#on a side note: work is complete and utter mayhem at the moment | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

artificialqueens · 4 years

Text

A Road to Somewhere, Chapter 2 (Adore Delaska) - Puppy

Chapter Summary: After being rescued by this mysterious spirit, Adore gets to know the world of the bathhouse a little more and meets some interesting characters along the way.

A/N: I’m glad I’ve got this done. Wow. Again, I would like to thank @chaoticnachokitten and @thackeryisatop for beta-ing yet again. You are both very insightful; and I love having the extra sets of eyes.

I’m not sure how frequent these updates are going to be since I’m still in uni at the moment, but I hope you all still enjoy.

Chapter 2

Translations for this chapter:

“Lo siento” - I’m sorry

In time, Adore found herself back at the bathhouse and tried not to throw up or get whiplash from how fast the two of them went. They had sped through alleyways, a brewery, and a few kitchens. She nearly retched seeing all of the raw meat that she passed, but she was allegedly a wanted woman. Why do something that would give her away so easily? She didn’t want to focus on that now. She was with a friend, and the bathhouse looked absolutely fantastic from where she was standing.

The bathhouse was practically glowing as the lights made way to revealing things she hadn’t noticed. She wondered if the train ever ran that late at night; would it startle the workers? A few frog-like spirits greeted guests who barely noticed that the two were even around. Adore recognized some of them from the riverboat. The woman opened the gate and the two of them made their way towards the bridge.

“You have to hold your breath when we get to the bridge. The tiniest breath can break the spell, then everyone will know you’re here. Sound good?” Adore nodded her head at the other girl’s request. “Great. Perfect.” They started walking and the redhead clung to her like a scared child. If she messed this up, who knows what would happen to her? Or her mom for that matter.

“I’m scared.” Adore confessed.

“It’ll be alright. Just… calm down.” In that moment, the blonde’s demeanor had changed. Adore felt her posture go stiffer and she walked faster as if there was somewhere important she needed to be. The two passed by one of the greeters. “I’m back from my mission.” She stated, refusing to make eye contact with the frog.

“Ah. Welcome. Welcome back, Madame Lask.”

That’s a strange name… Adore pondered on that as she took a deep breath, sealing it closed with her free hand over her mouth and nose. Then again, it wasn’t everyday that someone was named Adore, so she wasn’t quite one to talk. Lask and Adore crossed the threshold and the test began. It was a test of loyalty and of endurance, yet she was sure she only had one in her entire being.

Instead of overanalyzing the very breath she held, she decided to take note of the other travelers. Three large ducks waddled sometime behind them, standing out among the various other spirits. There was one that looked like a walking blanket fort that passed by, nearly knocking Adore off from her footing by the massive steps they took. The one in front of them looked like some sort of peddler with woven kitchenware dangling from its sides. However, the spirit to her left intrigued her the most.

A mostly translucent creature passed the two of them while keeping their gaze onto Adore specifically. Or were they staring at Lask? She did seem like an important figure in the bathhouse. Did she work there or was she some sort of manager based on her title? The only thing that she couldn’t see through was a mask the spirit wore. She couldn’t quite tell if it was a mask or if it was their face. In fact, the creature was completely shrouded in ambiguity. The more that creature stared at her, the more she longed to breathe.

“We’re almost there. You got it, kid.” Lask whispered. They were just about to reach the end of the bridge as Lask and Adore were being stopped by another spirit. She seemed like one of the humanoid ones from the boat, and she wore a simple blue kimono. If Adore had more time to think (and wasn’t instructed to hold her breath), she would have asked if she worked there.

“Lask! Where have you been?” She asked, coughing up feathers after every word uttered. The human gasped, removing her hand at the sight of the new arrival. It was partly because of the shock and partly because she was, in fact, spewing feathers everywhere. If she didn’t lose her breath there, then the feathers would have gotten to her, making her sneeze. The chicken spirit squawked, “A human!”

Lask held up her hand with a look of slight regret on her face. “Sorry Tox…” She whispered as she encased the other girl, who had now been transformed back to her original form, into a bubble. She hoped Tox’s beak wouldn’t pop it right away; she then grabbed Adore, quickly flying her to safety in the closest place she could find. “Let’s go. Now.” She whispered yet again as they passed by another group of greeters. The skirts of their hakamas blew from the manufactured wind. She opened a door, pulling Adore inside of another small offset garden.

The two of them ran to the ambient sounds of mayhem within the bathhouse. Sounds of spirits calling out for their superior, complaints of the smell, and clucking noises filled the air. It was almost too much for Adore to handle. Lask brought her behind a rather shapely bush hiding themselves from the chaos. “Fu-” She stopped herself, remembering she was in a professional setting now, “crap… They found out.”

“Lo siento, Lask… I fucked it all up.”

“No… you’re fine. You did your best. Now listen to me very carefully.” She put her hands on Adore’s shoulders: a comforting gesture. “You can’t stay here for long. They’re gonna find you and who knows what’ll happen. I’ll… create a distraction.”

“Wait, that’s the best you can do?” Adore stopped the spirit from getting up by tugging onto the girl’s kimono. “Aren’t you, like, some higher up? They called you Madame and everything… You could just write this off!” She stopped herself, becoming more aware of the volume of her voice. “Just… stay with me okay?

Lask sighed, wishing that she could. “I… I wish I could, but you have no choice if you want to survive. And save your mother.”

“So she actually turned into a pig… Damn.” Adore shook remembering the transformation, but she didn’t quite want to show her guide quite yet. She was thirteen; things like this shouldn’t bother her anymore. Her mother would have wanted her to be strong, so she did.

“Stay still, won’t you?” Lask didn’t give the human time to respond as she put two fingers to the redhead’s forehead. It was then Adore’s world went white. She could no longer see the lady in front of her as a series of images flashed through her head. They seemed to sync in time with what the spirit was telling her. “Now, when things quiet down, go out through the back gate. Go all the way down the stairs until you reach a green door. That leads to the boiler room. There you’ll meet Raja; they’re in charge of the whole thing.”

“Raja…” She repeated.

“Right. Tell ‘em you wanna work here. Even if they refuse, you gotta keep at it. If you don’t get a job here, the Grand Witch Visage would turn you into an animal.”

Adore was taken aback for a second.

“She runs the bathhouse. Anyway, back to Raja. They’ll do anything they can to try to keep you away, but you just gotta keep asking. It’ll be hard work, but not impossible. Besides, you’ll get a place to stay for a while and she can’t hurt you if you’re under her employ. Sound good?” Before the human could respond, the workers’ panic started back up again. “I gotta go, but remember these things. I’m your friend, and you’re a good kid, Adore.”

“Wait.. how’d you know my name?”

“Believe it or not, I’ve known you for a while now. Good luck, Adore Delano. And whatever you do, don’t make any noise, y’hear?” After some nonverbal confirmation, Lask turned her attention towards the commotion as she emerged from the bush. “I’ll see to this.”

Another worker approached her, nearly panicking. “My lady, the Great Witch wants to see you!”

“Yes, about the mission, correct?…”

The human girl unlatched the garden’s back gate and sneaked out of view and into the further unknown of the bathhouse. She stared out into the vast darkness with ambient lights from behind giving her some sense of visibility. The end of the staircase seemed so far away. Someone had to have discovered her sooner than later, so she figured she’d get a move on. Adore clung to the railing as she thought about not falling off the narrow platform to the best of her ability. Their fears were soon heightened as she heard the train pass by. It seemed so much smaller from when she first saw it on the bridge; there was something about it that gave her a boost of inspiration though.

She gulped and inched her way towards the start of the staircase. “Fuck…” she whispered to herself. The stairs looked steeper than she thought; how did anybody even go down these without dying? I guess that’s how there’s so many spirits, the redhead thought, if that witch lady doesn’t kill me I guess this will. She chuckled to herself as she took the first step. Okay… one down: so much more to go. Adore sat on the step as she inched another foot down the jagged wooden staircase.

She scooted herself down a few more steps. As she reached her foot towards the next one, she nearly slipped, but she stopped herself. She clung to the step for dear life. The wind and the surrounding darkness covered the tracks behind her. There was officially no going back; her mother was a pig and this was the only way to get her back. Adore stood up, finally regaining her footing, but as soon as she went to the next step, it broke. It gave way and sent the human down flying down the rest of the staircase.

Adore screamed as she speedily scooted down the staircase. It almost made her wonder why she thought this was so fun in her youth. The younger Adore would almost travel down the stairs by scooting down, nearly irritating Bonnie in the process. There were so many things she took for granted. For example, back at the old place, there was no way of possible getting splinters in unthinkable places. Nor was the fact that there wasn’t really any way to stop her at this point. Even if she tried to stand from her current position, the momentum would just push her forward even more. Eventually, this adrenaline rush stopped when she crashed into a wall. Thankfully, she wasn’t hurt too badly.

The redhead peeled herself off of the cement and took some time to catch her breath. She stared at the architecture that nearly caused her demise and flipped it off ever so sweetly. She was about to curse that very staircase’s existence some more before being startled by the sound of an opening window. Out emerged another spirit, she assumed; this one had shaggy, dirty blonde hair and a cigarette between her lips. Adore prayed that the kimono-clad spirit didn’t see her as she sneaked around a corner.

Oh great… more stairs. She looked down at the next flight, lamenting that her progress wasn’t done. It looked less steep than the other flights, and they were made of stone. There wasn’t any chance of it breaking or for the teen to go for another tumble. She hopped down the last few steps until she saw the forest green door. “This must be it,” she pondered before taking a few steps towards it. Feeling the heat of the boiler from the other side of the door, she opened with caution. She then made extra sure to close the door behind her; she didn’t want the cold to come in.

Adore looked left and right, taking note of every steam powered mechanism in the hallway. She just wanted to stay there and bask in the warmth for as long as she could. Hell, she needed to get used to it now that she was going to be living in San Francisco. However, she needed to leave this realm of monsters and darkness in order to get her ride back. Also, she didn’t want to disappoint Lask, so she simply pressed on forward.

As she passed the machinery, she stood in the hallway noticing a large, oblong shadow around the corner. She couldn’t tell if there was more machinery moving about or if that moving figure was the mysterious Raja her spirit guide had mentioned. Adore peeked around the corner to get a better view of the figure. What she saw surprised her; it took her a while to take it all in.

An offset furnace opened its mouth mechanically as little lumps of coal seemed to gravitate towards the fires by themselves. Was this place enchanted too? She wondered as she looked closer at the bits of fuel. To her further surprise, they weren’t in midair at all. It seemed as if something was carrying them, Miniature balls of soot waddled back from the fireplace and grabbed more lumps nearly in time with the machine’s opening. Coal goes in; a creature comes out.

As for the one running the boiler, an arm reached for a pile of herbs in a nearby jar while two of them ground those herbs with a wide mortar and a rolling pin. Yet another arm scratched their head while ANOTHER one cranked a wheel behind them. The spider-like person’s hands, by the looks of it, were dark but had a bluish tint to them.This coloration spanned the rest of their body too. They used their free arm to tug on a token that hung in front of them. So that must be Raja then… Adore blinked dumbfounded, letting out an audible yet indistinguishable noise of confusion. It was then the two made eye contact, and the human seemed officially screwed.

Raja banged a small wooden hammer against their workspace, halting the process of the soot sprites. They tossed in the last of the coal and retreated back to their little holes in the back wall. Adore nervously stepped out of her hiding spot and approached the spider-like worker, who retreated into another job that didn’t require the constant furnace fueling. “Uhhhhhh, excuse me?” She called as she got within a few feet from the pedestal. They seemed to not have heard her as they continued grinding the herbs. “Are you Raja?”

“Huh?” The blue-tinted spider inspected the redhead for a split second before going back to their work.

“Uh… Lask told me to go to you and she said you could get me a job so…. Can you get me a job?”

Raja ignored Adore and continued with her business as more of the red tokens fell down. “Four of- what is going ON up there?” Raja pulled the tokens, and struck the hammer again to alert the sprites that their break was over. “Oh, I wasn’t expecting company this early,” They finally paid attention to the human who had constantly asked for her attention. “She’s right. I am Raja. The Grand Witch appointed me to the highest position of running the boilers. Step on it, fellas,” They now addressed their dormant coworkers. “You heard the hammer, didn’t you? Now get back to work, you piles of ash.”

“You… didn’t answer my question. Can you get me a job?” No answer. “Come on! Please let me work here, goddammit!”

“Listen. I appreciate your moxie, kid, but I’ve got all the help I need.” The sprites emerged from their burrows and Raja pointed to them with one of their fingers while the rest of their hands manned their previous stations. “You’ve seen these, I assume. And what do they carry?”

“Coal… I don’t know why this is relevant?”

“I’ll get there. Now what does coal leave behind?” Before Adore could answer, they interrupted. “Dust, exactly. It gets everywhere. Now, I cast a spell on the soot and that gives me all the workers I need.” More of the spirits entered the space, surrounding the human at any chance they got.

“Now wait a second…” She started to protest as even more of the enchanted soot sprites emerged. They just had to maneuver around her if they wanted to get a smidge of work done, but they didn’t. The rocks collided with Adore’s ankles and the tiny workers squeaked their complaints, finally signalling her to move from her spot. She reluctantly did so and sulked in front of a long wall of cabinets.

“I know you just got there, but… you might want to scoot over. Preferably now.” Raja reached the cabinet with a tattooed arm and Adore subsequently rolled out of the way. She didn’t care if her pants or socks got dirty, but it wasn’t the best way to present to her possible job interview. She could do nothing but gawk at the boiler’s manager .The Latina could never fully take in how she was able to do all of that. How were they so organized and calm? However, she shifted her focus to how the spider-person treated her as if she was a fly that she didn’t quite have the guts to kill yet: a pest, but not a threat. She wasn’t going to save her mother any time soon, so she’d might as well stare at the flow of traffic from the enchanted ashes.

One of soot balls emerged from the hole, but it looked like it was having She severely underestimated the weight of the rock. “How strong are you guys?” Adore mumbled as she barely held the rock by her fingertips. “So should I, like, just leave shit here? I’m sure one of you’s gonna-”

“Finish what you started, human.” The boiler spider retorted, without even looking at the redhead. “You’re the one who wanted to work so badly.”

Adore wanted to give them the middle finger, but she might be hit with a good six of them back. Or maybe this spirit didn’t know the cultural significance behind the gesture. She didn’t want to risk it though, so she simply scoffed as she lugged the piece of coal, having been filled with a burst of determination. She trudged through the other soot balls, stopping them momentarily in their tracks before following the human. She nearly dropped the rock, but managed to catch it in time.

Five more of the enchanted workers were in front of her, lightly tossing the coal into the furnace as if they were nothing. It was now the young human’s turn to prove herself. She gingerly stepped onto the narrowed platform as she stared into the flames. She could easily take the heat (she’s from Azusa; she could stab someone on sight if she wanted to), but now she was wary of the embers. Right then and there was this California dreamer afraid of getting burnt. She closed her eyes and chucked the black rock into the open furnace and prayed that it got in.

Adore caught her breath as she ran around a corner towards Raja’s workstation. She did it. This would definitely make the boiler manager proud of her. Her victory was short lived, as the other soot balls took notice. One came up to her sneakers and dropped the lump on its back; the rest followed in that same manner, slowly surrounding the human preventing her from leaving. In that moment, Raja swung their hammer.

“You goddamn runts, do you want to be turned back into soot?” They were livid, as they then pointed their hammer towards the human. “As for you, young lady. I get what you were trying to do, but you need to watch it. You can’t go around taking others’ jobs in order to prove a point! You’re young. You shouldn’t even be here. Just.. go somewhere else. ” The soot balls did not think very much of that though. They raised their loads in protest and angrily squealed at the human, as if they were begging her to stay. “Do you guys have a problem with that?”

The squabble was stopped by the sliding of a door hidden among the cabinets of herbs. Another woman emerged from the hole carrying a tray with a bowl of rice in one hand and a basket in the other. “Soup’s on,” she said, closing the door with her foot. She wore a salmon pink robe, a dark blue apron, and the same colored work pants; her black hair was in a neater updo than Adore’s. “Hey, don’t stop because I’m here. What were you all fighting about?” Her bare feet danced across the floor and brought the tray near one of Raja’s free arms. “And where’s your bowl from yesterday? I keep telling you to leave it out!”

“Alright. Meal time. Take a break.” This excited the soot balls as they dropped their loads and scattered to the empty floor.

“Gods forbid you take care of yourself once in a while.” She sprinkled some star-shaped candy on the floor where the smaller sprites took and ate them up. “And some of us have to wash these too, because why would the Grand Witch spend her money on employers’ well being?” The woman slowed her rant as she stared into Adore’s brown eyes. Both of them gasped at each other. “Oh. Gods. You’re the human everyone’s been looking for! They’re having a huge fit about it upstairs, and I get to hear the half of it and-”

“Don’t worry, Rio.”

“Yes. Don’t worry. That’s easy.” The other woman, Rio, retorted in that same vein of sarcasm used earlier. “It’s not like we have our lives on the line or anything.”

“She’s my granddaughter.. or maybe she’s yours! I think she’s got your eyes.” Rio rolled her eyes. “Anyway, my granddaughter says she wants to work here, but I’ve got the help I need. How about you take her to Michelle and-”

“Michelle?” Adore parroted, trying to hold back laughter. Was that seriously the name of the high and mighty proprietor of the house?

“Yep, that’s her name.” They continued as they took a bite of their food. “As I was saying, you take her to the witch. The kid’s tough enough to handle her, I bet.”

“And risk my life? No thanks.” Rio complained.

“How about if I gave you this?” Raja extended one of their arms and held a roasted newt, waving it in front of the younger spirit’s face. Her lips began to water at the smell of it.. “It’s fresh.. It’s quality…” Turning to Adore, the blue spider continued. “If you want a job, you’ll have to talk to Michelle. There’s no harm in trying.” The human nodded her head and smiled as Rio snatched the newt.

“Fine. You,” She addressed Adore, “come here and follow me.” The younger girl stepped over the coal pile and ran into Rio. “Aren’t you going to thank the nice person for sticking their neck out for you?”

“Oh… yeah… Thanks, Raja.” The human followed the older woman, heeling to her side.

“Now hurry up. You don’t need your shoes or socks here.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Adore set her shoes down, making the soot balls very happy as they found another home.

“I didn’t have to remind you that time. Good for you.” She smiled as she pulled Adore into the small from which she emerged. The redhead nearly bumped her head as she turned around. She waved goodbye to Raja who, in turn, gave a thumbs up of support.

“Good luck. You’ll need it.” The boiler-person chuckled to themself as they went on with their business. They could only wonder how the witch would react to that little firecracker.

#rpdr fanfiction #adore delano #alaska thunderfuck #adore delaska #detox icunt #raja gemini #bianca del rio #lesbian au #supernatural au #spirited away au #a road to somewhere #puppy #concrit welcome

9 notes · View notes

yourdeepestfathoms · 4 years

Text

The Crucible (part ten; finale)

[UK Tour; Carrie AU]

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9

Word count: 8463

TW: Blood and gore, mentions of rape

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

-Don’t Waste The Moon-

“When did you first realize something was wrong?”

“When I heard the sirens.”

Katherine remembered all her fears coming true when dozens of police sirens, fire truck sirens, ambulance sirens began to blare so loudly in unison that she could hear them from her neighborhood. She had ripped open her front door, Isabel hovering right behind her, and stared in horror at the golden-orange light illuminating the night sky from miles away.

“And then the fire.”

“And when was the last time you saw Joan Seymour alive?” Mulaney asked.

Katherine looked at him skeptically. “At school on Friday. Before the prom.”

“You told Sheriff Doyle you saw her after the prom. Right before the Shell blew up.”

Katherine bit her tongue, remembering that interaction. She had just sped down in her car to get to the mayhem, but stopped at a gas station that was swarmed with police cars. When she launched herself out of the driver’s seat, she heard one of the officers saying into his radio how a fuel tank had just “went up” and the “gymnasium was gone.” She asked him what happened at the gym, and he told her to go home, that there was nothing she could do. But she didn’t listen, instead swerving around the gas pumps to get a better look at the school, which was completely engulfed in flames on one side.

That was when she heard the explosions. And saw the bursting pillars of fire in the distance. And noticed that the telephone poles lining the road were starting to rattle and rock.

And Joan Seymour emerged from the smoke and fog rolling down the street.

“It was dark,” Katherine said. “I saw a girl in a dress.”

“You said you saw Joan Seymour.”

“I was wrong.”

But she wasn’t. She knew it was Joan.

Joan, covered in a slick of blood.

Katherine had tried to call out to her, but Joan didn’t answer or even look in her direction. She just kept walking, arms flat at her side, fingers splayed open, eyes wide and shiny and blank.

The Shell gas station blew shortly after. Something had wormed into the gasoline deposit and ignited the entire thing, sending the pumps into a blaze. Katherine’s ears didn’t stop ringing for a few hours.

“What’s it matter, anyway?” Katherine said. “Joan is dead.”

I would know...

------

The sound of frantic knocking on Anne’s front door and the sound of her cousin shouting interrupted the heated makeout session between Anne and Cathy. She had been trying to ease her girlfriend up, who has looked sick ever since the blood dump, and it was just starting to work when the panicked banging and yelling started. Rolling her eyes and groaning in annoyance, Anne peeled herself from the couch (nobody was home, so they had the house to themselves, making this interruption even more irritating) and walked to the front door.

“What?” She growled at Thomas. “What’s your problem?”

“Oxford.” Thomas gasped out, clearly out of breath. His eyes were round holes of horror, like he had witnessed something awful. “It’s burning up, Anne.”

On the couch, Cathy shot up from her reclined position instantly and began to put her shirt back on, much to Anne’s dismay.

“Whole damn city,” Thomas went on, breathless. “The school’s gutted.”

“What?” Cathy stood up and hurried over beside Anne. Regret, guilt, and terror was twisted all over her face.

“They said people at the prom were trapped.” Thomas continued. He wore the same expression as Cathy, realizing that this alleged destruction was partially because of him. “Only, like, eleven of them got out. The rest were cooked.”

Anne and Cathy exchange looks. Cathy looked ill all over again. She began to pace back and forth with her hands to her head, fingers knotted in her hair.

“Anne,” Thomas whispered, shuddering. “The ones that got out told the police something about a prank.”

Anne pressed her tongue against the inside of her lip, feeling embers of anger flicker through her. She shook them off for now and stepped closer to Thomas, noting the way he flinched away from her slightly. She placed her hands on his shoulders.

“Go home.” She said. “Don’t talk to anybody.”

Thomas took a deep, shaky breath and nodded. He hurried down the driveway and back to his car. Anne closed the front door after he drove off into the night.

“And what are we going to do?” Cathy asked. She sounded like she was close to tears.

Anne turned to her with a thin smile.

“We’re going to go into town and watch the fires.”

------

The street is thick with mangled cars and billowing smoke. All around, the cries of the dying form brief, unsettling harmonies with the cracks and booms of exploding pavement.

A red double-decker bus tilted over at an alarming angle, tires punctured, emergency exit door hanging open. Its driver laid slumped across the steering wheel, sightless eyes staring ahead to a junction he would never reach. The limbs of luckless late night passengers trail from broken windows.

A water main has ruptured. Its flow was tainted with blood; dark swirls in a new river that headed for the oblivion of black drains. Soon those drains will fill beyond capacity and the street will begin to flood with the remnants of the dead and broken.

It’s the most magical place on earth, and everyone seemed to have it all there—the drugs, the drama, the unabashed violence, and the harm it’s done to Joan and everyone she’s ever loved.

This old, mysterious city lured her in a long time ago and numbed her with a fix for her every desire. Against this landscape, she’s carved out a prosperous career as the resident freak. Through the sheer force of her will, the city had molded and bent before her very eyes, covering everyone’s every potential insecurity with false confidence and gaudy excess.

In return, the city has jaded her, stripped her of her humanity, and warped her into an unrecognizable shell of noir-esque dysphoria, washed up on the filthy banks of the city’s canals. It has brought her to this very moment, shambling down one of the streets like a zombie, coated in coagulate blood and guts, leading a path of utter destruction in her wake.

The air around her was crackling. Every step she took broke the asphalt beneath her feet. Pillars of fire roared out of the ground behind her, spewing chunks of fiery rocks into the sky, which then landed with tremendous explosive force.

She was wrecking this city the way it wrecked her.

And every sinner who ever hurt her or wronged her was going to perish in her act of purification.

Rapture was nigh, and Judgement was upon them all.

Joan slowly continued down the road. The earth began to shake without stopping, a continuous tremor that jarred her teeth in her head and made her feel as though the ground was about to drop out beneath her. Another fountain of fire shot out into open air and the asphalt melted into magma, slithering slowly down the pavement alongside Joan like a benevolent bituminous companion.

A big black truck rattle up a side street, swaying into the other lane and jerking back over and over again. Music was blasting from the open windows and the stench of alcohol and weed could be smelled even from where Joan stopped. She watched the truck screech to a halt and the passengers peer over at her curiously, slurring among themselves. Then, they’re getting out and walking over.

“Damn girl,” One said, noticing the blood all over her. He stumbled when he walked and kept mixing his words together. A brown bottle was clutched tightly in his right hand. “You look FUCKED!”

His three friends, all red-faced and either drunk or high out of their minds like he was, roar into loud peals of laughter. Joan stared at them blankly.

“What’s with all the pyrotechnics?” Another asked. “You a performer?”

“Yeah, yeah,” A third nodded. “What kind of show is this? ‘S not even close to Halloween!”

“I’d still go down on ‘er, though,” Piped up the fourth with a lusty smile.

(dogs)

Joan continued to stare at them absently as comments about the blood all over her and the fire burning around them were bounced off each of the men. What they don’t realize is that she’s sending her powers through the ground and into their bodies, and by the time they do realize, it’s too late.

A shrieking fit of screaming broke out when the fourth man’s head suddenly popped like a balloon, spewing shards of blood and bone and brains all over the place. One of them got a chunk of stringy tissue caught in their mouth and he immediately doubled over, gagging and vomiting. The other two continued to howl like babies.

“WHAT THE FUCK?!” The first yelped.

“WH-WHAT HAPPENED TO HIM?!” The second added.

“HE’S FUCKING DEAD, MAN!!” The first cried.

The second whirled around to Joan, pointing and blubbering.

“You-you fucking did this, didn’t you?” He stammered.

“How?!” The first said.

“I-I don’t know! But she killed Danny!”

The second man bent down and grabbed a long, thin shard of glass that had been broken when all the bottles of alcohol had been dropped. He swung it at Joan, and she was much too dazed to properly react.

“What...what the fuck…” He backed away from Joan, who had the shard now pierced through her cheeks. It entered through the right and came out from the left, wedged in place by her flesh. When she opened her mouth, the brown glass could be seen glistening in the firelight. Blood dripped over her bottom lip.

“What...what are you…?” The first whispered.

Joan flicked her tongue and felt the piece of glass in her mouth. It was cold and slick, but the blood it drew was hot and sticky. She didn’t like the taste.

She jerked her head and the man who had stabbed her went flying. His spine snapped loudly against a telephone pole, his body folding like a bent card upon impact. He slumped to the ground, lifeless.

“Oh fuck! Oh god!” The first man panicked. He grabbed his other friend’s arms, who had gone into shock. “Fuck! Jack, let's go!! We need to go!”

They didn’t get very far.

The ground below the men exploded into towering flames, incinerating them. The smell of burned flesh filled the air. Charred body fell to the asphalt, blackened and indescribable.

Joan moved on in silence.

She passed the plaza where she had been harassed by those college kids just a few days ago. She remembered the way nobody had done anything to help her and ignited the pavilion into a golden-orange blaze.

The fish and chips shop went next. She stomped her foot and a crack shot across the earth. A giant chunk of rock ripped through the building, turning it to rubble. She turned to the hair salon next.

No matter what time of day she went there, "Cut and Colour" was full of women who talked too loudly. The exact composition of the group changes from hour to hour but there were always familiar faces, and their tone is consistent: they know better.

At first, by day, she thought the locals were waiting for a haircut. Then, she noticed that it never seemed to be their turn. Finally, she realized that what they liked was a warm room to hang out in, with free magazines and a captive audience. It was a sort of day care center for bigots which also offered haircuts.

Vidal Sassoon supposedly said that with a small pair of scissors, he could make a woman cry for a week. Imagine what Joan could do with telekinetic powers.

She decided to blow the salon right out of the ground. It went flying through the air like a burning asteroid and burst apart when it hit the ground. When it was just mere pieces across the fiery pavilion, Joan was left a lot less satisfied than she thought she would be. She moved on slowly.

As she walked, she began to think. So many years wasted to torment. So many years she could have exacted her revenge and been treated like a normal person. So many years thinking she was just a useless, scarred waste of skin, as her peers in school had spent six years of her life reminding her.

She still heard them all the time, their voices in her head telling her how wretched, hideous, and scary she was. She tried to drown them out by concentrating on school work and prayers, but the smallest thing could bring them crashing back in. Just the thought of the shower incident—how familiar it all felt—brought on a fresh wave of memories of poisoned words and scornful laughter.

It all started when she was ten. Year 6. She had brought a Bible to school and prayed with it in the cafeteria during lunch. Everyone thought it was hilarious and she couldn’t live it down for the rest of Primary School.

And then she was eleven and in Year 7. Secondary School. And up until that school year, she was mainly ignored by her peers or picked on simply because of the whole Bible incident. But then gym class and changing in front of other girls became a thing, and they all saw the way her ribs would weirdly press out against her skin and how her stomach was sunken too far in for her skinny hips. That was the day she learned what the word “emaciated” meant. It also kickstarted hell on earth for the next five years of her life.

The rest of Year 7 was spent with her being bombarded by food and the constant question of if she was hungry. She even started being called anorexic when a few of the kids figured out what that meant and would be asked if she needed someone to jam their fingers down their throat whenever she would go to the bathroom. She also distinctly remembered a boy giving her a tub of rotten meat with maggots in it one day.

Year 8 rolled around. Mama said that the bullying would go away after the break, but when Joan turned up to the school when she was twelve, she was only met with familiar evil faces and fresh bouts of teasing. The anorexic jokes became more extreme, but those were probably the least awful things she was met with because her peers grew enough balls over the break to start getting physical with her. That school year quickly became the year of being tripped, shoved, and slammed against walls. She had even been pushed down one of the staircases when she was going to get a drink of water and broke her arm. She still remembered how horrified and sick the culprits had looked when they heard the awful crunching and cracking sounds of her bones breaking, like they hadn't meant to do that much damage. Instead of helping her, they left her in the stairwell, where she cried on the floor for an hour, immobilized by pain, until class ended and she was found by dozens of students. She finished that year with a cast that got slurs written on it when bullies would pin her down and forcefully write whatever they wanted.

When she turned thirteen, she begged her mother to take her out of school before Year 9 started, but Mama refused and Joan had to live through another year of ridicule and harassment. That was the first time she got her head dunked in a toilet and fingers smashed in a door.

Year 10 was the worst, in her opinion. High school. On the second day, her so-called friends abandoned her and scribbled on her homeroom desk statements such as “Go home”, “Drop dead”, and “Freak”. All her peers seemed to spread the news of her weirdness like wildfire to the higher grades, turning people she didn’t even know against her. Older kids and kids her age alike would beat her and threaten her with knives they would sneak to school just so they could snatch whatever snack she bought from the cafeteria and turn anyone she may have befriended against her. Students in her class would beg the teacher to let them be with someone else if they were partnered with her, always making sure to do so in earshot of her. They would laugh at her during presentations and throw things at her and make fun of her when she messed up. They mimicked her stutter and nervous ticks, held her down and dripped hot glue on her skin, put staples in her ears and fingernails, and poised sharp objects too close to her eyeballs just to hear how loud she would squeal. And the entire time, no adults did anything. They all turned a blind eye to her treatment, even when she had the burns and scars and bruises to prove what had been happening to her.

She soon realized that it wasn’t that they didn’t see what was going on.

They just didn’t care.

Nobody ever cared.

She turned fifteen at a summer camp she hadn’t been allowed to go to, but sneaked off to, anyway. The break had been lonely and dreary- Joan wanted friends so badly that she dared to go against her mother’s wishes and ran off to the camp to try and be with kids that would mock her.

But, like everyone else in her life, they did.

When she cheerily told them that it was her birthday, they called her a witch instead of singing to her. A large group of the cruelest campers, some being seventeen, some being only nine, dragged her out to the nearby river and repeatedly dunked her in the water until she began to drown, all while they chanted “Drown the witch! Drown the witch! Drown the witch!” over and over and over again. It still echoed in her ears to this day.

Her mother punished her severely when she got home and didn’t even care when Joan cried to her about what the kids did to her, saying that she deserved it.

Joan became deathly afraid of water after that.

And then, there was Year 11. The cycle of abuse and torture and torment continued. The shower incident happened. Seemingly all was lost.

But not anymore.

Never again will she cower beneath them. Any of them.

She was an angel of wrath, and she would spread her fury unto them all.

A black G-Wagen stopped at a red light up ahead. Even from the distance between the two, Joan could tell who the driver was.

The car roared forward, not waiting for the overhead light to turn green. Joan lumbered slowly, while the car sped at her full speed. She could see Anne Boleyn, now, her face twisted with rage. Next to her, a dark skinned woman Joan didn’t know was yelling something in a panic. Joan twitched her head to the side and the dark skinned woman’s neck snapped to the side. Anne screamed and lost control of the car in shock. Joan gave it a gentle nudge and sent it tumbling across the street in a cacophony of cracks and crashes and shatters.

Joan stopped and watched the car roll wildly before finally coming to a halt in front of her. Every side of the vehicle was crumpled and crushed, metal scraped and folded, black paint streaked with silver slashes. One of the doors was dangling open and barely hanging onto its hinges. Anne was sprawled out beside it after she had been thrown from the open door in the crash. She jarred awake from a momentary dip of unconsciousness and gasped sharply, looking around wildly.

“Cathy?” She croaked. She looked up and saw the dark-skinned woman slumped in the passenger’s seat. She was very, very dead, if not by her neck wrung backwards, then by the gaping red horror opened up in her chest cavity. “CATHY!!”

Anne tried to get up and run to the woman, Cathy, to try and rouse her despite her injuries, to beg her to wake up, but couldn’t.

Because she was missing the entire lower half of her body.

Anne choked on a scream when she looked back and realized her legs were no longer attached to the rest of her. She may have vomited if her stomach hadn’t been ruptured; Joan could see the contents, mainly alcohol-mixed bile and chunks of a hamburger she had for lunch earlier that day, drooling out from a slice in the lining that was opened up like a ziplock bag.

During the crash, when Anne had been thrown out of the car, the open door rolled over her midsection, cleanly cutting her in half. Dark red intestines are stretched across the pavement like dying snakes. Stringy tendons dangled from the curve of her back, frayed and numb, no longer connected to any bone. Her spine was sticking out into the open air, bright white against all the blood. Organs poured out of the maw of the wound, shimmering in sheens of pink and scarlet. The shirt she’s wearing may have originally been dark green, but it was currently swamped by a flood of glistening gore. Her legs were a few feet away, bleeding heavily.

Joan sidled around the girl slowly and stepped into her field of vision. Anne looked up at her, gasping and spitting up blood. Tears were streaming from her eyes.

“Y-you--” She choked on her words.

Joan tilted her head like a confused puppy. Anne continued to sputter and wheeze below her.

“J-Joan--”

Anne barely managed to move her arms and grappled onto Joan’s right ankle. With whatever strength and feeling she had left in her body, she pulled herself forward to Joan. Her intestines slither and slide across the ground, leaving streaks of blood. She coughed up another bout of red.

“Joan--”

What did she want? Mercy?

Joan reached up and slowly pulled out the glass that was still stuck in her cheeks, then stuck it underneath Anne’s jaw. Anne gasped and spewed blood all over her legs.

“Y-you bi--” The glass pierced her tongue. She wasn’t going to be able to talk very well. Or do anything anymore, really. “Y-you--f-fucking--mon--monst--er.”

Joan stood up straight, turned around, and continued her walk down the street. Anne tried to follow her, crawl after her, but her head fell heavily and the shard of glass was jammed up further into her head when her chin connected with the ground. She frothed and foamed at the mouth helplessly, struggling to stay conscious.

Joan wondered how long she lived. She wondered if it was quick or if she suffered.

She hoped she did.

Joan’s jaw began to ache. She could now feel the thin cuts in her cheek and felt like she was gulping down tiny pieces of glass whenever she swallowed. Awareness was slowly returning to her the closer and closer she got to her house.

She wanted her Mama.

Withered brown leaves rustled in the ghostly wind. The night was almost silent, if not for the wailing gust, the crackle of fronds, and the wailing of sirens in the distance. Bloodied shoes trampled over the dead blades of branches, the crunching of their filaments accompanying Joan’s every step. A frigid breeze cut across her face like a frozen knife, drawing red to her sallow cheeks. She shivered. The blood coating her body had gone cold.

She really, really needed her Mama right now.

Joan hobbled into her neighborhood, passing house after house, so much nicer than her own, until she finally came to the Seymour bungalow. Something inside of her fluttered and she staggered towards it as fast as her weak legs could take her, hands doing desperate grabby hands.

“Mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy--” She sobbed over and over again.

She stumbled through the front door, nearly tripping on the rug, and careened into the den. Everything was as she left it- completely trashed. Crosses were hanging at angles, the couch was tipped over, chairs and tables and lamps were strewn all across the floor. The only thing that was still in its original place was Mama’s velvet throne chair in the living room.

But where was Mama?

“Mama?” Joan called out. “M-Mama?”

No answer.

Joan stepped forward, and all the furniture and items on the floor pulled away from her, as if they were offended by her dirty presence.

“Mama? Mommy?”

Nothing.

Where was her Mama?

She remembered that Mama had left the house earlier that evening. What if she never came back?

Tears filled Joan’s eyes. She couldn’t be alone. Not after what happened tonight. She desperately needed her Mama.

She walked up the stairs, falling to her hands and knees halfway up and continuing the climb like a blood soaked animal that barely managed to get away from a hunter. She looked around the upstairs part of the house, crawling to Mama’s bedroom and peeking inside, leaving streaks of red across the hardwood floor. Mama’s bed was made, but she thought the blankets looked a little wrinkled on one side.

“Mama?” She called out again, a brief expression of hope flitting across her face.

No reply.

Joan’s bottom lip began to quiver. The movement hurt her cheeks even more and she whimpered sharply. The smell of rancid blood wafting around her was starting to make her stomach churn.

“Mommy?” She tried one more time, and when she got no answer, she retrieved fresh clothes from her bedroom and then locked herself in the bathroom.

An unseen force cranked the hot water nozzle on the faucet, filling the tub up with steaming water. Joan could barely lift her own arms, so she used her telekinesis to worm the dress off of her for her. It was a clumsy process, but she eventually was free from the bloody fabric. When she looked down, she saw that the blood had soaked all the way into her bra and underwear and even her pale skin, streaking down her chest and belly and arms and legs in dark red stripes. She quickly got into the bathtub.

The water was way too hot, but she didn’t bother turning the cold nozzle, even though she easily could with just a simple flex of her mind. She melted into the heat, sucking in a sharp breath and easing her lungs. When she slowly pushed herself up into a sitting position, she saw that the water around her was tainted a light red color. She splashed her face, thinking maybe she was just seeing things, but then she looked down at her hands and saw how stained they were.

She had been hoping it wasn’t real, that it was just all in her imagination, but something about seeing the blood now wet on her hands cemented it all as true.

It was true.

It all really happened.

Joan’s breathing began to pick up to the point where her lungs begged for air. She turned her hands over, staring at the palms and then the backs. Blood trailed lazily over the scars.

“No--” She gasped. She splashed her face again, wetting the blood and making it run down into her eyes and over her cheeks. “No, no, no--”

She splashed and splashed and splashed, then began to scrub and scrub and scrub when she realized just how stained her shoulders and chest were. Her hands smeared the blood into awful shapes, so she hooked her nails into claws and began scratching viciously until even more blood was drawn out. The entire process was messy and clumsy and had her weeping out loud like a lamb that had lost its mother.

Where was her mother?

Joan dunked her head under the water and held it there, clawing her nails through her hair. The locks were stiff and dried with blood and released clouds of red through the bathtub when scoured so roughly. The natural platinum blonde color doesn’t come back easily and she nearly drowned herself trying to get all the blood out.

(o Mama Mama where are you i need you o Mama please come back)

Joan hugged her knees and rocked back and forth, sloshing the red water around her. Her skin stung from the heat, but she didn’t care. She found that she wasn’t caring about a lot of things at that moment.

The room was dark, blue shadows leaked out of the cracks between the tiles. Maybe it’s mold, maybe it’s just a fancy design; they’ve been there for as long as Joan can remember. Ghostly whispers flooded her ears. She slid down the smooth, spattered ceramic and held her breath until her eardrums were about to burst; this is a coping mechanism of sorts, she thinks. She might fall asleep underwater one day, peaceful and careless.

(Mama)

A thick, soapy wave splashes out of the tub as Joan sat up, gasping and hyperventilating, slapping her palms against the surface. She’s angry all of a sudden, she barely suppressed her scream as the shelf with all the shampoos and shower gels comes crashing down, bottles scatter across the floor.

At first, Joan thought that the devil was finally coming for her soul. Then, she thinks that it was an earthquake; the water was sloshing around the bathtub like a reddened poison. But, when Joan wiped the foam off her face, she realized that she’s the only one that’s quivering.

There’s a vibration racking through her body, muscles tensed, and wet hair full of electricity as if she’s about to cause a short circuit.

The shelf is lying on the tiles now, broken in two.

Joan whimpered. She leaned her temple against the edge of the bathtub and wept. Glittering silver tears dripped silently into bloody water. The smell of blood began to permeate through the air again. Joan dragged her body out of the water eventually, shivering and sniffling.

The house was eerily silent when Joan hobbled out of the bathroom. She’s dressed in a plain white nightgown and her hair is dripping freely all over her back and chest. It’s still slightly tinted red.

“Mama?” She whispered.

Like all the other times, there was no reply.

(please please please)

“Mama?” Louder this time.

(please please please please)

A creak in the floorboards.

Joan whirled around.

And there was her Mama, like an angel in the hallway, illuminated by a flickering red candle. Her hair was neatly combed and she was dressed in a dark blue dress she had sewn herself. Her golden brown eyes were warm and tender, sucking Joan in with their soft gaze, and Joan couldn’t help but burst into a fresh set of tears.

“Mama?” Joan squeaked weakly.

“Oh, my girl,” Mama murmured. “My sweet, sweet girl…”

“Mama, you were right!” Joan sobbed. “They all laughed at me!” The tears were falling faster, now. She could hear the laughter echoing loudly in her ears.

“Oh my poor angel…”

Joan nearly choked on a sob, feeling her throat constrict. She raised her arms, doing desperate grabby hands at her mother.

“Mama, please hold me,” She begged.

Mama obliged, sweeping her up into her warm, strong arms that made Joan melt upon contact. Her weak little body crumpled, knees buckling together, and Mama carefully lowered her to the ground, not letting go for even a second.

“Shh, shh,” Mama murmured, stroking her wet hair. “It’s okay… I’m here. I’m here now, your Mama’s here.”

“They all laughed at me,” Joan wept. She smothered her face in her mother’s chest, clinging like a drowning woman to the back of her dress. She couldn’t handle being let go right now. She just wanted to curl up in Mama’s arms and stay there forever.

“I knew they’d hurt my little girl.” Mama growled lowly.

Joan replied with a whimpering sob. She didn’t have enough air to properly answer, so she just continued to cry and cry, shaking like a newborn baby goat in her Mama’s embrace.

Several minutes of silence, aside from Joan’s crying, passed. Joan realized that she couldn’t hear any sirens anymore. Maybe things had finally calmed down and would be okay again, like they were before the blood.

“I should have killed myself when he put it in me.”

Joan tensed up like she had just been struck by lightning.

“We slept in the same bed,” Mama went on, “Lived together sinlessly.” Her strong hand was rubbing firmly against Joan’s upper back, near the nape of her neck. “And then, one night, I saw him look at me in that way and we got down on our knees and prayed for strength. And that’s when he took me.”

“No, Mama--” Joan whimpered. She didn’t want to hear this. Not right now. Not after everything that has happened. “No, Mama, I don’t want to hear it--”

Mama leaned Joan back and stroked her tear stained face. “And I liked it.”

“No, Mama, no--” Joan shook her head, fresh tears pouring out of her eyes.

“I should have given you to God when you were born.” Mama said. “But I was weak. And I loved you so much.”

A smile twitched on Joan’s lip, weak and thin and shaky, but real. Those words sent butterflies fluttering through her stomach.

“And I said, ‘God, let me keep my little girl. Let me keep her.’” Mama said, and Joan’s smile became a little bit bigger. Maybe things would be okay after all. “Let us pray.”

Joan nodded, almost eagerly. “Yes, Mama,” She said, craving Mama’s soothing touch and silky words. “Yes, we’ll pray.” She nuzzled in closer to Mama’s warmth, breathing out a soft sigh of relief.

“I’ll be the preacher,” Mama said, “you be my congregation.”

Joan nodded again, smiling giddily. She closed her eyes and murmured along with Mama when she began to recite the prayer.

“Our Father, who art in heaven,

hallowed be thy Name,

thy kingdom come,

thy will be done,

on earth as it is in heaven.”

Mama’s voice was like honey, slithering warmly from her lips. Joan was drawn to it no matter what happened, no matter what Mama did. Because Mama, despite her actions and flaws, loved her.

“Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our trespasses,

as we forgive those

who trespass against us.”

And wanted her.

“And lead us not into temptation,

but deliver us from evil.”

And needed her.

“For thine is the kingdom,

and the power, and the glory,

for ever and ever. Amen.”

And--

And there was a sharp pain.

Joan’s eyes popped open wide and she gasped as all the air rushed out from her lungs. There was a sharp pain in her back, below her left shoulder, and then a rush of warmth across her nightgown. She looked up with a whimper and saw that Mama’s eyes were solemnly cold and crackling, like embers flickering in a winter wind. Her arm was reached around Joan, holding something in place, and Joan realized she had a knife in her back.

“Mama--” She croaked, blood dripping from her lips.

Something around the two of them crackled, like the air was charged with electricity, and they burst apart from each other like the similar charges of a magnet. Mama went flying down into the hallway, while Joan ricocheted off the staircase railing and then tumbled down the stairs, hitting the back wall with a magnificent splattering of blood before teetering over the remaining few steps. There on the ground, gasping for breath, she lay sprawled like a broken doll. Her jaw ached fiercely with every sharp intake of oxygen she took, while her back felt as though a bruise had just been slashed open and now all her tendons were being pulled out one by one. She whimpered at the pain, barely able to move her arm without it feeling like it was being torn off.

The staircase creaked; Mama was there, holding the stained butcher knife and primed for blood.

Joan scrambled backwards. Her body crumpled almost instantly, crushed by the weight of her wound, so she had to drag herself with one arm across the floor. Mama advanced on her slowly, menacingly, like a lioness stalking its injured prey.

“N-no, Mama--” Joan begged. “Mama, no, please-- Please no--”

“This isn’t your fault, Joan,” Mama said. “It’s mine.”

“Mommy, this isn’t right--”

“Don’t you know that the Devil never dies?” Mama went on. Her eyes were shining and she was drooling slightly, lost in her daze. “So you have to keep killing them. Over--”

“No, no--”

“--and over again.”

Mama stabbed the knife down.

Joan rolled away just in time. A lock of hair got caught under the blade and tore free with a burning sensation across her scalp, but she could hardly care. She rolled over onto her stomach and tried to get up, and then crawl away when she wasn’t able to stand. Mama pursued her, grabbing her by the leg and slashing the back of her ankle. Joan screamed in pain and jerked onto her back. The stab wound throbbed, but she barely felt it through the rush of adrenaline spurting through her. She barely jerked her head in time before she was stabbed.

Her fingers, so spindly and bony, wrapped around Mama’s on the hilt of the knife and she wrestled with her over the weapon. Mama was bigger and much stronger, easily ripping her hands free from her grasp. She cut Joan across the arm when she shielded her face from another blow.

“Stop it, Mama!” Joan cried. She wiggled beneath her mother and managed to get one leg free. She kicked Mama in the stomach and took the chance to scamper away when Mama recoiled backwards in pain.

“YOU DEVIL!!” Mama roared.

Joan heard the uneven shuffling of footsteps behind her, then felt the sharp pain of the tip of the knife pricking her in the leg. She kicked again, only to have the blade streak across her exposed belly and make her howl in agony.

“No, Mama!” Joan shrieked. Her head was starting to become fuzzy. She felt so tired all of a sudden. “No, no!!”

Mama practically pounced on her, looking hungry. Joan struggled wildly beneath her like a captured animal. Her little body was slippery with blood and Mama had a hard time getting a good grip, so she gave up after a moment and cleaved the knife down on Joan’s head with a bellowing battlecry.

But that was the one blow Joan didn’t feel.

Joan looked up, gasping for air, and saw that the knife was hovering mere inches away from her face. Mama’s hand was frozen, ensnared by a telekinetic force much stronger than she was. Joan flexed her mind and suspended Mama in the air, then called upon every possible sharp object in the house- knives and needles, shattered glass and broken chair legs, box cutters and scissors. They all hovered around Mama, poised and waiting.

“Joan…” Mama whispered in horror, tears trickling down her cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” Joan whimpered.

“JOAN!!!”

Joan wailed and sent the object upon her mother.

The butcher’s knife pierced Mama’s heart and sent her flying backwards against the wall. A pair of wickedly sharp meat shears pinned one hand against the plaster, while a seam ripper wedged itself in the flesh of the other. Dozens of knives stabbed themselves into her stomach. A boxcutter smashed into her shoulder and a screwdriver embedded itself deep into her waist. She took a shard of glass to the thigh and a ruler to the torso and a ice pick to the collarbone, and Joan commanded them all to do so, watching with tears streaming down her cheeks.

Mama, stretched out like Jesus on the wall, stopped moaning and groaning after a moment and her head slumped forward. Joan blinked her glassy eyes and tilted her head like a confused puppy.

“M-Mama?” She squeaked.

Like when she first got into the house that night, there was no answer.

Joan weakly crawled across the blood-spattered floor and shook one of Mama’s legs.

“Mommy?”

No answer.

Joan’s bottom lip began to quiver. She shook Mama’s leg harder, then wrapped her arms around it, looking up at Mama with big, shining eyes.

“Mommy, please answer me,” She begged.

Her Mommy did not.

Joan stood up and nearly blacked out from blood loss. Her head spun and she tottered on her feet, feeling sharp starbursts of pain exploding from the slash on her ankle, then steadied herself. She grasped onto Mama’s body and began to pull out all the sharp objects, whimpering out apologies as she did so.

First the ruler in her torso, then the meat shears, then the seap ripper. Mama’s body, no longer held up by anything, came crashing down and nearly crushed Joan. She clumsily fell to the ground, stumbling with Mama slumped in her arms.

“Mama?” She nudged Mama, who lay sprawled in her lap, motionless and bleeding. “I’m sorry, Mama… I’m so, so sorry…”

She felt selfish for crying. No closure comes, only more misery. An unfathomable weight on her chest pressed down on her lungs until they nearly burst. The dam that long protected her heart ruptured at the pressure and a whimper bubbled to her lips, morphing into a full-throated outcry of grief.

A cry for the life she’ll never get back. For her Mama in her arms. For all the lives she ruined. For the fates of the people at the prom.

Only the unfeeling moon slipping in through a window attended her outburst. She knew that it wouldn't lament her in her time of sorrow, only spotlighting her lost soul under a cold and tyrannical white light.

------

Katherine entered a bloody scene that would haunt her forever.

She found her in the ruined living room, under a beam of silver moonlight, like heaven itself was spotlighting her sinfulness. She was holding Jane Seymour’s corpse in her arms, rocking back and forth and sobbing. Katherine could see streaks of blood all over her tattered nightgown. She was hurt.

“Joan?” She called softly.

Joan’s head snapped up. Her eyes were as pale and wide as the moon outside.

“Let me help you, Joan,” Katherine approached slowly, as if she were actually trying to corner a scared stray kitten.

Joan bared her teeth for a moment, then looked down at her mother again and burst into a fresh set of tears. Her entire little body shook with the weight of her sobs.

“Why couldn’t you have just left me alone?” She said, her voice nasally and wavering from crying. “N-none of this would have happened if you hadn’t… M-my Mama…” She uttered a long, keening whine that was reminiscent of a dying puppy.

“I—” Katherine faltered. “I’m sorry.”

Joan’s body shuddered and she grit her teeth. An unseen force coiled around Katherine’s body and suspended her in the air tightly. Her breath hitched in shock and she couldn’t breathe. It felt as if the atmosphere was crushing her.

“Look what you turned me into.” Joan whispered.

“P-please don’t hurt me,” Katherine begged.

“Why not?” Joan asked, and a pained smile tugged on her bloody lips. Tears start to roll down her cheeks again. “I’ve been hurt my whole life.”

Katherine stared at her in horror, realizing it was true. The girl before her had been hurt more than she ever had been in her entire eighteen years of life.

How has Joan lived with so much pain inflicted on her tiny little body?

Joan released Katherine from whatever had been holding her, then bent over her mother and whimpered against her bloody shirt. She kept nuzzling into her chest, keening softly, and then looking up at her mother’s face, as if she was hoping her affection and presence would wake her up. When it didn’t work, she tried again and again and again, and it was the saddest thing Katherine had ever seen in her entire life.

“I killed my mama,” Joan whispered. “I want her back!”

It was awful to see a child bound to such a witch of a woman. Katherine knew this lady had hurt Joan severely, and yet Joan still loved her.

A crack suddenly zigzagged through the wall. Katherine jerked her head around to see several other cobwebs of crevices splinter through the walls around them. The wood holding up the house creaked and then began to shake ominously like an erupting volcano.

“Joan!” Katherine cried. “We need to leave!”

“No.” Joan held firmly to her mother’s corpse, curling against it loyally. “I’m not leaving.”

“Joan, please!” Katherine begged. “I can’t lose you, too!”

That made Joan look up.

For just a moment, Katherine felt a glimmer of hope when Joan sat up slightly, but then she looked back down at the corpse and her body covered in blood and crumpled right back into a fetal position. Katherine then realized that she didn’t just want to stay with her dead mother—she was immobilized by pain and grief and trauma.

Joan wanted to die.

And there was nothing Katherine could do to stop her.

Except--

Katherine took a small step forward. The entire house rumbled. The walls were starting to break themselves into tiny pieces. Chunks of the ceiling were falling loose and Katherine barely managed to duck away before some rubble smashed into her skull.

“Joan--”

She grabbed Joan and scooped her into her arms.

Joan jolted and then screeched in a fit of outrage instantly. She kicked and squirmed and clawed at Katherine's face, but she was much too little and much too weak to get free. Katherine ran outside with the screaming girl as the house began to crumble.

The walls folded inwards like a collapsed tower of cards, and then the roof came crashing down. The earth shifted and opened into a wide sinkhole that swallowed the house, devouring the walls and the floors and the furniture and all those awful crucifixes Katherine had seen hanging up until there was nothing left to mourn. Dirt and rubble poured down into the abyss, sending a tidal wave of dust crashing into Katherine and Joan.

“MAMA!!!!” Joan shrieked. She fought Katherine even harder, sending them both toppling to the grass. She tried to scramble forward and nearly got caught in a piece of sinking debris, but Katherine grappled onto her dress and yanked her back into her arms. “MAMA! MAMA, NO!!”

She squirmed and struggled, reaching one arm out to the destruction. Her movements were starting to slow down, but her screaming and crying did not seize.

“I’m scared!” Joan wailed. She looked up at Katherine, eye shimmering with tears, and she suddenly looked a lot younger. “I-I hurt! I want my Mama!”

“Shh, shh,” Katherine pulled her closer and rocked her gently, like you would a fussy baby. “It’s going to be okay, Joan. I’ve got you. I’m here.”

Joan opened her mouth again, and Katherine expected her to scream once more, but all that came out was a moan. It was only then that Katherine realized just how badly she was wounded.

“Oh god, Joan…”

There was a cut across her right arm and up her stomach, as well as one on her left ankle, a small prick on her back, and slits in her cheeks, but the worst injury was the stab wound in her back, which was still gushing out blood. Katherine ripped off her jacket and pressed it to the injury on her back, which elicited a flinched and a whimper of pain.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” Katherine murmured, holding Joan’s head close to her chest. She gently stroked her unruly hair. “It’s going to be okay.”

“Hurts…” Joan mumbled. Her eyes were suddenly very cloudy and rapidly losing focus. “Mama…?”

“No, Joan.” Katherine said. “It’s Katherine. Katherine Howard. I’m going to help you, okay? You’re going to be alright.”

But Joan’s body was slowly depleting itself of strength and becoming limp in Katherine’s arms. She was losing too much blood.

“Mama.” Joan decided and sluggishly snuggled her head closer to Katherine. Her face was twisted in pain and she was still crying, but Katherine swore she looked just a little happy being held in someone’s arms.

“I’m so sorry, Joan,” Katherine whispered. “Oh, sweetie… I’m so sorry.”

Joan was much too dazed to answer, although her mouth was half open like she wanted to. Her eyes were glazed over, distant, and looked like glass orbs in their sockets, leaking out jewel drops of silver tears. Katherine got choked up just looking at her.

“It’s going to be okay, it’s all going to be okay,” She wept, pressing her head against Joan’s and rocking her back and forth again. “I promise, sweetie. It’s going to be okay soon.”

Joan’s head lolled and Katherine kept it firmly in place, even as the rest of her body when limp and cold. Still, she cradled the little girl, crying into the night, lying to Joan and herself over and over again because nothing would ever be okay ever again.

And then, a blindingly bright beam of light hit her and she flinched. The body in her arms was cold and then burning hot and then not there at all. Everything around her melted into nothingness.

“Name, please.”

“...”

“State your full name.”

“You already know my name, it's Katherine! Katherine Howard. Can you turn down that light? I can't see.”

“Tell us about the night of May 28th. About the occurrences that led up to the alleged event.”

“Alleged event? Why are you asking me the same thing over and over again? Are you trying to catch me in a lie? Is that it?”

“We want the truth.”

“I've already told you the truth! How many times do we have to go through this?”

“Until we understand.”

“What you need to understand is that we were just kids! Kids trying to do our best. We were kids...who made a mistake.”

Nineteen year old Katherine Howard leaned back in her chair, arms crossed firmly over her chest, eyes set on the detective in front of her. She was a sharply dressed woman named Victoria Green, with hawk-like facial features, pinned back strawberry blonde hair, and mossy green eyes. Like all adults nowadays, she looked at Katherine like she wanted to open up her brain and read through all her thoughts and memories.

Katherine finally came full circle into an ever-repeating loop of nightmares.

“What can you tell me about Joan Seymour?”

18 notes · View notes

sondepoch · 4 years

Text

XX: Saeran's Route (Y/N)

Where Futures Begin

Life used to be simple for you. Peaceful. But the Savior had other plans for you, and in moments, she ruined what you thought was your one shot at happiness. Blinded by anger, you escaped the Mint Eye, but that triggered a series of events that would bring you further into the world of brothers Saeran and Saeyoung. And further into the twisted world of your love for them.

Neutral Route: 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 | 07 | 08 | 09 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | ✔

Saeyoung’s Route: 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | ✔

Saeran’s Route: 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | ✔

MASTERLIST

Was it kindness that compelled Rika to throw you in the same cell as Saeran? Or cruelty?

You turned your gaze to the broken boy lying in your lap, unable to even utter a word.

Was she telling you to enjoy your final moments with the boy you'd come to love? Or perhaps she was trying to make your end as miserable as possible, forcing you to sit and watch as he slowly died in your arms, suffocating under the weight of his own skin.

You gazed into Saeran's open eyes, cupping his cheek. Was he alert? Did he see you? Was he even conscious?

You couldn't bring your other hand away from his chest. The slow pulse of his heartbeat under your warm hand was the only thing keeping you sane—the only verification of his life. But how much longer could he hold on?

You pulled your gaze back up to his eyes, staring at the blue-green irises that had once seemed to hold the entire sky in them, though now it looked like the cloudiness was setting in. "Saeran?" You whispered, praying for a response. Anything would do. A groan. A frown. A twitch.

Nothing.

"Saeran, you have to throw it up, okay?" You pulled the boy up by his arms, awkwardly rolling him onto his side so that his mouth was tilted toward the far corner of the cell you were both in. Never did your hand leave the spot where his heart kept beating. Never did you let yourself forget that there was still hope, dwindling as it was.

"Are you ready, Saeran?" You cooed into his ear, trying to give him time to prepare himself even though you doubted he was sentient enough for it to help. "Get ready on...Three, two, one."

You pushed his stomach in, earning a choke from Saeran. You hesitated and waited until you felt the familiar thump thump of his heart before a second attempt, then a third, a fourth, and before you knew it you were pressing on his stomach with all your might.

More choking sounds.

But you couldn't stop. You had to do this. You wouldn't let the Elixir sit in Saeran's stomach.

Rather, forcing him into the pain of vomiting it all back up was his best chance at survival right now.

You leaned Saeran forward, adding your knee to the pressure on his abdomen, and that was the straw that broke the camel's back. Within seconds, mint-green chemicals were spilling forth from his mouth, the contents emptying into the corner of the dungeon, like a tiny lake of death.

"More, Saeran. Please, just a little more." You pushed harder and the boy's stomach responded, more fluid emerging from his mouth until he was pushing himself off the ground: awake, alert, and alive.

"E-enough," He sputtered out through coughs. Saeran was on his hands and knees, clutching his throat as the remnants of the Elixir were expelled from his body. "I-I'm good now."

A smile bloomed on your face as you leaned backward in your position on the ground, relief flooding your senses like a tidal wave of happiness. You couldn't stop tears from forming in your eyes when Saeran finally regained enough strength to look at you and throw himself into your arms, giving you the first hug in what felt like an eternity.

"You're okay," You murmured in disbelief, tightening your arms around his slender frame.

"I'm okay," He responded, nuzzling his head into the crook of your neck. You could feel a wetness spill from his eyes as he clung to you, unwilling to let go. Though, in the moment, you were just as reluctant to leave the comforting embrace.

"I-I called Luciel. And Vanderwood. The Mint Eye's security defenses are completely down. They can literally walk in and—"

A blaring alarm interrupted the two of you from your momentary reunion, causing you both to further bury yourselves in each other's arms in an attempt to hide from the sound.

There was only a second before Rika's prerecorded voice played out over the speakers, and after that brief moment of calm passed, only chaos followed.

The booms and crashes and screams coming from up above were distant but loud, and there was no question in the fact that the duo that had come to rescue you and Saeran was not trying to be subtle about it.

"That must be them," Saeran thought out loud, looking up. The two of you had been settled in the central dungeons, the most secure part of the Mint Eye but also the part directly beneath the main entrance. Without a doubt, if Luciel and Vanderwood were the ones who had caused that alarm then they were directly above you: 2,000 feet up.

"Why'd you leave th-the alarms on?" Saeran asked, coughing in the middle. It seemed that the effects of the Elixir were still taking their toll on him.

"So that Rika wouldn't realize that I'd disabled everything else," You responded before shushing the boy. "Don't talk. You'll make it worse."

"Th-there's something I need to tell you, though," Saeran whispered, pulling back from the hug. You wanted to admonish and quiet him, but he began speaking before you could intervene. "I know you don't want me to apologize. But I'm sorry, (Y/N). I'm so fucking sorry. These past two months, I've treated you like shi-"

You brought a finger to Saeran's lips, silencing him with a shake of your head. "That's in the past. I forgive you."

"But you shouldn't forgive me! I've been so awful to you!" Saeran continued rambling, lost once more in one of his long apologies.

You almost laughed.

In all this time, after everything that these past two months had put you through, nothing had truly changed in your relationship. He was still the apologetic teddy bear you cared for. No, he was the apologetic teddy bear you loved.

"Shh," You whispered to Saeran once more, a tiny smile on your face as an idea popped into your head.

"But-"

There it was.

The apologetic teddy bear had spoken once more, another 'I'm sorry' about to roll off his lips when you silenced him with a sweet and chaste kiss.

You smiled into his lips, still young and inexperienced. The only other man you'd kissed in your entire life had been Saeran's own brother, Luciel. But with Luciel it had been different. Hot and passionate, but lacking love.

And so this kiss with Saeran felt as novel and foreign as the future that it would trigger between you two, one filled with happiness and hope and life.

"I don't need you to apologize for anything," You murmured. "Because I love you despite it all."

Saeran hesitated for a moment, before everything holding him back vanished. He leaned forward to recapture your lips, and you felt his shoulders shake and his cheeks grow wet once more as you two basked in the sweet glory of simply being together. It made you smile, to know that something simple as a kiss could bring him such emotion. It reassured you. Deep in your heart, you'd known of your affections for Saeran for years. The implication that he wouldn't feel the same way would have been too much for you to handle.

"But I have one more thing to apologize for," Saeran whispered, bringing his lips a hair away from yours. You were about to tell him to shut up and kiss you again, but as usual, he continued before you had the chance. "This wasn't our first kiss."

You looked up into his eyes, startled.

Had you two kissed before? After so much time together, the idea wasn't that absurd, but you were certain you would have remembered something so important.

"It was during your Secondary commitment. That was the first time. And...despite everything that had been going on, you trusted me. And that was the moment when I realized that I loved you." Saeran leaned forward and met your lips again, unwilling to lose the contact for more than a second.

"I love you," He repeated, kissing your cheek, as if testing the words.

"I love you." He kissed your neck with newfound confidence.

"I love you." He kissed your jaw.

"I love you." Your shoulder.

He traced your entire body like that, sending shudders down your spine as his lips ghosted over every bit of exposed skin, leaving nothing unclaimed with another whispered 'I love you' so that every part of you knew it for the truth.

You could only repeat it back to him when he finally moved back up to your lips, and by then the entire world had stopped for you two. The sound of alarms upstairs in the Mint Eye was like background music, edging the two of you on as Saeran pressed your back to the cell wall, deepening each kiss with his tongue.

Even the sound of bombs seemed far away as his hands made contact with your skin, one resting on your thigh and the other on the small of your back as he pressed your body closer to his. And the sound of screams faded into an off-tune melody that enveloped the two of you as you wrapped your arms around Saeran's neck, a quiet beg for more.

All around you, there was chaos. Mayhem. Havoc.

But your quiet cell was the first glimpse of true paradise you'd seen since your arrival in the Mint Eye so many years ago: and it was a pale-faced paradise with short, white hair, and mint green eyes.

It was a paradise that you'd spent years befriending and loving, a paradise that would be with you no matter where you went.

It was a paradise you loved, and a paradise that loved you back.

It was true paradise.

MASTERLIST

Neutral Route: 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 | 07 | 08 | 09 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | ✔

Saeyoung’s Route: 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | ✔

Saeran’s Route: 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | ✔

Word count: 1.7k

Notes: Owowowow im on spring break but this is the week that all the textbooks i ordered in preparation for my exams have arrived T^T wish me luck i get to work out and then do 80 pages of math! how exciting.

Comment & Like

Next Update: 4/09/20

I do not own the rights to Mystic Messenger or any of the characters within it.

41 notes · View notes

galionne-vibin · 4 years

Text

Welcome to Earth - Chapter 2: Radio Silence

Title: Welcome to Earth

Chapter: 2/3 (Previous Chapter) (Next Chapter)

Summary: Gigan awakens in Seatopia to Megalon's friendly face, a bunch of Seatopians- and a completely silent mind.

Warning(s): None

A/N: You thought this fic was dead, didn't you? Well so did I! I've been struggling with this chapter for MONTHS (I unfortunately hit a big "stress and panic" moment while working on this due to college work and some (minor) health issues, which I think really impacted my energy for writing this specifically). BUT! Here's chapter 2, finally! Hope you enjoy! (And sorry if it's a bit messy)

Read on Ao3 or below.

Gigan groaned and stirred as consciousness began ever so slowly pulling him out of his slumber. His mind felt hazy and his body incredibly heavy, weighed down by the lethargy still coursing through him. He took long, deep breath as bits and pieces of information pushed their way back into his brain. It was all muddled together but he was beginning to remember a desertic scenery, a fight...

He exhaled deeply as he tried to collect his thoughts.

So the Nebulans had sent him to Earth, that he remembered... They had sent him over to help some of their allies cause some well deserved mayhem and destruction on the planet's surface. And there was this other kaiju... Ah yes, Megalon was his name. The giant beetle with drills for hands... Not the brightest of beings but a good fighting partner nonetheless. Although that fight... Considering Gigan barely remembered anything from it, he must have received a pretty ruthless beating.

He sighed and focused on his body, trying to put his senses to work. It took a few minutes before he finally became more aware of his surroundings: he was lying on his side, the ground beneath him hard and rough but surprisingly warm. The air smelled faintly of salt, heated metal and smoke. There was a lingering taste of blood on his tongue and his throat felt incredibly dry for some reason. He coughed lightly at the unpleasant sensation- only for it to turn into a full-on coughing fit as his throat tightened painfully. He hacked and gasped for several minutes, clenching his teeth and wheezing once it was over, trying to catch his breath. As a few more seconds passed, he suddenly heard a faint noise which slowly grew louder, sounding like a high pitched cry of some sort. It felt... Familiar, although he couldn't quite make out if it was saying anything. He tried to concentrate on it but to no avail. His hearing and his translator hadn't quite re-adjusted yet it seemed...

Gigan mumbled a little. Some more memories of the fight were coming back to him ; namely Godzilla's presence. Of course that radioactive mutant would show up to ruin his fun... Although this time, rather than the angry "ball-of-spikes-on-legs" that usually accompanied him, Godzilla had become allied with some sort of giant humanoid robot- an abomination created by humans, he assumed. A supposed 'equal' to creatures like he and Megalon...

"Can you hear me?"

Oh. Speaking of Megalon.

Now that his hearing had come back, Gigan could tell that was definitely the giant beetle's voice he'd been hearing. He groaned and nodded slowly before turning on his visor, causing it to emit a small flash of red light.

"You're alive!" the beetle kaiju cheered.

Had Gigan had functional eyeballs, he would have rolled them. He looked up and paused for a moment as he took in his surroundings.

The two giants were in what appeared to be a large cave of red mineral, the ground covered in a thin layer of dust. About twenty or so cables of varying color and width snaked along the rocks above them, a few of them disappearing into the rather sizable round lamps hanging down from the ceiling. There was moss growing in uneven green patches on the cave walls ; water trickling down through cracks in the rocks here and there.

Megalon himself was sitting opposite to Gigan with his back against the wall. His arms were splayed out to his sides, resting on two odd metal scaffolding-like structures which crept upwards along the stone. As he squinted, the cyborg could see a dozen of humans on either structure, seemingly working away at Megalon's drills- presumably the reason he could smell heated metal earlier...

"-Where are we?, he asked tiredly. -In Seatopia, the giant beetle responded cheerfully. -Seatopia...?"

The name rang a bell... Gigan looked around some more, spotting some houses and other similar buildings towards the end of the tunnel. If he remembered correctly, the Nebulans had referred to the allies he was supposed to help as "the Seatopians". So this must be their kingdom... Gigan frowned.

"-Why did you bring me here? -You were hurt, so we needed to fix you. -Did you contact the Mothership?"

Despite Megalon's lack of facial muscles and inability to frown, Gigan could see the confusion in his yellow multi-faceted eyes.

"-The... What? Who? -The Nebulan Mothership. I was supposed to go back to it ; did you manage to contact it?"

The beetle's antennae twitched.

"What are you talking about...?"

Gigan groaned and began sitting up, pushing himself up with his bladed arms which were folded beneath his body.

"-Wait, Megalon said as he leaned forwards ever so slightly, You shouldn't- -Did you ask the- AAAH!"

A high pitched cry escaped the cyborg as he felt pain shoot up his right arm and bounce around the rest of his body. He jumped up into a sitting position, holding the agonizing limb to his side as he tried to catch his breath, the pain blinding even his visual receptors. Suddenly, the image of his arm being grabbed by two hands of metal flashed in his mind. He remembered Godzilla's robotic ally attacking him ; savagely breaking his limb with one swift movement of its knee… Once the pain subsided, he looked down and was surprised to find his arm encased in what appeared to be a contraption of black metal and plastic. It kept the limb bent at an angle and secured it from moving too much. He poked at the metal curiously.

"-What... Is that...? -The robot broke your arm, so we put a cast on it to fix it! You never had a cast before?"

Gigan was silent for a moment before shaking his head. The Nebulans didn't really do 'fixing' as much as 'replacing'... Which they were probably going to do anyway, once he got back to the Mothership... There was another moment of silence before the cyborg sighed.

"-Listen, I don't think I should be here. Can you tell me where the exit is- -Oh! And we had to take another thing out of your head that was hurting you, too. -Out of my head...?"

Gigan felt a weight in the pit of his stomach.

"-What did you remove? -Oh, It was just this little metal thing..."

The gigantic beetle turned towards the other side of the cave and let out a call, slightly lower than his usual roar. It took a few minutes before a human appeared at the entrance of the cave carrying what looked like a flat, metal slate which was nearly half his height. The newcomer was dressed in all white and silver and carried himself with great confidence in his stride. Gigan watched as the other Seatopians bowed before him, leaving him room as he walked by them. He approached the two giants with his head held high ; no fear or even the slightest hint of hesitation in his eyes. The cyborg was a little taken aback by this attitude. He watched as the human looked up at him, still silent, before slowly setting the metal artifact down before him. He then turned to Megalon who let out an approving sound and bowed to the gigantic beetle, before promptly leaving.

Gigan watched him go, still a little taken aback. Humans usually ran away in utter terror when they saw him, they didn't casually stroll by to bring him gifts... He huffed and carefully slid his left blade beneath the object to pick it up and inspect it.

It was a bit hard to identify ; especially because it was completely burned and had apparently been deformed under great heat. Gigan could tell it was originally supposed to have a somewhat green color and a rectangular shape. It was also still very lightweight and had, although they were damaged, about half a dozen metal downwards-pointing pins attached to either of its longer sides. Gigan also noted it was roughly the size of one of his scales- and smelled faintly of his own blood, too... He looked up at Megalon, feeling uneasy.

"-Are you sure this came out of my head...? -Yeah!, the Seatopian kaiju nodded, It was hurting you and you were trying to pull it out, so we did it for you. And then you passed out..."

There was a moment of silence, before he asked:

"-... What is it? -It's a microchip, Gigan explained. -What's that? What does it do? -A lot of things really... Wait, how do you not know-..."

The cyborg trailed off as he noticed a symbol on the back of the artifact. It was barely visible and scorched over but he could recognize the simplified drawing of an orange cockroach- the Nebulans' signature. Gigan felt his stomach twist.

"Why would they chip me...?"

Something was wrong, but he couldn't quite pinpoint what...

That's when he noticed the silence.

He could still hear sounds ; his own breathing, the Seatopians' tools working away on metal, Megalon's wings scraping against the cave wall... He could still hear things from the outside. But his mind was completely silent.

"You have to put it back."

Megalon's antennae twitched as he looked at the cyborg quizzically.

"-Uh? What- -You have to put it back in my head! Now!"

The color had drained from Gigan's face. He began trembling as the realization of what had happened took hold of him.

"I can't hear the voice without this! That's-! I-! I need it!"

The gigantic beetle was taken aback by his counterpart's sudden outburst. He pulled his drills out of the metal structures in one swift movement and held them flat-side up against the edge of the platforms, waiting for the Seatopian workers to get on before carefully lowering them to the ground and quickly ushering them away. He had no idea what Gigan was panicking about, but he knew better than to let his people get in harm's way...

He turned back to the cyborg who was frantically looking around and breathing loud and hard.

“-Why do you want it back?, he began, It- -You don’t understand!, Gigan cut him off almost immediately, I need the voice! I-I don’t know what to do without it! -What are you talking about?! What voice?!”

Gigan swallowed thickly, shaking.

“-The voice in my head! The voice that tells me what to do! I need it! I-I can’t do anything without it! I need the chip to hear it! -But it was hurting you! -I NEED IT BACK-”

Gigan was interrupted by a sudden flash of blinding white light and the sharp sound of electricity crackling all around him. He stumbled back with a cry and hit his back against the wall, dropping the chip as he did. He coughed and looked up to see Megalon looming over him, the occasional spark of electricity still bouncing off of his horn. The beetle kaiju remained silent as he walked towards him. His foot bumped lightly into the chip as he took another step, stopping him in his tracks. He briefly looked down at it before looking back up at the cyborg.

Gigan didn't have time to utter a single word before the chip was crushed under Megalon's foot.

He opened his mouth for a few seconds before closing it, speechless. Instead, he only stared at the other kaiju in disbelief.

"It was hurting you, Megalon simply stated as he sat back down, I don't know what voice you're talking about, but that..."

He lifted his foot, revealing the shattered pieces of the chip.

"It was bad. It was making you scream and burning you, so we took it out to help you. We're not putting it back in your head."

Gigan remained silent, staring at the broken pieces under Megalon's foot.

It was hurting you...

He brought his left arm up and behind his head, running the blunt side of his blade against the back of his neck. There was a distinct spot where scales were missing and he hissed lightly in pain as he touched raw, burned flesh instead of his usual thick hide. There was also some kind of scarred hole in his flesh where he assumed the chip was implanted. So they really had chipped him... But why? Why would they do this? Sure, they'd thrown all kinds of prosthetics and gadgets on his body before- blades, his universal translator, his visor ; even his beak was made of steel. But chips were different... Chipping was for machines. To tell them what to do, to keep them under control...

Gigan's chest suddenly tightened painfully, leaving him breathless for a few seconds as the Voice's last order rang in his head.

"Return to the Mothership..."

By all logic, that's what he should be doing. Listening to those disembodied which had guided him his whole life ; this empty tone he knew so well...

But despite all the logic and familiarity involved, something felt incredibly wrong. The thought of going back to the Nebulans was making Gigan... Uneasy. He had been fighting for them for as long as he could remember ; if anything that was all he knew. His entire life consisted of nothing but battles and destruction...

And yet.

He couldn’t help but think back to his fight with Godzilla and the robot… Being thrown around like a rag doll, punched, kicked, burned ; getting his arm shattered… He was reminded of Godzilla’s atomic ray hitting him in the head and the pure, blinding agony that had followed ; reminded of how he’d completely lost control of his body as he lay helpless on the ground. Megalon caught him shaking lightly and pressed the tip of his drill against his arm gently.

“-Are you okay? -I… Don’t know…”

Gigan swallowed thickly, mindlessly running his left blade over his cast and toying with the straps.

“I should go back, but I… It sounds wrong...”

The words barely made any sense to the cyborg. How could something he was so familiar with suddenly feel so foreign and unsettling? What was this weight in the pit of his stomach? Megalon gave him an awkward pat on the shoulder.

“If you don’t want to go back you don’t have to.”

Gigan paused.

“-Don’t “want” to…? -Yeah, you know… If it makes you feel bad, then you shouldn’t go back.”

The cyborg fell silent again, pondering the question. This was new... This gut feeling... None of the Voice's orders had ever made him feel like that before...

He looked down at the destroyed chip with a worsening feeling of dread, a shiver trailing up his spine. Was this why? Was it because of this minuscule device that he'd never felt anything similar before? Why he'd never tried to go against the Voice's orders before? Did it control his emotions? Was this how the Nebulans had kept him fighting for so long?

He turned to Megalon, feeling a little light headed.

"What... What do I do?"

The large beetle was a little taken aback by the tone in Gigan's voice and the look on his face. Despite the cyborg having no real eyes he could still read the fear in him... And although he didn't really understand what he was fearing, he also knew he had to help. He pressed his drill against Gigan's arm, giving it a gentle rub.

"You can stay here if you want... You're hurt and Godzilla and the robot might still be out there, so maybe it's better for you to stay in Seatopia until you feel better..."

Gigan's visor flickered for a moment before its light was dimmed, indicating he had 'closed his eyes'. If it was a question of not making him feel 'bad', as Megalon put it, then staying in Seatopia certainly sounded like the right option.

As if he had any other...

He didn't know anything outside of the Nebulan fleet and this single cave. If he didn't pick one or the other then he'd have nowhere to go. And in that case, the choice was simple...

"I'm staying."

Megalon's antennae perked up.

"Really?"

Gigan nodded and gave a gentle sigh, the light in his visor flickering back on.

"I don't know what else to do... So I'll stay here for now."

Before the cyborg had even finished his sentence Megalon clapped his drills together, letting out an excited sound which Gigan assumed was both a laugh and an exclamation of joy.

"Great! Great! You'll see, it's great down here!"

He pushed himself up and stumbled awkwardly for a second before catching himself.

"Come on! I'll show you around!"

Gigan sighed as he stood up, following an excited oversized beetle through the tunnels of his new temporary home.

What kind of mess had he gotten himself into now...?

#godzilla #kaiju #godzilla vs megalon #gigan #megalon #gigalon #fanfic #fanfiction #godzilla fanfic #kaiju fanfic

11 notes · View notes

lovelahela · 4 years

Text

❛ sweet tooth ❜ ─ jax matsuo

author’s note: this is like my first choices fic and it’s pretty short and bad ( this is not me being fake modest or anything aksujd it’s genuinely bad, i’m not used to writing these types of fanfics) but i look forward to improving and writing better fics! constructive criticism is appreciated <3

day nine of thirty-one

tags: @choicebyjade, @cora-nova, @choichesdecemberchallenge

word count: 1236

book + li: bloodbound, jax matsuo

prompt: sweets

status: unedited

SWEET TOOTH

"Hey! Grab the cat, it stole my wallet!"

"Farah! Come back here, the cookies will burn!"

"Who cares about the cookies, Adrian doesn't pay me as much as y'all think he does!"

To say the 24th of December was the most accurate representation of the word "chaotic" would be the understatement of the century. Despite the delicate glow of the Christmas lights hung all over the walls in the room, the Christmas tree that was... quite messily decorated, if you really think about it ( but hey! it's the thought that counts, right?), and the soft chatters of excitement outside their door, Jax Matsuo and Farah Amari's day was not as cozy as their beautifully adorned room indicated. And it had all started when they were tasked with the job of baking the sweet deserts to be served at their feast that night.

Keep in mind, of all things that woman could do, handle herself in a kitchen was not one of them.

"Jax! Hey!" Farah had called out joyfully, running to her boyfriend's side the moment she saw him after entering the Shadow Den. She was wearing a ridiculous, vibrant red Santa Claus hat, a comically over-sized and horribly ugly Christmas sweater, and a pair of jeans she had stolen from him ( he had pretended not to pay attention, but frankly, he loved it). When he spotted her charismatic ensemble, an unattractive snort unwillingly escaped him, to which she slapped his arm playfully, brown eyes sparkling jovially under the soft illumination of the fairy lights strung up near them. Before she could have the chance to fight off the urge, a wide, pure smile stretched across her plump, gloss-coated lips, which was quite contagious if you asked him. Although warmth spread throughout his body like a wildfire at the sight of her gorgeously genial eyes and her childlike jumping, he swallowed the affection that he was so tempted to shower her in and instead resorted to tease her.

"What's up, Alabaster Snowball?" Jax sniggered childishly, earning chuckles from the members of his Clan that happened to be passing by, softly smiling at their adorable interactions. Despite knowing her puny human strength would not so much as make a dent in his athletically toned body ( let's not forget his superhuman, vampiric strength as well ) she sent a weak punch to his arm and pouted melodramatically.

"Ouch, right where it hurts!" He continued to poke fun at her mercilessly, which gained him a chucklesome glare from his much shorter girlfriend and a series of feeble attempts at punches.

"Anyway," huffed Farah after expressing her feigned anger by treating Matsuo like a punching bag, "I just got a call from Adrian. He said Mila is out sick and can't bake the sweets for tonight, so we're gonna have to do it."

His facial expression contorted into an unpleasantly shocked one. "What? This is on such a short notice!"

"Dude, we've like, killed an army of Ferals and pretentious vampire hunters, I think we can bake a bunch of cookies before tonight." Farah tried to lift his spirits - key word here being tried. He grimaced at her unrealistically optimistic behavior, given her past experiences in kitchens - from burning cakes to half-cooked rice to impossible bitter scrambled eggs ( how do you even mess up scrambled eggs? and make them bitter? ), little miss Amari was not a force to be reckoned with when it came to cooking and baking, and Jax meant that in the worst possible way.

"Full offense, Farah, our kitchen has almost perished a whopping fifty-two times because of you," said Jax, cringing bitterly at the memories of her miserable failures. She tilted her head slightly, softly wavy hair flowing like black ink on a tilted piece of parchment, and frowned innocently at his critical choice of words.

"You counted?"

"We don't really have insurance in case you burned down the entire place, might I remind you."

"Come on, pleeeease?"

"No."

"Pleeaaaaaaase?"

"Absolutely not."

And then there they were, standing side-to-side in poor Jax Matsuo's kitchen with the ingredients needed to bake scrumptious cookies were carelessly scattered about. Jax, with brows knitted in utter worry and arms crossed stiffly against his chest, let out a long huff that screamed I-don't-know-why-I-keep-putting-up-with-you-at-this-point. Farah, on the other hand, was positively beaming as she protected her atrocious outfit with an equally appalling apron.

"Cheer up, Jaxxie, how bad can it be?" She had giggled mischievously, carrying two eggs in her hands and waving them around tauntingly. With the speed of lightning itself, he grasped both her hands in his and closed the gap between them. A yelp escaped her parted lips at the abrupt movement, and upon registering the closeness between them suddenly felt heat rush to her cheeks. An almost melodic laugh that made her heart skip a beat or two sounded through the room as a reaction to her adorable sheepishness, and - to her dismay - he backed away with the eggs now in his own palms.

"Get to work, young one, we have a shit ton of cookies to bake."

Needless to say, that was the last sentence that was said before complete madness broke out. It had started out calm, with the two humming in rhythm to cheerful Christmas songs and exchanging encouraged smiles as well as furtive glances at the clock that seemed to be going too fast, then it had suddenly escalated to the pair tripping over their own feet as they rushed to get their job done in the remaining two hours they had. The younger of the two was doing surprisingly well - only because that time, she decided to obediently follow his wise instructions - until a stray cat came screeching into their room, snatched her prized wallet into its small mouth, and ran out.

Farah gasped dramatically, resulting in her dropping the bowl of batter she had been whisking and spilling its contents onto the floor. Jax cried out at the mess and wasted batter, looking frantically between the spilled contents on his previously squeaky-clean floor and his wide-eyed, hyper-active girlfriend.

"Farah, what the hell?" exclaimed Jax in complete and utter disbelief. His loud yell brought her back into reality and she ran out the door, fastest she's ever run, after the thief that robbed her of her possibly most precious item.

"HEY! GRAB THAT CAT, IT STOLE MY WALLET!" She had shrieked, startling all the inhabitants of the Shadow Den that instantly stopped their preparations for the feast to gape with dropped jaws at the panicking woman. In amused confusion, they turned their attention to their leader, who ran out covered in flower, batter, and an apron covered in flowery prints that made some of the vampires snicker.

"FARAH! COME BACK HERE, THE COOKIES WILL BURN!" His nervous roar echoed throughout the underground village, causing an uproar of laughter and joy, which he would have admired if it weren't for the fact that it was his suffering they were guffawing at.

"WHO CARES ABOUT THE COOKIES, ADRIAN DOESN'T PAY ME AS MUCH AS Y'ALL THINK HE DOES!"

And suddenly there were shoes flying targeted at the fleeing cat, nervous outcries from a financially struggling assistant, and a whole lot of mayhem that was not suited for a cozy dinner on Christmas Eve.

#choicesdecemberchallenge #choices #playchoicies #pixelberry #BloodBound #kamilah sayeed #adrian raines #jax matsuo #jax x mc #jax x reader

19 notes · View notes

ahumanfemale · 6 years

Text

Everything.

Hello all, I’m new to the Strike fandom but not to the series - I’ve been hooked since the first, all those years ago. I’m about a third of the way through Lethal White and felt the need to try my hand. Also up on ao3 if that’s easier for anyone.

xoxo, ahf.

Robin imagined the worst.

She couldn’t help it — an occupational hazard, she would say, after the last three years of her life. Murder and mayhem and trauma that left lasting scars. Of course, it was tempered with victory and justice and a profound sense of validation, but those attitudes were less likely to be affected on a night like tonight. When the weather was hot and balmy and she was running from the train station so quickly it felt like she couldn’t catch her breath or steady the frantic jackhammer of her heart against her ribs.

Cormoran was hurt.

The bloody idiot had promised her. Promised. A covenant that had always held the utmost importance in their partnership, and Cormoran had broken it. Had made a move on the suspect after swearing the weekend would be spent surveilling while Robin was in Masham, visiting her mother after her emergency gallbladder removal. It had been understood between them that their conclusion was not yet proven, that there was still evidence to collect before they could be sure, and that he would keep an eye on Roger Marshall until Robin could return to London.

She’d planned on taking the redeye Monday morning and going straight to work from the station bright and early, and instead she’d gotten a frantic call from Ilsa in the middle of Sunday afternoon when she was putting supper in the oven.

You have to come home, Ilsa had pleaded, sounding distraught. It’s Cormoran.

Robin had hardly needed to hear anything else. She dropped the tea towel on the kitchen table, had kissed her mother goodbye, and had asked her father to drive her back to the station. It had been clear from the expression on her face that there were to be no questions or refusals. Her normally practical father than driven over the speed limit the entire way, offering comforting pats on her knee as she phoned Ilsa back to let her know she was on her way. It was only after she’d bought a ticket and found a relatively quiet space within the station that Ilsa had been able to explain.

They had been working in conjunction with the Met on a kidnapping case, hired by the young girl’s wealthy grandparents after her ransom insisted they were not to contact the police. Of course, hiring private detectives was very nearly the same thing, but Cormoran had somehow maintained that they could hunt down leads without drawing the same attention as CID. It was assumed that the child’s estranged father had taken her after gaining nothing in his divorce from his clients’ wealthy daughter but neither Cormoran nor Robin had believed that to be true. To Wardle’s complete consternation, they had insisted on looking further. It was a formerly beloved tutor, it turned out, who had taken young Camilla Evans from her bed in the middle of the night, leaving a typed letter devoid of all forensic evidence for her mother to find in the morning.

Not that they had been able to prove it, nor that they had been able to find the child. Cormoran did not believe the girl to be in danger if things stayed as they were, if Marshall stayed in control and confident, and so he intended to watch until eventually the man led them to where he was keeping her. Or at least that was the plan discussed moments before Robin hopped on the train to Yorkshire, worried more for her ill mother than she had been for the disheveled and exhausted hulk of a man waving her off from the platform.

How wrong she’d been.

Her former mentor and boss, current partner and best friend, had instead followed Roger Marshall to a seedier part of London just in time for the man to receive a phone call from someone who had talked to Cormoran earlier in the day - a warning, not that it was likely the person on the other end of the line knew it. Cormoran had been behind the man on the street as the voice on the line offered, Oh, that private detective. You know! The one in all the papers. Great beast of a man, even bigger in person. Did you know he’d been hired to find Camilla?

Robin knew, just has Cormoran had earlier in the day, that Camilla was in more danger at that moment than she had been since her disappearance three weeks before. And when the man had rung off and hurried to a small rental house around the block, Cormoran had spotted a blade in the man’s pocket. What else could he have done? Call Wardle, which he did, and then follow the man around the back of the house to find a cellar with walls so thick not a soul would have heard a rock concert through them.

What happened? Robin had asked Ilsa, feeling sick when she heard tears in the attorney’s voice.

He went after him, because he’s Cormoran and of course he did. The woman sniffled and Robin could see in her mind the woman pressing her glasses back up her nose, unconscious of the reflexive gesture. The little girl is fine and the evil prick is in custody, but he got in a good jab before Wardle showed up. It’s- God, Robin. It looks awful. I couldn’t, I can’t—

I’m on my way, it’s okay. I promise it’ll be okay.

She didn’t know quite how she could promise that, but of course she did — whether it was a promise to herself or Ilsa, she couldn’t say.

That was close to four hours before and now, running down Denmark Street in the dark, Robin felt breath catch in her lungs. She’d found out through text messages on the trip that Cormoran would live, that the damage would heal, but that he’d also refused to stay in hospital. Had checked himself out against medical advice and against pleas, accusations, and threats from both Nick and Ilsa. It didn’t surprise Robin, not really, but she found herself fuming all the same.

It’s Cormoran.

Ilsa’s voice whispered in her ear while her eyes burned.

It’s Cormoran.

It’s—

She’d arrived.

Taking the steps as quickly as possible, she picked up the pace at the sound of raised voices coming from upstairs. Female, she noted immediately, high-pitched with emotion. The second voice was the low grumble of a male arguing. Cormoran and Ilsa, she’d be willing to bet, as she hurried her steps a little more. When at last she’d come to the door and pushed her way inside, it was to the sight of Ilsa standing in front of the couch with her mobile to one ear and her hand to another to block out the sound. She barely had time to take in the fact that Ilsa was clearly arguing with someone on the line before her eyes sought out what she’d come for in the first place.

Cormoran.

…

Cormoran stood, transfixed.

For a long moment he thought she was a hallucination — something his brain had dreamed up to comfort him, because of course he’d known Robin wasn’t in London. Robin was in Masham with her mother after an operation. And yet this woman in front of him looked like his Robin, breathed like her. Smelled like her, he thought with an inhale as her subtly sweet perfume drifted into his nose. Hell, she even sounded like his Robin as she assured Ilsa that she would stay with him, that Ilsa could go and attend to whatever client was having an emergency somewhere else in the city.

Listening probably would have been a good idea, he bet, as Ilsa had shouted something else vaguely menacing in his direction before storming off and leaving him and the hallucination standing on opposite sides of his still shabby office. Alluring blue-grey eyes met his and his heart thudded in recognition.

Robin.

The hallucination was real.

Imagine that.

Ilsa had practically slammed the door behind her as she left, the raucous noise still echoing in the air between them, but still through the fog of pain medication and exhaustion she was the only certainty his mind could lock on to. Her hair, burnished rose gold over the shoulders of her dark blouse. He rarely saw her in dark colors, he realized hazily. Always pastels and florals and smart professional outfits that were flattering without being provocative — of course, nearly everything Robin wore was provocative to him, just because she had the virtue of being Robin.

Robin, who was breathing hard and mysteriously silent.

Cormoran knew better, of course. He had long since perfected the art of the pointed silence as a means of gleaning information from an unwilling source. Still, with the weight of her stare on him from a few feet away, the words came and came quickly.

“Caught a train back, did you?” he said and heard the slight slur in his speech. “That’s good, I guess. I hope it was a good trip. I mean, not that you coming back was good. M’sorry, that’s not what I meant. Damn it…”

She only kept those alluring eyes trained on him. Nearly unblinking, narrowed in on him either because of the dark or in spite of it. In spite of him, most likely, and that only kept him stammering. Muttering about Masham, asking after her mother’s health following the surgery. Talking about the bloody weather, of all things, until the very moment that Robin took pity on him and moved. To leave, probably, if she knew what was best for herself.

Or not.

Closer.

Robin was coming closer.

Walking on worn trainers until he was backed up against the pitiful desk and she was face to face with him. With his dilated pupils, with his vague reek of warm copper and harsh antiseptic. Had he known he was going to get knifed that morning he might have been compelled to keep a spare shirt handy.

A fact that he apparently uttered aloud, because Robin’s hands lifted up to the shirt in question without so much as a pause. She touched the vertical line of buttons and glanced up, meeting his eyes. His dark to her light, earthen to tempestuous sky.

Entirely without thought, he nodded.

In a second she had two handfuls of fabric and had tugged his shirt clear of his trousers, exposing the mat of dark hair that covered his midriff. Had he been more cognizant of the moment he might have experienced some trepidation; some sense of self-consciousness at the bit of his stomach that was soft and expanding over the cusp of his belt. As it was, he stood numb and waiting as Robin pulled his shirt up and out of the way.

The wound was deep, or so they told him. Eight or so inches across the ribs on his upper left side, a puncture and rip that had nearly blinded him with pain in the seconds after it had happened. He’d had just enough wherewithal to knock Roger Marshall out of his shoes before collapsing and blacking out. Seconds, minutes, he wasn’t sure how long. Only knew that he woke up when Wardle had shaken him to within an inch of his life and then cursed him up one side and down the other at how much it had hurt.

Now it was sutured and bandaged and gauzed and taped, kept entirely from sight even if it did still hurt like the bloody devil. When Robin reached out to touch the edge of that gauze he flinched in anticipation but let her, realizing as she moved that the scar very nearly matched the one on her right arm. The one rent into existence by Donald Laing almost two years before.

If she embraced him, he thought drunkenly, the two might just line up.

“It’s fine,” he said, hoping the words he spoke would drive away the ones he’d thought, “I’m fine.”

Robin nodded, and then hit him.

It was hardly a glance, aimed at the meat of his chest rather than somewhere nearer the wound on his side, but Cormoran blinked in surprise anyway.

“Robin, what—”

Another smack, this one to the right side of his chest. Another, and then another. Seemingly delivered flailing but somehow careful enough to never land anywhere near somewhere it might actually hurt him. After a moment he stopped bracing against them and let Robin go, feeling something crack in his chest at the first broken sob to escape her throat. The sound of her crying had an uncomfortable effect on him, forcing something like agony to crawl into his throat and lodge there for him to swallow around. It was all he could do to wrap his arms around her shoulders and let her have her fill while he fought the sting behind his eyes. He held her while she struggled, while she cried, until she stopped landing blows and collapsed into him. It was the first hug they’d shared since the one on her wedding day, though Cormoran had the fleeting thought that he’d felt worse then than he did now.

Still, Robin shook and wailed against his chest until his button up was damp and his arms were the only thing holding her upright.

When finally she quieted, hiccuping every other breath, Cormoran huffed a flippant laugh.

“Feel better?” he asked. “Talk about a hostile work envi—”

“You don’t know, do you?”

Her interruption set him aback, made him tilt his neck so that he could see her tear streaked face. She was serious, he quickly realized. There wasn’t a hint of a rueful smile on her face, the light in her eyes had dulled to smoke.

“I— what?”

“You don’t know that if something were to happen to you, if you—” Her voice broke, her misery shattering him like glass. “Everything. I’d lose everything.”

She looked shell-shocked now, breath coming quick even as her hand rested lightly on the knife wound Roger Marshall had bestowed upon him. Under his shirt, so delicately skin to skin. His addled brain couldn’t decide which sensation to process first; the feel of her so close, touching him, was headier than the best whisky in London. Then again, her words bounced between his ears taunting and teasing and promising things they had no business promising.

Everything. I’d lose everything.

“You didn’t lose me, Robin,” he said stiffly, wishing he were something approximating sober for the first time all night. “It missed everything it needed to.”

“And if it hadn’t?” she asked emptily. She sounded very much like the hypothetical part of the question was irrelevant and Cormoran found himself pulling her a little closer, arms closing around her a little tighter. It hadn’t even occurred to him to let her go. Frankly, he wasn’t sure he could have if it had.

Cormoran, for most of his adult life, had felt… expendable. He was no one’s nearest and dearest, always a fleeting and peripheral character in the everyday lives of the people close to him. Supposing the worst had happened he had no doubt believing people would mourn. His sister would be miserable but she had Greg and the boys, would inevitably see his demise as living by the sword and dying by it. Shanker would loot his corpse and nod farewell, visit him and Leda together when it occurred to him. Nick and Ilsa would miss him, he supposed, but they again had each other. It hadn’t occurred to him until just that moment that the woman in his arms might feel differently. To her, perhaps, he was irreplaceable.

She means her job, you tit.

“Don’t worry, I’d see you’re taken care of,” he started and this time Robin picked her head up, surprised. “Ilsa got on my case a few months back, insisting I make a will. I don’t have much, but I have this office and the agency. If someone one day manages to kick my bucket, ‘CB Strike Investigations’ becomes ‘Strike-Ellacott Investigations’ and she’s all yours.”

Robin stared.

“You’ve worked so hard and done so much and… I have no doubt that I would have lost all this by now had Temporary Solutions not cocked it up and sent a temp I’d already canceled,” he said and felt the lump in his throat grow. “This agency is nothing without you, Robin Ellacott. It’s yours just as much as it is mine.”

I’m nothing without you, he thought wretchedly. I’m yours.

But, no. More words he could never take back, and so he never offered them.

“So. Don’t worry about making a living,” he continued and cleared his throat. “I’ve got it all worked out, for once.”

She was silent for so long Cormoran thought she might start hitting him again. Maybe he would have deserved it, he didn’t know. The world was fuzzy at the edges and he was exhausted and Robin was really there. She wasn’t a hallucination, not a dream like she sometimes was, and she was so close—

She was kissing him.

Full lips, soft and smooth, were pressed to his. Robin had come up onto the tips of her toes and taken two handfuls of his shirt again and maybe his brain was starting to catch up because suddenly he was kissing her back. His hands at least knew what to do, coming up to cradle the back of her neck with one and the soft line of her jaw with the other. For long, glorious moments they shared air and the taste of weak hospital tea on his lips and he reveled in the feeling of his heart clamoring out of his chest, fighting to get to her.

Everything. I’d lose everything.

She opened her mouth to him and his knees threatened to buckle.

I’m nothing without you.

When at last they separated, Cormoran wondered if he had ever truly been kissed in his life. The raw emotion in Robin’s eyes threatened to bowl him over, send him crashing to the floor just as surely as his awful right knee could and often did. Was it… was it even possible? What in God’s name could a woman like Robin want to do with him other than give in to an urge to spend a few nights in the slums?

“I don’t give a damn about the job,” she said, breathless but stern. Her eyes darted to his lips again and he wanted to crumble. “I give a damn about you.”

Cormoran stared this time.

“Do you understand me, Cormoran Blue Strike?” she asked. “Do you know what I’m telling you?”

He nodded, wordlessly.

Christ, how his heart was drumming.

“Besides,” she started again, this time with an air of teasing in her shaky voice, “I could always go join the Met.”

“What?!” he cried finally, scandalized and still feeling lighter than air. “And what would happen to the agency?”

“I’d sell it to Shanker for wine money.”

“Over my dead body!”

“Well, yeah,” she said dryly, sniffling, “That’s the idea.”

He scowled so deeply it made her laugh, brittle after her tears but still the best thing he’d ever heard.

Music.

It was music.

“Guess I might as well live then,” he growled, surly and gruff and still happy enough he might fly apart at the seams.

Robin grinned.

“Now you’re getting it,” she told him matter-of-factly and kissed him again. All light and laughter and something so dangerously close to love it threatened to break him.

Everything, he thought as he tasted her for the second time that night.

She’s everything.

“Come on. Let’s get you to bed,” she said finally, pausing between words to press fleeting kisses to his lower lip and the scruffy edge of his chin. “You’ll have sleep on your side so you don’t tear anything.”

“You planning on joining?”

Robin Ellacott, consummate professional, blushed some intimate shade of rose he’d never before seen on her and Cormoran found himself dying to chase every bit of skin where that color might have bloomed.

She beamed at him.

“If you want,” she offered, coy only because she was unsure.

“Can’t say I’ll be much fun,” he admitted, only because his better judgment had temporarily won out. “You know. Knife wound and all.”

“Then I’ll just have to be patient then, won’t I?” Robin asked, voice low and exaggeratedly wicked, and he heard himself chuckling despite the blood that rushed decidedly south of his brain. “Come on then, pin cushion. Let’s get some sleep.”

She stepped away, heading toward the door that would take them up to his tiny flat. Robin had been up the steps so many times he could hardly count them, but this time she’d be staying. It baffled him to realize he’d be falling asleep next to her that night, waking up next to her in the morning. How had he gotten so lucky?”

“Cormoran?”

Her voice was on the steps now, inquisitive.

He stifled an elated chuckle and pushed himself away from the desk, limping to follow her. He’d follow her anywhere, he realized as she held a hand out to him.

Taking it, he gave her slight fingers a small squeeze.

“Lead the way.”

She always did.

#bbc strike #the strike series #cormoran strike #robin ellacott #ilsa herbert #cormoran x robin #cormoran x robin fic #bbc strike fic #angst #first kisses #cormoran is an idiot #forgive an american for her spelling

88 notes · View notes

wolf-in-a-suit · 6 years

Text

Employee of the month

Movie:Star Wars

Summary: Somehow you had found your way, however unwillingly, on Starkiller base. Barely recovered from this unforgivable disruption of your life General Hux starts taking notice of your defiant actions against fellow colleagues and a certain black clad Sith: That’s gonna be fun!

Starkiller base, the pride of the whole first order. Here you only found the best, of the best in their respected fields. Technicians who fixed any arising problem as soon as they laid hands on their ‘most holy tools’. Stormtroopers decorated for their services, and in peak physical condition. What you usually didn't expect to find was:

Boredom. Utter, crippling boredom. You were transferred here against your will to your utmost horror -your former superior, bearer of the bad news, probably still hadn’t regained all of his hearing. Though, it wasn’t the boredom in your job as a radar technician that was the cause of your anxiety - you were used to your job not posing a challenge: but the people. Three thousand four-hundred six to be exact. Just thinking about the astronomic number caused your stomach to plunge way down onto the perfectly cleaned floor, the maintenance team was the best of the galaxy as well. At your old station you had to fight awkward conversations and sleepless nights just dealing with one hundred colleagues. This, was the stuff of nightmares.

The weeks passed with moderate embarrassment and you soon found the merits of inhabiting such a big chunk of metal, floating in the vacuum of space. No one cared about you just stealing away from conversations and never leaving your station, except for an absolute necessary repair job. Until of course, someone noticed and your perfect constructed monotony was violently interrupted.

The humming of the instruments in the dimmed lights, the sole indication that it was nightshift, soothed your usually racked nerves. Nightshift was great because it only required one technician on duty, you were only too eager to take the shift from your complaining coworkers. All was as it was supposed to be: You, your instruments, and a hot cup of coffee in your hands. Paradise - however short lived. The marching of boots echoed down the hall outside your cozy station. Nothing unusual, yet like always your gut clenched and your head seemed to have a hitch in your record collection: 'Not here, not here. Not here!' The urgent footsteps passed and dropped in volume, you released your breath.

Suddenly, the echo came to a violent halt and after a second the the marching was back and gained in volume. You groaned inwardly while trying to set your face into ‘human interaction mode’, which consisted of a somewhat I'm-not-quite-sure-if-a-smile-is-appropriate expression. If you ever managed to force a facsimile of a smile on your face, it was certainly gone when General Hux entered the room. Clad all in black, from feet to collar, his red hair posed a stark contrast to his white face: Dressed for business. Though, not very tall he always radiated and inspired a fear in his subordinates.

Gathering your, rather small composure to begin with, you tried to stand at attention. The hand was supposed to go to the side, no that wasn’t right... like this, still not right... how did the Troopers make this seem so natural?

Hux witnessing your pathetic struggle didn't need to comment, his face first annoyed morphed into wonder at the complete lack of any form for elegance.

Finally you settled into an awkward position between a formal greeting and a child trying to copy a soldier, he took a deep breath stifling his annoyance: "You are hereby required to participate in the COFO program."

Silence. Both of you mustering the other. Oh, this is where you were supposed to acknowledge the demand, right? Unsettled by your silent stare, the General began to speak: "Did you-", right when you blurted out: "COFO program?" Once again there was a stalemate, Hux mustering you, trying to decide if you were making fun of him. 'Not good!' Just one way to turn this ship around, however, daring it may be! "Sir." you added lamely. At this the General seemed to set your tribunal on hold, no person would degrade themselves like this, in order to joke around.

"Cooperation of fellow officers, while your outstanding work has been noted-" here he looked very doubtful, certainly due to the great first impression you just made "your superiors have informed me that you tend to seclude yourself. This is unacceptable! In order to function on full capacity, interaction is required." At the word interaction you gulped audibly. "The program was created to foster this type of skill. Tuesday, 0800 room 394, do not be late!"

He turned, his coat giving an elegant furnish, and left you in the crumbling remains of your former little world.

If General Hux had been aware of what he just set in motion, he would gladly offered you a post on starbase 42, the most secluded base of the whole quadrant.

The first impression you formed about the COFO wasn't necessary a good one. At 0800 sharp, all the social delinquents had gathered in a too white room - the First Order’s understanding of a welcoming and warm color. Then the pairing began and your sweat glands took this as an invitation to go into overdrive. Finally, you stood face to face with your interaction partner: Gary a bored looking Stormtrooper, sporting slightly red eyes. "N...nice to ...meet you?" But the grimace, stretching uncontrollably on your face, spoke clearer words: 'Having an intestinal parasite would be better than this!'

Gary, just shrugged his shoulders. "Guess we're stuck with each other."

The days passed, and somehow you made it through a whole week of the program, with minimal awkwardness. Quite a feat! By now, you were sure, that if someone was to search for the definition of 'laidback' in the dictionary a picture of Gary, slouching somewhere, was included. Strengthened by not being swallowed by the earth yet, you felt brave enough to face the cafeteria at gamma shift tonight. Standing in line, musing what you should take: The gray puddle with pieces in it, or the brownish-reddish meat, at least you hoped that’s what it was supposed to be? Apparently the ‘best of the best’ motto didn’t include the kitchen personnel. The chain of your thoughts was broken by men’s laughter. "Come on Gary, what’s your hippy ass saying over the next mission?" Craning your neck, Gary and his tormentors fell into your line of vision. Never had you seen the man this uncomfortable, but the other Stormtroopers just grinned even wider enjoying this immensely.

"Come on guys, knock it off." Gary berated himself for choosing exactly this time to grab a late dinner. In the corner of his eye he saw movement, the flash of a data pad and... darkness engulfed the whole cantina. The few tired persons present started murmuring and shouting. Gary almost cried out when in the pitch black, a hand found his and started to drag him off, to an unknown destination, but something about the clunky ungraceful movements put him at ease. 'Just roll with it.'

When he and his mysterious savior- or possible serial killer- burst into the light of the corridor he finally saw the woman from the program. After a few more turns they came to a stop and she slowly turned around. She dropped his hand shocked, as if an evil spirit just had just been exorcised from her body and she just became aware of her actions. With her change in demeanor the old awkwardness bleed back into her moves and once again, each shift of arms made them look too long for her frame.

Her head turned down, eyes squinting over every perfectly boned floor tile, she mumbled: "S...sorry?"

"Dude!" She flinched at the too loud and enthusiastic voice. "What you're sayin' sorry for? That was awesome!" He never knew that eyes could get that big, but here they were: Looking at him in a wonder that somehow made his insides turn, too fragile. Add a bulky Stormtrooper with a loose mouth like him and it simply spelled disaster. He shrugged 'Since when did I ever give a shit about something like that?'

In that very moment, in a somewhat dimly lit corner of Starkiller base a Stormtrooper and Radar technician formed an unholy bond that would let chaos and mayhem rain down upon their enemies.

"And then Ren just started screaming at us and trashing the whole room! Guess who the lucky fella on cleaning duty is." Gary's arms, still in uniform, surged through the air. He was an exotic bird visiting the mundane planes of existence: Namely the gray walled radar technicians work station- much to the annoyance of Matt, your coworker. He currently was shooting glares like laser beams at the interruption of his most holy and cherished routine. When the object of his continued affectionate thoughts didn't melt into a puddle under his scrutiny, he huffed and stalked out of the room. Leaving Gary and you alone, not even taking notice of his departure. Ideas shifted in your head, turning, grinding against each other and finally: Clack, something stuck!

When you looked at your friend a new gleam ignited in your eyes, pregnant with the promise of danger, but also excitement. "So let's pay him back." Your voice was bar any stutter or insecurity. Gary felt a cold shiver running down his spine, he wasn't quite sure if he liked the change.

General Hux strode through the polished corridors, personnel squirting around him and parting to let him pass. A sharp turn right and he reached the cantina, bend on getting his exact one o'clock lunch. When his eyes caught sight of dark billowing robes, it took all his discipline not to groan in a- very much warranted- but undignified manner. Kylo Ren! Twenty-four hours in a day, and the insufferable man just had to pick this exact time to get his coffee.

Gracing the Sith with an aggressive ruck of his head, just barley balancing the rope of civility, the General strode to the counter. He stopped and turned however, when a storm of cursing accompanied by the sound of liquid spraying out onto the floor reached his ears. The powerful Kylo Ren, Sith, leader of the knights of Ren, and protégé of Snoke himself was helplessly trying shield himself against the dark spray of coffee erupting from the machine. When he finally managed to vacate the area of danger, slipping more than walking on the steaming liquid on the floor. Hux was sure the sight before him was a gift delivered by whatever force resided in the universe. The dark knight was seething, black hair plastered to his red face and robes dripping.

The cantina was very still, no one dared to ridicule the man any further for fear of being cut down. Hux however had no qualms of walking up to his 'partner', mustering his drenched form slowly. His face perfectly straight, only the rising eyebrow indication of his thoughts. "Do try to keep the floor clean, Ren." Then he turned and exited, the loss of lunch not bugging him in the least.

For the rest of the day General Hux's staff was constantly on edge- Hux in a good mood? It had to be a trick, or drill! At first the General had simply thought himself lucky, in having witnessed the total mortification on Kylo Ren that afternoon, but when reports of a group of Stormtroopers running around in their underwear, due to a malfunctioning capacitor in the locker system his suspicion started to rise.

The monitor before him spluttered out all data of the last month, and his sharp eyes narrowed. That's what he thought! This particular band of Troopers had been victim to quite a few of these irregularities occurring on base. First, their entrance codes stopped working, leaving them to spend half of the night in front of the barracks, then their new arriving uniforms were several sizes too small, followed now by this ridiculous display of running around almost naked. A disgrace! He wouldn't stand for the First Order being the point of jokes due to these misfits! 'Time to visit the troops.' With that last thought the ginger wrath of the Order descended on the unfortunate souls.

Just a few more steps! You sat by the ledge of the upper section of the training room, hidden by a crate and fixing your next victims with a killer stare. Captain Phasma and Kylo Ren strode down the aisle, with the constant air of an imposing couple of regents. However, they were unaware that they were just three steps between them and their new makeover. “Get down on the floor and show me some real pushups!” Phasma raged, her silver armor making her easy spotable against the backdrop of oppressive black walls. Ren followed suite: “What is this embarrassing display of drills supposed to be!? The rebels won’t be impressed by this!” His mask while obscuring a most certainly murderous expression did little to ease the sting, so the two Troopers in question hastily altered their movements.

The prepared maintenance droid - ‘of doom’ as Gary helpfully added, each time the two of you spoke about the mission in hushed whispers – slowly rolled down the room toward the, self-proclaimed, pair of drill sergeants. “That has to be much faster, if-” Kylo stopped mid yell, when he felt a sudden nudge on his leg. Starring down he was greeted by a small maintenance droid rolling again, and again against his leg, the big lense occupying the front, making it look almost like a loyal, innocent - but somewhat retarded puppy.

“Shush!” Captain Phasma turned around and was astonished by the scene unfolding before her: Kylo Ren, was trying to get the the small machine away from himself, but somehow the little guy managed to evade all of his kicks. Sighing she strode over, bend on grabbing the thing and chucking it down the trash compactor. This certainly wasn’t very beneficial for their image. A strong hierarchy was founded on discipline, and discipline was only gained by respecting as well as fearing your superiors. Which was arguably hard at the moment, Phasma had to admit, when Ren grabbed his lightsaber and ignited it, the angry hiss of plasma filling the room.

General Hux choose this exact moment to stride into the room. The scene before him couldn’t have been a more unfitting display for commanding officers: His Capitan crouched down, in order to make a grab for a small droid at the feet of Kylo Ren. Meanwhile, the Sith was raising his red lightsaber threatening over his head, ready to strike down the malfunctioning disturbance. Hux lips thinned to a small line, annoyance along with a headache rising in him. Just when he was about to gift his ‘colleagues’ with scathing remarks:

Boom! The middle of the room erupted in a cloud of pink dust and glitter. The remains of the machine squirting to a halt directly before the General’s feet. The following silence was far too loud. The last part of golden glitter glided to the ground, giving a free view on a, now, very pink robed and armored Captain and Sith. “Who was THIS!?” The golden pieces of paper floating down Ren’s shoulders did little to accent his intimidating roar. He turned, robes billowing and emitting a new pink gust, the hand gripping his lightsaber with even more force now. Hux had to commend the Troops for their stoic expressions, stifling every snicker, for it would most certainly be their last.

In the corner of his vision the General caught sight of a face on the landing above, quickly vanishing behind a stack of crates. ‘Found you!’

Clack, clack. Your hurried footsteps leading you to the security of your station resonated in a scarry manner from the halls. This was bad! You were so screwed! But once the initial burst of panic had passed, you realized something: ‘Why do I even care? From the very start I wanted to find a way out of this garbage station?’ This was your ticket to freedom! A sweet way into the secluded confines of Station 42. Granted, you had to avoid being disciplined by Phasma - and being killed by Ren, but once Hux found you, you were certain, the only thing to expect was a degradation and being thrown off the base. Your goal from the moment you said foot on this godforsaken piece of space litter.

Still you couldn’t fight the flinch when the General sporting his most terrifying expression, reserved only for the most serious of transgression, strode into the radar technician’s office. He didn’t stop at an arm’s length though, and kept invading your privet space, coming to a standstill just directly before your face. In this moment you could have sworn, that he could melt steel with the intensity of that glare. His voice however was even and quiet, which made it all the more terrifying: “So, we have a joker amongst our crew, have we?” You choose the only reasonable position someone was allowed to take if they weren’t sorry at all: Eyes cast down, regarding your feet and mumbling a not so heartfelt “I am very sorry, sir.”

Couldn’t he back off a little? You felt the heat radiating from him, but did not dare to move even an inch. “Sorry, doesn’t cut it for humiliating your superiors! In one case more than once!” You flinched again. “So the appropiate punishment is…” At this you looked up a hopeful gleam in your eyes, which was however, short lived once you caught sight of his cold, blue stare and the knowing smile creeping on his face. “… a transfer to…” ‘Yes, say it! Station 42!’ “… my personal staff!”

‘Wait… what?!” There was no need to pose a question, your flaggerbasted expression, complete with a slack jaw did the job for you. The grin on the ginger man’s face had an almost feral quality to it. “You don’t think I am going to accommodate your wish to get transferred from this base, now, do you?! Also, there is no way I am going to leave…” here he leaned in even further, your noses almost touching and whispered: “… such talent go to waste!” As fast as he had entered he turned on his heels and strode out. His farewell tinted with a somewhat dark humorous manner, made your skin crawl: “Monday, 0800, my office. You should start to make yourself comfortable… in your new home.”

#star wars imagine #general hux x reader #general hux imagine #kylo ren imagine #captain phasma imagine #gary the stormtrooper #matt the radar technician #kylo ren #captain phasma

173 notes · View notes

raendown · 6 years

Link

Pairing: ObitoShisui Word count: 1790 Soulmate au: The one where each morning there is written on your arm an event which will happen to your soulmate that day

Follow the link or read it under the cut!

Chapter 122: Obito/Shisui

Obito made it three steps in the front door of the hotel before a massive hand caught hold of his collar and he found himself hauled in to the air, feet kicking at empty space and hands scrambling to hold on to the straps of his backpack. He was barely in to his teens but Obito wished he would just hit his growth spurt already so that no one could do this to him anymore. Not that he didn’t know exactly who it was holding him up by the neck.

“You,” a familiar voice growled in his ear, “are going to behave yourself this weekend.”

“Madara-ji. How nice to see you too!” Obito made an effort to twist his body and offer a friendly smile to the looming figure behind him. Instead of greeting him in return, Madara shook him like a rag doll.

“I mean it. If I have to put out a single fire this weekend I will sic Tobirama on you.”

Shuddering at the thought of having to deal with his uncle’s crazy scientist husband, Obito hoped his nodding made him look innocent and pure. “Of course! No fires, I promise! Er, can I go back to the ground now?”

With a great harrumph Madara dropped him. Obito stumbled and hurried away as soon as he managed to find his feet again, rushing in to the venue with no idea where he was going but a great amount of confidence he would find his way somehow. The building was absolutely crawling with people he knew would be willing to help him if he asked.

One of the largest clans left in Fire Country, able to trace their ancestry all the way back to the original founders of the village Obito had been born in, the Uchiha clan had since spread out to all four corners of the elemental nations. He wasn’t sure whose idea it had been to have a massive reunion for them all but he was grateful to whoever it was. Konoha was but a mere shadow of its former glory; any excuse to get out of town for a while was a blessing and the chance to meet members of his distant family was even more so. The only family Obito ever saw was his crotchety Uncle Madara and the frail grandmother he had lived with since he was a baby.

Pushing up his sleeve to check the words on his arm for perhaps the fifteenth time that morning, Obito grinned and headed towards a bunch of teenagers who looked his age, most of them blessed with the distinctive Uchiha looks. Meeting new people was always a delight but it was only half he reason he was so excited for this weekend. This morning his already high excitement had tripled upon waking up to see the event that his soulmate would experience today was “will meet their soulmate”.

As he had for the entire drive here, Obito spent his morning in a state of joy he’d heard referred to as walking on air. Every corner of every room and every new person he met felt as though they were filled with possibilities. He shook every hand he could and forgot more names than he remembered, bouncing from place to place until he found Uncle Madara tucked away in the hotel bar with his husband, both of their looking supremely uncomfortable surrounded by so many strangers.

“Find ‘em yet?” his uncle grunted. Obito shook his head.

“I will!”

“You’ve got dirt on your face, you know.”

“What!?”

Obito spun around to peer over at the mirror behind the bartender, mortified to see that there was indeed a giant streak of dirt down on side of his face. There was no telling how long it had been there or how many people had been too polite to say anything, though it was probably from leaning his face against the window in the car. What an excellent first impression he’d been making! Trying to scrub off the mark with the heel of his hand did nothing so Obito hurried back out of the room to where he’d seen a sign for the public toilets.

The first thing he saw when he burst in to the bathroom was a tall thin boy a few years older than himself, perfect brows folded inwards to form the most aristocratic frown he’d ever seen.

“You should find another bathroom,” the boy said. Obito wrinkled his nose.

“I just wanna use the sink and the mirror,” he said.

From inside one of the stalls there came an ominous rattling. “Ah, let him fix his hair,” a new voice called. “Someone in this joint needs to look good.”

“We are Uchiha,” the tall boy pointed out. “We all look good. Now quit being melodramatic and can we please find somewhere more sanitary to spend our time?”

“I am in the throes of depression, my lowest hour, and if I want to hang out in a toilet I will!”

“Could it at least be a more private toilet?”

Obito inched towards the sink, grabbing a few paper towels on the way. As he dipped them in the water and scrubbed at the dirt mark on his face, he kept one ear tilted towards the voice over in the corner, eavesdropping shamelessly. Movies always made family drama sound so interesting but the only drama he ever got to see was when Uncle Tobirama tried to do science in the kitchen.

He watched in the mirror as the boy apparently named Itachi rubbed at the bridge of his nose and gave a snooty huff at whoever was hidden in the last stall of the row.

“You are making a big deal out of something small.”

“Am not,” the other voice replied. For someone who was apparently depressed they sounded particularly upbeat, cheerful even. Obito noted that his face was completely clean now but he kept scrubbing anyway. This conversation was the most interesting he’d heard so far today.

“Please come out, Shisui. You know exactly who arrived today and if he catches us doing what I think you’re doing there will be trouble. I don’t want trouble. Mother says I can’t go to Math Camp if I get in trouble.”

“Only you would be enough of a nerd to think having Math Camp taken away is a punishment.”

Itachi blinked slowly. “I enjoy math. Now put down the lighter and let’s go.”

More curious than ever, Obito finally turned the taps off and tossed his paper towel in the bin. He decided against making any efforts to hide his actions, instead marching over to where the two others were talking and popped his head around the door before Itachi could react. Considering their conversations he had expected to see someone in the toilet stall with a cigarette or a pilfered bottle of alcohol, perhaps even partaking in some sort of recreational drug.

What he found was a boy a few years older than himself trying to get a flame from his lighter so he could set off the bottle rockets he’d strapped to the back of the tank. ‘Shisui’ looked up at him with a wild grin.

“Hey there! What’s your name?”

“Obito.”

“Do you like fire, Obito?”

“I love fire but Madara-ji said he’d be watching me like a hawk today.”

“You see?” Itachi huffed beside him. “Even he knows not to cross Madara-sama. Can we stop this foolishness?”

Shisui waved him off, eyes set on Obito. “Nonsense. What that old wind bag doesn’t know won’t kill him. Do you want to help me light the rockets Obito?”

“Alright!” Obito dove inside the stall with stars in his eyes, beyond happy to have met someone who shared his propensity for mayhem, and reached out to take the lighter from the older boy. The moment their fingers met a spark jumped between their skin and they both snatched their hands back. Obito looked back and forth between his fingers and Shisui.

“Holt shit,” the other murmured.

“Doesn’t that mean–?”

“Pull up your sleeve! What’s your event for today say!?” Obito held still as Shisui lunged for his arm and pulled up his sleeve, reading it out loud. “Will meet their soulmate. How come yours is so straight forward and mine isn’t!?”

“W-what’s yours say?”

Shisui rolled up his sleeve to show off the black writing curled down his forearm, which read “will fall in love”. As soon as he read it Obito promptly turned red in the face and clutched at the straps of his backpack as though they might steady him against the embarrassment. He was intrigued, sure, but anyone would be to find a soulmate as awesome as Shisui – and they barely even knew each other! It was hard to imagine how much more amazing the other boy would be once they got to know each other a little better.

“I thought you were going to fall in love with someone and then maybe someday we would meet and find out we were meant to be platonic soulmates! Don’t get me wrong, platonic is fine. It’s fine! But…”

“That’s not what you wanted?” Obito ventured. Shisui snapped his fingers.

“Exactly.”

“So…you were going to light bottle rockets in a hotel bathroom…because you thought your soulmate was going to fall in love with someone else?”

The other boy twisted his mouth to one side wryly. “Well anything will sound silly if you say it in that tone. Look, what I do in my utter devastation is my business.”

“Do we really need to keep up the dramatics?” Itachi asked from behind them. Instead of looking at all embarrassed by his own behavior, Shisui gave a haughty sniff and held his lighter aloft once more, clicking it a few times until he finally got a flame going.

“Speak for yourself, Drama King. Hey – Obito, right? – do you still wanna light some rockets with me?”

“Of course!” Shuffling closer, Obito all but plastered himself to Shisui’s side, a massive grin splitting his face

While Itachi groaned behind them and muttered about leaving so they couldn’t drag him down in to their mayhem, Obito and Shisui both huddled closer to the rockets strapped to the tank of the toilet, giggling like a pair of children. As the first fuse lit and the familiar scent of burning met his nose, Obito couldn’t help but send out a silent prayer of thanks to the universe for bringing him someone so perfect.

Just as the other boy’s arm had predicted, he was pretty sure he was already in love. Finding his soulmate was worth every hour of the endless lecture Uncle Madara made them sit through once he caught them.

#rae writes #soulmate collection #obishi #obito #shisui #fanfiction #naruto shippuden

25 notes · View notes

littlepurinsesu · 7 years

Text

In Regards to Hugs: No

Title: In Regards to Hugs: No Fandom: Yuri on Ice Characters: Yuri Plisetsky, Yuuri Katsuki, Jean-Jacques Leroy, Seung Gil Lee, Emil Nekola, Michele Crispino, Sara Crispino, Victor Nikiforov Relationships: Yuri Plisetsky & Yuuri Katsuki, Yuuri Katsuki/Victor Nikiforov Rating: Teen and Up Warnings: Swearing

*Read on AO3*

Summary: The pork cutlet bowl goes on a hugging spree. It’s disgusting and traumatising and Yuri Plisetsky could have sworn that he saw his life flash before his eyes, but he thinks he understands.

Author’s Notes: The hug scene in Episode 9 has always been one of my favourite moments in the anime. It’s so hilarious and adorable, but there’s also so much potential for some friendship feels between Yuuri and Yurio. So this went from a simple fanfic-isation of the hug scene to a full-fledged fic that got a lot more serious than what I had in mind when I started the piece. Mostly canon compliant, but lots of filling in the gaps to really bring out the relationship between the two Yuris. Because Yurio is an angry tsundere who will never admit how much he cares for his Katsudon.

Silver.

Whether it was the colour or its symbolic value or simply the word itself, Yuri Plisetsky was not happy with it.

He had worked his ass off and almost busted his lungs to execute a perfect free skate performance. For fuck’s sake, he’d even earned himself a new personal best. Yet apparently none of that was enough to stop that Canadian sucker from pushing him to the right side of the podium again. Second for the second time, and Yuri could not be more displeased—with himself, with that jackass, and with practically everyone, because there wasn’t a single person who didn’t piss him off right now.

I’ll destroy that shithead at the Finals. Fucking watch me. Knife shoes or not, I’ll fucking end him.

Yuri’s brows were knitted tightly together and his heavy steps reverberated menacingly as he tramped down the hallway. The aura he was radiating was enough to keep any unwanted people at bay.

‘Unwanted people’ did not include a certain pork cutlet bowl, though. After that frustratingly underwhelming free skate, Yuri had come to the conclusion that he probably needed to give him a good talk (complete with a kick or two) to get him back on track. Maybe he’ll yell at him about this later before the Japanese skater returned home the next day or something.

Yuri rounded a corner in the maze of corridors, hoping to bump into absolutely no one, when lo and behold, who should he chance upon but Yuuri Katsuki himself. The fourth-placer was standing near the wall in a daze, eyes seemingly fixed on nothing in particular as he stared absently into the distance. It was almost odd to not see the balding man-child draped around his shoulders, trying to cheer him up or talk some sense into him. But then again, if that man-child had been present, Yuuri wouldn’t have placed fourth to begin with. Yuri knew this for a fact, because goddamnit, Yuuri Katsuki was better than this.

He was pondering the possibility of giving that pep talk right here and right now when the Crispino twins approached, occupied with some small disagreement that Yuri didn’t care about.

‘Yuuri!’ Sara called suddenly as the pair neared the pork cutlet bowl. She speed-walked the final steps to close the distance, leaving her scowling sibling behind. ‘Congrats on qualifying for the Grand Prix Final! I knew you’d make it.’ She extended her arms warmly, as though welcoming a friendly embrace.

Oh, boy. That obsessive freak of a brother is not going to take this well.

Sure enough, within milliseconds, Michele Crispino had marched right up to them, mouth set in an angular frown. ‘Sara!’ he complained.

Had Sara been asking for a hug? Or had she simply been holding her arms out as a strange gesture of congratulatory pride? Yuri had not quite wrapped his head around the mixed social cues when he saw Yuuri fling his arms around the woman’s slender frame.

‘Thank you,’ he breathed.

Congrats on qualifying for the Final? More like congrats on digging your own grave, Katsudon.

Yuri had to press his lips together to suppress his vindictive snicker as Michele visibly bristled, before squawking out an exclamation of the utmost rage. The flower bouquet he had been holding moments ago went flying as he raised his fists in the air. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?!’ he demanded, with perhaps a little too much passion and force in his voice. If the disturbed Italian man had yelled any louder or harder, Yuri was sure he would have ruptured a vein in his neck.

Yet no horror movie Yuri Plisetsky had mistakenly watched while curled up on the couch in the wee hours of the night could have prepared him for what happened next.

Yuuri Katsuki opened his eyes—if they could still even be called eyes—revealing one of the most terrifyingly lifeless expressions Yuri had ever seen. It was dark and vacant and enough to send an unnerving chill slithering down his spine.

This dangerous gaze was slowly pointed at Michele as Yuuri let go of Sara and latched himself onto her fuming brother instead.

‘Eh?’ Michele spared less than two seconds comprehending his situation before completely losing it. He flailed his arms uselessly, eyes swirling and shoulders practically vibrating as he released a shriek so high-pitched that Yuri had to wonder if it were even possible for a person with a Y chromosome. It was one of the most hilarious cries of distress Yuri had ever been fortunate enough to overhear, and the teen had no shame in his lack of guilt as he mentally thanked the deities for granting him the privilege of witnessing such a spectacle. By now, Yuri was unsure whether he was watching a horror movie or a comedy show.

His amusement was short-lived, however, as a concerned voice rang out from around the corner of the hallway. ‘Was that Mickey screaming?’

A bearded face and a head of chestnut brown hair came into view as Emil Nekola emerged, voice as gallant as a knight’s, ready to sweep his comrade away from danger.

Your comrade has fucking bubbles coming out of his mouth.

Yuri wished he had been joking, but there was no mistake in the scene unfolding before him: Yuuri clutching a mass of glittering purple as Michele lay limp in his arms, eyes blank in a traumatised stupor and a steady flow of froth gurgling at his mouth. The predator now turned those same soulless eyes in Emil’s direction. He put an end to Michele’s misery and freed the foaming man from his grasp, ignoring the dull thud as his body hit the floor and his sister rushed to his aid.

Yuuri’s steps were frantic as he sprinted into Emil’s arms, and Yuri was not so preoccupied with the Italian siblings to miss the ease and amicability with which the Czech man returned the embrace.

‘What’s this? A hugging competition?’ he questioned, cheerful and relaxed as he held Yuuri snug in his arms.

Does the idiot not realise that he currently has a fucking zombie hugger hanging off his shoulders?

Ignorance is bliss, Yuri decided, and he really would feel bad for Emil’s poor cluelessness if he had known the bearded sunshine a little better. But alas, hugs and sunshine really weren’t the Ice Tiger’s forte, so Yuri was content to stand away from the commotion and assume that Emil’s smile was of genuine mirth and not, in fact, a disguised plea for help.

Emil’s beaming face was so bright that Yuri was beginning to feel the need to whip out a pair of sunglasses, so he was quite relieved when the apathetic Korean man appeared and restored some much-needed balance. Seung Gil Lee approached as silently as a skulking cat, but even his phantom presence didn’t escape the hugging maniac. There was an ominous glint in Yuuri’s eyes as he ended the hug with Emil and rounded on his fellow Asian skater instead, tackling him in an unsolicited embrace.

The poor man had no idea what hit him.

Seung Gil failed to register the situation enough to utter some hostile remark about wanting to be left alone, instead only managing to choke out a feeble noise as his face darkened in a manifestation of revulsion and fright. Yuri watched on with a strange mixture of both hilarity and sympathy as Seung Gil’s hands hovered awkwardly about Yuuri’s shoulders, clearly wanting to place them anywhere but on the Japanese man’s body.

At this point, Yuri, being the graciously kind and angelic soul he was, considered stepping in to rescue poor Seung Gil from his predicament and officially putting an end to this mayhem. Agape, right? Unconditional love for all, including those who were suffering. And these people were definitely suffering.

But then Jean-Jacques Leroy sauntered idiotically down the hallway, his unwelcome entrance topped with an equally unattractive smirk as his gold medal flashed obnoxiously from around his neck. The image itself was enough to set Yuri’s teeth on edge again, and the Ice Tiger of Russia internally swore for the umpteenth time that he would wipe that repulsive grin off the fucker’s sorry little face when he knocked him off the podium at the Finals.

And suddenly, the idea of demonstrating his agape didn’t seem like Yuri Plisetsky’s top priority anymore.

Ah, what the fuck. Who am I to deprive Katsudon of another hug? Jean-Jacques fucking Leroy, it’s your time to shine.

There was an irritating swagger in JJ’s gait as he breezed towards them, no doubt engaged in some unintelligent conversation (or monologue, Yuri notes) about his supposed superiority.

‘JJ is—mmph!’

What exactly is JJ? The world may never know. And Yuri had never felt so eternally grateful for the hero that is Yuuri Katsuki, the awe-inspiring saviour who had just rescued humanity from the agony of having to hear JJ speak more than two words at a time. The Japanese skater had thrown his arms around JJ’s build and effectively silenced the lanky idiot, whose mouth was now stretched into the most ridiculously hideous expression Yuri had ever laid eyes on. It was so ugly and so stupid, and it brought Yuri so much joy.

Oh my god. Yuuri Katsuki, you are the light of my life. Holy shit you amazing—

He had spoken too soon.

Yuuri turned.

Huh?

His soulless eyes bore into his final target.

The fuck are you staring at, asshole?

As though in slow motion, Yuuri began to move in his direction.

What the actual fuck? Wait, no. Don’t you fucking think about it, you—shit, no. No! NO!

‘HUHHH?! STAY AWAY FROM ME!!!’ Yuri could hear the cry tearing from his throat as he turned on his heel and fled for dear life.

This is it. This is how it all ends. Yuuri Katsuki was closing the distance with his arms outstretched, and Yuri, the poor deer caught in the headlights, stood no chance against that man’s damnable stamina.

Yuri could have sworn he saw his life flash before his eyes. All the laughter and tears, blood and sweat, love and loss. Every promise he had made to himself and every dream that had yet to come true.

It was all over for Yuri Plisetsky, and at such a young age, too.

What will happen after he is gone? Will the world remember him? Who will feed Puma Tiger Scorpion? His final performance on the ice had suffered a maddening defeat, and he didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye to his grandfather…

The image of his grandfather’s smiling face faded and reality gradually shifted back into focus. Yuri was now acutely aware of his surroundings: a dimly lit hallway, the stares of puzzled onlookers, and a pair of arms wrapped tightly around him from behind.

He could not recall when his legs had finally stopped scissoring through air or even begin to fathom why he wasn’t struggling, but Yuuri’s grip was unrelenting as he held the teen’s body firmly against his chest, face buried into his shoulder. Yuri felt a slight tremble in the unsteady rise and fall of the older man’s breathing, and the fingers squeezing even tighter around his upper arms made him swallow the aggressive protest that had been stirring at the base of his tongue. There was a certain sense of unhappiness in the embrace, a kind of loneliness, as though Yuuri was trying desperately to seek out something that he just couldn’t find in any of his previous victims. And from the way his frenzied breathing was failing to slow or even out, Yuri knew that he wasn’t the one, either.

‘The one’? Fuck, sounds like some kind of shitty romance story. That kind of crap belongs in the gross ass world of you and Victor, not—

That was it, wasn’t it? That’s what Yuuri was longing for.

Yuri was no fool. He was very much aware of the reason behind Yuuri’s less than stellar free skate earlier on. The pork cutlet bowl could do so much better, like those times when he had captivated the proud teen prodigy with his entrancing step sequences and flawless spins. Today had obviously not been one of those days, and everyone in the audience and their dogs had probably figured out why.

Silly Katsudon. You won’t find what you’re looking for here… Not even with me, because I’m not him.

Yuri wondered briefly if his part in this sordid hug fest was longer than the others’, or if he had simply lost track of time while fighting between the impulse to kick and shout and the strange urge to reciprocate this one-sided hug. But even if the angry Russian boy were to swivel around and uncharacteristically wrap his arms around Yuuri’s drooping body, it still wouldn’t change anything, would it? He wasn’t the one Yuuri needed right now.

There were many things in this world—perhaps too many, if he was willing to admit so himself—that provoked Yuri Plisetsky’s anger, but never had he considered that this could be one of them. The Yuuri Katsuki he knew could often be a flustered ball of anxiety and insecurity, or sometimes a sensual skater oozing enough sex appeal to rival Christophe Giacometti, and always a kind and simple boy who was sincere, hardworking, and charismatic. Not… whatever this was. This mopey, depressed loser who couldn’t get his shit together and act like the fucking champion Yuri knew he could be. And although this time it wasn’t the Japanese champion’s own fault, it was an infuriating reminder of the cowardly sobs Yuri had heard in the bathroom stall at the Sochi Grand Prix Final, and he hated it. He hated it with his guts, and if he could do something within his power to bring Yuuri back to normal or raise his spirits again, he would fucking do it. Heck, if he could give the pork cutlet bowl something to make him feel warm and safe, to make him feel at home again, then goddamnit, he would give him anything.

But he couldn’t do what Victor does best, nor could he give Yuuri the sense of security he craved, and that upset Yuri even more than the silver medal he had taken off immediately after the ceremony. And before he even realised that he was slowly raising his hand to offer Yuuri a gentle but awkward pat on the arm, the pork cutlet bowl had released him and begun to shuffle away.

Yuri was joined by an assembly of hug victims as they stood, united in their mutual confusion and concern for Yuuri’s behaviour. Michele was wedged between Sara and Emil as they supported his weight (the dumbass still couldn’t even stand on his own); Seung Gil had deigned to situate himself with actual people, risking the possibility of further human interaction; and Yuri himself was miraculously standing less than half a metre from JJ without the temptation to claw his ugly face off.

And as he watched the zombie hugger’s retreating form, slumped and downcast and in desperate need of… of something, Yuri Plisetsky made up his mind. He may not be a certain silver-haired old man, but someone needed to be there for Yuuri right now, and Yuri swore on his skating career that he would fight anyone who dared to jump in for the job before him.

The brown paper bag would probably be slightly soggy and the contents cold by now, but Yuri had many fond memories of his grandfather handing him the steaming pirozhki when he needed a bit of comfort or love. Plus, the ones sitting in his bag weren’t just any ordinary pirozhki, they were katsudon pirozhki—an affectionate invention of his grandfather’s to remind him of the unforgettable taste he had experienced in Hasetsu. And they would serve just as well as a small token of home for the lonely Japanese man as he spent his final night in this foreign country.

‘Where are you going, little Yuri-chan?’

Under any other circumstances, Yuri would probably have grabbed his skates and hurled them at JJ’s face for that wording (not really—his knife shoes were precious and expensive), but tonight, Yuri had more important things to do. The pirozhki were getting soggier and colder with each minute he wasted, but he was sure that they would still taste absolutely divine and hopefully put the smile back on the pork cutlet bowl’s dumb face.

And anyway, it’s not like he had marked Yuuri’s birthday on his phone and had been saving the pirozhki for him in the first place, thank you very much.

#yuri on ice #yuri plisetsky #yuri katsuki #yuuri katsuki #yuuyu #yuriyuu #victuuri #yurio nice #mine #writing #creative writing #fanfiction #fanfic #prose

6 notes · View notes

theunaccomplishedwriter · 7 years

Text

The Differences That Divide Us - Part 3: The One They Forgot

Well it’s back, my fanfic that I will get finish one day. Hope you like this new installment. Please reblog, leave comments, reviews, likes, and go check it out on Fanfiction.net as well!

Pushing through the revolving doors into the darkened square, Nick paused for a moment outside the ZPD. After four hours of overtime with what seemed to be the largest stack of paperwork ever assembled by mammal kind, Nick was glad to have the chance to just stand for a moment and inhale the crisp night’s air as it tingled his nostrils, before softly soothing his entire being, the tensions slipping off as easily as a coat.

Heading off into the amber tinted night, Nick took in the strange stillness of everything. The raging rivers of people had reduced to mere trickle, all heads down into their phones or staring off with vacantly glazed over eyes that take in nothing and mere walk on their automated path to their usual haunts and homes. The noises of bustling pawsteps, cars horns, ringtones, shouted greeting, and incensed accusations had vanished, the low hum of the streetlights being the only note played this quite monotonous part of Zootopia’s usually vibrant soundtrack. The explosive colour of day had been transmuted into a more subdued beauty of night which, even with the benefits of night vision, Nick readily appreciated, having spent enough nights out in the open to recognise its wonder.

Nick’s legs led him on his own automated path, letting his mind warm up after hours of tedious information having been its only lacklustre nourishment. He tried to think back when he last ate, wading through the spreadsheets and crime reports before finally landing on the doughnut which Judy left on his desk before leaving. It was a nice parting gift, with blueberry jam bursting out in every direction on his first bite, staining his muzzle and paws, which Nick gleefully lapped up.

It had been a while since Nick had been without his ever-present bunny partner. It had been a running joke in the office that they were joined at the hip when they first were partnered together. Not only were they on every case together, but their desks were right beside one another, they had lunch together, got spotted going to the pictures together, got ribbed and asked probing questions when Nick was seen leaving Judy’s place on more than one occasion. The couple jokes were ZPD daily routine, even when Judy and Nick revealed the true nature of their partnership, everyone laughed. Even Bogo let out a snort of derision. It was only when Judy’s anxious face turned into her trademark steely gaze and calmly stated that she wasn’t joking that the laughter abruptly stopped. Any remnants of doubt were gone when Nick took hold of her paw and looked up at everyone, the same daring expression on his usual relaxed face.

In hindsight, although the jokes were sometimes a bit too crass for Judy’s, and sometimes even Nick’s liking, they made the acceptance of their relationship at the ZPD a lot easier. Even Bogo, notorious for his dislike of work relationships, let it slide, stating in characteristic bluntness that he trusted ‘Hopps to keep everything professional between them at work’. Nothing changed really, other than the fact that they were stuck together even more than they had been before and the jokes became interested questions.

But even so, after being together for so long, it was an incredibly strange feeling for Nick to be walking home alone. He kept expecting to hear the pawsteps of the tired but still joyous bunny walking beside him, probably listening to Gazelle while holding his paw. He almost could feel her soft fur entwined with his.

It wasn’t as if Judy hadn’t a valid reason to be away and he for being ‘the responsible one’, a role which he was still finding an odd to adjust to, even after becoming a police officer. Indeed, after months of vacillating with work and general procrastination, Judy had finally got her parents to come up to Zootopia and get the business of their blessing ceremony in Bunnyburrow done and dusted. Nick had been sprawled out on the sofa many times while Judy paced the floor on the phone with her mum or dad trying to get this whole thing sorted, he was just delighted that this ongoing soap opera was nearing its end.

After bimbling through the streets, Nick finally reached the flats, the building lit like a beacon in storm, calling all weary travellers to it. After a swift lift ride up, Nick strolled down the corridor and, after fumbling with his keys, pushed the door open and swiftly flung onto the sofa burying his head within the cushions.

Mulling over whether to slip into sweet unconsciousness, the sound of footsteps softly approaching his made his ears twitch and a smirk to creep around the corners of his face. The sofa bounced a little as Judy hopped onto its edge before lying down on top of him, with her entire being only taking up his torso. Feeling her little frame on his back, her small nose breathing him in, her leg reaching down and entwining with his own, Nick felt complete, as if that lost limb had returned, making him whole.

Turning her head softly, Judy gently whispered to his ear; “Good day then?”

“The. Best”. Judy chuckled at Nick’s half-hearted and half-muffled sarcasm.

“I’m so glad to hear that. It is a shame though, ‘cos if it had been a bad day I might have had something special for you.”

With that Judy sprang off the now bemused Nick, who shot up like a bamboo, his eyes wide at the prospect of losing something he didn’t know was being offered. Judy stood at the edge of the sofa, her cunning, violet eyes glinting with glee at Nick’s bewildered look. Nick quickly composed himself into his trademark half-lidded nonchalance, attempting to capture that elusive prize.

“Oh it was the worst.” Nick replied, hamming it up for her. Judy smirked. “Oh was it now?” Judy replied, folding her arms and resting on her weight on her back foot, the classic ‘I totally don’t believe you pose’. “How bad was it?” Judy questioned, spinning on her heel as she did so before slowly making her way towards the kitchen. Nick hauled himself off the sofa to follow.

“Oh yeah, you don’t even know the half of it. I mean, Bogo dropped a massive pile of paperwork on my desk, and then I had to give Clawhauser the Heimlich manoeuvre to stop him from chocking on a donut, I had to save the mayor from a gang of raccoons, and… and the coffee machine wasn’t working. Utter mayhem!”

Having climbed up her small step so she could see over the counter, Judy remained facing away, slowly making a cup of green tea in that forced slowness that betrays the façade of the act. Nick slipped his arms between her, holding her against him as he nuzzled the side of her face his muzzle.

“Oh that sounds really bad.” Judy replied, still not looking at him but hamming it up right back. “In that case, since it was such a bad day you’re probably too exhausted to get the special something.”

Even though Nick could feel her giggling, Nick knew when to play the drama queen. “Oh, how you could you treat me so Judy!” Nick said, his voice going an octave higher and throwing his hand in the air in mock despair. “A poor, defenceless fox being thrust in the hazardous world of overtime being promised some delectable treat from a bunny as charming as yourself only to have it snatched away, is there no justice in the–”.

Mid-speech, Judy span around, grabbed him by the tie, and tugged him in for a kiss. Momentarily startled by her forcefulness, Nick relaxed into the kiss, reciprocating and enveloped his arms around her, holding her in a soft embrace.

There was something revitalising about Judy, no matter how down or exhausted Nick became, Judy always managed to perk him back up, whether it be a kiss, a hug, or occasionally scratching behind his right ear, a weak spot that Judy used sparingly but maliciously. It wasn’t as if Nick didn’t know and do the same things for Judy. There were many an occasion when walking through the ZPD Nick would gently rung one of his claws up Judy’s back, making her shiver in ecstasy before turning in fury and threatening to punch him. It was still worth it, despite the bruises.

“Alright that’s enough you” Judy said, pushing the hungry fox away. “I’ve got to get ready anyway. There’s some leftovers in the microwave if you want. I’m just gonna get changed.” Any protest Nick might have had evaporated as his stomach snarled at the mere mention of food. Judy giggled and stepped into the bedroom, leaving Nick holding his belly and blushing under his fur.

Nick swivelled the microwave dial without checking what was in there and flopped down on the sofa, the time marked by the growing grumblings of his gut. Soon the microwave pinged and Nick brought out a piping hot plate of veggie stir fry. Popping the plate at the table, and grabbing a pair of chopsticks, Nick wolfed down the plate, placating his body’s need for sustenance and ignoring the stinging heat on his tongue.

Just as he finished the last morsel, Judy reappeared complete in ZPD uniform, rubbing the badge with the back of her paw to a gleaming shine.

“Being fancy, are you?” Judy remarked, gesturing to the chopsticks resting by his side.

“Hey, you’re just jealous you can’t use them.” Judy brow knotted with frustration. Watching Judy try to use chopsticks was like watching Clawhauser trying not to eat donuts, both ended messily.

“How was the family anyway? You finally get anything sorted?” Nick asked, quickly changing conversation.

“It was great!” Judy exclaimed as her face lit up, a wide smile instantaneously covering her face cheek to cheek. “Mum and dad even brought up a few of my nephew and nieces. It’s been so long since I’ve seen any of any of them my family so it was good to see a few of them.”

“A few?”

“Well, only a couple really. You could hardly get 275 siblings in here!” Judy laughed.

“Nice, so how many of the clan did you squeeze in here? Ten? Twenty?”

“Yeah, and about twenty kits as well. It was like a little burrow in here!”

The thought of forty bunnies jammed packed into their flat, with twenty young and hyperactive bunnies hopping, swinging, and running everywhere shot through Nick’s mind. He was surprised that everything was still neat and tidy, probably neater than it usual. Judy had definitely done the whole ‘parent clean’ to impress them or at least make us look halfway civilised, with all the pizza boxes and tea mug rings disappeared from the coffee table and the kitchen still clinging on to that freshly cleaned smell unmistakable in last minute cleans.

“Must have been snug” Nick grinned. “Get any of the nitty gritty details sorted when I was away?”

“Yeah, we talked about tonnes! Johnny’s finally gotten engaged to Linda Warren, I swear they have been going out since primary school so it’s about time they got together. You should have seen the look on his face when dad brought it up, he was practically beat red! The wedding’s happening later so mum’s gonna have to get more burrows sorted for the new bunnies soon, which could be very soon if you listen to what Jillian say. Mum and dad’s partnership is going really well. Apparently, blueberry pies are going down a storm at his bakery. According to mum he’s got order months in advance and, since he’s started doing morning tea, he gets a queue of rabbits so long down the street he’s had to get help! It’s great to see his life turn around after everything while growing up. Oh, and also…”

Judy wittered on for what to others might have seemed an eternity but to Nick was a frankly brief catch up on what was going on back in Bunnyburrow. Despite knowing all the Bunnyburrow’s juicy gossip and being married into the family, Nick had never had the chance to go down there to see everyone who’s life he knew in deep, vivid detail.

It was hard to get the time off, what with being part of the ZPD as well as being partnered with its most enthusiastic member, but even going on their days off never seemed to happen. In any case, Stu and Bonnie had come up and met them in Zootopia several times. Nick had been nervous on their first meeting, but they got on well enough now, Stu even cried for joy and hugged them both when Judy told them they were engaged.

Since then Stu had been trying to get them down to Bunnyburrow for a proper family meeting but it always remained a forever next time, with things just coming in Bunnyburrow that Stu and Bonnie had to sort out that stopped them short of going down. Not this time though, Stu had a look of determination in his eyes at the weeding. Nick could tell come hell or high water, they were destined to go down to the Hopps’.

“That’s great and all Carrots” Nick interrupted “but I did mean about the blessing that we’re meant to be doing. You know that thing we’ve been trying to get done for months?”

“Oh right! Yeah, sorry, I can get a bit carried away sometimes. Well we got all the guests sorted out that aren’t family sorted out so expect quite few there, it is a majority bunny event. We’re going to be using the barn so we can most the family to fit in and the rest can watch from the door, and Father Hareton will do blessing. Apparently, it’ll be his first interspecies blessing so he’s quite excited.”

“That’s good, I don’t think we can use Mr Big’s persuasion every time we need the clergy for something.”

Judy giggled. “Don’t worry, I don’t think word of that made it down the grapevine to Bunnyburrow quite yet so I think we’re alright. We’ve settled on 17th next month so we can get the time off and they can get everything sorted for us.”

Nick nodded in agreement, finished up his dinner and, with Judy’s eyes boring into the back of his head, made the conscious effort to stick his plate in the dishwasher instead of its usual home of the sink to be met by seven or eight of its brethren over the coming days. Judy jumped out the chair and started heading over to the door.

“Have you told your mum yet?”

Nick let out a sigh. “I’ve been waiting till we had everything confirmed with your side. You do not know how many texts I’ve had off her?”

“I think I do, you keep forgetting to put the thing on silent And I wake up to your ringtone going off at three in the morning. Does your mum ever sleep?”

“God knows. Knowing her I wouldn’t put it past her to set an alarm at ridiculous o’clock in the morning just to send those messages and then go back to sleep.”

Nick’s mum Vivian was one of those vixens that, having reunited with their child after so long of being kept apart due to Nick’s previous lifestyle, had sought to make up for lost time by being the embarrassing mother she had missed out on and was revelling in every moment. The wedding had been no different, with her telling every story she could remember from Nick’s childhood to embarrass him to his ZPD colleagues, deliberately trying to be ‘cool’ and ‘hip’ and ‘down with the kids’, as well as loudly proclaiming what her grandkits would look like, making both he and Judy so red they could have been roses.

There was no doubt in Nick’s mind that this wouldn’t change at the blessing but he wouldn’t miss it having her there for the world. She may embarrass him but she felt he deserved it. For so long he had been an embarrassment, a con artist fox, the perfect stereotype. Now that was all different. They reconnected, they bonded. She met Judy and loved her for all she was and all she had done to help Nick from the very first instant. If there was anyone to fight their corner, it was his mum, so if a little embarrassment was what he had to pay, then so be it.

“What time will you be finished?”

“Sometime about four or five I believe, unless somebody gets too drunk then it might be later.”

Doing the overnight shift wasn’t a pleasant prospect, but all the money they’d spent on the wedding they needed some coppers in the bank.

“Okay, well I’ll be especially quiet for when you get in then.” Nick said, walking over to her and hugging her goodbye.

“You better be” Judy shot back. “otherwise a certain fox will be sleeping on the couch for quite a while.”

“Love you too.” Nick chuckled. “Now go on or you’ll be late.”

Judy smiled. “Dumb fox.” Planting a small peck on his cheek, Judy whipped round and bounded out of the door.

With the sounds of her paws quickly receding down the stairs, as Judy and apparently slow moving lifts were never a good combination, Nick relaxed back into his usual place in the old sofa and began to idly flick through the TV stations, eventually settling on some low budget noir film from the 50’s. He’d not seen it before but right from the off he knew the villain would be a predator of some sort, seeing as how all the main detective was the stereotypical hard drinking ram tormented by his past and doesn’t go by the book but he gets the job done, dammit!

That and it was the 50s. All predators were villains in the 50s. And the 60s. Well the 70s, 80s, 90s and even to an extent the 00’s if you wanted to be pedantic about it, but it was changing slowly. Last year he saw a film with a panda as a villain. Not the main villain but, it’s a start at least.

Felling quite snug, Nick’s eyes began to close, allowing his mind to switch off while the noir film became background noise and then silence.

Waking up bleary eyed and slow witted, his brain not fully woken up from the short nap, Nick turned his head to see the film had ended and the late night ZNN news was on, with a snow leopard having a difficult time interviewing the almost evangelical preaching of giraffe, emblazoned with a massive Herbivism badge on his suit lapel. Nick swiped up the remote and turned the TV off in a single well practiced motion, before making his way to bed.

Switching on the light, Nick made for the en-suite. Nick was proud of the fact they had an en-suite attached to their bedroom. Whereas Judy had had a communal bathroom at the Grand Pangolian Apartments and, before Nick went on his apartment hopping days, Nick either had to use public bathrooms or very public bathrooms.

As Nick opened the door and reached for the light switch inside, his ears perked up to the sound a small creak coming from within the bedroom. Swivelling his head around, Nick saw the wardrobe door slowly moving open, creaking all the way as it did so before stopping half open.

“Odd” Nick thought, moving across the room to close the door. Just as his paw reached the wooden door, force already prepared in his arm to slam the door shut, a pair of small paws caught his eye. A pair of small bunny paws. Too small to be Judy’s. Swinging the door open, a tiny grey blur at his feet. It only took a moment for the vagueness to take the form of a half-turned bunny, with bright blue eyes staring up at him.

For a moment both Nick and the bunny remained motionless, as if blinded by headlights, unable to move away from the oncoming danger yet still not realising their imminent fate.

“Hey kid,” Nick said, coming to senses first “you alright?”

Nick moved an inch in the bunny’s direction and it was if the bunny was electrocuted back to life, jolting back to life, launching herself away from Nick and straight up against the wall behind her. Her eyes were truly open now, taking in the fox before her and the rest of her body reacted accordingly, her nose began to twitch; her body hunkered down against the wall with only her paws gripping against the faint bumps and crevices keeping her from collapsing; her breathing becoming rapid and harsh, her eyes momentarily darting away looking for an escape. A trapped prey.

“Woah! Hey, hey, hey!” Nick said, throwing his paws up. “I’m not gonna hurt you. You alright there?”

The bunny’s eyes stopped darting and looked at him with such intensity that it almost made Nick feel guilty. She looked at him as if everything for her had melted out of existence, everything around her, everything outside the room, the building, the city, the state. Only she and he remained, with this being the last thing her deep, sapphire eyes would see.

“So” Nick began tentatively “I’m guessing you’re one of the Hopps’ aren’t you?” The bunny’s ears perked up a little, the intensity of the stare became less fearful and more curious. Okay, Nick thought, it’s a start.

“Guessing I’m right then, aren’t I?” Nick chuckled. A smirk quickly flickered on the bunny’s face. “Were you here to visit your sister Judy?”

The bunny eye’s widened with surprise, before she gave a tentative nod.

“Okay and you were here with you mum, right? And your brothers and sisters?”

Again, the bunny silently nodded, having now come out of her attempt to merge with the wall and now stood straight, cautious but not totally afraid now. Looking at her, it was kind of hard to believe that she was related to Judy in anyway. For one thing, she was miniscule. She barely came up to Nick’s thigh, with her shortened ears just creeping above his waist. Nearly everything about her was miniature, her paws, feet, legs, almost every aspect of her was diminutive. Except her eyes. Compared to the rest of her tiny body, her eyes seemed alert, as if possessing another form of sight granted by the two vast oceans of ultramarine iris’.

“Yeah” the tiny, sharp voice escaping from her.

Nick relaxed a bit. “Good to know. Sorry but seeing as there’s a couple hundred of you, I lose track of who’s who. What’s your name?”

“Molly” she replied, her body relaxing as if all the tensions simply fell away just by simply introducing herself.

“Nice to meet you, Molly. My name’s Nick.” He said, gently offering a paw.

Tentatively, Molly moved forward and gripped onto Nick’s smallest paw pad, with Nick being careful to shake gently and not to fling around this sentient plush toy of a bunny.

With Molly now out of the wardrobe and sitting on the sofa, fiddling with the TV buttons which was almost the size of her, Nick dialled Bonnie’s number, wondering if Nick was the first or four hundredth and first person to report one of her kits being left behind somewhere. If I had that many kits, Nick thought, I could probably go years without noticing twenty of them gone, let alone a small one. After a few rings, a monosyllabic voice came down the phone.

“Yeah?”

“Er, hey, is Bonnie?”

“Yeah.”

Helpful child, Nick thought.

“Can she come to the phone, please?”

“Yeah.”

Still nothing.

“Can you ask her?” Nick asked, his patience already wearing thin.

“Kay.” The rabbit replied followed by a loud shout “MUM! PHONE!”. A little while later, with a few notes of scolding in the background, Bonnie’s familiar voice came on the line.

“Hello, who’s this?”

“Hey Bonnie, it’s Nick.”

“Oh Nick!” Bonnie replied, her voice going up an octave. “How are you? Judy told us you were doing a long shift today. Sorry we missed you but we had to get back and get the young ones to bed.”

“Er, yeah, about that…” Nick said, his free paw almost instinctively rubbing the back of his neck. “Seems you’ve left a small one back at ours.”

From the noise that came down the other end, it was safe to assume that Molly was indeed the first she had lost and that the entirety of Bunny Burrow, and anyone who with a sense of hearing within a five-mile radius of the phone Nick was holding at ear drum disintegrating distance, now knew.

It took a while for the power of speech to put the power of panic into a headlock, with Molly now paying full attention to Nick who was both holding the phone at full arm’s reach away from him and soothing the remnants of his ear with this free paw, but soon Bonnie calmed enough for intelligible words to stutter out of her mouth.

“Who – oh cheese and crackers – wh-wh-who is it? I thought we got them everyone?! Stu, get everyone up! We’re doing a headcount right now! I could have sworn I got everyone, oh carrot sticks.”

“Bonnie, calm down.” Nick said, eventually getting through the panicked warble and hopefully preventing the military inspection going on in the background. “It’s Molly, I’ve got Molly here, okay. Please calm down. You’re kind of panicking her and me as well to be honest.” Nick looked over to Molly, already clasping one of Judy’s cushions to her body, her eyes fixated on the wailing receiver.

“Molly? It’s Molly! Stu I told you to keep an eye on Molly! Well clearly you didn’t ‘cos Nick’s got her! I’m sorry Nick is she okay?”

“Yeah she’s fine. To be honest I almost jumped out my pelt when I saw her coming out my wardrobe.”

“Coming out your wardrobe?”

“Yeah, that was a bit weird.” Nick admitted, trying to laugh it off. “Guess they were playing hide and seek or something and she fell asleep.”

“Yeah, that makes sense. She does end up in some weird places that one. Always wandering off somewhere.” Bonnie replied, her tone with an air of slight exasperation.

“Good to know, so when should I bring her down?”

“Huh?”

“Molly. I’ve got the day off tomorrow, I can drive her down if you like.”

“Oh no” Bonnie cried “Th-there’s no need for that! I, I can come and pick Molly up! I can be there before dawn if I get the next train. Stu, when does the -”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Nick interrupted. Bonnie was a great mum, but sometimes her maternal nature kicked into overdrive. “There’s no need for that. If you’re dead set on coming up, then by all means come up but you don’t need to rush. Molly’s fine and I’ll get her all sorted for when you come up tomorrow, sound good?”

“Erm” Bonnie hesitated “okay, if that’s alright with you and Judy.”

“It’s fine and I’m sure Judy will love having one of her siblings over for a little bit.”

“Oh, so where’s Judy then? Has she just popped out then?” Bonnie asked.

Nick remained silent. Surely Judy told her that she was on duty tonight? That’s not something Judy would forget about. No, she’s definitely told them, Bonnie’s just forgot that’s all. Just as the first breath of his reply came out, Bonnie quickly interrupted him.

“Well, I’m sure Judy will be back soon. She just loves her siblings so I’m sure Molly will be fine with her. I’ll ring tomorrow to let her know when I’m coming up then, okay? Lovely to talk to you Nick. Bye!”

Before Nick could utter even the first sound of the word bye, the hang up tone rang into his ear. Shoving the phone back in his pocket, Nick looked over to the expectant bunny, her eyes wide with anticipation.

“Is, is mum coming then?” her voice still barely over a whisper.

Nick sighed. “Yeah, she’ll be here first thing in the morning Little Miss Hide-and-Seek. And” looking at his watch” I think it’s time someone went to bed. We can discuss the whole you being in the wardrobe thing tomorrow, okay?”

“Okay.” Molly yawned in reply, the tiredness seeping in as soon as bed was mentioned.

Turning the TV back off, Nick herded Molly to their room and plonked her in Judy’s and his bed. With her tiny head placed in front of two massive pillow and her body not even fifth of the bed’s length was almost too cute for words.

Stifling an almost compulsive aww, Nick headed to the door to fall asleep back on the sofa.

“Mister Fox?” the tiny voiced called out.

“Yeah?” Nick replied, turning back towards her, his hand on the doorknob.

“Why are you in Judy’s house?”

That threw him for a loop for a moment.

“Erm, I live here.”

“Why?” cam to instantaneously reply.

“Because I married Judy. I’m her husband.” Nick replied, half laughing.

Molly just stared at him, eyes wide and jaw dropped. In a weird way, it was almost refreshing to have someone so openly shocked at the thought of a fox-bunny couple instead of just getting the usual looks of disdain.

“But you’re a fox.”

“Very good detective skills there, Molly” Nick replied, a little sarcasm peeking through.

“But isn’t Judy married to a bunny?”

Nick stiffened up. Why would she think that? Why would she say that? A million other thoughts passed through his head while the young bunny looked on for an answer.

“Well really” Nick replied in a faux offended tone. “she could have at least told me!”

Molly giggled, causing Nick to smile. It was cute, not that he;d ever say it.

“When she gets home I’m going to have a word with this naughty bunny about and her other husband but before then I want you to have a good night sleep, alright little-un?”

“Okay” came the giggled reply, before Molly turned over, tucking the covers round her as Nick left, switching the light off before closing the door.

Grabbing a spare blanket, Nick tried to make himself comfy on the sofa but the sleep that had come so easily before now eluded him expertly. Why would Molly say that? Surely, we must be the talk of Bunnyburrow by now? A fox and a rabbit married? The way Judy told him about the place it would have been going through the gossip mill for at least another century. Something was wrong here and, turning over and shutting his eyes to try and catch some needed sleep, Nick knew, one way or another, he was going to find out.

#Zootopia #fanfic #the differences that divides us #my own thing!#Nick Wilde #Judy Hopps #bonnie hopps #stu hopps #zpd #married life #first OC!#Molly Hopps

3 notes · View notes