#please heed the content warnings

[keydekyie]

The Drover

When Ruyak was four years old, he did something he shouldn’t have.

1107 words, content warnings: horror, off-screen death, children doing very stupid things

Do NOT read this if you haven’t read book II yet!!! Just don’t! You’ve been warned!

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Sliuk stretched her arms before her, letting her claws dig into the cool soil. The summer breeze brought a fresh whiff of growing grass and warm sunlight, and she leaned her head back to take in the pleasant smells with her eyes closed. 

If only she could enjoy the peace for just a moment… but her brothers were already getting up to mischief.

“You’re not supposed to use your teeth. You’re supposed to pick it apart with your claws. You’ll get splinters in your mouth doing whatever that is.”

“Just let him try it, Renge.”

Sliuk cracked one eye open. Her three brothers were on the other side of the shady green meadow, fooling around beside the gurgling creek. The very youngest was hunched over and appeared to be gnawing on a fallen tree. 

“Don’t let Ruyak hurt himself,” Sliuk growled. “If he gets splinters, we’ll never hear the end of it.”

Ruyak popped his head up, eyes bright, and tried to say something around a mouthful of tree branches.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full, stupid,” Kadu snarled. When Ruyak just blinked at him, Kadu popped him on the back of the head, making the branches fall out of his mouth.

“Ow…” Ruyak grumbled sullenly.

“See?” Renge laughed. “Told you you’d get splinters.”

“It’s not splinters, Kadu hit me too hard!”

“No I didn’t.”

“Ruyak… Ruyak, stop biting it!”

Sliuk watched them a moment longer as they argued over how dissecting a tree was supposed to be done, then closed her eyes again. If she could trust her oldest brother Kadu not to get them all into trouble, she would have let herself take a nap, but someone had to make sure Kadu and Renge didn’t let little Ruyak bumble off a cliff or eat a rock or whatever. He was still hardly more than a baby, after all.

Then Renge said, “Do you smell that?”

Sliuk’s eyes flashed open as a sinking feeling settled in the pit of her stomach.

The three brothers had clustered around a spot a little downriver, sniffing curiously. Sliuk sprang to her feet and hurried over, pulled Ruyak away by one ankle, then pushed between Kadu and Renge to sniff the foliage herself.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Kadu replied. “I don’t think I’ve smelled it before.”

“Kinda smells like tur to me,” Renge offered.

Ruyak shoved himself between Sliuk’s front legs and thrust his face into the brush, taking an exaggerated sniff. “Yeah! Smells like tur to me.”

“You don’t know what tur smells like,” Renge argued.

“Yes I do!”

“No you don’t!”

While they were arguing, Sliuk was taking more careful sniffs of the trail. Suddenly, she snorted and straightened up, ears pinned. "Oh… I think I know what that is."

"What?" Kadu asked.

"I think it's wegs. A herd-- a drove-- of wegs."

"Wegs?"

"Fluffy little things, a lot like boars I think. They’re human livestock.”

Kadu’s face changed, eyes widening with interest. 

Renge cocked his head curiously. “Human livestock?”

“Yeah, the humans raise them for meat or fur or something,” Sliuk explained. “There’s usually a human tending them, a ‘drover.’ Sometimes they have roden with them, too.”

“So…” Kadu said cooly, “that means there’s a human on our territory.”

Renge gasped, “A human on our territory? Isn’t that-?”

Sliuk interrupted him, “We should go tell Mom and Dad.”

“No,” Kadu growled, “we can track it down ourselves.”

“We shouldn’t-”

“I’m twelve, I’m old enough to hunt on my own, and that makes me old enough to take you fools hunting with me.”

“But-”

“And I’m in charge, anyway. Let’s track it.”

“We’re going to find the human?” Ruyak chirped, looking excitedly between Kadu and Sliuk’s faces above him.

“No!” Sliuk snapped. “We’re going to find our parents, and they’ll deal with the human.”

Ruyak frowned in disappointment, but Kadu was stubborn. He was already stalking off after the weg trail, Renge close behind. Sliuk reached out preemptively to grab Ruyak by the scruff with her claws.

“If you want to be a squealer, you can go find Mom and Dad,” Kadu said, “but I’m going after it.”

 Sliuk huffed, “Fine, but Ruyak’s staying with me.”

“But I want to see a human!” Ruyak whined, gazing enviously after his brothers. 

“Maybe some other time.”

Ruyak squirmed, trying to wiggle out of Sliuk’s grip. “Come on…”

Sliuk started to drag him away, back towards the den. “I’m sorry, but-”

At that moment Ruyak rolled to the side, twisted his head, and sank his knife-sharp baby teeth into Sliuk’s forearm. Sliuk yelped and jerked back, letting Ruyak go. He immediately gamboled away. 

“God’s eyes, Ruyak!” Sliuk yelled after him, checking her arm. It wasn’t bleeding, thankfully. “That hurt!”

 “Sorry!” he threw over his shoulder before vanishing into the brush.

Sliuk stood there a moment, indecisive. If she ran to find their parents, any manner of nonsense could be accomplished by her brothers before she managed to catch up to them, and then Sliuk would be scolded for leaving them unsupervised. Then again, there was little she could honestly do to stop Kadu once he had his mind set, and of course if any trouble was made under her watch, Sliuk would be doubly blamed for it. 

Sliuk hesitated a moment longer, claws digging up clumps of grass in her agitation, then she sighed in defeat and followed the weg trail.

The scent was all mixed up with the boys’ scents. They’d made no effort at subtlety, and Sliuk hoped perhaps whatever was at the end of the trail had enough sense to flee at the sound of all the commotion.

The forest opened up into a great meadow, sprawling bright green with long summer grass all the way down into the bottom of a lush river valley. The weg drove-- a squealing collection of fluffy white creatures-- was fleeing across the fields and disappearing into the tall grass like seed heads dissolving into water. 

Just then, the sun passed behind an immense cloud, bathing the fields in shadow. 

Kadu and Renge were nearby, roaring with laughter, which was never a good sign. Sliuk loped over to them.

“I didn’t think… he’d really do it!” Renge gasped between giggles, rolling in the grass on his back.

Ruyak was sitting hunched between his two brothers with a very strange expression on his face. Ashen, confused, and oddly fearful, it was the kind of face Ruyak would wear having just eaten something he shouldn’t have.

“Please tell me that was a weg,” Sliuk groaned, stopping a few paces away.

Renge was too indisposed with laughter to answer, but Kadu had collected himself. “No,” he chuckled.

Sliuk’s heart dropped. “A rodi?”

“No,” said Kadu, “the drover.”

#remember that part in book II where Ruyak mentions the first time he did something? #this is that time #please heed the content warnings #it isn't explicitly gory or anything but there's a reason I've hesitated for multiple years to share this #I'm serious don't read this if you haven't read book II unless you want to be freaked out and confused #I mean don't read this anyway if you don't want to be freaked out #it's not cute it's very upsetting #but it really shines a light on Ruyak's relationship with his siblings and his history so #y'know if you like angst and shit and you're curious about that incident he mentioned then you'll probably like this #tmatb #grace makes art #writing #horror

[blorbocedes]

his eyes are like angels, his heart is cold

Rating: Explicit

Pairing: Carlos Sainz Jr/Lando Norris, background implied Charles Leclerc/Carlos Sainz Jr

Word Count: 5.2k

Tags: mafia au, emotional manipulation, possessive behaviour, jealousy, unreliable narrator, unhealthy relationships, a little knifeplay as a treat, power dynamics, mclaren hate blogging

Summary:

Lando had brushed off his offer when he first received the suit, sardonically replying, “I think I can manage wearing a suit by myself.”

Carlos had raised an eyebrow at his confidence, pretended to back off, and murmured in his ear. “If you are sure, Lando. You know how important this gala is to me and my family. You would not want to embarrass us in any way, would you?” And let Lando spiral in his own self-doubt until he came back biting back his tongue to Carlos, needing him. And who was Carlos to deny him?

the second son of the italian mafioso and the ferrari driving academy graduate get dressed for the most important gala of the season.

world's biggest thank you to @colors-of-feeling my bestie for translations 🥺🥺🥺 also this was supposed to be a pwp that grew plot somehow 🥴 why is this 5k...... would be very 🥺 to hear your thoughts if you read...

#carlando #my fics #f1 rpf #please heed the content warnings #and enjoy #i am on maybe 5 hours of sleep in 2 days #mafia au #if any fic of mine deserves a sexy edit moodboard it's this one but I'm so tired to make one

[lonesome--hunter]

CW: creepy masked whumper, force feeding, threats of violence/death, drugging

"Why haven't you touched your breakfast? It's all your favorite things." Pancakes and bacon with a side of hashed browns. Untouched along with the tall glass of orange juice beside it on the breakfast tray. Dmitrios sat crossed legged in front of it, his ankle chain was pulled taut from the anchor in the corner of the dimly lit cell.

"Because you drugged it." He said despondently while an I'll timed stomach growl sold him out and showed how hungry he was and how he almost didn't care that it's drugged.

"You know why, dear. I can't trust you yet. You still have this silly notion that you're going to leave me again and we can't have that. No no no. Can't have it."

"The others will find me and then they're gonna kill you."

The man in the black mask knelt down on one knee and leaned in close as he spoke cooly.

"Nah. They're too stupid not to get themselves caught. There's no where they can hide where I won't find them. I'm everywhere, my love." He says as he cuts the pancakes into little triangles and then pours the blueberry syrup on top. Then he piles some onto the fork and shoves it into Dmitrios' mouth.

"Then... I will gut them all one by one while you watch."

#the man in the black mask #idk what is happening #might maybe continue it #please heed the content warnings

[teruthecreator]

(tw for racism, pedophilia, transphobia, child impregnation mention)

yeah idk why y'all read this

i was originally going to just post this and have some tags with my reasonings, but i realized that opens me up to too much bullshit from people who may think i'm being unnecessarily mean or whatever. so i'm going to explain exactly why the screenshots above are something i hold issue with.

firstly, and i just want to get this out of the way, this post is not intended to be a hit piece against the creator. i've seen how she reacts to any mild-mannered or slightly joking criticism, so i know this post is probably going to not land well. but it isn't my intention to make her mad or anything--she's writing a piece of content for the internet, which means she is just as open to criticism as any other poster. and what i intend to go into in this post is criticism. i'm allowed to do this, as that is the nature of the internet. people are allowed to critique whatever they please, and if you don't want critique then you shouldn't post. simple as!

i am also making no attempts to posit myself as better than the creator. i'm not doing this for clout or moral superiority or any of that dumb shit. i simply want to discuss something that's been bothering me for a bit, while simultaneously warning people who haven't read this yet (who may be sensitive to the issues above) to steer clear. if things like casual racism or transphobia aren't properly tagged, then readers who are affected by such things run a risk reading this! same goes with people who are triggered by lewd content involving minors. i wanna make sure people are getting a more critical scope of this work than what has been hoisted up by others.

okay, now that i've gotten that out of the way, i'm going to get into my points.

firstly, the subtle and not-so-subtle racism throughout this fic, especially in relation to serizawa. i'm white, so there is only so much i can speak on without trampling over the words of other fans of color, but some of this feels so blatant it's odd it hasn't been noted earlier. it's important to note before i go into it that serizawa is specifically written as half-black half-japanese for this fic, in case the screenshots don't make it abundantly clear. but there are just too many moments of casual racism in this fic. i'm not talking about the plot point of serizawa being bullied as a kid for being mixed; i'm not mixed, so i can't speak on the accuracy there but it is well-known that black people face a lot of racism in japan. i'm talking about how it seems everyone else has these racist moments that aren't acknowledged by serizawa or the narration as being bad.

reigen hypothesizing over serizawa's exact ethnic background is just strange. yes he's a fairly observant guy (he has to be, with his job), but there is no canonical evidence to suggest he would immediately jump to theorizing whether serizawa is american or not. and the way it's posed in that first quote--"he has darker skin and the kind of hair texture that would likely indicate African ancestry"--is not great. that's an extremely inappropriate way to bring up someone's race. i don't think most people would stare at someone and be like "hmmm well your nose shape and hair texture would suggest you're of this race". it's racial essentialization that is only slightly covered up by the excuse of "oh he tweets in english". there are some other smaller moments of questionable wording, like calling serizawa's afro "sloppy" when it isnt (which btw there's another issue with the creator only referring to an afro as a "fro". it's a hairstyle; you're allowed to use the actual name of it). even if reigen cuts his hair in canon, he never states it's because serizawa's afro looks sloppy. (also there's something to be said about the casual racism baked into making your employee cut his natural hairstyle for a job, as that is a very real issue many black people face when wearing their natural hair or even protective styles in the workplace.)

i'm especially bothered by toichiro's very casual racist remarks. toichiro in this fic is a general bother of mine (most of which can be boiled down to "he would not fucking say that"), but the way she chooses to characterize him in relation to serizawa feels gross. calling a black man a slave should be a very obvious red flag, but also saying serizawa (again, as a black man) has a "brutal masculine appeal" is also extremely stereotypical and racist. and really there is just no need for it; toichiro's actions in canon prove how shitty of a guy he is without the need for him to be racist (along with other things i'll get to in a bit). as my girlfriend put it: he doesn't need to be a member of the fucking kkk to show he's a bad guy.

there's also, again, the very casual racist remark of calling serizawa a "dog". i don't care if that isn't the intent; when you are writing a character of color you need to be aware of your wording, even in insults (unless she intended to make tsuchiya racist, which i don't think she did).

secondly, the eugenics/child pregnancy bit. it is surreal to even have to write this, but i seriously do not understand the purpose of either of these bits in the story. they are so minor yet so jarring you can't help but wonder why they're there. once again, i do not think you need to have toichiro doing esper eugenics just to prove he is an evil guy. he has nuance, and by making him casually reference child pregnancy (like that isn't an INSANE thing to say) reduces that nuance to nothing. that's the only reason i could see why that bit was included: to make toichiro look worse. but, even still, the author is running the risk of potentially triggering victims of csa or people who don't want to see that by not properly tagging the mention of it (or, at the very least, warning readers in the intro notes). the only other explanation for it would maybe be shock factor??? but that's a pretty shitty thing to use for shock factor, if i'm honest. also the fact that the esper eugenics was referenced again in a more recent chapter just has me very disturbed and confused. there isn't a canonical explanation for why we see less espers who are women than espers who are men, but that doesn't mean we need to jump to fucking Eugenics. it's weird!

thirdly (and this is probably one of my biggest problems and the main reason i wanted to make this post), the weirdly lewd/sexual language shou uses constantly, along with referring to reigen as a pedo or a creep at several points. frankly, i think it's pretty fucking gross for someone in their near-40's to be writing a 12-year-old talking so casually about sex like that's normal. which, i'm sorry, but it's not. yes, teens know about sex and like to joke about lewd shit. but a 12-year-old is not about to make references to a grown man's virginity. 12-year-olds draw dicks on their desk bc they think it's funny. 12-year-olds say the word "buttfuck" because it has the words "butt" and "fuck" in it, and those are the two funniest words on earth to a kid that age. i literally do not understand the purpose of having shou be so lewd all the time. for one, it doesn't make sense for his character. shou is shown time and time again to be extremely mature for his age, but that maturity extends to shit like assembling a counter-terrorism unit and extending a hand to his father to allow him to try again. and even then he's still just as naive as any other kid his age! the omake where he's telling his guys to go to the "far right corner" based on ritsu’s advice proves that he still has plenty of blindspots that are indicative of his age. leaning into this raunchy, lewd version of shou is just weird. and, again, i think it is made a bit weirder given the author's age!!! not ageshaming or whatever--i'm 23 and i write fanfic, clearly i cannot judge there--but it is just extremely inappropriate in my opinion. also having shou be more versed in sextalk than serizawa is odd too and speaks to a larger issue of serizawa's infantilzation throughout this fic, but that's something i can get into in another post if people want an explanation.

also, the way she constantly calls reigen a creep and even has him being accused of being a pedophile during the twitter cancellation is extremely inappropriate when, again, there is NO CANONICAL BASIS FOR THIS! everyone just calls him a fraud and a scammer during separation arc; there is never a reference to reigen being seen as a pedophile in that arc. and, yes, while there are versions of mob psycho where reigen is very clearly written as a creep (looking very specifically at the netflix adaptation), that doesn't mean it's good. honestly, the creep mentions all just feel like really poor jokes that do not land in the slightest.

finally, the transphobia (aka WHY IS SHIMAZAKI A CHASER). i literally do not know what else to say other than: why? why is this a thing? why is he a chaser? what is the purpose of this? is it a joke? i feel like it's supposed to be, but seeing as the author is cis i don't think that's a joke she should really be making. it not only comes out of left field, but it's just kind of a weird thing to ascribe to a character for no reason. not to mention, it's uncomfortable! trans women deal with enough creepy antics from cis men in real life--why must they be accosted by this guy too? it's just weird and uncomfortable.

i wanna round out this post by saying, once again, that i'm not trying to attack anyone with this post. but i do hope people come away from this with a new perspective on this work, and maybe think twice before recommending it uncritically to someone. to the author specifically, i hope you can read my post without rage or indignance blinding you. i might be a little blunt or rude in parts, but it's only because i'm passionate and i don't mince my words when it comes to things i'm passionate about. to the readers, understand i am not judging you for reading this fic without noticing these things. your own life experiences will give you certain blindspots and there's nothing wrong with that. i have plenty of blindspots of my own! it's what makes us human.

there is more i could say, but this post is long enough. i ask that if you come to me in my inbox or in dms about this that you treat me with respect, as i will do that for you. writing something like this took a lot out of me, as i'm usually not so open about my opinion on shit like this.

have a good day :-)

#mp100 #side quest #yeah this is all from <- that fic btw #ive been sitting on this for about a week or so bc ive been nervous abt posting something like this #i dont want people to think im making a callout post just to call shit out #im doing this bc i dont want people to get triggered by this content and because i want fans to be more critical of the content they consum #media literacy is something A LOT of fandoms struggle with and it leads to things being praised uncritically #i simply want people to have perspective when going into a thing #anyways uh. goodbye <3 #edit: took the tw tags off bc tumblr was suppressing the post bc of it #so PLEASE heed the warning at the top if u have specific triggers and things

[saturnisfallingdown]

consuming media that makes you go "how am I expected to integrate into society normally after this"

#red valley #this post is about podcast red valley #please please listen to red valley (heeding the content warnings) #red valley syndrome. instead of brain there is red valley

[agerefandom]

Baby Steps

Fandom: Twilight

Characters: regressor!Bella Swan, caregiver!Charlie Swan

Words: 2,900

Summary: After Edward leaves, Bella is left in a shattered, dissociative state. Her father doesn’t know what to do, but eventually he starts to put the pieces together and discovers that age regression might be a way to get through to his daughter again. 

Warnings: Detailed descriptions of depression: lethargy, dissociation, disordered sleep and eating. Hurt/comfort with a lot of angst. A lot of feelings about mental health and helplessness. 

for @little-biscuit2​

It had been almost three months.

Three months, and Charlie didn’t know what to do.

It had never felt more like he lived alone. Bella spent most of her time in her room, and when Charlie coaxed her down for food or to watch TV, she didn’t seem to process any of it. He had even tried putting on reality TV instead of sports, but her blank expression didn’t change, her eyes reflecting the glare of the television.

She didn’t eat if Charlie didn’t feed her, and even then her appetite was small: she was losing weight and she was already too thin to begin with, in Charlie’s opinion. She swung between oversleeping and sleeping far too little, with Charlie coming in and finding her sitting in her chair, gazing out the window well past midnight.

He had just been getting to know his daughter: independent, clumsy, smart as hell, always taking care of the people around her. And now she was gone, retreated somewhere deep inside herself, and he had no idea how to get her back.

It was killing him. It was killing both of them.

Charlie had Renee fly in for a weekend, just to see if that would shake Bella out of her fog. Bella had smiled, and hugged her mother, but it didn’t reach her eyes, and she still wouldn’t speak more than a few sentences. Renee wouldn’t stop holding her, and Bella just laid in her arms, her expression as still as the lake in the morning, and revealing just as little.

Renee had cried, and Charlie had given her an awkward hug, and made food for everyone. Renee stayed for two nights, and left in tears. Bella hadn’t moved to comfort her, had hardly seemed to register Renee’s presence.

‘Desperate’ didn’t begin to cover the way that Charlie was feeling.

Bella’s grades were dropping, though she seemed willing to be driven to school and to walk through her classes in that same disconnected haze. She didn’t participate, and only occasionally finished her homework. Charlie had met with her teachers and they were willing to give her some leeway, but their worried expressions left Charlie feeling sick. He was her father, he should have been able to help.

He should know what to do.

--

“Bella! Time for dinner,” Charlie announced, opening Bella’s door. He never would have entered her room without verbal permission before all this started, but now he knew that she wouldn’t come downstairs to eat unless he came to fetch her.

She sat in her chair, arms wrapped around her knees, eyes fixed on the trees outside her window. This was how Charlie usually found her.

“C’mon, Bells, we got homemade mac and cheese tonight. Very fancy.”

Bella didn’t respond. Charlie came closer and squatted beside the chair, trying to catch her gaze. Her eyes didn’t move from the window.

“Sweetheart, will you look at me? It’s dinnertime.”

Still nothing.

At this point, Charlie usually had two choices: he could let Bella be, or he could bring up the food to see if she would take it and start eating once it was in front of her. But today, he was tired and worried and couldn’t bring himself to leave his daughter’s side.

“You’re scaring me, Bells. If you don’t come down with me, I’m going to have to carry you down.” From Bella’s blank expression, she either didn’t hear him, or had no opinion on this proposal. Charlie clapped his hands on his knees and rose to his feet. “Alright, let’s go.”

She was already curled up, and Charlie took a moment to judge the best way to pick her up. He was getting on in years, but his job demanded that he stay in some kind of shape, and he was confident he could get her downstairs.

“Here I come,” he warned her, and then wrapped his arms around her, pulling her up out of the chair.

Finally, Bella’s expression changed: she looked surprised, eyes flashing wide and then moving over to Charlie’s face. Then a furrow appeared between her eyebrows, like she hadn’t expected to see him.

“Hey Bells, we’re taking you down for dinner. Do you want to walk?”

Bella shook her head and even shifted slightly in Charlie’s arms, getting comfortable. She was far too light for a girl of her age, and Charlie was even more determined to get a decent dinner into her. Still, he couldn’t hold her for too long, so he headed for the stairs.

He carried Bella all the way to the little table in the kitchen, pushed out one of the chairs with his foot, and settled Bella down on the seat. She looked more aware than before, and her eyes followed Charlie to the other seat.

Their food was already on the table, and Charlie pushed Bella’s bowl towards her with the spoon beside it. “You gotta eat. Mac and cheese, right? It’s still hot.” Bella’s gaze flicked down to the food in front of her, then back to Charlie. “It’ll be good,” Charlie added.

Seeing that Bella was making no motion to pick up the spoon, Charlie sighed.

“Do you want me to feed you? I will, so help me.”

To his surprise, Bella opened her mouth like a little baby bird. It was such an unexpected gesture that it startled a laugh from Charlie. How long had it been since he’d laughed?

“Okay, you got it.” Charlie got up from his chair and came to stand beside Bella’s, scooping up a spoonful of cheese and noodles. “Here it comes.”

Bella accepted the food and chewed, then opened her mouth again. Charlie laughed a second time, still overtaken by the ridiculous scene of feeding his newly-eighteen-year-old daughter like she was two years old again, but also relieved that she was eating at all.

The second and third scoop were similarly accepted, but then Bella didn’t open her mouth again.

“Well, you can’t be full already,” Charlie said. “Come on, kiddo, two more spoonfuls.”

No response. Charlie poked the spoon into Bella’s lip, which got some cheese on her face, but didn’t change her expression.

“Alright, we’re getting silly then. If you don’t want your dad to get silly, you better eat the pasta.” After giving Bella a few moments with that statement, Charlie nodded and got the spoon ready. “Here comes the airplane, Bella.” He dutifully flew the spoon around with some airplane noises, and watched Bella’s eyes start to follow it. “It’s coming in for a landing, open wide.”

Finally, Bella opened her mouth and accepted the food.

Charlie pulled out all the stops for the rest of the meal: airplane, train, very important delivery: he wiggled the spoon and made the kind of sound effects he hadn’t made for sixteen years.

But at the end of it all, the bowl was empty. He’d gotten a fair amount of cheese on Bella’s face, but she’d eaten every last spoonful.

“Good job, honey. Thank you for eating,” Charlie said, somewhat exhausted by the ordeal. His own food was cold, but he was satisfied with the situation. “Do you want me to get you cleaned up, or would you like to do it yourself?”

Bella blinked at him, and Charlie nodded. That would be his job, then.

“Can you drink this water while I’m gone?” He pushed the glass towards her. “Both hands, sweetheart.”

To his surprise and delight, Bella wrapped her hands around the glass and raised it up, beginning to drink.

Charlie retreated to run a cloth under warm water. Returning, he saw Bella had drank half the cup before setting it down.

“Still want dad to do the honours?” he asked, offering Bella the cloth.

When she made no move to accept it, Charlie leaned over and started wiping the cheese off Bella’s face, finishing with a flourish.

“There you go. All clean.” He couldn’t resist pressing a kiss to the top of her head on the way back to the sink. “Should we go and watch some TV, then?” Charlie dropped off the cloth and returned to Bella’s side, offering a hand to hold on the way.

Bella put up both hands, stretched towards him.

“Fair enough,” Charlie shrugged, and scooped his daughter back up into his arms, carrying her over to the couch. He held her the same way Renee had on her visit, with her chest and head cradled in his arms, her legs laid out on the couch. “Do you want to watch the game, or do some scrolling?”

Bella was already staring at the screen in faux attentiveness, as if she hadn’t processed that Charlie hadn’t yet turned on the screen. She didn’t seem to have an opinion, so Charlie turned on the television and started flipping through channels.

He could feel Bella perk up when he flipped onto some kind of kid’s cartoon, so he left that playing. It was mind numbing wash of colours and songs, but Bella was leaning forward and her eyes were actually tracking the characters, so Charlie let it play for a whole hour before turning it off and carrying Bella upstairs to bed.

Charlie left her on top of the covers, with her pyjamas laid out beside her. Whether she would change and get under the sheets or just sleep in her clothes, he wasn’t sure, but he made sure to keep the temperature turned up in case she didn’t make it under the covers.

Then he pulled out his laptop, and pulled up the search engine.

-

Charlie learned a lot that night, about trauma and depression and age regression. He booked Bella an appointment with a doctor in Seattle, which he probably should have done a long time ago. He also ordered a few things online, curious and cautiously hopeful.

It was possible this evening had been a fluke, but he was willing to do anything to help Bella back to being herself again.

-

It took over a week for the supplies to reach Forks, and Charlie was doing everything he could to help Bella in the meantime. He didn’t want to cross any of his daughter’s boundaries, so he never helped her get dressed, but he started tucking her in at nights, singing lullabies until he saw her eyes close. He woke her up in the morning with breakfast in bed, and changed the sheets after dropping her off at school, to get the crumbs out.

In the evenings he would feed Bella her supper: sometimes she would lift the fork herself and he would sit back and let her eat, but when she looked at him with unseeing eyes, he would pick up her fork and start with the airplane noises. Every empty plate was a victory.

When the package arrived on his doorstep, Charlie picked it up and took it to his room, then unpacked it. He had gotten some bath toys, and a pacifier, and a soft blanket with ducks on it. He’d also picked up a couple of Bella’s favourite books from her childhood: Anne of Green Gables and The Chronicles of Narnia, new copies with beautiful embossed covers.

But the last thing he found himself holding in his hands, unable to let go of, was a brown stuffed dog: the exact same style as one of Bella’s first stuffed animals. She’d gotten it as a gift from one of her mother’s relatives, and they hadn’t been able to pull her away from it. Bella had chewed the ears bald and eventually pulled off one of the legs, and they’d gotten rid of it when she was ten. But here it was, soft and shiny as the first time Bella ripped it out of the tissue paper with her chubby little hands.

Charlie wasn’t sure that Bella would even remember the toy, but he thought it might be nice to have something to hold.

So he tucked away the books and the toys and the pacifier and the blanket, and he went to Bella holding the little dog.

Bella was sitting in her chair, staring out the window in the same direction as always. It hadn’t escaped Charlie’s attention that she was looking into the woods, towards the spot where Charlie had found her collapsed on the night after the Cullens left. Towards the last place she had seen Edward.

“Bells, honey, I got you a present.”

No reaction. That wasn’t unusual.

“It’s a silly little thing, but I thought you might like it.” Charlie shifted from foot to foot, already feeling uncomfortable with the build-up. “Here you go.”

Without further hesitation, he presented Bella with the stuffed animal, holding it out in front of her. Bella slowly looked at Charlie’s hands, and then at the dog. Her forehead creased in that same little mark of confusion that Charlie had become familiar with, when she was brought back from wherever she went in her absence.

With one hand, she slowly reached out and ran a finger down the nose of the plush puppy. Charlie put the stuffed animal onto her chest, half-cradled by the arm that was still in her lap. Bella blinked and looked down fully at the stuffed animal. She curled her arms all the way around it, and held it to her chest.

Then she looked up at Charlie and burst into tears.

Charlie panicked for a moment, retreating several steps from the sudden distress. But then it occurred to him that this was the first time he’d seen Bella cry since the day he found her in the woods. There had been no break to her blank unresponsiveness, and this was just as shocking as if she’d burst out laughing. Was this a step backwards, or was this progress?

Either way, Charlie steeled himself and went over to pat Bella on the back. She reached out for him with both hands, in a gesture that was becoming familiar. The dog fell to her lap and she stopped to pick it up, then tried to reach out for Charlie again.

Charlie scooped her up into his arms, stuffed dog and all, and made his way over to her bed so that he could sit down with his daughter in his arms. She was sobbing and gasping and there were tears running down her face, and Charlie didn’t know what to do except hold her. He cradled her on his lap, rocking vaguely back and forth, and just held on as her body shook.

“It’s okay Bells, it’s gonna be okay,” he murmured, over and over again.

The crying lasted for longer than Charlie thought was possible. His back was starting to hurt from all of the rocking back and forth, but he kept it up. Eventually, led by memories of long nights taking care of Bella as an infant, he started humming a Bon Jovi song. As though in response, Bella’s sobs slowly started to subside. Before long, she was lying heavy in his arms, and he wasn’t sure if he’d managed to put her to sleep. That cry had seemed exhausting, but the atmosphere in the room felt a little bit lighter, somehow.

Charlie gently guided Bella back from where her face was pressed into his shoulder, lying her down on her pillow.

Her eyes blinked open, still shiny with tears, and Charlie grabbed a Kleenex from the bedside table and started cleaning her up. There was snot and tears everywhere and his shirt desperately needed a wash, but he dutifully wiped off his daughter’s face, then held a new Kleenex up to her nose and said “blow your nose.”

Bella obliged, and Charlie got her to do the other side as well, then tucked away the tissues.

“Good job, kiddo.” Bella looked at him, her eyes clear in the dim light of evening coming through the window. “Hi, Bells.” Charlie touched her nose gently, and smiled.

Bella smiled back, a sudden dawning of happiness across her face. Her hands curled around the new stuffed animal, and Charlie could finally believe that everything was going to be okay.

-

Epilogue:

Alice liked to check on Bella every once in a while.

She didn’t believe that Edward had done the right thing in leaving Bella, and had worried over the months that Bella had been unresponsive: Alice’s visions of Bella’s future were changeable, and there were some futures in which she saw that Bella never emotionally recovered from the abandonment.

But then, something changed.

Suddenly, Bella’s future settled into a more secure form, something that Alice hadn’t expected. She saw Bella cradled in her family’s arms, first her father and then the flickering of possible future friends. She saw Bella crying, and laughing, and smiling. She saw Bella drinking from bottles full of milk, having her hair brushed by gentle hands, playing with dolls.

Alice went to Jasper and folded herself into his arms, hiding her smile against his chest. It was the kind of smile that would be accompanied by tears, if she had still been human enough to cry: a bittersweet loss and relief at the same time.

She had loved Bella, had wanted to be her sister one day. Even this side of Bella made Alice want to be there for her, to hold her and cradle her. But now that she was certain Bella could be happy without Edward, without the dangerous world of the supernatural, and Alice could let her go.

“Are you alright?” Jasper asked, soothing her with a hand on her back and a touch of his powers, washing over her.

“Bella is feeling better,” Alice said, still not letting go of her mate. “She’s going to be okay.”

Jasper hummed and held Alice close, tucking her head under his chin. He didn’t say anything, but Alice knew he understood.

They held each other, and wished the best for Bella Swan.

#twilight agere #fandom agere #agere fanfiction #agere writing #my writing #my fics #please heed the content warnings!! #tw angst #twilight

[cocolacola]

happy halloween! sorry the art has just been doodles as of late😪 i accidentally set her name to "knightZ" when trying to hit enter on the name screen so she's the Knightz now.

#are u guys taking in people from the lisa fandom situation of 2023 #im migrating #no spoilers please im really early into the game #if i like the game i will def do a bigger piece #the character designs are v fun and spooky #also please dont take my art as a recommendation to go play the game. heed the content warnings first i beg of you #d'arce #fear and hunger #my art #funger

[que-de-metal]

According To The Scorpion - Poniko/Madotsuki - 24k words

💚Happy Birthday @insecateur💚

They tell you to start a Dream Diary. Really, what part of "recurring" don't they understand? Your dreams are like real life: nothing ever changes.

This is a story with kind of a paranormal reading of the game. Now that I'm finished with it I feel like it reads like a fantasy adventure film? 😄 I hope YN fans (and curious bystanders) will enjoy it!

#yume nikki #poniko #madotsuki #uboa #seccom masada #please heed the content warnings for this one!

[whumpcereal]

the kennel, part nineteen

NOTE: I swear to goodness I am working on Jacky and Joe, but this just came out today, so here it is.

part of the kennel (masterlist here).

content warnings for: EXPLICIT NONCON, extreme dehumanization, extreme pet whump, filmed whump, creepy/intimate whumper, human trafficking, forced nudity, cages, restraints, collars, threatened electrocution, dissociation

part nineteen, reduced to an object

They leave Will in his cage for days. 

Well, that’s not quite true. He hears the door open and shut, feels Annie’s feathersoft touch on the sole of his foot, but he doesn’t let himself stir. Or maybe, he doesn’t even think about it. Maybe he just doesn’t move because he can’t. Like, he cried himself into oblivion after Annie cleaned him up, and now there’s nothing left. 

Maybe it’s better that way. 

Doc doesn’t care if he eats, and now Will doesn’t either. Even after however many days, he can still taste Tommy, feel the sour warmth down the back of his throat. And since he isn’t eating or drinking, really, there’s no reason to go to the recreation yard. He wonders if he can make himself disappear, if maybe he’ll die before Doc wants to use him again. 

No such luck. 

At some point, it’s Doc, not Annie, who opens his cage. Doc’s hand locks around his ankle, and without speaking, he drags Will’s atrophied body backward from the crate. Will doesn’t give any sign that he’s felt it, because why should he? It’s not like anything is a surprise at this point, and it’s not like he cares what happens to him now. Whining and getting served with a shock isn’t going to make any of it better. 

“Oh, little mutt, it’s not as bad as all that, is it?” Doc murmurs. 

Will keeps his forehead pressed to the concrete floor. 

“You know, your little exercise with Champ caused quite the stir. I think we may find use for you after all.” 

The Will of six weeks ago would have had something to say. He would have laughed, and he would have said something like Joke’s on you, buddy. I’ve been aggressively useless my entire life. 

But this Will doesn’t speak. Not unless he’s commanded to, and it doesn’t seem like that’s what Doc is in for just now. Not that Will cares. 

“Up on your knees, boy.” 

Will doesn’t even bother to try to do what Doc asks. He knows he can’t support his own weight, and he doesn’t figure it matters if he ever does again. Doc’s toe lands hard against Will’s ass crack. Will’s body jars, but that’s it. Nothing happens for a moment, like Doc is waiting for something, and then the older man sighs. 

“Stay still, then,” Doc mutters.

Doc’s dry hands are at Will’s hips, and he slips Will’s briefs down and away from his backside, letting them stop just above his knees. And fuck, Will should be afraid, but somehow, he isn’t. It’s not like he doesn’t know where this is going. 

There’s a soft click, and he feels Doc’s hand press one of his asscheeks to the side. Something warm and slick falls into his crack, and then Doc’s fingers follow, slipping over his hole and then inside of it. Will stays silent, but this time, he feels a dry lump in his throat–no tears; he hasn’t had enough water for those. But still. He didn’t feel it the first time, just the pain that came after. But this doesn’t feel right. Not to him. His flesh is still tender, inside and out, but it isn’t even that. Even if he had words, he isn’t sure he could explain. 

Maybe it’s that the contact is intimate, but Will didn’t ask for it and doesn’t want it. Maybe it’s that there are other pets in their cages, watching his humiliation. Maybe it’s that he can feel in Doc’s touch that the older man doesn’t think he’s touching another person at all, that this is all business to him. Maybe it’s that, on some level, he knows he’s being prepared for Tommy; that even here, Tommy is worth more than he is. Will always comes last if he places at all. 

Will feels something slip inside of him, small at first, and then stretching what shouldn’t be stretched and settling wide. He scrunches his eyes shut and tries to breathe. 

“The people are asking for you, little mutt. And since you’re drumming up business, I thought I’d help you out this time. We’ll make sure that you’re ready, won’t we?” 

Doc waits again, but what the fuck is Will going to do about any of this? If the guy wanted to hear his opinion, maybe he shouldn’t have outfitted him with a fucking bark collar. Will turns his head and lets his cheek rest against the cool concrete. His breath is hard and fast. 

Doc sighs. “Fine. Play dead. But you’re not dead yet, mutt. You can thank Champ for that.” 

Yeah, because this is something to be fucking grateful for. 

Doc doesn’t put him back in his cage right away. He forces Will to lap at a metal bowl of water first, and then he pulls up Will’s briefs and locks him away again. But there’s no relief this time. Every time Will shifts, he can feel the plug inside of him shift too, a reminder of exactly what’s coming–and exactly what he’s worth. 

- - - 

It feels like days before Doc brings Will back to the doghouse. Maybe a week. Tommy doesn’t know. It’s hard to know anything anymore. He can’t predict what’s coming next, and it doesn’t matter anyway. There’s no getting out. He’s not stupid enough to believe otherwise. He doesn’t think Will is either, but it’s not like he can ask. No, Tommy knows what Will’s presence demands, and it isn’t conversation. 

Tommy had a feeling it was coming. Doc hasn’t fucked him again since that first day– “You know, Champ, this isn’t about me. I’m not who the people want to see.”--but there have been others. Red collars like Tommy, but with black hoods over their faces. Doc directs them from outside the box, his voice pumped in over speakers Tommy hadn’t realized were even there. 

Harder. I want to hear him scream. 

Lick up the mess, Champ. Show the people what a good boy you are. 

Grab his hair, you stupid mutt. Make sure the camera can see his face. 

But there’s been some downtime for the last little bit, for whatever it’s worth. No other red collars, just the familiar burn and stretch of his tail, keeping him loose and ready. But when Doc chains Tommy’s wrists above his head and fits him with the massager again, lets it thrust inside him, lets the tension build until he’s shaking and moaning beyond control, Tommy knows exactly what’s coming, even as his brain melts inside his skull. 

This time, Will isn’t blindfolded, but he doesn’t look at Tommy. Tommy understands. He can’t look at Doc or the cameras either. Looking means knowing. Recognizing what’s been lost. That part of him is being systematically routed out from somewhere deep inside, and that he’ll never be able to get it back. 

It’s not a thing you assume about yourself, that you’ll be reduced to an object for someone else’s, well, use. At least, Tommy never did. But he supposes he’s been an object for most of his life. That grand jetés and fouettés and port de bras are designed to be looked at, and that, for a long time, Tommy’s body was just their means of projection. He loved to feel eyes on him as he moved, loved the warmth of other people’s energy, the way that it pushed him farther, higher. The way that it made him feel alive. 

It isn’t the same now. The cameras never shut off, and Tommy can feel himself trying to shrink from their omnipresent eyes in a way he’s never shrunk from attention before. But there’s no escape, no curtain that separates this life from another. There’s just–nothing. Tommy knows that as soon as he sees Will’s defeated face, already stretched in discomfort by the familiar ring gag. He can’t see Will behind the mournful brown eyes, sunken into a face that’s so gaunt and pale that it would make Tommy’s gut turn if every nerve in his body weren’t directed toward the pursuit of forced pleasure. 

Doc smiles as he leads Will into the box by his leash. Now that he knows what to look for, Tommy sees the black electrical box attached to Will’s collar. There are rusty bandages beneath. Will must have hurt himself that first time, screaming the way that he did.

Tommy hopes Will won’t scream this time. He doesn’t want this to hurt Will anymore than it already will. 

“Lookit who’s back for another little guest spot,” Doc says with a soft laugh. He ruffles Will’s greasy hair, wiping his hand on his pants when he pulls away. He looks at Tommy. “I thought it was time you got to feel good, Champ. You’ve done so well this last little bit. You deserve a reward.”

Tommy isn’t gagged, but he can’t form words. Sensation rises inside him and he cries out like an animal. Still, he shakes his head. Will is not his reward. Will is his best friend, and Tommy doesn’t deserve him. Not after what’s happened. 

Will is kneeling at Doc’s feet, but he is barely there at all. His mittened hands are braced in front of his knees, natural as anything. Like he doesn’t remember that he’s a man. Doc snaps his fingers, and Will rises onto his, well, his mitts and knees. He’s wobbling like a colt, and his eyes are unfocused and far away. Tommy wonders how many times Doc has made Will practice that particular move. 

“Good boy,” Doc murmurs to Will. Doc reaches down, and Will barely flinches as Doc pulls a tapered plug from his backside. Doc smiles back at Tommy, waving the slick plug in the air between them. “He’s ready for you, Champ. You can use him however you want.”

“I–I don’t–” Tommy bleats, but his words are lost to the thrumming inside. 

“You do,” Doc says firmly. “You know that you do.” 

He knuckles his fingers into the shiny knots of Will’s hair and tugs. Will doesn’t make a sound, thank God, but his blank face terrifies Tommy. Will should be frightened. He should be angry. He should be something. But this– 

What has Tommy done? 

Doc clips Will’s lead to the same hook in the floor as the first time, and then he moves to Tommy. “It doesn’t matter which end you use, but you will use him,” he whispers savagely. “That’s what your public wants, and if you don’t, you know exactly what will happen to him.” 

Tommy wonders if Will wouldn’t prefer death, but when he looks at the empty shell of his best friend, he doesn’t know if it’s possible for Will to want anything at all. And selfishly, Tommy doesn’t want to let him go. 

“Will you–” Tommy swallows and groans as another wave of sensation crashes against him, but he forces his eyes to Doc’s. “Will you let me–let me–decide–” 

Doc laughs, and he scratches his fingernails against Tommy’s sweat-soaked scalp. “Awww, Champers. Not just yet. You’ll do as you’re directed, and if you’re very good, maybe I’ll let you freestyle with him someday.” 

Doc unfastens Tommy’s wrists, and this time, he doesn’t remove the massager. Tommy is hard and trembling, and Doc has to help him over to Will’s hunched body. Tommy collapses on his knees in front of Will, but Will still doesn’t look up. 

Doc smiles. “Have fun, you two.” 

And then he steps outside the box, locking the door behind him. 

Tommy looks at Will, at his dead eyes and diminished body, and the rational sliver of his brain wants to take Will in his arms and hold him close, to fucking hold him until he’s warm and there’s some sign of life in him. But then Doc’s voice comes over the speakers. 

“Fuck his mouth until he chokes, Champ.” 

And Tommy, sweating and sobbing, takes Will’s face in his hands, and, God help him, does what he’s told. 

Will never looks up, and he doesn’t scream. Never once does Will scream. But when Doc takes Will away an hour later, Tommy does.  

taglist: @darkthingshappen, @oddsconvert, @sparrowsage, @whump-for-all-and-all-for-whump, @mylifeisonthebookshelf, @highwaywhump, @squishablesunbeam, @hold-him-down, @whumpsday, @sowhumpful, @termsnconditions-apply, @irishwhiskeygrl, @deltaxxk, @d-cs, @whumpinggrounds, @canislycaon24, @considerablecolors, @starlit-darkness, @scp-1296, @flowersarefreetherapy, @morning-star-whump, @whumpwhittler, @susiequaz12, @whump-world, @hiding-in-the-shadows, @tasteywhumpee, @whumplr-reader, @sad-boys-anonymous, @whumpzone

#the kennel #will cartwright oc #tommy mahoney oc #doc barker oc #tw noncon #please heed all other content warnings #whump #whump writing

[cherrybombfangirl]

What's In Idaho?

@ginevrastilinski !!! here's your girl Darcy getting retraumatized and me projecting a lot of my religious trauma onto her, as promised <3 also this was 6,000 words actually, the religious trauma was stronger than I thought, oh well 😅

Content Warnings: heavily implied/referenced child abuse (physical, mental, and religious), lots of evangelical/fundamentalist cult shit, death and murder, descriptions of blood, lots of very strong swearing, Darcy's religious trauma, Darcy's shitty foster care experience and even shittier foster 'parents', brief mention of sex, gun violence

fair warning, I barely edited this, and there's a lot of places where I just plucked down brackets of [such and such happens here], and I might fill them in much much later.

After escaping the Roman demigod camp on the Argo 2, the others realize that they need to get a certain artifact that will help them in Europe that I will decide the details on later. Unfortunately, Darcy knows exactly where it is, and they have to go dig it up in a small town in Idaho where her worst foster home was.

~

Darcy closed her eyes and pinched her nose.

There was no way.

There was no way that the object Piper was describing from her knife was the same little box.

Reluctantly, she spoke up. “Uh, Piper, It wouldn’t happen to be uh-” She held up her hands to approximate the small size. “-yeh big, blue, and with a magical enchantment etched on it in Greek… would it?”

“Uh, yeah,” Piper said, “That describes it exactly… actually. How did you-”

Darcy sighed, trying not to show too much discomfort. “I… know where it is.” She turned to Leo. “Do you have a detailed map of Idaho somewhere? We’re looking for a pinpoint on that map.”

“I’ll… find something,” Leo said, giving her a weird look similar to everyone else in the room. Percy looked the most suspicious and concerned out of all of them.

Leo came back one awkward minute later, and tapped on the screen in the main room, pulling up a map of the United States, and zooming in on Idaho. “Ok… where are we going?” He asked hesitantly.

Darcy zoomed in the map more, at the base of the Rocky Mountains where a small road, river, and forest met smack in the middle of the state. “Little Rock Falls. It’s about there, less than a thousand people in the population, last I checked. They had to combine the elementary, middle school, and high school into one school because there were so few students and teachers.”

She pointed a little farther north up the map. “You’ll have to park the ship farther away, the people are pretty… superstisious, and me and Percy can make it the rest of the way on foot anyways.” She pointed a little southwest of where the town was supposed to be. “Once we have it, we can lie low in the woods for the night, and you can pick us up about here in the morning.”

“Wait,” Percy said, “Why am I going with you?!”

“Are you sure you don’t want someone else, or you know, a whole group?”

“It’ll be faster with just two,” Darcy said, “Especially cuz we don’t want to be followed.”

“How do you know where it is?” Jason asked, a little scared of Darcy’s knowledge.

Darcy was silent for a second before she gave a short, “I buried it.”

“Do you… remember where it’s buried?” Annabeth asked.

“I remember pretty clearly.”

Before anyone could ask her anything else, she disappeared into one of the cabins where she’d dumped her duffel bag. She started checking that everything she would need was inside, including her essentials for surviving in the woods- flint and steel, a little pocket knife, two wool blankets, an extra jacket, a coil of rope, a flashlight, a book of old road maps of the US, a small compass, and her most recent addition- a camping shovel (it was pretty big, so she tied it to the outside of the bag). 

She also poked around Leo’s stuff, and thanked fuck that she found a pair of shears for cutting metal- definitely going to need that. She also made sure that she had five or six meat sandwiches on her, courtesy of the Argo’s well stocked kitchen.

Annabeth came in, arms folded (Darcy knew she should’ve closed the door). “What’s in Idaho?”

Darcy didn’t answer, trading her sneakers for the hiking boots she’d stowed in her bag, pulling on thick wool socks before she put on the boots. Even in the summer, it would get chilly in the mountains, especially at night.

“Darcy.”

With a huff, Darcy pulled on a bomber jacket over her thin gray jacket. “What?”

“What’s in Idaho? Why do you know exactly where the box is?”

Darcy zipped the duffel bag shut and threw it over her head so that the duffel rested against her back. “It’s no big deal, we’ll be in and out before they even see us.”

Annabeth studied Darcy’s face, and her expression softened. “Most of your foster homes were in Idaho, weren’t they?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Most of them were in Idaho, weren’t they?” Annabeth repeated, trying to gauge Darcy’s reaction.

Darcy huffed. “Why are you asking me all this?”

“Because I don’t know much about how you grew up, other than you were in foster care. That’s it. I don’t know anything beyond that.”

“Why would you want to know more?”

“It was just me and you looking for Percy a few weeks ago, Darcy. You never opened up during any of that time about your childhood. About Percy, yes, but not you.”

Darcy bit the inside of her cheek, trying not to react.

“You can’t shut everyone out, Darcy, I don’t know what shit you went through but you can’t bury it and stay closed off about it. It’s not healthy to supress everything.”

After a beat of silence, Annabeth continued, “Then just now, you reacted the way you did out there to Piper describing the box and showing us exactly where to go.”

“Are you accusing me of something?”

“No, I’m worried about you. I think that something happened to you in Idaho that you’re not sharing.”

“Not much to share, Idaho is a boring state. It’s the even more boring version of Utah. Only thing worth mentioning is that it’s the only state in the US that grows potatoes as a major part of its economy. That’s a boring ass fun fact.”

“I’m talking about you, not the state. What happened to you in Idaho?”

“Nothing I feel like sharing,” Darcy growled, leaving the cabin to go find Percy and make sure he had wool socks and a thick jacket for the journey ahead.

~~~

Birds twittered sweetly and insects buzzed, echoing through the woods. The leaves, sticks, and pine needles of the forest floor crunched under their feet. Darcy pulled out one of the old road maps and a small compass- checking that they were on course.

“Alright,” Percy said, stepping up next to her, “You have some explaining to do.”

Darcy sighed, adjusting her hold on the compass and map. “Not you too.”

“Why me?”

“There’s safety in numbers,” Darcy said with a shrug, not looking up from the map.

“Then why not take some of the others too?”

“Too many will draw attention and make us easier to track, and we don’t want that.”

Percy grabbed her shoulder and turned her to face him. “Why did you choose me to come with you? You hate me.”

“You’re not wrong.”

“We both know you’d sell me to the devil for a corn chip if you felt like it.”

 “That is also true. But you’re also the most qualified in this situation.”

Percy stared, open mouthed. He then gestured to the woods around them. “We’re in a landlocked state, I don’t know if you noticed. My powers will not be super helpful here. Powers wise, Jason would be more qualified here, cuz air. Or Hazel, because her turf is everywhere there’s solid ground.”

Darcy went back to the map and turned her back to him, staying silent.

“Why did you pick me for this little quest? Everyone including me knows that you think I’m stupid, plus we’ll just fight the whole time, which I don’t think is going to be very helpful. Why not someone smarter or that you get along with more, like Annabeth?”

Darcy still didn’t reply, she pretended to be busy with the map, even though it was a little too long to be checking a map.

“Darcy.”

She tapped her foot, hoping he’d just drop it.

“Why me?!”

She bit the inside of her cheek, mind screaming the answer, but refusing to speak.

“Why. Me?”

Darcy snapped the map shut and shouted, “Because I don’t want anyone else to know, ok?!”

Percy blinked, taking a step back. After a few minutes of thick silence, he said softly, “What do you mean?”

Darcy took a deep breath, trying to seem uncaring about it. “None of the others know about what my growing up was like. Annabeth knows that I was in foster care, but nothing beyond that. The only people who know much more than that are you and Mom,” she aggressively folded the map and shoved it in her duffel bag, “And I would prefer to keep it that way. That’s why I picked you and not anyone else. Now let’s go.”

She started down the slope towards the small cluster of buildings in the distance at the bottom of the mountains.

Darcy didn’t talk to him the rest of the way to Little Rock Falls.

Steeling her nerves for what was to come, she hoped she looked different enough to not be recognized.

There was one road in town, and a few houses scattered in the woods that surrounded it. At the end of the road, the school had gotten a little bigger than Darcy had last seen it, but not by much. There were some people walking up and down the only street, most going to the small grocery store or poor excuse for a drug store.

Darcy made her way to the road that would take them up to their destination, Percy trailing behind like a lost kitten. She grabbed his arm and pulled him next to her, “Act normal, you look suspicious.”

Percy was about to shoot back, but a deep voice interrupted them. “Excuse me.”

Darcy turned to find a police officer. The only difference since she’d last seen the cop being that he finally had more hair on his face. The fact that he was blonde didn’t help that his chin still looked bare from a distance.

“Can I help you?” Darcy asked with a fake smile on her face, kicking Percy’s shin behind her to shut him up.

“Several years ago we had a delinquent foster care runaway. She was about eleven or twelve and had dark red hair.” The cop lowered his sunglasses and examined her face. “She looked a lot like you actually, and would be about seventeen or eighteen by now.”

Keeping a straight face, Darcy shrugged. “What a coincidence. Good thing I was a good child that grew up with loving parents in a stable home.”

The officer chuckled, then said in a more serious tone, reaching behind his back for his handcuffs or gun. “I’m gonna have to take you in-”

Darcy grabbed the cop’s shoulder and drove her knee into his groin as hard as she could.

The cop wheezed, doubling over as Darcy grabbed Percy’s shoulder and pulled him behind her as she dashed behind the cover of a large building across the street. 

“Darcy-” Percy panted, but she shushed him, listening for the cop and anyone else.

She could hear the cop yelling for them to stop, and she and Percy plunged into the woods near the rugged dirt road that turned up towards the mountain.

Percy said, “Will you just explain-”

“Later,” Darcy hissed, “We’re running out of daylight. And we need to get in there and grab the box before they realize I’m here.”

“Before who realizes?” Percy asked as they walked along the dirt road, using the thick woods for cover.

Darcy fixed her eyes ahead, focusing on not twisting her ankle on a tree root as they quickly walked.

Percy grabbed her shoulder and stopped her. “Darcy. We’re going to one of your foster homes, aren’t we?”

“The one I was at the longest, yeah. I buried the box in the backyard. Can you stop interrupting? We don’t have time for you to be asking your questions.”

“I’m guessing this family is the ones we’re worried about finding out that we’re here.”

“I wouldn’t call it a family, but yeah, they can’t know we’re here. This will go a lot smoother if we get in and out without them knowing.”

Percy said softly, “Darcy…”

“What?”

“You said this was the family you stayed with longest.”

“Yeah, why?”

“What happened to you here, Darcy?”

“If I get asked that one more time-“ she growled under her breath. Then she snapped, “I’m fine, ok?! Nothing happened here, I’m fine!”

Then she stormed off, up the road and getting closer to the mountains.

The road got narrower and narrower, and less and less traveled on. Darcy kept going, until they saw the first house in miles, nestled in the trees, surrounded by a chain link fence.

They circled around to the back of the house, where two dogs lay sleeping, chained up to the base of the house.

Darcy cursed under her breath.

“What?” Percy hissed.

“I should’ve known they got another dog. That’s going to be a problem.” She opened her duffel bag, and pulled out the bundle of sandwiches. “I hope this is enough for two dogs.” She pulled out the metal clippers, and handed the sandwiches to Percy. “Get ready to throw these at the dogs. Once you do we won’t have a lot of time.”

“You remember where you buried it?” Percy asked.

“It’s right next to that rock in this corner of the yard.” She took a deep breath. “Hopefully the dirt hasn’t frozen yet.”

She slithered forward across the grass on her stomach, pulling herself forward as quickly as she dared. Percy followed suit right behind her.

[ about six years before]

The old house creaked as it settled, just like it did every night around the time the other seven kids were fast asleep. The basement was crowded, each child having their own pallet. There was one dusty window at ground level, and the door was locked every night- to keep the devil out, as the parents told them.

Darcy was only eleven (or ten, no one was really sure due to the lack of birth certificate), but she knew they were full of bullshit, and refused to call them her parents. No matter how many times they punished her, or told her that God revealed to them that she was their spirit daughter as had been set apart in the premortal life- she wouldn’t call them parents. 

Just like most of the other homes she’d been in, she was an outsider, an alien to the family, and wouldn’t be staying long.

She had no family, abandoned at a hospital in one of the nearest cities a few hours away. Kicked from foster home to foster home since she was young. She’d learned very quickly to live off of a small duffel bag and not need anything she couldn’t fit in it.

She listened to the house above them, for the tell tale signs of the parents having the sex they’d had every night for the past few months. They said that God told them it was time for them to have another child, even though the basement could barely hold eight kids as it was. Most of the kids were girls, all of them close in age. 

There was a set of scriptures at the foot of each bed, and each of them was expected to read the scriptures before bed each night and first thing each morning- until they had the holy books memorized from cover to cover to Samuel and Diana’s satisfaction. If it wasn’t to satisfaction, you got punished any number of ways- no food or water for a random amount of time, sleeping outside with the dogs, or the worst one if Samuel was in a bad mood.

Darcy had gotten quite a few lashes and welts across her back and arms just in her first few weeks there for speaking up that this wasn’t fair or just whenever Samuel felt that ‘the devil possessing her needed to learn a lesson’. She learned pretty quickly to keep her thoughts to herself and her head down, no matter how unfair it got.

She’d managed to escape punishment for a while, until the day before when Samuel was inspecting how well she’d memorized the scriptures. He didn’t seem to care that she couldn’t tell what the squigles and blobs meant, or that she never could in the first place. He said she was just stupid, and must not care that her family was going to hell because of her because she didn’t care enough to memorize the holy scripture. Darcy protested, and got the worst punishment all up her arms and back.

She’d never gotten both at the same time before.

On top of that, Diana decided that the devil inside her must be winning power over her, and gave Darcy “a good smacking” to get the devil to leave her.

Darcy didn’t know what was wrong with her, but she was very sure that she wasn’t possessed by anything, and it wasn’t her fault the bible couldn’t be deciphered.

Her arms and back stung every time she moved them, but as Samuel and Diana’s actions got more intense upstairs, she knew this was the only chance she was going to get.

Darcy grabbed the small screwdriver out from under her bed, tucked between the thin mattress and the wood planks.

Moving as quickly as she dared, Darcy started unscrewing the screws in the small dusty window.

Darcy started clipping the wire of the fence, creating a hole for them to crawl through. The dogs started to stir and Darcy looked at Percy, ready to throw the sandwiches. She cut a few more links in the fence, and the new dog woke up and started growling, waking the other one as well.

“Throw them, now!” Darcy hissed.

Percy chucked the sandwiches over the fence, and they landed right in front of the dogs.

The two dogs happily started to devour the sandwiches while Darcy and Percy crawled through the hole.

Darcy shoved her duffel bag in Percy’s hands, and started to untie the shovel, which was small enough to cart up here, but big enough for the job.

She went over to the corner of the yard where a large rock sat, and started digging. Just a few minutes in, someone inside the house shouted, “What’s going on out there? You kids aren’t supposed to be out!” It was a man’s voice, booming and harsh, with a hint of ‘God-given’ righteousness to it.

Darcy cursed under her breath and threw the shovel into Percy’s hands. “Keep digging, whatever happens don’t stop until you have it, I can handle this.”

The voice shouted again, “Diana, did you feed those dogs? You know they ain’t supposed to be fed yet! … Well I can hear them eating something!”

While Percy kept digging, Darcy crept over to the corner of the house where the shed was. She checked over her shoulder, noting that the dogs were about halfway through the sandwiches.

A large, rough hand grabbed Darcy’s hair and pulled her back.

Darcy yelled, trying to rip free.

The strong hand threw her to the ground, knocking the wind out of her as she smacked her skull on the hard dirt. Head spinning, she scrambled backwards and tried to get to her feet.

[flashback continuing from the first one I have yet to write]

“Darcy, has your heart become so laden with guilt and sorrow you came crawling back here to repent?”

Darcy had backed up into the fence and used it to pull herself up, the wires digging into her fingers, biting with cold. Her heart hammered in her chest as blood rushed to her ears, Darcy tried her hardest to only react with a cold glare. “Nope. And I don’t need to. Just here for one little thing and then you’ll never see me again.”

“You tore this family apart Darcy. We might not make it to the Celestial Kingdom as a family because of you. Don’t you want an eternal family?”

“Not if it’s yours,” Darcy snapped. He stepped closer to her, hands on his belt buckle. He was wearing a rusty brown jacket over a white button up shirt, the shirt was off white and hadn’t been clean in a long time.

Darcy backed away as he stepped closer. He’d grown out his beard, and it was much longer than the last time she saw him. His brown hair was also long, almost past his chin, and was in desperate need of a wash.

“Darcy, you are a daughter of God-”

“Correction, I’m a daughter of a god, one of many, and your god is kind of pathetic.”

“Pathetic? Darcy, is that how we talk about our father in heaven?”

“I could take him in a fight, easy.”

“God is all powerful, he can’t be defeated, we know this from the holy scrip-”

“Considering I fought an actual god of the Greek pantheon- oh, yeah they’re very much real, and kind of douchebags- and a greek titan, which is just a much older and more powerful version of a god-” The dogs only had a quarter of the sandwiches left and Percy had dug so deep he must be close to the box. “Considering I fought both of those and won, I think your God would be pretty easy to beat. At least for me.”

“Don’t interrupt me, Darcy. You know one of the commandments is to honor thy father and thy mother.”

“You’re the farthest fucking thing from my father.”

“You may not have been born to us, but it was in Heavenly Father’s plan that you are part of our family. Your biological family on earth sure didn’t want you.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Darcy said, “I found my family after I left, and they didn’t want to leave me. Unlike you, they actually love me.”

“We do love you Darcy, which is why sometimes you need correction.”

“My real family doesn’t think I need correction,” Darcy said, folding her arms, “You’re a sick fucking bastard that only sees children as punching bags. Fuck you, and fuck your fucking family.”

Samuel’s eyes darkened. “The language you are using isn’t righteous or clean, Darcy. They must be the words of Satan.”

Darcy backed away, only for her back to meet the other corner of the yard where shovels, rakes, and other yard tools had been leaned against the fence in a pile. She squared her feet and balled her hands into fists, blood roaring in her head and ears. “Stay the hell away from me.”

“Darcy, you need to be taught a lesson, and a righteous parent, I must obey God’s will and teach it to you.” Samuel’s hands were undoing his belt buckle.

Darcy swallowed, as her brain and body disconnected, and it felt like she was trying to move through neck deep mud.

Samuel pulled the belt through the loops of his pants, and Darcy felt like ten years old again, as everything slowed down and sped up at the same time. Her head started to spin as she tried to get her body to fight back, do something.

“Hands on the fence, Darcy.”

Darcy didn’t move, breath frozen in her throat.

There was a loud snap, making her flinch involuntarily. “Now, Darcy!”

Samuel was starting to get impatient, raising the thing over his head.

But before the belt could come down on her and inflict red hot pain, the sharp edge of a shovel made contact with Samuel’s temple, and he fell to the ground, blood pouring out of his head. He groaned, curling up and moaning in pain. So he probably wasn’t dead, at least not yet.

Darcy collapsed against the fence, leaning against it hard as the rusty old shovel slipped from her hands to the ground. She was breathing heavily as the world spun around her and her whole body started to tremble.

“I got it! Are you ok?” Percy said, rushing over as he brushed dirt off the small blue box. It was about the size of his fist, and the bright blue of the box had faded.

Darcy was pretty sure this was the second time in her life that her brother was very visibly concerned about her, actually scared for her. “He wasn’t about to-”

“Not right now, please,” Darcy said, grabbing the duffel bag and shovel from him.

A new voice shouted from in the house, this one female, also rough with a ‘God-given’ righteousness to it. “Sam! SAM! What’s going on out there?”

The dogs finished with the sandwiches, Moses laying down to sleep while the new, young dog started barking ferociously, tugging on his chain so hard it might rip the chain out from where it was securely attached to the stone foundation of the house.

“Samuel!” Cried the woman’s voice, now outside with them as Samuel groaned and writhed on the ground.

A woman wearing a pioneer style dress with blonde hair took in the scene before her. After a few seconds of looking at Darcy, her eyes narrowed. “You.”

She charged forward. “You sinful, disobiedent, possessed child of Satan! You tear our family apart by leaving, and now you’ve come back to kill your own father!”

Darcy growled. “He’s not my fucking father.”

“And am I not your mother?”

“My mom’s in New York, and she’s the nicest, sweetest, most badass lady to grace this planet. She doesn’t think I’m a problem that needs to be fixed. She would also beat the shit out of you if she knew about what you did.”

“Your biological family didn’t want you, you’re lucky God chose us to be your family and we took you in,” Diana said, looking disappointed.

Darcy took a step towards Diana, fear replaced by pure rage. “You were wrong about me. You’re not my fucking family. My biological family did want me. I found them, and they love me so much more than you ever could. And I couldn’t read your fucking bible because I’m dyslexic, not a sinner you bitch.”

Diana gasped at the language, but before she could launch into a lecture, Darcy kept going. “I wasn’t something that needed to be fixed. I wasn’t possessed by Satan or any demon, I have ADHD and was being followed by monsters that I didn’t choose. I met gods, yes gods plural, and none of them were like the god you think is real. I even fought one, and also a titan god. My real family wanted to keep me, but had to give me up to keep me safe. I can be happy by being a decent person, not following your bullshit commandments. You never loved me or cared for me.” 

She was close enough to touch Diana now. “And I don’t need you.”

Diana was so shocked she couldn’t even speak. She watched wordlessly as Darcy grabbed Percy’s shoulder and they turned to leave.

Diana’s hand wrapped in Darcy’s hair, yanking her back and throwing her to the ground.

“Darcy Mary Larsen in God’s name-”

“THAT’S NOT MY FUCKING NAME!” Darcy screamed, hands finding a rock the size of her fist. She rolled over and tackled Diana to the ground.

“MY NAME IS DARCY ASTREA JACKSON YOU PIECE OF SHIT!” Darcy screamed so loud her throat burned, and with each word she bashed Diana’s head in with the rock, until her skull was sunken in and she stared up at Darcy with dead eyes.

Darcy sat back, rock slipping from her hand as she panted and her bloodstream still roared with adrenaline. She almost collapsed to the ground, but Percy’s leg was there, and she leaned against it for a minute.

Samuel started to groan on the ground, and Darcy struggled to her feet, body trembling. “We need to go.”

Percy swallowed, looking at the two horrible people on the ground, and just nodded, handing her the duffel bag again.

They rushed over to the fence, and behind her, she could hear Samuel starting to get up, cursing Darcy and calling her a murderer and a sinner, and saying he was going to teach her a lesson for this disobedience. Meanwhile, the new dog barked violently, trashing against its chain.

As Percy was crawling through the hole in the fence, the hair on the back of Darcy’s neck stood up. She whipped around, and saw that Samuel had gathered enough strength to crawl to the shed and was pulling down his shotgun.

[flashback here that mirrors this scene]

“PERCY RUN!” Darcy screamed, throwing the duffel bag over the fence and climbing over it, letting the barbed wire at the top leave rips in her shirt and jeans as she scrambled over.

She landed on the other side, threw the duffel bag over her shoulder, and yanked Percy to his feet. They made it to the trees when she looked over her shoulder and saw Samuel taking aim with his gun.

“GET DOWN!” She screamed, yanking Percy down with her to the forest floor.

An ear splitting gunshot rang out, the crack echoing through the woods.

Samuel was yelling, cursing and screaming threats. Darcy scrambled to her feet, yanking Percy with her, and they plunged into the woods. She was dragging Percy behind her as her feet pounded the forest floor. He could barely keep up with her, stumbling over tree roots and rocks.

But Darcy didn’t dare slow down (let alone stop), and she wasn’t about to leave Percy behind with those monsters.

[shorter flashback that again mirrors this scene]

She lost track of how long they’d been running, but some time later, the sun was starting to set, and she figured that they were far enough away now. They tramped over a few creeks to make sure their scent would be lost, and found an area that was secluded enough, but near the area where they’d told Leo to fly the Argo to come pick them up in the morning.

Darcy set to work on a campfire, and directed Percy to gather some firewood- no green stuff and to get sticks ranging from twigs to small logs. According to her, he did ‘a good enough job’.

When he gathered enough, she had already lit some small twigs and leaves. She then used the firewood to build a small campfire.

They covered the ground in pine needles, leaves, and twigs with the wool blankets on top to keep the ground from sucking the heat out of them, and sat down in front of the fire.

They dried their feet, socks, and boots in front of the fire. The entire time, Darcy stared into the fire, trying not to think about the last time she was in these woods. Percy was also silent for once, and she appreciated him for that.

She looked up at the clear sky of stars, a strange feeling hitting her as this sky looked almost the same as the last time she’d seen it. She was able to find all the constellations she knew very quickly.

Percy said quietly, “Can I ask something? You don’t have to answer.”

“Sure,” Darcy said, going back to watching flames dance across the logs.

“How long were you with them?”

“It’s all pretty blurry, but about a year I think,” Darcy said, pulling the extra jacket tighter around her, “The other houses I never stayed more than a couple months. Monsters either showed up- but I thought they were just really fucked up dogs or terrible adults- or my anger issues got me kicked out.”

“How much does Mom know?”

“Just that I was in the system and got kicked from house to house, and that all the homes were pretty much in Idaho. She doesn’t know more than that,” She shrugged, “She might suspect more though.”

Percy nodded, staring into the fire as well. “That piece of shit… Sam?”

“Yeah?”

“He reminded me of Gabe a little too much, though this guy was much more religious. Gabe wouldn’t set foot in a church unless there was beer and a poker table.”

“The shitty guy Mom was married to at one point, right?”

Percy let out a dry snort. “Be glad you never had the displeasure of meeting him.”

“Didn’t need to, I had a Samuel. Sounds like he and Gabe would’ve gotten along pretty well.”

“Well, Samuel wouldn’t appreciate the gambling and drinking I don’t think, but they certainly would’ve agreed on beating up kids.”

Percy nodded back in the direction they ran from. “So Mom doesn’t know about any of that?”

“Hell no, and she’s not going to,” Darcy grabbed a stick and poked at the fire, pushing the coals closer together, “She’s got enough to worry about, with you and me being demigods and you disappearing and shit.”

It was silent again for a minute. “What happened to Gabe anyway, you never told me.” Darcy said.

Percy smirked and said casually, “Mom turned him to stone with Medusa’s head.”

“What?” Darcy said, almost laughing, “Mom did that?!”

Percy nodded.

“How did she get ahold of Medusa’s head?”

“Oh I cut off Medusa’s head for a quest, mailed it to Olympus, and then Dad had me bring it home in a box.”

“Damn, really!?”

“True story, though I think bashing the skull in with a rock is just as effective.” He added, “How are things back home? You never did give me a proper update.”

“Well, I moved into the apartment with Mom, and so did Paul,” Darcy said.

Percy said, “I swear if you stole my room-”

“Ew, no, your room is a biohazard!” Darcy said, “Mom and Paul made some renovations to the apartment, they took out the washer and dryer and my room is the old washroom. They figured washing clothes downstairs or at the laundromat across the street will be fine. It’s small, and I don’t have a proper door yet, but I’d take it over your cesspool of a room.”

“My room is not a cesspool.”

“Your socks have their own ecosystem and you can see the smell!” Darcy said, smacking his shoulder.

“Cannot!”

“Can to!”

Percy gave up, giving his usual drama queen pout.

Darcy grinned, and her smile fell as memories from these mountains crept into her thoughts. “Last time I was here it took me hours to manage a fire,” She said quietly, almost to herself, “I still couldn’t sleep because the ground was so cold, and I couldn’t figure out a bigger fire.”

“At least you’re not alone this time,” Percy said, scooting a little closer until their shoulders were touching, “Even if it is with an annoying idiot.”

Darcy shrugged. “Well, you did have my back in there so… I think that makes up for you being an annoying crackhead.” Her eyes started to droop, and she allowed her head to rest on his shoulder.

[they are picked up the next morning by the Argo, and continue making their way to Europe. A few weeks later while on their quest, Sally Iris messages them to ask why cops showed up to their house and the suspected murderer of two people looks like her and has the same face, hair, and first name as Darcy. Darcy is like “it’s fine, they deserved it.” Sally pieces together that they were one of Darcy’s foster families, and wants Darcy to open up about what happened exactly (absolutely not going to turn her over to the cops). Darcy’s like, “It’s fine, Percy was with me.” and their Paul turns to Percy like, “You let your sister murder two mortals?!” Percy shrugs and accidentlly lets it slip what Sam was about to do. Darcy smacks Percy’s shoulder and is like “Dude! You said you wouldn’t say what happened!”. Sally is livid and wants to know the nearest entrance to the underworld so she can beat the shit out of those two horrible people.]

#heed the content warnings! #if i missed any content warnings let me know please <3 #percy jackson #pjo #pjo hoo toa #pjo hoo #percy jackson oc #riordanverse #riordanverse oc #percy jacksonverse #annabeth chase #oc: darcy #percy jackon and the olympians #pjo fandom #pjo fanfic #percy jackson fanfic #argo 2 crew #cw religious abuse #cw child abuse #cw murder #cw gun violence #cw evangelical/fundamentalist cult #cw cult #cw physical abuse #(implied/referenced) #my ocs #my writing #my art

[lonesome--hunter]

*ties Ezra up out in the woods on an evening*

"Have fun Baby >:)))"

CW: environmental whump, noncon, begging, noncon touching, creepy whumper

Josiah's got him by the hair, determination in his step as he half drags Ezra towards the darkening woods. Begging goes in one ear and out the other. It didn't make a difference. Ezra's leg was broken and his attempts to dig his good one into the ground to stall had failed.

He's tied to a tall tree about ten yards into the densely packed trees.

"Please don't leave me here! Please! Josiah don't do this pl-mmmph!" Josiah shoved the knotted bandana into Ezra's mouth and tied it tightly behind his head, indifferent to the desperate tears of fear and panic forming in his eyes.

This wasn't even a punishment. Ezra did everything Josiah wanted and then some, all the chores, all the kisses and late night fucks. None of it mattered.

Josiah was doing this because he could, because he wanted to. He liked knowing Ezra was out here alone and terrified of every sound, every rustle of leaves, every howl.

When he takes Emilio to bed in his place tonight, he'll get off thinking about Ezra's predicament. The way he's probably shivering from the cold wind, the spirits that inhabit the Appalachians calling his name.

After checking all of the ties and giving Ezra a kiss on his gagged mouth, Josiah turns to leave him, the anguished muffled pleas putting a smile on his face.

"Have fun, Baby. I'll see ya in the morning."

#the devil's highway #josiah blevins #ezra #baby #emilio #ducky #please heed the content warnings #terror in tennessee

[oh-katsuki]

Where The Panther Killed The Stag (Hanma x Reader)

masterlist | ao3 | series masterlist

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Pairing: Hanma x Reader

Series Content Warnings: THIS SERIES IS A PSYCHOLOGICAL HORROR AND INCLUDES THEMES OF: murder, violence, abuse, alcohol consumption, mentions of drugs, hard kinks, rumination, guilt, depersonalization, dub/noncon, organized crime, mind break, and other similar themes. 

Summary: You're a good student at the top of your university class and the vice president of your student-led club. A shiny toy on the top shelf of your social circle. Hanma likes toys he can break. Slowly but surely, you begin to spiral into a twisted situation that is entirely out of your control, putting your life and the lives of the people around you at stake.

Or, Hanma takes an interest in the University of Tokyo's resident good girl.

Chapter Title: Mice, Men, and Those Above Them

Chapter Content Warnings: fem!reader, mentions of violence, threats, slight feelings of helplessness

Word Count: 2.8k

A/N: I’d like to thank my ADHD for giving me the power to complete this series. I’ll be posting it on a bi-weekly basis on Tuesdays and Saturdays for the next six weeks. For now, please enjoy the first chapter and be sure to heed the content warnings as the series progresses!

You have never made waves. Well, not in the traditional negative sense. You have always been an overachiever, someone who stands out from your peers in the best way. You’ve always got your best foot forward, a star student at the top of your university, recognized yearly for your achievements with the pretty certificate to match. As far as everyone is concerned, you are the absolute cream of the crop. But you never cause trouble. 

In the small town you grew up in outside of Tokyo, Nikko, you’re something of a celebrity. When you come home to visit the quiet streets of your hometown, people recognize you. They stop you and ask how you’ve been, if your studies are going well, before calling you their pride and joy. The mountain city is quaint but beautiful, famous for the shrine built nearby after the 17th century. Nothing really ever changes there and people tend to stick to the same ordinary mold, so when you got accepted into the University of Tokyo and decided to leave that cycle, people talked. They called you exceptional. 

You attend the University of Tokyo on a merit scholarship, are overly involved in school activities, and are a well-known face throughout all of campus. If there is something going on, it’s likely that you’ve been a part of organizing it. That’s just how you are. A good girl with a good streak who wouldn’t dream of stepping out. 

Still, you’re a people pleaser. You’ve known this about yourself since you were young, finding yourself bending to meet the will of others and coast by as a “good kid”. It’s what earned you these grades, glowing recommendations from teachers that earned you a spot at one of the most prestigious universities in Japan. You should be proud and you absolutely are. 

In exchange for the ability to have complete control over your future, you give up any chance of mistakes. One slip up and that beautiful future you’ve crafted comes crumbling down. You can’t afford to let your iron grip on yourself slip. 

So you don’t drink, you don’t smoke, you don’t party, or date, or have sex because none of those things fit into your life narrative. God knows you’ll probably settle down with a man (probably a medical student), work, have kids, and retire to become a housewife who runs their home with charts and lists and bulletin boards. 

You will probably marry someone like Ichiro Hasegawa. Clean cut and grad school bound, he should be sitting across from you in your club board meeting. In your free time on campus, you run a student collective for learning how to network in business. It’s a large club with about 300 active members and a small board of twelve students who ensure that organization activities run smoothly. You are the Vice President, set to take Hasegawa’s place as President next year during your final year of university before graduating. Elections will be held next quarter in March. 

Ichiro has dark hair and wears glasses. He’s a lot like you and honestly, you quite like him, even as his seat remains glaringly empty while the treasurer rambles on about next quarter’s budget. It’s all incredibly boring and though you enjoy the responsibility, his spiel has you tapping your foot against the floor in exasperation. 

“Will we still be hosting the job expo next quarter?” He turns to you, leaning forward. “I know by that time it’ll be a new council rotation, but it’s good to know for budgeting.” 

“Looks like it. We’ve just got to book a venue on campus and contact companies for programming, then we should be set. I can forward you the list of contacts later.” You chime, not needing to check your notes. It’s easy now, to put on that little fake smile and pretend you’re having a good time. You remind yourself that it’s all for your future. All of this will pay off when you have your dream job and the cushy corporate life you’ve always dreamed of. 

“Sorry I’m late.” Hasegawa closes the club room door behind him, adjusting the collar of his sweater with a nervous hand. 

He’s handsome, really handsome. Even now, as he takes a somewhat hurried seat across from you, you find yourself admiring how put-together he looks, the way the light from outside hits his dark hair and high cheekbones at a perfect angle. Yeah, you could definitely marry someone like Hasegawa. 

“A text would have been nice.” The treasurer pipes up. Ever the straight edge. You don’t take the time to admire the irony in that thought. 

Hasegawa gives you a look over his glasses that makes you instinctively straighten, nerves humming through your body as you toss him a shrug. You’re unable to protest the other’s statement, but you feel heat rise to your cheeks nonetheless. Something about him makes you nervous. This delightfully innocent back and forth the two of you have shared for the better half of the year almost makes the stress worth it. 

The meeting continues about as smoothly as any meeting before it had. Hasegawa picks up the slack that you have been unable to pick up and pushes forward until the meeting nears its close, all the while sneaking you pleasant glances across the table. It’s positively middle school, but something about the way he peers at you makes you shiver pleasantly. Maybe he’ll ask you out, not that you have time for dating right now anyway. 

You find yourself slipping into a pleasant daydream, one where you can relax a little bit and let him take you on a date. You might be getting ahead of yourself but hey, what’s the harm in a little fantasizing to pass the time. 

You’re torn from your daydream by the club room door opening. It’s odd, as you weren’t expecting any visitors, but you see the small, quiet boy across from you grow pale, his face falling into something that looks like terror. It isn’t until you turn to the doorway and realize just why. 

In the door frame stands perhaps one of the tallest men you’ve ever seen. He looks to be about twenty-something with jet black hair, save for the streaks of bleach blonde, yellow from a lack of toner. He wears a suit, gray with pinstripes and tailored to the inch. On his face are a pair of silver round-rimmed glasses and behind them sits the coldest pair of eyes you think you’ve ever seen. Just his presence sends a chill down your spine. 

He glances over the room with half-lidded eyes, looking bored despite the fact that he’s just rudely intruded on a meeting, and you find yourself standing from your chair on instinct. 

“Uhm, I’m sorry sir but-” You step up to him, eyes trailing up his figure as his looming presence settles over you. For a moment, he doesn’t look down, eyes staring straight ahead at Suzuki Haruto, the treasurer, whose body is rigid in the chair across the room. Then his gaze sinks down to meet yours and you’re met with stoney gold eyes. You suddenly feel like prey before a predator. “This is a uhm… private meeting.” 

“Is it?” He speaks, a rich baritone voice dripping from his lips, and you can’t detect a single ounce of care. The man looks away from you just as quickly. “Suzuki, you’re late.” 

“Hanma, sir!” The boy stands up, trembling as his eyes dart across the room and then back to the pather standing in front of you. “I know, sir. Money is tight and- and my mother she- we don’t- I’ll have it to you by Monday. Give me until then.” 

Suzuki pleads, hands stiff by his side and his slacks bunched in them. 

“So you’re in a position to beg now?” The man named Hanma replies, pulling his hands from his pocket and inspecting his nails. On the back of his hand, there is a tattoo that reads punishment. You shiver. “You think I wasted my time coming down here to hear you beg?” 

It takes you a moment to register the situation, the tattoos on his hands, the demands for money, the expensive gold and diamond earring hanging from his left ear. This man is dangerous and the alarm bells in your head are firing on all cylinders as you stand before him. Even Hasegawa is stunned into silence. 

“No, sir!” Suzuki shouts, far too loud for the room. 

“So, if I give you until Monday, you’ll have my money? All of it?” Hanma questions, tilting his head to the side. “If you don’t, I’ll take your teeth instead. As if that would cover half of your debt.” 

Hanma’s gaze drifts down to you, straight-backed in front of him. It’s bad enough that he has to take time out of his day to come collect this debt and he should be upset that he’s not getting it. Honestly, he should be taking his teeth out here one by one and making all of you watch while he does. He’s sure that would be fun and in idle passing he imagines which one of you would be sick first. But he’s bored. Hanma is so, unbelievably bored, until he sees the way you tremble when he sets his gaze on you. 

You look so… malleable. Shorter than him, though just about everyone is, and cute as a button. Hanma can’t help but think that you look like you’d be fun to break and he figures that he might just poke some fun at you in his own cruel way. 

“Need something?” He leans forward slightly, lacing his fingers together. 

Your eyes dart to his hands where you get a good look at the tattoos, and you visibly suppress a grimace, heat flooding your body because despite yourself, his fingers look enticing. Whatever energy he has, it’s making your heart race in a way entirely unfamiliar to you. Hanma looks like someone you should be on your knees for. You shake your head slightly, answering him as well as clearing your mind of whatever repulsive thought just pushed its way into your brain. 

“Uh no-” You pause. “Uh, sir.” 

Hanma stands at his full height again. “Good answer.” Not that he means it. 

He watches the way you look at him, wide-eyed. You look fun, like a new toy for him to break. Probably pretty when you’re in pain, when you’re so scared that you swear you’ve got ice in your veins. If Hanma is capable of showing interest in anything, it would be in you right now. 

Your toes are curled in your shoes, the air deathly still. If Hanma is thinking anything, you can’t tell what it is. You pray he doesn’t find your name, that he doesn’t remember your face and you acknowledge that you’re flattering yourself thinking someone like this would take an interest in you at all. You watch as Hanma tilts his head, eyes still half-lidded and bored, watching you. For your reactions, you think. Under his gaze, you feel incredibly small. 

You think he might speak again to you but instead, he looks back to Suzuki, pointing a finger at him. “Monday.” 

Before he leaves, he gives a look to the room, one that turns your limbs to lead. Despite his boredom, despite the seemingly permanent deadpan he wears, you feel yourself grow heavy within his orbit. Hanma says nothing, but you know what it’s meant to do. You know the message he means to ask and the consequences for the wrong answer. What did you see? Nothing. Nothing at all. 

And then he tells you with anything but words, one simple twitch of his eyes as they narrow slightly, that it doesn’t matter anyway. You’d be dead before you even reached the station. 

—

Haesgawa ends the meeting almost immediately after Hanma leaves. Suzuki looks panicked, eyes wide as he pleads you all to forget what you saw. He tells you all that it isn’t a big deal, his own issue involving student debt. Some part of you feels bad for him, but when he begs for none of you to go to the police, you find that his words strike a chord deep in your chest. It’s incredible that Hanma could make someone feel like this. It’s incredible, but his presence felt so huge that you hadn’t noticed the two people waiting in the hall for him, two people who had gone under your nose because you were so focused on him. What is it like to have that much power?

“Are you okay?” Hasegawa catches up to you on your walk back to your apartment, His eyebrows pulled together in genuine worry. 

“Huh? Yeah? Why wouldn’t I be?” You turn, giving him a genuinely warm smile. You’re flattered he even came to ask. 

Hasegawa frowns, taking in your appearance. “I’ve never seen you like that.” 

You think back to Hanma, the way his gaze settled on you so cooly and despite your fear, something claws in your chest. Part of you wants him to look at you again, settle that cold stare on your features. You shiver at the thought of him, the defined edges of his face, sharp eyes and features, criminally beautiful, cold, and collected. 

“Oh…” You pause, licking your lips slightly and scuffing your heel against the floor. “He was just scary. That’s all.” 

You’re lying because some part of you knows that wasn’t it. Even if he is bad news, Hanma wasn’t just scary, he was terrifying, panther-like in manner and gaze. 

Hasegawa looks at you for a moment, nodding. “Do you think we should…” 

“No.” Your response is immediate and laced with panic. “No, I think that might only cause more problems for Suzuki. He asked us not to.” 

When you meet his gaze, it’s full of regret, an understanding between the both of you that speaking to anyone else about it would only make the problem worse. Hasegawa nods, fair features growing a bit solemn before he mutters a quick goodbye, suddenly uncomfortable that he’d even brought it up. 

You mull over the events of the meeting in your head for the rest of the day, distracted while you study as you imagine Hanma’s hands, long and broad, ghosting across the lapel of his suit. The way he inspected his nails as if he was thinking about how Suzuki’s blood might look under them. 

It’s not as if you don’t feel bad. You do, unbelievably so. There is a part of you that is weeping in this helpless position, not used to the lack of power you feel, but drawn to it all the same. 

Later that evening, between studying for class and bed, your fingers ghost across the keys of the keyboard, typing in the last name you’d learned. Hanma. Even typing it out feels sacrilegious, like you’re setting yourself up for some cosmic joke. 

It doesn’t take long to find information on him, hoards of it. Ironically, his job description is just “entrepreneur” on nearly every website you can find. But you’re not too concerned with it, rather, you’re concerned with the news reports on him. Scores of articles written about Hanma Shuji (which you learn is his full name) and the Tokyo-based gang Toman. 

It’s here, in your ideal bedroom, seated at your ideal desk as part of your ideal life that you learn about the less than ideal part of Tokyo that is Toman. A violent gang, more akin to white-collar criminals, run on a massive scale. Drugs, murder, informants, arrests, mass shootings, just about everything you see in those cheesy gang movies that run on late-night television. But this is real. This is real and you’ve just made yourself a witness to dangerous criminal activity. You and your perfect, squeaky clean record has just seen something that could get you killed. 

You scroll for what feels like hours before stopping at a photo of Hanma in a club, seated behind a red velvet rope. Under his arms are two beautiful young women in matching dresses and they’re fawning over him, eyes wide as he stares ahead at something off-camera, entirely unbothered. It’s that same familiar stare he gave you and you find yourself squeezing your thighs together. 

Your mind wanders back to Hanma and his tattoos, the very literal meaning behind sin and punishment and you’re certain that there is nothing you can do for your friend. Getting involved in this, going to the authorities, you’re sure that they’d hurt him for it. That his family or yours would pay the price for ratting them out. You might be a goody-two-shoes, but you have enough common sense to know your place in this particular food chain. 

You don’t sleep much that night, unable to get the memory of Hanma’s eyes out of your head. But when you do dream, you dream of a deer and a panther.

#hanma x reader #hanma x reader smut #hanma shuji x reader #hanma shuji x reader smut #tw: dark content #minors dni #[ 📕 – writing ] #please please please heed the warnings of this fic as I post it #I am very excited to be able to post this now that i've written the entire series out #and i hope you guys enjoy it #even if it is different from what i usually write #tw: threats #tw: mentions of violence

[prettyboykatsuki]

forgive me if im confusing you with someone else but, you once said in passing that you know of DoL right? i keep thinking it was you and if it was you, then thank you for bringing that game into my radar AFDHWGJDE lowkey obsessed

looks around suspiciously... yes that was me fdkhksj i refuse to download it again bc its so incredibly addictive so my codolences but i am also obsessed with it and want whitney sooo terribly

#return to sender #HUGE TRIGGER WARNING FOR THE GAME IF ANYONE PLAYS!!!! #for everything. everything ever. please heed the contents and customize to your experience

[multi-lefaiye]

“Stars - 1997″ - Juno Study

It’s finally here! The Juno character study! Not sure if that’s the right word but y’know what that’s what I’m calling it.

Content Warnings: Discussions of domestic violence and abuse in general, discussions of death and murder, mentions of cancer, semi-graphic descriptions of a corpse, vague/implied suicidal ideation, and depictions of a character smoking a cigarette.

Tagging (i don’t have a general taglist so i’m mainly tagging folks who i thought might be interested/have shown interest, but if you want to be tagged in general when i post things like this let me know!!): @wherearetheplants @skitzo-kero @nicola-writes @albatris @emotionalsupportpuma 

--

“You’re an asshole. You know that, right?”

Juno looked up from where they'd been sitting beside the pool, bare feet dangling over the edge and into the cold water. A few feet away, lit by the tell-tale glow most undead carried with them, sat a spirit, looking at them with an irritated furrow of her brows.

"What'd I do this time?" they asked, their voice dry and brittle as an old, fraying rope.

Normally, Juno wouldn't respond in public, not where people who couldn't see the spirit might hear. Tonight, however, it was three in the morning and the outdoor pool beside the Lockridge Motel was completely deserted. No one could hear Juno talking to the empty night air.

The spirit scoffed. “So that’s what gets your attention?” she sneered.

“What's your fucking problem?” Juno snapped, glaring at her as their fingers tensed around the cigarette they were holding.

"You've been ignoring me for the past fifteen minutes," the spirit spat, her eyes narrowed in distaste. "I've been trying to talk to you, but you only fucking looked up when I called you an asshole.” There was a brief pause, followed by a scoff. “It's like you don't care."

The spirit was a woman, or at least Juno assumed she was based on her appearance. Like every ghost Juno had encountered, she looked how she likely did at the exact moment of her death, however long ago that was. That was something they never got used to, looking into the eyes of frightened corpses brought to life. Though, in this case, the corpse was more angry than scared.

This spirit had pale skin, with mottled bruises adorning her throat and skinny arms like grotesque flowers. Her short, wavy hair was poorly dyed a bright blonde, with black roots plainly visible, though it was missing several patches as though some of it had been ripped from her scalp, and her almond-shaped, glassy eyes were a deep, muddy brown. She wore a knee-length black dress that was tattered and torn in places, hanging off of her emaciated frame.

All in all, every sign pointed to her having a violent death, which meant this wasn’t going to exactly be a pleasant conversation. Juno felt their defensive anger leave them in one fell swoop, and they instead felt very, very tired.

And when Juno was tired, they defaulted to being a dick, which was exactly what they did next.

"How did you know I just couldn't hear you?” they drawled. “For all you know, I could've had a good reason." Juno lifted one hand and took a drag of their cigarette, their remaining eye looking over the woman sitting a few feet away from them. They weren’t wearing their usual eyepatch tonight, but their hair hung just so to hide the mess of gilded scar tissue on the left side of their face.

As they breathed out a cloud of dark, acrid smoke into the starry night sky, the spirit wrinkled her nose slightly. Juno knew she couldn’t smell it, but they also knew it was hard to break most habits, even after death.

"Bullshit," she said with the faintest of wry smiles on her face, though it was clear she was still unhappy with them. "You're talking to me now. Clearly, you can hear me.” All of the humor drained from her face as quickly as it arrived. “What’s your fucking deal anyway?"

Fair point.

"My bad,” Juno conceded after a moment, offering the spirit a shrug and a half-smile of their own. “Was just thinking a bit. Got a bit lost in thought for a while there. I guess I missed you.”

It wasn’t a complete lie, at least. Juno had been vaguely aware of the spirit’s presence for at least five of the fifteen minutes she claimed to be getting their attention, but they hadn’t realized that she was speaking to them. Like many nights in recent memory, Juno’s focus was lost in the ever-shifting waves of the cosmos.

Only the burning cigarette clutched in calloused fingers kept them grounded on nights like this.

The spirit crossed her arms, tilting her head as she regarded them. Her eyes, ringed with dark circles like the bruises covering the rest of her, narrowed. Juno got the distinct impression they were being appraised like some old piece of junk someone had found in their attic.

Not exactly an incorrect comparison.

“You came out here at three in the morning just to sit by the pool and smoke? Shouldn’t you be sleeping?” There was a hint of judgment in her words that Juno might have bristled at, had it come from anyone else.

That was something about spirits that they’d always liked. Most of the time, the dead didn’t have much of a filter, especially the angry ones. Something about dying just made it harder to care about social norms and politeness. It made them a lot easier to understand than the living, in Juno’s opinion.

“I do my best thinking when I’m sleep-deprived and breathing in noxious fumes,” Juno said, clicking their tongue as they winked at the spirit in a playful gesture they clearly weren’t feeling. She stared at them, unimpressed, and they tried their best not to fidget under the intensity of her gaze.

“What’s so-” she started.

“What’s your story?” Juno interrupted before the spirit could finish her sentence. She blinked at them, so surprised at their abruptness that she momentarily forgot to be angry with them, and they rolled their eyes. “I mean, not everyone who dies sticks around. You obviously got the shit knocked out of you before you kicked the bucket--what happened there?”

Maybe on another day, Juno would try to be a little more gentle in their approach. Many ghosts were traumatized by their deaths--at least, they tended to be if they remembered them at all--and even the ones who weren’t usually had some baggage to work through. Because Juno was right; not everyone who dies sticks around after, unless they have some shit to deal with.

Generally, spirits responded better to kindness than cruelty, and Juno had enough experience to know that.

Unfortunately, though, this spirit wasn’t wrong. Juno was an asshole, and it was too late at night to pretend otherwise. It would be a disservice to them both at this point.

The spirit seemed taken aback by the direct question, but she didn’t seem upset by their bluntness. Rather, she paused, evidently considering her words. Juno gave her a moment to think, taking another drag of their cigarette.

Their body had long since passed the point of being affected in any substantial by their smoking habit, but the hot smoke filling their lungs was comforting in a way little else was to them these days. They were drowning themself, one drag at a time, but they never got any closer to death.

“I think it was my boyfriend,” the spirit said finally, a weight to her words that wasn’t there before, her voice achingly soft in the silence around them. “I think my boyfriend killed me.”

Juno blew out the breath of smoke they’d been holding, allowing it to drift listlessly up into the night sky. Then, they turned their head slightly to regard the spirit. She looked lost, anger giving way to the fear and confusion they were more used to with ghosts. They hated it.

“You think?” Juno said, poking and prodding at the open wound presented to them. “What do you remember?” All at once, the anger flooded back into her expression.

“Why are you smoking?” the spirit snapped instead of answering the question. If she was a cat, she’d probably be bristling. “You know you’re gonna get cancer--and it’d be the least you fucking deserve, you dickhead.” Juno snorted.

“Eh, I think I’m a little past that point.” Evidently, the spirit hadn’t picked up on the fact that Juno wasn’t quite human, but they weren’t about to correct her on that front. Instead, they smirked at her, their smile all teeth. “Now, come on, what do you remember? Tell me what’s eating you.”

The spirit stared at them in undisguised disgust. Juno wondered distantly if she was this angry in life, or if this was new. The odds were about fifty-fifty on that front.

“You suck at this,” she told them pointedly. “What kind of bedside manner is that?”

Juno shrugged. “It’s not really a bedside manner,” they said, unable to resist. “More a poolside manner, if we’re being honest here.”

The spirit rolled her eyes. Juno’s smile fell and they held their cigarette up to their lips once more.

“But, no, you’re right,” they said. “I’m not trying to offer you comfort right now--I don’t think either of us really is up for that. But if you tell me what happened, maybe it’ll take a bit of weight off of you. I mean, I’m not really in any place to judge, regardless of how you actually kicked it.”

The spirit hesitated as Juno took another long drag of their cigarette, the little ember at the end flaring orange and lighting up their worn features. Any other time, the silence might’ve been deafening, wearing them down and biting at their heels, but now Juno hardly cared.

Because this was another part Juno was used to, a familiar step in the process. Most spirits were hesitant to talk about their deaths, which they supposed made sense. They didn’t like to talk about theirs either, after all.

For a time, the two were quiet, and Juno let the dark cloud of foul smoke drift upwards from their shriveled lungs. Their cigarette was almost spent by now, but they made no move to put it out or light another one. Instead, they held it between two fingers, staring at it with their empty eye. Absently, they tapped the fingers of their free hand against the concrete beneath them.

After a moment passed, they glanced at the spirit and saw that she wasn’t looking at them now. She was crouching on the ground, her bony hands resting on her knees. Her lifeless eyes stared into the pool.

Juno almost spoke again, hoping to give her a nudge, but she beat them to it and began speaking on her own.

“His name was James,” she said after a long minute, lifting her head to look back at them. “I… I think we were fighting.” She furrowed her brow, sitting up and wrapping her thin arms around her battered middle as she curled in on herself. “It was probably about something stupid--he really seemed to like fighting.”

Juno hummed in understanding, tilting their head slightly. “They usually do, don’t they?” It was the wrong thing to say.

The spirit’s gaze snapped back to theirs, and Juno saw themself reflected in her eyes. Whatever anger had been present on her face before was gone now, replaced by an aching vulnerability they were all too familiar with. Juno turned away and looked down into the pool, not wanting to see painful brown eyes any longer.

Their feet were getting pruney.

Distantly, Juno thought to themself that they should get up and go back inside their shitty motel room, but they ultimately decided against it.

“What do you mean?” the spirit asked softly. Juno’s fingers stilled in their tapping. They didn’t know how to answer that, or if they even should answer.

This wasn’t about them. It was about the ghost next to them.

Her question hung in the air for a long moment.

“Keep talking,” they urged her instead of answering, more gently than they meant to. “What else do you remember? You don’t have to tell me everything, but it helps to get it out.”

For another long moment, the spirit was quiet, peering at them curiously. Even if Juno wasn’t looking at her, they could feel her gaze burning into their skin, a contrast to the frigid chill that clung to her undead form.

When they chanced a quick glance in her direction, they saw something they weren’t expecting: a dawning sort of understanding, followed by a flicker of sympathy.

It made Juno uncomfortable, an itching sensation passing under their skin. “... What was yours named?” she asked, using the exact tone of someone talking to a frightened child and asking them about the monsters in their closet.

A flare of anger passed through Juno and they gritted their teeth.

“This isn’t fucking about me,” they said, struggling to keep their voice even as they forced the anger down. Now wasn’t the time, and that wasn’t how they handled things. “Now, come on, tell me what else you remember, or I’m getting up and leaving.” It was an empty threat and they knew it, and based on the spirit’s expression as she watched them, she knew it, too.

The spirit moved, coming to sit next to Juno properly. She dipped her long, spectral legs in the pool and let out a soft sigh as she rested her hands on the edge of the pool. Juno knew logically that spirits experienced very limited physical sensation, so they doubted she could feel the water against her skin.

Still, she seemed to be enjoying herself, splashing her feet idly as she peered upwards to the sky. Juno stared at her for a long moment, then they turned their head to follow her gaze.

It was a beautiful night, with only a few swirling wisps of clouds blocking out the vast expanse of stars above them. Even with the light pollution from the city in the near distance and the flickering neon lights of the motel sign behind them, there were able to see dozens upon dozens of twinkling lights.

If Juno were so inclined, they might have tried to say something nice and poetic. Something fitting for the moment they were sharing with the dead stranger beside them.

Luckily for them both, Juno was never one for poetry, to begin with, and they’d long since stopped seeing beauty of any kind in the stars.

“I like the sky,” the spirit said, taking Juno out of their thoughts. “Especially at night. The stars are really pretty.” She smiled a little, turning her head to look at Juno. “Did you know that it takes so long for some stars’ light to reach Earth that, right now, most of the ones we see are probably already dead?”

“I didn't know that," Juno said. They weren't sure how they felt about that fact. Juno kept their expression neutral, bringing their cigarette to their lips and allowing their eye to fall closed. As they took yet another drag, they mulled over the words. For one small, absurd moment, they wondered if the stars left spirits behind, too. If the light that reached Earth represented nothing more than a ball of fire in an endless void, or if there was more to it.

They breathed out in a huff that sounded almost like a laugh, allowing the smoke to drift upwards. Maybe they really were up a bit too late, if they were musing on the lives and deaths of stars. The last of their anger had left them now, and they let out a soft sigh.

The spirit was quiet for a long moment, so long that Juno wondered briefly if she’d disappeared. When they opened their eye once more and looked her way, however, she was still there. She was looking down now, smile nowhere to be seen as she stared at her hands. Their muted glow glimmered on the surface of the water.

“... I came outside,” she said. “We had a fight, and I wanted to go outside and calm down out here. I was looking at the stars…” Her voice broke towards the end.

Juno stayed quiet, letting her speak. They respectfully averted their eyes and looked down at their cigarette. The tiny ember was truly dying now, and there was barely anything in their hands to smoke anymore.

“James came after me.” The spirit’s voice trembled as she spoke, and perhaps if she still had tear ducts, she might’ve been crying. “He tried to drag me back inside, but I didn’t want to go. I think he grabbed me…” Unconsciously, one of her hands went to her neck, resting against the dark bruises ringing her pale skin.

She fell silent, and Juno decided to let her be for now. There were no words for a situation like this, after all.

The two were quiet for some time, looking out into the night.

“What did you mean?” the spirit asked finally. Juno knew exactly what she was asking, but they looked at her curiously anyway, silently prompting her to elaborate. “When you said that ‘they usually do.’ What did you mean by that?” There was an urgency to her voice now, and Juno knew that they weren’t going to get away from her questioning this time.

A soft sigh escaped them, and they took a long moment to consider their answer. Their shoulders tensed slightly, and they closed their eye again. When they finally spoke, they opened their eye and met the spirit’s dead eyes with a flat expression of their own.

“What I meant,” Juno began, their voice hollow and distant, “is that there are a lot of people like that. Cruel, vicious bastards who move themselves forward by taking others down.” At this point, their cigarette was truly nothing more than a tiny, flickering light in the darkness. They hardly had it in them to care. “However they can do it, really, but they need to control others to keep them down and keep going.”

The spirit was quiet for a moment. When she spoke again, her voice was quiet, almost hesitant.  “... And they like fighting because-”

Juno turned their eyes away from the spirit, cutting her off before she could finish. "They like to fight because they always win; it's how they stay in control. They wait until you’re at your lowest, then they strike.”

They remembered the sensation of small, gentle hands running through their hair, of chapped lips pressing against their forehead, of a voice like birdsong echoing in their ears.

The tightening of a rope around them.

The memories made them sick to their stomach, and they gritted their teeth again as they took a deep, shaky breath to steady themself.

“And when it’s all said and done,” Juno continued, forcing down the tidal wave of grief inside them, “they make it out to be all your fault, and they say they’re doing you a favor by sticking around and making you better.” Their voice came out sharper than they meant for it to, but they hardly had it in them to give a shit.

Unconsciously, Juno clenched their fingers and crushed what remained of their cigarette, ignoring the sight pain of what was left of the fire burning their skin. The flickering light was snuffed out, leaving the two in darkness. For a long moment, the two sat in silence in the dark, before the spirit spoke once more.

“... You seem to know your shit. You a psychiatrist or something?” The spirit’s voice was cautiously interested, maybe a tad incredulous, and the thought was almost enough to make Juno laugh as they tossed aside their cigarette.

“Nah,” they said, offering her a sardonic grin. “I’ve just been around the block a few times, you could say.”

Another beat of silence passed between them, long and strangely comfortable. Juno always liked this part. They didn’t necessarily enjoy hearing the same sad stories over and over again, but it was almost worth it if it meant they could have quiet, peaceful moments like this.

Their relationships with humans always fell apart, slipping through their fingers like so much sand, but the dead were easy. Even at their worst, the dead were more understanding, and Juno quietly treasured the moments of peace they had occasionally while dealing with them.

Some days, they thought that it made all of this feel more worth it. “You never answered my question,” the spirit said. Juno glanced her way, but she wasn’t looking at them anymore. Her head was tilted back, and her eyes were facing the stars.

“Hm?”

“You never said what yours was named.” She didn’t turn her head to look at them, but she didn’t have to.

Juno thought about trying to play dumb, but they knew it would be unfair to them both. The spirit had been honest with them, and she deserved honesty in turn. That didn’t make it easy, though, and Juno snorted humorlessly. The sound was scratchy, and it hurt their throat to make.

“You’re a perceptive one,” they said, turning away to look up at the stars with her. In a strange way, even knowing that most of those stars were likely dead didn’t make the sight any less comforting for Juno. Maybe it even made things more comforting, in a way. “How do you know I’m not just really knowledgeable about how shitty people can be? Maybe I am a fucking psychiatrist.”

The spirit laughed at that, loud and full of delight, though it sounded almost like she was trying not to cry. Juno decided to let her have her privacy in that regard, and they kept their eyes firmly upwards.

“Takes one to know one,” is all she said. “When you… when you were talking about it, I could tell. You understand. You don’t talk like that if you haven’t either studied it or lived it in some way. And, I mean this as nicely as possible, but I don’t think you’ve studied it.”

Juno was quiet. She was right, of course, on both counts.

“What was their name?” the spirit asked, a sudden tinge of desperation to her words. “Please… you don’t have to tell me what happened, I just want to know. I want to know I’m not alone.”

“Her name,” Juno began, then paused. They could feel the spirit’s eyes on them, but they didn’t turn to look at her again. Their remaining eye fluttered shut and they sighed, the weariness of the past century weighing on them in a way they were all too familiar with.

It wasn’t often that Juno was made painfully aware of their own reality, but it was in moments like this that they realized just how truly exhausted they really were, in a way no amount of sleep could fix.

“Her name was Estelle.” It was the most they’d said about her since they last saw her, and they felt the familiar uncomfortable twinge in their heart as they said her name, the word heavy on their tongue. “Her name was Estelle, and she promised she’d give me the world.”

And in a way, she did, but Juno decided not to voice that part. The world Estelle had given them was one they'd never wanted to begin with, and now it was all they had left.

“I’m sorry,” the spirit said. Juno cracked a smile, despite themself, and opened their eye to look at her.

“You’re the one who got murdered,” they said drily, “and you’re apologizing to me?” The spirit’s expression was soft now, gentle in a way it wasn’t before.

“You don’t have to be murdered for things to fucking suck for you,” she pointed out. “Or for someone to come around and ruin your life.” Juno snorted.

“Fair enough,” they conceded. “Guess there’s no shortage of life-ruiners out there, after all.” Juno leaned back on their hands, letting out a quiet sigh. Silence fell over the pair once more, this time lasting much longer.

“... So, what happens now?” the spirit asked. She looked troubled, but the anger was gone from her expression now. The vulnerability was still plain in her eyes, though for the most part she now just looked curious.

“What do you mean?” Juno asked, tapping their fingers against the concrete once more.

“Is there some kind of… light? Like, a light appears, and I walk into it, and then I’m on the other side?” The spirit held her hands up as she spoke, gesturing vaguely as if to emphasize her point. It was enough to make Juno snort, a smirk tugging at the corners of their mouth.

“Other sides,” Juno corrected, more out of habit than anything.

“What?”

“There are multiple-” Juno caught themself before they could start off on a tangent, chuckling as they shook their head slightly. “Nevermind, it’s not important. The whole afterlife shit’s complicated, and I don’t think I’m really the person you should talk to about all of that.” Truthfully, they understood very little about how this whole thing worked, and everything they did know they only learned through trial and error.

The spirit peered at them curiously for a long moment, tilting her head. They could sense the question in her gaze, but they decided they weren’t going to answer it right now.

“What’s your name?” Juno asked her instead. She looked a little startled.

“Me?” she asked.

“Yeah,” they said, “you.” They gestured with a hand towards her, cracking a sharp grin as they leaned forward again. “I mean, you’ve told me about the guy who fucked you up and took your life from you, but I don’t give a shit about him. His involvement in your story is over now, and I wanna know your name. Who is the beautiful spirit who decided to grace me with her presence tonight?”

The spirit was quiet for a long moment, considering their words. Without their cigarette, Juno felt a bit antsy, but they didn’t say anything. This wasn’t about them, after all.

“Yūna,” she said after a long moment. When Juno looked at her, she was smiling a little more genuinely now. “My name is Yūna.”

“Well, it’s nice to meet you,” Juno said. “Sorry you had to get fucking murdered for it to happen, but you seem pretty cool.”

Yūna laughed at that, more genuinely this time, and their smile softened. There was no way for the dead to truly come back to life, not really, but in that moment she looked more alive than she had the whole conversation.

“For what it’s worth,” she said once she’d calmed down from her laughter, “you’re not so bad either.” She ran a hand through her hair a little self-consciously, as though trying to fix it up. “I’m sorry I called you an asshole and, ah, disturbed you while you were trying to think.”

“Nah, it’s fine,” Juno said, waving a hand in the air. “Wasn’t thinking about anything important anyway. Besides, you’re right--I am an asshole.”

“What were you thinking about?” Yūna asked, the same curious expression as before on her face once again. Juno hesitated, and so she continued. “You don’t have to tell me everything, but I’m just… curious.”

Juno thought about a lot of things, in general. Life. Death. Rebirth. What it all meant, at the end of the day. Whether there really was anything worth looking forward to. If there was a point to their existence. If there was a way for them to end it.

They thought about people, too. Good people, bad people, and everything in-between. Some days, they wondered if they could still consider themself part of that.

Tonight, though, they were thinking about-

“I was thinking about stars, I guess,” they said before they could finish that thought, before they could let the usual wave of existential despair and aching loneliness wash over them. With one hand, they gestured vaguely up at the sky. “I mean, what you said earlier, about how most of ‘em are probably dead already. I was thinking about whether or not stars have any kind of afterlife awaiting them, or if they’re just sad sons of bitches waiting for oblivion to destroy them, with nothing to look forward to on the other side of it all.”

“Wow,” Yūna said with a snort. She looked a bit more hesitant now. “That’s, uh… that’s a bit morbid.” Juno shrugged noncommittally, quietly relieved she didn’t ask after any details.

“I’m kind of a morbid guy,” they told her. “Comes with the territory.” With one hand, they scratched lightly at their wrist, at the black mark forever staining their skin.

“And what territory is that?” Yūna’s tone wasn’t accusatory at all, at most teasing and friendly. Juno decided to lean into that.

“Being the most dead-looking living person you’ll ever meet,” they replied in the same tone. “Trust me, it’s hard looking like a corpse--no offense.”

“None taken.” Yūna quirked a smirk at them for a moment, but soon her expression softened again. She looked at Juno for a long moment, then turned her eyes back to the stars.

“For what it’s worth,” she said softly, “you look pretty alive to me.”

Juno wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so chose not to. Instead, they let her words linger in the air. There was a light breeze now, ruffling Juno’s white hair and chilling their skin ever so slightly.

“Do you mind if I sit here with you for a while longer?” Yūna asked, a bit timidly. “I just… I don’t really know where else to go, and it’s nice to actually talk to someone who can hear me.” The vulnerability that had been thick in her voice before was back now, and Juno was nodding before they could stop themself.

“Make yourself at home,” they told her. “I’m not going anywhere anytime soon. And neither are they.” They gestured vaguely up to the stars.

Yūna chuckled. “No, I guess they’re not.”

The rest of the night passed in silence as the two lonely, lost souls sat together, feet dipped in lukewarm water as they watched the sky. Juno didn’t know anything about Yūna, not really, and she certainly didn’t know anything about them, but there was a quiet camaraderie between them now.

It was the closest to living that Juno had felt in a long, long time.

#multi makes text posts #multi's writing #a modern ghost story #juno london #character study #content warnings on post #please heed them! this is a bit of a bummer #though there's nothing really graphic here. it's all mainly dialogue #also again not sure if this counts as a character study #but i tried! #and i had fun writing this #and this helped me really figure juno out a bit