#like no he wont say outright that he likes maps and hanging out with her

[slightly-depressed-sloth]

Little fandom vent; sometimes I get annoyed at the way fandom reduces Damian down to stabby child who only cares about himself and does murder. Like yeah while I get fandom almost always reduces characters down to their funniest or snappiest traits Damian's just doesn't make sense.

Like his whole character is about how much he DOESNT want to be those things.

Damian cares so so so much about other people he just struggles to express it bc it takes a lot for him to trust someone enough to believe they're not going to pull the rug out from under him or betray him somehow. If he didn't care about other people he wouldn't have spent months trying to find Martha's pearls in the sewer, risking his life bc there was a bounty on his head at this point and further ruining his image with Bruce (who thought Damian was just sneaking off and putting himself in danger). He wouldn't have denounced the league and everything he knew to protect a man he'd met less than a year ago. He wouldn't have purposely failed a timed test as Robin to get across the city as fast as possible (a test that would've allowed him to go out alone as Robin and given him more independence one of things Damian values very highly) instead he went over the allowed time by more than 10 hours BC he helped old women with their shopping and walked women home after they were robbed and he sat with a man he saw crying in his apartment for more than 2 hours just having tea with him. I could go on and on about all the genuinely kind things he does bc Damian's empathy and kindness is one of his defining traits actually.

And yeah he used to kill people and he was more prone to violence than the other Robins but he was literally raised in an environment where his worth and by proxy his survival was tied to how well he did murder. I'm pretty sure if you raised any child in an environment where since they were born they were rewarded for killing and violence but punished for showing mercy and told them that it's for the greater good, that they're special and that there's nothing wrong with killing if the ends justify the means they'd end up the same.

Not to mention Damian fights so hard to not be violent bc he doesn't want to be, the people Damian admires most in the world (Dick and Jon) both based their entire personality around Superman (also it's confirmed Supes is his fav justice Leaguer in supersons). Damian wants to be like them so bad and wants to be kind and outgoing and as pacifist as you can get as a vigilante. Damian struggles so much to be that person but it's not as easy as just stopping when you've been conditioned your whole life that killing is the right move and that your worth as a person and the love of those around is dependent on you doing it. He literally keeps a sketch book where he just draws out all the intrusive violent thoughts he gets while fighting villains to get the anger and compulsion out so that he DOESN'T do those things. And Damian feels immensely guilty about all of his past murders which is shown over and over. When he kills no-body (an action he did to protect Bruce) he asks Bruce afterwards how he's supposed to make amends, how he's supposed to live with it.

Which leads me onto the other thing (and hopefully the last cause wow this is getting long) even Damian at his absolute worst only performs extreme violence out of either self defense or logic to him. He doesn't do it out of maliciousness (or at least that isn't the motivating factor). His worst actions were probably in his introduction where he 1) He accosted Alfred and stole the key to exit the batcave 2) Decapitated a villian 3) Attacked Tim

So let's get background on these events from Damian's pov. Damian has never been told who his father is and has to duel his mother every year on his birthday for the chance to find out. And then on his 10th birthday he wins and then that same night he's taken on a plane to go live with this man who he's told about on the plane ride over, then his first impression of him is Bruce fighting a bunch of manbats. His mother says she's leaving him with him indefinitely not telling him when she'll be back. And then this man who he only found out about hours beforehand takes him on another plane to a foreign country where he knows no-one and he finds out his father has other children as well. He's then locked in a small room adjoining a fucking cave full of weapons and told virtually nothing with no-one really talking to him except for them telling him that oh yeah everyone you know and trust is evil and your whole world view is wrong. And then when he yells at Bruce and has what's honestly best described as a temper tantrum (BC oh yeah he was literally 9 years old until a couple hours ago) Bruce in a bid to try and control his anger (since he's not sure how dangerous he is yet) uses league tactics on Damian telling him that he's dishonouring those who taught him. So the literal child whose spent his 10th birthday being flown around the globe to be a dumped in a foreign country with a man he's never met and only knows is a good fighter with a family consisting of an unknown amount of other allies who are similarly trained and then was locked in a room after being told his whole life is a lie might be forgiven for latching onto the only familiar thing here and going 'oh! Now I know how this works'

With the knowledge that Damian definitely decided from this conversation that the bats operate the same as the league it's pretty clear his reasoning is

1) Accosting Alfred and and stealing the key - a) I don't think you'd wanna be locked in a space by a bunch of strangers either no matter how nice the space is b) he probably assumed it was a challenge to see whether he was able to break out and a way they were testing his worth/ability

2) Decapitated a villian - once again assuming this is a test and trying to prove his worth/help his father in the mission to stop crime he was just told about

3) attacked Tim - a) Damian assumes that since Tim is home that he must be the current favourite and it's already known that in the league the way you replace someone is by killing them thus proving you were better than them. B) in the league if you were not the favourite/the best you were disposable c) the only way Damian knows how to earn/receive love is by performing violence, it's pretty reasonable that a 10 year old would try to go above and beyond to earn their new father's love (especially for a child like Damian whose always looking for that unconditional love he's been denied)

From Damian's perspective here he's being the best son anyone could want, he's doing the most past the point he'd be expected to and only being met with anger and disgust. Not to mention that from his view he's literally ensuring his safety since once again in the league Damian was one of the only people whose safety was ensured by proxy of him being the heir/favourite, we literally see them kill other leaguers as part of training.

Like this isn't to excuse what he did or say it's right but it is to point out that it WAS right from Damian's point of view and that he doesn't do what he does out of malice or blood thirst he's just a small child who quite literally didn't know any better.

(also him being mean is similarly a self defense thing, it's fairly common in abused kids. It's the logic of you can't hurt me if I hurt you first/you can't hurt me if I don't let you get close enough)

#damian wayne #honestly i feel like most ppl have only ever read his introduction and it shows #so while we're here read his run with Dick's batman and also born to kill #also supersons and gotham academy bc omg wholesome #batfamily #batfam #fandom #fandom analysis #meta #slightlyslothspeaks #dc #dc robin #damian al ghul #tbh too damians canon personality is already pique comedy without just making him a murder baby #boy is literally just a tsundere #like no he wont say outright that he likes maps and hanging out with her #but he will set up an entire scavenger hunt and detective game AS ROBIN to gift her a first edition D&D book #i think what im trying to say here is just that Damian's main love language is gift giving and acts of service

[greenninjagal-blog]

Let Me Hear You Scream pt2

Ready for more spooky vibes? If you missed the first part you can find it [here!]

Summary: Upon waking up in a forest he doesn't recognize, Roman vs a Bear Trap goes almost exactly how you would think it goes.

Words: 6374

TW: Bear traps, blood, violence,

Read on Ao3 || My General Writing Masterlist

Roman has always had an unusually high pain tolerance. He had to, being twin brothers with Remus and all that. The sheer amount of danger the two of them got into as kids delegated that if he was anything less than completely indestructible, he’d be dead the next time Remus started a conversation with “I bet you won’t…”

He remembers that summer when Remus dared him to ride his bike down the concrete stairs, and he remembers how the wheels pitched him forward and his helmet cracked on the sidewalk, his knee skidded on the concrete, and his arm went snap with pain so white hot that Roman actually thought that the whole thing had popped right off his body entirely.

He remembers lying on the ground so shocked that he couldn’t even breathe, much less cry, and he remembers Remus laughing in the background, “I didn’t think you were going to actually do it! Oh shit, Ro? Roman! ROMAN!”

He remembers it so clearly.

“REMUS!” Roman shrieks into the forest, with tears rolling down his cheeks. “THIS ISN’T FUNNY, YOU FUCKER!”

His ankle burns. He can’t feel his toes, he can’t feel his ankle, he can’t feel anything, but there’s blood all over his hands and he can’t look down in case he faints.

His hands are trembling as they blindly work over whatever the fuck he stepped on. He can feel the slushie that he last ate, swirling in his stomach, boiling and bubbling until he feels it corroding his back molars. His fingers fumble around the… the metal teeth, oh god he’s going to vomit. His ankle screams in pain when his fingers prod too close to his actual limb. His ears echo with the painful awful SNAP of the jaw mechanism like its seared right into his soul.

“Remus,” He sobs, “I’m going to fucking kill you--”

Because there was a line here; Yeah, Remus dared him into a prank war with one of his stupid “I bet you wont, you prissy goody two shoes…” and Roman poured glitter into Remus’s laundry once, then Remus replaced Roman’s toothpaste with mayo, then Roman put white hair dye in Remus’s shampoo, and Remus swore he would get some type of revenge, even though he loved that look so much that he kept a stupid white streak in his hair. At least Roman thought he did-- He did, right?

Remus wasn’t the type to keep it to himself if he was upset. Neither of them were: Roman had perfected the art of loud sighs and dramatic monologues into a microphone and Remus had set things on fire to make people pay attention.

He didn’t-- wouldn’t--

He wouldn’t drag Roman into the middle of nowhere and make him walk into a bear trap for hair dye that would come out in another few weeks.

((Wouldn’t he?))

Everyone said Remus was insane, through whispered rumors and gossip that dissipated the moment that Roman walked into the room. Roman hadn’t ever seen the insanity himself; he grew up with Remus chasing squirrels in the park and diving into dumpsters for cool treasures and it was normal. Remus had always found humor in strange and weird things and as they had grown up those things had become less real and more abstract and Roman still didn’t think it meant that Remus would do this.

The forest is dense around him, stupid, dark; Roman isn’t sure he could recognize it even if he had a map in front of him, but then again Remus was always the more environmentally aware person of the two of them. He doesn’t know where Remus went the fuck off to either-- he’s brain is fuzzy at everything more than a few seconds ago when he blinked opened his eyes and took one step forward into a metal death trap, but he… he thought Remus had been right beside him, so close that… that…. His head is singing with pain and the backs of his eyes are melting.

“Hey!” A voice calls out and Roman flinches so hard that the metal spikes dig into his ankle and his scream strangles him.

Roman blinks back his tears just in time to see a figure stumble right out the thickets nearby, with the grace of a new born fucking dear. Roman swears in every language he knows and then some he doesn’t as the person scrambles back to their feet and zeroes in on him with an expression that Roman usually associates with the memory of his science teacher right before she demonstrated how to break a frog's ribcage for their dissection.

“No,” Roman says, “No, back off--”

He tries to scoot back and agony shoots up his leg so bright and violent that his vision whites out.

“Don’t move,” the person says, holding up their palms up suddenly to show they were unarmed or something. Roman isn’t sure what that’s supposed to do when he knows that Remus himself has never needed a weapon to be a lunatic. “I’m going to try to help.”

“Do not fucking come near me,” Roman snarls. “Who are you? One of Remus’s fucking little friends--”

“I assure you I don’t know a Remus, but you are in pain and believe I am qualified to help.”

“Fuck off!”

Roman swears that the pain is getting to his head, meddling with his thoughts like alcohol except not fun and Roman would not suggest anyone repeat this experience. The stranger-- Remus’s friend or whatever-- is staring at him with a patient impatience: like his mother waiting for him to finish his story before she runs off to answer a call on her work phone. They’re older than Roman, by a year or two, with sharp cheekbones and back framed glasses of a stereotypical nerd but a height that makes it hard to even imagine anyone looking down on them. Their eyes are colder than ice, and frost wafts off their breath. They’ve got a sweater vest on, with a tie, and converse dotted with glow in the dark paint in the shape of space nebulas.

Between his teary eye lashes Roman thinks that this guy looks incredibly tame for someone who associates with Remus and he fights the urge to vomit.

Is his leg supposed to be feeling cold?

Oh god, was he going to lose his foot? His breath swells up in his lungs, like a balloon pressing against his ribs. He wouldn’t be able to walk without a foot-- He wouldn’t be able to move or leave these woods or get help-- Remus and his psycho friends could easily cut up the rest of his body and let the wolves get him and then at school when someone would ask what happened to that dumbass who used to make dumb jokes on air during the football games, everyone will be like “Who?” and “didn’t Remus used to have an annoying twin? What happened to that guy?” and no one will ever find him because no one would car--

“Please,” The Doctor Who-ever says, in a faux calm tone as Roman nearly swallows his tongue. “I have medical knowledge, and you are clearly in distress.”

Agony races up his leg and Roman whimpers again. He swears he can hear the sound of metal grinding against his ankle bones, biting in deep and forcing the marrow to crack and shatter and explode until it's just a bunch of broken glass-like fragments under his skin. His head feels light and he frantically breathes deeply because he is not going to pass out, he is not going to make it that eas--

He’s cut off by a sudden crashing from behind behind himself: snapping of branches like a wild animal is tearing through them, the crunch of dead leaves steadily getting louder and heavy and deadlier, the swearing that are all tell-tale sounds of Remus crashing directly into someone and both of them eating the dirt as they barrel through the thickets and roll to a stop a few feet away.

Nerdicus jerks back like they were expecting anything less of Remus’s spectacular grand entrance.

Roman bites down on his tongue to stop himself from outright whimpering. Remus, his twin, his mirror image, rolls back to a sitting position like a possessed doll coming to life, untangling his limbs from another crumpled, groaning form that must be some other friend of his, and snapping them back in place because what are limbs to a maniac like him? The setting sun paints him in an eerie light and Roman’s skin itches with equal parts rage and terror at him, for dragging them out there, for putting out bear traps, for doing all this as pay back for a stupid little prank in a prank war he fucking started--

Remus’s laughter is obnoxious as always and Roman tries not to flinch at the sound of it alone, holding back a white wash of fear with just his force of will.

His other friend is another person that Roman hasn’t seen before-- not that he spends a lot of time getting to know the faces of the delinquents that his brother hangs out with. They’ve got on black jeans and a black T-shirt with one of those reversible sequin designs in the shape of a skull. Their blond hair dances in the last dregs of the evening, even as they pull a leaf from their bangs and yanks their dirty yellow beanie back over their head.

“Holy shit!” Remus says, spitting out dirt from his mouth. “Is that a bear trap?”

“Remus!” Roman whimpers with a tight throat. “This isn’t funny!”

“Au contraire! I left you alone for like five seconds and now you’re in a bear trap!” There’s a glint in Remus’s eyes and Roman recognizes it from those times when Remus climbed too high in the trees back at home, when he stared at a growing flame of a match too long, when he reached across the console and yanked on the steering wheel, screaming Roman’s name--

Roman brain pulses to the point where he can feel it knock against his skull and that hurts almost as much as ankle and he swears he sees stars on the backs of his eyelids and he does not want those to be the last stars he ever sees.

Remus swoops towards him and Roman flinches back, nearly screaming when his leg jostles.

“Chill out, Prince Charmless,” his twin says, rolling his eyes. “I’m gonna get it off. What’s your range of movement?”

“Do not come any closer to me, you asshole!”

“You can’t get that thing off yourself,” Remus says.

“And whose fault is that?” Roman snaps.

Remus freezes, tilting his head slightly to the side. His rat's nest of hair creates an unearthly silhouette as he looks down at Roman, something straight out his Halloween horror films, and Roman bares his teeth in warning. He’s not thinking about how Remus’s foot can stomp down on his injured, trapped leg, he’s not thinking about how there’s no one around for miles, he’s not thinking about how there’s nothing and no one to stop him from straight out fratricide--

“Why am I suddenly getting the feeling you think I know what the flying fuck is going on here?” Remus asks.

“Don’t you?”

“No!” Remus says, delightedly, happily, cheerfully and his voice makes some distant bird caw. “I thought you snapped and took me to the woods to kill me yourself! This is much more boring now that I know I haven’t managed to break your last shreds of sanity.”

“Why would I--”

“This is ridiculous,” Glasses McGee cuts in sharply, adjusting said glasses with their index finger. “We need to remove your foot from that trap now.” They look at Remus and the other person. “Are either of you knowledgeable about the mechanics of bear traps?”

Remus throws two thumbs up, and Roman remembers vaguely a rant from a year or two ago about unethical bear hunting and steel jaw traps and how animals would step in and then lay there for days suffering as their mangled limb held them captive regardless of them trying to chew it off for freedom and oh god he’s going to be sick--

“Roman,” Remus says somewhere beyond the screaming in his head. “Oh shit.” It sounds like he’s far away and distant, or maybe underwater and Roman is drowning. He can’t seem to breathe anymore, like the teeth biting into his ankles had wrapped around his chest and was slowly crushing him.

People are moving around him, faint voices talking and then suddenly burning blinding white hot pain that shoots all the way up to the back of his eyes.

He screams and bites down only to find there’s something in his mouth-- fibers and the unmistakable taste of wool and Roman nearly gags on it. He blinks back the foggy pain and finds that he’s leaning on Remus and Webster Dick-tionary is pressing a multicolored sweatshirt to his leg delicately with the bear trap fully closed a few feet away, tethered to the ground with a heavy metal chain coated in a red paint that makes Roman’s vision sway all over again. The slushie claws back up his throat and he gags.

There’s someone new standing just behind the nerd: a very pretty person in a pretty skirt and headphones with cat ears on them around his neck. The splash of freckles and the round glasses makes them look a bit younger than the rest of them, but that could also be Roman’s brain twisting things around the moment that they wince in sympathy as the nerd prods part of his ankle.

They’re magnificent, Roman decides with a dizzying certainty. They’re the sun in the middle of this dark and dreadful forest, the stars in the night sky, the lighthouse in the storm guiding Roman back from complete devastation with just those shiny eyes behind cracked lens.

The other person, the one in the black skull shirt, Sid from Toy Story come to life, is standing just behind him and Remus, looking on distastefully from a good distance away. It takes Roman a moment to realize he’s biting down on the guy’s beanie, and gross. He spits it out at the same time as the nerd presses too close to where the trap had caught him.

“Son of a Witch!” He hisses. “A dragon witch, a fucking---”

“Oh, boo,” Remus says. “He’s alive.”

“He was not in any immediate danger of dying,” Space Case says firmly. “And isn’t he your brother?”

“Looks like someone is an only child,” Remus says. The person in black reaches out and snatches back his beanie, his entire face curling into some disgusted expression as they hold the part with Roman’s saliva away from themself.

“Wonderful,” they say in deadpan and stuff the beanie in their back pocket.

Roman blinks, struggling to sit up by himself. He scrubs his face trying to get rid of his tears, and buries that boiling humiliation being the center of attention like this. Of course, he has to be grievously injured for anyone to care about him, for anyone to take a moment to look at him, for anything--

Remus lets him go, stretching up and yawning like nothing about this is weird or strange or scary to him.

Part of Roman is reassured by that. Like, of course Remus isn’t terrified out of his mind; what is there to be scared of when he’s the most terrifying thing in a 100 mile radius? When he handcuffed himself to the doors of the city history museum to protest its demolishment even though the wrecking ball was right there, when he wore a mini skirt to school to protest the dress code even though he’d been beat up for less before, when he marched into the Governor’s office when he was refused a meeting about the rescinding of the pollution standards in the the county and laughed in the face of the armed guards that told him to leave.

Remus had an endless supply of guts and determination and Roman had wished for so long that his reckless bravery could be contained, controlled and banished, but now it kinda felt like Remus slipping a familiar jacket over Roman’s shoulders and telling him to relax.

Google.com-- Roman is seriously running out of names for them-- leans in and tears the new holes in Roman’s jeans further-- Roman grimaces at the thought of having to buy another pair to make up for this, but the nerd expertly uses the excess fabric to tie up his wound with a professional precision.

“Alright, Doc Oct,” Remus says while they work. “What is the diagnosis? Amputation? Do I need a body bag?”

“I just said that he was not in danger of dying,” they say, finishing the knot which only causes Roman to grunt a little bit. “And my name is Logan, if you must know. I am not a full medical doctor by any means, but I believe that he will recover fully; the trap broke skin and there will likely be a nasty amount of bruising deep in the muscle tissue, but he will recover in a few weeks of rest. It will probably be best to keep weight off your foot as much as possible.”

“See, drama queen?” Remus says to Roman, shoving his shoulder. “You’re fine.”

Roman gives him double middle fingers for his trouble and tries not to shake too hard with relief. He stares down at his leg, forcing a steady breath through his lungs and out his nose, and wonders with a dizzying amazement how his leg was not only in one piece but recoverable, after all the pain. He isn’t sure that it’s not just the placebo effect of someone saying that everything’s going to be okay, but he wiggles his toes and swears that the pain only wracks his limb moderately this time.

Even closed, the bear trap looked menacingly at them: Roman’s blood on the jaws that were curled into a ghoulish grin, just waiting for someone to get close enough to open and bite down on. He’s not sure how Remus and the Doctor Doolittle-- Logan-- managed to get it off him.

Logan turns and offers the sweater to the person in the skirt. “Ah, sorry, I’m afraid the blood has…”

Roman sucks in another breath at the sight of it: the bright splotchy blobs of red that bled through the pastel tye dye design that would likely never come out and eternally remain a reminder of how Roman put his foot directly in a bear trap like an idiot-- What would he have done if there was no one around? Died? His own stupidity had ruined such a nice piece of clothing and--

“It’s okay!” The angel says with a somewhat cartoonish voice. Roman blinks in surprise at the sweetness of it, tasting sugar even as the words hold over the air. He swears he can envision their I’s dotted with hearts; a soft and kind tone despite the fact that Roman had ruined their sweater. “I’m much more relieved he’s going to be okay!”

“Let’s not get too excited,” Doctor Doom says, causing Roman to stiffen and Remus to glance back curiously towards them. They’re turned away from the rest of the mismatched, miscellaneous group, looking into the trees with a gaze that makes Roman’s stomach roll over and not in any way that is even remotely good.

“What?”

They glance back at them with an expression something that Roman can only call shifty. Like a snake before it strikes, they’re poised on the balls of their feet, coiled with the power to move at a seconds decision. Untrustable, Undependable, Unkind-- and Roman squares his shoulders just to prove to himself that there isn’t actually a dagger point about to plunge into his back.

The person’s voice is silky smooth, but Roman can’t find it in himself to be jealous when the meaning of the next words hit. “I don’t suppose any of you remember just exactly how we came to be here, do you?”

The woods echo with a strange emptiness, like the trees themselves are holding their breaths. The silence is eerie-- Roman’s never been a forest this quiet. He’s never been anywhere this quiet. The hairs on the back of his neck raise up.

Logan and the shining, shimmering, lovely vision share a look and the former shrugs, occupying their hands with tying their sweater around their waist.

“It’s fuzzy,” they admit, thoughtfully. “I was leaving my dorm...and then…” They grimace, which is downright awful to witness: Roman doesn't think anyone deserves to look so uncomfortable, and certainly not a beauty like them. “...then I was here.”

Logan makes a sour face like he managed to misplace a decimal twenty seven steps back in his math equations. “I was uncharacteristically late to class, but I seem to have some form of amnesia surrounding the hours since then as well; It was just past two.”

Dr. Facilier-turned-teenager turns to Roman, their eyes asking a question they already know the answer to. And part of Roman wants to snarl at them, tell them to knock it off with the creepy aura and better-than-you-expression, explain to them exactly how they ended up all here together because there’s a logical, causal explanation.

But Remus is already laughing. “Oh come on! We were…. What were we doing again?” Remus freezes for a moment, some of the smile leaving his face. “Ro? Where were we…?”

Remus is dressed in another one of his ripped T-shirts, the Save the Turtles one that he wore to that protest a few months ago and when he volunteered to clean up beaches for the weekend. His sleeves are ripped off to show off the endangered Tiger tattoo on his shoulder up to his neck, and his jeans are the recycled ones that he bought second hand and begged Roman to repair rather than buy a new pair and “give his money to the capitalists that are trying to kill us all”.

In comparison, Roman is wearing his letterman jacket, with his name engraved on it that he got for being the announcer for the football team three years in a row. He’s wearing his announcer uniform too-- his hair is styled and his colors are coordinated to the white and red of their school, but Remus never comes to the football games anymore.

Or well, he’s not allowed to come to the games anymore after he stole the tuba from the band players and charged into the field during the game back in their freshman year.

Still he-- remembers… he thinks he remembers... They were in the car together, Remus needed to go somewhere and Roman had to drop him off and then speed off to the game, right? Remus' feet were up on his dashboard, mud flaking off into his freshly cleaned car, his air fresheners weren’t working, they were fighting over the radio, Remus’s hand reached out, latching on to the wheel and a scream--

“Fuck,” Remus says, rubbing the side of his head like Roman had slapped him. “Did you crash our car out here?”

“Me?” Roman says, incredulously.

“Yeah!” Remus says. “Did you get brain damage in the crash too? Are your brains going to fall out? You were the one driving, dumbass.”

“You grabbed my steering wheel!”

Remus snorts. “What? No, I didn’t?”

“Yes you did!”

“No way!”

“Yes way!”

“I wouldn’t get anything out of--”

“Boys!” Skeletar says, clapping to get their attention. “Less arguing, more answering the question.”

Remus looks at Roman and Roman glares right back because he did not crash the car. Between the two of them Remus was more likely to crash a car-- proven from how he totaled their green Ford Fiesta nine months ago and now even around the pounding headache he can still remember the feeling of surprise as Remus’s sporadic movement jumbled through his own, the yank that caused him to lose control, the-- the--

He doesn’t remember what happened after that, but he knows that then Roman had opened his eyes out here, taken a step forward, and nearly lost his foot to a bear trap.

“This is getting us nowhere,” Logan says. “Even if perhaps you happened to have a car around here, that does not explain how the rest of us came to be here. And likely from the events that you are describing the car is not in functional condition-- although I’m unsure how your persons would have come out of such a thing without a few visible injuries…”

“I didn’t crash the car,” Roman says firmly.

“Oh, like you didn’t step into a bear trap?” Remus asks innocently antagonistically.

“Why are there bear traps out here anyway!” Roman hisses. “Isn’t bear hunting or whatever illeg--”

Roman almost doesn’t hear it: it starts so softly and then it raises in pitch and suddenly it's ringing in the air like cracks in the fragile glass silence. He feels his breath disappear right out of his chest, his body tensing and everyone jerks towards the direction the sound comes from, like they’re expecting to see something out there.

Roman remembers hearing people yell at Remus to get out of the way of the wrecking ball, remembers hearing the teachers snap at him to go change into his gym clothes, remembers the armed guard spitting on Remus’s face, his own shouts turning to something just above an animalistic growl when he told Remus to knock it off, you’re making me look bad.

And still he doesn’t remember hearing anything sound so horrified. So desperate. So despondent.

It is the noise that causes Roman to break out in goosebumps, electricity dancing along his skin causing all of his hairs to raise, and himself to find it suddenly very hard to swallow. Roman is scrambling back before he can remember that his foot should not be moving and he bumps into Logan as he does.

It cuts off short and disappears like someone took a pair of scissors to the sound itself, snipping the scream for help away before it reaches the end.

And Roman doesn’t think anyone is breathing anymore. His heart pounds in his chest, waiting for the rest of it.

The trees cast shadows so deep and dark that not even the moonlight will touch them. Somehow without Roman noticing, the temperature had dropped until the air feels like frostbite licking his exposed skin. Roman doesn’t dare move another inch-- doesn’t like the idea of what might happen if he reminds the rest of the world that time is still passing.

“I…” the person in the skull T-shirt says, in a very low, strangled tone. “I don’t think bears are what's being hunted.”

“No,” Roman says, “No.”

“Oh god, I’m gonna be sick,” the person in the skirt says.

“No!” Roman says, throwing out his arms before his thoughts can catch up. “This is not--”

“We need to leave,” Logan says, face pale. “Now.”

“I think I saw a gate,” Remus said, no hint of his unhinged grin. He thumbs the direction that he and Kaa came from. “I pulled the switch but it didn’t open. I thought about climbing but there are no holds and barbed wire around the top--”

“It’s likely lacking a power source then,” Logan says steadily calm and Roman feels like he’s losing his whole goddamned mind. “Let me take a look at--”

“We are not being hunted right now!” Roman blurts out.

The others stare at him for a solid, endless second and Roman’s stomach threatens to crawl up his throat. He waits for them to agree with him, waits for them to laugh and call it a joke, waits for Remus to tell him he’s so easy to scare, come on Ro, did you really think there was a murderer in these woods? This is grade school level effort!

Roman gets the feeling that he’s going to be waiting a very long time.

“Guys,” Roman says, slightly more wobbly than he means it to, slightly more softer than he means it to, slightly more terrified than he means it to. “We aren’t being hunted for sport, right?”

Because-- Because he’s seen horror movies. And he remembers once how Remus poured a bag of popcorn over his head and said that if they were ever in that situation, he’d leave Roman to rot, maybe even toss him to the killer himself, laugh as Roman screamed and begged and cried.

He doesn’t look at his foot. He doesn’t look at his foot and think about how he can’t run. He doesn't look at his foot and realize that they’re going to leave him behind and no one will ever know what happened to him and no one will care--

Remus is suddenly right in front of him, offering a hand right into Romans face. Roman blinks back the burning tears on his cheeks and looks at the limb with a trembling lip.

“Come on,” Remus says. “You’re a little bitch when you ruin your mascara, Ro.”

And Roman tries to articulate the billions of insults he has in his brain, but all that comes out is a whimper as Remus latches on to his wrist and pulls him to his feet. He stumbles the moment that he tries to put weight on his foot, flickers of pain echoing in his brain although it's not nearly as bad as he was expecting. Remus pulls Roman over his shoulder with his injured leg raised between them and all of his weight on Remus’s shoulders.

“I’m not leaving you behind, dumbass,” Remus says.

((Why wouldn’t he?))

“We need to help them,” the person in the skirt, the good and just and wonderful person in a skirt, says suddenly.

“I don’t think they need our help,” Hans Gruber-minus-the-German-accent says. “In fact, I don’t think they need anything, anymore.”

“How could you say that?!”

“Easily,” they respond, shortly.

The person in the skirt is shaking, Roman realizes. They’re shaking and hugging themself and they look slightly green in the face.

“I came from over there,” they say from behind trembling hands. “I-- I didn’t hear anyone else over there but they must have been there and I-- I can’t--”

“They’re dead,” Dr. Jerkyll says clinically, like a surgeon with a knife. “Us rushing towards that area is only going to get us attacked next. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to die, thank you very much.”

“We can’t leave them!” The other argues.

The person in the skull shirt steps towards the other and grabs their upper arm to spin them back to the direction the scream came from. Then with a derisive and terrible sneer, they shove. The cutie in the skirt stumbles forward, nearly face planting on the uneven ground.

“Then you go help them,” they say, with streaks of faint and awful moonlight painting them in a pale halo. They wave back to Logan, Remus and Roman, and Roman feels very much like he doesn’t want to be included in this group all of a sudden. “Don’t drag the rest of us into it.”

“Hey, don’t be a dick!” Roman says, stepping forward and hissing when he places a slight weight on his foot. “What if it were you out there?”

They scoff. “Me? I would never let myself get caught by a psycho murderer in the woods. But if I did, the last thing I would want is my valiant savior to come charging to my rescue and then get slaughtered right beside me like an idiot!”

“I’ll keep that in mind, you slimy snake,” Roman says.

“I bet you will, Hiccup,” they shoot back. “The gate is this way. Try not to step in another bear trap, won’t you?”

“Damn!” Remus says, “You’re a bitch! What’s your opinion on plastic in the sea?”

Roman slaps Remus’s arm and gives him a glare because really? Right now? They’re in the woods, someone just screamed and probably got murdered, they don’t know how to get out, Roman’s injured, and Remus is doing one of his weird flirting attempts.

Great.

The person in the skull shirt at least looks slightly thrown by the question, narrowing their eyes and shaking their head as they turn away as if they can brush off the rest of the group. “The sea turtles are dying.” They say blandly, without a hint of actual emotion. “Oh no. Next time I see one I will give my condolences about it’s mother.”

Remus’s mouth pops open for a retort that Roman knows is going to be bad, but before he can get the words out, there’s a loud sound of cracking branches from behind them. Remus drags Roman back from the area, planting himself in front of Roman like some kind of human shield and Roman wobbles, without anything to put his injured leg on.

“Jesus Christ!” A new voice screams, as they trip over a thicket and fall into the clearing.

They move like a blur; barely more than a shadow with the ungodly amount of black they’re wearing. Roman can make out a pale face, dark bangs and terrified eyes, before the scramble back in the ground leaving… leaving smears of deep red on the ground in front of them. Their flashlight goes flying off to Logan’s feet, but they don’t seem to care as much about that as moving away from whatever is behind them.

The air tastes like metal, like copper, and Roman swears the world sways under him. His heartbeat blares in his ears almost louder than the newcomer’s hysterical sobs.

There’s a thud. And another.

And the trees themselves seem to shake and draw from the shadow that takes form. It peels away from the others, massive, hulking and distorted in all the wrong ways: at some point it must have been human, Roman thinks hysterically. It has two legs and two arms and a torso and a head, but it's elongated towering over even Logan at his ridiculous height. Its skin is covered in soot and dirt, layers upon layers to the point where Roman almost thought that it was wearing some kind of leather armor. It has rubber overalls on, strapped...strapped to its body with metal hooks that catch the thin moonlight peeking out of its bulging bare shoulders in a way that looks…looks self mutilated. The patchy ugly skin is healed around the metal, molded to it, absorbing it. In one hand is a cleaver, cobbled together from various metals with an unfinished touch and dripping scarlet all the way down the handle to its massive hands. Roman thinks that with one hand it could easily crush one of their skulls.

But worse than that, than the blood, than the stench coming from the thing, than the bloodlust that's echoing out of it: worse than all that is the mask welded to its face. A pale white skin that nearly glows in the darkness, framed with jagged sharp edges of bladed teeth in a terror inducing smile. Soulless orbs exist where eyes might have once been: now there are empty voids without a human behind them.

In a slow, almost robotic motion, it raises the cleaver in its hand. Blood rolls down the handle onto it’s hand and Roman watches the bulb of red drip down into the grass right between the newcomer’s sneakers.

Oh, Roman thinks suddenly very clearly without any room for a single doubt, This is what death looks like.

“NO!” The person in the skirt screams and suddenly they shove forward and throw themselves in front of the swing of the cleaver. Roman isn’t sure who screams louder at that: him, the person in the skirt, or the person on the ground bleeding out.

His brain is on fire, every atom in him is screaming so loud that he can’t hear his thoughts. His own breath flees his lungs with abandon that Roman’s brain somehow hadn’t gotten because instead of running away he’s running towards the monster. His blood boils in his veins and he pushes through Remus with the sort of reckless abandonment of sanity he never would have thought he’d ever make.

His vision locks onto the kid on the ground and his fingers latch on their left shoulder and he hauls them back.

The air next to his ear whistles as the cleaver misses them by centimeters and the person in the skirt screams as they fall to the side, and specks of something wet and warm and sticky flings through the air like its a water fountain; Roman feels it splatter across his face and his brain heart thuds in his chest.

Remus appears on his other side, grabbing Roman’s hostage by their other arm and they both pull them to their feet, ignoring the way they scream in pain. Their torso drips ruby into the dead grass at their feet and Roman-- Roman--

The hulking monster in front of them gives his cleaver a shake and drags it over its own arm to wipe away the blood, like it's nothing more than a hindrance. It turns its entire body towards the person in the skirt, the gorgeous selfless angel of a person that Roman hasn’t gotten the name of-- of someone he isn't going to get the same of because the abomination raises the cleaver again.

Roman screams because he does not want to watch someone die, please he doesn’t want to be in this nightmare anymore, wake up wake up wakeup--

There’s a brilliant white light that explodes at the last second. Roman himself jerks away from it, but that’s nothing compared to the inhuman howl that the creature makes as it stumbles back to the edge of the forest, covering its beady eyes with its massive hands.

Logan flicks the flashlight off and grabs the person in the skirt by their uninjured arm and looks back at them only briefly with an air of finality.

“RUN!” He says.

And Roman does.

#dbd au #sanders sides #roman sanders #remus sanders #logan sanders #Janus sanders #patton sanders #virgil sanders #tw: violence #dead by daylight #Roman is incredibly unlucky #I ran out of nicknames #But heyyyy Virgil's alive! #isn't that great guys? :D #I am trying horror for the first time