the others, to follow suit.

Knowing what little I knew about the King, it did explain a small bit -- monarchs in general were subject to strange decisions now and then, and they were no exception. With the magic I'd thus far seen, it hardly seemed out of the question to make that rock float.

With that explanation in mind, I slipped into the Apartments -- followed shortly after by the others.

'...It's familiar to me.'

'As the resident Caster, it only makes sense I would know that the floating rock is magic.'

The Caster of Rakugo followed in the steps of Gorgon, passively whispering prayers and spells of 'alteration' to cast an illusion over her tail. To make it seem as though slightly jointed -- while hardly obvious, just the littlest of hinges would make the tail seem far less biological in nature.

Yet, his mind remained on the floating rock. Even a 'king,' surely, wouldn't waste their time empowering a specific rock to float.

...But at the same time, didn't that also make sense? Kings were foolish people -- they weren't dissimilar to lords of the land he knew, both in stories and in his own life. Acts of power, even beneficial ones, were often done just for the hell of it. To send a message.

...He couldn't shake the feeling the magic was familiar to him.

The inside of the hotel was remarkable in how unremarkable it was -- especially when it was all too easy to hear the creaking of the chains from the inside. Simple, if dated wooden flooring, with off-white walls and wooden baseboards stained to a slightly dark brown. As I took further steps in, weak wall-mounted lamps illuminated the shopkeep -- a golden-eyed, golden-haired man with a wide smile on his face, waving to us as we walked in.

"Why hello there! It's rare we see someone come in unless they have to, let alone... so many of you."

The receptionist's calm voice was almost enough to steady my nerves -- most likely, he was already well aware of the atmosphere the hotel set for itself, though his best attempts weren't quite enough to shake the awful feelings the literal chains creaking were putting in place.

A glance to my right saw Ritsuka shoot forward just as Morgan furrowed her brow and began to walk to the man -- taking over before the queen even had a chance to say anything.

"Well, times are a little rough. We got pretty lost on our way back from a friendly mini-Renaissance fair, and the fact a fair few of us aren't quite sober isn't helping. Me and my buddy are about the only ones who stayed above the table, but..."

As Morgan breathed out softly -- with Kagekiyo elbowing her gently -- the queen stepped back a bit.

The receptionist nodded after mulling over Ritsuka's tale for a moment, sliding to a small outdated computer monitor -- likely to start logging rooms for us to borrow.

"Well, don't worry too much about it. I'm just gonna assume you're dead broke, right?"

Ritsuka paused for a moment, but then relaxed their shoulders and continued.

"Yeah, just about. Unless you'd count a couple yen."

...Ritsuka sputtered, after a moment.

"--I'd forgot to exchange that for canadian money."

'Nice save, buddy.'

The receptionist didn't seem too bothered, laughing it off before making a few last clicks -- and, rummaging under the table, passed myself and Ritsuka a key, and attempted to hand a key to the others as well - before being met with a collective 'I'll pass.'

...Save Caster, who was for all intents and purposes a minor, and one could only assume the receptionist wasn't keen on having the little guy hold up a room.

"...Only two rooms? You have, what, eight people? Can you..?"

Ritsuka interrupted the receptionist with what could best be described as 'the cheekiest wink ever conceived by man,' before taking a step back. The receptionist, while briefly caught off guard, responded in tune with a wide grin - and, sending an equally cheeky wink my way, pointed down the left wing of the apartment.

"Your room should be that way, friend. It's got some extra room, comparatively."

...I could only whisper out a flustered 'thank you' before slipping off into the hallway, only catching the receptionist escorting Ritsuka into the rightmost wind before I came across my door.

'...Room 103.'

...I breathed out, and opened the door.

A car speeds down the Carcosan highways.

An ambulance, without its hazards on.

One could hear the equipment moving about, sliding about what one could presume to be closed cabinets, if they were to listen closely as it shot past them.

In its driver's seat --

A man, clad in black -- a large, flowing cape with a black exterior and purple interior. Remarkably poofy black sleeves, and a baggy black button-up shirt. Even their pants, boots, the feathered cap they wore -- all were completely black. Their hair, forced into the massive hat, wasn't visible at all.

And their mask -- black, covering the upper half of their face, a mustache attached to the bottom of the mask's 'nose.' The only highlights, of course, were rosy-red paint on its 'cheeks.'

A doctor by trade. A doctor they were -- on the case to find someone who they knew needed their help.

Their locket bounced on their chest, as they ran over a speed bump. Sparing a glance behind them, the doctor would smile -- looking over their tools of the trade.

Scalpel? Check.

Basic Medicine Cabinet? Check.

Tourniquet material? Check.

Wrench? Check.

Certainly -- they would help them now.

The room was, yet again, remarkably unremarkable.

The floorboards creaked as I stepped on them, the sound of the chains thankfully more distant than before.

In the moonlight, only a shoddy desk lamp and the worn room light could illuminate this temporary home -- a warm, yellow glow illuminating just enough to at least see what needed to be seen, even if the corners of the room still remained dark.

'...It's almost nostalgic.'

As 'edgy' as it sounded, it felt more homely than the Chaldea base. The poor lighting, the soft moonlight, and the creaking of the floorboards reminded me of my old home in Toronto.

A bit cheap, certainly -- but it was home.

Though, there was one major difference, now.

"...Husband."

A commandeering voice, coming from the door, but one that didn't wait for a response.

The door opened quickly, revealing a familiar white-haired woman in a black-and-blue dress. She made some haste in settling herself on the first of two beds -- the one closest to the window, of course -- sitting down and staring me down with those ever-chilling blue eyes.

"...Tlazolteotl has asked the others to do something for her."

After a moment passed, I nodded, taking a seat beside her on this bed -- though her gaze didn't move at all from me.

"Did you get out of it, or something?"

At that, Morgan chuckled slightly -- adjusting herself to better face me, closing her eyes for a moment as though in thought.

"A ruler needs her spare time, husband. If I am to rule England, the first mistake is overworking oneself."

...Biting my tongue as to not note that she hadn't done much in the singularity yet, I instead moved on.

"...And you're spending the time cooped up here?"

"Someone should stay with you, no? You hardly keep well when you're alone for too long."

'...Did she have to be so blunt?' Even with that, I laughed a bit to clear my nerves, my hands locking together, fidgeting with my thumbs.

"...I suppose so. Even so, isn't t-"

"--Silence. You wouldn't question the acts of a perfect ruler, would you?"

...I'd nod, breathing a sigh out. Those words of hers never ceased to be truly blunt -- rarely ever focused on anything apart from the inevitable rule of Britain.

Even so, to say that was the only motive was...

...

"...Morgan?"

"What do you need of me? Have you finally worked up the courage to allow me to call you 'H--"

"--Not quite!"

Cutting her off at speeds that shocked even myself, I'd forced myself to continue before she could think up anything else that I'd need to prepare my heart for.

"...How would I help you rule Britain?"

...I couldn't help but be curious -- to ask, with the two of us alone.

"...I ask genuinely, Morgan. I'm... not a hero, nor am I a ruler."

...The ruler raised an eyebrow -- but still, she paused. To give a decent answer.

...Even so, after a moment, she'd furrow her brow -- reaching an arm around me...

...And pulling me onto my side, before I could even react, my head falling into her lap. The Queen only smirked as I tried to process this momentary act -- her gaze remaining, down upon me like a laser beam piercing through my eyes, into somewhere deeper.

"...Don't think about those things, Husband."

...

"My actions are all for the rule of Britain. Such things come before all else. A hero, a ruler, cannot by themselves understand their subjects."

...I blinked, trying for a moment longer to try and figure out just what she was implying -- but she spoke up yet again, as though timed to derail my thoughts.

"...A ruler mustn't overwork themselves, and they cannot always be alone. I choose those who I prefer, to be near me, so I may rule more properly. It need not be more complex than that."

...I breathed a sigh out, once more. It only seemed ever clearer to me that a straight answer from a Berserker wouldn't be possible to begin with.

"...Rest, husband."

"Shouldn't you be the one resting, in that case?"

"...A ruler, even while taking a break, should not shirk what duties they have. It is relaxing enough to be here."

...The Berserker smiled, after a moment -- and, giving up the fight, I'd simply nod my thanks, and close my eyes, just for a moment.

'...How would I help you rule Britain?'

A curious question indeed. The Berserker furrowed her brow, running a hand through her Master's hair.

Certainly, on paper, a mere 'person' like Cadence would make for a very poor king. Cowardly, reserved, unwilling to take risks -- paranoid, and easy to get worried.

And yet...

"...Set aside your differences. Don't you dare cause any fights right now, and... Don't let him worry about the small stuff."

...The words of the Mesoamerican goddess troubled Morgan greatly. This man, one she was willing to rule with, was now being prevented from hearing what matters a ruler should know. She had to allow Cadence to forget the worries that should come with being a king -- she had to let him rest.

"If all goes well, we can discuss all of these things after the Singularity. But not before."

...She supposed the Carcosan Singularity was an obstacle to her rule, regardless. Reasoning with herself, the Madness that gripped her mind, she came to the 'natural' conclusion -- that this was a kingly duty, and one she had to aid.

...

...She kept her gaze on him -- not letting up, save only to blink.

As though he'd disappear if she looked away.

My eyes slowly opened to the sound of sirens -- as someone's hand gently shook my arm to awake me.

"Husband. Tlazolteotl is calling your name."

"...Huh?"

After a moment, I slowly lifted my head off of Morgan's lap, standing up and pinching my cheek momentarily to try and get myself ready.

"CADENCE! QUICKLY!"

The familiar voice of Tlaz, however, proved to be what spurred my mind to move -- as Morgan opened the door, glancing behind her as to not trip on anything, I ran out, and turned left--

--directly into a masked man clad in black, who quickly took hold of my hood, and began running, dropping some sort of mask on the way out.

"Who-- Who are you?!"

"A roaming doctor, child! And I had heard pray tell of an injured man this way! Falling in a forest is a prime indicator of a stressed mind!"

Footsteps could be heard behind me -- with a spare glance back, before the man forcibly pulled me, it seemed to be Morgan.

"--Come back here, you damned..!"

--Yet, the doctor forcibly held me up behind him, now running backwards, as they entered the lobby. Without the receptionist that was there prior --

--The doctor forced himself out the door, with Morgan hot on the trail, yet she found herself caught in a moment's time.

By a knife, suddenly before her -- that she only just managed to avoid.

"...Is that..?!"

With every step forward, another knife she only barely dodged -- setting her on her heels, backpedalling to regain her balance.

Despite her gaze being locked on the doctor, despite every step she took forward, it seemed -- just as suddenly -- like her body began to force itself to avoid that blade, that materialized in the air, and dematerialized just as quickly.

In my helpless state, stuck watching the ruler be caught in a loop of avoiding the same blade, I found the tunnel vision obscured the ambulance doors that now shut in front of me.

...

...The lights turned on.

Around me -- motor oil, gears, pistons. Motors connected to various power sources -- even weapons, attached to mechanical structures that hardly made sense even to me.

In a moment, before I could even comprehend what I was thrown onto, clasps on the ambulance's 'bed' locked me in -- and judging from the sudden speed increase I could feel, the ambulance was already well on its way.

As I blinked to try and get a hold of my surroundings, the masked man that took me finally came into view -- my peripherals returning, despite the adrenaline still running through me.

"Good, good! The hardest part is handled. Now, dear patient, you do understand that stress takes a toll on the mind, right?"

Even as he spoke, I tried to pull against the restraints -- but, of course, no dice.

"I'll take that resistance as a 'no.' You should know that if your brain is stationary too long, stress begins to build. That, truly, does not bode well for you."

...Another pull against the restraints -- but I froze, momentarily, as he spoke. 'What the hell is he talking about..?'

"Now, dear patient, I have to check for indicators of stress in the brain. I've done this before, rest assured!"

The man walked to my left -- his hands rummaging through what sounded like a duffle bag.

"All I had to do was go into my patient's skull and find the parts of the brain that were stressed -- and deal with them."

...The man turned around, holding two splintered wooden stakes, as though ripped straight from fresh lumber.

"Of course, the pros -- unwilling to accept the fact that you should 'rest your brain,' or cut off the stress in your life -- voided my medical license! But it hardly matters now, does it? After all, I did get a medical license, so who cares if I lost it?"

'What does he..?'

The man stepped to his right, and procured some sort of metal slab -- crafted into something akin to a cut sphere, as though a third of it had been cut out -- and wire had been placed at its end, running downwards.

"Now, rest assured, patient -- I'll be making sure you must only do this once. Because I have a permanent solution to stress, and it beats simply resting your mind and returning it after."

...Something gripped my throat, at that moment -- siphoning my breath from my lungs.

The man smiled, positioning a stake in each hand -- and stepping forward, leaning over me from the right.

"Keep your eyes open, dear patient. Hurts less that way."

The man laughed a moment, as though just preparing a filling, positioning the stakes --

I'm finding myself unable to breathe, all of a sudden. Those wooden things, suddenly above me -- their sharp, splintered edges lowering themselves down...

The cold, sharp hands tear at my spine, my lungs. I shudder, unable to move -- a clasp around my neck secures my head in place.

The man in the mask smiles.

"The brain is ultimately just a biological computer. A very fragile one, however - weak to age, disease, and stress alike. It needs breaks. But it is still a computer."

Another clamp. My eyelids are forced back. My breath quickens, but I'm getting no air.

The hold of the beast is tearing holes in my lungs. I breathe, and it isn't enough.

I can't even speak -- not enough to use the Command Spells. And as the knife had stopped even the Queen, surely...

"A computer can be replicated if you know enough about computers. A perfect computer, that isn't harmed by stress nor by misery. You can simply remove those feelings."

He takes a moment, glancing from the 'brain' to me.

"No matter what, if the data is copied properly, you will believe you are 'you' -- even if your brain is fake."

...He leans over me, smiling. In a moment, he stared deep into my pupils --

"Isn't technology amazing?"

--and the stakes suddenly fall.

#fgo #mastersona #gudasona #l o r e #cadenceloreposting #tw: medical shit #tw: eye trauma #columbina #il dottore #ae of rakugo #caster of rakugo

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starr-fall-knight-rise · 4 years

Text

HASO, “Letting Go.”

Wrote this today, hope you like it, and hope you all have a great day :)

“We have to take him to a hospital.”

His hearing echoed, his ears rang, and his body felt cold and numb. He hurt all over.

“No! That's the last thing he needs right now.”

“Not to be rude but, are you stupid! The last tie i checked, I am the only one here with a Doctorate in actual doctoring.

The world swirled slowly to the left and then to the right.

“Last time I checked I’ve been in his shoes before. You have any idea what they are going to do, they are going to assume he jumped off that bridge on purpose. They are going to strap him down, which is going to make things worse, they are going to bring in psych, who are then going to determine that he should be locked down. That is the last thing this man needs right now, and believe me I have been in his shoes.” he faded out and then back in again.

“Than what do you suggest.”

“You’re a doctor aren’t you, so as long as we have you, he is going to be fine. Let's just get him back to my hotel, but I am telling you the last thing he needs is a noisy smelly hospital room.”

“And how are we going to get him back?”

He faded back in and back out again, “I can carry him.”

“He weights over two hundred pounds.” “Than I will take lots of breaks.”

He faded out again, this time for a long while, waking up only briefly an unknown time later. He was lying, uncomfortably over someone else’s shoulder and staring at the ground as it passed by below him. Little streaks of light dotted his vision from the pain, and he felt back unconscious before he could really understand what was going on.

***

Kier Lindsay stared down at the young man, watching as the strange little alien creature got to work. He had once heard that multitasking was pretty much impossible for humans as the brain was too interconnected to allow for it, but his creature didn’t seem to have any problems. All four of its arms seemed to work independently of each other as it stitched the unconscious man back into one piece. Looking him over the doctor had determined that he had managed to fracture his good leg and some of the bones in his right arm and side, but otherwise he was less injured than they had hoped.

Then again this was without considering the psychological duress he might be under at the moment.

He grimaced thinking about it.

He had been there before, he had been there and he had hurt a lot of people in the process.

He continued to watch as the alien stitched the other man up with great precision…

Man?

Honestly he wasn’t much more than a kid, his face was still smooth, unscared by time . Not a hint of white showed in his blond hair, and as he slept, the lines of his face were soft enough that Kier couldn’t shake the feeling that he WAS nothing more than a child.

A child who had had responsibility placed on him far to soon.

To be only in you late twenties and have command of an entire galactic armada.

That was too much to ask for anyone, much less someone like him. Kier couldn’t shake the thoughts as he stared down thinking about how despite technically being an adult for a long enough time, he doubted this man had ever been given a chance to grow up, at least not in the right ways. Turned to the academy at age fourteen, he had been doing adult jobs for longer than most people. He had been thrown into an environment where intelligence and performance mattered but social opportunities were sort of lacking, and then to be thrown right onto the enterprise and into war before trying to recover and immediately turning back to the one group of people that had failed him so badly…..

Adam vir was just a kid, an overly optimistic too trusting kid who had been taken advantage of by the system time and time again. He was like a golden retriever hurt by his master but still loyal enough to come crawling back.

It almost made him sick to watch, but he knew just by looking at him that he would never consider leaving.

Even if it were for his health.

Kier sighed and sat down by the bed staring at the boy with his chin cupped in one hand.

He had a son about Adam Vir’s age, a boy that was just beginning to pull his life together into some semblance of controlled. It had taken him a lot of mistakes and a lot of experience to figure out who he was, and he ached for the realisation that this man probably never got that.

He knew the feeling all too well.

He shook himself a little, dad mode was something you couldn’t really just turn off, at least not in his case. If there were people younger than him, he felt the automatic obligation to adopt them whether they wanted it or not.

Young people deserved guidance from someone who was older and the more people to do it the better. Lindsay hadn’t seen any of Adam’s family members at the trial, which didn’t necessarily mean anything, but he also got the impression that maybe the had avoided telling them on purpose, which was another red flag he was going to have to discuss with the boy woke up.

If he woke up.

***

He woke up some time later, though he couldn’t have guessed what time. The room was dark aside from the blue light of the TV. A little bit of natural light filtered in from the window, but rain clouds dotted blanketed the sky above. Rain pattered against the window in sheets obscuring the city landscape.

He groaned and tilted his head to the side.

A soft whimper, and something warm and wet ran over the back of his hand.

He tilted his head to the side.

The room was small, only big enough for a queen sized bed, a tv and a small desk. There was adoor to a small bathroom right next to a door that likely lead out into the hallway. The hotel room was small, but clean.

And it wasn’t his.

He turned his head a little further, gritting his teeth against the pain as his bleary eyes fell on the silhouette of a man sitting at the end of the bed. He was slightly hunched forward one hand resting on his knee as he flipped through the channels.

“Adam, can you hear me.’

He turned his head a little further to the right, to where Kril was standing beside him, a look of concern on his face.

The silhouette turned to face him, no more than a balck blob against the light. It was impossible to make out his face.

“Where am I? He croaked

The man stood and stepped forward, stepping out of the way of the TV and allowing some light to fall on the side of his face, “My hotel room, sorry about how cramped it is, but until yesterday I was kind of short on cash.”

Adam blinked, the cogs in his brain grinding to a slow start as he stared at the man’s face, which was familiar but he just couldn’t…

“Cigarette.”

It was the first word his brain could think of to describe the man when he finally recognised him, and in his goggy state it was the only thing he could think of, “Where do you even buy those these days.”

“Lets just say if I could quit my smoking habit than maybe I wouldn’t be so short of cash…. Anyway, how are you feeling.”

“Like shit…. What…. What happened.”

The other man sighed and pulled up the chair from the desk, sitting next to him, “You must have had a pretty bad PTSD attack. Looks like you jumped off an overpass and then rad headfirst into a brick wall.”

He grunted, “that explains a lot I guess….” he paused, “I thought…. I thought I was doing fine. I felt…. Fine and now…” A hand rested on his shoulder, “I know, I understand.”

Adam blinked, squinting at him slightly in the darkness, “Who are you/”

“The name is Kier but most of my friends call me Lindsay. I don’t know why, guess our days in the army just sort of rubbed off on us, now we only refer to people by their last names really.”

“What were you doing at the trial.”

The man smiled a little sadly, “Watching some assholes git their comeuppance, oh, and being awarded about five million dollars compensation.”

It took Adam even longer to digest that, “You….. you’re Steel eye-” The last two words came out as a squeak.”

Lindsay turned on the light by the bed, bathing them both in a warm yellow glow. Now that Adam could get a good look at him, he saw an older man probably in his late forties or early fifties. His hair was steel grey but well groomed, and he had the body of a man half his age. He wore only a tattered flannel rolled up to the sleeves and a white T-shirt. The back and sides of his arms were dotted with familiar circular scars all with a silver sort of sheen.

And, surprisingly, little silver dots….

Iron eye implants.

He turned his head to stare up at him, “You…. you are one of the five.”

“Yep, we never met during the war but I’ve been watching your career on the news for some time now. Some real impressive stuff kid.” he smiled, smiled and easy smile of someone who actually meant it.

Adam felt a sudden pang of guilt and shame.

For a moment he couldn’t figure out what it had stemmed from, until he realised. This man seemed fine, and here he was a complete wreck.

“How are you….. Ok after all that?” he wondered almost bitterly.

Lindsay shook his head, “Don’t start with that. I've jumped from one war to another my entire life. I have more experience than you.”

Adam went quiet, “So you were fine…. After steel eye.”

The man snorted, “No… no no, not even close.”

“What happened, if you don’t mind me asking.”

The man shrugged, “Lost both my legs in the war, one above the knee and one below. When I got home my family didn’t have enough money to get me good prosthetics, so I was pretty much wheelchair bound for a year or so.” he sighed, “I came back a shell of a man to a family who really needed a father. It was so bad for a time, everyday I thought about just…. Not being there anymore. I didn’t talk to my wife, I didn’t talk to my kids, and when I did speak I was angry all the time or apathetic.” His shoulders slumped, “For a time, I didn’t have much of a relationship with my middle daughter or my oldest son. I had drug withdrawals so bad I even wheeled myself halfway across town to try and find something…. Heroin maybe, anything that might take the edge off,” He snorted sadly, “I see it as a blessing now that no one would sell to me. I went over the edge drinking, and chain smoking and trying to bum pills off of any doctor I could find. Luckily with regulations on pills these days, I wasn’t given any.”

Adam felt his mouth go dry, “That bad.”

He nodded, “Woke up screaming most nights because of the dreams. For a while my kids moved out of the house because my wife was scared for thor safety.” He held up a hand, “Even during that time I would never have hit them intentionally, but my dreams were getting so bad that I would wake up flailing, and I would jump at the smallest sound. Anything could set me off.”

He sighed sadly, “But my wife bless her soul, is the strongest woman I know.” He reached into his pocket, and pulled out a photograph showing it to Adam with a look of pride so profound it made even Adam’s heart ache.

What he saw was a nice family. Two younger kids, a teenage boy, and a woman.

She had short black hair spiked up and dark lipstick on, and the look on her face was indicative of someone full of mischievous humor.

“My angel. She stayed by me even though she should have left. I tried to get her to leave, even made my behavior worse at one point to drive her off. She SHOULD have left me, but she didn’t. I had the mot amazing support system. She held me from falling any further into it, and my little girl, my little girl Bethany, that little girl pulled me out by my hair and dragged me back to reality. She was too young to realise how horrible I was being, and she just thought I was sick. No matter how much my wife tried to keep hr away from me, she always came to see me somehow, with ‘medicine’.”

He smiled, “Generally it was just a tube of baby M&Ms. I refused at first, but she insisted, and the one day I decided to take them just to quiet her down, she told me that I would be all better.”

He waited with pent up breath.

“That night, I slept without nightmares…. The placebo effect is a hell of a thing if a child can convince a grown ass man that M&Ms ar medicine. I woke up and my head had never been so clear in my entire life. I saw what I was doing to them, and to my little girl and to my other kids…. I have never cried that hard in my entire life, but it was just what I needed. Some emotion to break the cycle of anger and apathy. It wasn’t an easy road from there, but I finally got smart and started listening to my wife. Somehow managed to get my kids to forgive me, and from there we worked as a team to get me back on my feet.” he patted the cigarette in his pocket, “This is what remains from those days…. Can’t seem to quit, but working on it.”

Adam was quiet for some time,

“It was that hard on your family.”

“It was. I am glad they stayed but at the same time I wish they hadn’t been so hurt by me.

He sighed and leaned his head back, “I don’t think that is possible for me.”

A hand turned to rest down on his shoulder, “I know it sounds hard right now but…. I have a theory if you want to hear it.”

He sighed, “Shoot, it's not like I have any other bright ideas.”

“What are you?”

“What do you mean.”

“I mean when all the trappings are stripped away from you, your job and your title…. What makes you…. You.”

He paused for a moment, opened his mouth and then closed it, “I…. Im a….I….” The other man waited, his eyes sad.

The only things Adam could think of were related to his job.

When he was silent for some minutes, the man patted his arm, “All these years of service and you've never taken time to construct a framework for yourself that can survive outside of your job. If you keep defining yourself by what you do and how well you preform than you aren’t going to last. You constantly do everything for everyone else, but why not think about doing something for yourself for once, be completely selfish. Don’t go on vacation because, I bet this will calm me down and make me a better leader when I return, go on vacation because you bloody well want to job be damned.”

Adam opened his mouth to protest, but the man silenced him.

“Even if you love your job, you need breaks from it. You need to set the line to where your job ends and you begin, otherwise you won’t have a personality left when you are done. Take some time to fix YOU before lending yourself to everyone else.”

He rested his head back, “That sounds….. Difficult.”

The man patted him on the arm, “You’ve proven you can do hard things, now is just the time to do another hard thing.”

Adam nodded but inside his head he was beginning to feel a little hopeless. He knew that Lindsay was right. He knew that he was messed up, and everything he had done up to this point was just going to be a bandage.

And until he was fixed.

He was going to have to give up a few things.

He hated the idea of hurting people like Lindsay had described, so…. So that meant doing something that he wasn’t going to like.

“Do you…. Do you mind if I…. speak with you…. On occasion.”

The man smiled, “I already put my number in your phone if you need me. I work law enforcement now so I might be busy, but if you need my help Ill do my best.”

***

He didn’t want the court’s blood money. He would have tossed it away if he could, but he knew that was just his confused mind talking. Money was money, so he mostly gave it away. Gave it away to his parents for their retirement, and to his brothers and sisters for their kids college funds. He gave some to his brother to get him a better house in a new area, but he kept some for himself. It would have been irresponsible not to buy himself a house, to get himself a place away from his job and the ship.

He didn’t know where to buy it at first thinking that earth was too mundane but anything further out was too far removed. So, he bought a little private property on the moon. It cost a shit ton of money but, he had that in spades now. He only told his family about it.

They weren’t exactly happy with them when he finally told them where he had been. They had wanted to be there to support him, but he couldn’t find t in himself to feel bad that they hadn’t see the pictures and the videos he had been forced to see. He apologized and promised he would do better in the future.

He felt disconnected from himself.

Out of touch.

The crew of the Omen was just as angry with him, perhaps even more so than his family.. The intervening days that led him back to his ship feeling detached was like…. Some sort of horrible dream. He felt like he was slipping backward down a slippery slope and watching the light fade away from him.

He was scrambling on the rocks but couldn’t find purchase.

Perhaps it was the idea of what he had to do next that hurt him so much. Hurt him so much that he didn’t want to think about it, but he knew he had to. He didn’t want to but he knew he had to. It was the only way he was going to be able to feel ok about himself, about fixing himself.

Maybe things would change when he finally came back.

Maybe when he recovered, he could change what he was about to do.

And maybe he was about to ruin it forever.

He walked down the hallway of the engineering corridor despondent, like he was watching himself in third person.

He reached out a hand that didn’t feel like his and knocked on the wall of the ship.

A familiar face turned to look at him from her workspace in the dark. Sunny stood and paused to look at him, “Adam, are you alright.”

“Sunny…. We…. need to talk.”

She paused eyes narrowing in confusion.

“Are you ok.” she repeated.

He walked in taking a seat on her work bench and staring down at his hands.

“Is this about, the trial….. I mean yes I am a little mad that you didn’t tell me. Is it because I’m a Drev, is it because it would have looked bad. I know I don’t understand human politics, but maybe….”

He held up a hand, and she grew quiet.

He sat for a long moment fighting himself on the inside,and then forcing himself to look up at her. He could feel hot tears prickling at the back of his eyes though, for some reason he couldn’t get them to fall.

She deserved that he at least LOOK at her.

He felt sick.

He just wanted to throw up.

This…. This was the hardest thing he had ever done.

“Sunny…. I… while I was away, at the trial.”

She stared at him slow horror and confusion passing across her face.

“Well, I learned some things about myself. Number one being that, I….. I never recovered from what happened to me. From Steel eye and the war. Ive been bandaging it up for the past few years assuming that I can fix it, but at this point…. I wonder if I ever will.” He took a deep breath and locked eyes with her, “I’m broken, and until I can fix myself…. I think its best if-”

“No, no no no that's not how this works.”

He continued speaking, “I think it's best if we take a break.”

“NO!”

“Sunny I love you but I. I am not Capable of being what you need or deserve.” he stood reaching a hand forward, “I can’t subject you to myself like that.”

She jerked away from his hand, “that should be MY decision it would be OUR decision.”

“Sunny please…. I am so sorry.”

“On my planet, battle pairs fight WITH each other no matter how hard the battle is.”

His voice shook timorous and fading fast, “And on my planet, sometimes loving someone means letting them go.”

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deadlymodern · 3 years

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Hullo! Hope you don't mind me asking, how did you first know you have ADHD? And how did you get into therapy? If you're feeling uncomfortable to answer, feel free to ignore this. Just wanna know when or whether someone should seek help especially when things get confusing, somewhat outta control ashdhdjkajshskalgghg. Thanks and have a nice weekend c:

Hi there! Hope you’re doing well! I’m already going to apologize because this got really long. I’m super passionate about mental health jdlfgjld.

So, about therapy. I think one of the biggest misconceptions about therapy is that it’s only necessary for people who are in the middle of a crisis or are suffering from extreme mental anguish. However, therapy is a way to take care of yourself and to understand yourself in levels you never knew you actually could! Of course, if someone is struggling, it’s super important to seek help! But it’s also nice - and I dare say, preferable - to seek psychological help before you reach that point.

Think of it like going fishing in open sea. You set sail and you know what you need: you need to find an area to anchor your boat. But if a great storm hits and the waves start throwing your boat left to right, you’re not going to be able to focus on anchoring, right? You’re going to focus on getting through the storm. Going to therapy while you’re in a crisis is like having an extremely experienced sailor help you navigate the storm until you both reach a safe area for anchoring. But going to therapy while you’re stable would be like having the same experienced sailor but having good weather and a nice little spot to fish.

This is not me saying that therapy is a walk in the park. Having to look at yourself and your past can be painful and difficult. But once you pass the “surface” level in the sessions - be it the crisis or even just shyness and difficulty of opening up - you are able to dive into the origins of your problems and triggers, face obscure parts of your past (with emotional support) and understand how and why you do things the way you do. Does that make sense or have I just gone nuts? JIGJIOD.

I had my first therapy session when I was around 16 years old. I didn’t enjoy it much. I felt like the lady was low key judgmental and that made me feel ashamed and insecure about opening up - which made me drop therapy completely for a few years. But, then, I met my ex gf and she gave me a lot of support to try it again. I attempted two other therapists before I found the one I just instantly clicked with. And now, I’ve been consistently in therapy with her for almost four years.

Finding a therapist you are comfortable with sometimes takes a while. It’s a similar process to finding a good family doctor or even that perfect hairstylist that just gets you. It takes some trial and error, but there are many wonderful professionals out there. So if you are able to, go to therapy!

I don’t know where you are from, but in Brazil you are able to get free therapy from SUS (the public health system) and even from university students - who are in training, but are being supervised by professionals who will help them with your case. So, do a little research in your country to see if you can do something like this, if you have no means to afford it any other way. Do a few sessions with them, see how you feel - you can always stop it if you are uncomfortable and try again when you’re ready c:

***

Now, about ADHD.

ADHD can be really difficult to be diagnosed. Even the name doesn’t make any sense because ADHD is far from just being Can’t Sit Still And Forgets Shit™ disorder, you know? I have the inattentive type, which means I was not the hyper, disruptive child in class. Most girls with ADHD have the inattentive type and are only diagnosed later in life because it is extremely overlooked by parents, professors and the medical community. (ADHD in general is overlooked, but the inattentive type is “less of an inconvenience to the neurotypical”, therefore, it’s not really noticed).

Do you really want to know how I found out? I found out through fucking Tumblr HUISDHFIUD. I’m not even joking. A mutual of mine here on simblr reblogged something about ADHD and I chuckled and went like “that’s funny, I do that”.

But then I started reading the symptoms and watching videos of people with ADHD talking about it... And I was shocked to see that many of the things I thought were just average traits were actually symptoms. Then the penny dropped real hard and I told both my therapist and my psychiatrist that I thought I could have ADHD. We went through the testing shenanigans and, surprise surprise, I’m neurodivergent 😅

I’m still trying to get used to it. I mean, I’ve received the official diagnosis only a couple of weeks ago! But it’s shocking how misunderstood it is. Never, in a billion years, I would have thought I had ADHD. NEVER.

So, raising awareness and talking about mental health is really really important. Knowing yourself is really important. Having professionals that you trust is really important. And being validated is important.

My biggest advice would be to trust your body. You know your limits and you know yourself better than anyone else. If you believe you could have a mental illness or a neurodivergency, surround yourself with people who are supportive and try getting your diagnosis ❤️

I’m so sorry this is long af. But I hope this is helpful and answers your questions! Take it easy 🌼

#long post tw #thaistalks #nonsims #mental health #adhd #therapy

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revchainsaw · 3 years

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Stephen King's Graveyard Shift (1990)

Blessings upon you congregants from your dear Reverend my beloved Cult of Cult! Gather round a receive today's message as hear a word from the writings of Saint Stephen! I have a bit of inside baseball to share with you today, and that is that I love the fact that Hulu curates a list from your watchlist that lets you know what films have been sitting queued up unattended. You know those movies that you kind a want to see and you keep saying "i'll get around to that" right before you binge King of the Hill for the 90th time? Well Graveyard Shift was one of those movies for me, in fact, I frequently decide what films to cover based on what is about to disappear. In many cases the films I sit through are not very engaging or surprising. I think to myself, yeah, this is about what I thought it would be, no wonder I chose not to engage. Graveyard Shift, however, was actually quite a wonderful surprise.

Sermon

Graveyard Shift begins at the overnight shift of a rat infested textile mill. The employee working the machinery has been so severely pushed to the brink by engaging with the little invaders that he begins to toy with them and sets a very tragic precedent for the film by gleefully tossing living rats into the cotton picker. We get some shots of a blood and viscera mixed into the cotton before this son of a bitch is offed by an off screen force. I'm not gonna hold out on spoilers here for you folks, the movies 30 years old and it's a giant mutant bat.

Our hero Hall, a drifter with a tragic past, blows into town and is quickly hired by Warwick, the womanizing and half insane owner of the textile mill. Warwick has an awful habit of giving easy work to the women in his mill who provide him with sexual favors, while punishing those who don't with the most filthy and strenuous work he can find. This abuse also extends to any of his male employees who he sees as competition for their attention. This is why when Hall begins a relationship with Jane, an independent type who has repeatedly told Warwick to back off, they are soon destined to land on the sub basement cleaning project that brings them into contact with our nocturnal beast.

As this plot unfolds Warwick and Hall become increasingly at odds. Hall at this point has been substantially assigned to contend with the hordes of rats in the basement, playing games and almost training them in a way to leave him be. Eventually the time comes for the much feared cleaning of the basement levels of the mill, and our three main characters as well as a slew of murder lambs descend to their doom.

These poor blue collar folk are accosted by rats, floods, collapsing architecture, the Mutant Bat Mama and Warwick himself descends into madness, killing Jane, before he himself is eventually caught in the leathery wings of the blood thirsty beast. This leaves Hall alone to fight the monster. The battle for survival between Hall and the Bat works its way back up to the Mill where Hall uses the cotton picker and ingest the creature in a bloody cottony mess the likes of which I haven't seen since a 13 year old Chainsaw tried to teach himself to shave.

The Benediction

Best Character: Who's the Boss?

Sometimes with certain characters there's a certain intangible something or other that draws a viewer to them. In the case of Warwick it must have been the pure charisma of actor Stephen Macht. He was definitely not the best actor in this film, it was very clearly a phoned in role with some questionable choices, like I don't get what that accent was about. The character was a sleazy heel and I was absolutely satisfied when he was killed. He provided a very realistic menace despite the utter cornball portrayal. This is truly what they mean when they talk about characters you love to hate. Fuck You Warwick, you magnificent bastard. I'm glad you were eaten by that giant bat.

Best Actor: Chucky's Cheesin' It!

Brad Dourif is perhaps the only actor in this movie who was memorable. It's always great to see Dourif outside of the chucky role. He's always bringing his best stuff and although I didn't mention him in this review, Dourif plays an absolutely demented Vietnam Vet/ Exterminator with his little rat catching dog Moxie in this movie. Whenever I think about Graveyard Shift I think about Warwick, Brad Dourif, and the Bat!

Best Kill: Nana nana nana nana BatMess!

Unfortunately for Graveyard Shift most of the deaths that occur are incredibly tame. It's a creature feature that mostly plays like a Who Dunnit. Its honestly the weakest feature of the film. In fact I'm going to call it right here. (Worst Feature: Genre Confusion). In a film that fundamentally does little more than 'Giant Bat Eats Mill Workers in Mild Criticism of Capitalist Exploitation', I'd like to see some people getting absolutely wrecked by this bat. That doesn't really happen. Most of the kills are off screen, or obscured by big leathery wings. The bat looks pretty damn cool, and when it is chewed up by the Cotton Picker it's about the most gore and effects you get in the film. It's a shame that it is the monsters undoing rather than the monsters doing that really shows off the effects. C'est La Vie!

Worst Kill: Rats Off to You!

In the opening scene that fucker is throwing rats into the cotton picker just for being rats. I know there's a ton of them, but it's such a mean spirited bull shit way of eliminating rats. Rat Terrorism is bullshit and I'm against it. Fuck you you weird rat killing guy, Let Brad Dourif do his thing and stop picking the rats up by their tales you asshole.

Summary

Graveyard Shift was a disappointment to Stephen King, who called it just another "quick exploitation picture" and you know what, that's all it had to be to make me happy. Graveyard shift has a cool looking bat creature, that is unfortunately underused. A quick and engaging little story that doesn't try too hard to be too deep, and I know that was probably a huge temptation with the themes of the story. The characters that are notable are over the top and interesting, and those that aren't are the perfect murder lambs, they are just unique enough to differentiate and keep the action moving. It's by far not one of the greatest films you'll ever see. It's a creature feature that doesn't do enough to feature it's creature. It's effects are good when they are shown, and I'm so happy it was made in an era where we didn't get bombarded with weightless grey blobs of CGI rats everywhere. It's exactly what the doctor ordered for a low stakes night in with some pop corn and a coke. Don't let the haters stop you, definitely give Graveyard Shift a shot.

Overall Grade: C

#Graveyard Shift #Stephen King #Horror #90s #1990 #C #Grade C #Grade: C #Brad Dourif #Dourif #Bat #Creature #Creature Feature #Rat #Rats #(C)

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wu-sisyphus-gang · 3 years

Text

Motion Sickness Chapter 81

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"Where were you?" Ruby asked me.

"In town. Down in Mantle. There's this bar I went to a lot when I was a criminal. It's run by this union group," I answered. I shifted slightly in the corner of Team RWBY's room. I leaned against the wall and crossed my arms.

"We don't like it when you just disappear. Anything could have happened," Ruby went on.

"And I heard you were involved with some plot in tandem with the strikes. That was where our people picked you up. In the middle of a crime scene. You're not giving us the full story," Weiss followed her up.

"I worked with the leader of this terrorist group, Dyne, while I was a criminal. His wife died and he went mad from grief. He had this little girl, Marigold. He was talking about killing her. So I showed up and did my job as a huntsman."

"You were working with those terrorists though. Weren't you. When you were a criminal," Yang perceived.

"I was working with a different group of terrorists. But effectively yes. It was my responsibility to clean things up. And they had information I needed. Or could have had information I needed. About my sisters or Cinder. I had to follow up."

"Why didn't you tell us? We would have gone with you!" Ruby exclaimed.

"I know you would've. This wasn't about that. It was about cleaning up my own mess. Ironwood's orders to take the day off be damned."

"He is technically your superior officer," Blake said.

"Maybe. But he needed this kind of thing cleaned up, too."

"But people died," Ruby mumbled.

"People always die," I shot back. "What matters now is that it's over and done with."

"This kind of terrorism is never over and done with," Blake fired at me.

I had to concede the point to her. She would know better than me.

"What should I do next time? Get you four involved in something I can take care of?"

"We're not little girls," Weiss said with some venom. "We deserve to be in the loop."

"I never said you were. I handled it. And when I find my sisters or Cinder I'll let you know just like I let you know back at the hotel that I found out she was in town. But you don't need to be involved in every little errand I run."

"People died and that's an errand to you?" Blake asked.

"Yeah. That's about right. I didn't kill them. I even went out of my way to try and spare them, too. People are just fragile."

"I don't like this. No more secret errands," Weiss told me.

"Fine," I agreed. "I promise to let you know first next time."

"I want you to not do it," Weiss returned. Some heat in her voice. If I wasn't careful this would turn into our first lover's spat. It might be already too late for that.

"I needed to do it. It had to be done. I needed some information that the guy I was with had."

"And what information was that?" Weiss demanded.

"When I sunk your father's ship one of my charges went off prematurely. I needed to know why and who my saboteur was."

"You sunk that ship?" Weiss asked. "Any other terrorist acts you're not telling us?"

"I also caused that mine collapse."

"You're responsible for all the strikes down in Mantle!" Weiss exclaimed. "I can't believe this. And let me guess, you forgot to tell us."

"It hasn't come up! And yeah. I probably am responsible. I was buying future information from Avalanche and Aurum. My criminal contacts in this city. I was building my network. I did far worse than sink a ship and cause a dust mine collapse. I killed people and burned down a building, too. But you already knew that."

"Why'd you burn down that building, Cloud?" Ruby asked.

"It was full of drugs. Aurum's competitors. It was a favor."

"Cloud!" Weiss shouted.

"I'm not a perfect person! I'm not even a good one! You already knew that!"

"What else have you been up to in this city?!" Weiss demanded.

"I think that's about it."

"You think so?"

"Damn, Weiss, I can't remember everything at once and my mind plays tricks on me. I don't remember. Some prisoner break out, too, for that guy, Aurum. But you knew about that too. I didn't even kill anyone with that."

"And you think that makes it better?!" Weiss asked.

"It doesn't make it any worse!"

Her nostrils flared up at me. "I'm tired of you not telling me things. Of you trying to hide things. Like when you wanted to not tell Ruby about your seizures. You don't get to decide what's best for us."

"I didn't even know today would be a problem. They just said they had something they couldn't discuss over the phone. I'm literally telling you all everything. As it comes up. You want my life story? Well, me too."

She glared at me for a moment more. "Fine. But no more tip toeing around the line. You come clean with us. Before. Not after." The 'or else' was implied. I got the memo.

"Did you find out who sabotaged you?" Blake asked.

"The Happy Huntresses. You heard of them? Robyn Hill wanted to shut me down. Adam Taurus was there. When my bomb went off early he thought I was cutting the mission off at the knees and he attacked me. That was when he nearly killed me. Any more questions?"

"What information were you looking for?" Weiss asked.

"Just more dirt on Cinder, Merlot, and my sisters. I've been trying to learn all I can but so far 'nothing much' has pretty much been the word."

"But you know that Cinder is in town. From who?" Weiss questioned me further.

"Aurum. He's a drug lord. He runs The Den where you ambushed me that night. Anybody else?"

They were silent.

"What are we going to do for the rest of the night?" Ruby asked.

"Grill me," I deadpanned.

"You brought this on yourself," Weiss shot back. "If you would have at least told us where you were going that would have been something."

"You would have wanted to come."

"Which ought to tell you something."

"Guys…" Ruby bemoaned. We both shut up.

I sighed after a moment of silence. "Look Weiss. I'm sorry I didn't tell you about it. I'll do more next time."

She rubbed her thighs where she sat with her palms and wouldn't meet my eye. "You had better." I figured that was as close to an 'it's okay' as I was going to get. I took it as such. We weren't ruined over this. It was just a fight. We'd be back to where we were later.

"So seriously what are we going to do for the rest of the night?" Ruby asked again.

"I was going to go get my bike out of impound."

"You bought a bike?" Yang asked.

"Just some wheels to get Neo and I around. Any of you are welcome to come with. It'll probably be boring as hell."

"I'll go with. Can I drive it?" Ruby wondered.

"I don't see why not. I also don't see why." I gave her a teasing grin. She 'pffted' her hair out of her face up at me but she gave me a small smile.

Weiss sighed. "Does it have room for three?"

"Probably if we don't mind getting touchy-feely with one another," I answered.

"We're going dancing again. You mentioned The Den. Is it any good?"

"I never clubbed there. Well not really. About the only thing special about it is all the hard drugs."

"You didn't…" Weiss trailed, slightly threateningly.

"I tried some. I figured it couldn't make things worse." Open honesty being the policy…

"So that's how you know what hyper is like," Weiss sighed. She leaned a hand on her forehead like she had a headache.

"Is it any good? I always wondered, too. Ow. Don't hit, Blake," Yang muttered.

"I could honestly take it or leave it."

"Leave it," Weiss growled like she was talking to a dog. Which, I mean, fair enough.

"You could give it a try. Tell them Cloud sent you. Get you a bit of a discount," I went on like I hadn't heard her. "It's a bit intense. Bit of a rush. But you can get the same thing with, like, good sex."

"Interesting…" Yang said. "Blake. I said no hitting. You're abusive."

"You'll find out just how abusive I can be," Blake shot back. "No drug use."

"Cloud is there any good weed in this town?" Yang wondered. "I tried some back home. I could use it to open this girl up. Loosen up, Blake."

"Some. Same place. Same people. Got your hook up. I could really use a hit right now, too."

"Tough shit for you, Jau-Cloud. Learn to live without," Weiss grumbled, slipping up on my new name.

"I'm trying but it's not easy."

"Did it really help that much?" Ruby asked.

"Ruby!" Weiss hissed.

"What? If it helped him then… then I want it for him."

"It's a hard maybe, Rubes. Let's keep trying what the doctors have me on for now. But I'm not sure I can take a few more months of this."

"Is it that bad?" Ruby wondered.

"It's not great," I returned with a sigh.

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I got my bike out of impound and was riding it down an empty highway. Our seating order went me, Weiss, then Ruby in the back. They clung to each other then to me super close. It was actually kinda nice. Especially Weiss clinging to my torso after our fight.

It let me at least pretend I was in part forgiven. Even more so when I'd take a turn and feel her arms tighten around my chest. Her fingers trailing across my abdomen and her palms drifting across me.

I checked my rear view mirror. Two other bikes were coming up on me. I slowed down to let them pass, I wasn't in any rush. Then they caught up to me and started to match my speed.

I truly wasn't that suspicious until one of them pulled a sword with two blades. The other whipped out a gauntlet with sharp points on the end. One of the riders, a girl, hovered close to me on her bike. A helmet obscuring her features. Blonde hair breezing through the air behind her.

"Cloud!" Ruby called, her voice barely making it above the wind. "It's them! From Argus!"

I flinched. I drew my sword around Weiss's body and drove with one hand.

I turned my bike sideways and abruptly slowed down in an attempt to lose them. Another girl on a bike rode up on me right then from behind, boxing me in. She yanked up on her bike and front-flipped right over us, bike and all. She pulled her pistol from her waist and pointed it right at my head as she did. Then she fired and the punch from her gun rocked my head back.

I'd gotten a good look at her through her helmet as she did her trick though.

"Saphron?!" I asked. I shouted over the breeze. "You're real?" The one with the gauntlet pulled up on me. I recognized her immediately. "Lavender? You too?"

"Poor big brother. Can't tell reality from fiction." Lavender let out a laugh. Her narrower jaw made her stand out from my memory of my sisters. My head suddenly pounded and I touched it with my sword hand. My sisters…

"Come with us, big brother," another voice said. I recognized it right away. Violet pulled up on my other side with her double blade. Her darker eyes and shapely nose pointed her out. Our swords clashed for a moment. I could feel Ruby and Weiss readying their weapons on the bike behind me as I drove.

Violet tried to catch my weapon with a twist of hers and disarm me. I held fast to my enormous weapon regardless. I slashed at her and she blocked while I drove.

"Come see Mother with us. She'd be happy to see you," Violet giggled. Like it was some private joke. I didn't laugh. I didn't get it.

Lavender punched at me with her gauntlet and I drove the bike to the side on the empty highway and I sliced at her too.

Saphron was pulling up in front of me. She turned around in the seat on her bike and shot me with her pistol again. It was a decent calibre round because it stung.

My head pounded. It hurt like it had when I'd last talked to, "...Mother?" I wondered aloud.

"Come with us, Jaune," Lavender beckoned. "We'll take you to see her." Her voice pierced over the wind as we drove down the empty highway.

"Cloud!" Ruby called. "Stay focused!"

"Cloud?!" Violet laughed. My sword met hers again. The long blade served to keep her double one away. "Is that what they think your name is?"

"I'm…" I flinched like I'd touched a hot stove but with my brain. "I'm Cloud now."

Saphron shot at me twice again. One hit me in the chest, the other pinged off of my bike.

"Is that what you're calling yourself?" Saphron asked. A note of laughter on her voice. "You'll always be our Jaune."

Ruby stood up on the back of my bike and took a shot at Saphron. It struck asphalt and tore it up. I drove over where she had just shot and the bike went badump .

She fired another shot and hit Saphron in the back. Saphron twisted on her bike so she was driving backwards and took three more shots at us. I heard Ruby cry out in pain. She'd just made herself a bigger target when she stood up.

Lavender came up on me again. She seemed to hesitate. I knew that stance. It was like she was charging something. She was storing a little time away. She punched down at my bike and I swerved to avoid her gauntlet. She swerved down and struck the asphalt and tore a huge chunk of it out in a flash of purple light. Then she threw it at us.

Weiss caught it with her pseudo-telekinesis. A dull black glyph came to life. Then she tossed it over us and at Violet who had to swerve to avoid it.

"Big brother!" Saphron sung out. "Don't you want a family reunion? Everyone can be there. Especially if it's for you."

"Come be with us! Ditch these girls. You don't need them." Lavender called. I clashed with her gauntlet again. Myrtenaster poked out from beside me and met the double blade of Violet.

Saphron shot back at me twice again. She hit me both times with preternatural accuracy.

"Come be with us," Violet purred. Ruby opened fire from her stance on the back of the bike and hit Saphron again. Saphron spun back around to drive straight once more.

My head hurt so bad. It was like talking to Mother again. It pounded with memories. With memory .

"Cloud? Are you alright?" Weiss asked.

"I'm fine," I bit out.

My head whipped back again as Saphron shot me in the skull one more time. Then my blade met Violet's beside me. I shoved her back.

Lavender was driving focused and unmoving. Like she was storing more time away for another devastating attack. Ruby took three shots at her to disrupt her concentration. The first hit her. And the next two hit her bike and caused her to swerve slightly.

Ruby shifted her weapon into its full mode out of just the gun state and took a swipe at Violet while I had her blade engaged.

Saphron shot me three more times. They came at me high impact and hit like .50 caliber bullets. I was pretty sure they were. She tossed an empty clip behind her and reloaded. She then whipped around and threw a knife at me. It buried in my aura up to the hilt and the tip nicked my face, leaving a cut behind before it bounced down into the street.

I flinched to the side. I swerved slightly to the right but that just led me closer to Lavender. I tried to block her purple flaring punch with the wide side of Crocea Mors but the force of it was enough to lift up my whole bike, three passengers and all. It nearly slammed us into Violet. Who in turn took a long slash at the bike that would have crippled us if Weiss hadn't caught us with a glyph and blocked her cut with Myrtenaster.

Saphron shot me in the head again and there was a whoosh of air as I got Limit.

I had had enough. I stabbed Crocea Mors into the asphalt and picked us up off the ground. I swung the bike around without losing momentum and reversed us completely so that we were driving the wrong way. Then I crossed over to the other side of the interstate over one of those entry ways for police. I left my sisters behind, they were driving straight where I'd completely turned around.

"Cloud?" I put my sword away and raised a hand to my head.

“Jaune…”

"...Mother?" I murmured.

"Cloud, snap out of it!" Weiss ordered.

I shook my head. I was trying but my head hurt. And not just from being shot there a couple times.

Behind my eyes pulsed and I shuddered. Weiss wrapped her arms around me tightly.

"It's okay, Cloud. We're here."

pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq

I stumbled off my bike at the garage in Atlas Academy. I fell to my knees. The grimy pavement in the garage mattered little. I felt grimy in my head and in my very soul.

“Come to me…my son… my precious son…”

"Cloud, you recognized them, didn't you." It was Ruby's voice.

"Saphron, Violet, and Lavender," I muttered. "They're real. My sisters are real." I sort of knew that they had been, I could feel it. Like I could feel Mother. But seeing it was a whole next level.

"Cloud? Are you alright?"

"My head hurts. And I hear Mother's voice," I bemoaned. I rubbed my face with the whole of a hand. I got a phantom pain across my entire tongue from when I'd bitten through it.

“Reunion… a family reunion… Just for you.”

"Mother?" I called out.

"He's delirious," it was Weiss's voice. I felt her arms wrap under mine. "Gods he's heavy. Help me, Ruby."

“Everyone will be there…”

"Everyone will be there. At the reunion," I murmured. "All my sisters. And Mother."

"What are your other sisters' names?" Ruby asked.

“Iris, Kolumbine, Juniper, Lily…”

"Iris, Kolumbine, Juniper, and Lily," I repeated Mother's voice outloud for Ruby.

"Someone has a flower fetish," Weiss grumbled.

"Step-father must have thought he was being funny. They're… they're all like different models. Different makes. Like cars."

"What's his name?" Ruby wondered. Trying to keep me focused.

"I don't… I don't know." I picked myself up and out of their arms. I took two steps and almost fell again. I pitched and swayed on my feet. I rubbed my face. My head ached.

"How many times were you shot?" Weiss asked. "You've got a nasty cut."

"A couple. She really kept bouncing them off my skull." She had rung my bell with those bullets. Then with that knife.

"Are you going to be alright?" Ruby asked.

"If I…"

“Go to the reunion…”

"...no…" I murmured. I cut that thought off.

"No?" Ruby asked, concerned.

"Yes?" I realized I was having a conversation with myself. "As alright as I ever am."

"That doesn't sound promising," Weiss murmured.

"They knew your old name," Ruby followed her up, speaking softly.

"Mother must have told them."

"Salem," Weiss softly corrected.

"No… yes…" I breathed. "Salem. My sisters are real. I… I don't know if I can face them. I don't think I'm strong enough. There's seven of them. And I'm just the bad batch."

"Don't think like that," Ruby whispered. "You're not alone, either."

"Let's get him inside. Put him to bed."

"No. Please. Anything but that. She gets me when I sleep," I pleaded. "I'm not strong enough. Not for this. I don't know if I can resist the urge to go to the reunion."

"What's the reunion, Cloud?" Ruby asked.

"My summoning. She calls out to me from so far away." I realized I made no sense to anyone but myself. "Don't you see? She calls to me." Distantly I realized I sounded a lot like Dyne.

"He's going mad." Weiss murmured.

"What do we do?" Ruby whispered back sounding desperate.

"What can we do?" Weiss wondered back.

"How can I save my sisters when I can't even save myself?" I laughed. "Salem has them. She has them. She'll get me too."

"Cloud, listen to us. Can you hear us?" It was Ruby's voice. I heard it so I nodded. "That is not going to happen to you," she went on. "We'll keep you from losing yourself."

"Cloud if you ever feel like you're going to lose yourself we'll be there for you. And we'll help you save your sisters, too. You need to sleep though. We'll be right there for you when you wake up," Weiss reassured.

"How can you know that?"

"Which part?" Weiss asked.

"Any of it," I shot back.

Ruby came up to me and took both my hands in hers. "Because I believe it. We're going to save you."

I choked back a sob. But I nodded. "Don't let me go to the reunion," I begged.

"We won't," Weiss promised.

"Whatever I say and do… And don't let me kill myself."

"Well we especially won't do that," Weiss went on, she smiled slightly. She reached up and touched my face. I almost couldn't look down into her ice blue eyes.

"My head just hurts," I complained as they started to walk me to my room. "It hurts like I'd talked to her again."

"Does it always cause you pain?"

"It did last time. And she made me bite my tongue off. Almost completely."

"You didn't tell us that," Ruby murmured.

"I thought I was going to die from the pain," I confessed. "My head is full of these… these memories. I don't know if they're real. What does it mean for a memory to be real anyways? How can you tell? I have so many memories of living and playing with my sisters. They can't be real though."

I remembered when my sisters braided my hair in Shion. I remembered walking in the rain alone with Kolumbine when we were both just little kids. Just flashes of spending time with the short haired Iris before school one morning. I even knew that I'd fought this boy who pulled on Lily's pigtails. It came to fists over it. Little Lily… my little Lily. I could recall Saphron and I eating my Mother's cookies in the kitchen once. My little sister, a little shortstack. Absolutely adorable with big blue eyes and shoulder length golden hair.

I was going to be sick to my stomach.

And my Mother, she'd been a beautiful blonde woman in a flowing white dress with pale wispy blue eyes like crystal.

But I couldn't recall my father's face or anything about him. That's how I knew it was fake. It was glaring and obvious but only once I knew where to look.

And my Mother… she was always wearing that same dress. White and drifting in every little breeze with golden trimmings to match her pale straw colored locks. That same dress… Burned into my mind. Roaring across my skull. It had been planted there by her. By my Mother. It was all fake. It had to be. I didn't have a childhood.

She was always wearing that same white and golden dress. Always.

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-WG

#rwby #ff7 #ffvii #motion sickness #ruby rose x jaune arc x weiss schnee #cloud strife #cloud!jaune arc #sephiroth!jaune arc #war of the roses #lancaster #white rose #whiterose #whiteknight #white knight #saphron arc

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high5nerd · 4 years

Text

Vorfreude

Aay, my first (at the time) Pitch x Reader one-shot!

Don’t fook your professors, folks.

“When understanding the root words of our modern day languages, it can be daunting to fully comprehend the detail such a language as English can be intertwined with a multitude of other languages long forgotten,”

Dr. Pitchiner was certainly entrancing when he spoke at the podium, flourishing a hand at the list of most common prefixes and suffixes used in today’s modern English, along with a surprise list of obscure ones you knew you had to take note on. Dr. Pitchiner wasn’t one to give easy exams, the last exam was so gruelling someone almost passed out from a panic attack at the multitude of pages.

Despite enjoying writing yourself, you weren’t as invested in English as he was, which was a given, hence the reason his PhD in English as well as a degree in Latin Translation. Many times he’s journeyed to Italy to help assist scholars in finding new information on the lost civilizations of Rome, Sicily, and Pompeii, and that credit alone was the sole reason he got the job at this state college. He should have been employed at universities like Harvard or Yale, or even Oxford or Princeton, but yet here he was, teaching at your simple state college with an acceptance rate of 93% and the highest transferring stat in all of your state.

Not a lot of students found him attractive like you did. Certainly there was more than a couple handfuls of girls, pockets of them, who’ve admired his lithe figure, his graceful movements and that firm ass that was way too snug in his black slacks. Most of them admired his physique from afar, some even daring others to get closer to flirt with him shamelessly, and usually that ended up with a bad memory for the attempted action, as well as the girl who tried to drop the class out of utter embarrassment at such a call out after class that could be heard around the hall.

Dr. Kozmotis Pitchiner took no bullshit from anyone, and that’s the main reason your heart fluttered at the thought and sight of him. This class wasn’t the first time you two had met face to face either, shockingly. Quite hilariously, the first time you two met, you didn’t even like him.

Three years ago, you were an itty bitty freshman just like the ones that recently arrived this semester, and to the best of your luck, you scored almost five hours of total free time on Mondays and Wednesdays before your Intro to Biology class and Intro to Psychology course after lunch.

Why not explore the gorgeous campus during those five hours? It would get you more acquainted with your surroundings and in small cases, make new friends! Grabbing a can of fruit juice and a danish from the dining hall, you munched as you explored the massive quad before discovering where the art gallery was, venturing towards the art and theatre buildings you’d be in the next year for your art perspective requirements. You found yourself meandering in the photograph-covered walled hallway of the English department, unknowingly headed towards the campus’s own local newspaper headquarters when a voice startled you from your entrancement with your journey.

“Hey. Where do you think you’re going?” a voice matching the texture of velvet came.

You turn around, frowning at the sudden startling noise. There just feet away from you, emerged from his office was a man dressed in what you would consider funeral appropriate attire, a smooth black suit with a basic black tie, and shiny black dress shoes that looked like they could reflect sunlight and somehow cause a car accident if he walked outside.

“I’m exploring. Where do you think you’re going?” you shot back, taking a long sip of your fruit juice.

You were mildly surprised to see a smirk cross his devious lips, his silver-gold eyes narrowing at your sass. He almost looked amused at your attitude, even enough so that his tensed shoulders relaxed, but his arms still remained folded over his chest.

“At the moment, I’m going wherever you think you’re headed, which should be in the opposite direction you’re headed.”

Ooh, he likes playing word games. You took another sip and then took a big bite of your danish, not caring about how childish you were coming off to him. You pointed towards the hallway, “Why can’t I go down there?”

He gestured his head in the same direction, “It’s merely copy rooms and computer labs meant for the Daily Mascot Oracle. Nothing worth checking out.”

“Oh. That’s a shit title.” you commented.

He barked out a heartwarming laugh. You grin at him, glad he finally was capable of taking that stick out of his ass and be a decent human being. Almost three times so far in just two days you got two people to really dislike your presence and your sassy attitude, someone named Bunnymund and another elfish looking kid named Jack who’s definition of fun didn’t match yours at all.

“I certainly didn’t agree to it either, but the editor in chief made sure my vote was outnumbered,” he hesitated, thinking quickly before glancing at you, “Are you a freshman?”

You nodded, knowing what he would ask next, “Majoring in psychology with hopefully a minor in alternative medicine and therapy.”

He looked genuinely impressed, “I must say, it’s quite refreshing to have a new student under that field. Not a lot of freshmen choose that whilst entering for their first year. What makes you like that field of study so much?”

You shrugged with a smile, “I like the whole concept of the human mind and how it functions on an emotional state. It’s interesting how certain actions and emotions can create feelings inside us, and I especially love the study of dreams and fears and hopes. I want to do a project on dream therapy for my senior thesis when it comes time to that, but I doubt they’ll let me. Professor Oren didn’t like hearing me say that at orientation.”

Dr. Pitchiner nodded, “Oren doesn’t really believe in the science behind dreams, and certainly not the spirituality behind it if you believe in that sort of thing. I certainly do.”

“You do?” you were genuinely surprised, literally taken aback. You wouldn’t have considered such an eloquent, smooth and finely dressed man to believe in a spirituality. He reeked of realist to you, you certainly weren’t expecting that.

He nodded again, “Of course. It’s only natural for the human psyche to become understandable to a certain degree, and it’s been proven through many other cultures that such things exist, like the sixth sense or empathy or precognition. Why not in dream analyzation? It’s fascinating, I’m glad you’re interested in it. If I wasn’t an English professor I would immediately return to college to take advantage of that.”

That’s when you realized how gold his eyes were, how they sparkled like the richest coins ever discovered in the vastness of the sunken world of ships at the bottom of the ocean. His eyes gave away intense wisdom, feeling and intellect that you felt the need to learn from. You needed to unlock every part of him to see beyond that gaze he gave you with that strange upturn at the corner of his devilish mouth.

Sure enough, you eventually found yourself in his class a couple years later for your required English Analysis course, and the both of you took advantage of that. You found yourself wandering back to his office between classes and office hours, knowing full well no one visited him nor had the courage to due to his harshness in class and strict code he sticks to in not forming attachments to the student body. For you, somehow you were able to break that barrier and see a different kind of man than what people upfront knew him as.

Your friend Katherine is your first and only senior friend at the university, and from her story when you signed up for his course at the beginning of the year, he was known to be callous and strict, such a polar opposite to leniency that even if you were sick with proof of illness, he wouldn’t accept that as an excused absence unless you flourished a medical note from a doctor to him. Everyone feared him, but admired him from afar since he’s the only professor to actually cut down on the bullshitters and slackers in class, and is one of the most respected professors there because of his adventures in Italy as a historian as well as a translator.

You, however, knew him as a sarcastic, good humored intellect with an avid thirst for learning the unknown, and unlocking skills he’s never attempted. From the times you would visit his office or bump into each other in the hallways and have small talk, you learned that at one point in his life he was just as brash, brazen and impulsive as you are now. Before he considered becoming a professor, he was eager to study what you were studying in now, especially the study of phobias and humans’ reactions to certain fear-triggering events or objects. You were the only one that’s ever heard him snort at a god-awful joke you would attempt at, and the only one that’s ever seen him grin at you in such a way it made your stomach flip and flutter.

Perhaps you exposed yourself too much to him, or perhaps he was just so relatable you felt like you sometimes felt like you were talking to a part of yourself you’ve never discovered before. It slightly scared you how much he knew about you and it wasn’t even the end of the fall semester, but you trusted him in ways you’ve never trusted another before. He always promised you absolute confidentiality with your confessions to him, most out of pure merriment and in the goal of a strengthened friendship, like when you told him when you were fourteen you tried blending into the popular clique but still found yourself drawn to the nerds and theater kids once more. He once gave you such a dubious smirk at the notion of you once being the stereotypical geek, with what you claimed to be the unattractive flat hair, braces and awkward gait.

“I can hardly believe that of you.” he chuckled.

“Why? You can kinda tell, don’t lie.” you winked teasingly.

He tilted his head in his hand at you, looking your figure up and down so slowly and languidly that it made your face heat up with a sudden thrill you haven’t felt in a long time.

“Whoever you were before has grew into a fine young woman, that’s most of what I can see.” he looked at you seriously, his eyes hard with truth.

Ever since that you realized that the idea of him being closer than what you two already were was something else you wanted. You thirsted for it, like an obsession. Unhealthy, you weren’t sure, but you were careful not to give yourself away to him, in fear that it would destroy that friendship you two already had. Without anyone’s knowledge but his, you both called each other by your first names. You called him Koz, and he called you by the nickname you wanted him to call you.

Even just watching him write on the board, hearing his voice wrap you lovingly in it’s deep musical tones made your legs tighten in excitement. You furrowed your brows, trying to ignore the incoming thoughts of his voice saying your name like a mantra as you wrote down everything being scribbled on the board.

The guy next to you noticed your discomfort, and nudged his elbow with yours. You looked at him, affronted, “What?”

“You look pissed. You okay?” he looked suspicious.

“Shut up, I’m fine.”

“(y/n).”

Your blood froze, looking up at him in pure fear at being called out in front of class. His hands were folded behind his back, his eyes lingering on you and only you. The class stared at you, nearly a thousand eyes focused on your nervous leg bouncing and the pen in your hand being crushed by the amount of attention drawn onto you.

“I see you have already started to discuss with Stephen,” you could swear to the moon above he smirked ruefully, “Would you like to tell us what the definition of vorfreude is?”

You gulped quickly before looking down at your paper, noticing that the last couple notes were not even notes, they were sinful descriptions of what you wanted him to do to your mouth and in between your thighs. Your face grew incredibly red to the point it prickled your skin as you stood up. You never broke eye contact with him. You can’t be weak now.

“Vorfreude is a German word to define a type of intense anticipation of imagining future pleasures.”

He nodded, his smirk subsiding to something even darker at the moment you uttered the word ‘future’, “Excellent. Glad to see you’re still paying attention despite your distractions.”

Some people snickered at your red face deepening in color as you plopped back down in your seat. By now Koz was shuffling the exams collected last week, freshly graded and corrections that could leave someone in tears if not taken lightly.

As he passed around the graded exams going over the class’s weak points and what to look forward to for the next midterm, you doodled a bit more in your notebook and wrote more lines of absolute sin into a poetic verse, something E. E. Cummings would be absolutely proud of.

You read over your lines, admiring the visual rhymes as well as the absolute clear imagery of being locked into him, his arms like a vice as he would pull your hair and bite at the sensitive parts of your neck, and even now you squirmed at the daydream of such a carnal act going on in his office. More than anything, more than just impressing him with your knowledge and sharp tongue would be for him to pin you to the desk and make you cry out his name in ecstasy as your legs would quiver with release. You bit your lip as you tightened your grip on your sweatshirt, trying your damn hardest not to accidentally make a noise.

That’s when you noticed the shadow lurking over you.

You froze. Your entire body became still with horror and your blood turned cold as Koz read over your carnal poem and observed your lewd doodles with a casual eye as he handed you your exam. You reached out for it with a shaking hand and slowly placed it over the notebook page, knowing it was too late to hide the damage.

“Please see me after class about your note-taking.”

You nodded, trying to fight tears from the utter embarrassment as he finished handing out the exams. You close your notebook in disgust with yourself. Koz continues the class until 5:45, the usual time it ends when everyone wastes no time in dilly dallying and immediately leaving, most if not all heading to the dining hall for dinner. You, planning to indulge in just a minor dinner consisting of cereal or soup out of embarrassment and sadness, packed up slowly.

“(y/n), a word please.” he beckoned from his podium.

You refused to look at him as you stepped down from the lecture hall stairs to the podium, your backpack slung over your shoulder and your confidence crumbling even further as you waited with baited breath as he finished shutting off the projector and computer.

“You have quite a knack for poetry for someone who says English isn’t their forte, as well as for a psychology major.” he calmly noted, hardly glancing at you.

You couldn’t help it, you couldn’t hold it in anymore and let it burst from your chest, all your thoughts jumbled into a single rambling mess, “I swear I didn’t intend for you to see it, I just-I just-I don’t know why I did that and I know I messed up our friendship, it’s all my fault and I’m really really sorry, I seriously wasn’t thinking and I just can’t help but feel these things and it just makes it worse when I think about you, I don’t know what to do about it-”

A hand crept around the back of your neck and forced your head up, and without even a single warning you felt warm, wet lips enveloping yours, biting sweetly as well as fervently. You couldn’t help but make a noise of startlement at the sudden action, but before you could even have time to melt into the kiss, he pulled away, a smirk on his face.

“It’d be inappropriate for me to do such things, but more inappropriate for you to act on it as well. Yet, I know you are wise enough to not pursue it like you want to.” he stated, his eyes resembling molten gold.

Your gaze flattened, “Koz, what the fuck was that if you say you’re not ‘pursuing it’.”

He grinned, “Your confirmation of your feelings, as well as a promise of patience.”

“Patience?”

He smirked again, tilting his head and embracing the feel of superiority again, “You have nearly one more year left. I wonder if you have the patience to stick it out-”

That pissed you off. You grabbed his black tie and pulled him down, startling him as you kissed him hard. You pulled away just as quickly, enjoying the look of surprise on his face as well as slight bewilderment at being cut off from gloating.

You smiled innocently, smoothing down his tie as well as the front of his jacket, “Nice to know I’m not the only one enjoying the feeling of vorfreude from now on. Have a good day, Professor.”

Without a second backwards glance, you confidently strode out of the lecture hall, leaving Koz impressed as well as out of breath at your grand exit. He didn’t realize he’d be aching for you just as much as you ached for him.

It’s only a year, right? Not too long…

Boy were you two wrong.

#pitch black #pitch black x reader #reader insert #fanfiction #fanfics #fanfic commissions #fanfiction commissions #rise of the guardians #rise of the guardian fanfics #university au

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songfell-ut · 4 years

Text

Chapter 10, one month in!

Man, I might actually finish this. Link here and @lostmypotatoes remains great.

This one mostly features Frisk having enough of everyone’s shit.

When Sans had composed himself enough to leave the wallpaper behind, he found Dr. Serif double-checking the paperwork while Frisk rustled around in her dressing room. As soon as she emerged in her black dress, the doctor said, "I have a request, Sans. When you escort Snowdrake home, I'd like you to stay in human form. Two monsters going anywhere without an owner will attract too much attention, especially near the border, and we should see whether your disguise can fool another monster. Do you think you can masquerade as a human who is using Sans' magic?"

Sans didn't like the idea – in fact, he completely hated it – but he was in the mood to think before he spoke, and the more he did, the more it made sense. "Yeah, I guess. If I told 'im who I was, he'd probably think I'd been brainwashed or somethin'. Everyone would be weird about it when I got home."

"Exactly." The royal sorcerer rolled the papers back up and placed the scroll on the edge of the table. "Does Sans need to bring the deed to the house with him in case he's questioned, my lady?"

"No, I've written a note and put my seal on it. Here's a map with the house marked, and I also have an insignia he can carry." The priestess went to a little nook by the fireplace, glanced at herself in the mirror, and opened a drawer full of odds and ends. "Where is...ah." Frisk pulled out a leather armband. "This will identify you as the High Priestess' personal agent. I don't use it often, but anyone you speak to should recognize it."

Sans had retrieved his silver chain from the bedroom. He looped it around his neck, put the smaller items in his overcoat, and accepted the armband, admiring the patterns of tiny white and red crystals worked into the leather. "Spiffy. So, if anyone asks me who I am an' where I'm takin' Snowdrake, I can tell 'em to shove it?"

"You will not tell anyone to shove it." He winced at her tone—yep, she was still mad at him. "Furthermore, please remember your fortune. No matter what happens, unless it is absolutely the only way to keep yourself and Snowdrake safe, I don't want you to kill anyone." She swept an errant lock of hair behind her ear, voice softening. "Please, Sans."

The boss monster's SOUL fluttered. He looked down at the armband, which was more of a wristband at his human size. "Fine," he said, trying to sound careless. "I'll talk first, only kill 'em if they really, really bug me."

"Sans!" He'd forgotten that Frisk had the lungs to roar like a miniature hurricane. "Do you care about anything but yourself and what you want to do? If you kill anyone and you cannot come back here and look me in the eye to tell me why it was necessary, I don't want you to come back at all! Do you understand?!"

Sans was speechless. As her echoes bounced off the corners of the room, he not only couldn't think of what to say, it felt like the magic comprising his vocal cords had evaporated.

Into the silence fell the sound of someone rapping on the double doors. Frisk whipped on her veil and headdress, allowing the bemused Dr. Serif to get up and admit two armed guards.

Between the men drooped a birdlike, half-grown monster roughly four feet tall, ice forming on the chains around its neck and feet. Without preamble, the priestess snapped her fingers at the guards and said, "Remove his bonds. Now."

The shorter guard coughed as Snowdrake shrank further back. "He is secured with the commonest type of lock. Your Ladyship will doubtless possess the key already," the guard mumbled.

Though her features were obscured by the veil, the High Priestess' body language was so expressive of absolute wrath that the men swallowed and gripped their weapons tighter. Without turning her head, she said to Sans in measured, glacial tones, "Get rid of those chains."

"As milady wishes," Sans said cheerfully, raising his left hand. The guards didn't notice the red mist surrounding the collar or shackles, but they did see the metal burst into fragments; the men nearly wet themselves as the rest of the chains fell off the startled drake.

"Leave us," ordered Frisk, and they were happy to obey, one pausing to grab the scroll and the other nearly running out the doors ahead of him.

Snowdrake's beak fluttered open, but he shut it and cringed as Frisk reached for his neck. "That's Sans' magic," whispered the young monster. "How'd you get him?"

Frisk placed her hand on his head, feeling him tremble. "He's unharmed, and he's given us his magic in order to help return you to the Underground." She brushed the last few links off his feathery neck, trying to avoid the half-healed scabs where the collar had rubbed him raw. "I am not your new owner, Snowdrake. You're going to be free."

The ice monster's eyes darted between her and the two men. "Yes, my lady," he said woodenly.

The poor kid. Sans knew exactly what it was like to be at a human witch's mercy and having to hear that kind of crap. Only the knowledge that she wasn't lying and Snowdrake would be home soon kept Sans from dropping the disguise right then and there.

"My guard will escort you as close as he can to the entrance to the Underground," Frisk told Snowdrake, then looked at Sans. "You shouldn't have trouble, but if you run into poachers, I'm giving you full authority to protect yourselves through non-lethal means. Is that understood?"

Sans nodded. To his surprise, Dr. Serif cleared his throat. "I think you had better take this as well. Consider it repayment." He produced yet another brooch from his robe, this one large and faintly pink. Sans wondered irritably how many of them he still had. "If you use this to supplement the magic you already possess, you can make the journey in a few easy stages. Pace yourself, and do not hurry back." He sat down as Sans put the brooch away. "Several people in the plot against Her Eminence have already been detained. We will maintain a watch in case anyone else involved decides to strike before they're discovered, and I will personally check on her throughout the day."

"Indeed," said Frisk. "Please take your time."

Holy shit, that hurt. The boss monster plunged his hands into his pockets to avoid breaking anything. "Breakfast should be here in a moment," the priestess went on, "and as soon as you've—" Right on cue, there was another knock at the door. "—both eaten, we'll pack something for you to take with you."

Sans tried to catch her eye, but she went back to the office as the servant unloaded the trolley. Snowdrake made no move to eat until Sans put a plate down and told him, "Go for it," at which the ice monster almost literally dove in. There was no telling the last time he'd had enough to eat, so Sans didn't ask, letting Snowdrake devour nearly everything and gulp down all the milk.

Fortunately, there was a bundle of apples and sandwiches sitting on the bottom of the trolley, along with three flasks of water and one of cider. "I ordered extra provisions. You'll need to keep your strength up," said Dr. Serif, waving away Sans' muttered thanks. He checked that Snowdrake was done, then called, "They're leaving, my lady."

Frisk reemerged, still veiled. "The best of luck to you both," she said.

Sans picked up the bundle, tucking it under his arm. "Sure, boss. See you when I get back." He jerked his head at Snowdrake, who was peering up at him, eyes half closed. "C'mon." Sans shouldered the doors open for the smaller monster to trudge through; a second later, the guard outside made a squeaky sound that indicated Sans had teleported them away.

The priestess sank into a chair, shoulders slumping as she pulled off her headdress. Dr. Serif cleared his throat. "You look as though you need more rest, Your Eminence. Unless, of course, you'd like to talk about your—"

"No. Thank you," she said, loud and sharp. Frisk picked up a fresh stack of letters, sorting them into different piles according to the wax seals or lack thereof. "I have a great deal of correspondence to catch up on, and I'll be very dull company for the next several hours. I'm sure you also have a great deal of work to do—have you started drafting your proposed specifications for the first set of solar arrays?"

"Yes, my lady. In fact, I've scheduled a meeting later this morning with several of my colleagues to discuss the matter. I'll be back this afternoon, but if you need anything at all in the meantime..."

"Thank you," she said again, a little more calmly. "I also must thank you for your help earlier with Sans. Did you figure out why he was acting so strange? I can't believe he grabbed me like that! I don't know what he could have been thinking."

The doctor made a wry face at her back. "I'm not sure how it happened, my lady. I don't believe he intended to become inebriated, but that is certainly what he was." He paused. "I will also keep you apprised of developments in Fernand's interrogation. Your Eminence will be glad to know that Lord Owen has been cleared of suspicion, more than adequately."

Frisk looked daggers at him. "Has he?"

"Indeed," he said gravely. "The moment his friend was arrested, Lord Owen volunteered to answer questions under hypnosis. He was tested beforehand for any magic with which he might have resisted or subverted the procedure, which ensured his answers were completely truthful. He is guiltless, and can offer no further information."

She nodded, returning to the next stack of letters. Why did she feel just the tiniest bit disappointed?

It was no use pretending. In her too-honest, very tired mind, she knew exactly why: it would've been the ideal excuse to reject him and find another suitor for her "adequate" future. It wasn't at all nice, but facts were facts. No matter how much she wanted to be married, having Luke as a husband would be like sleeping with her brother!

So, that just left...who?

The doctor coughed theatrically. "Before I go, my lady..."

Something made Frisk look up at him. Dr. Serif gave her a brief smile, and said with unusual delicacy, "With no intrusion intended or opinion attached, I beg that you inform me if and when you wish to safely dispose of your box. Whatever may be inside it, I assume there is magic involved, and throwing it away without the proper precautions may have consequences."

Frisk picked up an envelope and hissed between her teeth as she felt the paper slice her thumb. "I understand, Doctor. Good day to you."

He half-smiled. "And to you, my lady." When she looked up a moment later, he was already gone.

If Frisk had ever had a more miserable day as High Priestess, she didn't want to remember when. She hadn't just been trying to get rid of the royal sorcerer; she really did have a pile of mail to get through. The only attention she paid to the proposals was to make a stack of rejects, maybes, and actual prospects. Then she threw the maybes into the reject pile. Then she had to literally grab her own wrist to keep from dumping the entire basket into the fireplace—if she was destined to either marry Lord Owen or hop right into bed with someone unmarriageable, why bother wading through any of these?

A small, flat package at the bottom of the stack puzzled her until she opened it and several bookmarks fell out. Right: she'd ordered them when Sans got after her one time too many for her uncouth reading habits. She could fold all the pages she wanted today, Frisk tried to tell herself, but it just made her wish he was here to tell her to leaf them alone or mark his words. When she got another paper cut, she started to ask him to heal it for her, only to realize she was speaking to an empty room. She had to make do by washing her hands and applying tiny bits of ointment that came right off when she picked up more envelopes.

Just before lunch, Frisk told herself she'd earned a break and went in to flop on the enormous bed. Would Sans be back tonight? If he wasn't back by evening, should she go ahead and sleep in here, knowing he could come back inexplicably drunk and try to cuddle her again?

...She couldn't shake the idea. Technically, she should be scared at the idea of a ten-foot monster with no inhibitions invading her space when she was most vulnerable, but...she wasn't. Not remotely. In fact, her imagination was running with it so fast that she couldn't catch up, much less stop it. Frisk actually had to remind herself that Sans was a skeleton, only for her self to remind her that there were approximately two hundred creative ways around that particular deficit. Ah, well. It was all stupid, harmless tired-brain fantasy about someone she was comfortable with, not as if she was going to marry him or anything...

This was ridiculous. It had only been a few hours, and she was still furious with him, but she missed Sans so much that she could barely function.

There was another knock, and the priestess scowled as she got up to put on her veil and answer the outside door. To her surprise, it was Luke, holding a tiny velvet jewelry pouch out to her. "Good morning, Your Eminence," he said as she pasted on a smile. "Forgive my intrusion, but I came to return this in person."

Frisk opened the drawstrings and pulled out her pearl bracelet, the one he'd removed so the parrot wouldn't destroy it. "Oh. Thank you," she said automatically. Luke waited for more, and she glanced behind her. "I am sorry, Lord Owen, but you've caught me in the middle of decanting. The fumes will be potentially harmful once the mixture has heated, so..."

"It's quite all right. I didn't intend a long visit," he assured her. "I wanted to ask if you've had a chance to look over the contact information I forwarded to you."

Thank God she had found his note in her mail, or else she wouldn't have remembered the farmland at all. "Yes, I have, thank you," she replied. "I'll send your broker an inquiry with the name of my banker. Shall I inform you when I hear back from her?"

"If it's quite convenient, yes, please." The young lord shuffled his feet, as if he was suddenly uncomfortable about something. "Fr—Your Eminence, may I ask if any of the rumors about the All Souls festival are accurate?"

The guard at her door had been doubled, and she couldn't help noticing how both of them were waiting to hear her answer. "Forgive my bluntness, Lord Owen, but I don't know what you're talking about. I have no time for ridiculous gossip," she almost snapped.

"Yes, of course, of course. I'm the one who must beg forgiveness. I'm sure you would never..." Her stare intensified, and he hastened to say, "The last reason I've trespassed on your time is that I am preparing to visit St. Brigid's. I'll be leaving early tomorrow. May I tell Mathilda that you've been well?"

"Absolutely!" Frisk knew this was where she was supposed to ask how his sister was doing in general, how her studies were going, etc. etc., and pass along all sorts of loving messages. But somehow, with her blood still humming and her potential husband right in front of her, and Sans not there to see, she had just one thought: "Could you give her something from me?"

"Yes, of course," he said pleasantly. "What is it?"

Frisk nodded, stepped forward and gave him a quick, decisive hug, careful to get her arms all the way around him before she stepped back. "Please excuse me," she said, "but I haven't seen Mathilda since Christmas, and I miss her very much. I hope you understand."

"Uh..." Luke blinked hard. "Yes, my lady. I'll see her and give her...that. Thank very much, and a good day to you." He bowed vigorously and turned on his heel, speed-walking down the hall in flustered elation.

Ignoring the guards' smirks, the High Priestess went back inside and slammed the doors, removing her veil again. She knew she should be embarrassed or at least care what they were going to say about her, but really, half the city was probably placing bets on who she'd be sleeping with in however many days or hours, so what was one brief embrace?

It was nothing. That was what she'd felt, anyway. Part of her was surprised at her own cold-heartedness, but Frisk knew what had happened when she hugged Sans, and she was certain that no matter how long she snuggled up to Luke, it wouldn't feel remotely similar; if he had put his arm around her, it would've just annoyed her. At least she had eliminated any remaining doubt: Luke could offer her pleasant company, and that was all. Not warmth, or real companionship, or gentleness, laughter, intellectual stimulation, literal attraction...

There went her imagination again. The workroom was still cold from however long Sans had had the windows open, but she had to pick up some papers to fan herself. It was quite a relief when lunch arrived and she could eat Sans' portion to make up for missing breakfast, then retire to the bedroom.

Having spent so much of her early life on her own, Frisk had been shocked when she came to St. Brigid's and discovered that even in a convent, the primary occupation of adolescent girls seemed to be talking about boys, or sex, or any combination thereof. She understood now that they had had very little else to talk or think about, and that being in a strict religious environment meant that there were no other outlets for their perfectly normal teenage curiosity, but those first few months had been eye-opening, to say the least.

To their credit, the sisters were aware of this and knew very well that after the lights went out in the dormitory, the girls would stuff their pillows under their covers to create a laughable illusion of being in bed, crawl to the center of the floor, and whisper to each other until they forgot themselves and laughed too loud at something, which was the cue for the proctor on duty to shout "BED" and send them flying back to their cots. It was probably also why everyone had to undergo a comprehensive sexual education course when they turned fourteen, and of course, the girls who could tell penis jokes for literal hours on end felt quite differently about the matter when an eighty-year-old priestess was passing out textbooks with full-color drawings and scientific labels.

In short, Frisk knew exactly what she was feeling and why. She'd never had the nerve to try anything when she was sleeping in an open room with dozens of other girls and young women, but once she moved into these chambers and found she had nearly unlimited privacy, she had finally availed herself of the opportunity to ignore the Church's teachings on self-exploration. Then she had availed herself of the opportunity a lot, figuring that it was harming no one whatsoever, and that she wouldn't have been given those parts if she wasn't meant to use them. But she hadn't done it since Sans arrived, especially not when they were in the same bed.

Sans was not here now, and she wasted no time, pausing only to throw a quilt over herself before she moved her skirt aside and worked her hand into place. She'd never done this in the middle of the day before, but that added a little excitement; what if she was to take down the barrier against teleportation, and he happened to get back right as she was in the middle of it? That would be just awful. Would he even recognize what she was doing, or would he just—

Another knock. Another fecking knock on the outside door as she was getting this close, and she wanted to burn down the entire castle. Frisk kicked the quilt off, pulled her clothes back into place, and stomped over to her veil and circlet before she threw the doors open. This had better be worth the interruption!

Over an hour later, she came back to her rooms with her cluster of guards and, given the general trajectory of the day thus far, was not surprised to find Dr. Serif waiting next to a stack of crates. "Good afternoon," he said. "It seems as if the items you've ordered for your apprenticeship have arrived. Would you like some assistance putting them away?"

Frisk looked at them, and at him, but she could barely speak. "I am overtired, Doctor," she mumbled. "I would appreciate your help, and then I need to rest."

"Of course." The royal scientist opened the double doors and directed the guards to bring the boxes inside while she went to the bathroom to remove her veil and compose herself for a few minutes. It didn't work, but it was long enough for the guards to put everything away and leave, so she only had to worry about the doctor when she emerged.

One look at her was enough. He didn't ask if she was all right, just moved aside a respectful distance as she sat down to check the inventory sheet. "Would you like to talk about it?" he asked kindly.

"No, thank you," she said, voice cracking.

"I understand." The doctor removed the lid from a long box of seedlings and began filling a vial at the sink. "They've found the guard responsible for leaving your door unattended and allowing the assassin into your room. It seems he is affiliated with a local group pushing to decriminalize the retrieval of monsters from the no-man's-land. It should be a valuable link in uncovering more conspirators."

"Excellent. I'm glad to hear it," Frisk said politely, mind still buzzing.

Dr. Serif tipped some water into each seed-bed. "If he avoids detours or anything else he is not supposed to do, Sans should be back late this evening. Don't be alarmed if he takes longer, though. I could easily see him deciding to rush back and overextending himself. He can sleep at your house tonight if need be."

The only sound was water running into the vial and being trickled onto the tiny plants. The doctor glanced at her over his shoulder. "If I may, High Priestess. Please don't go there to wait for him or try to meet him. He should—"

"Get out!"

When the doctor had obediently made himself scarce, Frisk threw her veil on the floor, stormed into the bedroom, and flung herself on the bed for a good, long cry, or at least a long one. It wasn't Dr. Serif's fault that he'd happened to visit right as she was returning from a talk with her father. She hadn't been so angry or humiliated in a long time—of all the people to drag her away from her private time to lecture her about maintaining a good reputation and not sleeping around, why the hell did he think he had the right to do it, especially based on a single stupid rumor? It'd been all she could do not to scream at him that he'd spent his youth screwing his way through most of the kingdom, left her to be neglected almost to death for ten years, and only taken an interest in any of his damn-near-orphans when his second wife died in childbirth and the midwives told him the baby might not survive! How dare he?!

The final nail in the coffin came a few hours later, when she'd finally pulled herself together enough to start writing replies to everything that needed replying to. After many more paper cuts, Frisk was almost done when she heard a knock that she hoped, for the other person's sake, was her dinner.

It was, but it was also another messenger. At least this one wasn't there to take her anywhere, merely to tell her that His Holiness had furnished the records she requested, handing over a folder roughly two inches thick.

Frisk probably should have been glad she could peruse the list of enslaved monsters without Sans hovering over her shoulder, and she was; it was just hard to be happy about much of anything when she was reading all the names and descriptions—she'd felt strongly enough about it when she wasn't remembering how completely beaten Snowdrake had looked, and wondering how many other monsters must be in similar or worse circumstances at that very moment. Her duty now was to go through the list of owners and judge which were probably the absolute worst, and organize inspections as quickly and stealthily as possible.

It all went back to her stupid fortunes. She'd half-purposely led Luke on, and her father had made it very clear that he expected her to make the respectable choice, the hypocritical old goat. The problem was that it was what everyone would expect of her; in the wee hours of the morning, it had felt daring and romantic to contemplate a future where she had a child with a not-husband, but the reality was that it would probably ruin her life, just like her mother's. Frisk was more confused than ever: how could she change the world and free monsters if she did something so socially unacceptable that no one would probably ever speak to her again? But she'd also have new parents and a huge family...how?!

Even if Sans had been a complete idiot at the fortune-teller's table, she wished more than ever that he was here to talk to. Damn Dr. Serif for reading her thoughts so easily. There was still the brooch he'd given her a couple nights ago, but she wanted to save it for a real emergency; besides, it wasn't as if she could do much to help Sans if he simply needed to rest before coming back to the castle...assuming he was coming back.

Frisk shook herself. There was no reason to believe that at all! She had to think more constructively. Wasn't there some way to communicate w—ah, yes, he was able to speak to Papyrus in dreams. She had joined him fairly easily the time she'd tried it. If she took down that barrier again...

...then the child could get in. But Sans wasn't here. Could it make her hurt him in a dream?

That was when Frisk officially gave up on thinking, or working, or doing anything else for the day. It was already after sunset, so she folded up the registry, instructed the guards not to let anyone disturb her unless something was actively on fire, and went to run a bath. Her mind didn't clear much, but it did help relax her, even if she was still too tense to pick up where she'd left off with herself. She put on her fuzziest nightgown, whisked the barrier away and built up a fire in the bedroom, then made a warm nest of blankets and settled herself to sleep, leaving her mind cautiously open.

She woke a little as the bed creaked beside her. She grumbled under her breath and turned away from him, pulling the covers up.

Undeterred, he ducked beneath the covers and draped himself over her side. His hard, smooth fingers caught on her hair as he pushed it out of the way to nuzzle her neck. It was a good start, but he must have been tipsy: she yelped as his nasal bone jabbed her. "sorry," he murmured.

That should've been that; she graciously permitted him to stroke her hair as an apology, and settled back down to sleep.

She should have known better when he started petting her back and down her side, and then rubbed her leg, knowing very well that she'd sleepily turn toward him so he could pet the other one, too. Then came a soft, warm touch on her neck, his hands sliding under her nightshirt, and her nightshirt creeping up as he eased his weight onto her.

"Really?" she tried to ask, but his mouth was in the way, and he easily caught the hand she brought up to push him off, spreading his fingers to interlace them with hers.

He would have stopped if she'd insisted. She didn't. She—

Someone was in her office.

Frisk was not afraid. She was done. She got out of bed with an ache in her groin and murderous resolve in her heart, moving silently through the bedroom and the dark workroom. There was no light showing under the office door, but she could feel ripples through the barrier over her safe as someone dug into the floor around it. With no restraint or remorse, she yanked open the doors and slammed a multi-layered barrier into the room, catching the would-be thief by surprise.

Whoever it was, they were unnaturally strong and agile, nearly catching the edge to squeeze through as it sealed itself off. But it was no use: fueled by angry determination, the barrier snapped shut into a golden sphere, trapping the person inside. The intruder struck at it several times with terrific force, but Frisk held firm until the figure staggered, then fell to its knees, wheezing.

Only then did Frisk click her tongue, dropping the layer that prevented air from getting in, and strengthening the layer that suppressed magic. "Whoever you are, you have ten seconds to explain yourself," she snarled.

A gulping breath. "Please, my lady—"

Frisk was so startled that her concentration wavered. The figure took the opportunity to hit the barrier again, and she promptly cut its air off, waiting several seconds before she allowed any back in. The priestess came forward and peered inside. "...Doctor?"

In the barrier's glow, she could see quite well, and though she knew she had him contained, Frisk felt a twinge of fear. It had sounded exactly like the royal sorcerer, but this was not Dr. Serif. It was a monster, a skeleton with a long, eerie face, much more smooth and hollow-looking than Sans or Papyrus. As it straightened, its arms stayed hidden in the folds of its long, ragged black coat, and several disembodied skeletal hands floated over its shoulders. "The man who speaks in hands," she said to herself. No wonder they were supposed to beware him!

The monster's brow creased. "The man who speaks in hands?" he repeated in Dr. Serif's whispery voice. "How very poetic." Cough. "May I ask where you—"

"You may not!" The barrier constricted, nearly brushing the top of his skull. "Who are you?" she demanded.

The skeleton visibly struggled to answer, and finally croaked, "My name is W.D. Gaster. I am a monster who has been posing as a human in order to maintain my post as the royal sorcerer." He took a deep, shuddering breath. "Young lady, what...what is this?"

Frisk sat down on the couch, which had been moved aside to expose the safe. "I assume you mean the fact that you can't lie to me while you're in there. I'm not much good at truth spells, but I figured out how to incorporate one into a barrier, which I am very good at. I just don't use it very often." On some level, she wasn't surprised that Dr. Serif had been hiding something like this, but she was still afraid—had any of his help or kindness been real, or was it all for some unknown, sinister purpose? Would he try to eliminate her now that she knew what he was?

Gaster was staring at her. Above him, both pairs of hands started a slow clap. "I am extremely impressed, Your Eminence. I am also very apprehensive. As a monster, I cannot match your determination, which means you have me at a complete disadvantage. I must commend you."

The priestess was gratified, but knew better than to drop her guard; she could feel him subtly testing the weave and span of the barrier with unseen hands. "Stop that," she snapped, and he did, tilting his head to concede defeat. "Were you trying to steal my box?"

"Of course," he said. "I infer that it contains your memories, and it is now common knowledge that the future of this world hinges on what you do with it."

Frisk controlled another stab of anger, though she couldn't stop the barrier from popping and snapping like a bonfire. "And you thought you would...what? Dispose of it without asking me?"

"I don't know exactly what I was thinking," Gaster confessed. "I succumbed to intellectual curiosity as to what distilled memories look like, and whether I could view them without disturbing the physical medium. What I would do with them would depend on their contents."

The barrier was now eye-wateringly bright. "You broke into my rooms when Sans wasn't here, damaged my property, and woke me up from a very good dream because you thought you knew better than me what I should do with my life?! How dare you! How dare all of you try to decide this for me?"

"You are completely correct, my lady, and I apologize wholeheartedly." The monster placed his hand on his chest and bowed from the waist. "I swear that I will not presume to meddle any further."

It sounded sincere, but the old priestess who'd helped her develop this technique had been very emphatic: if someone promised something while under a truth spell, there was nothing to stop them from breaking it once the spell ended. "Why are you here?" she asked. "What are your intentions?"

He managed a chuckle. "As I truthfully told your apprentice earlier today, that is a large question." The monster's hands folded into pairs. "I do not believe you will derive any benefit from my entire story, and that most of it will unnecessarily disturb you. May I tell you as much as I sincerely believe will benefit you, and omit that which is not necessary?"

Frisk bit her lip. "I'd prefer to be the judge of that. Answer me, please: what are your intentions towards me, and Sans, and this kingdom in general?"

Gaster didn't reply. Frisk felt him trying to use some kind of magic similar to Sans' to slip out of the barrier, and she gave one sharp whistle; the skeleton's hand went to his throat as his magic dissolved and the air started to thin again. "Please, stop!" he rasped.

The priestess did so, feeling a tiny bit guilty. That rush of anger was starting to fade, but she knew she couldn't let him manipulate her into letting him go before she was ready. The fact that he had been manipulating her up till now was more than enough to steady her resolve. She crossed her arms and stared him down in silence.

A hand came up to massage Gaster's temple. "All right. I...do not intend to harm anyone. I came here solely as an observer, and have only remained for this length of time in order to rectify my errors." He sighed. "As is so often the case, every attempt I make only compounds the problem, and yet I cannot seem to stop."

Frisk shook her head. "I don't want vagueness or lies by omission, Dr. Gaster. Where did you come from, and on whose behalf are you observing us?"

"I came from a place similar to this one. I lived inside Mt. Ebott, which contained the Underground, home to monsters such as Sans, Papyrus, King Asgore, Queen Toriel...to my knowledge, every living monster I knew currently resides here as well."

The priestess' mouth fell open. "How...?"

He made an impatient sound. "As I said, the majority of this information is not necessary to impart. You can do nothing with the knowledge of another Underground, except for the one or two details that are relevant to you and Sans, which I will tell you if you agree to trust me that you do not need the rest. Do we have a deal?"

She exhaled. "Fine. What are you doing here now? Are you gathering information to bring back to your Underground?"

"I dearly wish that this was the case, young lady, but no. I was expelled from my home in an accident, and I no longer exist there. I have been wandering ever since, looking for another place I might settle into." Another sigh. "I know now that it was not only a vain hope, but a dangerous one."

"Dangerous? How so?"

He grimaced. "I found out the hard way, of course. I thought I was doing the right thing when I transplanted a certain monster from a dangerous environment to a safer one where he was needed. I did not know that the danger would follow."

Frisk's skin prickled. "What do you mean? Please start making more sense."

"Very well. To start at the beginning, I must tell you I am not the first W.D. Gaster to have lived in this kingdom or its Underground. Many, many years ago, when I happened upon this place, I went looking for the first item on my checklist: myself. Unfortunately, when I found him, I discovered that your Gaster was easily one of the cruelest I have seen. He conducted horrific experiments on defenseless subjects, both humans and monsters, and he created new life purely to torment it."

The chill increased as Gaster's face darkened. "I was skilled enough to observe him unseen, and his actions disgusted me. I should have left, but when I saw him murder one of his 'sons,' I grew so angry that I could not stop myself. I killed this world's Gaster, and I tried to save his other creation, but it was too late. I broke my policy of noninterference without any real benefit to anyone." He sat down inside the barrier. "Imagine my surprise when I checked the rest of the laboratory and discovered one copy of the younger skeleton ready to awaken, hardly more than a baby. There was no sign that any other creations had survived. I now had a decision to make."

"The 'younger' skeleton? You don't mean—"

"Yes. He created Sans and Papyrus, and he killed them, knowing he could replace them at any time."

The priestess had to fight the urge to be sick all over the office floor. "Couldn't you have taken his place and tried to undo the damage he caused?"

"That was a definite option, and I was tempted. But this is not my home, and I did not want to stay for much longer. I believe I made the correct choice in that respect."

Now she understood why he hadn't wanted to tell her this. Too late; she had to hear the rest of the story.

"It was quite the dilemma. I could not leave Papyrus on his own, nor could I stay here to raise him, or take him with me. He was too young, and I did not know what might happen if I brought him into another place with another Papyrus. But there was no Sans here to care for him. So..." He closed his eyes, pulling the slashes taut. "I made another well-intentioned mistake."

There was a very long pause. "There are certain variations of time and place that I have seen more frequently than others," he said slowly. "The most tragic is where a very sorrowful and angry SOUL becomes warped into a force of absolute destruction, essentially a demon, and it finds a vessel to connect it to the physical world." His eyes opened. "It kills everything, Frisk. Every monster in the Underground, every human above, until there is nothing left. But the force itself does not die. It finds another place to destroy. And another. And another. The child you have seen in your nightmares is here because it cannot bear the fact that in one place, at one time, there was one monster it failed to exterminate. It has come here looking for him."

All the hairs on Frisk's body were standing straight up. "What exactly happened?"

"I found a place where a Sans stood ready to meet the child on its way to murder Asgore and leave the Underground. He had made a promise not to harm any fallen humans, and that promise bound him until it was too late. As always, he was still going to fight it, knowing that it was futile." Gaster looked at his hands, studying the holes in the palms. "I did not speak to him, or even let him see me. I approached him from behind, rendered him unconscious, and transported him here. I had checked Snowdin and saw that the house in which they usually reside was empty, so I brought them both there, left a supply of food and money, and allowed them to live as usual."

"...But...but doesn't he—"

"This world's practice of memory excision is not a good one, in my opinion, but it gave me the idea to try to...adjust him. I did not remove his memories to save for later if he chose to revisit them: I destroyed them entirely. As far as he or anyone else knows, he has always lived here with his little brother." Gaster looked back up at her. "I wanted to give him a second chance in a place where the demon did not exist, and where circumstances were not likely to replicate its creation. I knew that he might have nightmares as echoes of his past experiences, or even glimpses of other lives, but I had no conception that the child itself would stalk him all the way here."

The barrier wavered. Gaster did not move as Frisk shook herself and hummed it back to full strength. She'd have to process all of this information properly later. For now, next question... "Why did you become the royal sorcerer? Didn't you want to leave as soon as you knew they'd be safe?"

"I did, but I came back periodically to check on them. All seemed well until one visit where I discovered that a group of humans had just visited on a diplomatic mission that ended in violent catastrophe. Imagine my surprise when I examined Dr. Alphys' records and discovered that the Sans I rescued had become a boss monster through imperfectly understood means. It was one of the most anomalous variations in his growth that I have ever observed, and it absolutely fascinated me."

His tone was a little too rapturous for her tastes. "You disguised yourself as a human and became the royal sorcerer to keep a closer eye on Sans?" she asked warily.

"Oh, no, my dear young lady. I did so in order to keep a closer eye on you." Frisk started as the skeleton slowly got to his feet. "In order to affect physical matter, even something as tenuous as a monster's body, the demon must find a host. In the course of observing Sans and his brother, I became convinced that the child was trying to reach him, but it could not attach itself to any of the monsters. Through various means, I eventually tracked it to you, just as you were being considered as a replacement for the murdered High Priestess. Not only did I feel the need to protect Sans from a danger he no longer recalled, I became curious about you."

"In what way?" Frisk couldn't help rubbing her eyes. "Why did it choose me?"

Gaster smiled thinly. "At the risk of threatening you or, even worse, stating the obvious," he said in a different tone, "I would guess that a barrier of this strength and complexity requires a great deal of power, and you are not going to be able to maintain it much longer. I will only be at your mercy for another few minutes at most, after which I could make a serious attempt to break out and potentially injure one or both of us." He took a step forward. "I propose instead that I tell you more about Sans while you still know I am being truthful, and then you release me."

He was right. "If I release you, will you attack me or take any other malicious action against me, now or in the future?" Frisk asked carefully.

"I do not intend you or Sans any type of harm whatsoever, Frisk, now or in the future. I bear you no malice, though I admittedly find being caught in this fashion very irksome."

Frisk would have to be content with that. "Done. What do you want to tell me?"

"That you did not give Sans the opportunity to apologize for his conduct at the festival or the morning after, and you said something fairly cruel before he left. I thought I made it clear that he is not stable and you must be careful how you handle him."

It took a second to recall how she'd told Sans to take his time, and his expression after she did. "I'm not his mother," she argued. "I'm sorry I hurt his feelings, and I'll apologize when he gets back, but even you said I shouldn't be held responsible for his behavior. He's been fairly good at keeping his temper, all things considered."

"He's been good at keeping his temper around you," Gaster said severely. "Did you know that monsters can see the condition of a living monster or human SOUL? I have been monitoring Sans for a long time, as you now know, and soon after he became a boss monster, his SOUL began to darken at a remarkable rate. It was natural for him to accrue EXP as he fought humans to protect his kin, but it is extremely unusual for a single monster to develop such a taste for violence when the rest of the Underground remains unaffected."

Frisk didn't know what EXP was, but she could guess, and time was running short. "What are you saying, Doctor?" she snapped.

"I am saying that I do not know exactly why he is the way he is, and I don't only mean his metamorphosis into a boss monster. No matter what kind of magic he was subjected to, and however his LV grows, it cannot explain why Sans is so very angry. It's so ingrained that it feels deliberate, which I don't understand. Is it vestigial regret from his first life? A heretofore unknown side effect of the accident that spurred his transformation? All I know is that when he was listening to your song yesterday morning, I saw him let go of his accumulated rage for the very first time. When I took another look, it seemed as though several layers of that filth have been sloughed off his SOUL since he came here, though far more remains."

The priestess flushed. It was flattering to think she could affect him that much, but...

Gaster must have seen her skepticism. He sighed so mightily that his entire body settled to the floor, as if he simply couldn't keep himself upright. "You can't seriously—you can." He drew himself back up to his full height. "You may still be hurt by having been previously abandoned by those you cared for, young lady, but what do you need to hear before you understand the current situation? That Sans is deeply in love with you? That he behaved so stupidly at the fortune-teller because he was beside himself with jealousy? That any apprehensions you may have about him deciding not to come back here are laughable at best, and you are the only one who can make him want to return to a happier state of mind and avert the possibility of him hurting innocent people?"

Frisk had specifically been taught not to do what she did next: spring to her feet and bring her fist straight down on the barrier, shattering it like paper-thin glass. "However you got in here without alerting the guards, or waking them," she added darkly, "please see yourself out the same way. Good night, Dr. Gaster!"

In the sudden blackness, his eyes showed as two tiny pinpricks, one yellow and one blue. Frisk made herself meet his terrible gaze and point at the door, and he chuckled appreciatively. "Good night, High Priestess," he murmured. There was a rush of shadow, then an empty room.

The priestess could barely move or think. She felt her knees bend and her hand grope around the space where Gaster had been tunneling into the safe. She removed the barrier, picked up the box, put the barrier back up, got to her feet. Back to the bedroom, another barrier up on the door, and a collapse into bed, pulling the blankets around her. Too tired and too troubled to remember where she had left off...what would she see the next time she dreamed?

More importantly, where was Sans?

She was walking over an expanse of sand and scrubby trees that she had never seen before but somehow knew was the no-man's-land, closer to the Underground than to human territory. Her head turned at the sound of men screaming, far off to her left. In the fading light, she saw flickers of magic, a bigger flash, and a sound more awful than screams: silence.

Not total silence. As she approached, Frisk heard a familiar chuckle, but not in a familiar way. This was not a skeleton pleased with his own stupid puns or laughing at her rage when he beat her at chess five times in a row. This was someone standing amidst a pile of broken human corpses, surveying his handiwork and enjoying it.

For a terrified moment, Frisk thought Sans was doing this in the present, or had just done it, and she wanted to scream at him—but no, he was wearing the ragged canvas garments she'd first seen him in, not the wool and linen ones she had given him. If this had ever happened – which felt likely – then he was dreaming of a time more distant than the past twenty-four hours.

She was only about fifty yards away, but he didn't seem to notice her. She tried to call out to him, only for her voice to get stuck as she looked again at the human bodies he was stepping over like rocks in his path. Gaster had been right. Sans really was capable of this, wasn't he? He wasn't the gentle, protective, sometimes-somewhat-sweet-natured skeleton she'd grown fond of. He was a killer.

No. He was gentle and sometimes somewhat sweet, and he was a killer. Frisk couldn't fall into the trap of believing that only one side of him existed, or that only one was "real"; people didn't work that way. She had to talk to the one she knew—he was there, too!

Sans was trudging away. Remembering what Gaster had said, Frisk took a big breath and whistled at him over the empty expanse, using a few bars from this morning's song—she'd often seen him stop what he was doing to listen to it.

Sure enough, he paused. He turned, and his orange eyes focused on her. The flames dimmed just a little. "Frisk?" Sans came closer, skirting the pile of bodies. "'sat really you?"

The priestess held out her hands. Sans reached out to touch her fingers, then recoiled—his hand was spattered with blood. "What are you doin' here?" he asked, voice rougher than usual. "Ya don't wanna see this!"

"No, I don't. But I wanted to see you," she said.

Sans blinked at her. He jerked his head for her to follow him, moving until the grim scene was out of her line of sight. Then he sat down, plunging his hands into the sand to scrub the blood off. "Yer an idiot. Why'd you come after me? I thought ya wanted me t'take my time gettin' back."

Frisk winced. She really had hurt his feelings. "I'm so sorry I said that. I missed you today."

The boss monster swallowed hard. "Fine. Ya saw me." He shook sand off his metacarpals, aiming it away from her. "Look, 'm sorry, too. I embarrassed the crap outta ya at the stupid festival, and I..." He shrugged elaborately. "I dunno what the hell I was doin' yesterday mornin', but whatever happened, I'm sorry."

"It's all right, Sans." Frisk folded her hands behind her back. "Did Snowdrake arrive safely?"

"Yeah. I only saw one nosy neighbor lady at the house, an' I played nice 'n let 'er see the note. She left us alone after that. Didn't see anyone else till we got close enough to the Underground t'let 'im go. Poor little bastard kept thinkin' it was some kinda trick." The skeleton brushed more sand off his femur. "I ran inta some poachers on my way back t'the city, but they didn' have any monsters with 'em, an' they just told me to get lost, so I did."

Frisk smiled. "Thank you. That means a lot to me."

Sans made his usual noises, which just made her smile wider. "How was yer first day off from babysittin' me?" he asked crossly. "Good?"

"It sucked," she said, deadpan, and he snorted. "Seriously, Sans, it was awful. Everyone's heard of my fortunes already, and my father, who has had at least fifteen children that we're aware of, gave me a talking-to about my sexual mores."

The skeleton's eyes were fully alight. "Yer kiddin'. Ya haven't even done anythin'!"

There was the tiniest pause, and lest he add "...Right?" and force her to kill him, Frisk said, "Right. It just reminded me that if I open the box and end up having a child on my own, I'll be an unwed mother. Among humans, that makes you a complete outcast. I wish we were more like monsters, I really do."

Sans was very quiet, in a way that put Frisk on edge. "But, of course," she said with forced optimism, "if I don't open it, I'll get married and be completely boring and respectable for another fifty or sixty years, and just have to live with the fact that I chose not to let monsters go free." Her throat was closing up yet again, and she shook her head. "Why do I have to decide this, Sans? I'm used to being under pressure, but not like this! What am I supposed to do?!"

The boss monster edged closer as she sniffled. "Ya know what you should do?" he asked.

"What?!" It came out nearly as a shriek. "What should I do, Sans? Tell me!"

Sans remained sitting, watching her quietly as she scrubbed her face on her sleeve. "I think you should make a decision an' go for it insteada tormentin' yerself like this. Whatever ya wanna do, it'll turn out t'be the right thing. An' fer what it's worth..." He fidgeted, scowling at the ground. "Whether ya pick the bird guy or...someone else, if ya ever need help, I'll do whatever I can. Heavy lifting, beatin' people up, dumb jokes, whatever. So...quit whinin' and pick somethin'. Flip a coin if ya need to. Just stop hurtin' yerself. Okay?"

Frisk's heart stood still. She looked at him in such a way that he sat back warily. "What? What'd I say?"

"Don't say anything," she said, advancing on him. "And don't get up yet."

"Hey, hey, lady, this's a dream, remember? Ya can't touch m—"

Sans lapsed into stunned silence as Frisk's arms went around his neck and her cheek rested on his clavicle. She leaned her full weight on him and heaved a sigh. "I'm sorry to ambush you again," she said into the space between his ribs. "I just needed to see something." It was the same as before, a wonderfully tingly feeling in her chest that spread through her body until she wondered what'd happen if she moved away too fast. Frisk sighed again, trying to work up the willpower to let go. Somehow, he wasn't as uncomfortable as she would've thought, as if there was a very thin layer of something padding his bony exterior. It just made it harder to—

Sans' arms came up to hold her against him, as he had the previous morning, and neither of them cared that they were so big, they overlapped over her back. His cheekbone rested against her head, careful not to be too heavy. "Whaddya do with yer hair?" he muttered.

It was...not what she'd expected him to say. "Can you elaborate, please?" she muttered back.

"I dunno what smells are what. I think the longer I stay human, the more human-ish stuff I can do, like smell, 'n feel stuff I touch." His phalanges moved softly through her hair. "This doesn't make any sense. Yer not s'posed to be able t'interact with anyone in a dream 'less ya went ta sleep in the same room or somethin'."

"I don't know about you, Sans, but I'm sick of thinking." Frisk stared at a spot of drying blood on the ground behind him. "In fact, you're right. I'm done thinking about this." She squeezed him gently, though she knew she could use all her strength and he'd barely feel it. "Let me go, please. It's time for me to get some real sleep."

"...Nuh-uh."

Frisk laughed. "It's vanilla," she said over his shoulder.

"Hm?" Sans was absently petting her hair again. "Wha's vanilla?"

It was so nice that she wanted to fall asleep right there, somehow. When was the last time she'd felt this secure? "It's...my hair. I don't use a lot of expensive lotions, but I'll splurge on anything scented with vanilla. Do you like it?"

"Mm. 'snot as bad as most of the stuff I've smelled so far."

The priestess smiled, then reached up to touch his skull. He tensed as her fingertips encountered the wide, smooth expanse of bone. It was warmer than she'd expected, almost velvety—probably from magic, she figured. "I'm very tired, Sans, and I've used almost all of my magic already. Can you please let me go now?"

He wouldn't. The last shred of doubt in her mind disappeared, and in a surge of determination, Frisk ducked free of his arms, moving out of his reach. "I'll see you soon," she told him. "Tomorrow?"

"Uh." Sans had the oddest look on his face. It reminded her of when she'd cleaned the fork for him at their first face-to-face meeting in the bedroom. "I dunno. I might be drunk again when I wake up. It kinda feels like it."

Frisk gave a long, theatric sigh. "If you are, please sleep it off before you come back. We've gotten in the supplies I ordered, and I don't need you eating the plants or something ridiculous." She stepped back further. "Good night, Sans."

"Night," he said inaudibly, and she left.

The guards outside Frisk's doors admitted Dr. Serif after breakfast, then settled in to wait for the royal sorcerer to leave, after which they could properly nap. His morning visits were usually an hour or so, in their experience.

This time, after only five or so minutes, the doors banged open, and one guard dropped his halberd. "I wish to be very clear, Doctor," the High Priestess said, voice pitched to carry down the hall. "Do not open it, do not attempt or allow anyone to attempt to open it, and do not keep it for any reason. I want it destroyed. Will you please do so as soon as possible?"

"Of course,Your Eminence." To the guards' astonishment, the normally imperturbable doctor was frowning, and took the little rosewood box with obvious reluctance. "Good day to you."

The priestess shut the doors without another word. The guards stared at Dr. Serif, who was now scowling full-force at the box. With a glance at the doors and none at all at the two men, the doctor tried to pry the lid open, only to drop it as the box sizzled at him. "How did she put a barrier inside it?" he said to no one.

The guards could barely wait till he was gone to whisper to each other, "She threw it away! I knew she wouldn't—" "Oh, bull shit, you said she'd get knocked up by this time next w—" "No I didn't! I—"

Slam went the doors. Frisk glared at one, then the other, and waited the count of five before she slowly pulled them shut.

#songfell whoo lemme at the next one

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ecoamerica · 23 days

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detectivedreameater · 4 years

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One For The Money|| Nell and Marley

TIMING: Earlier this week (during the living nightmares potw) PARTIES: @nelllraiser SUMMARY: A bounty gone wrong. Or maybe right? Alternate title: Manumbra Numba 5 CONTENT: Mild PTSD episode

There had been quite a few strange calls coming into the precinct in the past week, so taking a domestic disturbance call felt like a tiny relief in the tide. Marley didn’t normally deal with them, but Maynard had agreed to let Marley take the case on her own, which she was grateful for. She needed some time alone, away from the precinct, and away from Jane. As bad as she felt saying that, especially since they’d talked, she needed it. Things still didn’t feel quite right between them, and she knew that it was just all the things they didn’t have the energy to say right now. She was trying to give Jane time to process what had happened to her, but she also wanted her to come to her so that she could help. Marley had never really wanted something like that before, but dying couldn’t be something you went through alone. It just...couldn’t. She’d seen enough deaths and the pain they caused in her day to know that. But she wasn’t going to force anything out of Jane, so spending some solo time on the job was just what the doctor ordered. Or, well, what Marley ordered.

When she pulled up to the house, all the lights were off. Her car traveled slowly up the driveway, which was obscured only slightly by trees, a small dirt trail leading to the house. Her hands subconsciously gripped the steering wheel tighter and she felt her heart rate increase without her say. Why was it doing that? It was just a house. When she stopped her car, she could see distinct tracks leading inside-- muddy shoe prints and what looked like some sort of drag trail. She stepped out of her car carefully and picked up her flashlight, pointing it at the front door. “Hello?” she called out, walking towards the front slowly. Her palms were getting sweaty and her skin felt sticky suddenly. She couldn’t swallow. “P-police!” she called out again. Heard a thump from inside and stopped in her tracks. “Show yourself!”

With all the money she owed the hospital, Nell had been working overtime when it came to bounties, both supernatural and not. This was one of the latter, some regular Joe that had run out on bail, and was trying to avoid the law. Nell’s tracking spell had led her here to an abandoned house, and she’d wasted no time in flipping off the Karen who had threatened to call the police on her when she’d seen Nell poking around the eyesore of a home. If the police came it’d be easy enough to show them her license. Just a few steps into the house made for a pretty obvious picture. Her target had been squatting here, trying to law low before carrying on to wherever they’d gone next. Stomping a foot lightly against the ground, she uttered a spell that would tell her whether or not there was any living creature on the premises, and if her quarry was still holed up in this dump. Not one, but two results came back to her, the first closing in on her quickly. The question of who it was didn’t pose all that big of a mystery when a voice rang out through the dilapidated house. The police. Right on schedule. “I’m allowed to be here,” Nell started with a roll of her eyes, moving towards the voice. Poking her head out, her expression quickly changed to one of amusement, a crooked grin coming over her lips. “Well if it isn’t my old friend,” she teased, recognizing the woman who’d let her escape the police holding cell.

Something like relief flooded through Marley when she recognized the voice inside the hallway. Though her mind still held tight, her muscles relaxed and she lowered her weapon and flashlight. “You again,” she said to the small suspected spellcaster, putting her hands on her hips. “I half expected you to be climbing in a window the next time we met.” She stepped into the house, and the chill that ran up her spine made her freeze. She looked around the entryway and over to the living room, where there was evidence of a squatter. “You here for that?” she asked, pointing towards the mess of belongings. The hair on the back of her neck suddenly stood on end. A noise from upstairs made Marley’s muscles tighten. “Or...are you there for that?”

“Me again,” Nell replied with a shit-eating grin, all too ready to give the detective a hard time. “I could go back out and climb through the window if that’ll make you feel better,” she offered innocently, eyebrows high as she jabbed a thumb in the direction of the closest one. She’d parted her lips to answer Marley when the sound of the second being her spell had detected thumped from above. “I guess both now,” Nell replied, voice instinctively dropping to a hushed tone. “There’s something else here. I know that much for sure. And it’s not just some cat or rat.” A seriousness that hadn’t been on her when they’d first met came over the witch as she approached the stairs, figuring there was only one way to find out what the thing was, placing a foot on the first step as she slowly began to climb.

Marley crinkled her nose at the girl, but didn’t opt to reply as she watched the girl’s demeanour change almost on a dime. Whatever was here was serious, and she knew what it was. How, Marley wasn’t sure, but she had a hunch-- and she hoped her hunch would be confirmed here. Her body stiffened and she glanced towards the stairs. For a minute, her vision wobbled-- the hallway ahead of her stretched out, elongating, twisting, turning upside down. Marley held her breath for a moment, closing her eyes tightly. When she reopened them, the world was back to normal, and it was only after she’d glanced back over her shoulder towards the door that she realized why her heart felt like it was going to hammer itself through her sternum-- the lone car sitting in the partially obstructed driveway, the footprints leading up to an empty house, the darkened hallways. This house was the same as the one she’d gotten trapped in with Roland. Another thump from upstairs made her jump and she looked up to Nell, then to the stairs. “Wait!” she said, shuffling forward. Her arms were shaking. It wasn’t the same, she had to remind herself. This wasn’t the same. “I’ll go first.” Because she was the cop and the descending sun outside meant her abilities were kicking in.

It felt like the skin on Nell’s arm where her summoning sigil tattoos had been inked were itching, as if they could warn her of the danger that might be upstairs. That was ridiculous, though. There was no way they could possibly do that. Instead it was her own hyper vigilance that was causing them to prick, as if they were asking her to Summon something in case they’d be needed. But she waited, not about to bring three hellhounds into the world when there was no immediate need. The warping of the stairs and hallway was enough to make Nell’s shoulders stiffen, her magic instinctively pooling in her stomach should she need to call on it. Nevertheless, Nell was still perched on the stairs, beginning to ascend. After all, even if the home was turning into some sort of not so fun house, there was still something that didn’t belong here— and the only way to get to it was up. Marley’s call made her wait for no other reason than habit, and she looked skeptically at the detective, not all that keen on letting her go first. Plus, she simply wasn’t used to it. Nell always generally put herself at the forefront of danger. “It’s fine,” she rejected, also not liking the way Marley’s arms were quivering. “Don’t worry about it.” Then she continued her ascent until she reached the top landing, pausing cautiously for a moment. A moment was all the manumbra needed as it leapt from its ceiling perch, perfectly disguised until it was too late. Down it fell, straight onto Nell as it flattened her to the ground. Nell’s grunt of pain was quick to follow, an angry snarl coming from her not a second later as she twisted, grabbing for one of her hidden knives and jabbing it into the demon’s side. A fucking manumbra. Of course it was a fucking manumbra.

Marley’s heart hiccuped, then froze. Everything was so familiar. Everything was the same. Roland’s face flashed through Marley’s mind and for a minute, she considered turning and running. But the door closed loudly behind her and the creature dropped from the ceiling, pinning Nell beneath it, and Marley felt the same pull inside of her as she had when Roland had yelled at her to leave. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t leave someone behind. Not Roland, and definitely not this annoying kid who kept calling her old and breaking out of her jail cell. Marley took the stairs two at a time, her arms shaking, and pulled out the switchblade she kept on herself. There was too much error margin using a gun, so this would have to do. She stabbed it into the creature, hoping to distract it enough for the girl to get away. “Run!” she said, lifting the knife to stab into the creature again. “Get out of here!”

The two stabs, one from each of the women, was enough to make the manumbra scramble for a moment, and more than enough for Nell to wrestle the thing off of her with a growl. “Piece of shit!” she yelled before processing what it was Marley was trying to tell her. Run? Like hell, she would run. The witch had never run from anything in her life, and she sure wasn’t going to start now. In the flash of an eye, Nell was raising her knife to herself this time, drawing a careful line down her patchwork scarred forearm. In the same moment, she struck a knee firmly against the demon’s chest, trying to drive it into the ground in an attempt to make it stay still so she could banish it. Gathering the ruby droplets on her left hand, she began to draw a binding circle around the manumbra as quickly as she could, careful not to smudge the lines. “Help me hold it down!”

Why wasn’t Nell running? Marley could easily get out of this mess, but she couldn’t just leave someone behind. Not anymore. Before it would’ve been easy, but after she’d been locked in that house with Roland-- after they’d spent so much time in that place, alone, wondering if they were going to live or die-- after realizing she’d only survived because of him, she couldn’t leave him behind. She wouldn’t leave anyone behind ever again. “Dammit, Bambi!” she growled, stabbing the knife down. The creature made a loud noise and it rocketed up Marley’s spine, making her freeze. Suddenly, the hallway began to warp. The floor beneath her sank. And then the whole world flipped upside down. Marley went crashing to the floor-- ceiling?-- and felt her hand smack hard against wood, the knife falling from her grip. “Shit!” she shouted, rolling away just in time to watch the creature slam down where she’d just been. “We have to get out of here!” she said, scrambling across the ceiling towards Nell. “Quit messing around!”

Nell let out an annoyed growl as the manumbra escaped the circle she’d been working on, watching as it skittered around, trying to find an opening to pin it down once again. “Shit,” Nell cursed as she watched the detective fall...somewhere. She wasn’t entirely sure which way was up at this point. “I’m not messing around!” Nell yelled back. “I know what I’m doing if you’ll help me get it pinned!” Tracking the manumbra as it crawled along the ceiling-floor, Nell threw the knife from her hand towards the demon, a sense of satisfaction flooding her as it landed with a satisfying thud, and the creature made a pained noise. “I can bind it!”

The knife landed with a thud, but Marley knew better. “Bind it?” she shouted, looking over at Nell with bewildered eyes. “Are you serious? Just fucking kill it or run!” she called out, pulling for her gun finally as she came to a stop near Nell, kicking away at floorboards of the ceiling to try and distract the thing. Visions of her nightmares tried to flood her eyes-- dark hallways, closing in. Wood peeling like paint, floating around them. Hands gripping her throat, choking her. Marley shook her head, tried to refocus, but it wasn’t enough. She stumbled, grabbing her head. “Stop it!” she shouted at no one, “just stop it!” The creature took its chance, lunging. Marley remembered watching it drop hard onto Roland, remembered it trying to squeeze the life out of him-- she shoved Nell out of the way and felt it collide with her back, face hitting the floor-- ceiling?-- glasses falling from her face, snapping. It went to squeeze, she knew it was coming, and her body instantly changed itself, like an automatic muscle response. The creature slipped right through her and she pushed herself up, turning around to face it again, gun pointed. She fired into it several times, unloaded her entire clip. It screeched in pain, skittering backwards, away from them. The world shifted under them once again and the two were dumped back on the actual floor, near the stairs. Marley lay still for a moment, breath hard to come by, gun still aimed. “Where is it!?” she asked in a haze, “where’d it go?”

“Fine!” Nell yelled back, preferring to bind it, but willing to kill the demon if need be. “I’ll just kill it, then!” But it seemed the manumbra had other plans as it charged Marley. Called out to the cop as it looked like the manumbra would be aiming to end the woman. Instead of a squishing or squeezing, there was nothing. Absolutely nothing where Marley was, and the demon passed through her. “How did you-?” Nell began in surprise, not yet putting the pieces together of what were mara induced abilities. The world was moving too quickly to come to that conclusion at the moment. Finally, everything was still apart from the two women looking around in their frantic attempts to find the demon. Reflexively, Nell offered Marley a hand to help her up before once again performing the spell she’d done in the beginning of her house exploration. This time, the only signatures it returned were her’s and the detective’s. “It’s gone. It must have run. Are you alright?”

Marley looked up to the offered hand, almost immediately wanting to swat it away-- she was the cop, she was supposed to protect other people and offer her hand up to them after they were attacked. Rubbing her chin, she reached up and grabbed her offered hand after a moment, hauling herself up with some effort. Though she was physically unharmed-- she couldn’t be hurt that badly at night-- her body was still shaking and flooded with adrenaline and shock, shaking herself off. “I’m fine,” she muttered, wiping something off from her hand. “How did you know what it was? A-- what did you say? Man-something?” She wanted to get out of this house, but kept still, waiting for Nell’s response, before she realized she didn’t have glasses on her face. Hurriedly, she glanced around, only to find the broken in half on the floor where she’d landed. “Fuck…” she hissed, scooping them up. A piece of glass fell from one of the lenses. “Fuck.”

Despite Marley’s insistence that she was fine, Nell gave the woman a cursory once over, trying to see if there were any parts of the detective that was bleeding. However, it seemed that most of the wounds the manumbra had dealt were below the surface, as those were the kind it specialized in. “It’s a demon,” the witch began her explanation, figuring that was the best place to start. “And I...know demons.” There was no need to get into the specifics of it at the moment. Besides, what would she tell Marley? That her dead grandma left a journal behind that helped her figure out how to summon the creatures? “This one was a manumbra. They’re a bit rarer than their cousins. On a scale of demons, it’s not the worst. But it’s obviously...not great either when you’re its prey. The good news is that it doesn’t need any special rituals or anything to get rid of it. If you stab it enough or whatever- it’ll just die on its own.” Wordlessly, Nell took the glasses from Marley, waving a hand over them with a murmured spell to repair them back into one piece before handing them back to the woman. “We should probably get out of here for now.” Nell would have loved to stay and see if the demon returned, but she could tell that Marley wasn’t in the best of places at the moment.

“A demon?” Marley said, a bit breathless. God, she hated that. She groaned, pressing her palms into her face. “Great, perfect. So now I’m being stalked by a demon.” This was just what she needed right now, wasn’t it? Manumbra. She’d remember that name. She’d remember it and next time she found it, it wasn’t going to get away. She would kill it and burn the body and make sure it was dead for real this time. No more coming back or whatever the fuck it was doing. She looked up when Nell grabbed the glasses from her and waved her hand over them, fixing them almost instantly. “So I was right,” she mumbled when Nell handed them back, “you’re a spellcaster.” Marley only knew a few spellcaster-- they seemed just as secretive and hushed about their abilities as real supernaturals-- but she’d keep that to herself for now. “Thanks.” She glanced around, then back to Nell, before motioning for her to follow her down the stairs, weapon still drawn. They weren’t safe, after all, until they were out of this house. She was reminded that Nell was here for a bounty, but whoever it was, they were surely already dead. “Uh, sorry about your guy,” she muttered as they passed by his stuff, “maybe next time will be better.”

Once they were outside, Marley holstered her weapon and took a few long steps away from the building, looking back in. When she was sure they were safe, she turned back to Nell, quiet for a moment. “Thanks. Again. For--” nodded back at the house, but couldn’t finish the sentence. “Uh, you um-- stay safe out there, okay Bambi?” She dug through her pocket a moment before holding out her card. “I know you hate narcs and shit, but if you’re ever in trouble-- just call me. Promise I’m cooler than all the other narcs.” And then she slid her glasses back on and turned back to her cruiser. Next time, she’d finish this thing for good.

#chatzy #chatzy: nell #wickedswriting #one for the money #nell

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tripsonflatground · 4 years

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Is it just me, or is it kinda capitalist that in order to get new superheroes, people kill off or age up the old ones and then put the new heroes in the same role/identity? Like, they killed Peter Parker to have Miles Morales. Bucky Barnes and Falcon/Sam Wilson both became Captain America after the death or age & retirement of Steve Rogers, depending on whether you’re looking at the comics or the MCU. Batman goes through Robins and Batgirls like it’s going out of style (and seriously, why does Dick Grayson let other people be Robin? That was a personal nickname from his birth family, right? Why would he give something so intimate away?). Replacing someone else and living up to their legacy rather than making your own path was a whole plot point/theme in Spider-man: Far From Home!

There are exceptions to this, like X-23 and Wolverine, who have managed to have some form of a father-daughter relationship in the comics (although, if memory serves, I believe he’s been killed in recent comics and she replaced him as Wolverine - though I haven’t read anything recent, so I might be wrong, and in the film Logan they killed him off). And things like Conner/Superboy from Young Justice being created with the idea to replace Superman doesn’t count in the same way because it was a villainous plot and Con didn’t end up following through. And there’s a new Ms. Marvel now that Carol Danvers is Captain Marvel, which is a much better alternative considering that Carol wasn’t using that identity anymore.

The idea I’m trying to get at, if it isn’t clear, is that the costume identity, AKA Spider-man, Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, etc. seems to me the thing that’s given value while the person behind the mask is more recently being treated as expendable/dispensable. Which doesn’t make a ton of sense to me, because the person created the mask, and so much of themselves and who they are and what their goals are drove the reasons behind the creation of the identity and the way they behave in that identity. It’s like being a kid and trying on your parents’ clothes or getting hand-me-downs, even if it fits, you didn’t exactly choose it, and you look different wearing it. And I’m calling this capitalist because it feels like capitalism. If we equate being a superhero to a job, which in many ways it really is, especially if you are employed by an organization to do it like SHIELD, then the value is being placed on the role/job, and not with the labor. Capitalism doesn’t give a shit who’s doing the job and how they’re being treated as long as it’s getting done. Employees in the service/retail industry get treated like shit and don’t get paid enough but that will never change unless people have other options and aren’t desperate enough to accept those conditions and get something better. Recently, with the deaths and/or replacements of superheroes in order to have someone else fill the identity in comics and films, the individuals behind the mask, who are the real source of emotional connection and relatability, not the mask, seem to have become dispensable in the eyes of the creators.

And I do get that it’s a shortcut and an attempt to bring in new audiences by putting more modern characters into recognizable roles. But why does the original character have to *die*?

Yeah, superhero-ism is a dangerous occupation, sure, but doesn’t death seem like the most extreme option? It’s not as if there aren’t other possibilities:

1.Having characters be located somewhere else other than New York City or its fictional equivalent (Metropolis, Gotham, etc). There are other major cities in the US where crime happens, let alone other cities in the world. Los Angeles, Chicago, Minneapolis, Dallas, Detroit, Atlanta, Seattle, Philadelphia. Who doesn’t want to imagine a Spider-man or a Batman with a Boston accent? Wouldn’t it be a cool storyline if other Kryptonians not related to Superman escaped Krypton and eventually made it to Earth and moved to different cities and took up mantles and eventually the Kryptonian race could start rebuilding on Earth? Talk about a really interesting and positive way to show a diasporic community. And also, it doesn’t make any sense statistically that the majority of the world’s superheroes are in the US. Put some in Toronto, Paris, London, Cairo, Sydney, Tokyo, Beijing, Moscow, Rome, Athens, Rio, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Seoul, Istanbul, etc. If the Olympics happen there, then there’s probably a lot of people that need saving and crime happening. It’s especially dumb with the alien invasion stories where they show the audience aliens popping up in places other than NYC and suddenly the heroes have to get other there, like unless you got super-speed or teleportation, it’s going to take a while, and how are you even going to communicate with the civilians if there’s a language barrier?

2.Having characters be from other dimensions. Marvel and DC have a history of playing with alternate timelines and multi-verse theory. Into The Spiderverse was a super-popular movie that inspired tons of people to make their own Spidersonas, and the lesson that can be taken from it is that you can take a character and make it still feel unique or individualistic even if you’re using similar themes. Maybe instead of the dimensions having evil versions they have to fight or being fucked up in some other way, make the new version of Wonder Woman or Iron Man or whatever be from an alternate dimension and end up in the main because of science/magic, or a dimension-hopping villain they’re fighting, or an accident, or to get help from other versions of themselves, or even escaping from an apocalypse/doomsday from their own universe. It’s so easy to either send them back to their own universe when you decide you’re done playing with them or keep them around if you want them permanently. Wouldn’t it be fascinating if the Captain America we’re familiar with met a Captain America from an alternate universe where he fought in the American Revolution or for the Union in the Civil War or even in WW1 or Vietnam?

3.Having female characters take on feminine versions of the identity, or vice versa, or non-binary characters find a way to have a gender-neutral version. This has been done with Hulk and She-Hulk, Superman and Supergirl, Captain Marvel and Ms. Marvel back when Captain Marvel was a dude, Spider-man’s daughter May was Spider-girl at one point, Batman’s cousin or something is Batwoman. There’s also been some adjacents, such as AntMan and Wasp or Wolverine and X-23. There are definitely ways that you can use a familiar identity to put more female and non-binary superheroes out there. I mean, military titles (the Captains) or even names like Black Panther, Green Lantern, and Flash aren’t even gendered. You can feminize names if you want to, but I’m pretty sure the female Hawkeye is just straight-up Hawkeye. People like Thor I feel differently about because Thor’s an actual mythological character, not something Marvel came up with, but you could just use a different Norse god/goddess? And yeah, Dr. Strange is the man’s actual name so that’s also a little different, but if he had a daughter or a non-binary child who also got their doctorate, they are in fact entitled to call themselves Dr. Strange rather than something lesser. Not to mention, that whole alternate universe versions point I just made? Yeah, these can be characters from gender-bent alternate universes or a universe where humans are androgynous or something.

4.Have multiple characters use the same secret identity. This would be the perfect concept for twins or friends with the same build. The bank’s been robbed but A is on a date? B can totally show up at the scene! B got really hurt in their last fight? A’s got them covered. There’s a bit of risk to it, like if people recognize they have different voices or someone notices them at two different crises happening at the same time, but that’s just what makes the challenge of pretending to be the same person interesting. And it could get even more complex if you had triplets doing it, or four college roommates, or whatever. It’s also a great excuse to be able to write deep interpersonal relationships and identity struggles. Hell, can you imagine how much scarier multiple Batmans would be? They could play even more on the “you never know where he’s going to be next or what shadow he could be hiding in” thing, like, just when the crook thinks he’s lost Batman, another comes out out of nowhere.

And if superhero writers don’t want to do any of this, there’s also the C-List and D-List heroes that maybe got introduced in like the 70′s or 80′s or whatever but didn’t take or ended up being a blip in another character’s backstory. If you want more modern superheros connected to the major ones so you can use them in the same stories, it is totally valid IMO to try revitalizing these obscure concepts. I have a vested interest in seeing if Monica Rambeau shows up as her hero identity Photon in the Captain Marvel sequel. This idea is still using what you have, but it doesn’t capitalize the lives of the characters you have or make them expendable in any way. In fact, it’s also kind of like recycling, or the opposite of capitalism, because you’re trying to use alternative resources or all of your resources instead of very specific ones to the point of over-saturation.

Look, I’m just very tired of superheroes getting killed off to be replaced by someone else using the same identity or because it’s edgy or dark or whatever. Even a debilitating injury that leaves them in a wheelchair or blind or deaf is a hell of a lot more interesting. Once a character’s dead, they’re dead, there’s nowhere else you can take them unless you bring them back to life (which admittedly happens a lot in superhero universe) or have them hang around as a ghost or something. It’s boring, it doesn’t give the audience any closure and just messes with their emotions for shock value, and it promotes toxic capitalism.

#superheroes #marvel #dc #capitalism #killing characters #alternatives to killing characters

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the-blind-assassin-12 · 4 years

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Jigsaw // Black : Part Two

I Promise

A/N: Time’s up. Frank’s here. It’s all about to end. Will Billy be able to finish it on his terms and keep his promise to you?

Warning: gun violence, weapons, major character death

Word Count: 3,770

“You’re almost done, Billy.” He leaned back in his chair in the communications tent, eyes closed, just listening. The cushioned headset he wore drowned out most of the background noise, letting him focus more clearly on you. If he concentrated hard enough, he could pretend that the muffled voices of the men right outside were just your neighbors, arguing again. He could pretend that he was sitting across from you in your living room instead of across oceans and continents.“Less than three months now, then you’ll be-” He swallowed, squeezing his eyelids shut at the way your voice betrayed you, hitching before your muttered ‘fuck’. You took a breath to steady yourself but he could hear the tears behind it. Fuck, he repeated to himself. “Then you’ll be back home, Billy.”

The last time he’d been able to talk to you, it had been a video call. The screen froze and the audio lagged at certain points, but getting to see you- the way your eyebrows would jump and your eyes would grow round before your smile overtook your face, or the way you’d look down and shake your head before you broke into a laugh- getting to see you was more than worth the technical frustrations. But this time, a video call wasn’t an option. His unit had recently moved to a new location, and things weren’t entirely set up yet. He dragged a bruised hand down over his dirty face, palm curving around the overgrown beard covering his chin and jaw. Despite the fact that he wanted nothing more than to have you right there in front of him, to take you in his arms and feel you warm and real against him, he was glad that the network wasn’t set up yet, glad that you couldn’t see how drained and ragged he knew that he looked; he was glad that he couldn’t see how broken you sounded. The past few weeks had been tough on both of you. He was glad he didn’t have to see it on you.

“Yeah,” he forced the exhaustion down, like he’d been trained to do, replacing it with a stability that he didn’t feel. “Yeah, that’s right.”

“Like you promised,” you breathed, giving in to the tears.

Fuck that goddamn promise. On nights like this, when he could feel the odds tilting against him, he hated the fact that he’d given you hope where he had no business to do so. “Yeah,” he answered. “Yeah, like I promised.” I’m tryin’ like Hell.

A door opened and someone called his name. “Time’s up Russo.”

“RUSSO!” The harsh scrape and cold metallic clang of the warehouse door accompanied the wild roar of his name. Pupils dilating and attention snapping back to the present, he inhaled through his nose and silently rose to his feet, back to the wall. Why did I...why that… “RUSSO! Where are you?” Frank bellowed as the door slammed shut again. But Billy knew he’d be there, knew he was coming. What he didn’t understand was why he’d recalled that conversation. He’d talked to you a handful of times between that night and the night he’d sent the email that had ended things. So why… Why was his battered brain replaying that scene? Why now? “Bill! Goddamnit, Bill, I know you’re here. Where are you?” Time’s up.

Frank’s booming voice echoed in the steel and concrete space, his boots crunching over broken glass from the fallen panes. Billy inched his way around the corner, the brick wall to his back as he slunk in the shadows until he could peer over the edge of the broken window into the room below. He cocked his head to the side as, unseen, he watched Frank stride into view. In the past Frank had been beside him when he’d taken the high ground on an enemy. This was a different angle, one that made his stomach lurch. Shit. Suddenly, eyes trained on his former friend, he realized why that particular memory had come to him. Goddamnit it, Frankie.

“Russo, I feel like you’re someone I can depend on,” Rawlins spoke casually, even when the topic was anything but. Billy couldn’t stand the man, but he knew that he had endless resources at his fingertips, knew that he was the kind of man that could make things happen. “Am I right, soldier?”

Billy regarded the cocky little bastard, weighing his response. What’s in it for me? “Yessir,” he answered, thinking only about self preservation, thinking only about how to fulfill that damn promise to you.

“And Castle?” The man shifted his weight, beady little eyes on Billy. “Is he someone I can depend on? Or is he going to be a problem?”

“I trust Frank with my life, sir.” Billy answered without hesitation.

Rawlins smiled, taking a step towards Billy, shaking one finger. “That’s nice, soldier.” The way he said the word, employing all of the superiority that his rank allowed, made Billy cringe. “But that’s not the question I asked you.”

“No, sir,” Billy dished the emphasis right back. “Frank won’t be a problem.” We gotta get outta this, Frankie. You gotta trust me, brother.

“Alright then, Russo, you’re dismissed. Go take your turn in the comms tent. I’m sure you’ve got someone to call back home.”

It was still weeks before the fateful night that Billy tore Frank away from Rawlins’ twitching, bloody form. But it was the first night Billy knew that shit was going south, and that his only chance of coming out of it on top was to convince Frank follow his lead. We do what he says and we walk away from this. We go home, start that security team...He thought of you as he followed his feet to the communications tent. After a string of rough missions and a stretch of sleepless nights, all he wanted was to hear your voice. Frank goes home to his family. I go home to her.

That’s why…

That’s why he was standing where he was, scarred and carved out and hollow. That’s why Frank was downstairs, blinded by rage and fueled by vengeance. Damnit, Frank, why couldn’t you see it?

Billy watched as Frank turned, slowly pacing and scanning the dark room. With another bellow of Billy’s name, he finished his circle, facing Billy’s direction. Stark white against the jet black vest, the skull that haunted him for months seared through his memory, burning every single page as it flipped back to the night on the carousel. The night l lost her. He flinched away from the razor sharp memory of that last kiss as he begged you to leave the park, get far away from him. The night he took her from me. The razor zipped back through his brain to show him your lifeless body, the eerie blue lights reflecting off skin that was already growing cold as the ponies carried him away from you. He took everything from me. He watched Frank’s shoulders hunch and tense up as the man prepared to shout again. His heart thumped wildly in his chest, his blood pulsing behind his eyes. Time’s up.

“Right here, Frankie boy,” he sneered, stepping away from the wall. He had Madani’s gun pointed right at Frank’s head, and in less than half a second Frank had returned the favor, spinning on a dime to find Billy and line up a shot. Some things never change. “I’m right here.”

“You alone, Russo? Huh? Anyone else here?” Half of Frank’s face was obscured by his gun and his outstretched arms, but Billy recognized the flame in that man’s eyes. It was the same fire that burned in his own.

“Yeah,” Billy spat from behind his own weapon. “Yeah I’m alone. You made sure’a that, didn’t you, Frank?” You lost your family so you took mine away.

“Ah, c’mon, cut the shit, Bill, you can’t put this on me. You know you can’t.” He was slowly advancing towards the staircase, Billy moving along upper level as Frank moved below, like magnets pushing and pulling against one another.

Billy’s lungs heaved under his ribs, massive intakes of breath that made him fight dizziness. Can’t put it on you, Frank? Anger ripped through every cell in his body leaving his bones vibrating. “YOU. SHOT. HER!” His voice tore and frayed into threads as he squeezed the trigger of his gun. It was a poorly timed and badly aimed shot and he knew it. It was an emotional reaction and he cursed himself for it as the bang reverberated in the warehouse. Fuck! He told himself he wouldn’t waste the few bullets he had, and he’d blown one within the first minute. Frank had dodged the shot, reading Billy’s telegraph and rolling closer to the staircase. “Don’t, DON’T, tell me it’s not on you, YOU KILLED HER!” He kept his gun raised but refrained from shooting again until he knew he had his shot. Until he gets up here. Right up close.

Frank groaned, as though he was tired of the topic. “And why were we there that night, huh?” He slowly made his way up the rickety stairs. “Why did I kill her? Why is my family dead?” Billy’s nostrils flared as he tried to get his breathing back under control, gun still pointed at Frank as he backed further into the lofted area. “That doctor,” Fuck that doctor. “Madani,” Billy seethed as he tightened his grip on her gun. “Lotta bodies, Bill. Lotta Blood on your hands.”

Lotta blood on both our hands, Frankie, or did you forget that? “Yeah,” Billy scoffed. “Yeah. Just got one more to add.” Then I’m done.

Frank was only one step away from the top when he locked eyes with Billy and pulled the trigger, a gravelly yell coming from him as he did. Just like Frank had done, Billy was able to throw himself sideways and out of range, ducking behind one of the overturned file cabinets that he’d moved to take cover. Frank let two more shots rip, the bullets lodging in the thick metal, denting it with deadly force. Billy waited for the ringing to subside, until he could hear Frank’s footsteps again, before he moved. The bandage he’d wrapped around his arm after leaving Madani’s apartment had torn off as he landed behind the cabinet, cool air hitting the wound as warm blood seeped into his shirtsleeve. “You’re not gonna kill me, Bill! I’m not the one who dies!”

“You’re not gonna die today. Dyin’s easy.”

The garbled music of the carousel played like a soundtrack as Frank’s words echoed in his memory. “You had your chance to kill me. Now it’s my turn.” He slid along the cabinet as Frank circled around, firing two more shots into the space where Billy was just seconds ago. Getting the drop on him, Billy stood and quickly spun behind another shelving unit. “I’m a hard man to kill, Frank.” Especially now. I got nothin’ to lose. He aimed through a busted shelf as Frank gaped around the room looking for him. He fired at the exact moment that Frank moved, the bullet only grazing the man’s shoulder and giving away Billy’s location. Damnit.

With a grunt, Frank turned in Billy’s direction. “You’re right, Russo. You are a hard man to kill. I shoulda finished things that night, I shoulda,” he reached into his pocket and Billy’s eyes went wide. Oh, shit. “Not makin’ that mistake again, Bill.” He pulled the pin from the small metal orb in his hand, cocking his arm back.

From the shape of the grenade, Billy could tell it was just a flashbang, a non-lethal blast that was used for distraction or to flush an enemy out. The combustion alone wouldn’t usually be enough to kill anyone, but whether or not Frank was aware of it, the warehouse was full of old aerosol paint cans, and they, as they caught fire and exploded, could certainly be deadly. “No! Don’t!” He shouted as Frank released the grenade, but he was too late, the cannister tumbling towards him through the air as he dove as far as he could.

The flash ignited instantly, a brilliant burst of light followed by a loud crack as Billy flew through the air. Just as he knew would happen, the blast sparked a flame that spread in a matter of milliseconds to the pile of spent spray cans that had fallen from the shelf. Frank was blown backwards as Billy landed, cans exploding to send twisted bits of hot metal and plastic through the room. Searing heat and a deep, burning pain told Billy that he was still alive, and he blinked and coughed, scooting back against a damaged door frame. Finish it. Gotta...gotta finish it. He blinked again and again, trying to clear the brightness, your face flashing behind his eyelids every time. “Billy,” you reached for him like you had in his mind the night in the park. Hang on, he begged you. I’m comin’. A groan from the other side of the room and a shuffling sound told him that Frank had survived the blast, too. Just gotta finish this. Almost done.

Deafening bangs tore through the air as several more paint cans exploded, flames flaring as they burst, brilliant orange and raging red. Billy crouched with his back to one of the door frame as the cans turned to shrapnel and flew in all directions. As the shock of the explosion subsided, he found the source of that burning pain. He looked down at his right thigh, black jeans torn, blood and mangled skin visible through the tear. Shit. He knew he had to stop the bleeding, knew he didn’t have long if he couldn’t. He had eyes on Frank and saw that he was hit, too, clutching his left bicep near the crook of his elbow, and knew he had a minute to recover while Frank did the same. Hands shaking, he pressed his palms around the pointed piece of aluminum protruding from his leg. Wincing, Billy determined that it was too deep to simply pull out. He recalled the crash course in IED wound care that he’d taken years ago. If the shrapnel hits the femoral artery, apply pressure and call for a Med-Evac immediately. He removed his hands from the wound and blood spurted out around the edges of the jagged metal, hot and thick as it soaked his pant leg. He slowed his breathing as the rapid blood loss threatened dizziness, and focused on tearing the bottom hem of his shirt. It took more strength than he thought, but he tore the material and wrapped it tightly around the wound, surrounding the piece of metal to make sure it didn’t move.

His heart drummed loudly in his ears, like it was warning him that it was beating out it’s final rhythm. Not yet. Not...not until I finish this… He squeezed his eyes shut to try to focus, opening them again as he heard more movement from Frank. He’d secured his own wound, picked his gun back up, and Billy could see him staggering to his feet. Time to move. He tested out his injured leg, putting weight on it slowly until he was standing, too. Another shot caught him off guard as Frank took advantage of the fact that he’d found his feet first, ripping into his side, right next to the long, puffy scar that Frank had left him with the last time they’d done this dance. A burst of air left his lungs as he fell back into the wall and fired his own shot, the last bullet in the chamber finding its mark and tearing into Frank’s collarbone, right above the vest he wore. Both men slid back down, clutching their new wounds as blood spilled over their fingers. That drum beat in Billy’s chest changed tempo to tell him time was short. His breathing came shallow and rapid quick as color faded from his vision, everything turning a drab gray or a thick, heavy black. He choked as dark, hot blood dribbled from his lips and exhaustion filled every muscle, slowing his movements. Almost done.

“How’d we get here, Bill?” Frank groaned the question, and Billy could tell that he was in rough shape, too. “How’d...this...goddamnit, Russo, how’d we get here?”

“Could…” he coughed, spit and blood spraying from his mouth. “Could ask you the same...question, Frank. You…you did this. You…” He felt his voice break as the weight of everything he’d lost pressed down on the shell of his body. You. Him. The Castles. Everything. Tears stung at the corners of his eyes, burning from the smoke and from the way he felt you reaching out to him. “Remember the fires, Frankie? ‘Member… remember how they smelled? Rubber’n oil and…” he wrinkled his nose, the acrid memory filling his nostrils. “Shit like that… it’s burned in there, Frank.” He pressed the ball of his hand into his eye, palm and fingers curving around his brow. “And now she’s…” He winced, coughing and squeezing his eyes shut as tight as he could. “Now she’s there, Frank, she’s there,” with the fires, and the bombs, and, and the nightmares, and it’s not right.”

“You put her there, Bill...It’s your fault she’s there.” He choked the words out, absolute conviction filling what was left of his voice.

“No.” Billy clutched the top of his head with one hand as he shook it to clear Frank’s accusation. No. No, it’s not. “No, no! No, Frank, you did! You killed her like you killed your family.” He shouted across the vast space, voice cracking and breaking, throat raw from the hot, smoke-filled air.

“Bullshit!” Frank lobbed his response around the corner like another grenade, the absolute hatred in that one word raining more rubble down around the remains of what they once had. “They loved you, Bill. They- and you…” He paused, a breath leaving his lungs in the form of an anguished grunt. “My kids, my wife! They loved you like you were one of us, Bill.” I know they did, that’s why I… He doesn’t see it, he still doesn’t see... He pounded the cinderblock wall behind him with the side of his closed fist in frustration as Frank continued. “And you betrayed them. You killed my family and-” No.

“I tried to save your family, Frank!” Billy cut him off, spit flying from his lips as he screamed, fist slamming the wall twice more to open up small cuts on the meat of his hand.He didn’t feel it, numb to everything except the acidic sting of Frank’s inability to see. He took a shuddering breath, fighting harder and harder to fight the slow, creeping cold that was starting to shut him down. Why can’t he… “I tried to warn you. I tried to...but you didn’t...you didn’t listen, Frank, you never...listened! That transfer? You should have… god damnit, Frank, why didn’t you take that fucking transfer?” She’d be alive. Your family would be alive, we’d all be… The room spun, vision taking longer and longer to come back after each blink, coming through darker and darker. He’s not gonna...I can’t make him see. I can’t. He shoved his hand in his pocket, fingers wrapping around the blade handle, knuckles brushing over the photo. Gotta finish it.

Frank continued his protests as Billy harnessed as much strength as he could, refusing to fail as he forced himself to his feet. He saw you in that blue dress that you wore in his conjured vision from the ball. Another can burst somewhere to his left as he took a step. You stretched your arms out wide in front of Alice and her bronze companions, thick blue scarf wrapped around your neck. A shattered pane of glass fell from the window that looked out over the bottom floor, and there you were, next to him on that carousel, begging him to hold on. Another step. Another flash. “X Marks the spot, Billy” He pulled the knife from his pocket. “Like you promised.” Frank let the last of his bullets fly, grazing Billy’s shoulder. “I love you, Billy”. He kept moving, kept coming, kept going, and Frank couldn’t get out of his path.

His knee hit the ground, his whole weight behind the drop, letting gravity help him as he caught the back of Frank’s skull with his free hand, driving his knife through his throat until his knuckles touched flesh and his forehead fell against Frank’s. “Dyin’s easy.” He heard the words again and watched how true they were as the man he once called brother spasmed and fell silent, his blood coating Billy’s fingers, his weight heavy in his arms. It’s over, Frank. It’s done. Billy set his body down, a new level of emptiness scraping at his battered heart. It’s done. I’m done. He closed his eyes as the fires swept through the building, but you were there, and you were calling him, and he couldn’t let go until he found you. Opening his eyes, he gasped and gulped for air as his fingers relaxed their grip on the blood soaked blade that he held, diving into his pocket to find the bent, glossy print instead. A sob fell from his lips as his eyes landed on your face and he whispered your name.

He kept his eyes on the photo until they burned from the smoke, until they blurred and filled with tears. He wiped them roughly away with his sleeve before squinting back at the image for another few seconds. “I want a picture of us. Here.” Your voice filled his ears, replacing the roar of the flames and the pop of the bursting cans, taking him out of the warehouse and back to the park. “I… you’re leaving, Billy. In a few days and…” He slid his thumb up over to cover his own face, as he’d done the first time he’d been handed the photo. “And I want a picture, before you go.” But this time when he slid it back down, a smear of blood kept his likeness covered, leaving only you, smiling up at the faceless man. “Okay?”

“Okay.” He looked over at Frank, at the flames and the broken glass and he knew this wasn’t where he was supposed to be. “Okay,” he moaned weakly, tears falling and lungs heaving as he dragged himself to his feet again. “Okay, I’m comin’...I promise.”

@something-tofightfor @its-my-little-dumpster-fire @suchatinyinfinity @gollyderek @thesumofmychoices @obscurilicious @traeumerinwitzhelden @jigsawlover10 @getlostinyourparadise @breanime @nananananananananananabatman @lexxierave @songforhema @fireeyes-on-teller-dixon-grimes @lysawayne @roses-in-your-country-house @ymariejp @belladonnarey @audreychaz @songtoyou @stories-you-wont-hear @luminex3 @ificouldhelpyouforget

#jigsaw #jigsaw // black #billy russo #billy russo x you #billy russo x reader #frank castle #the punisher #the punisher au #i hate everything

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