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#reanimated alive again in death
worldtravelfacts · 2 years
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Lake Natron, Tanzania, Africa
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theheadlessgroom · 1 year
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https://beatingheart-bride.tumblr.com/post/707565030082805760/theheadlessgroom-beatingheart-bride
@beatingheart-bride
“W-Well, you deserve to sleep comfortably too, Emily!” he insisted right back, as he sat a little more upright: Quite honestly, he’d be more than happy to give her his bed...but he also knew (even before she said so aloud) that she wouldn’t want to deprive him off the bed (especially after he’d just begun getting used to sleep in it...), leaving them once again at a bit of a stalemate...
(For a brief moment, the idea of the two of them sharing the bed crossed his mind, but he very quickly dismissed it, as his face suddenly turned white-hot behind the mask; he supposed that was one good thing about having it, so that Emily didn’t see him blush so hard and ask what the matter was...)
As much fun as it was to playfully to volley teases and arguments back and forth, Randall was now well aware of the tiredness beginning to sink in for him as he sat in his seat, eyelids beginning to grow heavy: Between the rainy, moody skies outside, the rhythm of the rain on the roof, and his own overall tiredness, his will to stay awake was beginning to ebb, as he stifled a little yawn (trying not to appear as tired as he was), saying (as one last weak protest), “I really don’t mind if you take the bed, Emily, r-really, I-I can get perfectly comfortable on the lounger...”
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vulpinesaint · 3 months
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yeah man my dnd character is doing great! beginning of last session he was miserable and stressed and fighting with his party members and thought his god hated him and his guts were literally falling out but by the end of last session. he was back on his feet, distinctly more gorgeous than he was before, body wiped clean of scars, well on his way to repairing his relationships with his party members, assured in his devotion to his god, and he was like. maybe a little less of an alcoholic even. did he have to die for this to happen! yes! does his blood run black like tar now! yeah! that's just hot boy shit though!
#faedren has been dying for like Weeks now it was probably time to just get it over with 😭#list of his horrible life-ending scars is no longer relevant cause he got a New Body basically.#list of times that he has Fully Fucking Died though. need to keep that one updated sdkjgdsf#i think that makes three times now? if i remember correctly#WAIT. FOUR ACTUALLY.#he saw the gates of elysium once after getting fucking Ruined during a battle in the first part of the campaign#had his whole chest cleaved open had to get welded back together with the brand of his goddess. so that's death number one#can't for the life of me remember but i'm fairly sure he died another time in the same kind of time span#where he didn't like. Get To The Afterlife but definitely was not alive for a second there#he died when xefros attacked him! again he didn't make it to fucking heaven but he died enough to get vampirified#(died by being bitten by a vampire)#and then they killed him on purpose for anti-vampire surgery. took his heart out and shit.#so thankful in my heart of hearts that he did not have to know what was going on during that process he would be so traumatized#don't worry baby boy go to sleep and go talk to the gods a little bit <3 wake up happier and healthier <3#meanwhile his party members watching his organs be removed and his body be burnt to ashes and then his corpse be reanimated as a zombie#before he finally sits back up as himself#AND THEN GETS IMMEDIATELY JUMPED BY THEIR PARTY MEMBER AGAIN WHO GETS CLAWS INTO HIS HEART.#that was hot though. very funzies. positive experience i would say dkjghsdf#fucking insane sitting here vibrating waiting for next week to come around so i can have him talk to his little friends#faedren#valentine notes
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prokopetz · 1 year
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More inadvisable diegetic explanations for why your soulslike protagonist keeps coming back from death:
Something happened with you and Death that's made things, like, super awkward between the two of you, and Death has been deliberately avoiding you ever since. You don't like to talk about it.
A mad scientist who's experimenting with the reanimation of dead tissue keeps resurrecting you by mistake. They aren't even looking for you specifically – you just keep coincidentally ending up in their corpse pile, and they never realise it's you on the table before pulling the lever; they're extremely sick of seeing your face.
God has a gambling problem, and He made a bet that somehow requires you in particular to be alive. Every time He brings you back He's going double or nothing on the wager; at this point He couldn't stop even if He wanted to, because the consequences of cutting His losses would literally be unimaginable.
You're a rogue member of a secret society of anthropomorphic cat sorcerers who've conquered death by sealing the entire city inside an enormous enchanted box, thus rendering your dead/alive state ontologically ambiguous; your quest is to open the box, thereby making your erstwhile peers – and yourself – mortal again.
The sin that damned you to Hell was so fucking weird that there genuinely isn't a page in the big book of punishments for that, and it turns out that there's no particular mechanism in place to stop you from just wandering off and doing whatever while they're trying to figure out what to do with you.
You're actually playing as an endless series of eerily similar cousins out to avenge the original player character's cutscene-mandated prologue death, and that's why you need to go on a corpse run to get your shit back every time you die: you're literally retrieving the previous cousin's stuff.
Have you ever wondered what actually happens if you ignore the warning in the erectile dysfunction medication's fine print to see a doctor if your erection lasts longer than four hours? Well...
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endemise · 4 months
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DEMO
→ Latest Update: Prologue — 3 February 2024
17+ The Fall of House Black — A gothic, supernatural, mystery interactive fiction story. Lightly inspired by The Fall of the House of Usher and Frankenstein media. (Work in Progress)
Synopsis has mentions of death and suicide. See extended content warnings below.
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The fall of House Black, your house, was an imminent thing. A name had never been so cursed that all it could do was bring about death.
First, your younger sister in a swimming accident, then your older brother in a case of mistaken identity. As the rest of your family sought to grieve and bring justice to your brother, your older sister was killed in a hunting accident at the end of your father’s bow.
The three of you, mother, father, and child, became inconsolable. Broken beyond repair. Your mother unable to bear the weight of life any longer took her own while your father disappeared, gone into the night. When you remain the sole survivor of House Black, you know you must leave, and on the night of your decision, your home goes up in flames with you inside.
Then, you awake, dazed with no recollection of anything, and when you look down at your body, you scream. It is wrong. So wrong.
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Play as a reanimated, customizable character.
Learn how to be a person again.
Try to survive in a society that fears the unknown.
Develop relationships. (4 ROs: All gender-selectable + 1 secret RO)
Aid in the investigation of your family’s untimely deaths.
Learn about your family’s curse.
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Aesop/Almira Hammond | Detective | 36 Years Old | RO
[Profile] [Portrait]
A is an observant and clever person, stoic in nature. They put their all into their work, striving to find the truth in every case. They take on the case of your family’s sudden deaths despite pushback from others. It was an occurrence of events all too strange, and they are determined to figure it out.
Cyprian/Cecilia Atterton | Writer | 28 Years Old | RO
[Profile] [Portrait]
C is an imaginative and creative person, quiet in nature. They write not only from their own experiences, but the experiences of others as well. They are interviewing people about House Black, intending on writing a book about your family’s ill fate and eventual demise.
Sebastian/Sabina Farwell | Doctor | 34 Years Old | RO
[Profile] [Portrait]
S is an intelligent and kind person, caring in nature. They are a most trusted doctor, hardworking and honest. They were the young doctor that tried to help your father and sister. They helped without question, never calling your family cursed as you so often were.
Elias/Elosia Osborne | Coroner | 30 Years Old | RO
[Profile] [Portrait]
E is an empathetic and hardworking person, cheerful in nature. They put their heart into their work, aiming to bring closure to people as swiftly as possible. They are the one who investigated and confirmed the death of your elder sister. They never could for you though.
Unknown | ??? | ??? | RO
A secret. Who knows when they will appear.
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SUBJECT TO CHANGE
Mentions of death, child death, suicide, violence, blood, injury, burning alive, body horror, mutilation, slight gore, amnesia
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asks are welcomed!
DISCLAIMER
this is a demo/work in progress. everything is subject to change until the final version. it is by no means a finished or polished work.
LINKS
→ demo | same one, just another link
→ itch.io | my creator page
→ @ethersic | my main, art, etc. blog
INFO
word count w/o code: 6.3k
next update: tbd
written with twine (tweego)/sugarcube
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mxtxfanatic · 4 months
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I’ve been stuck in 2ha fics for a minute and have seen a few metas and posts surrounding Mo Ran’s character, but something I don’t think comes across very well from the book to fanwork and (some) discussion is that Taxian-jun doesn’t exist without the long-hatred flower.
Like, I see a lot of modern au fics, for example, that tackle the Mo Ran 1.0 to 1.5 shift by having Mo Ran be disillusioned by Chu Wanning and that being his villain origin story, but what gets lost in that remix is that in canon, while Mo Ran was hurt by being whipped by his shizun, after he thought about it for a while, he decided to apologize to Chu Wanning to reconcile rather than hold a grudge. Because Mo Ran, at his core, is someone who is naturally good and would rather die than enact vengeance on others. That’s why both the timing and the effects of the flower are particularly evil: Mo Ran is cursed because he chose reconciliation over petty grudges and the curse forces him to go against his nature by holding onto said petty grudges to “repay” them to a ridiculous degree while erasing any good memory he has, which is what had previously fueled his will to live.
With that said, Mo Ran 1.0/Taxian-jun is able to transition to 1.5 and eventually 2.0 not because he realized that Chu Wanning loved him all along (as a disciple at this point), but because the Chu Wanning from the original universe nullified the effects of the flower, allowing him to finally see that Chu Wanning loved him all along and that he actually doesn’t want revenge. And we can see that effect of the nullification immediately! Taxian-jun becomes 16-year-old Mo Ran, finds out that Shi Mei, his “first love” is actually still alive at this point, and immediately decides to prioritize keeping Shi Mei alive over enacting revenge on Chu Wanning. Because at his core he’s motivated by love! And when Hua Binan brings Taxian-jun’s reanimated corpse into the new universe, his control is tenuous because Taxian-jun isn’t being motivated purely by spite anymore because the flower isn’t in effect anymore. This isn’t to say that Mo Ran was incapable of becoming Taxian-jun, but as the narrative proves, that is a version of him that only exists under mind-breaking abuse and duress, which only happened when he lived under the Mo family’s reign of abuse for years before finally snapping and then once again under the effects of a curse that rewrote his memories to convince him that he was living under mind-breaking abuse and duress. Without those conditions, Mo Ran always chooses hope and love, and even as he looks back on those moments where he reigned terror, he wishes he could have chosen/been afforded death instead (much to Chu Wanning’s upset). So all this to say that Mo Ran isn’t saved by realizing he was living under a misunderstanding; he is saved by having the thing leeching out all of the good in him destroyed.
(Also on a smaller note, Taxian-jun isn’t uneducated because he was on the street for so long and therefore “too old” to be properly educated. Taxian-jun is uneducated because all of his memories of learning were good memories tied to Chu Wanning, thus they got erased. Mo Ran 2.0 re-educates himself in his late teens/early 20s because the problem was always the flower, not some “inherent” inferiority he was stuck with from his upbringing or an unwillingness to learn.)
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wildgeese98 · 2 days
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I wish I could dig up the post from very early on, I think when only a few eps were out, where someone was taking about the concepts of body, mind, and spirit in alchemy and how the three season of Protocol might follow this, with season 1 being body.
The op of that post explains it way better and in more detail and I think they were spot on. I wish I could remember who posted it.
Almost every episode so far has had some element that ties back to the physical body, with several hitting on the theme of accepting physical harm in exchange for something.
Ep. 1: a grotesque reanimated corpse and implied eye related body horror
Ep. 2: body dysmorphia, full on body horror, introduction of ink5oul who seems to effect people by tattooing their bodies
Ep. 3: body horror transformation
Ep. 4: violin that requires the player to maim himself or others in exchange for success.
Ep. 6: Needles, a monster who uses his body to kill
Ep. 8: the mirror world people in the tower trying to eat the guy alive and him jumping resulting in severe bodily harm
Ep. 9: much of the bad luck from the dice seemed to manifest as physical injury, especially the particularly gruesome death of dice guy's friend.
Ep. 11: moving old corpses, return of Ink5oul and tattoos with strange powers
Ep. 12: just a straight up massive amount of gore, as well as whatever body horror type deal Bonzo himself has going on.
Ep. 13: fiance bro severely physically harming himself for money.
The physical body seems to be a general theme running through the season so far. Again is wish I could find that post because it talked about how this might relate back to alchemy. If anyone remembers and can find that post send it to me please!
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sapphire-drawings · 7 months
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In the case that swapped adult Webber dies from their spider and human halves being separated, do you think Wendy would have learned her lesson about trying to bring people back from the dead with ritual magic from what happened with Abigail? Yeah me neither I think she totally tries to bring Webber back from the dead. Especially since lunar magic seems to be able to reanimate corpses (yeah they turn into horrifying monsters, but they’re alive, aren’t they?) 👁 👁
(Wendy whispering to Webber’s corpse “I will not let death keep you” shbdnsjdbjwndbwkbdbdn)
As the ask mentions CW: DEAD BODY
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Listen
I know nothing about the lunar island. I've seen the reanimated hound and pengul but I've never been there in game to know anything about it. So here I am, with a non canon comic for this Au. Will I ever do a follow up?? idk, I have ideas but I know nothing so they're just there orbiting my head
Also, I tried something different, much more sketchy. Do I like it? yeah. Will I do it again?? If I ever do the follow up, I guess
aaaaand... That's it I think
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shu-box-puns · 2 months
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I never would have given you to them; not for anything (Tsu'tey x Reader)
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Last Chapter <- Part 5
If you prefer to read on Ao3, the fic can be found here!
Summary: You can choose to stay.
Word Count: 7532
Reader uses they/them pronouns.
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Perched upon Eywa’s throne after yet another near death experience, you were officially contemplating if Eywa wasn’t just some neurological connection between the tree of Pandora, and was actually some dormant deity. Because for some reason, She really wanted you alive.
In the last twenty-four hours, you had been released from Bridgehead, captured and interrogated, only to somehow escape the first encounter, only to end up shot and then resurrected over the course of an hour, all so you could be nearly stabbed to death before the day was out. And somehow, you were still fucking alive, despite almost dying more times in one day, than you had in your entire previous life.
You would’ve found it hilarious if you had had the energy to laugh. But instead, you just felt drained. Whatever will to live that had been keeping you going until now, was running on fumes. You were hopelessly hungry and achy from the bullet wounds smarting across your side, and to add insult to injury, you had no idea what was happening. 
Tsu’tey seemed to have decided you were returning to camp with everyone, despite how little he clearly trusted you. And for some reason, neither Jake nor Neytiri had objected.
It wasn’t as if you had much of a choice regardless. With Quaritch and the rest of your squad dead and General Ardmore no doubt informed of your betrayal, marching back into Bridgehead would be about as effective as eating a bullet. Not to mention, with your injury, wandering off into the forest would result in a similar situation. 
Perhaps if you hadn’t exerted every inch of energy you had left getting Spider out from under Quaritch’s knife, you could’ve managed option two. But that didn’t matter now.
The body of your late comrades remained sprawled across the grass, their blood soaked into the earth beneath them. You felt no remorse for bringing about their end. Spider hadn’t deserved to die so you would have an opening to get away. He was Tsu’tey’s son, and that was enough to make him worth protecting.
At least they would finally be able to rest.
Your gaze flickered away from the bodies towards your own grave. Of course, it hadn’t moved since you found it earlier, where it had silently observed everything that had happened here. Unmoving and indifferent. It offered no answers beyond what had become of your past self. 
The skeleton it cradled would not sit up and push the dirt off like a cosy blanket. The corpse would not reanimate and take a seat beside you upon the roots of the Throne. It would not laugh and sigh as it retold its life, filling in all the blanks the Tree hadn’t. Hell, its body wouldn’t even hold the evidence of what had killed it. By now there would be no fingerprints nor injuries to examine. 
In your peripheral, Tsu’tey slipped into view, his hands visible and his expression solemn. Without turning your head, you moved your eyes towards him in acknowledgement. The mourning paint from his nose to his forehead had been mostly scraped away, his flying helmet set low above his brows. 
“We’re ready to go.” He told you simply, “Jake has room on his ikran for you.”
You hummed, eyes rolling back to the grave. To the source of so many questions and anxieties.
Tsu’tey shifted restlessly on his feet. “Look.” He stepped closer, but at your instinctive shift to keep some distance between you, he quickly stilled himself. His ears lowered in understanding, his hands raised to show his empty fingers again. “I just wanted to thank you for protecting Spider and the others.” Tsu’tey said simply, his tone earnest. “I know I didn’t say so before.” You looked him up and down, finding no ulterior motive in his gratitude. 
“It’s what they would have done.” You said simply, knowing that you both understood who you were referring to. 
“Yes.” Tsu’tey agreed.
Another beat of silence.
“What happened?” Tsu’tey shifted on his feet, swallowing loudly. “What?” “What happened to them?” You repeated, eyes boring into the carved name of your headstone. In your peripheral, you watched Tsu’tey study you, before he shifted back a step and glanced at the graves. His body was wound tight, as if it pained him to acknowledge them. As if he viewed them as some sort of failure. 
“We should head back-” “What happened, Tsu’tey?” You pressed firmly, tearing your eyes from the graves to meet his. “The Tree showed me so much, but it didn’t give me answers. I need you to be honest with me, or I can’t trust you.”
He swallowed. “Okay.”
“What happened to them? What killed them?”
>_<
“What killed them?”
Tsu’tey hated this. He despised the haunted look in their eye. He loathed the pain echoed in their eyes, both mental and physical. All he wanted was to go home. He wanted the safety of the clan surrounding his family. He wanted a warm meal, his comfortable hammock, and the knowledge that this nightmare was over.
“Did She not show you?” Tsu’tey asked instead of responding plainly. 
The recom shook their head. “Not all of it. Someone gave me a tea.” 
“Yes. It was infused with mucus from the Txumtsa’wll.” Tsu’tey confirmed with a grimace. He hadn’t realised at first, and had found the soiled mug in the compound some hours afterwards, the smell having drawn his attention. “Shit.” The recom breathed, “then why did they stab me?” “The tea alone would have taken too long to kill you.” Tsu’tey replied honestly, “and it is treatable if the patient is given the antidote quickly enough.” He paused to gather himself, stomach squirming as the uncomfortable memories began to resurface easily now that he was talking about it. “Arvok, my brother knew what he was doing. And he knew he would be noticed if he was gone too long. He struck on the night of a meeting between our clan and one of the horse clans. He stole one of their knives and framed their Olo’eyktan for your death. You died in my arms when I tried to get you to Mo’at.”
The recom was uncomfortably silent.
“How did you catch him?” They had finally stopped looking at their grave as if it would offer answers and were instead looking at him. Properly looking at him. Not his ear or the space above his eye, like they had when they feared him before, now they were looking at him like an equal.
Somehow, it didn’t make this any easier to say. “He went after Spider.” Tsu’tey spat, “and it was his last mistake.”
He could still feel the rage of that betrayal simmering beneath his skin, even fifteen years later. Could still feel the chokehold of grief that had blinded him. Forcing him to be reliant on Mo’at and the rest of the clan, to help him care for Spider when the sadness of losing his mate got the best of him. 
He could still taste the FURY that had burned the back of his throat when he turned up to  Arvok’s hut to pick Spider up, only to find his son suffocating. Arvok had laid the infant out on his back and removed his exo-mask, his face horrifyingly devoid of emotion as Tsu’tey’s son choked to death.
<”WHAT ARE YOU DOING!”> Tsu’tey had snarled, his body moving how he wanted for the first time in weeks. His vision had narrowed down to his son, panic and betrayal making his hands shake as he shoved Arvok aside and dove for Spider. With unsteady but determined hands, he had secured Spider’s mask back to his face. 
<”It is for your own good Tsu’tey.”> His little brother had informed him, whilst Tsu’tey had kept his back to him, his attention solely on Spider. With careful fingers, he had combed Spider’s hair back from his face, relief blooming in his chest as colour returned to Spider’s face and his eyes cleared. He was still breathing hard, catching his breath, but humans usually recovered without difficulty at this stage.
At his back, Arvok was still monologuing, basically admitting to the murder he had allowed the visiting Olo’eyktan to take the fall for.
With Spider recovering, Tsu’tey had finally turned his attention to the threat. <”It was you? You did this?!”> Tsu’tey hissed, fury replacing the fear as he turned slowly. 
<”Yes.”> Arvok admitted freely. And he was smiling. 
<”It was your fault?”> Tsu’tey bellowed, <”I had to bury my mate, because of you? Spider’s other parent is rotting in a grave, because of you? You did this?”>
Arvok nodded again.
<”This nightmare never ends, and it’s your fault!”> He wasn’t entirely sure when he had reached for his knife, but it was in his hand regardless. <”YOU DID THIS!”>
Arvok seemed to have caught on that Tsu’tey didn’t agree with his motive. The coward had startled at his raised voice, his hands rising in surrender as he began to back up.
<”Tsu’tey!”> His mate’s murderer pleaded, <”think about what you’re doing-”> <”NO!”> Tsu’tey snarled, his tail thrashing with rage. His hands ached to kill, his entire body ached actually. From heartache and loneliness and remaining in his hammock for too long. But he was moving. Finally his mind and body were in sync again, listening to him. Willing to help him carry out vengeance. To protect his son from this threat and avenge his fallen loved one. <”I will not think! I will not wait! This ends NOW! I will NOT allow you to hurt ANYONE ELSE!”>
Arvok fumbled to draw his blade, but it was too late, Tsu’tey had already tackled him to the ground. His brother had shrieked and wiggled, pleading for mercy, but Tsu’tey had given up listening. His knife punctured vulnerable flesh with a wet slice, and the body beneath him began to tire. 
He recalled the numbness that had followed. How his limbs had refused to cooperate again as he had crawled off the body, tears sliding down his face as grief tore open his chest anew. He had gathered up his unconscious son and crawled towards the hut’s entrance. He had only been able to make it as far as the walkway outside before he was forced to rest, his limbs screaming in exertion as a panic attack threatened to crawl up the back of his throat. 
All he could think about was his son choking in his arms. About the promise he had made to his dead mate to look after him. How he had almost failed not even two weeks after they’d died.
He was a terrible father. 
He’d curled up outside the hut for what felt like hours, tears slipping silently down his cheeks as he protectively curled around Spiders’s little body. Listening to his heartbeat even out and feeling his breaths with every puff of the exo mask. 
Mo’at had been the one to find him. She had always been like a mother to him. Even more so in those moments, when she had peered into Arvok’s hut, and seen his body, but had not flinched away from Tsu’tey. Her voice had been soothing and calm as she had helped him up, coaxing him into keeping a firm hold on Spider as she led him away from the scene.
Within minutes, she’d had him sat in her hut with a cup of tea in hand, whilst she sent hunters to deal with Arvok. By the time Spider had spluttered awake, Mo’at already had food waiting for him and Tsu’tey had stopped shaking. 
With a hard blink, Tsu’tey was back to the present. Stood beneath the shade of Eywa’s Throne with his family readying their ikran at his back, as he looked upon the reincarnated form of his mate and finally felt as if a weight was being lifted from his shoulders. 
“I dealt with him personally. He will not be a threat to you, should you choose to remain with us once you are healed.” Tsu’tey continued.
“I’m just sorry I wasn’t there.” The recom breathed, “that can’t have been easy.”
“It wasn’t.” Tsu’tey replied simply, because it was true. It hadn’t. And several times, he was sure he wasn’t going to pull through. “But you are now. I asked Eywa for a miracle. For you to stop being dead. And you did.” He smiled, small and private, whilst the recom nodded. “And you came home.” 
“I wanted to.” The recom admitted. “Getting back to you was my first thought upon waking up. I wasn’t even sure if the clan had survived the Battle for The Tree of Souls, but I had to know anyway.”
“Thank you.” Tsu’tey said again, and they looked up. He did not elaborate, and they did not ask him to. 
And this time, when he offered a hand to help them stand, they took it. 
>_<
“Hold tight.” Jake called over his shoulder, prompting you to tighten your arms around his waist as he coaxed Bob into a fluid glide under the belly of a colossal mountain. The wind tore at your hair and bullied your ears into lowering tight against your skull. You didn’t have a visor, so you’d been forced to duck tight against Jake’s back so his bulk would block most of it. Your eyes watered as you peeled them open a crack against the sting, to watch the mountain pass. 
Far below, the forest sprawled, and you couldn’t help but feel safe. Even if it was Jake doing the driving. As if to prove your point, your pilot unexpectedly rose higher on his stirrups, yanking you up with him thanks to your death grip around his stomach. Crouched awkwardly behind Jake, you winced as he yipped loudly over his shoulder, prompting the other ikran to fall into formation behind Bob. 
With another turn and a great swerve, the flock neatly soaring up into the hidden mouth of High Camp’s entrance. 
The camp stretched out below you from wall to wall. A living, breathing community of homes and cooking fires, interwoven with the compounds the scientists used to live alongside it all.
Bob circled once above it all before landing on the lip of the rocks as he had before. The rest of the flock followed suit. 
Your hands were ice cold from the wind, but somehow, you managed to peel your frozen limbs out of their death grip around Jake. Sitting back heavily in the saddle, you breathed out a sigh of relief now that there was no longer any danger of plummeting to your death.
Jake turned in the saddle, looking back at you over his shoulder with amusement plain on his face. “I’m surprised you didn’t scream the whole way up here.” “You forget I also used to accompany Trudy on her missions.” You replied sharply. “A little rough flying and a maniac of a pilot hasn’t killed me yet.”
Jake raised a brow at the irony, but didn’t push. “Need a hand down?” He asked instead. 
“I got it.”
He shot you a look that clearly said he didn’t believe you, but he dismounted alone regardless. Remaining in Bob’s saddle, you watched Jake stride towards Neytiri’s ikran and raise his hands in preparation to help Tuk down. 
Then you remembered that there were things to do and a clan to inform, all whilst you were relaxing on someone else’s ikran. Glancing down, you realised that you couldn’t actually judge how high the drop from the saddle to the ground was going to be. Even the flight up had drained you, and you could feel yourself on the cusp of crashing now that your adrenaline rush had well and truly died. Readjusting your grasp on the saddle straps, you yelped when Bob seemed to sense your struggle and smoothly lowered himself to the ground. Stretching your legs down, you scrambled for purchase whilst clinging tightly to the saddle. 
Bob was surprisingly patient and remained still until your feet touched cool stone and you slid off him entirely. He cooed softly as you leant against him, the world briefly spinning now that you had moved too much.
At your back, Mo’at’s booming voice echoed throughout the chamber.  <”Welcome home!”> Glancing over your shoulder, you found the Tsahik and a good chunk of the clan crowded around the landing area. 
Despite how gently you had moved, the movement pulled your torso wound wrong and you hissed in pain, ripping a hand away from the saddle to apply pressure. Which was bloody ridiculous because you’d just endured an entire flight without it complaining more than a dull throb. 
Your knees buckled without you focusing hard on keeping them straight, but luckily, Bob was a nice tempered ikran and simply followed you down instead of watching you topple over like Jake probably would have if you had instead allowed him to help.
Bob cooed encouragingly, his big head swinging round to lightly push at your shoulder. His scales were cool against your heated skin; soothing. 
Distantly, you could hear Mo’at waxing poetry to the clan, declaring some bullshit about Eywa repaying everyone’s hard work and devotion by offering one of the fallen a second chance. The People ate it up with hums of agreement, blindly trusting their Tsahik as they should. She might have mentioned the other recoms, or dragged Jake’s situation into the mix, but you couldn’t really hear.
White noise had swept in and drowned out her loud, regal voice. Your vision swam, but you could feel the stone you were sitting on and the saddle strap still clutched tightly in your hand. You could hear Bob chirping and feel the vibrations of feet approaching. 
Shadows flitted across your unseeing vision as a hand soothed down your back, whilst more checked your forehead for a fever. An even smaller set cupped your cheek, encouraging you to look at a small, pale face locked away behind an exo mask. You blinked slowly, feeling horrendously nauseous. 
Someone else dropped to their knees by your side, causing the other hands to retreat. The hands that touched you now were uncertain but supportive, encouraging your crumbled form to lean into them. You felt hands on your kuru, lifting and moving the braid, but it didn’t hurt, so you didn’t bother to fight it. 
There was softer, comforting talking happening right in front of your face, but your ears couldn’t figure out the words. Not whether they spoke in Na’vi or English, let alone what was being said, but the sound was comforting all the same as you felt yourself beginning to drift. 
There was zing up your kuru that flooded warmth into the base of your skull where your braid connected to the top of your spine. The pain seemed to ebb in its wake, leaving behind a sensation that could only be described as soothing.
I’ve got you. Tsu’tey’s voice promised, although it spoke in your mind rather than out loud. Clearer than anything that was happening in High Camp. He sounded kind, like he had in the memories, instead of angry at your very existence.
Hurts. You thought back, letting out a pained shout as you were abruptly lifted by whoever you were leaning into. Their grasp was firm on you, more grounding than painful now that you were being held steady.
I know. We’re gonna make you better.
Spider? He is here.
More vibrations thrummed through your cheek, which was pressed against a cool collarbone, as the person holding you spoke out loud. Almost instantly, a small hand reached up to grab your limp arm, which hung down. Five fingers squeezed down, sending a bolt of relief through you.
You found yourself suddenly grateful that this inevitable crash hadn’t happened in the forest. If they had decided to leave you behind, you would’ve been vulnerable to predators or detected by the RDA. But here you were instead, hidden within the heart of the clan, concealed within the floating mountains. That is right. Tsu’tey soothed in your mind. You are safe here. We will not allow harm to come to you.
And you believed him. 
The rest was a blur after Tsu’tey ducked into Mo’at’s hut. Your strength had almost completely departed now, as you hung limply in Tsu’tey’s grasp. Strangely, the Olo’eyktan continued to be unsettlingly gentle as he sat himself down beside the fire, with you cradled between his knees and your head resting back across his shoulder. His touch burned your over sensitive skin, but it was as soothing as it was unsettling. 
You saw the hut through Tsu’tey’s eyes, your own suddenly too tired to stay open. You were in the same hut as before, Mo’at’s herbs hanging from the ceiling whilst a pot of something strong bubbled over the flames. Spider had already moved towards where Mo’at kept her instruments, his back tense as he began pulling out various things. You could feel Tsu’tey searching for something to say to soothe his worries, but Mo’at swept in before he could voice anything.
<”Good.”> The Tsahik breathed as the curtains swished shut behind her. There was an unspoken lightness to her tone as she moved further into the room, ruffling Spider’s dreads as she went. <”I will not have to bully you into creating the bond. That shall allow this to go much more easily.”> She paused to take note of what Spider had already begun to pull from her supply, a proud grin tugging across her lips at what she found. <”You’re learning.”> She praised, to which both you and Tsu’tey noticed some of the tension leaving Spider.
Mo’at squeezed his shoulder, before returning her attention to you and frowning. <”Now, let us see the damage.”> She approached on steady feet, sinking to her hunches at Tsu’tey’s side as she began asking questions about your injuries. 
Between the three of them, they began patching you up. Tsu’tey kept you steady and the pain at bay, whilst Mo’at cut away your shirt and the old leaf bandages to get at the wounds beneath. Spider handed over disinfectants and cooling salves that she took great care in firmly rubbing into the fresh wounds. The pressure was even and predictable, allowing you to suck in shaky breaths whenever she withdrew her hand for another dose. 
As Mo’at carefully bandaged you up, you felt Tsu’tey beginning to relax on the other end of the bond. Until now, he’d been careful to keep his own emotions in check, so much so that you had barely realised he was tense. But now you could feel it. His anxiety came in waves, ebbing and flowing with no rhythm. As soon as he was calming the first, a second would unexpectedly sweep in to drench him, causing his heartbeat to pound against your back. Stubbornly, his face remained unreadable.
With what little strength you had left, you reached up to cover his hand that was gently curled over your stomach. 
I’m fine now. You told him mentally with a tight squeeze to the back of his hand. Good as new.
There was no fresh wave of guilt to challenge your claim, and something visibly loosened in him. Through the bond, you got the vague sense that he wanted to bury his face into your shoulder and cling tightly, but it was gone as quickly as it came. 
<”Tsu’tey sit them up higher.”> Mo’at suddenly said from closer than you were anticipating. Dutifully, Tsu’tey obeyed, whilst you cracked open an eyelid to find Mo’at holding a bowl of something steaming and a spoon. <”There you are.”> She said softly, <”try and eat something before you go back to sleep. Today has taken a lot from you. You will need your strength.”> As she spoke, she filled the spoon with warm broth and raised it to your mouth. You opened and hummed in thanks as the warmth flooded from your tongue into your body. It was the most delicious thing you’d had since waking up. Hearty and soothing, sweet but not too much so. Worlds better than RDA rations. It warmed you from the inside out, allowing sleep to make your eyelids heavy.
<”Spider, could you clear some space for a spare hammock, of course we’ll need to monitor them-”>
<”Dad and I could look after them!”> Spider rushed out before abruptly cutting himself off. He cleared his throat. <”I mean, we have room. In our hut?”>
You grumbled softly, content to let them figure it out between them. With the broth heavy in your belly, you could feel sleep finally digging its claws in and refusing to relent. This time, you couldn’t have stayed awake if you wanted to. 
>_<
For what felt like weeks but could have only been days, you flowed in and out of consciousness like river water around submerged stones. When the current pulled you higher, you managed to peel your eyes open to find a woven hut roof and a warm bowl of something light to eat waiting for you. 
And when it pulled you deep down within yourself, you relied on the comforting presence of Tsu’tey to keep you grounded. During those times you shared Tsaheylu, the pain was relieved better than any painkiller, as if Tsu’tey swept it away through sheer force of will. With the connection also came stories, fond memories that Tsu’tey offered to pass the time. Some you recalled from before everything went to shit, and some that were new.
If you were especially lucky, you would drift up enough to hear Tsu’tey asking Spider for memory ideas. To which the boy would happily and animatedly narrate some fond memory he had, whilst Tsu’tey recalled it from his own perspective and fed it down the bond to you. 
It was a simple, repetitive existence. So much so that it was jarring to float upwards again and find yourself staying there. 
Your eyes were crusty as you peeled them open, your back smarting from lying still for so long. But you could already tell you didn’t hurt as much. There were still bandages wrapped securely around your torso, slightly restricting your breathing, but you didn’t feel wet under them. Your injuries were definitely on the mend. 
The hammock you were tucked in swayed gently as the rest of the hut came into view. It was not one you had been in before. 
In the pit, the cooking fire had fizzled out into nothing, whereas the repetitive, slow breathing of someone nearby alerted you to the fact you were not alone. Everything hurt as you eased yourself up into a sitting position, surprised to find yourself stripped of your ratty, RDA issued uniform and instead dressed in the traditional na’vi loincloth. Your hair felt clean for the first time in days, the build up of sweat and grime washed away whilst you were unconscious. 
The world swayed as you struggled to haul yourself out of the hammock, dark spots floating across your vision as you grasped one of the supports for dear life. The tent your hammock was strung up in was tidy, but clinical, with hooks lining the ceiling supports in uniformed rows and baskets of healing supplies carefully tucked away against the far wall. A long rug covered most of the uneven stone floor, whereas the entrance to your right was pulled to, but not obstructed.
“Zaza?” A small voice groaned from behind you, heavy with sleep. Your ears pricked as you turned, finding Spider half out of a hammock three times too large for him. “Where are you going?” There was thinly veiled panic hidden in his tone, accented with the way he was holding himself dangerously still. Uncertain whether to approach.
“Where am I?” You asked instead of answering, tail ramrod straight as the boy fully slipped out of the hammock. His stripes were dull now, somehow, you could tell even in the low light. 
“In the infirmary,” Spider offered easily, hands plainly in sight as he slowly approached. “I wanted to take you home but Dad said you might not be comfortable with it.”
“I see.” You replied neutrally.
“Are you hungry?” Spider offered when you didn’t follow the sentence up with anything else. You found yourself nodding hesitantly, to which Spider smiled tightly. The cuts Quaritch’s knife had left across his throat had scabbed over.
“Can we go to mine and Dad’s tent? We have ingredients there for breakfast?”
“Only if that is okay with your Dad.” It felt weird to refer to Tsu’tey like that. “He won’t mind.” Spider replied too quickly, flashing you a winning smile. Smiling back, you followed him out of the tent and into the main chamber of High Camp.
The camp was quiet considering the early hour, with only the odd hunter milling around and the ikran perched near the cave mouth. 
Spider walked noticeably slow ahead of you, glancing back periodically as if you would slip away between the tents if he didn’t keep an eye on you. 
The boy’s tent was surprisingly empty of Tsu’tey when he held the curtain open for you. As you rounded the dormant fire pit to take a seat, you noted the two hammocks strung near the back wall, alongside the knick knacks and keepsakes scattered beneath the one on the left - clearly Spiders. Whereas Tsu’tey’s was neatly tidied with his bow stand empty and his arrows gone. The tent felt homely, and well lived in.
Spider was clearly comfortable navigating it. With confidence, he woke a fire and began pulling all manner of fruits out of the various baskets near the entrance. Pausing to tie back his dreadlocks, he neatly pulled out a spear knife from a box and got comfortable on the opposite side of the fire. WIth a steady grip, he ducked his head and began dutifully cutting the closest thing to him - a yovo fruit.  
Between you, the fire popped merrily, and you very quickly realised you had nothing to say to him. Besides sharing a near death experience and a common drive to keep each other alive, you realised you had nothing in common. You didn’t really know him.
“How’s your throat?” “Healing.” Spider replied after a heartbeat of silence. “H-how’s your side?” “Better.” You assured him, with a subconscious touch to the healing injury in question. “I’m assuming I have you and your Dad to thank for that?” Spider ducked his head. “Dad did most of the work, I just helped.” “And yet you were standing guard when I came to.” 
Spider flushed this time as if he was embarrassed you had noticed. “I fell asleep.” He admitted with a mumble. 
The corner of your mouth tugged up at the quiet admission. “Don’t beat yourself up over it, I’m the exact same when I sit still for too long. You’ve had a difficult-” you trailed off, “how long have I been out?” “Two days.” Spider supplied helpfully. 
“Thank you, it’s been a difficult few days.”
“It hasn’t been bad.” Spider admitted absently, using his knife to half and scrape some freshly sliced  yovo fruit into two nearby bowls. He was quiet for a moment as he picked up the slightly larger portion and held it out to you. Ducking your head in thanks, you reached forward to take it from him, but Spider didn’t let go.
Meeting his gaze, you found him already watching you with a long look. “Thank you for not dying again.” He said sincerely, “I’d really appreciate getting to know you this time around.”
You smiled bitterly at the sentiment, a look that Spider mirrored easily. 
“And I, you.” You replied easily, finding that you meant it as he let you take the bowl. “I’ve heard great things about you Spider, it’ll be nice to get to know you better.” He averted his gaze then, scooping up a bit of fruit and stuffing it into his mouth instead of responding straight away. Taking a page out of his book, you lowered your gaze and did the same. The fruit was delicious. It was sweet and full to bursting. With every bite you had to wipe the sides of your mouth because of the sheer amount of juice in every piece.
“Will you stay?” Spider asked when his bowl was half empty. You paused mid-bite to find him looking at the fire instead of you.
Swallowing your mouthful, you wiped your chin and asked seriously, “do you want me to?”
“Yes.” Spider said without missing a beat. His expression was painfully vulnerable, full of hope and what could only be described as longing. “Dad does too. And Mo’at. Jake and Neytiri too, but they won’t admit it because they don’t want to pressure you.” He paused, “you’ll be safe with us here.”
“I would be.” You agreed, “but I have to see if it’s the right decision first. If I don’t fit here, then I can’t force it. Do you understand?” Spider pouted but didn’t contradict you. “I understand.” He said maturely, and you knew he was being honest. 
>_<
Recovery was slow, but you’d never been the kind to remain in bed for long. Even with Mo’at barring you from contributing on hunts, you ensured you rose with the sun and helped out around the camp in whatever way your injuries allowed. Sometimes, that was cleaning or servicing stolen RDA weapons alongside other hunters, or you were washing and prepping Mo’at’s herbs. 
In those first few days, the clan gave you a wide berth, which you appreciated. In return, you remained unarmed and calmed yourself by sitting with your back to a wall or against someone’s hut whilst you completed your tasks. You kept your head down, and gradually, their unease faded. 
Usually, Spider or one of the Sully kids joined you for an hour or two, talking about anything or everything whilst their parents hunted or contributed with patrols. But today, Tsu’tey sat himself down opposite you, a basket of fruit balanced on his hip. He kept his gaze fixed on his work as he crouched a comfortable distance away, and immediately occupied himself with peeling the fruits. 
You said nothing, and as you had the last few days, refused to start up a conversation. As long as neither of you opened your mouths, you tended to be able to exist in the same space without dissolving into insults or painful memories. You knew he was trying. 
You knew Tsu’tey was attempting to rebuild some of that trust in the only way he knew how, but it was unsettling. You’d never known him to be this quiet. This comfortable in existing in someone else’s space without having to voice his internal monologue. It was just another reminder of how much he had changed whilst you’d been frozen in time. 
And what’s more, some of the things he was doing for you, couldn’t be explained away as an Olo’eyktan looking out for one of his own. Even after you’d woken up and spent that first morning having breakfast with Spider, you had been a long way from recovered. 
Moving around without long naps in between chores left you exhausted and oftentimes passed out in the weirdest places, such as Tsu’tey’s tent floor when you had been waiting for Spider to finish making lunch. That time - and every time after - you’d woken up in a hammock instead of on the floor. 
When a fever had come for vengeance and your wound had gotten a minor infection, he’d been nothing short of doting. Feeding you light meals to settle your stomach. Braiding your sweaty hair back so it was off your forehead and didn’t cling to your neck. Changing your bandages like clockwork. Adding and taking away blankets where needed. 
In a lot of ways, it reminded you of how your parents had doted on one another. Performing thankless acts of service without the other ever having to ask for it. 
And through it all, he scowled the entire time. Like constantly. And you definitely shouldn’t have found that as achingly familiar and reassuring as you had. You definitely shouldn’t have started looking into it, searching for the fiery, annoying man you’d fallen head over heels in love with all that time ago. 
You were submerged so deeply in your thoughts, that you’d completely forgotten where you were and what you were doing, until you managed to sink your knife into your thumb. With a hiss and a jerk, you dropped the fruit you’d been peeling and jammed your bleeding thumb into your mouth and sat back on your hunches.
Across from you, Tsu’tey clicked his teeth. “Idiot.” He sighed, but not with his usual bite, hell, it practically sounded fond, as if you’d done something endearing instead of pathetic. “Here,” he continued, reaching into the pouch secured across his chest strap and pulling out a river leaf. “Let me.” Slowly, he reached across the distance between you, his expression open and sickeningly kind. You let him take your hand without a fuss. Carefully, Tsu’tey mopped up the blood, a soft tut leaving his lips as he assessed the depth of the injury. 
“Do I need to go back to Mo’at?” You joked half-heartedly.
“Luckily not. She’s getting sick of only seeing you.” 
“Not for long hopefully.” You interjected, “I’m on the mend for real this time.” Tsu’tey hummed noncommittally. “Have you given any thought into what you will do once you’re healed?” He asked point blank, with no warning or prompt to get him to say it. 
You blinked. “What brought that on?” Tsu’tey ducked his head, a gesture you’d noticed Spider doing when he was embarrassed. “I overheard Spider asking about it the other week, and I can’t stop thinking about it.” He admitted sheepishly. 
Just to fuck with him, you gasped dramatically. “You were eavesdropping?” “I was not!” Tsu’tey corrected defensively with a scowl. He bit his lip and averted his gaze again. “I was worried when neither of you were in the infirmary when I went to check. Naturally, I checked home before looking anywhere else for him.”
“I see.”
“So?”
“What?” With a firm crack of his tail, he caught your gaze and held it. “I answered your question, so answer mine.”
He was still holding onto your hand with both of his, you realised absently. He was sat close enough now, that the combination of all three hands had fallen into his lap, the river leaf forgotten and your finger beginning to scab. It was such an intimate position, that you almost forgot what his question was.
“If I were to stay,” you started carefully, intending to see how far he would go, “I would need somewhere to live. Mo’at’s going to chase me out of the infirmary one of these days if I stay there much longer.” “We have spare tents.” Tsu’tey said neutrally, ears swivelling to face you, showing just how eager for your answer he really was. “And if you were comfortable, you could even move in with Spider and I if none of them were to your liking.” He paused, before quickly tacking on a panicked, “but only if you wanted to. There is no pressure of course.” “Of course.” You agreed readily, feeling more at ease than you had yet. With a small smirk, you decided to keep fucking with him. “And I would need my weapons back.” “That can be arranged.” Tsu’tey agreed, before glancing up and stalling at your expression. You tilted your head.
“And I would need to negotiate a relationship with my son if his father was open to it.” Tsu’tey went very still causing panic to slam into your sternum. Abruptly, the tables had turned and it was you scrambling to justify yourself. “Of course, I wouldn’t want to step on your toes. I don’t even have to see him that often if you’re not comfortable with it. I can take him out for a day, or we don’t even have to do that. I could be like that distant cousin, or the weird clone twin of his dead- fuck this isn’t coming out how I wanted it to-”
“I think,” Tsu’tey cut in sharply, looking more amused than offended. “That Spider would love to build a connection with you.” Tsu’tey’s hands had gone completely slack around your own. The sluggishly bleeding cut completely forgotten now that the air between you was thick with untold tension. 
“And what about his father,” you pushed, studying his expression, “would he be happy with that arrangement?” 
Tsu’tey’s gaze dragged across your face and circled at least twice down to your lips. “He could be persuaded.” He said darkly, making your stomach squirm from his tone. 
His eyes had fallen to half mast during the little back and forth, his pupils swollen as they looked at you. You could feel your tail wagging at your back, and you hated to think how eager you probably looked. 
With a hard blink, you dragged yourself off of that train of thought before it could derail off into dangerous territory. Kissing him would be a stupid idea right now, you reminded yourself. In fact, it would be more stupid than marching into Ardmore’s office and openly admitting to treason. Not only would it jeopardise your position within the clan, but it wouldn’t actually fix anything between you and Tsu’tey and might even end with him pulling away.
No, as gorgeous as he looked right now, and how much you could see he wanted you, you needed to wait. There was no room for this, when you were only just beginning to trust each other once again. Maybe soon, but not now. Not today.
Clinging tightly to that reasoning, you sat back and pulled your hand out of Tsu’tey’s grip.
He blinked and seemed to come back to himself. With a sheepish clearing of his throat, he also shuffled back and out of reach. Ears lowered, he took up his knife again and continued his previous task of peeling the fruit, dutifully pretending like nothing had happened.
You hated it. But you hated that blank expression on his face more.
Scrambling for something to say - anything - to keep the conversation flowing, you blurted out the first thing that randomly came to mind to fill the silence. 
“How did we end up adopting, Spider?”
Startled, Tsu’tey’s head snapped up. His brows furrowed as he struggled to process the question, as if bewildered you were still willing to talk to him after pulling away.  
“What?” “I mean, if I’m going to be co-parenting with you, then I should know these things.” Something like relief flooded his expression. “I see.” He said easily. “So,” you prodded, with a pointed wiggle of your ears, “how did we end up adopting a human child together?” 
Tsu’tey smiled fondly to himself. “It was after the battle. We went to Hell’s Gate to raid for medical supplies. I insisted on coming along because you were so small, and you fought me every step of the way because I had suffered a shoulder injury.”
Instinctively, you knew which shoulder to glance down at. The bullet wounds were old and faded with time. You could only imagine how long it had taken him to heal them, and how long it had taken to rebuild the strength in that arm.
“The corridors were stupidly small and impractical, but echoey. I heard a baby crying and you followed me when I went to investigate. We found Spider in someone’s bunk room, and you told me he was hungry. From there, it was just a matter of no one else having the time to take care of him, and you stepping up. And as your mate, I did too.”
“Huh.” 
“Anything else you want to know?” Tsu’tey prodded good naturedly. You thought for a moment. “What was his first word?” Tsu’tey stopped his polishing to laugh. A proper laugh. The kind that started deep in your belly and burst its way out of your mouth and demanded you to tilt your head back from the sheer force of it. A truly gorgeous expression on him.
“What?” You defended yourself with a chuckle, “I need to know the important information.”
“Of course.” Tsu’tey chuckled, the mood light. “His first English word was uh-oh, because he knocked my bow off your desk. And his first Na’vi word was Sempu.”
“Oh, I see how it is!” You mocked, pretending to be offended whilst Tsu’tey shot you a wicked grin as if he’d won. “So his first word was practically ‘dad’, big deal.” Tsu’tey hummed.
“Alright, what’s his favourite food?”
And it went like that for several hours. You and Tsu’tey basking in each other’s company, learning and reliving fond moments from a time long gone. It was easy and familiar, and it finally felt like home.
~FIN~
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Last Chapter <- Part 5
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Revenant!Jazz ideas:
Continuing from this DPxDC prompt of mine, I’ve had some more thoughts about Jasmine Fenton and Revenants, especially where it concerns DC lore and Jason Todd in particular.
———————-
In my original post, @starlightcat04 asked whether or not Jazz’s eyes would glow toxic green too. I propose that, no, they wouldn’t.
While it’s a common head canon that Ectoplasm is heavily influenced by emotions, Jazz’s Ecto-contamination is bone deep and pure, unlike Jason’s. So no, I don’t believe her eyes would glow green.
They turn from the teal she had in life to a smoldering green that reflects light just like a feline, with a heavily damaged sclera that is perceived as black in low lighting, with ash grey veins spreading from her eye sockets down to her jaw like tears.
Her once bright hair turns from a lively orange-ish red to the color of cooling embers.
That which caused her death, a punctured artery is half-way healed by the time Jazz reanimates in the crematorium, so not only is she supposed to be dead still, she also has to be very careful with her movements otherwise she could very well bleed out again before she is fully healed.
What else changes with Revenant!Jazz?
In exchange for a higher mental processing and the high damage absorption of Revenants, Jazz loses most (almost all) of her memories of her life. What she does remember is thankfully not her death, but rather Danny’s, his death scream and ghostly wail overlap in her mind, at times causing severe headaches and nausea.
(According to his wiki page, Jason spent a year in a coma and as an amnesiac vagrant, therefore it’s not entirely without precedent that Jazz wouldn’t keep hers.)
Her Ecto-contamination has to factor in a lot though.
Jason was revived by Superboy-Prime’s Reality Shattering Punch. Jazz was reanimated by her own willpower, aided by Ecto to allow her body to heal and regress the stages of rigor mortis.
———//:///////———-
What does Jazz need to accomplish as a Revenant?
In the original prompt I wrote that Jazz returned to keep Danny safe- broad enough for a prompt, but what exactly does “safe” for a halfa entail?
Let’s list the major threats to Danny’s health, beginning with the obvious: the Ghost Investigation Ward and The Fenton Parents.
The Fentons are capable of tracking Phantom by his Ecto-signature, creating and having created weaponry specifically designed to target the ghost in question, to which they pass that tech on to the GIW.
If Danny remains in Gotham, the ambient Ecto will scramble the tech over enough of a distance, but if Danny were in a line up of three people right next to a GIW agent he’d be clocked almost immediately.
So, the Fentons and the GIW have to go. How does this happen?
The greatest irony I could possibly inflict on these anti-ghosters- becoming ghosts themselves. I won’t go into detail about what my brain jumped to when I thought about that outcome, but let’s just say it was pretty dark.
(And karmically well-deserved.)
#3 on the list depends on where Danny is when Jazz is finished with numbers 1 & 2 on her list.
If Danny is is Gotham and staying there for the long haul, then I believe this girl would take one look at Batman’s rogue gallery and nope them so hard everyone in Gotham gets the sense of their world about to be rocked, but the ones she gunning for the most?
(Joker, Bane, Manbat, Firefly, Madhatter, Riddler…)
They get the sensation that someone just walked over their non-existent graves.
(I got a little gleeful demented imagining Jazz just straight up ripping Manbat’s wings clean off, burning Firefly alive and throwing a detoxed Bane into a crowd of vengeful Gothamites.)
(Jazz learns that Joker killed a young hero with a crowbar and a bomb. She’s fully onboard with turnabout being fair play when it comes to that Pennywise reject.)
(I can’t even begin to list every rogue Jazz cuts down, it she doesn’t kill all of them, just most of their number.)
(Gotham celebrates for weeks.)
(I’m not sure whether or not Jazz kills the four mentioned previously in a couple of nights, one night or over a a few months, but it doesn’t take as long as one might think.)
/://:///////:::/::::///////
What’s next for Revenant!Jazz?
I’m still writing The Regent series, so I doubt I’ll come back to this for a while, but I’ll still be posting ideas and whatnot about Revenant!Jazz. There’s still plenty to explore here, and I have a pretty angst/bittersweet ending for Jazz in mind I want to talk about later.
If you have any ideas to add, please feel free to comment! If anyone does write this, please let me know so I can read it!
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abybweisse · 1 year
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Why I think Undertaker has to be Cedric, revisited
At this point in the series, I'm a bit surprised how many in the fandom not just don't see him as Cedric K. Ros-- but actually rail against the idea.
So, here's a long, somewhat thorough overview of the situational and physical clues that he's Cedric, the father of Vincent and Francis/Frances.
Situational hints
How he cries over the details of Vincent's death. Not just that he died but what became of his remains. I'd cry over my dead son, too, especially if I had the ability to reanimate corpses but his body was destroyed by fire so that I couldn't do that. Let alone the fact his cinematic records were destroyed, so I not only couldn't make a bizarre doll of him, but I couldn't even review his memories to see what happened right before he died. This ties in with what he later says about not wanting to lose any more Phantomhives. But it strongly suggests that whoever set the fire did so specifically to thwart the efforts of a grim reaper. Whoever did that either knew Undertaker was a reaper or was at least following the instructions of someone who knew.
The whole not wanting to lose more Phantomhives thing. Claudia/Cloudia is gone, and so is Vincent. Reanimating real Ciel is the best he can do to not let the older twin go. He tried to destroy Sebastian to release our earl "Ciel" from their demon contract and might try again. Makes you wonder just how many Phantomhives he's really lost already. As well as where others might still be alive. What exactly was his business in France? 🤔
Even his odd comment to our earl (before the attack) that he wasn't sure which twin this was... but that it didn't matter because they were both Phantomhives. Instead of seeing an heir and a spare, he saw them equally. At least he did then. I suspect he now sees our earl as a spare soul... or conversely sees real Ciel as a spare body. I guess both could be true, making them still essentially equal in his eyes. Again, this could be another attempt to save our earl from Sebastian. By putting our earl's soul into the unmarked body of real Ciel, that might void the contract... unless the seal on our earl's eye also somehow affected his soul. 🤔 Anyway. I digress, since that gets into a separate theory discussion.
Standing in to help young Mr. Pitt take a photo of the twins. That's right after telling our earl it doesn't matter which twin he is. Then the other twin and Mr. Pitt arrive, the latter holding a new camera. It's odd that Mr. Pitt would ask a non-relative of the kids (besides a nanny) to help stage the photo, though Pitt is perhaps the non-traditionalist anyway. Undertaker seems like he's shocked to be asked, but he also seems amused. Mr. Pitt likely doesn't even suspect Undertaker is the twins' paternal grandfather, otherwise he might have seen it as a scoop, á la "LOWLY UNDERTAKER IS SIRE TO PROMINENT NOBLE FAMILY" or something equally scandalous. Because undertakers were considered low class citizens. So, Undertaker acts shocked but complies with giddy delight. By asking Undertaker to help stage the photo, he has likely, unwittingly asked a relative of the boys, which would be considered completely appropriate for the time period.
How he treats the Midfords. He recognizes Lizzie's talents and skill with a sword, otherwise he wouldn't have wanted her at Sphere Music Hall as a protector of the lords of the stars, while he kept them and Blavat hidden away. So he probably had Blavat bring her into the cult. Undertaker might see some of himself in Lizzie, but he definitely sees it in Frances/Francis, and I don't just mean physically. Both women fight in a similar manner as he does: highly skillful and graceful. Idk what he thinks of Edward, but I know he got a great laugh from watching the Phantom Five (including Edward) perform onstage. He doesn't interact much, if at all, with Alexis, who isn't a Phantomhive.
What he says to Francis/Frances, as well as how she responds. Again, he hardly acknowledges Alexis' existence, but Undertaker speaks directly with "Lady Phantomhive". That's really important because she's married into the Midford family and hasn't gone by her maiden name in many years. As long as Edward is old plus at least a bit longer, since she strikes me as too proper for a shotgun wedding, even if she weren't a noble. So, he sets her apart from her husband because she was born a Phantomhive. He doesn't want to lose her, either, because she is her mother's daughter. Then, when she nervously states he hasn't changed in roughly four years, he pokes fun at the fact he hasn't changed in a much longer time frame. He says her birth, over 30 years ago, seems like just yesterday. She's sweating bullets, and it's not just his creepy vibes. She knows he means it -- that 30-some-odd years is nothing to him... and that he very specifically recalls her birth. I'm pretty sure she knows he's her father, and she's horribly embarrassed by the fact. Alexis doesn't have a clue about it, and she'd rather keep it that way. But what he says strongly implies that he was present at her birth. Maybe down the hall, like Vincent was when his sons were born, but there... and just as anxious and excited and proud.
How the years for Cedric's birth and death dates are hidden by a speech bubble. Cloudia/Claudia's dates are fully shown because she's a regular human being. Well... a human, anyway. But if Undertaker is Cedric, then the birth and death dates for him would be from when he was a human, before he committed suicide and was sentenced to serve out his punishment as a reaper. That death date could be decades or even centuries before Cloudia/Claudia was even born. Remember that this family tree isn't one prepared by humans; it's part of the dossier that the German reapers have for our earl. The focus is purely biological ancestry, not marriages. Cloudia/Claudia and Cedric don't have to be married to be on this family tree; he is biologically the father of both Vincent and Francis/Frances.
Physical hints
He looks a lot like Francis/Frances and Edward. And Yana-san tweeted years ago that Francis and Edward look like Cedric. Here's a comparison between Edward and Undertaker. Here's one between Francis/Frances and Undertaker.
The place on his right where his hair has a long braid seems to match up with Lizzie's and Francis/Frances' right side locks that tend to stick out. He's got it tucked behind his right ear, but the braid might originate from the same spot. If Lizzie and her mother pushed those locks back, behind their right ears, the placement would be the same as Undertaker's braid.
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He has the exact same baby hairs at the nape of his neck as Lizzie and Francis/Frances. They might be a bit shorter, but they are definitely there. Here's an old post about it. Edward possibly does, too, and we could tell if his hair was grown out and pulled up, but his hair is short and a bit shaggy on the nape of his neck, so we can't be sure.
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eldritch-spouse · 5 months
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lmao Vesper 😭😭😭
Ok wait for me I have new genius idea for crackass scapegoat!AU
Reader is the poor employee with a curse of being a magnet for Icons. They're trying their best, applying for the jobs in the most "human" spaces – but it's useless to try, it's only matter of time when they're meeting face to face with something very huge and demonic. They're not even trying, really. They're not even at some high position. They're just too unlucky to being the one who listens to all complaints and death threats... yet still very lucky to somehow remain alive after that.
After being kicked out from the theatre, their first honest job, they're totally broke. Underground casino? Yeah, yeah, shady. Sign them up!
Work is actually not so bad until some strange green giant scolds the shit out of them for "playing cheap" and almost brings them to that hot shithole– good thing he got distracted and the only thing poor employee lost are all their money and a job.
Damn, here we go again- Nothing could be wrong with working in a popular restaurant, yeah? Everyone gone through it-
Oh, how lucky they're to stay alive after that day when enormous snake woman decided to visit their modest establishment of a workplace. Their coworker, fellow waiter, is not so lucky tho. Poor Kenny.
With a generous amount of trauma, our scapegoat is escaping to something- something completely different, you know? They got a jackpot! Luck is TOTALLY on their side after all this suffering, how else you can explain that they got a job in that prestigious boutique?
... Well, let's say, they haven't break in tears only because of their lack of dignity at this point. That guy was marvelous, but he almost crashed them into the pulp with all his requirements- they're not even a designer, really....
Okay, maybe, they need to take a rest. Big rest. Take their stress out somewhere. Ikea, furniture store, bed section. Peace and love.
How it's even possible to be fired from a chill place like this? Oh, that's easy. Some buff dude built like a mountain just sorta appeared and fell asleep at the one of the biggest beds- and for some reason they fell asleep on their workplace while it happened. When they woke up tho, here was no one but a broken bed and complain in the customer's book.
That's it. That's a last nerve they had. They're escaping to the amusement park, to be the clown they are and being paid for it, as they deserve.
Only to be mocked by a guy with a fucking macaroni limbs. No, here was other people too, but he brought the greatest display of mockery and dishonour ever possible. Even their destroyed dignity somehow reanimated just to get beat down again.
...
Kalymir has zero idea why he woke up with a strong desire to go on the fucking "DOTA tournament" and tf it even means, but he already hyped up and ready to crush in-
After having to gamble at the same table as the Lord of Greed and nearly losing ownership of your soul.
After working at a restaurant good enough that the Queen of Gluttony unintentionally erotically fellated your entire body and made you feel like a twinkie.
After getting your department in IKEA utterly destroyed by the King of Sloth's insistence that he nap specifically in your section.
After having the King of Pride rip into you so viciously that you only wished you had been swallowed.
After having the King of Envy out-clown you.
And now, seeing what you can only guess is the King of Wrath well on his way to likely turn you into a stain on the wall...
You think of what could have been. Before this chain of horrid luck took over your life. In that one first job where you had to confront Vesper about his tendency for "group affections"-
Maybe you really should have just taken the deal and sucked him off.
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jesterwriting · 6 months
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JESTER MY DEAREST !!! I am SO excited for you that you've hit 200 followers, you absolutely deserve them AND MORE !!
If I may please request for your milestone event, Law with G/N or AFAB Reader with Dangerous Thing 😭😭😭💖💖💖 IF POSSIBLE, thank you sm for everything you do, you are integral to this fandom 💖💖💖💖💖
Congrats again you wicked awesome mofo 💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖
pairings: mad scientist!law x assistant!reader
word count: 2.2k words
contents: DARK CONTENT AHOY!! reanimator au, modern au, dead bodies, desecrating graves, manslaughter, codependency, unhinged!law, gore, horror elements, toxic relationships, quick mention of experimentation on animals
note: HAIII MANDIE <33 TYSM IM SO EXCITED :33 okay so. i had reanimator on the brain when i listened to a dangerous thing to start planning this request and got absolutely POSSESSED. this is definitely very spooky, even though halloween is over. i hope you enjoy <33
playlist: a dangerous thing - aurora
“Something about you is soft like an angel, and something inside you is violence and danger. I knew from the moment we met, you are a dangerous thing.”
written for 200 followers event!!
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How did it come to this?
Dirt was everywhere; in your shoes, between your fingernails, in your hair. You sighed and shook your head, watching a few chunks crumble to the ground. Setting your shovel to the side, you hefted your wheelbarrow up, and wheeled it inside. It was heavy thanks to the corpse that weighed it down. Dead weight was easier to manage in your head, especially when it was already stiff with rigor mortis.
Even underneath the tarp, you could almost see its glassy eyes staring up at you. Law would tell you that you were being illogical. It wasn’t even alive, how could it bother you? What you should really be afraid of was the inevitable rampage it’d go on if he didn’t strap it down before administering his reagent. Something about being dead really made one grumpy when they woke back up again. Maybe there was an afterlife, and it was just that good that people were furious when they woke up, half rotted, in a random man’s basement.
To be entirely honest, you couldn’t blame them for being pissed off when in Law’s presence. He seemed to have a knack for that.
A bit of anxiety wormed its way into your gut, squirming uncomfortably. Desecrating graves was not your favorite way to spend your Saturday, but when Law caught wind of an untimely death on the news, his mind was working a mile a minute. It was suffocation, no damage to the body, only a lack of oxygen to the brain. In his words, it was the perfect corpse for reanimation. It was a shame he had to wait for the body to be buried before he could get his hands on it, Law would have preferred it to be fresh.
“I’m home,” You called once you crossed the threshold, unsurprised when you got no response. You had been living with Law for six months now. Moving in had been his idea. If you were going to be his assistant, it was better to have you close, and you, so blinded by your infatuation for him, agreed readily.
The wheelbarrow squeaked as you pushed it further into the living room, down the hall, and then down the basement stairs where Law waited. His laboratory was brighter than necessary. He installed fluorescent bulbs into the light fixtures to mimic a hospital setting. You didn’t know why he felt this was so important, if you had to guess, maybe it made him feel more professional while he carved into the corpses you brought home. They were mostly animals, though on the occasion, like now, the two of you got lucky enough to host human subjects.
The room stank of blood, rot, and chemicals. You wrinkled your nose, carefully maneuvering your charge down the concrete steps. Law barely spared you a glance, looking up from his microscope before he slipped on his lab coat and covered his tattooed hands with rubber gloves. You quickly followed suit. He could be impatient at times, especially when he was excited to get started, and you would rather not get snapped at so late at night.
“This is the right one?” Law pulled back the tarp to get a good look at the body. It was dressed in a suit, arms crossed over its chest. He gave it a once over, searching for any signs of damage from the trek over, thankfully finding none. “You did well, thank you.”
Your heart swelled under the rare praise, a warm blush heating your cheeks. “I sure hope it's the right one because I’m not digging up another grave tonight.”
“You will if I ask you too,” Law said, and you didn’t bother to argue because you knew he was right. You were weak when it came to him.
No words were spoken as you worked in tandem with each other. Law linked his arms under the body’s armpits and you grabbed it by the ankles, heaving it onto the metal table. Its limbs were stiff, locked in one position. When it was reanimated, there was a significant chance it wouldn’t be able to move. Neither of you wanted to take that chance, though. Not again, at least. A black eye and a concussion were enough to keep the two of you sticking to protocol from then on.
Law left you to strap it down to dig through the refrigerator for his reagent, a green fluid glowing under the fluorescent lights. You couldn’t get its arms uncrossed, so you focused on buckling the leather straps across its waist, legs, and forehead. The dead were strong, abnormally so. If you weren’t careful, the corpse would break free and end up destroying the lab. Then, you’d be stuck living with a pissed off Law for the next month. Which you would rather not deal with. He was already cold, but whatever slivers of softness that shone through would dissipate completely.
Once you were done, Law filled the syringe with his reagent, flicking it a few times to rid it of air. He tilted the corpse’s head to the side to get access to the brainstem, then shoved the needle into the base of its skull. You watched the reagent leaked into its brain, and waited for the inevitable. No matter how many times you watched reanimation happen, you could never rid yourself of the sick feeling in your gut.
First, its fingers twitched. It was a barely noticeable movement, fingertips barely lifting off the table. Then, its eyes shot open, bloodshot and angry. Its back arched off the table as it fought against the restraints, mouth open in a soundless scream. You heard a pop, and watched its jaw unhinged, a horrible wail finally echoing through the enclosed space. Blood poured from the corners of its mouth onto the floor.
Bile rose in your throat, threatening to spew across Law’s pristine laboratory. It wouldn’t be the first time it happened. You had hosed the remnants of your dinner into the drain in the middle of the floor along with bits of viscera on previous nights.
Law sighed and crossed his arms. “I knew this one wouldn’t be fresh enough for any new data.”
Still, he performed his usual duties, checking for pupil dilation, recognition of its name, and other signs of life before he flopped into his chair and scribbled furiously into his notebook. All the while, the corpse screamed. If this kept up, your neighbors would complain again and you would have to deal with placating Law’s landlord again.
As his assistant, you took care of most day to day duties. When it came to the dead, Law was in his element. With the living, however, he was lost. That was where you came in. You knew he needed you, almost as bad as you needed him. Without you, he would have been arrested months ago, though he only showed his pleasure through pats on the head or the occasional softening of his eyes. It was better than anyone else ever got from him.
It made you feel special.
“You’re still here?” Law looked up from his notebook, golden eyes focused on you. He stood and ruffled your hair, a hint of fondness in his gaze. “Go get some rest, I’ll clean up once I finish with my notes.”
“Shouldn’t you… you know?” You gestured to the corpse convulsing on the table. “It’s making a lot of noise, and I really don’t want to deal with the landlord tonight.”
Almost on cue, the front door slammed open. Your landlord had a key to the house, one he threatened to use on more than one occasion if he got any more noise complaints. You guessed this was the final straw.
It wasn’t until the stomping footsteps got closer to the basement did the reality of your situation hit. There was a man in your house who was going to discover you and the man you loved standing next to a reanimated corpse that would not stop fucking screaming. You would never see Law again. At least, not with you both in prison. You kicked the metal table in frustration, hoping the gesture would shut the corpse up. It did nothing but cause a loud bang and draw your landlord closer.
“Feel better, Y/N-ya?” Even though his tone was condescending, there was a glimmer of panic in Law’s expression.
If he put the corpse down now, your landlord would still find you with a dead body strapped to a medical table. There was no way to win in this situation. Unable to think straight through the haze of adrenaline, you decided it would be best to drive a scalpel into the back of its head, silencing it permanently yet again.
You hoped it would be able to find peace.
“Shut up, Law.” You rushed past him, hoping to beat your landlord to the stairs, only to see him standing in the doorway.
He marched down to meet you, his face twisted in rage. “You're lucky I don’t call the damn cops. How many times have I warned you to keep your sick sexual activities to yourself?”
Your landlord made it about halfway into the basement before he froze, eyes trained on the now quiet corpse. His mouth flopped open. Law was shaking, genuine fear apparent on his face. You had never seen him afraid, and it made you hate your landlord for ruining everything. There wasn’t much you had in life except for Law. You didn’t know what you would do if you lost him.
Time seemed to slow down. You watched your landlord turn on his heel, prepared to run back upstairs. On all fours, you lunged forward and wrapped your fingers around his ankle, yanking him down the steps. He collapsed inward, his forehead bouncing off the concrete with a loud ‘crack!’ You could smell the blood before you saw it, the man’s body crashing down towards you. Flattening yourself to the floor, your landlord’s weight crushed you before he reached the bottom. This time the back of his head slammed against the far wall, leaving behind a bloody stain. If you looked closely, you could see chunks of skin, hair, and brain matter in it.
“Is he dead?” It didn’t sound like it was your voice talking.
Law’s terror was replaced with barely contained excitement as he examined your landlord. First, he checked his radial artery, then his carotid. When he turned to you, a smirk firmly in place, your blood ran cold.
“He’s dead,” Law confirmed.
You couldn’t stop shaking. “I-I didn’t mean to.”
Placing his palms against your face, Law’s eyes were unwavering. His thumbs rubbed soothing circles into your cheekbones. “You did good. This is the freshest body I could have hoped for, aside from killing one myself. Now, I can get the results I need.”
So cold. You were so cold. Unable to keep from shivering, you curled your knees up to your chest. Law pressed a recorder into your hands and gave you a smile that would have been reassuring if it wasn’t for the grim mania settled in it.
“I need you to record.” Your fingers pressed the button of their own accord and Law patted your head as praise.
“Administering my reagent now,” He said. Just as before, Law tilted your landlord’s head so he had access to the brainstem before injecting him with the green fluid.
“Five seconds, no response.”
It was so quiet, you could hear your own heart pounding.
“Ten seconds, no response.”
You saw a fingertip twitch upward. Law must have seen it too because his grin was a gash across his normally stoic features.
“Fifteen seconds, reanimation begins.”
Your landlord howled, body convulsing and twisting. Before you could blink, he punched Law in the mouth, sending him reeling. Blood trickled from his split lip as he scurried away. When he saw you, still hyperventilating on the steps, he tossed his lab coat over your landlord’s head and crawled in between you and the rampaging corpse.
Your landlord roared, halfway between a scream and a sob. You were scared he would continue his rampage like other subjects. To your surprise, he curled himself into the corner, rocking back forth as he cried. Distantly, you decided he had the right idea. All you wanted to do right now was cry.
Law made his his up the stairs to you and wrapped his arms around your shoulders. He was chuckling while he cradled you against him with bloodied hands. His fingers left deep red smears across your face as he wiped away your tears.
“You’re in shock, but I need you to do one more thing and then I’ll take care of you, I promise.” He gently took the recorder from your hands and replaced it with his cellphone. “Call the authorities and tell them we were attacked in our home. The basement was off limits and we found this. Tell them that our landlord went crazy and attacked us.” When you gave him a shaky nod, he pressed his forehead against yours. Repeat it back for me.”
“Found something weird in our basement. Wh-When we asked, our landlord snapped and attacked us.”
Law’s eyes softened. “Good enough.”
It was a lucky thing for Trafalgar Law that you always did as you were told.
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rockingthegraveyard · 7 months
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I've started a small collection of fics where Jason can die but he doesn't stay dead because it's my niche and I'm starving over here.
So far I only have seven so if you know of any feel free to add to this list!
Also remember to check the warnings of each piece before you read them. ✌
I'm not a zombie (but I feel like one) - wingedstarlight - (2,539) - Jason knows that when he dies, he doesn't stay dead. He puts off telling his family until the choice is taken out of his hands.
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The Life and Death(s) of Jason Todd - Nerdy_Pasta - (7,103) - Jason knew he was going to die. He wasn’t the first one to fall victim to the cold. He had seen two figures huddled together that same night, unmoving. He had to ignore them. He had to grip the tire iron tighter, and get to work on the foolishly parked car in front of him. Jason had gotten three tires hidden away and all of them off before the weather struck. He was on his way to take the fourth when he felt the raindrops pierce his thin jacket and he ducked for cover. The cover didn't hold and he had to find more, getting more and more soaked by the minute. Now Jason was in the present. Dying. Or, Jason Todd is a phoenix. How he dies and dies and lives.
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Reanimation -Lulaypp - (12,605) - How many times can a person die before they finally break? How many days can a mind last before it finally shatters? Jason isn't keen on knowing. Neither is he keen on going through it. Especially when he knows that he cannot stay dead.
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dead men tell no tales - mikkal - (15,104) - Jason died. But then he came back. This keeps happening.
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Patch Up The Tapestry I Shred - Hale13 - (18,648) -The first time Jason came back to life he could barely be considered living. The second time Jason dies he’s just as alone as he was in the warehouse in Ethiopia watching a timer countdown to zero. Or: Jason reconciles with his family, dies over and over again and learns why antagonizing magic users is a terrible idea but not necessarily in that order.
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Jason's Favorite Vacation Spot: Death - 316_frogs - (58,370) -The first time was a fluke. The second time, okay, there were extenuating circumstances. However, a third time? This was getting suspicious. --- Jason keeps dying. He becomes more acquainted with the other side. Nobody really knows what's going on.
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Of Broken, Blazing Wings - FrEShAVocaNoob - (189,227) - Jason Todd died. Now he's alive, and he doesn't know why. He has superpowers, and he doesn't know why. He has visions of a weird white room, and he doesn't know why. All he knows is that he needs to see the Joker dead, and he needs Batman to pull the trigger, and he would burn Gotham to the ground to see it happen. But you know what they say about playing with fire... (AKA the Phoenix Force exists in the DC universe and resurrects Jason Todd.)
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Additional Canon Details/Fun Facts from the RA Novelization:
* Herbert continued to use samples of Rufus’s tissue after three reanimations. He labeled the samples “Arcane” (R. Cain), as to not upset Dan.
* Herbert wrote the name “L. A. Zarus” on his toe-tag when he and Dan snuck into the morgue.
* Meg is also a medical student, but studies medicine “informally” and “(doesn’t want) to practice it.”
* When he first touched a dead body, Dan thought the skin felt like “a milk carton,” and it ruined milk for him.
* The house Dan and Herbert live in once belonged to a horror author named “Philips.” Who died in the basement and wasn’t discovered for weeks. How does Herbert respond to this information?
“What a waste.”
* In another nod to Lovecraft, one of Dan’s work colleagues is named Charles Ward.
* Meg, at one point in the novel, eats at a restaurant called the Nocturnal Diggers Diner. (Bitchin’ name!)
* Meg was essentially raised solely by her father Alan Halsey, after her mother (Diana) left both of them to join the Peace Corps.
* When Herbert was in sixth grade, he crafted a science fair project where he kept a mouse alive for a day using a pint of his own blood.
* Dan is said to have dealt with bats in the attic of the house. He fixed the issue by poisoning what bats he came across and then “(nailing) their carcasses to the outside wall.” (WTF, Daniel?!)
* Meg is almost never called “Meg” in the novel, always “Megan.” Which is mostly the opposite of how it is in the film.
* Mace, the morgue security guard, promptly quit his job by walking out of the hospital after the Miskatonic Massacre. (Good for him!)
* Herbert’s last words are: “Gruber, I join you…I join you!”
* West was deemed innocent by investigators in the wake of his death, the blame for the event instead put mainly on Dean Halsey.
* Dan and Meg (or Meg’s reanimated body) vanished after the massacre, presumably never to be seen again.
(Due to the popularity of these posts, I considered doing one exclusively about Meg, but there’s really not too much added to her character, so this is my alternative addition.)
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deadboyfriendd · 23 days
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Sovereign Creatures: The Triumph Of Death
Summary: You plan on reanimating your lover piece by piece, today, you are in search of his eyes.
Warnings: Fem!Reader, Mermaid reader, Plague Doctor!Steve Harrington, based off of The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw, period appropriate violence, gore, blood, self mutilation, surgical instruments
My content is 18+ Minors DNI
The bezoar sits encased in a glass cloche, its ruminating pulse the only thing to remind you that he was once alive, too– and that he may be alive again one day. 
The bezoar of your dead lover– a bolus of broken-off teeth and snarled hairs, fingernails, caked dirt, curds of mummified gray, colored glass. Over it all, a lettering of fine blue veins, like an alphabet that only muscle can decode – incubated his dwindling consciousness. You dreamed of the day this organ would pulsate behind flesh once more. 
You knew nothing of his pilot existence, where he learned his kindness. You did not know of the life he lived with a mother and father, where he learned to speak and run, where he felt the weight of the earth in all of its glory. Where the warmth of the sunburn overcomes the sting and the weight of existence is a beautiful one to bear. 
Instead you knew of his last existence. This one stunk with the morosity of being reanimated but never fully alive again. You’d wondered if his first death had been as painful as his last, even though you knew it would be foolish to assume that it hadn’t. Creatures of his nature rarely harbored peace in death. The weight of this existence was bruising– crushing, even. 
You knew this existence would be beautiful– almost as beautiful as he had been.
Your boy would be beautiful again, made in the image of your own ideal of it. 
Your finger traced over his notes, scared to smudge to ink despite its age. You felt the embossing against the parchment and tried to feel his hands against your fingers like reeds, blood flowing under his skin in its inky black beauty and pulsating through the ruminants of his inkwell heart. 
The study felt more like yours than his own now, though he had inhabited it for years before your existence. You were merely a vessel for his findings. A piece plucked and carved from this rib of his essence. A slave to the bezoar behind a glass cloche. 
It still pulsated its erratic song in a fleshy waltz. You looked for the hum of his voice beneath it, not quite able to remember its exact pitch. You listen to it again and again, the mellow drone of it a backing that fills your studies. Sometimes you listened for a whisper, sometimes you listened for permission to continue. 
There were more pieces of you covering this place than there were pieces of him, it felt like. You could no longer differentiate your books interwoven with his on the shelves– the lines between your handwriting and his becoming one blurred entity, the line where your being ended and the pieced-together formations of where his new being began intertwined as one desolate, threadbare creature. 
The human hands can be differentiated by the presence of an opposable thumb, made different from the other phalanges marked by the absence of the middle phalanx… the metacarpal is the connecting factor to the smaller subset of carpals within the wrist. 
This you knew was his writing, and you were thankful in the beginning for how thorough he had been in his studies. You allowed yourself the pleasure of feeling the ridges of his writing:
Trapezoid, trapezium, capitate, hamate, scaphoid, lunate, triquetrum, pisiform. 
You try to feel them in your own wrists, try to feel the sutures in bone and the roll of ligament over them. You tried to feel the feeling of being alive once more, differentiating it from what– you weren’t quite certain. You tried to remember a time in which he had been alive. 
“That’s it.” He would have whispered to you, through a velveteen smile, his own gentle fingers wrapped delicately around your wrists– feeling the roll of ligament over bone the way you tried to feel now, “So Long To Pinkie, Here Comes The Thumb.” 
Scaphoid, lunate, triquetrum, pisiform, hamate, capitate, trapezoid, trapezium.  You jotted down alongside his writing. 
His hands were one of the few things remaining after the day of the saints– your body seethed like the embers that remained of him. You watched them settle low against the glass in their formaldehyde home and wished desperately that you could pull one out to cradle your face just once– the way he had. 
You wished that you could trail your fingers over the hills and valleys of the soft plush of his hands in search of the canyons between his fingers in which yours would seek solace just once more. You wished to feel his thumb run rivers across the crest of your lip, pilling downward over the plush and settle in the crevice between there and your chin. Just once do you wish to  feel warmth behind flesh. 
It had been years, now. More than you could remember. 
His existence, the way he was before the only remnants of him you had were his studies, seemed blurry now– a far off memory in which you could not quite soft through. But you remembered the warmth that radiated from him like the sun. You do not remember who he was, yet the remnants of his previous existence consumed your entirety. 
The violence in which he gave his life for you no longer stings, but fills you with a hot, blinding anger.
His existence was violent and painful, manufactured to be that way, yet nonetheless beautiful. Sometimes you believe he does not want to live again, but you are selfish. You will show him that there is existence without pain. 
You press tender fingers, cold and aching against the glass cloche. A promise to him that you will return in due time. That you will come bearing gifts. That you will hold each other once more. 
The air is clammy this time of year, salty on your tongue when you inhale and chilled from the sea air. The cobblestone is right beneath your feet, and you walk with more caution than you typically would during the day. A fire burns in the distance, woolen-cloaked bodies stand around it in a horde in silence, staring into its molten nucleus. Humans were like that, you found, drawn to warmth. Maybe you had lost your edge. Maybe the frailty of humanity was contagious. 
Maybe a part of him had stayed human. 
He had been drawn to it as a moth to a gas lamp, quick to release his body to her thrashing, ravenous hands. Had the fire been the cause? Or, perhaps, the warmth in which death held him delicately between her fingers. He had held you the same way. You would hold him that way again. 
The first doctor was one that he was close to in his reanimated life; they had been brothers in death, harvested and reanimated at the hands of The Saints. They had passed years of orphaned childhood by playing kill the pig– a sickening game it was, even to you. Swine to slaughter, children for sacrificial youth. The saints plucked pieces from their bodies like ripened fruit, replaced them with other displaced pieces, ugly shows in sick theaters under the guise of ritualism for the other children to watch– until there were no remnants of them to be left. A quilt of leftover parts and shells of children that once were and would never be again. 
The woods that congregate like hooded men at the mouth of where river meets ocean are deep. His house is hidden deeper within them, not unlike your own, a dry thatched roof and stone walls. Solitary, with sea salt tears brimming cobblestone eyes. Yet, somehow warmer than yours. It felt like the depths of the ocean in which you resided. The part of you that human-adjacent held it close to you. 
His name is Edward. It was one of the few things he kept for himself in his old life, along with his eyes. When you would ask why, he would say:
“The Saints preferred colored eyes, my dear.” 
You’d figured that was why you were searching for your own pair now. Green, like the moss that covers the dirt in a spongy expanse in the spring.
You knock on the door and he is warm in greeting– almost as warm as it is within his house. 
“Ah, you’re here for them.”
There is a code in the way the plague doctors speak, they are warm to each other, but speak around the visceral topics of what they are actually doing. The world still feared them. In your bluntness, you had still not mastered the art. 
“The eyes, yes.” 
His back is to you. Even with his figure cloaked, you can see the misshapenness flex and roll beneath a linen sea. There is a tincture clinking as the jars bounce off of another in a song as he picks each one up and examines it– contents dancing formaldehyde dances. He is a creature in his own respect. You feel a solidarity to him despite the sovereigness to your creation. 
Your hands were not warm, not like his were. Skin rubbery and catching along itself in a tacky half-dryness as you reach to your back. Scales lay there, green and blue like the refraction of abalone. Sharp against any flesh that dare come close. The skin there is raised where you had done this before. 
It stings less for this time, but the dull ache pulsates beneath the skin where the pockets still remain. Your fingers bleed from the grip, and a deep blood seeps from the wounds like outstretched arms that reach for the scale. 
There is an infatuation that resides within the plague doctors with your existence. These pieces of you had proven incredibly valuable to them in the past. 
A book on the shelf calls to you– bound in leather and charred to an inky blackness around the edges. Necromantia. 
An old magic. Older than your lifetime. 
“What will that cost me?” You asked, Edward, who, in turn, pulls the book from the shelf. 
“We will settle that in time.”
You aren’t quite sure what it means, regardless, you tuck the book into your cloak– near your chest. It ruminates its own pulse, respires its own breaths– much like the bezoar. 
“You know,” he begins, eyes somber and black against the golden glow of the fire light, “the saints had a way of resurrecting us, of sorts… bringing us to life without actually killing us–”
“Rebirth without death.”
“Yes, so it was.” His eyes have become pits, swirling blackness of eternal oblivion. A rift in the seams of this world that points you toward his damnation. 
They had only been children. 
“I know this may be difficult to hear,” He says, voice low– you cannot tell if it for preservation of your emotions or for caution of violence, “but it may be best to let the dead be dead.” 
You assumed his resentment towards the saints was a mirror reflection of Steven’s. A fiery hatred that burned like embers deep within his chest– the lifeblood in which kept him alive for so long. He fed off of this hatred, he burned his own body to ash in search of it. He wanted The Saints dead– so much that he would offer himself to this hatred, too. 
This resentment burned in your throat tonight. It burned in choking sobs and hot tears that rolled down your rubbery flesh. It clouded your vision as you splayed ocular nerves. It burned your nose in tandem with preserving fluids. It burned in your chest as you took a step back, admiring his beauty in anatomical pieces. 
He isn’t dead. Just incomplete.
You should let him be dead, but the pulsating of the bezoar pleads to stay alive. 
When he opens borrowed eyes again, would he resent you too?
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