#story: volte-face

[2kmps]

volte-face; noun; a sudden change from one set of beliefs or plan of action to the opposite.

vash x plant engineer!reader

story synopsis; plant engineers are a rarity in no man's land, let alone good ones. you stand as one of the best humanity has to offer, having worked alongside vash for two years to alleviate the suffering of humans and plants alike. you're immediately attracted to the rumors of plants dying in a metropolis built above a geoplant hub; an oasis in the desert. with no way to know whether the city actually exists, you and vash set out into the unforgiving wasteland, chasing myths, and unprepared for what's hidden at the end.

story warnings; gun-violence, vash and mc have a complicated relationship, explicit details, democide, mentions of human trafficking, religious themes, erotic details/sexual themes, issues of autonomy, heavily implied sa, co-dependency between vash and mc, suicide, weird spin on "childhood friends to lovers" trope. mdni.

chapter one; 6.7k; rumor has it...

It was the man with one eye and a top row of silver teeth hunkered over a bottle of jack who spoke of New Oregon; a city-oasis veiled by beige wasteland and tempestuous sandstorms. A heavy haze of gray smoke and booze made the air in the cramped space stagnant; hard to breathe, sending the man into a fit of dry sputters that he chased with the burn of whiskey down his throat.

He never offered his name once that evening; a drunk nobody like everyone else there. It didn't matter how they crowed about bounties and conquests, modified their bodies with gatling guns, metal, shiny gold or silver. They simply didn't matter, so their nights were spent suffocating on dirty air that dimmed the flickering amber light from metal lampshades overhead, and the smell of unwashed men.

Not many turned from their card games or glistening liquid in sticky cups to hear this prattling fool at the bar, though. He was a regular; morning, day, and night, in fact. A sad shape of a man desperately clinging to any lasting stares, or perhaps remnants of a better time in his life imitated through liquid courage.

Boisterous, nonsensical, slurring words through coughs that made his barrel-shaped chest flounce, he was extremely ignored by everyone--

All except for you and Vash.

In a nondescript little corner of the bar nearest to a brown-tinted window just slightly cracked, you swirled around the speckled ice cubes in your glass; loud enough to hear it, not loud enough to fade the man's adamant claims.

"Bah, no one here wants to hear it, but I'm tellin' y'all! It's a whole damn city! No, no, wait!" He forced more whiskey down his throat, wetting his mustache when he nearly missed. "It's bigger! It's like July, a metropolis! Except, it doesn't look like July, it- it- it looks like- like- shit, I don't know. It's nothin' like we've ever seen here on No Man's Land!

"It's all lush, lush, lush green! There are water fountains, and trees and flowers! Flowers! You've heard of 'em, right? They're all livin' in a real lap of luxury there. Been hearin', though, that it's goin' extinct like everywhere else; plants are dyin' off. Innit just shit? I haven't even had a chance to look for it yet."

Everyone in the bar knew that New Oregon was a fabled place, sort of like a eutopia; somewhere, if you found it, you could live out the rest of your days in comfort and bliss. Surviving human artifacts from the bygone millennia on earth told legends of similar places: El Dorado, Atlantis, Avalon, and Zerzura. All places humans wanted to venture, into yet have never found. And never would.

Vash nursed his drink, the alcohol here didn't leave a good taste in his mouth, and neither did the stifling air. He looked to you occasionally, perhaps watching you more closely than he did anyone else in the bar. You were oddly fixated on this man's story and for good reason--

You were a plant engineer; one of the few, one of the best humanity had to offer at this point. Staking out the saloons and unsavory spots in outposts and trading posts for information on towns falling into disrepair and death was your hobby; tracking down these places and their plants was your bread and butter.

"You ain't ever even been to New Oregon; who you getting your info from, brother?" called a newcomer to the bar, throwing down his losing hand in poker. "These rumors are starting to get around more now. You're the fifth person in two months I've heard talk about that damn place."

Elated, the drunk shouted back across the room with all the eagerness of a smart schoolboy, "Lambertonville! One-fifty iles southeast! Good watering hole, lots of hawkers. There's a guy named Jetson, said he used to sell in New Oregon a while back."

A couple of the men groaned, laying down their cards, slugging their absinthe, whiskeys, and beers. "It's all crock! All bullshit! New Oregon is just made up, we're tryin' to have a good night. Stop talkin' about it!"

"It ain't made up!" he thrust a fist onto the solid wood bar repeatedly. "It's a geoplant hub! Are you gonna say those don't exist, because they do!"

Vash took a finical sip, mainly trying to wrap his tongue around a chipped piece of ice. It crunched against his molars as he chewed slowly, gaze darting between the quarreling men, to the splendent look in your eye just as you hopped to your feet and made for the doors.

"I don't know if you're going to be able to convince Meryl to drive one-hundred fifty iles to this place," Vash admitted to you on the way back to the hotel, shaking his slight buzz off into the cold night air. "It sounds like a longshot to follow rumors from a random guy in a bar."

"Don't worry about it." You said, untying the white coat at your waist to slip your arms through it. "I've got an idea."

Vash was worried clear up until the point of the one-hundredth ile ticking on the van's dashboard several hours later. Meryl drove with an otherworldly determination now; skillfully weaving the vehicle around mountainous sand dunes, looming rib bones of ancient beasts long gone, and the frequent wild thomas attempting to cool their bodies in layers of dust.

"What did you say to her?" Vash tried to pry out of you more than once in that four-hour trip.

You had your jacket bunched up against his shoulder, a comfortable barrier between you and him until he tried flattening it down to whisper in your ear.

He was too close, so you swatted the air near his face. You stumbled through your words, letting your grogginess win over actually caring enough to explain. "Exclusive interview with magical hawkers saves humanity in the city."

It wasn't as obvious to decipher what you actually meant to say.

For a while, he left you alone to drift off into a mostly heat-induced nap, your thighs still housing a tremendous insulated tumbler. The water and ice cubes would slosh and chatter against metal walls, only briefly eclipsing the roaring engine pulling the vehicle your bodies through the sand. Roberto's snores from the passenger seat came closer to dwarfing either of those, though.

You slept more heavily during the day than any other time, he noticed. Often times spending your nights in town or rummaging your twin dufflebags of equipment to account for each and every piece; all components necessary to repair the reactors housing plants. You were meticulous and careful; clinical yet easily one of the more excitable people he'd ever met.

He only ever saw you wrapped up in a task or work, or sleeping, rarely anything in between. A byproduct of your upbringing in a pale, sterile, and technical environment more focused on progression and results, rather than personal development within.

Still, he could think of you fondly. A very rare, single constant he's had in his life for two years since you left that pristine environment with bright lights, holopads, and computers. You had told him once, fate decidedly pushing you to cross paths again in the desert, that progress couldn't happen by waiting like Luida chose to do with her glass dome and flora.

A faint smile touched his lips when he looked across the balled fabric at you, finally resting after a long night. You didn't stir when he shifted his arm, letting your head and body slump into a new crevice he made--hopefully more comfortable for you than having your neck bent at an odd angle.

He looked up when Wolfwood moved--switching one cramped, crossed leg for the other--not missing the meaningful, pointed stare he received through the other man's darkly tinted sunglasses. The bent cigarette bounced as it was pinched in a crooked, knowing smile and silent laughter that instantly sent Vash's gaze sweeping to the blurred, brown landscape out the window with a body-wide burn that he suppressed.

It stayed like that for the last hour or two of the trip; complete silence apart from Roberto's planet-shaking rumbles and the engine sputtering beneath oppression of the binary suns. They glowed white and hot, vaguely reminiscent of the searing fluorescent lights that plagued his youth; long hours simply lying and staring, unfocused and shackled by his own unwillingness to move.

Some days, it felt like nothing had changed at all.

Lambertonville appeared distantly just before dusk, while the pitched rooftops of houses and reaching steeples of sleepy churches were caressed by the faraway sky hued in wreaths of scarlet and orange. They were chased away by the sprawl of night, of a black blanket dappled by uncountable glittering stars observed only by a pair of moons slowly rising overhead.

The headlights on the van illuminated an old wood sign hanging above the entrance to town, all at once fading to dark when Meryl killed the ignition, slumping over the wheel while gripping it with both hands.

"We finally made it." She expelled a hard breath, almost as though she had been holding it for a long time. "It was starting to feel like we'd never get here. I'm so hungry and tired. I want to take a bath."

"No rest for the weary, rookie," Roberto said, unclipping his seatbelt to let it reel back into its slot near his head. "We still gotta check in somewhere and move our luggage. Don't forget to consolidate your notes for your article, too."

Meryl nearly triggered the horn when her forehead landed with a dull thunk on the steering wheel, her sighs of suffering growing. "Sure thing, boss."

"Must be hell to be a reporter." Wolfwood mused aloud, barely pushing the door ajar with his foot before his hands were cupping a quivering flame and he was puffing away on his cigarette. "Can't say I envy either of you. Oi, Spikey. Buttercup. You both awake?"

"With how loud you talk, it's impossible not to be." You groused, sorely tempted to send your tumbler rocketing at his head while collecting your things. "I have a name, Churchman."

He grinned. "Could've fooled me, Sweetcheeks."

"Oh, shut up."

Wolfwood sucked in a breath and shrugged, throwing the door shut when you chose to get out on Vash's side; a trivial act of petty vengeance, but certainly one that he would retaliate at some point, somewhere down the line.

When you finally had your bearings after the long car ride; hard stretches and bends, joints cracking as you flexed them out and wrung out your spine, everyone's belongings were laid out in the sand with exception to your white jacket. Vash approached you with it neatly folded, a few creases forming that he looked particularly doleful about, as though if were his responsibility to fix.

"It shouldn't be too hard to get them out," he was telling you, hiking the narrow strap on his knapsack higher onto his shoulder. It was then that you noticed your black duffle bags hanging off of his other one, managing the weight of all of your equipment with impressive ease.

He saw your eyes, offering a disarming smile as he tilted that side towards you. "You just woke up. I thought I'd just lend you a hand. I can't believe you carry these around everywhere, they're pretty heavy."

Once slipping into your coat, you took your bags from him and flattened the shoulder straps on your body. "I guess some people are just built differently."

Your back was to him then, starting after Meryl and Roberto to hunt down the cheapest inn that'd take your double-dollars. The look he fixed on you was one he didn't think was possible to show to your face; wistful and somber, a beautiful ache spurred by memories that gouged him whenever you were near. You were a working mechanism in his daily life; part of routine, part of a peaceful sameness he desperately sought out, yet eluded him and slipped through his fingers like water.

If you weren't there now, he wasn't sure if he could go back to how it used to be. Wandering. Wandering. Wandering aimlessly and all alone; lost amid the vastness of No Man Land's desolation, praying the next town would hold out longer than the rest.

And yet, he saw all the things in you that he didn't want to. He saw the suffering of humanity in you and what it meant to claw and struggle to survive; saw hope and depravity in the white coat you kept close, now lightly browned from age and elements. He saw his past when he looked at you, the very thing that kept him walking on and on and on...

"I'll be back later." You announced to the group a little later on, having antsily tossed aside your equipment in the room you planned to share with Meryl and Roberto. "I'll try to be quiet when I come back."

This was work time, everyone knew.

No one tried to stop you on your way out, Vash and Wolfwood keeping pace, flanking you on either side. It was easy enough for them to anticipate where you were going: the closest dirty, rowdy bar you could find to scrape out some information or buy it with a couple of shots of hard liquor.

Wolfwood was a simple man, he held as much interest in your investment with plants as he did knowing what Meryl's next article was about. What he did enjoy, though, was a lively crowd after half a bottle of whiskey. Besides, places with cheap booze always had the best food, for whatever reason.

You did a double-take towards Vash, catching the dull sheen across his eyes; a distracted, thousand-yard stare.

He nearly started, pulling at the cold arm you touched. "Hey, you doing okay? You should go back to the inn and sleep off today."

"Yeah," Wolfwood injected, flicking his lighter a few times until the bud of his new cigarette glowed hot. "Don't think I saw you sleep at all the entire ride. Besides, a bar in a trading town probably isn't the best place for you to be, Spikey."

When he gestured past you both, towards a nearby building with bullet holes pocking outmost layers of brick and limestone, you saw a row of wanted posters. It was everything you could do to keep yourself from yelling expletives as you rushed over, tore them down, shredded them in half, and let the breeze carry them far, far away.

"Nice work." Wolfwood clapped languidly, giving your shoulder a hard smack on his way by. "Just gotta do that with the hundreds of other ones hanging around."

You could kill him sometimes, you really could.

"Vash." He didn't look at you immediately. "Seriously, you should probably head back. These small towns are the worst places for us to be. All it takes is one person to recognize you."

He already knew that. He's already heard it all from you before. Many times over.

"What about you?" he said, at last, gesturing weakly with a hand to your mostly white uniform. "You stick out a lot more than most people. No one is going to see you and think you belong there."

You spaced your arms and legs out, looking down at yourself, frantically patting away dust on your pants. "Do you know how expensive clothes are? Besides, everything is heat resistant. I'd probably actually die of heat stroke if I wore anything else."

He was inclined to agree.

You yanked the coat zipper down when he spoke again. "What I'm saying is: I'm not letting you go alone."

"Mister sixty-million-double-dollar bounty, I think you need to worry more about yourself. Besides," you pulled away one side, the handle of a pistol peeking out from a brown holster. "I'm packing, too. If it came down to it, I'd be just fine."

"As if you know how to shoot!" Wolfwood yelled from somewhere, his voice carrying on the breeze and spearing through the back of your head with all the sting of an untuned instrument.

Tonight, you would kill him.

Wolfwood was right, Vash thought glumly. This was all talk; handling weapons much less firing them was nowhere within your scope of practice, nor expertise. In the two years he had traveled with you, that gun had never been set off once. He had been the one to force it into your hands following a particularly nasty scuffle, one where you almost didn't make it out with him.

You scared him that day, and you still manage to scare him most days in how you purposefully flaunted yourself around, brandishing the uniform-clad on your body in hopes it attracted the very attention he tried so hard to thwart.

"Can..." Vash had to sigh, shoulders rolling forward as he rubbed his nape. "Can we at least stick to the back corners or something? Out of the way?"

That's exactly what didn't happen.

Vash sat at the bar, fingers so tightly clenched around his bourbon he thought he felt the glass splinter against his skin. The insides of his cheeks were raw from how long his teeth had been gnawing on his skin. He had been sitting with the same drink for over an hour now, too tight in his shoulders and back to will himself to take a sip, too on edge to think he even could.

The bar met every expectation between the three of you; Wolfwood was having an adamant chess tournament, the long neck of a bottle of wild turkey closed in his fist while he and others hollered over every poor move and checkmate.

Fortunately, you stayed nearby to Vash despite having about three shots in you already. Just enough to loosen you up to socialize and pry for information; always work-related, never for pleasure. Vash kept his eyes on you whenever you roamed away, palms full and fingers splayed across multiple shooters that you passed around. The favorite candy of hapless, drunk men.

"Jetson?" echoed one man returning for a drink. You handed it to him, he thanked you, slammed it back, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "Jetson. Jetson. Oh! That hawker guy. Yeah, he's been long gone for a few weeks. Who knows where he's at now."

Not what you were hoping to hear. "That sucks. Well, did he share anything about a place called New Oregon?"

"That mythical city or whatever?" came a new voice, this one belonging to a fairly young, lanky lad. He didn't look old enough for alcohol, though laws like that didn't really apply to towns sitting this far away from major cities. "I remember people talking about it. It's supposed to be some sort of oasis, right? Run by geoplants?"

The first man nodded. "S'posed to be a big hub for 'em, I guess."

"I've heard rumors about their plants dying." You said, leaning a hip into the nearest table while looking between them both. "Anyone mentioned that around here recently?"

"Well," the young guy started, pouting when you kept the drinks in your hand out of reach. "I don't know if it's related, but there were a couple of merchants here last week talkin' about how these really wild sandstorms keep picking up near Serpent's Tongue. And they're just too... weird to be natural."

The one man squeezed a whistle through his parched lips, kneading them together after downing another shot. "Serpent's Tongue is a ways out there. Didn't realize these guys were going that damn far."

"How far are we talking here?" you asked, skeptically.

"Let's put it like this," the drunkard stumbled closer to you, holding both his hands erect and a distance from each other. "You're gonna have an easier time getting to July; sand steemer, fed checkpoints, all of that stuff. That's almost two weeks. Serpent's Tongue is two huge rock faces with a passage between 'em. Real nasty area in certain parts. You're lookin' at almost a month just to get there, not countin' how many days you stop to build your strength back up."

You nearly let the liquor in your hand smash to the ground at the mention. The very notion of spending a month or more on the move to a city that may or may not exist was insane. It would mean a month of praying the elements didn't get you first, that bandits didn't find you, and that grand sandworms didn't plague those areas.

"Has anyone ever actually been to New Oregon?" you pressed, taking a shot for yourself to dull the panic beginning to twist in your gut. "Has anything ever been verified? Anything at all?"

The lad watched you pointedly, heard the glass clicking as your fingers curled into the makings of a fist. "You tryna go there? I don't think you'll have any luck, but something I'm remembering: Apparently there were some wind turbines in the area. They weren't old, either."

You felt your heart pinch in your chest and then lodge in your throat, this was the feeling you lived for. The sheer elation of a breakthrough, a sliver of light somewhere cast in darkness. The very small, very few straws you could grasp and hold onto with dear life.

This was justification enough.

With a splendid smile that pulled your lips taut over your teeth, you said, "Two things: A map, and where do you stable your thomases?"

Vash tried to gauge the bright look on your face as best he could. You had been that way since meandering back to his side, finally satisfied enough in your pursuit to sit down at the bar and order something a little more digestible. He watched your lips dance across the rim of your cup, teeth clicking into the glass a time or two, letting your mind hazily turn over the possibilities.

At that point, his shoulders were a little loose and he was on his third drink, having switched over to jack a while ago. He had questions he wanted to ask: Who did you talk to? What did they say? What are we going to do? What was that pamphlet they gave you?

He couldn't will himself to utter any of it; instead, he leaned forward on his arms, pads gripping the wide rim on his glass while observing you and your entire lightness. A side of you he rarely saw apart from a successful job; a glimmer of happiness often so easily stripped away.

It looked dazzling on you. He smiled tenderly.

"Alright, compadres!" Wolfwood was at both your ears suddenly, an arm over each neck as his weight bore down. "I can say that these hicks don't know shit about chess. I'm also fucked up. Time to go."

Your malicious edge had all but dissipated by now, giving way to someone far more malleable. Between the three of you, it was bottoms-up one more time, the hot liquid gaining purchase in your throats as it burned inside your nostrils and behind your eyes. A nice way to keep warm as you left the bar, the cold desert air still making your teeth clatter as it caressed your neck and jaw.

Far ahead of you, there were glints of orange and the smell of smoke. Wolfwood wasn't looking back at either of you, now grumbling on about the inbred hillbillies not knowing how to play chess, and resorting to cheating. You meant to take it that he lost a few too many games, and couldn't stand to sulk about it in the bar with everyone around.

"Better luck next time, Pastard*." You laughed.

He stuck a finger up at you, pocketing that hand afterward to keep it from getting numb. "You guys are too slow. Figure out your way back on your own."

Vash tilted towards you, whispering conspiratorially, "I think you struck a nerve."

"I think anything we say to him strikes a nerve." You rejoined.

"Yeah," he looked over his lenses, trying to scope out any lasting trace of Wolfwood, finding none. "Can we get back on our own? Was the inn along the main street, or the next one over? I think I drank too much."

You grunted at him, giving him a once over while sidling some paces away so he couldn't reach you even if he projectile vomited. His only response was to whine pitifully and apologize, once again closing that gap as you both swayed along the unpaved road, stirring up puffs of dust and sand that felt coarse in your throats when you'd laugh.

It wasn't as cold as it usually was at night, a simple thought that crossed your mind. You figured it was all because of your shift in good fortune for a change, the booze playing a secondary role in it. Maybe, you considered, it was also Vash's shoulder brushing against yours while you walked. For some reason, you noticed it so much more right now.

And so did he.

Trying to keep his mind elsewhere, on anything other than that slight pressure when you'd bump into him felt insurmountable in that moment. He let his eyes roam all around; noting the rusted street lamps with cloudy glass cages glowing a murky yellow, homes casting pillars of light into the streets through curtained windows, relishing how unaffected Lambertonville felt to everything outside of it.

It was the type of place he'd try to hang onto for as long as he could; days, a few weeks, a month at most with any luck. He would get to know names, the regulars at the bars, all of the local gossip and food. An impermanent haven where he could rest awhile and know you were safe.

Vash felt it then, yours and his knuckles touching, brief, but burning. The world spun around him a little too fast when he stepped away, opening the space between your bodies as much as he could, but managing to tangle his legs in a bucket that sent him staggering into the side of a building. He caught himself easily enough, the cold off the brick seeping through his skin and bone, straight to his nerves and spine.

He heard you call out. "Whoaaa, you okay?!"

"I'm good! I'm good!" he assured, raising a hand towards you as proof. It didn't stop you from trotting over anyway, nearly smacking into the wall yourself when your shin caught the very same bucket. "Are you good? I really think we overdid it tonight."

You edged along crumbling, ruddy brick with your shoulder, getting close enough to pluck one of the arms of his sunglasses from behind his ear and then the other. They were tucked away neatly in his coat pocket now, leaving you to fully see him bathed under a warm, faint glow from overhead.

"We're fine." You said, moving in until your chests just touched. "It was nice to have a few drinks with you."

Vash didn't know what to say, he didn't know what to do or think. All he knew is that he didn't want to move away, something kept his legs rooted there; waiting and anticipating, sending his heart into a frenzy against his ribs. And, when he felt your cold fingertips press into the sides of his face, guiding his head down to where your lips met his in fervor, everything went blank.

Your hands pushed divots into his skin, thumbs resting against the peaks of his cheekbones. The kiss was hard, leaving a searing imprint in his mind and on his lips. It was such an unfamiliar thing; the feeling, what he imagined a kiss was like, you so near in proximity he wanted to melt into the warmth shared between your bodies.

And, it was so quick. Just when he had gathered the nerve to reach for your shoulders, nursed the thought of kissing you back-- you pushed him away with a satisfied smile and gentle slap to both his cheeks.

He yelped, taking the chance to shield as much of the red blistering across his face as he could. "What- what was that for?!"

"That was for helping me out last night," you wagged a finger at him, stilling it midair. "For tonight too, actually. I just wanted to thank you for everything up until this point. I know following me around looking for plants isn't what you want to do. So, do me a favor and don't."

He wasn't processing what you were saying, troubled creases forming in his brow. "Where is this coming from?

"Oh," you scoffed, swiveling the balls of your feet, arms shooting out at your sides to catch your balance. "Don't worry about it. It's nothing. Let's make sure Wolfwood got back, and get some sleep. I have a feeling we're gonna have some nasty hangovers."

Three o'clock rolled around hours later and he was still thinking about what you said. Vash wasn't sure how much sleep he actually got before giving up, knowing he had spent most of the night thrashing on the mattress, making old boards underneath groan and squeal.

Wolfwood had made a point to hurl his wadded-up, dirty socks, and both loafers across the room, slurring out any expletive he could come up with when Vash moved around too much. After several minutes, things settled once again and Wolfwood's snores were a welcoming invitation for him to scoot his back upright against the headboard, eyes trained at the empty streets outside the window next to his bed.

Too much had happened in one day for him to be able to muddle through it all right now. More than anything else, he wanted to know what was going on with you; why you were so preoccupied with rumors of a place that may be conjured up by men on the verge of death-- a final deception from their brains to make the agony bearable.

'What did you figure out? Why won't you tell me?'

His eyes swept the moonlit streets. Unlike before where the street lamps faintly illuminated your paths to guide you back to the inn, the lights housed within walls of dingy glass had all extinguished, leaving just the pale glow from the binary moons to shine off of gabled, tin rooftops and the corners of metal signs swinging by rusty chains in the wind. Simultaneously an eerie, peaceful scene that did well to quiet his distress, until--

You came into view of the window, riding astride a fully saddled thomas with your duffle bags and belongings tied down behind your seat. A high-beam flashlight lit your way through town towards the looming archway leading out into the desert.

Vash came close to smashing his face against the window, his warm breath trembled and fogged over the glass. His mind started to race as he scrambled off of the bed, hobbling around creaky floorboards by the tips of his toes, slipping on socks and boots and his coat, cramming all his things into the tawny bag he had slung across his shoulder by the time he was closing the door behind him.

Why were you leaving without saying anything?

Why were you leaving without him?

Why were you being this way?

The thomas let out an agitated cry, stretching its long neck to peck at him as he tightened the girth around its undercarriage. He moved his fingers in time to avoid being bit, giving the large avian gentle shoves until it grew tired and relented to his weight soon settling on its back.

He ran the large beast for a long time, wondering just how far out you managed to get. A column of hot white light bounced across the dark ground, showing him tracks already being swallowed by sand and dust, carried by frigid southern currents. It wasn't until those same prints started to appear more vividly; newer until very fresh that the lines in his face smoothed with a wave of relief wracking his body.

You had finally slowed your thomas, giving it just enough rein so it could move its neck more freely. It stayed on path dutifully as you unfolded the map the drunk man in the bar had given you a short while ago. The paper opened more wide than tall, sprawling most of your arm span, and seemed to cover most of the explored territories on No Man's Land.

"So, next town is going to be Jukeblight." You spoke into the air, moving your wrist across the map, dulling your flashlight. "That's about three days. Yoke is--"

There was a sound. Rustling sand moving fast.

You whirled around in your seat, flashlight set to maximum and spinning around your body. It could've just been a bird, or a hive of worms that were startled by the noise, at worst a smaller sandworm looking for its dinner. It was all meant to keep your composure, though you immediately lost it when you flicked the light towards the right of you, snaring a flash of red in the glare.

Vash caught you by the side of your coat, keeping you in the saddle despite screaming and nearly falling off the other side. "Hey! It's me, it's just me!"

"Vash?!" you didn't know whether to be glad or throttle him. Either way, you slapped his hand off of you once he pulled you center in the saddle. "You're following me even though I told you not to?"

"It sounded more like a suggestion to me." He replied, gaze flicking towards the map now creased in the corners from your scare. You offered him a view with light, giving him time to study it. "How are we going to find New Oregon when it isn't even on the map?"

With the way he was already talking, you knew he would be in it for the long haul, dissuading him now would be impossible. "I'll catch you up to speed later. It's going to take us a month to get there."

Vash's jaw unhinged, emitting an airy groan in disbelief. "A month?! Seriously? You're- you're really being serious about this?"

"Of course," you said, tucking the map back into a satchel hanging off the side of your thomas' breastbone. "I've been serious about this since day one."

"Are you sure you want to do this?" Vash never looked away from you. "We've got some really vague clues with no guarantee New Oregon is real. We could be just going around in circles."

Your eyes were fixed straight ahead stubbornly. "Then, wouldn't it be easier for you to go back?"

"I won't do that." He frowned. "I'm not going back without you."

This was a constant with him. No matter how hard you'd try to shake him off, turn him around, lose him-- he'd always find you, completely unperturbable regardless of your nastiest tactics and vitriolic comments. If anything you said to him left a lasting scar on his heart, he never showed it.

Still, it didn't stop you from trying time and time again.

"To be honest," you sighed, "I was hoping you would be drunk enough to just sleep through the night."

He gave you a reaction; mouth agape again, face twisted in despair, eyes gleaming in a way that nearly convinced you he would start to cry.

"That's the only reason you've been letting me drink with you?"

You tipped your chin down into the collar of your jacket, masking a smile trying to tug your lips. "Duh. I always forget how fast your body metabolizes everything under the suns, though. Being a plant has its benefits, I guess."

Vash turned away sharply, nose in the air, chest flouncing with one large puff of air. "That's a dirty move, even for you."

"Can you blame me?" he definitely thought he could, but bated his words, letting you finish first. Something shifted in your demeanor as your shoulders sunk a little deeper in the oversized coat, sweaty palms making the stiff reins squeal. "Will you be able to handle the pain of being there with me?"

His lips were forced thin and tight.

"A theoretical city that size doesn't run on just a handful of plants, Vash." You said quietly, voice above the distant howls of wind and skittering sand. "If we find it, there's no telling what we'll see."

It came back to these moments most days. They reminded him why you could be as elusive as you were towards him. One of his sisters in agony was hard enough, he didn't want to imagine dozens of them screaming at once; a cruel cacophony of suffering. And he would be the only one to bear it all.

"Vash?"

"I'm not sure." He was honest, a solemn gaze towards the horizon where dawn broke through the shroud of night, bringing with it a burning sky and the first warm breeze of the day. "I won't know until I'm standing there with them."

The conversation whittled away after that; you had nothing comforting you could say to him. It wasn't your thing, and it wasn't realistic given the nature of your work. He knew that just as well, perhaps it was the reason why the silence worked so well between you in these moments. It was amicable, calm, and easy; part of the reliable sameness that he sought out from you.

"So," he tried again after a while, venturing a curious look that you met with a tired one. "You didn't let anyone know you were leaving, did you?"

"Do you ever?"

He sputtered in embarrassment, hunching over his beast with a pout that made your nostrils flare when you laughed.

You grinned. "I left a note, actually."

"Really? A note?"

"Yeah." You said. "They have all the details they need to know. Maybe we'll cross paths with them again in the future."

Once again, the somewhat somber look returned to Vash's face. In some ways, it was bittersweet knowing that they wouldn't be able to follow you two anymore; their journeys would continue separate from your own. Your intention for leaving them behind was equal parts selfishness and love, something you would never freely acknowledge, but something he knew to be true.

He kept his thomas in stride alongside yours, flicking out the arms of his orange-tinted lenses as he set them on his nose and looked out towards the rising suns.

"Yeah, it'd be nice."

LATER...

The upstairs of the inn was steeped in chaos by eight in the morning. Heavy footfalls rattled the light fixtures in the downstairs dining room, frantic shouts traveled from individual rooms towards the main staircase as Meryl, Roberto, and Wolfwood stomped their way down with their things hardly in shape to travel.

"I- I can't believe they left us behind again!" Meryl didn't hide the flush of frustration on her face, fist overhand on her luggage as she yanked it through the front door towards the vehicle. "Why do they always do this?!"

Roberto didn't share the same urgency of the rookie, nor of Wolfwood's seething anger when he stormed past the front desk, thrusting down a brass room key for the terrified employee to take once he was out of the building entirely.

"Sorry about them," was all Roberto said, leaving his key behind as well, along with a few double-dollars in sympathy.

He climbed into the passenger seat a little later, tugging his seatbelt a few times to seal himself in. The flask tucked inside his worn, old blazer came out once Meryl put the van into drive and thrust her foot into the gas, making tires spin on sand before it lurched forward.

Roberto took his first sip of alcohol that day, swishing it around his gums a few times to let the burn dance in his mouth. "Ay, rookie, don't get so upset that you wreck."

"Just wait, just wait..." she chanted, her face screwed up in concentration.

Next, Roberto turned to look in the backseat at Wolfwood. The man continually fussed with his dark sunglasses slipping down his nose, teeth clenched around four crimped, unlit cigarettes.

"I knew that fuckin' brat was up to something." He spat his venom, foot tapping on the floor. "I'm gonna kill both of them when I get my hands on them. The fuck is their problem just bailing like that?"

Roberto faced forward in his seat, an arm hanging out the window as he took a larger swig this time.

He wasn't going to be the one to ask where they were going.

divider; @/anlian-aishang

this is a repeat from my deleted blog: cardeneiv.

please leave a comment and reblog if you enjoyed this! likes do not help spread the story around! id love to talk to y'all about this story 😭🥺

#story: volte-face #vash the stampede x y/n #vash x y/n #vash x you #vash the stampede x reader #vash x reader #vash the stampede #trigun vash #trigun imagines #trigun fic #trigun fanfiction #trigun maximum #trigun stampede #trigun #tristamp #trimax #trigun x you #trigun x reader #2k writes

[afeelgoodblog]

The Best News of Last Week

1. ‘It was an accident’: the scientists who have turned humid air into renewable power

Greetings, readers! Welcome to our weekly dose of positivity and good vibes. In this edition, I've gathered a collection of uplifting stories that will surely bring a smile to your face. From scientific breakthroughs to environmental initiatives and heartwarming achievements, I've got it all covered.

In May, a team at the University of Massachusetts Amherst published a paper declaring they had successfully generated a small but continuous electric current from humidity in the air. They’ve come a long way since then. The result is a thin grey disc measuring 4cm across.

One of these devices can generate a relatively modest 1.5 volts and 10 milliamps. However, 20,000 of them stacked, could generate 10 kilowatt hours of energy a day – roughly the consumption of an average UK household. Even more impressive: they plan to have a prototype ready for demonstration in 2024.

2. Empty Office Buildings Are Being Turned Into Vertical Farms

Empty office buildings are being repurposed into vertical farms, such as Area 2 Farms in Arlington, Virginia. With the decline in office usage due to the Covid-19 pandemic, municipalities are seeking ways to fill vacant spaces.

Vertical farming systems like Silo and AgriPlay's modular growth systems offer efficient and adaptable solutions for converting office buildings into agricultural spaces. These initiatives not only address food insecurity but also provide economic opportunities, green jobs, and fresh produce to local communities, transforming urban centers in the process.

3. Biden-Harris Administration to Provide 804,000 Borrowers with $39 Billion in Automatic Loan Forgiveness as a Result of Fixes to Income Driven Repayment Plans

The Department of Education in the United States has announced that over 804,000 borrowers will have $39 billion in Federal student loans automatically discharged. This is part of the Biden-Harris Administration's efforts to fix historical failures in the administration of the student loan program and ensure accurate counting of monthly payments towards loan forgiveness.

The Department aims to correct the system and provide borrowers with the forgiveness they deserve, leveling the playing field in higher education. This announcement adds to the Administration's efforts, which have already approved over $116.6 billion in student loan forgiveness for more than 3.4 million borrowers.

4. F.D.A. Approves First U.S. Over-the-Counter Birth Control Pill

The move could significantly expand access to contraception. The pill is expected to be available in early 2024.

The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday approved a birth control pill to be sold without a prescription for the first time in the United States, a milestone that could significantly expand access to contraception. The medication, called Opill, will become the most effective birth control method available over the counter

5. AIDS can be ended by 2030 with investments in prevention and treatment, UN says

It is possible to end AIDS by 2030 if countries demonstrate the political will to invest in prevention and treatment and adopt non-discriminatory laws, the United Nations said on Thursday.

In 2022, an estimated 39 million people around the world were living with HIV, according to UNAIDS, the United Nations AIDS program. HIV can progress to AIDS if left untreated.

6. Conjoined twins released from Texas Children’s Hospital after successfully separated in complex surgery

Conjoined twins are finally going home after the pair was safely separated during a complex surgery at Texas Children’s Hospital in June.

Ella Grace and Eliza Faith Fuller were in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) for over four months after their birth on March 1. A large team of healthcare workers took six hours to complete the surgery on June 14. Seven surgeons, four anesthesiologists, four surgical nurses and two surgical technicians assisted with the procedure.

7. From villains to valued: Canadians show overwhelming support for wolves

Despite their record in popular culture, according to a recent survey, seven in 10 Canadians say they have a “very positive” view of the iconic predators. 

Here's a fascinating video about how wolves changed Yellowstone nat'l park:

----

That's it for this week :)

This newsletter will always be free. If you liked this post you can support me with a small kofi donation:

Support this newsletter ❤️

Also don’t forget to reblog.

#best news of last week #Youtube

[morbidology]

The legend of the "Green Man" traces its origins to Pennsylvania and describes a glowing supernatural entity or demon said to wander country roads at night. However, the true story behind this urban legend is more tragic than eerie. In 1918, young Raymond Robinson suffered a life-altering accident while climbing on a train track bridge to observe birds. Electrocuted, he endured a shock of 22,000 volts that melted his face, resulting in the loss of both eyes, his nose, an ear, and an arm.

As Raymond grew older, he faced relentless bullying from other kids who cruelly labeled him "The Zombie." This mockery drove him to seclusion, choosing to stay indoors to avoid the hurtful taunts. On rare occasions, he would venture outside at night, walking along State Route 351 with a walking stick. Locals caught wind of his nocturnal strolls, with some mocking him and others extending friendly gestures. The late-night walks ceased in the later years of his life, and he eventually moved to the Beaver County Geriatric Center, where he passed away at the age of 74.

Unfortunately, the genuine hardships Raymond faced became obscured by ghost stories and urban legends that emerged around him. He transformed from a real person, ostracized by the community due to his appearance, into the mythical figure of the "Green Man." The true narrative of Raymond's life was overshadowed by the sensationalism of the legend that grew in its wake.

#world #sad

[soleminisanction]

So. What actually happened between Secret and Spoiler?

The meat of this story goes down in Young Justice (1998) #30.

Taking place sometime shortly after the YJ crew returns from their adventures in space with Doiby Dickles, the story proper opens with a scene of Steph trying to follow Tim home to find out his identity and getting caught to establish that tension in their current dynamic for anyone who wasn't also reading Robin at the time.

As a refresher, when they decided to date (which was a couple of publishing years back at this point, during the events leading up to No Man's Land) Tim had tried to talk Steph out of it because he couldn't tell her his secret identity and he didn't think that was fair. Steph had responded with, quote, "I don't care about any of that, Robin. I just want to be with you." But she'd recently decided she wasn't happy with that arrangement after all and had been sneaking around trying to learn his identity behind his back.

This issue is very cathartic to me because it's one of the only times she's called out for violating her boyfriend's privacy, which starts here:

Couple of things to make note of here: Greta's not attacking Steph. We'd previously seen what it looks like when she uses her billowing clouds of angry smoke to attack (against Harm and the Pointmen, for example), and that's not what's happening here, she's just really pissed off. Steph is the one who escalates the whole thing to violence with that kick.

And while there is an element of jealousy here -- Secret did follow Robin home to get a look at his girlfriend -- the thing that's set her off isn't seeing Steph with Robin, it's learning of and seeing her self-centered justifications for her plans to continue trying to violate his boundaries. Which, it should also be noted, is something that Secret could do much more easily, but chooses not to. So it probably just pisses her off even more to learn that her crush is dating someone who'd disrespect him like that.

So they take it outside.

Where Greta, despite her anger, is almost certainly holding back because... yeah, let's face it, Steph doesn't actually stand a chance in this match-up. She has no powers, she hasn't even trained with Cass at this point; I don't know where she got that grenade but she's otherwise working with like a red belt in strip mall aikido and a bunch of gear she probably bought out of the back of a magazine. Secret is a sentient hellportal, a conduit between the realms of the living and the dead. She's pissed off, but she's still mostly focused on calling Steph out with her words rather than physically harming her.

Which Steph responds to with, again, a grenade and... this:

Why yes, that sword does come out of nowhere for a single panel and then vanishes into the ether, never to be explained or mentioned again. I find that hilarious. I suspect the script just said "Spoiler cuts the power lines" and left Todd Nauck to figure out how that worked.

But uh, speaking of how that worked -- in Greta's defense for how she'll behave later on in this post, Steph just clearly tried to kill her first. Like. I assume that any grenade a Bat is carrying around isn't so high-powered that it's actually going to hurt somebody if thrown at them directly so for all my joking I'll give her a pass for that, but the power lines?

Steph, of course, has no way of knowing that electricity is Greta's weakness, let alone that it's a trauma trigger for her. But she also has no way of knowing that Greta isn't an average metahuman teenager who would just, y'know, die from being hit with several hundred to several thousand volts of electricity. Which is part of a trend in Steph's characterization -- she's always had a tendency to make rash, dangerous decisions like this and only consider the ramifications after the consequences smack her in the face.

And once again, this is Steph's escalation; Greta only lets loose after Steph tries to low-key murder her. But I did say in my previous post that she was explicitly trying not to kill Steph here, right? That's because she's not:

"Oh," she says, directly to Steph's face. "I'm not going to kill you, but you're going to wish I had!"

The issue ends with Tim giving the girls a lecture about trust that... honestly, doesn't actually make much sense, but it's only there to set up the bullshit Bruce would soon pull in Robin to wrap up the whole Steph-and-Tim's-secret-identity subplot.

Instead, I'll just take this moment to point out that these two pages are the only part that anyone besides Steph and Greta themselves actually saw: Steph, overpowered and running like bugger all while a furious Greta hunted her down. Tim and Red Tornado don't have any other context for this encounter, and anyone else hearing about it would have even less.

We should also probably address the question of whether Greta was actually trying to hurt Steph here and: no, I don't think she was. Not physically, anyway. I think when she tells Reddy that she "just wanted to scare" Steph, she was telling the truth. Which, mind you, means she was going to dump her into a terrifying hell dimension and give her a repeated taste of her own mortality. But it wouldn't have hurt her; it didn't hurt the gang when they teleported through it in issue 19. And, frankly, between this issue and the shit Steph pulls over the course of the Robin issues around this subplot... I think she deserved it.

I never said I wasn't a hater.

Now, to be fair, Steph has no way to know this. She doesn't know Greta, and she doesn't have a reason to think kindly of her. And like I mentioned, it's an important part of Greta's storyarc that her powers and her connection to death makes her friends suspicious of her, and that suspicion sadly drives her to Darksied.

Which is why I'm inclined to think that their next encounters, brief as they are, are deliberately framed. First in issue 50:

And then in issue 54, during the storyline where Secret has allied herself with Darksied:

This leads into Greta basically eating Steph for reasons that don't actually have to do with their conflict -- she's already eaten the D.E.O., ie, the people who held her prisoner, and would continue to eat, it's implied, everyone on Earth except the members of Young Justice, saving them for last as we come to climax of the story. That probably counts as "trying to kill Steph" so technically speaking Greta has tried to kill Steph once, it just wasn't the time everybody thinks about or in a jealous rage. It wasn't personal at all, she was just part of a checklist.

The important bit I wanted to focus on was Steph and Tim's descriptions of their past encounter, and the fact that Greta calls it an exaggeration. With that context, I'm inclined to think that "almost killed me in a jealous rage" is the way that Steph framed their story to other people, not necessarily because she was trying to manipulate anybody, but because that's how she, Stephanie, internalized and interpreted the event.

Because Steph, demonstrably, doesn't think she was doing anything wrong. If she wants something, like her boyfriend's secret identity, or whatever, she will come up with excuses and justifications why she should get to have it ("He's testing me! He wants me to figure it out!" etc.) and no one can change her mind. So it's inconceivable to her that this person who clearly has a crush on her boyfriend would actually be mad at her for the reason they say they're mad at her; clearly, to her, Secret was jealous, and therefore Secret must have been the aggressor. Plus, she was big and scary and Steph (to be fair) had no way of knowing that Greta was mostly just having trouble keeping her emotions under control.

And because nobody else saw what went down between them, people were more inclined to believe Steph's story over Greta's, partially because Greta was clearly the overpowering victor when Red Tornado and Robin arrived on the scene, and partially because Greta's powers mean people, even her friends, tend to be suspicious of her, which is a key point in her personal, rather tragic storyarc.

---

So, to summarize, because I know this has gotten rambly: Greta followed Steph home to investigate her and was angered by her violating Robin's privacy. Steph escalated their dispute into violence, and then further into attacks that could be perceived as lethal until she bit off more than she could chew. Robin and Red Tornado, arriving at the tail end of the fight, only saw the much more powerful Secret overwhelming normal human Spoiler and were therefore more inclined to believe Steph's version of the story which, naturally, framed her as the victim and Greta as the aggressor, when it was in actuality a more even fight fueled by anger rather than jealousy.

#stephanie brown #greta hayes #the secret #spoiler #young justice #dc comics #meta #long post #tim drake #young just us #stephanie brown critical

[anotherhumaninthisworld]

Can you tell me the story of the relationship between saint-just and desmoulins? . ..

Because I couldn't understand it properly so yeah ...

The first connection between Desmoulins and Saint-Just is from 2 January 1790, when the former publishes an annonce for the latter’s recently published Organt in number 6 of Révolutions de France et de Brabant:

Organt, poem in twenty verses, with this epigraph: Vous, jeune homme, au bon sens avez-vous dit adieu ? And this preface: J’ai vingt ans, j’ai mal fait, he pourrai faire mieux. 

A few months later, we find the following letter from Saint-Just to Desmoulins. It is undated, but can be traced to May 1790. The letter makes Desmoulins, alongside Robespierre, who he wrote a letter to the following year, the only revolutionaries Saint-Just is confirmed to have contacted prior to heading to Paris in 1792. Unlike in the case of Robespierre however, the letter to Desmoulins implies a correspondence was actually picked up between the two:

Monsieur, If you were not so busy I would tell you some more details about the Chauni assembly where one can find men of considerable calibre and quality. I was received in spite of my youth. Sieur Gelli, your compatriot from Vermandois had denounced me. He was thrown out bodily. We saw your compatriots, M. Saulce, M. Violette and others, by whom I was received with great courtesy. There is no point telling you (because you are not fond of foolish praise) that your region is proud of you. You will have known before I did that the department is fixed at Laon. Is that good or is that bad for one or other of the towns? It seems to me that it is no more than a point of honour between the two towns and points of honour are of little importance. I took the tribune; I worked with the intention of carrying the day on the question of the chief place but I did not follow on, I left, weighed down with compliments like a donkey burdened with relics, having, however, the assurance that at the next legislature I could be with you in the national assembly. You had promised to write to me, but I see clearly that you will not have the time. I am free as of now. Should I return to you or remain amongst the foolish aristocrats in this part of the world. At the time of my return from Chauni the peasants from my region came to look for me at Manicamp. The Comte de Lauraguais was greatly astonished by this rustic-patriotic ceremony. I led them all to his house for a visit. They said that he was out in the fields, however, like Tarquin, I had a rod with which I cut off the head of a nearby fern beneath the window of the castle and without a word we made a volte face. Farewell my dear Desmoulins. Write to me if you have need of me. Your latest issues are full of excellent things. Apollo and Minerva are still with you and are not displeased. If you have anything to say to your people in Guise I will be seeing them again in eight days’ time from Laon where I will be going on specific business. Goodbye again: glory, peace and patriotic rage. Saint-Just I will read you this evening since I have only spoken to you of your recent issues by saying yes.

Different feelings can however be found a year later, in a letter Saint-Just adressed to Villain Daubigny on July 20 1791 (it is dated 1792 in Oeuvres complètes de Saint-Just, but Saint-Just’s biographer Bernard Vinot points out that this is most likely an error, since all the events it makes allusions to took place the previous year):

…Go and see Desmoulins, embrace him for me, and tell him that he will never see me again, that I esteem his patriotism, but that I despise him, because I have penetrated his soul, and because he fears that I will betray him. Tell him to not abandon the good cause, and recommend it to him, because he does not yet possess the audacity of magnanimous virtue.

What exactly had happened between the two for Saint-Just to write this about Desmoulins is unknown. The same can be said about the question regarding where and when the meeting between them he alludes to here played out, since neither of them are confirmed to have left their respective cities in 1791.

Yet another year later, in September 1792, both Saint-Just and Desmoulins were elected deputies for the National Convention, meaning the former came to settle in Paris on Rue de Gaillon 7, around 2,5 km from the latter’s home on Rue du Théâtre 1 (today Rue de l’Odeon 28). Aside from the fact both were fervent montagnards, I have not been able to find any connection between them until the second half of the following year, with the release of Desmoulins’ Lettre de Camille Desmoulins, député de Paris à la Convention, August général Dillon en prison aux Madelonettes. In it, Saint-Just, who had accused Dillon of having been asked to lead an uprising to put the dauphin on the throne and declare Marie-Antoinette regent on June 2 1793, got described the following way in a footnote:

After Legendre, the member of the Convention who has the highest opinion of himself is Saint-Just. One can see by his gait and bearing that he looks upon his own head as the corner-stone of the Revolution, for he carries it upon his shoulders with as much respect and as if it was the Sacred Host. But what makes his vanity killing is, that some years ago he published an epic poem in twenty-four cantos entitled Argant [sic]. Rivarol and Champcenetz, from whose microscope, used in the interests of the Almanach des grands hommes, not a single verse, not a single hemistich in France has ever escaped, have in vain gone searching for this; they who have hunted up even the least little scrap of literature have not seen Saint-Just’s epic poem in twenty-four cantos. After such a misadventure, how can he show himself?

According to some sources, the ”he carries his head like the Sacret Host” comment was a reply to something Saint-Just had himself said about Desmoulins. Marcellin Matton published in 1834 an anecdote (which it is presumed he obtained from Desmoulins’ mother- or sister-in-law) in which Guillaume Brune has a meeting with the Desmoulins couple at the time of the numbers of the Vieux Cordelier being released. The following conversation would then have played out:

”…You [Brune said] are also read by Barère who recognizes himself; by Saint-Just, who promised to make you carry your head like Saint Denis.” ”That’s true,” [Desmoulins] replied, ”I remember it: it was a very bad joke, and my answer was much better. Have you seen my letter to Dillon? In the approach and posture of Saint-Just, we see that he regards his head as the cornerstone of the republic, and that he carries it on his shoulders with respect like a holy sacrament. Was I wrong, and do you think that for such a good joke he would want to kill me? I only ask him for one favor, and that is to wait until he has given a valid response.”

In 1851, the historian Nicolas Villiaume similarly claimed to have had the same story told to him multiple times by Desmoulins’ mother-in-law. Interestingly though, the ”I will make him carry his head like Saint Denis” comment already appeared in works dated 1816 and 1825 (in both cases without any source cited). There, it is instead portrayed as a response to Desmoulins having written ”Saint-Just carries his head like the Sacred Host” and not as the cause of it. In light of this, I think the idea of Saint-Just having actually said it is something that must be taken with a huge grain of salt.

The things more reliable sources can tell us about Saint-Just’s attitude towards Desmoulins at the time are less overwhelming. He was away from Paris during much of the period where Desmoulins released and got in trouble for the Vieux Cordelier (from October 17 to December 4, December 10 to December 30, and finally January 22 to February 13), and when he was there during said period, I cannot find him recorded to have spoken about Desmoulins or his journal a single time. Saint-Just also went unmentioned in all of the six numbers of the Vieux Cordelier that were released during the time they were both alive.

When the Committee of Public Safety decided to strike down Desmoulins and the other ”dantonists,” it was however Saint-Just who, like in the previous case with the hébertists, got tasked with writing a report against them. Here he obtained the help of Robespierre, who prepared around 65 notes for him to use as material against them. In said notes, Robespierre presented Desmoulins as less guilty than Danton and Fabre, having instead been more of their minion, a version of the story Saint-Just then stuck to when finishing his Rapport sur la conjuration ourdie pour obtenir un changement de dynastie; et contre Fabre d’Églantine, Danton, Philippeaux, Lacroix et Camille Desmoulins:

Bad citizen (speaking of Danton), you have conspired, you said, two days ago, bad things about Desmoulins, an instrument that you have lost, and you attributed to him shameful vices. […] For six months, a plan of palpitation and anxiety has been hatched within the government. Every day we were sent a report on Paris; we were flexibly insinuated, sometimes imprudent advice, sometimes misplaced fears; the tables were calculated on the feelings that it was important to arouse in us, so that the government would move in the direction that suited criminal plots; Danton was praised there, Hébert and Camille Desmoulins were accredited, and all their projects were assumed to be sanctioned by public opinion, to discourage us. […] What shall I say of those who claimed to be exclusively the old Cordeliers? They were precisely Danton, Fabre, Camille Desmoulins, and the ministry, author of the reports on Paris, where Danton, Fabre, Camille and Philippeanx are praised, where everything is directed in their direction and in the direction of Hébert. Danton had directed the last writings of Desmoulins and Philippeaux. […] Camille Desmoulins, who was initially duped and ended up being an accomplice, was, like Philippeaux, an instrument of Fabre and Danton. It was said, as proof of Fabre's good nature, that when he was at Desmoulins' house at the time when he read to someone a writing in which he requested a committee of clemency for the aristocracy and called the Convention the court of Tiberius, Fabre started to cry. The crocodile cries too. As Camille Desmoulins lacked character, his pride was used. As a rhetorician, he attacked the revolutionary government in all its forms; he spoke brazenly in favor of the enemies of the Revolution, proposed a committee of clemency for them; showed himself to be very inclement towards the popular party; attacked, like Hébert and Vincent, the representatives of the people in the armies; like Hébert, Vincent and Buzot, he himself treated them as proconsuls. He had been the defender of the infamous Dillon, with the same audacity that Dillon himself showed, when at Maubeuge he ordered his army to march on Paris, and take an oath of loyalty to the king. He fought the law against the English; he received thanks in England, in the newspapers of that time. Have you noticed that all those who were praised in England have betrayed their fatherland here?

According to an anecdote published in the pamphlet À Maximilien Robespierre aux enfers (1795), released a few months after thermidor by Taschereau de Fargues and Paul-Auguste-Jacques, Saint-Just and Robespierre had wanted to denounce Desmoulins and the other dantonists before arresting them, but been downvoted by their colleagues:

Why should I not say that [the dantonist purge] was a meditated assassination, prepared for a long time, when two days after this session where the crime was taking place, the representative Vadier told me that Saint-Just, through his stubbornness, had almost caused the downfall of the members of the two committees, because he had wanted that the accused to be present when he read the report at the National Convention; and such was his obstinacy that, seeing our formal opposition, he threw his hat into the fire in rage, and left us there. Robespierre was also of this opinion; he believed that by having these deputies arrested beforehand, this approach would sooner or later be reprehensible; but, as fear was an irresistible argument with him, I used this weapon to fight him: You can take the chance of being guillotined, if that is what you want; For my part, I want to avoid this danger by having them arrested immediately, because we must not have any illusions about the course we must take; everything is reduced to these bits: If we do not have them guillotined, we will be that ourselves. 

Regardless of whether this be true or not, on March 30, Saint-Just was one of eighteen men to sign the by Amar drafted arrest warrant for Danton, Delacroix, Philippeaux and Desmoulins, who were all arrested in the night. The next day at the Convention, Robespierre shut down Legendre when he suggested the accused be allowed to come and defend themselves before the Convention, after which Saint-Just entered the hall, mounted the rostrum and read out the act of accusation the two of them had worked out.

Receiving a copy of Saint-Just’s report in his cell at the Luxembourg prison, Desmoulins got around to preparing a defence. In it, he claimed the author of the report had personal reasons for wanting him dead. He also referred to him as ”Monsieur le Chevalier de Saint-Just,” a nicknamed previously used by the girondin Salle:

If I had gotten the chance to print in turn, if one hadn’t put me in isolation, if one had lifted the seals and if I had the paper neccesary to establish my defense, if one gave me only two days to make a number seven, imagine how I would confront M. the chevalier Saint-Just! Imagiene how I would convince him of the most atrocious slander ! But Saint-Just writes leisurely in his bath, in his bathtub, he plots my murder during fifteen days, while I have no place to put my writing desk and only a few hours to defend my life. What is this if not the the duel of the Emperor Commodus, who, armed with an excellent blade, forced his enemy to fight with a simple foil garnished with cork? […] I arrive at the part of the report which concerns me. In living memory, there is no example of such atrocious slander as this piece. And yet there is not a single person in the Convention that doesn’t know that Monsieur the former chevalier Saint-Just holds for me an implacable hatred for a slight joke that I allowed myself five months ago in one of my numbers. Bourdaloue said: Molière puts me in his comedy, I will put him in my sermon. I put Saint-Just in a giggly number, and he puts me in a guillotine report where there isn’t a single true word in my regard. When Saint-Just accuses me of being an accomplice of Orléans and Dumouriez, he shows well that he is a patriot of yesterday. Who denounced Dumouriez first of all, and before Marat and more vigorously than anyone else? Certainly one cannot deny that it was me? My Tribune des Patriotes exists, let Saint-Just read the portrait I there painted of Dumouriez six months before his treason in Belgium, he will see that I have never since added anything to this portrait. And Orléans who he makes me the accomplice of, who doesn’t know that I was the first to denounce him? That the only writings on this faction that the Jacobins have printed and distributed were written by me? Does Saint-Just no longer remember my Histoire des Brissotins? […] There are witnesses to the fact that the great republican Saint-Just, at the beginning of the Convention, said: Oh! They want a republic, she shall cost them dearly! There are witnesses to the fact the ambitious Saint-Just said: I know where I go. 

In an unfinished and unsent letter written to Robespierre around the same time, Lucile Desmoulins too held Saint-Just as the main culprit behind her husband’s fate, arguing that he had misled their friend:

…As far from the insensibility of your Saint-Just as from his base jealousies, [Camille] recoiled in front if the idea of accusing a college comrade, a companion in arms. […] Robespierre, can you really complete the fatal projects which the vile souls that surround you no doubt have inspired you to? […] Had I been Saint-Just’s wife I would tell him this: the sake of Camille is yours, it’s the sake of all the friends of Robespierre!  

A rumor claiming that Lucile had been sent money from the imprisoned Arthur Dillon conveniently arrived around the same time the trial against the indulgents started getting off the rails. In the afternoon of April 4, after the proceedings had been closed for the day, Saint-Just again mounted the rostrum at the Convention and revealed the discovery of this new conspiracy:

The public prosecutor of the revolutionary tribunal reported that the revolt of the guilty had caused the court proceedings to be suspended until the Convention had taken measures. You have escaped the greatest danger that ever threatened freedom: now all the accomplices are discovered, and the revolt of the criminals at the foot of justice itself. Intimidated by the law, the secret of their conscience; their despair, their fury, everything announces that the good nature they presented was the most hypocritical trap that had been set for the revolution. What innocent person has ever rebelled before the law? There is no need for any other proof of their attacks than their audacity. What! those whom we accused of having been the accomplices of Dumouriez and Orléans, those who only made a revolution in favor of a new dynasty, those who conspired for the misfortune and slavery of the people are at the height of their infamy! If there are men here who are truly friends of liberty, if the energy that suits those who have undertaken to liberate their country is in their hearts, you will see that there are no longer any conspirators on the front line, who, counting on the aristocracy with whom they have marched for several years, call upon the people the vengeance of the crime. No, liberty shall not recoil in front of her enemies; their coalition has been revealed. Dillon, who ordered his army to march upon Paris, has declared that the wife of Desmoulins had received money in order to promote a movement to assassinate the patriots and the Revolutionary Tribunal. We thank you for placing us in the position of honor; like you, we will cover the fatherland with our bodies. Dying is nothing, provided that the revolution triumphs; here is the day of glory; this is the day when the Roman senate fought against Catiline; This is the day to consolidate public liberty forever. Your committees respond to you with heroic surveillance. Who can refuse you his veneration in this terrible moment when you fight for the last time against the faction which was lenient towards your enemies, and which today finds fury to fight liberty?

After having heard Saint-Just’s report, the Convention used this new discovery to order ”that the Revolutionary Tribunal shall proceed with the instruction relating to the conspiracy of Lacroix, Danton, Chabot and others. The President shall make use of every means which the law permits to cause his authority and that of the Revolutionary Tribunal to be respected, and to repress every attempt on the part of the accused to trouble public tranquillity and to hinder the course of justice. It is decreed that all persons accused of conspiracy who shall resist or insult the national justice shall be outlawed and receive judgment on the spot.” This order became essential for getting the dantonists condemned to death the following day.

Saint-Just had however nothing to do with the actual arrest warrant for Lucile, signed the same day by Robespierre, Billaud-Varennes, C-A Prieur, Carnot, Couthon, Barère, Du Barran and Voulland, which would lead to her ending up on the scaffold as well nine days later.

I’m currently blanking when it comes to contemporaries who had anything to say regarding the relationship between Saint-Just and Desmoulins.

#saint-just #desmoulins #camille desmoulins #louis antoine saint just #frev #frev friendships #ask

[agentmarcuspike]

“t h e l o n g e s t n i g h t”

– a secret santa holiday fic for erin @perotovar ✧

pairing: marcus pike + nonbinary!reader synopsis: left alone in the big city during the longest night of the year, a stranger in a club makes you wish it were even longer. word count: 1.9k a/n: i was so fucking excited when i got you as my giftee, erin. i love everything you make, gifs and stories, and i've been wanting to give something back to you, so i’m grateful for this excuse/opportunity. wanted to post it on the actual solstice, but when i saw you were my secret santa too, i couldn’t wait lol. (a lil shoutout to @scenaaario as well, for being my secret informant.) love u, proud of u!

It's the winter solstice; the shortest day of the year.

But then again, it’s also the longest night.

All of your friends have already gotten on their trains and planes to celebrate the holidays with their families, leaving you to create your own traditions. Usually you’d get out of town as well, hole up somewhere the sky is clearer, the air lighter. Celebrate the return of the sun, the light, the new year, with a bonfire and candles to drive the dark away. From without, so within.

This year is different. A last minute opportunity presenting itself for your best friend; spending the holidays and New Years in Thailand with her Man of the Month, had left you in charge of house sitting, looking after her apartment and moody old cat.

So this year, on the darkest of the nights, unable to escape the city, you’re hoping to make the many hours pass as quickly as possible, the promise of lighter days the only thing you look forward to.

You’ve been staring at yourself in the club’s dirty bathroom mirror for far too long, impatient fists knocking on the door, and you yell at them to give you a second. Face sweaty, eyeliner smudged, eyes empty, you barely recognize yourself. The sheer black shirt you’re wearing is unbuttoned as far as it can be. With a last look at the person in the mirror, you straighten your septum piercing, and make your way out of the bathroom.

The heavy scent of spilled beer and sweaty bodies hit you as soon as you open the door. Thumping music, more bass than tune, tickles your eardrums, and you can feel the sound as waves of prickles on your skin. The soles of your boots stick to the greasy floor where you’re making your way across the room, squeezing through the crowd of people, who are all moving as one; a massive creature with many heads, twice as many arms, and a sole purpose with existence: To dance the night away.

It’s not possible to avoid touching people as you push through to get to the bar, so you try your best to be respectful with your hands, but as you place them carefully on a slim waist to push past, a zap runs through your arm, as if your finger were a fork and this body were electric. Five thousand Volts of static travel between you, and the body your hands quickly withdraw from must have felt it too, because he quickly turns to face you.

Looking down at you, his brows are raised, mirroring yours, mouth slightly agape. A different type of electricity runs through you as your eyes meet. It travels from your face, burning your cheeks, through your throat, removing every trace of moisture on its way to your stomach, where it does a loop, and ends as a throbbing pressure between your legs.

In the short moments of flashing lights, you can make out his features. High cheekbones shadowing his clean shaven face. Slightly crooked nose and sharp jawline. Kind eyes, crinkling at the corners, softening it all out.

You can’t hear him, but his shoulders shake as he laughs, and you laugh too, looking away nervously. He brings your attention back to him when he leans down, mouth to your ear.

“I’d shake your hand, but I’m worried you’ll shock me again.”

His voice is surprisingly deep, but not booming. It has a comforting, gentle glee to it, and his breath tickles the sensitive skin around your ear.

“I’m Marcus,” he finishes before pulling away far enough to look at your face again.

Staring at each other, you can only giggle. You lick your lips before leaning in, lips brushing the shell of his ear as someone bumps into you, pushing you closer. With a hand on his shoulder to steady yourself, you tell him your name.

“And you shocked me!” you accuse.

“Why would I do that?!” Marcus yells, hand on his chest in mock offense.

Something about him has you grinning, your mouth dry, upper lip sticking briefly to your exposed teeth as you close your mouth. He’s funny, he’s cute. You wanna buy him a drink.

Your platform shoes give you some extra height, but you still have to stand on your toes to reach his ear when he stands up tall.

“Thirsty?” you ask, supporting yourself with a hand on his bicep.

“Parched.”

“Drink?”

“Yeah.”

Your hand glides from his upper arm, across his warm skin, feeling the nerves in his forearm flex under your fingers. When your hand reaches his, you squeeze it once before taking the lead, creating a path and guiding you both through the crowd towards the bar.

The music is quieter there, muffled by a thin wall dividing the bar area from the dance floor. You can no longer feel the booming bass in your body, but the way your heart is beating it might as well have slipped inside of you, bruising the inside of your chest bone with insistent thumps, begging to be let back out again.

Marcus leans on the bar bench, and you do the same. Or, at least you try to. Your height makes you feel more like a child being allowed to order hot chocolate by themself for the first time, face peeking over the bar like a meerkat. He must see it too, because he shoves you playfully.

“Wanna sit on my shoulders so you can see?”

You roll your eyes at him. “Yeah, yeah. Heard it all before.”

He turns towards you, looking down at your shoes.

“I mean, even with the platforms…”

“Okay, mister, we’re both well aware of how much I need a couple of inches.”

Your accidental innuendo catches him off guard, and he just stares at you for a second.

“No, wait–” you begin.

“Wow!”

“I didn’t– That wasn’t what I–”

But it’s too late, you’re already blushing, burying your face in your hands as you groan.

Marcus just laughs, patting your back with a soft, gentle hand.

“All good, don’t worry. How about we start with two fingers?”

It’s your turn to be speechless. Not sure whether to be impressed or offended by his abrasiveness, you look back up towards him, but he’s not looking at you. You follow his gaze to the bartender, who’s busy filling two glasses with… two fingers of whiskey.

Marcus accepts the glasses from the bartender, and hands you one with a satisfied smirk.

“It’s gonna be a long night if you keep this up,” you murmur, shaking your head playfully as you smile into the glass.

“I’ll drink to that,” Marcus grins back, finishing his drink in one go.

He looks at you expectantly, and with a grimace you down your own, before you let him grab you by the hand and pull you back towards the dance floor.

Marcus’ hands softly grip your waist as you move to the music. He gracefully guards you, quickly and easily twirling you out of the way whenever someone grinds too close. Your own hands rest on his broad shoulders, one of them moving slowly to the back of his neck, your thumb drawing small circles over the soft skin behind his ear.

He closes his eyes, leaning to rest his forehead against yours, and you swear you can feel the vibrations of him purring through his chest.

You’re no longer following the music, your bodies swaying to the steady pulse of your own hearts, which are beating in unison, a tango for just the two of you.

Marcus’ dark eyes flutter open, so close you can barely focus. His nose brushes yours as he leans in all the way, connecting his lips with yours. Soft at first, mouths closed, firmly pressed against each other. With your hands on his neck, you pull him down towards you, closer, closer, closer, and his hands on your waist grip you tighter.

He breaks away, nuzzling his nose against your cheek as he moves to your neck, where he presses open mouthed kisses to the sensitive skin, sucking lightly. A shiver runs through you, leaving goosebumps from your tailbone to the very top of your head. You turn towards him, seeking his mouth with your own.

This time you part your lips to invite him in, poking your tongue out ever so slightly. He accepts your invitation, feeding you his tongue back, the residue of whiskey coating it burning deliciously. It’s soft, your mouths working together instead of fighting for dominance, but it quickly grows more needy, two sets of hands grabbing and pulling, searching for something to hold onto.

Your hands settle on his lower back, finding the waistband of his pants, hooking your fingers in his belt hoops. With a quick tug, you pull his hips flush with yours, and he gasps into your mouth. He pulls away, just far enough to look into your eyes properly. A question between you, pulled tight like a rubberband. Requesting permission to move further. You nod at him once, giving him the green light, and the rubberband snaps as his lips once again connect with yours.

And he indulges. His hands travel to rest at your lower back, before sliding down to cup your ass, squeezing once. You catch yourself wishing, for the first time in your life, that you’d worn a skirt, so you could have felt his big hands against your skin. The cramped mass of people dancing around you are oblivious to your endeavor, only bumping into you every now and then, but Marcus doesn’t let you budge an inch, holding you tight, a hand on your ass and one arm sneaking around your back, holding onto your waist.

Your thumbs find the sliver of skin between his waistband and his shirt. With slow movements, in contrast to the quick blinking of lights seeping through your eyelids, you draw tiny circles on the soft skin of his narrow waist. One of his hands moves back to your face, thumb resting against your lower lip as he delicately pulls on it with his teeth, soothing the sting with his tongue immediately. You wish he’d have bitten harder, drawn blood. That he’d taste you, mix the fluid from your veins with the ones of his mouth. Swallow you.

He thrusts against you once, seeking friction, hard and impatient underneath his clothes. Had he shoved his hands down yours, he would have found you dripping as well; so slick and ready to take him. But all you can do with the crowd of people moving around you is hold on tight, and hope for an opening, however small, between atoms, letting your bodies move inside each other, the way his tongue does in your mouth, and your hand, secretly between your bodies, gently covering his protruding bulge.

You squeeze him gently, and you can feel his lashes flutter against your nose as he rests his forehead against yours, his mouth open in a silent moan.

The dance floor doesn’t exist anymore. It’s just the two of you now. Two hungry bodies, two lonely souls. You hear no more music, ears filled only with the sound of rushing blood. All you can taste is whiskey, and all you can see is him. You catch yourself wishing that this night, the longest one of the year, would last just a little while longer.

— happy holidays !!! x

#space sisters secret santa 2023 #marcus pike x reader #except reader is specifically Erin lmao #marcus pike fanfiction #marcus pike fanfic #marcus pike x you #my writing #useroaks #perotovar

[dianawinchester03]

Season 1, Episode 12 - Faith

Series Masterlist

Authors Note: This episode is suppperrrr long because I got carried away with adding my own little scenes. So buckle up, get a little snacky snack, some tea and I truly do hope you guys enjoy!!😘

________________________________

Third Person POV

The boys and Y/N pull up to a house in Baby. They open the trunk begin searching for the taser guns. "What do you got those amped up to?" Sam asks Dean. "A hundred thousand volts" He responds. "Damn" Y/N mutters impressed. "Yeah. I want this Rawhead extra frigging crispy" Dean replies handing them each a gun.

"Now remember, you only get one shot with these things. So make it count" He reminds them, closing the trunk. They then burst down the door to the dark house, using their flashlights and aiming their guns to guide the way. They make it to a basement and start going down the stairs.

They hear some clattering in a nearby closet and flash their lights towards it. Slowly approaching it. "On three" Y/N whispers and they nod. "One, two, three" Dean counts and quickly opens the door, revealing two young children crouching in fear, covering their ears. "Is it still here?" Sam asks them quietly and they nod fearfully.

"Okay. Grab your sisters hand, sweetie. We're gonna get you out of here. Let's go" Y/N instructs the young boy calmly. Dean and Y/N make sure the coast is clear behind them, "Alright, go!" Dean directs them and they head up the stairs infront of Sam but something grabs him from below the stairs and pulls him down causing the children to scream.

"Sam!" Dean and Y/N yell as he falls. Dean goes to the back of the stairs and fires his shot but misses. "Sam, get out of here!" Y/N shouts. "Alright, take this!" He throws his unused gun for Dean. "Go!" He runs behind the kids and leads them out of the house.

Dean and Y/N stay behind the gank the monster. "Come onnn" Dean taunts the creature to get out as they canvas the basement. Splitting up into different directions. Suddenly the creature comes out and backhands Y/N into the wall, causing her to trip and fall onto her back.

She trudges to the water to get her gun. Retrieving it she fires, hitting the monster. But the water that the monster is also standing in, caused the electricity to electrocute both her and the monster. She passed out from the shock to her body. Dean bends the corner to see a passed out Y/N and a dead monster.

"Y/N!" He yells, rushing to her side. "No, no, no! Come on princess, look at me" He pleads, shaking her, praying she's okay. Sam rushes down the stairs out of breath. "Y/N!" He yells, rushing to her side with Dean. "What happened?" Sam asks his brother panicked. "I-I-I- I just left her for a split second-" Dean can't get the words out, tears running down both their faces.

________________________________

Later, the boys are at a receptionist desk in a nearby hospital. "Gentlemen, I'm sorry to ask. There doesn't seem to be any insurance on file" The receptionist says kindly. "Right, um...here" A distraught Dean mutters, taking out his wallet and handing her his insurance card.

"Okay, Mr. Burkowitz" The receptionist nods, a bit confused but goes along with it. They turn to the police officers that were waiting for their report. "Look, we can finish this up later" One of officers says to them understandingly. "No, no. It's okay" Sam replies and begins explaining their cover story.

"We were just taking a shortcut through the neighborhood and um, our windows were rolled down and we heard some screaming when we drove past the house. And we stopped. Ran in" Sam tells them as the other officer takes notes. "You found the kids in the basement?" The officer asks.

"Yeah" Dean replies, nodding. "Well, thank god you did" The officer says and Dean notices the doctor come out from Y/N's room. "Excuse us" He says, pulling Sam away and the officer thanks them for their help. "Hey, doc. Is she-?" Dean asks the doctor shakily. "She's resting" The doctor tells them. "And?" Sam asks.

"The electrocution triggered a heart attack. Pretty massive, I'm afraid. Her heart...it's damaged" The doctor explains sorrowfully and their faces drop. Deans heart feels like it's about to explode. Blaming himself for leaving her. "How damaged?" Sam asks. "We've done all we can. We can try and keep her comfortable at this point but....I give her a couple weeks. Maybe a month" The doctor tells them honestly.

"No, no. There's gotta be something you can do, some kind of treatment!" Dean insists but the doctor shakes his head, breaking his confidence. "We can't work miracles. I really am sorry" The doctor apologizes and they nod sadly.

Going into Y/N's room, she's dressed in a hospital gown, dark circles under her eyes, they see her flipping through channels on the crappy tv. "Have you guys ever actually watched daytime TV? It's terrible" She grumbles annoyed, her voice raspy. She looks over at the boys who have broken looks on their faces. "We talked to your doctor" Sam says sadly.

"That fabric softener teddy bear. Ooh. I'm gonna hunt that little bitch down" She mutters jokingly chuckling. "Y/N" They call out to her. Dean shaking his head at the fact that she's joking at a time like this. Only Y/N would do that with her ray of sunshine ass. Dean thinks to himself. "Yeah" She sighs, tossing the remote aside.

"Alright. Well, looks like you fellas are gonna leave town without me" She tells them. "What're you talking about? We're not gonna leave you here" Dean says in disbelief at the fact that she thinks they're gonna leave. "Hey. You better take care of my bike or I swear I'll haunt your asses" She jokes and they look at her unamused.

"I don't think that's funny" Sam says shaking his head. "Me neither" Dean adds. "Ah, come on. It's a little funny" She chuckles and they don't respond, looking away. "Look, fellas. What can I say? It's a dangerous gig. I drew the short straw. That's it, end of story" She says in a low tone.

"Don't talk like that, alright? We still have options" Sam says hopefully. "What options? You got burial and cremation" Y/N says morbidly and they cringe at the thought. "I know it's not easy guys...but I'm gonna die. And you can't stop it" She tells them honestly. Dean walks to her bed and takes a seat next to her, laying a hand on her cheek comfortingly.

He caresses her cheek with his thumb. She rubs her face into his hand, closing her eyes and basking in his gentle embrace like it's the last she'll ever feel it. "You watch us with those beautiful (e/c) eyes" He whispers to her, loud enough for Sam with hear, tears brimming in his eyes.

________________________________

A couple days later. Dean is in their motel room now, Sam tried to call John earlier but he didn't get onto him so he left him a voicemail and left to get them food, though he know Dean probably doesn't want to eat, he's gonna have to eventually. Dean is trying to call F/N now but he's only gotten his voicemail so he decides to leave one also.

'This is F/N L/N, I can't reach the phone right now so you can call my daughter. Y/N at (your phone number). Have a good day' BEEP.

"Hey uh, Mr. L/N. It's Dean, uh..." Dean stutters, swallowing the lump in his throat. "You probably won't even get this, but it's Y/N" Dean says tearfully. "She's sick and the doctor said there's nothing they can do. Um.." Dean explains, fighting the tears that are threatening to fall and he takes a deep breath.

"But uh, I guess they don't know the things we know, right?" He says a bit hopefully. "So, don't worry, because me and Sam are gonna do whatever it takes to get her better. I promise you" Dean promises, fully intending it, his heart aching in his chest. "I'm so sorry, F/N. I failed you. I promised you I'd protect her. I failed my Dad." He apologizes tearfully, his voice cracking.

He goes to continue but Sam comes through the door, food in hand and he quickly recollects himself, wiping his tears. "I- but this isn't about me. I just wanted you to know. Okay. Bye" He finishes the voicemail, hanging up and tossing the phone aside. "Any luck?" Sam asks and Dean shakes his head sighing.

Sam hands Dean a burger and a soda but he shakes his head. "I'm fine" He lies roughly. "Dean, you gotta eat" Sam chastises his big brother. "If Y/N knew you weren't eating, she'd have your head on a platter. Now eat." Sam orders him, shaking the bag of food while Dean glares at him.

Not saying a word, he snatches the bag of food from his younger brother, and takes the soda from him. Sam couldn't help but chuckle, "You know I'm right" He mutters and Dean rolls his eyes, digging into the bag. He doesn't even have an appetite and neither does Sam but they try to gorge it down.

Suddenly, knocking at the door breaks them out of their so-called eating and Dean is the first at the door, eyeing it cautiously. He opens it quickly to see Y/N in a hoodie, looking worse than a couple days ago, leaning against the door with a sly smile. His eyes widen at the sight and Sam shoots up from his bed, "What the hell are you doing here?" He asks her, helping her in and closing the door behind him.

"I checked myself out" She replies, cringing in pain. "Are you crazy?" Sam exclaims. "I'm not gonna die in a hospital where the nurses aren't even hot" She retorts cheekily, leaning against the doorframe. "You know, this whole, 'I laugh in the face of death' thing...it's crap. We can see right through it" Dean calls her out on her bullshit and Sam nods in agreement.

"Yeah whatever dude" She scoffs. Dean gets behind her and helps her to a chair. "You know the doctors said I can't smoke? Shit pissed me off. A bunch of asswipes, like hello!?! It's my heart that's defective, not my lungs you scrub coated brainiacs!" Y/N exclaims in annoyance. Slouching in her chair like a 5 year old who got their candy stolen.

"That's what you're concerned about?" Dean chuckles, shaking his head. "Shut up" She mutters as they chuckle. She now looks between to two of them properly. "Have you two idiots even slept? You look worse than me" She asks groaning from the pain that's coursing through her body. "We've been scouring the internet for the last three days" Dean tells her as he sits next to Sam on the bed.

"We've been calling every contact in Dads journal" Sam tells her. "For what?" She asks confused. "For a way to help you. One of Dads friends, Joshua. He called me back. Told me about a guy in Nebraska. A specialist" Sam responds and Dean nods.

She looks in between them and smirks. "You fellas aren't gonna let me die in peace are ya?" She chuckles dryly. "We're not gonna let you die, period" Dean retorts with a sad smile. "We're going" Sam insists and Y/N huffs, trying to mask the pain she's in. But the boys aren't stupid, they can see right through it.

________________________________

The Impala pulls into a lot, crowded with people. A large white tent right across from a house. Some sickly people in the mix, from seeing this, Y/N already knew what Sam was up to. She opens the back door on the drivers side and Sam goes to help her.

"I got you" Sam tells her softly and she glared at him. "I got her" Dean tells him, pushing him off roughly and helping Y/N. Sam raises his eyebrows at this and shakes his head with a sad smile on his face. It was hurting him enough to see Y/N like this, he couldn't imagine how it must be for Dean right about now.

When Y/N gets out, her suspicions are confirmed when she sees a sign infront of the tent saying, "The Church of Roy Le Grange. Faith Healer". She rolls her eyes and looks over at Sam with a glare who's feigning innocence. "Man, you're a lying bastard. I thought you said we were gonna see a doctor!" She growls angrily, slamming the Impala door shut.

"I believe I said a specialist" Sam replies defensively. "I'm with Y/N on this one Sam. This is probably a load of crap" Dean agrees with Y/N. "Look, this guys supposed to be the real deal" Sam tries to reason as Dean helps her walk, wrapping his arm around her waist. "I can't believe you brought me to see some guy who heals people out of a tent" She exclaims.

"Reverend Le Grange is a great man" A woman in the crowd says defensively. "Yeah, that's nice" Dean shoots back sarcastically and Y/N chuckles. "I have a right to protest. This mans a fraud! And he's milking all of these people out of their hard earned money!" Another man, arguing with a police officer yells.

"Sir, this is a place of worship. Let's go, move it!" The officer ushers the protestor out of the compound. "I take it he's not part of the flock" Y/N says. "Well, when people see what they can't explain, there's controversy" Sam shrugs as they walk towards the tent. "Yeah but, come on, Sam. A faith healer?" Dean says baffled.

"Maybe it's time to have a little faith, guys" Sam retorts and Y/N glares at him. "You know what I got faith in? Reality. Knowing what's really going on" Y/N snaps bluntly and Dean nods in agreement. "How can you two be skeptics with the things we see everyday?" Sam scoffs, chuckling humorlessly.

"Exactly. We see them. We know they're real." Dean argues. "But if you know evil's out there, how can you not believe good's out there too?" Sam asks. "Because I've seen what evil does to good people" Y/N retorts. "Maybe God works in mysterious ways". A young man by the name of Logan interrupts their conversation, holding an umbrella.

(Quick Authors Note. You can imagine Logan as Mitchell Hoog. It's who I pictured for this role. Also note I post this story on both AO3 and Wattpad (And now tumblr) so I'm not sure yet how to attach a picture of it on AO3 so you can just research it. If not, just imagine him as Ross Lynch. Readers choice. Okay, back to the story!!☺️)

His blonde hair slicked back neatly, his blue eyes piercing into Y/N's. His eyes are nice but not as nice as Dean's. Y/N thinks. Y/N quickly let's go of Dean, placing her hands in her hoodie pocket. She smirks slyly, clearly attracted to him. "Maybe he does. I think you just turned me around on the subject" Y/N says flirtatiously, flashing him a coy smile.

Deans eyebrows cock at this, a familiar burning sensation in his chest rising at the sight of Y/N flirting with someone else. Sam shakes his head at her sudden mood change, noticing the heaving of Deans chest. "Yeah, I'm sure" Logan says chuckling. "I'm Y/N, this is Sam and his brother Dean" Y/N introduces herself.

Putting her hand out to shake Logan's, the smile not leaving her face. "Logan" He takes her hand, shaking it gently as he introduces himself. "So if you're not a believer, then why are you here?" Logan asks curiously. "Well, apparently my best friend here believes enough for both me and his brother" Y/N says smugly.

Causing Sam to shake his head with a smirk as Dean narrows his eyes at Logan. "Come on, Logan. It's about to start" Logan's mother approaches the group, ushering him to the tent. "Bye Y/N" Logan says, smiling at her as he walks away. Y/N eyes follow him as he walks into the tent.

"Well, I bet you he can work me in some mysterious ways" Y/N mutters smirking at the boys. "Really?" Dean says annoyed and she shrugs innocently. "What? I have a weakness for pretty boys with nice eyes" She says in a skittish tone, flashing Dean a wink before walking towards the tent and Dean hearts leaps when she says this.

"Did that electrocution affect her eyesight too?" He mutters lowly, his tone filled with jealously. Sam notices this and snickers. Dean looks over at brother confused. "What?" He asks him and Sam shakes his head. "You're such a jealous idiot" Sam retorts laughing, walking towards the tent, leaving Dean stunned.

"Am not!" Dean counters lamely, walking into the crowded tent behind Y/N. "Yeah, peace love and trust all over" Y/N says sarcastically while looking around, nodding to the security camera. Y/N looks around and she goes to sit in the back next to him but Dean pulls her lightly on her right side. "Come on" He says.

"What're you doing? Let's sit here." She asks confused. "We're sitting up front" Sam says, holding her on her left. "What? Why?" She grumbles annoyed. "Come on!" Sam ushers her. "Oh, come on guys" She mutters angered. "You alright?" Dean asks her gently. "This is ridiculous. I'm- get off me" She groans, pushing them off her lightly.

She appreciates their compassion, love and patience but hates the feeling of being treated like a child. "Perfect" Sam says, pointing to a second row seat. "Yeah, perfect" She mutters bitterly, taking a seat, in the middle of Sam and Dean. Behind Logan and his mom. "Look, I appreciate everything you boys are doing for me. But please. Don't treat me like a child" She pleads with them.

"Okay" Dean says softly and Sam nods. They look on stage to see a elderly man with a pair of dark shades on, wearing a suit and tie. Presuming to be Roy Le Grange. A woman, his wife, helps him take his outer layer on and he begins speaking into the mic.

"Each morning my wife, Sue Ann, reads me the news. Never seems good, does it?" Roy asks the crowd ironically. "No" Everyone answers. "Seems like there's always someone committing some immoral, unspeakable act" Roy says as Sam notices a crucifix with a symbol he's never need before at the alter.

Y/N cringes in pain, the feeling of her heart aching in her chest. Dean noticed this and wraps his arm around her comfortingly. She looks at him and gives him a small pained smile, resting her head on his shoulder. Sam looks at them with a small sad smile, taking a mental image so when Y/N's better, he can tease Dean about it.

"But I say to you: God is watching" Roy preaches into the mic. "Yes he is" The crowd agrees. "And god rewards the good and punishes the corrupt" He adds and the crowd murmur in agreement, Y/N rolls her eyes at this. Laying her head deeper onto Deans shoulder.

"It is the lord who does the healing here, friends. The lord who guides me in choosing who to heal by helping me see into peoples hearts" Roy preaches smiling and crowd chants, "Amen!" Y/N scoffs as this, "Yeah, or into their wallets" She mutters making Dean chuckle as she lifts her head off of his shoulder.

"You think so, young lady?" Roy calls out to her smiling, hearing her statement and her eyes widen in embarrassment. "Sorry" She apologizes, ashamed. "Watch what you say around a blind man. We got real sharp ears" Roy jokes, making the crowd laugh. Y/N cracks a small smile.

"What's your name, honey?" He asks her nicely. And she looks at the boys, they nod at her and she clears her throat. "Y/N" She tells him. "Y/N. I want you to come up here with me" Roy says kindly, nodding. Urging her to come up and she shakes her head. "Y/N, go on" A man in the crowd says to her.

Sam looks over in shock at this, happier than ever but Dean is a bit skeptical. "It's okay" She says sweetly. "What're you doing?" Sam exclaims confused and she ignores him. "You've come here to be healed, haven't you?" Roy asks her. "Well, yeah, but, uh- Maybe you should just pick someone else" Y/N stutters as the crowd cheers.

Urging her to go and Sam looks at her in disbelief. "No, I didn't pick you, Y/N, the Lord did" Roy chuckles and the crowd cheers louder as Y/N clenches her jaw. "Get up there!" Sam urges her. "Come on, sweetheart!" A man in the crowd urges her more and she looks around nervously.

Dean gives her his best puppy dog eyes saying "Please just go. It wouldn't hurt to try" He pleads with her and her heart pangs at the desperate look in his eyes. She sighs, nodding in agreement and gets up onto the stage slowly, the crowd cheering louder in joy.

Y/N's POV

When I die, I am so haunting those boys. I think to myself as I get up on the stage. "Praise the lord, amen" I see a man in the crowd praying with his hands clasped. Sue Ann helps me up on stage, putting a hand on my back. I look back at Sam and Dean and they both give me a look of encouragement.

"You ready?" Roy asks me, away from the mic. "Yeah look, no disrespect but uh...I'm not exactly a believer" I tell Roy honestly. "You will be, honey, you will be" He nods at me with a encouraging smile on his face. It kinda creeped me out. I look at him up and down skeptically as he says to the crowd, "Pray with me, friends"

Every one puts their hands in the air, palms to the sky. Roy slowly opens his hands, lifting it to the air and lays a hand on my shoulder before putting it on the side of my head. "Alright, now" He says and suddenly I feel weak, dizzy. I could feel my eyes flutter shut. I have no control over my body as I drop to my knees like if something is guiding me down.

I could see the boys at the corner of my eye, the worried expressions on their faces, quirking up in their seats. I try to talk, gasp for air, say anything, but nothing comes out. It's as if the life was drained out of my body the longer Roy touched me. My heart begins to give out as the pain courses through my chest.

Soon after I blacked out, falling to the ground.

"Y/N!" I hear Sam and Dean screaming my name in concern and the crowding cheering as they shake me, I gasp for air, coughing on nothing as I lay the ground. "Say something, Princess!" Dean yells worried, tears brimming in his eyes. I'm okay. Holy shit, I'm okay. I don't feel the pain anymore. Nothing.

When I open my eyes, I catch a glimpse of a tall old looking man with pale-grayish skin in a suit and tie behind Roy for a spilt second before disappearing. I gasp in shock and fear at this, not knowing what to say.

________________________________

The next day, the boys and I are in the hospital, I'm sitting on one of their beds waiting for a report on my heart scan, showered and wearing my usual clothes. "So you really feel okay?" Sam asks me surprised and happy. "You don't feel any pain, nothing?" Dean asks me for the millionth time.

"I feel fine, fellas" I say dryly, my mind still on that thing I saw back at that tent. "Well, according to all your tests. There's nothing wrong with you hear. No sign there every was" The doctor comes in and tells us with a clipboard in her hand. We all look at her shocked.

"Not that a woman your age should be having heart trouble but....uh...still it's strange. It does happen" The doctor stutters a bit. "What do you mean strange?" I ask cocking my eyebrow and the doctor crosses her arms. "Well, just yesterday, a young man like your boyfriend here" She gestures to Dean. "27, athletic. Out of nowhere, heart attack" The doctor says sadly.

I go to correct her about Dean not being my boyfriend but I'm too taken back by the information to do so. "Thanks doc" Dean thanks her gratefully. "No problem" She tells us kindly before walking out. "That's odd" I tell the boys. "Maybes it's a coincidence. People's hearts give out all the time man" Sam tries to reason.

"No, they don't" I say firmly, shaking my head not convinced this is some coincidence. "Look, Y/N. Do we really have to look this one in the mouth? Why can't we just be thankful that the guy saved your life and move on?" Dean tries to calm me down and I look at him stunned. "Please don't tell me you're buying into this crap" I snap and he sighs.

"I can't shake this feeling fellas, I can't" I tell them, getting up to pick up my jacket behind me. "What feeling?" Sam asks me gently. "When I was healed. I just— I felt wrong. I felt cold and for a second, I saw someone, uh, this old man" I explain to them as I put on my jacket.

"Im telling you fellas, it's was a spirit" I try to convince them. "But if there was something there, we would've seen it too. Especially Sam." Dean says pointing to Sam with his thumb. "I mean, I've been seeing an awful lot of things, lately" Sam shrugs. "Well, excuse me. You're just gonna need a little faith on this one" I scoff, turning to them.

"Guys, I've been hunting long enough to trust a feeling like this. And I've been getting a ton of feelings this last few months and ignoring them. When I ignore them, shit hits the fan. I'm not doing it this time." I say firmly and they sigh. "Yeah, alright" Sam nods understandingly. "So what do you want to do?" Dean asks me calmly.

I think for a second and say to Sam, "Why don't you go chest out the heart attack guy? Me and Dean will go visit the reverend" I tell him. Sam agrees while me and Dean walk out of the room. As we walk to his car and jump in, he looks over at me with a sad smile on his face as he starts the ignition.

"What? Do I have something on my face?" I ask him, looking at my face in the mirror and he chuckles. "No, I'm just happy you're okay" He says, his voice cracking a bit. I give him a small smile but the feeling from the tent is still wrong to me. I can't help but feel guilty about getting hurt, knowing Dean. He's probably blaming himself. "I'm sorry" I say sincerely and he looks at me confused. "About what?" He asks.

"For not being careful at the house, you've lost enough people. I should've been more careful" I apologize and he chuckles dryly, "You're the only person I know that would be dying and apologize for that." He says chuckling, putting his hand to my cheek and my breath hitches in my throat.

My chest starts to heave and I try to stop the heat from rising too my face as he caresses my cheek. His forestry green orbs pierce into my (e/c) ones as he takes a deep breath. "No pun intended, but you've got a good heart, princess" He says amused and I slap his shoulder lightly as we laugh.

"You're such an ass" I retort chuckling. Our faces are inches from each others and can't help but dart my eyes down at his lips. Now is not the time, Y/N. The little voice in the back of my head tells me and I sigh. I'm pretty sure he looked at mines too.

I pull away and clear my throat. "We should go" I whisper, looking down. Dean nods and does the same, taking his hand off my cheek. I wince from the loss of contact as he puts Baby in drive and we're off.

________________________________

"I feel great. Just trying to, you know, make sense of what happened" I tell Roy and his wife as she pours me and Dean some juice as Roy nods understanding. We're now at their house. "A miracle is what happened" Sue Ann said, sitting down. "Miracles come so often around Roy" She says boastfully and I nod.

"When did they start, the miracles?" Dean asks. "Woke up one morning, stone blind. Doctors figure out I had cancer told me I had maybe a month." Roy begins to explain. "So, uh, we prayed for a miracle. I was weak but I told Sue Ann, 'You just keep right on praying'." He glances over at Sue Ann who has a smile on her face.

"I went into a coma. Doctors said I wouldn't wake up, but I did...and the cancer was gone" He takes off his glasses, "If it wasn't for these eyes, no would believe I ever had it" He shows us his prosthetic eyes. "And suddenly, you could heal people" I add and he nods. "I discovered it afterwards, yes. Gods blessed me in many way" He says, putting his shades back on.

"And his flock just swelled overnight. And this is just the beginning" Sue Ann says proudly and I look at her a bit weirdly. Dean does so too and we nod. "Can I ask you one last question?" I ask them. "Of course you can" Roy nods. "Why? Why me? Out of all the sick people, why save me?" I ask honestly.

I notice Dean takes a deep breath when I ask this. "Well, like I said before, the Lord guides me. I looked into your heart and you just stood out from all the rest" He tells me and I don't buy it. "What did you see in my heart?" I ask him curiously. "A young woman with an important purpose, a job to do...and it isn't finished" Roy says softly and I look down.

I could feel Deans eyes on me this whole time, wondering what he must be thinking by all this.

Me and Dean walk out of the reverends house after thanking them for their time. As we're walking down the porch we see Logan, "Y/N. Hey" He calls out to me and I smile. "Hey" I say back. "How're you feeling?" He asks me concerned. "I feel good. Cured. I guess" I say shrugging.

Deans eyes glances between the two of us, his jaw clenching. "What're you doing here?" I ask him curiously and he looks back at his mom who's walking towards the house. "You know, my mom. She wanted to talk to the reverend" He tells me smiling. "Logan" Sue Ann calls for him and he walks up the porch.

"Yes, we're here again" He says with a smile. "Oh, I'm sorry but Roy's resting. He won't be seeing anyone else right now" Sue Ann says apologetically. "Sue Ann, please. This is our sixth time. He's got to see us." Logan's mom pleads. "Roy's well aware of Logan's situation and he very much wants to help just as soon as the lord allows. Have faith, Mrs. Rourke" Sue Ann calmly explains to them.

I take in the situation in disbelief. Mrs. Rourkes face drops as Sue Ann goes back into the house after giving Logan a hug. She then looks over at me angrily and snaps, "Why are you still even here? You got what you wanted" She says angrily and I'm taken back. "Woah, easy there lady!" Dean puts his hand out to stop her from getting in my face.

"Mom, stop!" Logan tries to calm his mom down. She looks back at him pained, "No, Logan, this is too much. We've been to every single service. If Roy would stop choosing these strangers over you....stranger who don't even believe" His mom rants and then looks over at me angrily.

"I just can't pray any harder" She says disappointed and Logan drops his head in shame. "Logan, what's wrong?" I ask him calmly and sighs, putting on a smile "I have this thing" He says vaguely and my eyebrows shoot up at this. "It's a brain tumor. It's inoperable. In six months the doctors say..." Mrs. Rourke cuts in and explains, trailing off as Logan puts his hand on his moms shoulder comfortingly.

My heart breaks at the thought of someone so young, filled with spirit, is going to die for no reason whatsoever. "I'm sorry" I say genuinely and he nods, giving me a smile. "It's okay" He tells me. "No, it isnt" His mom says sadly, looking at him pained. She then turns to me and grimaces, "Why do you deserve to live more than my son?" She says and my heart drops.

She then walks off and Logan mutters a small apology before going after his mom down the porch. I look back at them and clench my jaw to stop the tears from falling. "Look at me" Dean says, putting his hand on my shoulder. "Don't listen to that old broad. You deserve to live" He assures me and I shake my head, now allowing the tears to fall.

"Yes you do! Come here" He pulls me into a tight hug, wrapping his around around me and patting my hair as I bury my face in his chest, my tears soaking his shirt. "Me and Sam. We could never do this without you, you hear me? Never" His voice breaks as he consoles me. "I'm-" I go to apologize for wetting his shirt with my tears but he shushes me, placing his finger on my lips, causing butterflies to rise in my stomach.

"If you say 'I'm sorry' one more time, I'm gonna blow my brains out. This isn't your fault" His tone is gentle as I chuckle lightly, nodding, sniffling back my tears. He then tucks a loose strand of my (h/l) (h/c) hair behind my ear, "Yes, sir" I say weakly, looking up at him through my watery eyelashes and he smirks at me.

An emotion swimming through his eyes that I can't quite make out.

________________________________

We end up back at the motel after going to see the reverend which ended so amazingly. Note the sarcasm. Dean closes the door behind him and tosses his keys on his bed, peeling his jacket off and I do the same, resting it on the chair. Sam is currently at the desk, researching god knows what, hasn't said a word since we came in.

"What'd you find out?" I ask him, pulling a chair next to him and turning it backwards, straddling it. "I'm sorry" He apologizes quietly and we look at him confused. "Sorry about what?" I ask him. "Marshall Hall died at 4:17" He tells us, not looking me in the eye and it clicks.

"The exact time Y/N was healed" Dean voiced my thoughts and I put my hand over my mouth in shock. Yeah" Sam nods. "So I put together a list. Reverend Roy's healed six people over the past year and I crossed checked it with the local obits" He explains, picking up a stack of papers and handing it to me.

Dean leans down to take a look as Sam further explains. "Everytime someone was healed, someone else died. And each time the victim died of the same symptom Le Grange was healing at the time" Sam tells us. "Someone's healed of cancer, someone else dies of cancer?" Dean asks and Sam nods sighing.

"Somehow, Le Grange is trading one life for another" Sam tells us and I realize. "Wait wait wait. So Marshall Hall died to save me?" I ask a bit angry. "Y/N, the guy probably would've died anyway and someone else would've been healed" Sam says and I roll my eyes at the fact that he's right.

"You never should've brought me here" I say, getting up from my chair. "Y/N, we were just trying to save your life" Dean tries to reason with me and I turn around looking at him in disbelief. "But, Dean, some guy is dead now because of me!" I snap. "I didn't know" Sam says sadly and I sigh.

"I know" I say softly, I go over to him and he looks at me, absolutely guilty. "I'm so sorry, Y/N" Sam says sorrowfully, pulling me into a hug that I return. I wrap my arms around his waist patting his back as he wraps his arms around my shoulders. "I would've done it for the both of you too" I admit and they look at me stunned.

When we let go of the hug he then says, "The thing I don't understand is, how is Roy doing it? How's he trading a life for a life?" Sam voices his thoughts. "Roy's not doing it. Something else is doing it for him" I tell them and they look at me confused. "What do you mean?" Dean asks me.

"The old man I saw on stage. I didn't wanna believe it but deep down I knew." I say, looking down. "You knew what? What're you talking about?" Sam asks me confused. I lean against the desk and say, "Theres only one thing that can give and take life like that" I say, Sam is still confused but realization dawns on Deans face.

"You don't think.." He trails off looking at me and I nod, his face dropping. "Holy shit" Dean mutters. "We're dealing with a reaper fellas" I say and Sam is in disbelief.

________________________________

Hours of research later, Dean and I are looking at a picture with a vague drawing of a Grim Reaper on it that he printed out from the web and Sam is by his laptop. "You guys really think it's The Grim Reaper? Like, Angel of Death, collect your soul, the whole deal?" Sam asks us and we shake our heads.

"No, no, no. Not The Reaper. A reaper" Dean corrects him. "There's reaper lore in pretty much every culture on earth. They go gt a hundred different names. It's possible there's more than one of them" I explain the mythology. "But you said you saw a dude in a suit" Dean says, propping his head on his hand.

"What, you think he should've been working the black robe thing?" I say sarcastically and he rolls his eyes. "Sam, you said it yourself that the clock stopped, right?" I question him and he nods. I take the paper from Dean and show it to Sam.

"Reapers stop time. And you can only see them when they're coming at you which is why I could see it and you guys couldn't" I say, resting the paper down. "Maybe" Sam says. "There's nothing else it could be, Sam. The question is, how's Roy controlling the damn thing?" Dean defends my theory.

I see Sams face contort into the one he normally has when he's either realized something or holding in a fart. "What?" I ask him. "That cross" Sam mutters. "Huh?" Dean looks at us confused. "There was this cross, I noticed it in the church tent. I knew I had seen it before" Sam says.

He picks up a deck of and shuffles through them, chuckling when he finds what he's looking for. He hands the card to Dean who takes it. "Here" He says as Dean shows it to me. A man with a skeleton face and a cross, similar to the one on the church alter. "A tarot?" Dean scoffs.

"It makes sense. I mean tarot dates back to the early Christian era, right? When some priests were still using magic and a few of them veered into the dark stuff. Necromancy and how to push death away, how to cause it" I explain, looking over at Sam for confirmation. He nods in agreement.

"So, Roy's using black magic to bind the reaper" Dean suggests, handing Sam back the card. "If he is, he's riding the whirlwind. It's like putting a dog leash on a great white" Sam says, looking at him laptop. Dean then takes his empty coffee mug and mine, resting it in the sink behind us.

He leans against the sink thinking, "Okay, then we stop Roy" He says and I look back at him. "How?" I ask him. "You know how" He says looking at me grimly. "What the hell are you talking about, Dean? We can't kill Roy" Sam says. "The guys playing god, he's deciding who lives and who dies. That's a monster in my book" Dean argues and I get up from my chair.

"Believe when I say I agree with you, charming. But we can't kill a human being. If we do that, then we're not better than he is" I tell him calmly and he sighs. "She's right, Dean." Sam adds and he looks over at him. "Okay, we can't kill Roy. We can't kill death. Any bright ideas college boy?" Dean asks him sarcastically and Sam rolls his eyes.

"Okay, uh, if Roy's using some kind of black spell on the reaper, we gotta figure out what it is and how to break it" Sam says and we nod in agreement.

________________________________

We decide to go back to the church (Roy's tent), now pulling into an empty parking space on the lot. "If Roy's using a spell, there might be a spell book" I tell the boys as we get out of Baby, closing the door. "See if you can find it"Dean says to Sam. "Hurry up too. Service starts in 15 minutes. We'll try to stall Roy" I tell him.

"Alright" Sam responds and the protestor from the day I got healed approaches us. "Roy Le Grange is a fraud. He's no healer" He says, handing us fliers. "Amen, brother" I preach loudly, causing Dean to chuckle as we walk towards the tent. "You keep up the good work" Sam tells him and we laugh even louder. "Thank you" The man thanks him smiling.

Dean and I walk inside the tent and take a seat straight to the back. I look over at him to see him deep in thought and I nudge him slight, "What's swirling around in that handsome head of yours?" I tease him with a smile and he smirks at me. "Nothing, I was just waiting on a call back from someone, kinda disappointed" He says, looking down.

"Since when do you wait around for a call from a girl?" I cock my eyebrow at him, shocked. "Not a girl" He scoffs chuckling, I'm slightly relieved about this for some reason but I just ask. "Then who?" I ask curiously. "Our Dads" He says honestly and I'm taken back.

"You called them?" I ask surprised and he nods. "Of course, you weren't well. I wasn't going to keep that from them" He says and I nod sadly. I didn't think about it like that, now I know for a fact that my dad might know I was dying and he didn't even bother to show up. It hurt, I'm not gonna lie. Dean notices the look of hurt on my face and quickly apologizes.

"Im sorry princess, forget I said anything" He says apologetically but I feign a smile. "Im fine. Honestly" I give him a wide fake smile, hoping he takes the bait. He seems to do so and nudges me back with his shoulder jokingly, making me causing gasp and I chuckle along with him.

My phone then rings and I fish it out of my pocket to see it's Sam calling, I flip it open and put it to my ear, "What do you got?" I ask him as Dean leans in closer to me, pressing his ear to the back of my phone to hear what Sam found. "Roy's choosing victims he sees as immoral. And I think I know who's next on his list. Remember that protestor?" Sam says quickly.

"Guy in the parking lot?" I whisper into the phone. "Yeah, I'll find him. But you guys can't let Roy heal anyone, alright?" Sam instructs up and I flip the phone shut, me and Dean share a look before looking back on the stage. We get up from our seats and walk closer to it.

"Logan. Logan Rourke. Come up here, son" Roy says into the mic, falling out for Logan as the crowd cheers. Logan gives his mom a tearful hug before walking up to the stage. Me and Dean share a panicked look at this. "Oh, man" I mutter sorrowfully. Logan does to walk past me but I stop him.

"Logan, listen to me. You can't go up there" I try to stop him and he looks at me confused. "Why not? We've waited for months" He protests and I shake my head. "You can let Roy heal you" I plead with him. "I don't understand. Roy healed you, didn't he? Why wouldn't you at least let him try" He tries to reason.

"Because if you do, something bad is gonna happen. I can't explain. I just need you to believe me" I tell him honestly and I see Dean looks at me like 'WHY THE HELL WOULD YOU SAY THAT?!'. Logan looks at me in disbelief. "Logan" Sue Ann calls for him to get up on the stage.

"Please" I beg him. He looks back at his mother and back to me with an apologetic look on his face and I sigh. "I'm sorry" He apologizes and I try to stop him. "Logan. Logan!" I whisper yell but he ignores me. "Dear child" Sue Ann smiles at Logan, ushering him up the stage and the crowd cheers again.

"You deserve this" Sue Ann tells him. I look back at his mother who have an overjoyed expression on his face. "I knew the Lord was planning. I knew it was a mystery if time" Roy says into the mic. I groan in displeasure and Dean looks at me with pity. "Pray with me friends" Roy says to the congregation.

He opens his hand like he did when healing me and goes to lay a hand on Logan's head. I look over Dean, pleading with him with my eyes to do something. He nods and pulls me to the exit of the tent and yells, "Fire! Hurry! Tents on fire!" I go along with it and scream. "Fire! Everybody get out of here!" Everybody begins to panic, running out of the tent.

Roy stops, not laying his hand on Logan. "No! No, please. Please don't stop. Please! Reverend please! Please? Please don't stop" Logan's mother rushes to the stage, begging Roy to not stop healing Logan. My heart hurts hearing her pleas, knowing that if he was healed, someone would die. He looks over at me pained and I give him an apologetic look.

"Friends, if you'd all just exit the tent in an orderly fashion and we'll figure out what's going on out there and we'll come back-" Roy says into the mic. I take out my phone to call Sam, "We did it. We stopped Roy" I tell him once he answered. "David, I think it's okay" I hear Sam say through the speaker.

"Y/N, it didn't work! The reapers still coming!" Sam exclaims in fear and my eyes widen, looking at Dean. "How?!" Dean asks loudly, pressing his ear against my phone. "I'm telling you! I'm telling you, it must not have worked! Roy must not be controlling this thing!" Sam insists. "Then who the hell is?" I ask rhetorically and my eyes glance over to Sue Ann.

Roy's wife is in a corner of the tent chanting quietly and it clicks. "Dean!" I nudge him and he looks in the direction I am. "Sue Ann" I tell Sam before flipping the phone shut. We run towards her quickly and turn her around roughly. She's clutching a pendant with the cross from the tarot card and like the one T the alter.

She's stunned when we do this and starts screaming, "Help! Help me!" She tucks the pendant in her clothes. "You bitch!" I scream angrily, slapping her across her face and suddenly two police officers come and roughly escorts me and Dean out of the tent. Sue Ann comes behind us and begins to lecture us, clutching the red mark on her face from my slap with tears in her eyes.

"I just don't understand. After everything we've done for you, after Roy healed you." She cries, feigning innocence. Me and Dean glare at her, narrowing our eyes filled with hatred. "We're just very, very disappointed, Y/N" She cries then turning to the officers. "You can let them go. I'm not gonna press any charges. The lord will deal with her as he sees fit" She tells them.

My jaw clenches in anger, my eyes trailing her as she walks off. "We catch you two around here again, we'll put the fear of God in you, understand?" The officer bellows harshly, gripping Deans shirt, I don't answer instead just continue glaring at Sue Ann. "Yes, sir, fear of God. Got it" Dean says bitterly, giving them a smug smile and they rough push us both.

"Son of a bitch" I mutter. "Did you have to slap her?" Dean mutters to me disappointed and I sigh. I turn around to see Logan behind me with a disappointed look on his face. "Logan, I'm so s-" He cuts me off. "Why would you do that, Y/N? And it could have been my only chance" He asks me shaking his head, tears in his eyes.

"He's not a healer" I try to tell him but he argues. "He healed you" He defends. "I-I know it doesn't seem fair and I wish I could explain but Roy is not the answer, I'm sorry" I apologize sincerely, stuttering on my words. Tears begin to fall down his face and I have to hold back my own.

"Goodbye, Y/N" His voice cracks, shaking his head. He moves between me and Dean and then turns to me, I turn to look at him and he says, "I wish you luck, I really do" He says sincerely. "Same to you" I respond, tears threatening to fall from my eyes as he walks off. "You deserved a lot more than me" I say to myself quietly but Dean notices.

"Don't say that, princess" He tells me, "Anyone would be lucky to have you" He whispers in my ear, wrapping his arms around me, patting my head as I lay my head against his shoulder. "God I need to stop crying, I've been crying so much these days. I can't even recognize myself anymore" I chuckle humorlessly, wiping my tears.

He smiles at me, putting his finger on my chin and tilting my head towards him to look into his eyes. "If it makes you feel better, I think it makes you a helluva lot stronger than me" He says, emotions swimming in his eyes as my (e/c) one's pierce his.

"Thanks, charming" I say genuinely. We look over to the Impala to see Sam leaning against it, letting go of our hug we begin to walk towards it. "Private session tonight, no interruptions. I give you my word, I'll heal your son" We hear Roy tell Mrs. Rourke with Sue Ann next to him as we walk towards Baby.

"Thank you, Reverend. God bless you" She thanks him, shaking his hand and giving Sue Ann a hug. They then head on over to their car, his mom giving him a tight hug, tearing falling from her eyes before getting in and driving off.

________________________________

Now back at the motel, we explain what happened in the tent to Sam. He's sitting on his bed and Dean is sitting on his next to Sam's as I pace the room, nervously. "So Roy really believes" He says and I go to the window, pulling the curtain to look out it. "I don't think he has any idea what his wife's doing" I tell him.

"Well, I found this hidden in their library" Sam tells us, pulling out a small old looking book from his jacket, showing us. "It's ancient. Written by priests who went dark side. There's a binding spell in here for trapping a reaper." Sam explains as I take a seat next to Dean on his bed, handing me the book.

"Must be a hell of a spell" Dean mutters as I open the book, he peers over my shoulder to get a look. "Yeah" Sam responds. "You gotta build a black alter with seriously dark stuff. Bones, human blood..." He lists off sighing. "To cross a line like that...that preachers wife. Black magic, murder. Evil" He says, shaking his head.

"Desperate" I add. "Her husband was dying. She would've done anything to save him. She was using the binding spell to keep the reaper away from Roy" I say and they nod. "Cheating death, literally" Sam adds ironically. "Yeah, but Roy's alive, so why's she still using the spell?" Dean asks and realization dawns on Sam's face.

"Right. To force the reaper to kill people she thinks are immoral" Sam says and I sigh, shaking my head. "May God save us from half the people who think they're doing God's work" Dean mutters as I flip through the book. "We gotta break that binding spell, guys" Sam tells us and I reach a page with the cross like what Sue Ann was clutching.

Me and Dean share a look before looking up at Sam. "You know, Sue Ann had a Coptic cross like this. Once she dropped it, the reaper backed off" I tell them. "So you think we gotta find the cross or destroy the altar?" Dean asks me. "Maybe both?" I suggest and they look at me confused. "Whatever we do, we'd better do it soon" Dean says. "Roy's healing Logan tonight." I tell him and he nods as I get up from the bed, handing him the book.

________________________________

Later that night, the boys and I head back to Roy's. When Dean parks I notice a familiar looking car, "That's Logan's car. He's already here" Sam draws the car to our attention. "Yeah" I respond sadly, clearing my throat. "Y/N.." Sam goes to comfort me but I cut him off. "You know, if Roy would've picked Logan instead of me, he'd be healed right now" I say honestly.

"Y/N, don't" Dean pleads with me not to go down that path. "And if he's not healed tonight, he's gonna die in a couple months" I look down at my hands guilty. "What's happening to him is horrible, but what are you gonna do? Let somebody else die to save her?" Sam asks me rhetorically.

"You agreed with me when I said, 'You can't play God'" Dean tells me comfortingly but I don't answer, taking a deep breath I get out of baby and the boys follow behind me. We creep around the side of the tent and pull the plastic a bit to the side to see Roy hosting another service. "Gather around. Please, everyone, gather around. Come in closer, come on up" He ushers Logan up to the stage.

"Where's Sue Ann?" Dean asks us. "House" I respond. We walk back towards the house and I notice the police officer from earlier stationed infront of Sue Anns house. I turn to the boys and tell them, "Go find Sue Ann, I'll catch up" They look at me confused, "What are you-?" Dean goes to ask me but I cut him off.

"Just trust me, okay?" I flash him a wink before walking into the view of the officers and they crouch behind a bus that's parked. "Hey! You wanna put that fear of God in me? I don't mind getting double teamed!" I smirk as I call out to the officers tauntingly, instantly they shoot me angry look and they begin running after me and I bolt out of there to give Sam and Dean time to find Sue Ann.

________________________________

Third Person POV

"That crazy bitch" Sam mutters to himself, shaking his head in amusement as Y/N dashes away from the officers. Dean snorts in laughter, "We call her nutcase and crackhead for a reason" Dean whispers to his young brother, quickly getting up from behind the bus and making their ways up Sue Anns porch quickly.

They walk around around the side of the porch, looking for any weak spots or open windows to get into the house.

In the parking lot:

Meanwhile, Y/N is ducking under trailers, busses, cars, you name it, to keep hidden from the police that are still chasing her. "You see her?" One officer asks the other, shining their lights around the dark lot in search of Y/N. "No" the other officer shakes his head.

On the porch:

From ontop the porch, Sam notices what looks like an underground cellar below the porch, "Dean, come check this out" He whisper yells for his brother attention. Dean quickly comes around and they share a look before running down the porch to go check out the cellar.

They lean down and open it, quickly getting in and closing it behind them.

In the parking lot:

Y/N is currently braced up against a trailer, hiding from the officers when suddenly she hears a loud barking coming from the door. She lets out a low scream in fear, backing up from the trailer. The barking draws the attention to the officers who are on the other side of the trailer.

One of the officer flashes his light under the trailer and inside, scoffing when he comes up empty handed, "Psycho mutt" He grumbles as the dog growls at him through the window. Still barking as the other officer laughs.

Y/N peers off the ledge from on-top of the trailer, sighing in relief, thanking whatever god existed that she scaled the trailer in time before the police saw her.

In the cellar:

While all of this is going on, the boys walk down the stairs to the underground cellar. Bending the corner, Dean notices a altar with candles lit around it, "Hey college boy" He nudges Sam pointing to the altar. "That what we're looking for?" He asks him and Sam nods.

They push open the gate and walk towards the altar that has candles lit around, pictures of people, even Y/N with red X's on their faces (presumably human blood), a human skull with blood dripping down it. Dean picks up the picture of Y/N, showing it to Sam.

"I gave your girlfriend life and I can take it away" A familiar voice booms, causing them to jump and turn around quickly to see Sue Ann with a grim expression on her face. Anger raises to their heads and they share a look before tilting the table the altar was on, tossing it to the floor.

Everything on it smashing into pieces. They run after Sue Ann but she's had a head start from when they were destroying the altar, running up the stairs and barricading the cellar door with a wooden stick. The groan as they try to push it open but Sue Ann is using all her strength to keep it shut.

"Boys, can't you see? The Lord chose to me reward the just and punish the wicked" Sue Ann preaches from outside. "And your girlfriend is wicked, Dean. And she deserves to die just as Logan deserves to live. It's Gods will" She continues to ramble but the boys stop pushing the door and run to the back.

Looking for anything that's big enough to knock the door down with. They find a large peace of wood, that's heavy enough for the both of them to hold. "Goodbye, boys" Sue Ann says and leaves. "On three" Dean says and Sam nods curtly, "One, two, three!" He shouts.

The brothers run the hunk of wood head first into the door with all their might. Busting it down and breaking the peace of stick that was holding it together.

In the parking lot:

Y/N is still in the yard, when she notices the lights in the lot start to flicker. She looks up at the lights in confusion before turning to see the old man she saw when she was healed behind her. Her chest begins to heave when she realizes what might be going on.

The man begins to approach her slowly and her eyes widen, frozen in fear. The man lays his hand on her head and she begins to groan in pain, her head feeling as if it's going to explode. Roy's healing Logan and Sue Ann is trading my life for his. She chose to accept her faith, knowing she wasn't supposed to live either way.

She comes to the realization, not able to move as the man drains the life out of her slowly, bringing her to her knees. Y/N screams as the pain courses through her body.

Inside the tent:

Meanwhile in the tent, Roy has his hand on Logan's head, bringing Logan to his knees while Sue Ann is outside the tent, clutching the glowing cross to her chest and chanting the spell, controlling the reaper.

In the parking lot:

Y/N's eyes begin to turn grey and her skin begins to pale as the reaper looks at her apologetically, as if he didn't want to take her life from her.

Outside the tent:

Now free, Dean pushes Sue Ann to the ground and Sam snatches the glowing cross from her hand, throwing on the ground and it smashes into pieces. Rendering the control on the reaper ineffective. "Noooo!" Sue Ann screams pained.

In the parking lot:

Suddenly the reaper let's go of Y/N, she falls to the ground and begins gasping for air.

Inside the tent:

Meanwhile in the tent, Roy can feel his 'power' die. Logan doesn't feel the effect of the healing anymore, his eyes fluttering open. "I don't understand" Roy says confused. "I don't feel different" Logan tells him, looking over at his mom with tears with tears in their eyes.

Outside the tent:

"Oh my god! What have you boys done?!" Sue Ann screams from outside of the tent, kneeling next to the broken cross, sobbing. "He's not your God" Dean says angrily, clenching his jaw and rolling his eyes at her pathetic sobs. Sue Ann looks up and sees the reaper she had in her clutches across from her, smiling at her with villainous intent. She gasps loudly in fear.

The boys look at her confused as she tries to run away but suddenly stops as the reaper appears infront of us and lays his hand on her head instead. She begins to gasp for air, instantly turning pale as her eyes roll to the back of her head, turning grey.

The reaper then let's go of Sue Ann with a satisfied smile on his face and she drops to the floor convulsing as if she's having a seizure and she lets out one last breath, now dead. The boys look on at this and let out a satisfied breath of relief.

"Let's go find Y/N" Dean tells Sam and he nods, making their way back to the parking lot. They see Y/N leaning against the Impala trying to catch her breath. "You okay, Princess?" Dean asks her concerned and she nods weakly. "Hell of a week" She says ironically and they nod. "Yeah" Sam says.

"Alright, come on. We should get going" He tells them and Dean takes out his keys. They all open the doors to the impala simultaneously before jumping in. Dean in the driver, Sam riding shotgun and Y/N to the back.

________________________________

Later they're all in their motel room, Y/N sits on her bed staring into space as if she's deep in thought. "What is it?" Dean asks her knowingly, breaking her out of her thought process. Her eyes flicker over to him and she shakes her head, "Nothing" She says, sighing.

The brothers share a look, "What is it?" Sam presses, putting his hands on his hips. "We did the right thing here, didn't we?" She asks them. "Of course we did" Dean assures her and she sighs. "It doesn't feel like it" She says sighing. Suddenly a knocking on the door interrupts their conversation.

"I got it" Sam says, going over to it and opening it to reveal Logan. "Hey Logan, come on in" He says and Y/N shoots up from the bed. "Hey" He says, giving Sam a smile. "Hey. How did you know we were here?" Y/N asks him surprised. The burning sensation comes back to Deans chest, seeing how quickly her mood changed when she saw Logan.

He brushes it off quickly, brushing it under his rug of underlying feelings. "Um, Sam called. He said you wanted to say goodbye" He tells her and she looks over at Sam who gives her a sly smirk. "We're gonna go grab some sodas" Sam says quickly, grabbing his older brother by his elbow and pulling him out of the door.

Dean is hesitant about this but obliges. He huffs in annoyance as Sam closes the door. Sam notices the clenching of Deans jaw. "I thought you said you weren't a jealous idiot?" He teases his older brother, his gaze snaps over to him with a harsh glare. "I'm not. I just don't like the idea of leaving her alone in a room with a guy she barely knows" He retorts roughly as they walk to the vending machine and Sam chuckles dryly.

The irony of that makes him laugh on the inside, knowing Y/N hooks up with people every so often which Dean is quite aware of. Sam mostly did this so Y/N could get some closure because he know she has a big heart under all of her denying.

But partly was because he knew it would bother Dean and hey, his brother always says he doesn't feel that way about Y/N. He loves his brother dearly but the man is too damn stubborn for his own good. And so is Y/N but she hides her jealously better than Dean.

As the door closes behind Logan, the two exchange heated looks. Logan is the first to break it, walking around her to take a look at the room. "So, where are you going?" He asks Y/N. "Oh, don't know yet. Our work kind of takes us all over. So...." She tells him, trailing off when their eyes connect again.

"You know, I went back to see Roy" He tells her. "What happened?" She asks him sadly, already knowing the answer. Logan sighs, shaking his head as he takes a seat on the bed, "Nothing" He tells her as she sits next to him. "I mean, he laid his hands on my forehead but nothing happened" He tells her.

"I'm sorry it didn't work" She apologizes sincerely. "And Sue Ann. She's dead, you know. Stroke" Logan informs her and she nods. "Yeah, I heard" She says. "You know, Roy's a good man. He doesn't deserve whats happened" Y/N says sadly. "It must be rough...to believe in something so much...and have it disappoint you like that" She adds, giving him a sympathetic look.

Logan however has a smile on his face, "You wanna here something weird?" He asks her. "Hmm?" She responds. "I'm okay. Really." He assures her and she's slightly surprised by this. "I guess if you're gonna have faith, you can't just have it when the miracles happen. You have to have it when they done" He tells her and she smiles sadly at his wise words, leaving her speechless.

"So, what now?" She asks him and he shrugs smiling. "God works in mysterious ways." He repeats his first words to her, giving her a teary smile before resting his hand on her cheek. The way Dean usually does. But it didn't quite feel right like when he does it. He leans in and lays a small kiss on her cheek.

His lips lingering at the corner of her mouth as she swallows the lump in her throat. "Goodbye, Y/N" He tells her with a smile and watery eyes before getting up to leave. "Hey" She calls out to him and he turns around at the door. "Um...You know, I'm not much of the praying type. But...I'm gonna pray for you" She says to him confidently, her tone filled with sorrow.

Logan nods and smiles, "Well, there's a miracle right there" He tells her with a smile, opening the door and closing it behind him.

________________________________

Authors Note: I told you I was gonna add my own little spin on things in this rewrite lol. Hope you guys enjoyed!! I know how some people may think as if I'm taking away storyline from Sam or Dean by letting the reader experience certain things they go through but please remember I am just trying to keep her as included as possible.

I'm not going to take away big storylines as the whole point of this book is to follow the major plots but I'm just trying to make things more interesting to give a different perspective of the show. I'm enjoying writing so far and I personally have experienced books where I didn't like the way it was going and I left it so I hope you guys are still holding on!!

Note that this chapter is unedited and I plan on coming back to edit it eventually.

Xoxo

#dean winchester #sam winchester #spn #supernatural #dean and sam #dean winchester fanfiction #dean winchester x reader #dean winchester x you #dean x reader #sam and dean #dean winchester x female!reader #supernatural reader insert #supernatural fandom #supernatural tv show #supernatural fanfiction

[bullet-prooflove]

Could you potentially do two separate asks for Donovan Rocker? Or maybe combine them if you can?

“Rebel girl you are the queen of my world”

and “is she alive”

Hi Alex,

It’s one prompt per submission, so next time just put them separately if you wouldn’t mind.

You make Rocker feel alive.

That’s the difference between you and Val.

When he’s with you it’s like he’s been struck by lightning, thousands of volts of electricity searing through his senses as he brings you to climax. He’s no stranger to adrenaline, the build-up and then the release. With Val he used to diffuse it, boxing, running, any way he could to get it out of his veins. She didn’t like that side of him, the wildness of it. She wanted him clean cut, soft.

With you he’s messy, reckless. He doesn’t hide that side of himself. He fucks it out instead, riding the high until he hits nirvana, until the ecstasy becomes too much and he’s drowning in the euphoria. He spills himself deep, burying his face into the curve of your throat as he bites down, marking your skin. The sound you make as you come…

Fuck it ruins him.

“You alive in there?” He murmurs against your hairline in the aftermath.

The two of you are tangled up in each other, lying naked on the sheets, the air cool air from the open window caressing your skin.

“Barely.” You mumble, your lips brushing over the scar on his chest, the one where he’s caught a bullet a couple of years ago. “I think you fucked all the thoughts right out of my head.”

He laughs at that, gathering you up even closer.

“You bring out the best in me,” he finds himself telling you as his fingers stroke through your hair. “You know that don’t you rebel girl?”

Love Rocker? Don’t miss any of his stories by joining the taglist here.

Want more Rocker? Check out his Masterlist here!

Interested in supporting me? Join my Patreon for Bonus Content!

Like My Work? - Why Not Buy Me A Coffee

@one-sweet-gubler @telepathay @whateversomethingbruh @burningpeachpuppy @slytherqueen14 @lady-athanasia @justagh0stiegirl @reneejett44 @ravennaortiz @sarahedwards16 @stelacole

#donovan rocker #rocker #donovan rocker x reader #donovan rocker x you #rocker x you #rocker x reader #swat #swat cbs

[mewtwo-deserves-better]

Secrets, Secrets are No Fun

Aliquis x F!Reader

He's finally done it. Aliquis finally has an assignment with you which he views as the perfect time to ask you out. However, will the truth he finds out ruin everything?

I know Paldean Winds is a short little series with only one episode as of this post, but I fell in love with this man. I love Arven too, but at least he's got content that I can read XD. Sorry if this story is stupid.

For decades now, Naranja Academy has been the pinnacle of Pokémon education. People from over all the regions pay to come and attend there. Some people have goals to become an amazing battler, others want to pursue careers along the STEM path, and some just want to better themselves along with their Pokémon.

But either way, you gotta go through your generals, much to some people's annoyance.

"...and I think it's a good idea to learn from the past. Because of that, I'm going to put you in pairs," groans echoed from the classroom, " and you are going to write a five-page analysis on the New Island disaster."

Even more groans.

Now Aliquis was never interested in the lectures that Ms. Raifort gives. It's nothing to do with her. He's just not a history buff and is more interested in the here and now. In fact, for the most part, he just sits at his desk, head resting on his hand, as he thinks about a million other things. Like, when did he need to buy groceries next, his next battle against Nemona, and...

You brushed some hair over your shoulder, making his attention blank completely.

That was another problem. You were a complete distraction for him. Smart, beautiful, and caring. Almost too much of a sweet person to deal with his short temper. In fact, he really didn't know too much about you besides the fact you weren't really one for Pokémon battles. However, that didn't stop his daydreams from moving onto a new topic. You were now on his mind as Aliquis gazed at the back of your head from where he saw a few rows behind, and a smile or two came across his face.

So much so, he wasn't really listening to the pairings being listed.

"Aliquis and Y/N."

But THAT caught his attention, and he immediately felt his nerves beginning to build up. Everyone else got up to move and sit with their corresponding partner, and the shuffling of feet filled the room. However, Aliquis was just stuck in his chair. He couldn't feel much courage to move. That was until you came to sit next to him, not paying much attention to his obvious nervousness.

"So, how much do you know about New Island?" You asked him, straight to the point as usual. He slouched back in his chair a bit, crossed one foot over the other, and shrugged.

"About as much as anyone else. It was a lab that made some crazed Pokémon called Mewtwo, which escaped, and destroyed the whole island and everyone on it." He explained, daring to look over at you. You were quiet, looking down at your books as the murmurs of other students filled the room. Aliquis began to lean forward a bit, worried about your behavior.

But then the bell rang.

"Let's work on this at my dorm. I don't like to leave things till last minute." You said before allowing your Rotom phone to exchange numbers with his, and then you were gone before he could even say anything.

All he did know was that his face was so hot, he could probably go up to a Charizard and brag about it. He got your number AND was invited into your dorm in less than ten seconds.

Aliquis swears that Arceus was watching over him.

It's not a date.

It's not a date.

It's not a date.

He kept repeating that over and over again as he walked to your space. All you guys were going to do was work on homework...but perhaps he could slip in how you and him should go see the Million Volt Skyline. It's where he dreams of confessing to you.

However, he stops when he's about twelve steps away from your door. Doubt starts to creep into his mind when he realizes that this is the first time that you and him would actually be alone. But then out pops his Meowscarada, and the sassy Pokémon is already pushing him to the door.

"Knock it off!" He whisper-shouted at it, quick to whip out his Poké ball and return the naughty cat. But not before it could knock on your door with a smirk.

The sound of your door opening sent him into a new panic.

"I was wondering if you would show up." You said with amusement as you greeted him. Instead of your school uniform, you were watching much more casual clothes...but damn...you still looked adorable. A Sylveon was perched on your shoulder, and the friendly fairy type jumped over to his shoulder to say hello, wrapping its ribbons around him.

"Sylveon...personal space." You reminded your partner, who squeaked at you with a grin before jumping back over to your outstretched arm and back onto your shoulder.

"It's fine. I didn't mind at all." Aliquis said with a smile as you invited him in. He was amazed by how calm he was, and laughter resounded as Sylveon jumped back over to his shoulder as he walked past you.

Your room was nothing like how he thought it would be. In his mind, everything was pristine and organized. And it was, to a point. But your room was overall really cozy. Pillows and plushies lined your bed, pictures and artwork lined your wall, and a blanket was strewn on the floor with a Luxray on it. The electric type raised its head when you guys walked into the room, but then immediately lowered it when no danger was present.

"You want anything?" You asked kindly, tilting your head as you moved to lean against your kitchen counter. However, he was too busy staring around to register your question at first, so Sylveon nudged him.

"Thank you...but I'm okay." He managed to say. Then you went, and after carefully stepping over Luxray, sat on your bed.

"So," you moved your laptop to get into typing position, "shall we get started?"

With a nervous swallow, he joined you on your bed.

The two of you discussed, researched, and typed back and forth for a while. Sylveon had moved off of Aliquis and was now laying beside its trainer. The two of you were on topic, but once and a while some more personal questions came around. But you were always quick to bring it back to the homework.

"You know, what if Mewtwo isn't the evil Pokémon that people say he is?" You mused and Aliquis stopped his work to look at you. That really came out of nowhere.

"It killed people Y/N." He stated plainly, and you simply shrugged while setting your laptop aside.

"All I'm saying is that there are two sides to every story. History doesn't know how Mewtwo feels or what really happened." You stated, and Aliquis arched a brow.

"And um...you do?" He asked, skeptically but not rudely. However, you just swung your legs off the side of the bed and got up. He was now worried that he somehow did something to upset you.

"I'll be right back." You murmured as your steps patted against the floor until he heard the bathroom door shut. Aliquis now felt a whole group of Butterfree flutter around in his stomach. Did he do something wrong? What should he say when you come out? Should he ask you out to the Million Volt Skyline? Is he an idiot?

"Slyvie." His thoughts were interrupted by your partner, who was busy poking his thigh with its paw. It was looking at him intently, and it kind of freaked him out.

"What is it?" He asked the fairy type in an unsure tone.

"Ve." It simply said before hopping off the bed and landing gracefully on your desk. It then used its ribbons to open a drawer and begin fishing around in it.

Immediately, Luxray was on its feet, looking pissed.

"Ray!" "Ve! Ve!"

The two Pokémon began to argue over something that he couldn't quite place. Just as he was about to intervene (somehow without getting shocked), Luxray growled and moved to lay down as faraway as possible on its blanket with its rear to Sylveon. The fairy type simply glared at it before using its ribbons to grab the attention of Aliquis, who was now brought over to the deck.

"Sylvie." it said before bending down and clamping something in its mouth. Aliquis was able to recognize a journal, one that was obviously trying to be hidden, and your name was written on it in fine print. Sylveon nudged the book towards him with one paw, an invitation.

"I can't." He said, knowing that you would loathe him if he began to look through your belongings.

But Sylveon had already begun to open the journal, to which his eyes were glued to because of natural human curiosity, and he noticed not many words, but rather photos taped in there.

His interest has bested him, and he began to flip through the pages of your journal. Sylveon made no move to stop him, and instead appeared to be supporting his snooping with a smile on its face. There was pictures of Sylveon and Luxray respectively, and your other Pokémon soon appeared with locations and dates written on the bottom in sharpie. But then, just as he was nearing the end, one photo caught his attention.

He froze.

There was no denying it.

A picture of a, rather recent, shot of the legendary Pokémon Mewtwo rested on the page. The psychic type was resting against your bed, sleeping as Sylveon was sprawled out on its head. Aliquis blinked several times, hoping it was just some photoshop trick or something.

I mean, it had to be, right? You would've mentioned if you had Mewtwo as a Pokémon...right?

The only thing that caught his attention is when Sylveon passed by his peripheral vision, and he watched as the fairy type leaped up on a shelf where your Poké balls rested. Two were empty, representing Sylveon and Luxray, but four remained...and the very last one on the shelf was an ultra ball.

It had a weird pull on him, and he reached out to touch it. Could it possibly contain Mewtwo?

"Aliquis? What are you doing?"

He whipped around to see you standing there, your face unreadable as he nosed through your personal belonging. Sylveon whimpered a bit as it jumped off the shelf and scurried off. However, he was too stunned to even register what he had done. All Aliquis could do was lift the picture up and ask one simple question.

"Is Mewtwo your Pokémon?"

All thoughts of asking you on a date were thrown out the window.

#pokemon #pokemon paldean winds #paldean winds #pokemon imagines #pokemon x reader #pokemon aliquis #aliquis #aliquis imagine #aliquis x reader

[ecargmura]

Pokemon Horizons Episode 46 Review - Terastal Debut

What I like most about this episode is that so much is given out and it’s explained so thoroughly. Instead of having the kids go on a Treasure Hunt like in the game, Liko, Roy and Dot enroll in Naranja Academy’s Terastal Course. It turns out that the school allows students from all over the world to enroll in the course to learn more about Terastal as permitted by Director Clavell and Chairwoman Geeta.

Dendra gives an explanation of how the course works. To study Terastal, students must defeat Gym Leaders according to their aptitude. There’s also a condition as students can only have two chances to challenge a Gym Leader and if they acknowledge their skills, they pass. Also, students cannot terastalize outside of battles not revolving around the Terastal Course; this means that regular trainer battles do not permit Terastalizing. Liko gets paired up with Katy, Roy gets paired up with Brassius and Dot gets paired up with Iono. The kids get camping equipment as they have to camp out for the course. Dot is definitely not amused that she has to touch grass for a while now.

There are so many characters introduced here that it’s insane. Alex and Lucca, Liko’s parents, return and are actually seen together. It’s sweet that she has loving parents. Given that Lucca is a teacher, she doesn’t seem to work at Naranja Academy and probably works elsewhere. That’s an interesting detail. Then we have Clavell who wears the Scarlet version of his outfit. Then there’s the Pokemon League members with Geeta and the Elite Four showing up. It’s crazy how they all just show up at the school like it’s normal business to patrol the school or something. There’s also the debut of Penny who has no lines. I guess she’s forced to work for the League in this iteration, but it’ll be cool if Team Star gets implemented into the story. Jacq and Dendra make their debuts as teachers. They still teach their respective subjects of Biology and Battle Studies. Dendra is the one who explains the course to the kids while Jacq tells them that he wants reports from them as they are still students at the end of the day. Nemona makes her reappearance with a newly evolved Pawmot. In her first appearance, her Pawmo was the butt of a recurring joke where it got sprayed by Brassius’s Doliv’s oil twice. Here, Nemona is now the butt of the recurring joke as her desire to battle Roy gets interrupted by staff and the school bell.

The biggest surprise in terms of character returns is Ann who has transferred to Naranja Academy to partake in the Terestal Course with her newly evolved Dewott. The battle between her and Liko was really well-animated. Liko and Ann were very strategic and used various tactics to one-up each other. My favorite part of the battle was when Dewott used Aerial Ace and its fists glowed up and tried to punch Floragato. I hope Ann battles more in this arc because it’d be a waste to not let her battle when she’s very capable.

Another surprise is the Explorers coming in to partake in the course too. Sidian and Coral arrive late, and use very terrible pseudonyms in order to pass as students. Fortunately, they were able to get in because Chalce is disguised as a teacher and was able to hack them into the database. The Explorers are doing this because they were tasked to keep an eye on Liko. There were two things I liked about the Explorers segment. The first is Coral laughing her head off when Sidian introduces them as Onigiri and Sandwich, which she then accepts. The second is the fact that Liko, Roy and Dot recognize them and isn’t suffering from face blindness that Ash and his friend suffered through for 25 years when it came to Team Rocket’s disguises.

Last but not least, the Rising Volt Tacklers are doing their own thing right now. Orla is in charge of the Brave Olivine repairs. Mollie and Ludlow are caring for Pokemon. Murdock is working at what seems to be Patisserie Soapberry as his outfit looks similar to Katy’s. Friede is going to research the Six Heroes as he has the Ancient Pokeballs and Lucius’s belt in his possession as Liko goes to take the Terastal Course. It’ll be cool to see what the other RVTs will be doing in future episodes.

As a whole, the entire episode was a very good introduction to the third chapter. The pacing was great in terms of squeezing in everything that was needed. The new opening and ending songs were great too! I think it’s amazing how they managed to get IVE, a K-POP girl group, to sing in Japanese for Horizons. Since K-POP is rather popular in Japan and they have been using KPOP groups for different anime openings for various animes, it was about time that Pokemon would do the same. It shows that this arc will be one to remember with the new changes! It does feel like the quality has stepped up here. I’m honestly hyped up for what’s to come. What about you?

#anipoke #Pokemon horizons #liko #floragato #roy #fuecoco #dot #quaxly #friede #anne #dewott #geeta #director clavel #rika #poppy #larry #hassel #penny #nemona #pawmot #dendra #jacq #sidian #coral #agate #terapagos #review #anime #anime review #ecargmura

[glitcheslikeslego]

Show Me Your Moves! (Chapter 7)

AO3 STORY

Chapter 7: Volt Switch

Volt Switch is an attacking move that deals damage then switches the user out. The user will not switch out if Volt Switch fails to hit, activates an ability like Wimp Out or Emergency Exit, or ends the battle. 

Okay… you’re not regretting it as much as you thought you were. 

Turns out, with this new Lego world, came a new Lego body. You were faster than you used to be, and had somewhat better reflexes. 

You also have electricity powers now. 

Like a knockoff Pikachu. 

Were you a discount Pokemon?

Nevermind that. The Bull Clones were easily short-circuited due to your newfound powers, not done well, mind you. 

Surrounding you were also a bunch of broken trees, pots with plants in them, and one of the lights had crashed down from the ceiling, but the Bull Clones were down. That was good.

MK hadn’t arrived yet, which left you almost little to no time to escape or hide from him and everyone else. 

You decided that the easiest thing to do would be to hide behind the bushes again. They were decent enough spots if they hid you from Red Son and his Bull Clones, so hopefully it would work…

And it kinda did. When they arrived, MK was confused, but kept running to the top where Red Son was. All the others followed behind him, and Sandy also paused. 

“Hmm, strange…” was all he muttered out before running after his friends. You heaved a relieved sigh as his footsteps faded, and after looking over the scene one last time, made a mad dash for the exit. 

 

 

 

Time for your grand escape. 

You know for a fact that the Weather Station is somewhat safe, since MK and the others came around and beat all the Bull Clones to a pulp. 

The exit was, unfortunately, a few floors down. Which meant that there was a ton of running. You panted as you went down level by level to try and get to the exit. 

WHY WAS THIS PLACE SO HIGH UP!?

You panted as,why did you decide that the stairs was a good idea!? MK’s most likely up on the top floor facing Red Son right now, you could've just taken the elevator!

“AAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaahhhh!” A scream was muffled by the glass and a yellow blur flew into the city.

Ah, there goes MK…

And soon he’ll be back, strike Red Son with a bolt of lightning (ouch!), and all will be returned to normal. Easy peasy lemon squeezy!

You groaned as you finally made it to the bottom floor, and you were so close to freedom before a Bull Clone momentarily stopped you. Emphasis on momentarily , as it grabbed your shoulder, startling you. 

Your immediate reaction was to turn around and punch it.

Okay, punching metal? Not exactly a bright idea, it hurt a whole lot, and you felt your knuckles crack because of it.

But also yay , because somehow your strang, new powers decided to activate again, which electrified your entire body, fist included, which fried the electronics of the robot and made it flop onto the floor with an audible ‘clang’!

You took that chance to run away to the outside of the Weather Station. You found a crowd of civilians all dressed in swimsuits and other leisure clothes, surrounded by some first aid workers.

One of the workers noticed you approaching, nursing your very bruised hand and immediately took you in. 

“It’s just bruising, thankfully, but I would recommend you lay off this hand for a bit.” The nurse exclaimed, wrapping some gauze around your hand to indicate that the hand shouldn’t be bothered, and to help you keep it from moving and worsening the bruises.

Fantastic, you can’t use your dominant hand… wonderful…

“Look, it’s that overpowered kid!” A civilian yelled out, and everyone looked up. You caught MK being dropped off at the Weather Station by Monkey King’s somersault cloud, and you smiled in relief.

“Thank goodness, now this entire mess will be fixed.” You sighed with a small smile as the citizens all cheered.

Of course, everyone cringed when Red Son was struck by lightning, but when the weather began clearing, everyone celebrated.

The security guards examined the building, slowly opening floors back up to the public after the floors were cleared safely.

“You’re okay!” You yelped as Sandy picked you up in a hug and swung you around happily.

“Sandy, I appreciate the gesture, but you’re making me dizzy!” You yell out, so Sandy puts you back down.

“Are you okay? You’re bruised.” You pointed to the side of his head.

He nods. “Yeah, I’m fine, nothing a little ice pack and some tea can’t do.” He exclaimed energetically.

You were about to speak up again, but MK and Mei immediately tackled you to the ground in a tight hug. “You’re okay!” 

“Oh, ow. My hand! You guys!” You chuckled as the two awkwardly hugged you, now trying to avoid your injured hand.

“What happened to your hand?” Mk asked curiously as he held up your bandaged hand.

You laughed sheepishly. “Oh, yeah, that. Haha, a Bull Clone startled me so I punched it.”

Mei giggled. “Really? You’re so silly.”

The three of you all laughed, and Pigsy and Tang approached Sandy. “This your new employee?” The pig demon asked curiously.

“Yeah, they’re really nice.” Sandy said with a smile.

“I see they’re already good friends.” Tang exclaimed as he watched Mei and MK essentially nuzzle you to the floor, hugging you endlessly.

“That’s good. I’m glad.” The water demon smiled happily.

You, on the other hand, simply accepted the fact that Mk and Mei had brought you in to their cuddle pile and were probably refusing to let you go.

You just roll with it.

It was comforting having friends in this new world.

~~~

<PREV ~ NEXT>

#lego #lego monkie kid #lmk mk #lmk sandy #lmk x reader #lego monkie kid x reader #x reader #reader insert #platonic relationships #platonic #gender neutral reader #gender neutral y/n #gender neutral post #cross posted on ao3 #lady bone demon #lmk macaque #six eared macaque #lmk sun wukong #sun wukong #lmk wukong #lmk pigsy #lmk red son #lmk tang #lmk #lmk mei #lmk monkey king #lmk mayor

[shelbgrey]

Hello 👋

I was wondering if you would write something for ghostbusters Peter venkman with 2 and 4 from the prompts list?

I hope it’s ok, I’ve never requested before😖, I hope I requested correctly and it’s not weird.

Hope you have a wonderful day

When unspoken rules are broken(Peter Venkman)

Paring: Peter Venkman x Stantz!Reader

Summary: y/n is ray's little sister and is unspokenly off lemits to the other Ghostbusters, all the boys know it. Peter Venkman is well aware but he can't help but fall for her, even if they can't 'stand' each other.

Prompts:

0.2) “You are the reason that I'm still breathing”

0.4) “Why can’t I breathe whenever I think about you?”

A/n: yay, my first Ghostbusters story, I hope you like it. Send in more Ghostbusters request!

MasterList

It was an unspoken rule between the three boys that y/n Stantz was off lemits. She was Ray's little sister and just as smart as her brother and friends, she was also fearless and wasn't afraid to get up in a ghost's face. There's many reasons why the men of the group fell head over heals for her. They all at one point had a crush on her, well a side from Egon, so really it was only Winston and Peter with the crush. Winston got over it though and just realized how lucky he was to have her as a beast friend.

Around they're first years of colloge Peter Venkman started to fall for her. He was... To put it delicately, a man whore. He had away with the ladies and it annoyed her, she would be lying if she said she wanted nothing to do with him but he always had some girl on his arm, it's been like that all through out college.

What she didn't know is he had this obsession with her that he kept buried deep in the darkest part of his heart, and it was all for Ray's sake. Him and Egon both knew how important y/n to Ray and Peter never really thought about what his feelings for y/n would do to his friendship with her brother, he didn't start thinking about it until Egon brought it up. Her and Egon had been best friends for as long as the group could remember, one time their friendship was confused for being something more and that's when the unspoken rule was born.

“it wouldn't be wise to be in a relationship with Raymond's sister, especially considering how close we all are...just imagine the rage he'd feel if he found out about one of us feeling inappropriate things for her” Egon once said.

He regrets it, but the only way Peter could deal with the feels he was advised to keep bottled up, was to always tease her and get into small arguments with her. And for awhile it worked, but when the Ghostbusters was formed and Winston was told about the unspoken rule, it's started to get harder and harder to keep his feelings locked up like one of their ghosts.

~~~~~~~~(.......)~~~~~~~~

“easy case... Probably Slimer again” Ray told us as we walked into the fancy hotel. I nodded and quickly switched on Egon's proton pack for him and he did the same for me and Winston.

“we should split up” Egon said, Winston nodded and went up the first flight of stairs with him.

“I'll go this way” Ray said, I usually went with my brother but when I tried to follow Peter stoped me. “let's go together this time”

I raised an eyebrow as he simply shrugged and led the way. It was unusual for him, usually he'd wave me off or have some kinda smart-ass comment. I would be lying if I said I wasn't thrilled, I kept my cool and follow the blue-eyed ghostbuster.

We went down a couple of hallways in silence, it wasn't awkward like expected instead it was kinda nice. But the peaceful silence was ruined by the sounds of munching and slobbering, Slimer was a nasty eater. We don't really know why he never put him in the volt, he was never really a danger to the town so we captured him and he'd find his way out and leave a few days later.

“Ew, look” I said to Peter as we turned the corner, he looked up and saw the green, slimy ghost stuffing his face like crazy. Peter slowly held up his walkie-talkie and called for my brother.

“did ya find him?” Ray said on our walkies.

“We’re looking at it right now”

The ghost, Slimer charged towards us, Peter screamed and pulled my body infront of him, I flinched but didn't feel any pain…just slimy and grosse. I quickly backed up and gave Peter a dirty look. “Really?”

His lips went straight and he held his hands up but refused to touch my slime cover body. I didn’t want to move a muscle, everytime i did it just felt squishy and gross. I’m gonna kill him one of these days.

“Damit Slimer” I sighed and wiped my eyes carefully.

“Peter, sis, Where did he go?” Ray came running towards us, he went to place his hand on my shoulder but immediately flinched back when he saw my condition. “Ew”

“I have slime in places slime shouldn't be” I grumbled. Peter let out a chuckle and quickly hid it behind his hand when I shot him a dirty look. “Hey, at least you got actual contact this time, he usually doesn't let us get this close”

“I’ll show you contact” I growled and reached to touch his face with my slime covered hand. He flinched back and tried to grab my wrist, he did but i just jumped forward and whipped my free hand across his face then his chest. Ray rolled his eyes and pulled me away by my proton pack.

“Will you calm down? We have a job to do” Ray said, trying to hide his smile. I rolled my eyes. “Fine, I'm gonna help Egon”

At this point I didn't care about the wet, squishy feeling I felt every time I walked, I just wanted to get the job done so I could go home and get cleaned up. When I walked away I didn't see the sad look that fell across Peter’s face, he looked down and watched my figure walk down the hallway. Ray elbowed him when he noticed Peter looking a little too hard and a little too long.

~~~~~~~~(.......)~~~~~~~~

We got Slimer like usual, it didn't take to long which was nice. After we got take-out we headed home.

“I'm gonna take a shower” I grumbled setting my bag of Chinese food on the table. “stay out of my food Raymond” I yelled back into the kitchen as I left.

I quickly shedded my slime covered uniform by the lockers we kept them and grabed some fresh closes out of the drawers in the quarters we slept. With our home being an old firehouse our shower was an old tiled room with a bunch of shower heads and cubicles. Mine was on the far end, none of the boys used it and it was were I kept all my nicer products like body soap, conditioner, and other stuff.

The hot water felt nice on my achy muscle, caring a protonpack that was probably about 50 pounds maybe more will do a number on your back and shoulders. I don't know how we do it, especially Egon with how tall and lanky he is.

The once soothing shower soon turned frustrating after I soaped up and risned about three times and there was still slime. I sighed and just decided to stay under the water and soak for awhile, it's Peter's fault if the other boys have no hot water. After awhile the hot water did help and I was completely clean, I still smelled like death but there was a hint of lavander from my body wash.

I quickly drived off and put on the old flannel I stoll from Winston years ago, there's a peark to being so close to a group of guys, you get to steal there clothes and they won't complain. It might seem weird to new eyes, but that's how we live and we're comfortable like that, Hell Winston steals my peppermint body wash everytime it's in season.

I left the shower room and dried my hair off as walked into the erea where we slept. I hid my face in the towal to bask in it's warmth, I let fall off and I immediately jump.

“Jesus!” I placed my hand over my heart when I saw it was only Peter. He held his hands up in defense. “sorry, didn't mean to scare ya”

I smiled softly and threw my used towel in the laundry basket, as well as Egon's used slacks and Winston's flannels. The boys weren't very tidy at all.

“we have a laundry basket?” Peter said looking at the pile of laundry that was at the bottom of his part of the closet. I chuckled and set at the foot of my bed, I grabed my brush and untangled my hair as the room fell silent. It felt weird to be alone with Peter, it was a rare thing.

“I'm sorry about the slime thing” he spoke roughly, he cleared his throat and turned to me. I shrugged and saw his eyes held nothing but the truth he spoke.

“it's no big deal, it happens to all of us” I said, trying to drop the subject. Peter wasn't gonna budge though.

“it's not okay” he quickly said, I was suprised at his sudden out burst. I looked up and saw his walls slowly breaking down. “Peter...”

“I know how slime and ectoplasm irritates your skin” he said softly and nodded towrds the light tent of red that masked my arms and hands. It was nothing to worry about, I'll just be scratching everywhere for a couple of days.

The more he panicked and paced, the more confusing the whole situation was, since college he's done nothing but teas me and start arguments. It wasn't harmful to either on of us, but it was so weird to see his softer side.

“it doesn't matter Peter” I stated fermly, Hell I've always liked him but he can't just turn on a dime like this.

“then.. Why can’t I breathe whenever I think about you?”

I looked at him with wide eyes, did he really just say that. Did this mean he's always liked me... Or was I just an easy lay... Another notch in his headboard. I looked into his blue eyes and didn't see lust or anything un- innocent, just love. What he was saying was genuine.

“you don't relize how much I care about you... Do you?” he asked setting down next to me.

I don't know what possessed me but I turned to him and planted a quick kiss on his lips. Peter's eyes widened and slightly pulled back. I gulped feeling I made a big mistake.

“I'm sor-” I was cut off as his hand cupped the back of my neck pulling me closer. Our lips coiled in feverish kiss.

I grabed the collar of his shirt and pulled him closer as our lips locked. His hands fell and grip my waist, our eyes locked as I move my hands to the back of his neck, running my fingers though his hair. His hands moved the the back of my neck pushing his lips harder to mine. His toung gently touched my bottom lip asking for entrance. I granted him entrance as my hands slid down his chest.

“Wait” he sighs lowly, grabbing a hold of my hands before they are able to unbuckle his belt. I planted one last kiss to his lips and he slowly pulled away with fear in his eyes, the once cocky lady's man was gone. “we shouldn't do this”

I gave him a confused look and he continued with nervousness. “your Ray's little sister, your basically forbidden fruit” he quickly said, I scoffed and moved out of his arms, after all that and he still can't get off his high horse.

“y/n...” he started, stoped and turned around “I'm sorry” he whispered, I looked at him and his face drop. I'd never seen him so remorseful and I almost believed him. I opened my mouth to speak, but the alarm went off telling us we had a case... The second one of the night. I heard Ray and Winston groaned from upstairs.

“let's just work the damn case” I said left the bedroom and jogged to the fire pole. I slid down it and that point I couldn't even think about how much it scared me to go down it, no matter how many times I did it.

“what do we got?” I asked quickly taking off Winston's my flannel so I was in my tanktop. My locker was next to Egon's so I quickly moved next to him and got one of my clean uniforms on.

“some rich boy mansion, ghost haunting it” Ray said. I chuckled, trying shead some light on my evening. “the usual”

“you got that right” Winston chuckled then looked up the firepole as Peter slid down. “Pete hurry up!”

~~~~~~~~(.......)~~~~~~~~

As I walked around the abandoned pool, the EMF reader starred going off like crazy. “hey guys, I think I got something” I said through the walkie-talkie.

“hang on, I'll head your way” Egon said through the walkie.

I knlet infront of the pool and studyed it. It was decent size, covered in moss, mold, and slime. I'm pretty sure it would be considered gray water by now. No way I'm taking a dip in this freaking pool.

I scanned it one last time then set the meter down to get a sample for Egon. I got the slime infested water in the container and put in my pocket. I sighed at how quite it was, between Egon's on going experiments and Peter's strange behavior the quite was nice.

I couldn’t even see my reflection in the merky water. “N/n, we're on our way hang tight” Winston said through the walkie-talkie.

“Roger that” I said softly, I shook my head and stood up to wait for the boys. When left for the door the pool started to bubble, I quickly stepped back when steam and hissing started the leave the area.

“Boys!” I ran towrds the door but didn't get to far, I felt my feet get swept from underneath me. Between the protonpack on my back and the broken bricks I fell on, all I felt was pain. I looked over my shoulder and saw a dark blue slime wrapped around my ankle, pulling me towrds the pool.

“RAYMOND! PETER!” I shouted as I hung on to anything could, I couldn't even reach for my proton-gun in fear if I let go of the brick I'd get pulled under.

I was about to shout for my Boys again but this time no words came out. The slime grew to size bigger than me and leped over me like a blanket. And pulled me under, I tried to swim to the surface but I was pushed under and water and slime filled my lungs.

---( Peter's pov )---

I rolled my eyes when I saw a ghost the size of a small little girl peak around the conner then run off giggling like she was playing tag with me a Ray.

“creepy ghost kids... Seen it already” I replied, getting bored. Ray chuckled and charged up his proton pack while he went into the same direction as the ghost kid.

I started to make childish noises as I followed Ray but the painful screams coming out of our walkies made me stop. I knew her screams which made is so much worse.

“RAYMOND! PETER! HELP ME!”

me and Ray shared wide eyes glances then immediately ran to the pool room where she was at.

“somethings wrong with y/n” I hear Winston say on the walkie next. I ignored it and continued to run down the many halls of the mancain. I don't know how many doors and stair cases I passed, all I knew is nothing was gonna stop me from saving her.

“y/n!” I shouted to her and ran the last corner into the pool room.

My heart dropped when I saw her drowning, I threw my protonpack off and jumped in after her, Ray followed behind me quickly. The first time we tried to grabed her the ghost jerked her away. I pushed my self towrds the deep end where it took her and quickly grabed her hand.

She was small in stature but between the pack and the ghost tugging on her with all her might, I almost didn't have the strangth. Ray then came behind her and snapped off the straps with his pocket knife and pushed her towrds me. I put her limp arms on my neck and held her close to me as pulled to the surface.

“you son of a bitch” Winston growled. him and Egon shot their proton-streams at the ghost as I layed her on the ground.

“come on y/n” I said touching her cheek, she wasn't moving. I started to panic and started CPR, I've never done it in my life and only saw it in the movies. That made it so much more terrifying, what if I can't save her?

“come on, Baby... Don't leave me” I said pushing on her chest then quick connect our lips to give her air. I did the proses over and over, as I did I only panic more.

I let out a sigh of relief when she left out a painful cough. The rest of the boys sighed with relief as she started to breath. “thank god” I mumbled pulling her to my chest.

“your alright, I got you” I said, placing a kiss on her forehead. Ray nodded with tears in his eyes as he grabed her hand.

She only nodded then looked up at Winston and Egon, she smiled softly. “let's get out of here, we got the damn thing” Egon said while he pulled y/n soaked protonpack out of the pool.

“come on, let's get you home and wormed up” I said, picking up her chattering body. She nodded and snuggled closer to me for warmth.

~~~~~~~~(.......)~~~~~~~~

“all get the heater” Egon said quickly shutting Ecot-1 and running to the storage room, the rest of us ran to the bedroom and layed her chattering body on her bed.

“here” Ray said, wrapping a quilt around is both. She gripped my suit and pulled me closer for warmth, I rubbed her arms quickly trying to get some heat on her body. “relax, you'll be warm soon” I whispered.

She peaked her head from my chest and smiled when she saw Egon plug in the small heater we had. “I lost the sample from the p-pool, I'm sorry egon” she spoke softly.

I wanted to scoff, thst was the first thing she says since her almost-sudden-death? Egon smiled softly and shook his head. “don't worry about it, your life is more important”

He left and the others followed so she could rest. “I'll heat up your food and send it up to ya later” Ray said softly and padded Winston's shlulder signaling him to follow.

“thanks Ray” she said, once they left I grabed the quilt and got her to lie down on my chest. I pulled the quilt over the both of us as she snuggled into my chest.

I smiled at the feeling, I never experienced a feeling like this. It felt so nice to have her in my arms. “I love you, ya know?” I said softly as I ran my fingers throw her damp hair. “I don't care what anyone else says... I almost lost you tonight and I can't do that”

She looked up at me, man I loved her eyes. They were the prettiest tent of (e/c), so round and beautiful. She smiled softly at me, but her expression held a dash of uncertainty. I hated myself for causing that, I never wanted her to question her worth or how much someone I loved her.

“You are the reason that I'm still breathing” I said truthfully and it wasn't lying. I'll joke around and annoy my buddies to no end, but I'd never lie to her. She made my life worth living and I wake up every day happy I get to the greatest job in the world with her by my side.

She scooted up the bed so our faces were level and she placed her lips to mine, it was so soft and a bit chill from her time in that God awful ice bath. I didn't care how cold it was, I just felt so sweet to have her lips modeled perfectly with mine and this time there was no fear or uncertainty, just two people who finally woke up and realized they we're perfect for each other.

#Peter Venkman #Peter Venkman x reader #Peter Venkman imagines #Ghostbusters x reader #Ghostbusters imagines #Ghostbusters #Ray stantz x reader #Ray stantz x sister!Reader #Egon spengler #winston zeddemore #80s movies #bill murray

[bones-of-a-rabbit]

So…

I may or may not be obsessed with your Afton Virus AU, and so I may or may not have made a whole oneshot about it.

This story follows the point of view of a legal department head working for Fazbear Entertainment and their

encounter with a certain individual and their two animatronic friends.

Includes:

Descriptions of torture, not too explicit talk about gore though, other than a few offhanded mentions of blood. Still, a little touchy for people who might be squeamish.

PS: Y/N is 100% inspired by Sonya Falsworth from Secret Invasion. Her witty dialogue masking a total psychopath is a perfect match for Y/N and you can’t tell me otherwise.

Expect more. (If I have the motivation)

From a very, very sleep-deprived amateur writer.

—————————————————————

“Ah, you’re finally awake! Was wondering when you’d wake up.”

A voice called out from your blurry vision, your eyes were bombarded by bright fluorescent lights. Your shirt was soggy, in fact all of you were soggy. Where the hell were you?

“Who are you?”

The mysterious figure in front of you chuckled, standing up from their metal foldable chair. You got a better look at them, dressed in a black polo shirt with the Fazbear Entertainment branding pasted on.

Mechanics Supervisor

You looked at their hands, covered by gloves. They were twitching. They held an almost uncanny smile, the hat they were wearing covering up their eyes, not letting you truly see their full face.

“You seriously don’t remember me? Seriously?”

The figure chuckled again, their tone mocking and brimming with psychopathic enthusiasm. They returned to their seat.

“Well, just to jog your memory I’m the person who had their hands mangled a year ago thanks to your shitshow of a company!”

Oh, them.

You remember that case well, one of the worse you’ve seen. Sure, worse incidents had happened before but what made this one so bad was that unlike the others, the victim was still alive, and capable of suing.

Thank god they didn’t, all the bad press was already overwhelming for the PR department. One lawsuit was all it would have taken to bring that whole place down to the ground.

In addition, you got a suitable promotion for helping handle that case while causing minimum damages to the company’s image.

You are brought out of your trip down memory lane however, by another piece of dialogue from the person in front of you.

“Now, you’re probably wondering what you’re doing here. You see those wires clipped to your chair?”

You looked down, the shaky wooden chair you were sitting on was damp as well. In addition, the blue plastic wires were there, as promised.

“Those are used to charge the animatronics if the charging booths aren’t working. In fact, over there you’ll see my two lovely boys operating the emergency battery that goes along side it.”

You turned to your left, seeing the aforementioned battery, bright red with a Freddy logo in the middle, sitting on a toppled filing cabinet being used as a makeshift table.

The aforementioned “two lovely boys” were to your surprise, the daycare attendants that you remember very vividly having to settle a case involving dead children around. What the hell were they doing here?

“Now, I’m going to ask you a few questions regarding the security system of the main Fazbear office, and if you answer you get to live!”

You cough, your voice coming out rough and coarse.

“And if I don’t?”

“Well, then let’s just say that I didn’t splash you with water for no reason, ay?”

The figure pointed towards the daycare attendants, the two perking up like lost puppies and fiddling with a piece of machinery near the battery.

“How would you feel about 200 volts of electricity going through your veins? Not enough to kill you, but enough to leave you teetering on the edge.”

“…”

“As expected. Now, let me ask you, what are all the passcodes to all 30 doors that lead up to the CEO’s office?”

“…”

“I’d suggest talking before I make you see hell itself. Most people would agree with me I’d think, well at least the smart ones. You a smart one?”

“…”

“Alright, didn’t think so. Buttercup?”

You turn to your left, the sun-themed daycare attendant eagerly pressing on a button on the machinery, before you knew it…

—————————————————————

Your body was steaming.

Your nerves burned.

You are coughing blood.

Your breathing was heavy.

Your heart beat so fast, it felt like it was going the speed of light.

“Now, you willing to talk now?”

You coughed, droplets of blood leaving your mouth and your throat being in incredible pain.

“Fuck… off.”

“Well then, that was rude.”

The figure got off their chair, clapping their hands. The daycare attendants walked over cheerfully, like puppies being called over by their owner.

“Buttercup, blackbird, could you handle our guest?”

The two animatronics enthusiastically nodded in unison.

“Sure thing, sunshine!”

“We’ll do our best, starlight.”

“I knew I could count on you two.”

With a kiss to both of them, the figure left the room, flipping off the lights on their way out. Leaving you alone with two animatronics that had super-human strength, in the dark.

Their vivid fluorescent purple eyes stared into your soul, acting as the only light source in the room and shining a purple-tinted light onto your face. They raised their hands, full with tools likely stolen from parts and service.

Was that a drill?

—————————————————————

ANON I LOVE YOU PLS MARRY MEEEEEEEEE

I LOVELOVELOVE THISSS AUGH LOVE LOVE LOVE AFTON'D READER!!! AND THEIR TWO LOVELY BOYS AAAAAAA IM DEAD THEYRE TOO CUTE YOUR HONOR

afton reader, a horrible lil monster of a person, killing ppl on the regular: calls Sun and Moon cute names me:

#is it valid to simp for a writing style. no? ok nice *simps anyway* #anon. whoever u r. i love. u #ive read this five times fsjdfshdfjshdfs #tw gore #tw torture #tw murder #tw violence #afton au reader #afton virus au #fnaf au #fnaf sun/moon x reader #writing submission #fanfic of a fanfic #writing to be adored #anonymous submission #also afton'd reader smooching th bois right after torturing a whole entire human being in front of them and the bois being like <3 over it? #peak. perfection. i love them #man i have to draw this i love them so much

[clonemedickix]

Rating: M

Word count: 7.5K

Pairing: OC Clone Medics

Warnings: Mention of medical trauma, mention of medical procedures, mention of prehospital care and trauma, discussion on pediatric care, alcohol use, implied substance abuse/impairment, implied sexual activity, medical humor, prehospital humor (it's snide y'all, that's the reality)

Excerpt Summary - Day One of the 1st Annual GAR Medic Conference

If you'd like to be tagged for new fanfic posts, click here.

If you'd like to see more of my fic works, click here.

First Day: Watch Out For That Drop!

Clones started to file into the appointed lecture room for the first class, finding tables laden with breakfast pastries, cereal and blue milk, large steaming carafes full of caf. There were a lot of bleary-eyed men wandering about, hungover from the previous night of drinking, laughing and story telling at various restaurants and bars. The group was fairly quiet, considering how loud and raucous they'd been the night before, and Volte was secretly feeling quite smug over the rest he'd managed to get before starting classes that morning. It wouldn't last; Kix was not about to agree to another night of simply going to bed. He'd come to party and relive stories, and he wasn't going to let Volte's boring personality drag him down.

Sawbones and Whiskey sauntered into the room, also looking more bright eyed and bushy tailed than most of the others gathered around the table. Sawbones quickly moved to the caf table, giving a few of the younger, hung over clones sharp looks that had them shifting out of his way. He even growled "MOVE!" at one that hadn't gotten the message from his body language. The groggy medic looked up in surprise, blinking as if the light were too hard, saw the grizzled old clone's expression, and quickly moved as ordered.

The first day of classes started with a bang, almost literally. "Advanced Airway Management for Facial Trauma: What To Do When Holes Are Present That Shouldn’t Be" discussed such things as facial trauma from shrapnel wounds, blaster wounds, and stab wounds. The medics were all educated and most, though not all, were seasoned by having been in the field in some capacity. Airway management was always critically important; the C-ABCs were the most crucial steps in first response to save a patient. One of the younger medics, Chance, leaned over to his neighbor, Heron, a medic from the 218th Company, and asked "What do they stand for, again?"

Heron stared at the little shiny brother for a moment wryly, as if wondering why the fresh kid was asking something so obvious, and then muttered back, "Catastrophic Hemorrhage, Airway, Breathing and Circulation."

"Ahhh, thanks, 'Vod," Chance whispered back, flashing him a little smile.

The subject matter and attendant images were pretty harsh for a first-thing-in-the-morning class, but medical people were strange. They could handle looking at evisceration over a plate of spaghetti, or discussing dismemberment and gross bodily functions while eating dinner. An outside observer might wonder what was wrong with these people - how they could be so numb to horrific images - but the men all sat sprawled back and half awake in their chairs, sipping caf and munching on breakfast pastries while listening attentively to the lecturer.

A particularly gruesome image with an attached story was of a nat born civilian injury, in which someone had contrived to shoot them in the face. The front of their jaw and a lot of their lower face was missing, creating an airway nightmare scenario for the medics to ponder. The presenter stopped the class for a moment to take ideas on how the students would secure the patient's airway.

Stretcher, a noticeably taller than average medic with the 327th Star Corps spoke up. "Was the patient breathing on their own? I mean, if they're getting air, maybe just support, scoop and run."

The lecturer nodded, saying, "That's one idea. Any others?"

Volte leaned forward a bit and spoke up. "Intubate the patient. Follow the bubbles - where the patient's breath meets blood there will be bubbles and that should identify the airway. Secure it with a laryngoscope blade and pop a tube in there, because there's no guarantee how long they'll be conscious enough to keep breathing on their own, no matter how fast you run."

"Good, very good. Following the bubbles is a legitimate method. Would you use a facial mask over a patient like this?," the teacher asked.

Heads shook to say no. Bagging a patient like that would cause the remaining airway, teeth and tongue structures to collapse and further occlude the airway. It would be a disaster without proper jaw thrust to keep the tongue from falling back over the trachea; better to use a high flow face mask until real securement was in place.

"Very good, class. Any other suggestions?," the lecturer asked. This was the last discussion portion of his class and always generated some good feedback.

Once again, Volte spoke up. "One could always place a surgical airway, bypassing the entire upper trachea and the wounded area, but there's also a couple of types of airway adjuncts from my General's home planet, called the Combitube and King Airway. They're a blind intubation method - they can end up in the esophagus and yet still provide oxygenation and ventilation because of the position of their side holes. They were designed for things like this, when you have to just stuff the tube in blindly and hope for the best."

"That's very interesting. Have you used these tools, or seen them in real life?" The instructor seemed quite intrigued; this whole convention was about teaching new methods, updating education and showing off new technology. He'd love to get his hands on these tools being discussed.

"I have seen the King Airway, used it in fact. My General has brought us several implements from her home world to use in the field. I've found they help a lot - cut down a lot of the time to treatment element and help us get the wounded off the field quicker." Volte held up his data pad. "I've got some images stored on my data pad I can show you."

Kix coughed loudly and covered his mouth as he gasped out, "Be sure it's not the pinup pictures!" Several men heard him and chuckled as Volte looked over at him with a disgusted grunt and elbowed Kix in the ribs.

Volte snapped back something he'd heard General Lin say in jest when telling a trooper to shut it and leave. "Get thee gone Satan, or I will smite thee with my data pad and tape your mouth shut with conduit tape." Kix chuckled and walked out the door to stretch his legs while Volte and the instructor had their nerd moment over the airway adjuncts.

The class emptied out for a break before the next session started, "Rapid Sedation: How to Restrain Your Patient in Fives Seconds Without the Use of Conduit Tape." As the men trickled back in from the refresher and more caf, Volte and Kix grabbed seats near their little core group, seeing all of the Corries clumping together as well. Sedating patients was always a topic of discussion and sometimes jokes with medics, especially the Coruscant Guard, who as a general rule had to contend with the element of drunk partygoers or recreational substance use on all levels of the Capital ecumenopolus. Even the rich, famous and Senatorial types weren't innocent of the occasional dalliance.

To everyone's surprise, the speaker was an old nat born training medic from Kamino, famous for her assertive, indomitable will, her small stature and fierce eyes, nicknamed 'Pockets'. Few patients or students ever crossed her, afraid of seeing the wrath boiling in her cool blue eyes. Pockets was small, but a hurricane-like force of nature, and those who'd challenged her in the wild always found she was ever ready to sidestep the battle with a quick stab of a needle in a well placed muscle. She was not there to play games, she'd say. Pockets was there to help, even if it meant taking you out of the picture so she could do her job.

The group of clones were fascinated that such a small female could do so much with so little; the men were all no shorter than six foot two, give or take a couple inches either way. It was a rare day when someone out of their head challenged them, but it still happened occasionally, and every clone to a man believed that little Pockets would have a bull reek fully immobilized in less than five minutes, by herself. Sawbones gleefully imagined her strapping him to a bed with tape and having her way with him - he liked bullheaded, assertive girls that didn't back down.

"There are hundreds of medications spanning the range of emergency antipsychotic medications to straight sedation and pain classes, which can also serve the same purpose. In extreme cases, where a patient's psychosis or high goes too far and they require the aid of us assisting breathing, a small cocktail is required." Pockets paused, glancing around the room at her attentive audience. They were all breathtakingly handsome, and their dark eyes blinking back at her wiped her train of thought for a second. She cleared her throat, grasping at the threads of her lecture once more. "It was actually developed for the use of sedating and securing the airway of mothers in obstetrical distress, needing immediate surgical delivery and a patient airway. Given in the appropriate order and dose, the treatment team was able to knock the patient out without causing them to vomit reflexively, putting the airway at risk due to aspiration.” Pockets took a quick breath and then finished by saying, “So thank the next pregnant lady you see for rapid sedation protocols- they did you a favor.”

The lecture continued on in the same vein, as she covered the different medications, a short blurb about their history and pharmacology, pharmacokinetics, dosing and route of administration. She covered a few medications that could be given without intravenous access, which still had to be injected. "Sometimes, it's just satisfying to stab a truly unruly patient with a needle and watch them finally hit the wall of sleep. Definitely more humane than what one former partner of mine did. He used every roll of conduit tape in the ship to mummify the patient to the spine board after the guy decked me. I fell out the back of the ship, which was thankfully still on the platform, and really cracked my head hard. My partner didn't take too kindly to that, and since we had a trainee aboard, he and the newbie wrapped that guy head to toe with the tape to hold him down and keep him from hurting anyone else. They left his eyes, mouth and nose free of course, but it's safe to say the guy got a free waxing he didn't plan for when he started his day."

Pockets retold the story with a pretty neutral tone, though her eyes glimmered a bit with laughter. To some, the story probably seemed a little hard on the patient, but to others, like the Corries, it was all too familiar, recalling the many times some patients were less respectful, kind and cooperative, bordering more on the side of unsafe and dangerous to the medics and their crew. No medical crew should ever have to fear for their lives for simply trying to help a person. The forward operating medics all shot glances at the Corries, knowing this was more in their realm of expertise; it was rare that a wounded man in the field acted with such abandon and violence toward their medical officers. Sure, they could and would use the knowledge gained from this class to better care for their brothers, but they didn't plan on having to sedate them for behavioral issues. Now, doing it as a prank... that conduit tape mummification gag sounded pretty attractive to several of them, eyeing their neighbor a little mischievously or thinking of a certain brother they'd love to see strapped to a board. A few day dreams included visions of toting said brother around the base while still taped on the backboard, leaning him against the wall like he was nothing more than a curious object while continuing on blissfully with their lives...

Jab, a junior medic attached to Phoenix Company, chuckled softly and murmured to his neighbor, Captain Jaro of the 16th Medical Battalion, "Those injectable sedatives would be fun to carry in some of our autoinjectors. Can you imagine? Guy gets rowdy and you're like, 'Calm down or you're gonna get a poke.' Guy keeps fighting, 'One, two... stabby stab.'" He chuckled again; he was notorious for giving meds off count - it always took the men by surprise, as they trusted him enough to believe he would get to three before poking them, but no, not Jab. He believed in getting the negative stuff over with as quickly as possible.

The Corries as usual were all sitting together in a group, and Voodoo leaned over to Patcher, saying, "So, this means we're completely justified in sedating unruly supervisors that don't take care of themselves too, right?"

Patch laughed and answered back, "I'm not sure what YOU did was necessarily within the protocols, but justified? ...Maybe..."

Siren fixed Voodoo with a stern look and said, "Fox completely deserved what you did! If he wasn't going to look after himself, it's the medic's job to do so. When it comes to the health of the troopers, the medic is in charge."

Voodoo grinned back at the support of his brothers. Their Marshall Commander, Fox, had a bad tendency to work himself to death and refuse food and sleep until whatever obsession was on his plate was taken care of. When Voodoo was still somewhat new to the Coruscant Guard, he'd seen the man get particularly haggard and ground down after a long hitch of watching Senators for some big wig meeting in the Capital. When the rest of the men started to complain about how short tempered, hangry and down right bitchy Fox was getting, Voodoo decided to take matters into his own hands. He made a pretense to visit Fox in his office, moved to look at something over Fox's shoulder, and quickly stabbed him in the neck with an autoinjector of sedatives.

Fox had reacted like a snake bit him, shooting out of his desk chair with a strangled, "What in karking HELL did you just give...me..." as he crumpled to the floor and immediately drew in a stuporous snore.

Voodoo stood over him with triumphant grin, then hailed Thorn over his comm device to come help him get the Commander to some place more comfortable than the floor. When Fox woke up two days later, he found a warm, nutritious breakfast spread on the table next to him, as well as a note from Voodoo that simply stated, "And I'd do it again."

When the class broke up, the men all wandered off to find lunch. They had a good while before the next class started, so some of the medics headed back to their rooms to relax, nap, read a book, watch some holo net. Kix and Volte left the convention center to walk down the street, in search of food they hadn't tried as yet; they didn't want to burn out on hotel food when there were small Hosnian Prime native shops within reach to try.

The after lunch program started off with one of the most taboo and terrifying subjects in the medical world: pediatrics. As a general rule, most people were afraid to treat children. They often approached that patient population with the attitude of 'children are just small adults', and 'a silent kid is a dead kid, but a loud kid is annoying.' About the only medic actually excited to attend the class was Minder, who ambled in quickly, found a spot on the front row of the class, and waited eagerly for the speaker to climb the dais. Volte and Kix decided to sit just behind their friend; they didn't want to seem too excited about the topic.

Volte was wary of kids, but wasn't averse to treating them. His General, in fact, kept a job on her home world of treating children hospitalized for various illnesses, and had told him many times of long term patients she'd gotten to know. She seemed to hold a real affection for small patients and always patiently imparted tips to Volte on how to get on their level, gain their trust so that treating them was easier. General Lin always asserted firmly that treating kids was FAR better than dealing with adults, hands down.

There were low chuckles, murmuring, and a few gasps when the presenter climbed up to the podium. The instructor was a small, sprightly young woman, dressed in a costume that looked like a cat, whiskers drawn on her face, with little pointed ears sticking out of her curly hair, and a long tail trailing behind her. She placed a small sheaf of papers on the lectern and looked up at her audience, seeing hundreds of wide, amused to shocked brown eyes staring back.

"Howdy! Welcome to 'How to Approach Younglings: They're Not Armed Bombs.' I’m Madi, and this lecture is going to contain a lot of personal experience, maybe even some tips you might find helpful in the future. The biggest take away I want you to learn is that kids don't have to be terrifying. They're all unique, fiercely brave little souls that will all make a mark on you in some way, most likely permanently. You'll never forget these little patients going forward, especially if you are lucky enough to form a bond with them."

Volte and Kix had both sat up to attention when they saw the speaker’s attire, and Kix looked over at Volte with an amused expression. Her costume was very telling; it left little to the imagination about her form and figure. Kix was staring guilelessly at the woman, amazed that she had the spirit and courage to appear before a room full of single, handsome rakish men dressed as a sexy cat; he was salivating over the thought of getting her comm channel numbers. Volte was simply trying to look attentive and interested for the speaker. Sawbones leaned forward to mutter in Volte's ear, "I'll definitely never forget her wearing that outfit, going forward..."

"Now, I'm sure you're wondering why I chose to dress up like a cat for you. Let me tell you why, because it certainly wasn't to feed your filthy imaginations." Madi squinted at Sawbones knowingly; she'd seen him say something to Volte that had made the medic shift in his seat uncomfortably. "On my home world, medical professionals that specialize in children often dress up for different occasions, because wonder and imagination are both so important to a child. There is a whole day dedicated to dressing up as someone or something else for fun, and going around asking for candy from adults. At the facility I work at, we have a party on a sky bridge, where all the medical workers dress up for the children, to hand out candy and toys." Madi paused to see more of the clones were intrigued at the thought of her interacting with child patients on some distant planet, dressed up for the part in some tantalizing costume or other.

"Another important thing to remember about kids - they're not just small adults. A child's body is not mature; it's still going through a very complicated growth pattern, as is their mind. It's important to know the different developmental stages for a child, so you know how to interact with them appropriately. For instance, a toddler may hate you on sight, regardless of what you do, because it's within their developmental stage to be afraid of strangers. If you luck out enough to land on a character they're familiar with, you might be able to approach them more easily. Otherwise, you might just be in for a small rodeo."

Volte heard Voodoo mumble, "The kriff is a 'rodeo'?" This was something Volte had a lot of experience with; people were generally confused at many of the quips his General said in the course of a conversation. Even her own men were often forced to make her clarify what she was talking about, and would remind her “Basic... General. Basic." So it made Volte smile a bit seeing General Lin wasn’t the only person who needed a translator for their little euphemisms.

Madi looked at Voodoo a little dryly and huffed out, "Rodeo = wrestling match, same thing."

Sawbones laughed darkly and muttered, "I'd wrestle with her any day, and she can call it whatever she likes."

Rolling her eyes slightly at the male commentary, she continued on, outlining the different stages of mental and emotional development for children, then discussed multiple physical changes that occurred with growth. She wasn't to let their locker room humor stop her from enlightening them about pediatric care. "I've ended up watching holo shows and playing games with multiple patients of all ages, in order to gain and keep their trust. It's actually a very rewarding thing, knowing the kids look to you as something of a friend or protector."

She moved on to the next subject. "Gaining intravenous access on small children, especially infants, is incredibly difficult for those who don't use the skill on a daily basis. Those little veins are hard to see, tiny, and frequently like to roll away from the needle. In that case - and I've checked with your typical supplies - you have intraosseous needles that can be drilled either by hand or by purpose made drill, into the bone." Madi stopped and picked up a strange, burgundy colored power drill with a rather wicked looking, long plastic and metal needle on the end. She hit the trigger and the drill made a noticeable high pitched burrrr and Madi smiled a little wickedly, like an evil scientist with a surgical instrument. Kix's breath caught, his mind throwing images of her securing him to a bed and holding that thing over him threateningly. She stepped off the podium and handed it to Minder, telling him to pass it around so everyone could see it.

"What you're passing around now, is called the 'Easy IO' on my home planet. It's a purpose made power drill that holds an IO needle on the front by magnet, which makes it far easier to access the bone marrow. You find your appropriate site, hold it steady, hit the trigger, and drill that puppy home. Pop it off the drill, unscrew the top and voila, there is a connection beneath to attach IV tubing to." She paused as she saw Jab playing with the drill, his eyes a little dreamy about using it in the field. "Now, the two biggest problems with IO access is pain and pressure caused by infusing through the marrow, and securement so the line doesn't infiltrate into the surrounding musculature and tissue. That's a bad, bad deal. Down the road you also have to worry about osteomyelitis since placing these are always emergent and not usually the cleanest insertions; however, they can stay in up to 24 hours."

The drill had made it back to Carpal, who was hitting the trigger and watching the needle spin in a fascinated, morbid way. He'd heard everything she'd said; he had his hearing aids in so he could catch all the important information. When he got tired of listening, he would sometimes turn them off and snooze in his chair, so that he looked present, or at least like a body occupying a seat.

"These drills have made placing IOs FAR easier than in the past. Once the only choice was to manually insert the needle, by grasping the patient's leg, holding it as steady as you could, and drilling that wicked thing into the bone by hand. I've seen grown men shaking like leaves while inserting them, knowing they were causing pain but doing their best to help the child in question. And if your hand slipped, you could stab yourself through the back of the patient's leg - it was a rough procedure on everyone involved." She saw multiple clones wince in horror. "So the point is, drills are good, getting access is golden, medicate with a numbing adjunct first thing before you infuse volume or meds of any kind - it truly helps with the pain. Any questions?"

Madi surveyed the room with bright eyes, waiting to see if any were brave enough to ask anything. A few were. They tossed back questions and answers for a good thirty minutes and then were dismissed for a break before their next class. Minder immediately stood to corner the little speaker, to ask her more about her personal interactions with pediatric patients, generating trust between them, and how to cope with some of the harder cases. Kix grumbled in Volte's ear as he walked by “Gonna get her comm codes, watch me! See if I can't make that kitten purr,” he said with a salacious grin. Volte shook his head and kept walking; he imagined the girl had teeth and claws to go with her feisty personality, but he knew Kix was nothing if not persistent and bold.

The clones shuffled along to their next two classes in an upbeat mood; the day was nearly over and while it had been a long one, they'd learned a lot of valuable lessons and new information. They all felt it had been a productive day, and were looking forward to getting out, hitting the bar for drinks and camaraderie and laughs...maybe a pretty girl to flirt with or two. Kix had almost decided Hosnian Prime had no females, and that they'd come to some kind of torturous dating desert. Volte had laughed at his complaints, listening to him whine and grumble about the dearth of ladies to talk to, especially after the pediatrics instructor had turned Kix down hard; the rakish clone was still simmering with angst over his failure to woo the cute lecturer.

The last two lectures dealt with communicable disease and infection prevention. The first, 'Preventing Infections: As Easy As Wash Your Kriffing Hands!', dealt with exactly that - how hand washing was the most simple and expedient way to get microbes off of your skin. First, the man took roll call of every clone in the room by their CT number, making sure all were present. He called Kix's number, "CT 6...1...1...6...," waiting for a reply. When Kix didn't answer immediately, because he was too busy whispering something to Minder, the man repeated his number again in a sonorously boring voice. "CT 6...1...1...6...? No? He's not here?" Minder finally shushed Kix and gestured for him to answer the teacher back, so the man would move on. The speaker then blandly, monotonously explained how it was crucial to clean under fingernails while washing, as very harmful bacteria and viruses could live there as well, waiting like little ninja infection warriors to spread and attack new hosts.

He told horror stories of how some people, now infamous to history, had inadvertently spread diseases among the general populous. There was Dragon Pox Mary, who had been hired as a cook for a wealthy and influential family, and unknowingly spread Dragon Pox to them in their food, because she didn't believe handwashing to be necessary. And there was Nurse Katarina Belforto, who'd unfortunately not washed her hands either, and spread another deadly illness to babies under her care, killing or permanently maiming them. It was surprising that such a small thing as handwashing could be the single answer to saving lives.

The clones all sat back in their seats, many with their arms crossed over their chests, staring back at the utterly dry and boring teacher. The stories were vaguely gruesome and grim, but they couldn't over the speaker's dry, droning, slow way of talking. The instructor reached up halfway through his long session and pushed his thick glasses back up on the bridge of his nose, never looking up from the pages of his notes as he ambled on in his speech. If he'd looked up and chanced a glance at his students, he'd have seen glassy, tired, stunned eyes staring back at him like the empty windows of a vacant home - the men were just that bored by his monotonous drone. A few snorts and snores became softly audible after a few minutes, and Volte saw Whiskey suddenly jerk himself back upright after nearly falling out of his chair, having dozed off to sleep. Kix chuckled quietly and glanced at Volte out of the side of his eyes, his expression practically screaming, 'Holy kriff, this guy is boring!' Thankfully the class finally ended and the men all virtually sprinted from the room to wake up for the final lecture, hoping to get their blood pumping and find enough energy to make it through the homestretch of the day.

When they all filed back in for the final class, the men saw the presenter was a doctor at least a few of them had met before at the Grand Republic Medical Center. "Welcome to the final class of the day, men, 'Communicable Diseases: How to Avoid Them While Sitting in a Small Enclosed Space With Others.'" The men all chuckled a little at the title of the class, glancing to either side at their brothers, fellow prisoners of the current enclosed space.

The lecturer continued on, "I am Doctor Eric Coli, and we will discuss some of the finer points of how diseases can spread so easily in small areas, to some extent due to a lack of handwashing, as my fine colleague Sten Bein covered in his lecture." He paused, seeing the clones' eyes all start to glaze over at even the slightest mention of the previous discussion, and laughed softly. "I know you were all positively riveted by that class...," he said, completely devoid of irony. There were a few titters of laughter and a few murmured comments among the crowd; they knew the doctor was being sarcastic.

The medics all found Dr Coli to be witty and entertaining, as he described the horrors of some diseases and how they could spread like wildfire in small communities. He opened the floor up to take commentary on ideas about containing such contagion, since the clones to a large extent were not well versed in infectious disease. While violence was a disease, trauma on the battlefield was not, and the clones were all healthy, genetically enhanced, illness free men. They generally had no need of education on such subjects. To a man, they got their eyes opened that day.

Dr Coli discussed more than one awful disease, such as colonovirus, a notorious sickness that seemed particularly attracted to cruise ships. Victims found themselves overtaken within hours of exposure with severe vomiting and diarrhea, ideation of death (actually, wishing they could die because they were so miserable), and the urgent need for a refund on their trip. It was a yearly malaise, and had picked up multiple nicknames along the years such as 'The Cruise Ship Disease' or 'Montezuma's Revenge', or 'The Curse of The Out of Order Refresher.' The doctor even laughingly read them a poem he'd written about the awful malady when he himself had contracted it after a pleasure cruise to Naboo.

"Oh colonovirus, why dost thou assaulteth my bowels?

Each day I make offerings to ye gods of the refresher in stool softeners and fiber.

How hast I offended thee?

I pray, oh greatest of calamities, return to the depths of the hell from whence thou climbest!

I shall suffer the slings and arrows of your cursed hold no more.

For I shall defeatest thou by means of moist wipes and the washing of my unworthy hands.

By the power of the warm and comforting bidet, I shall vanquish thee!

The clones were all crying tears of laughter by the final stanza of his "Ode to Colonovirus," and all of the men present for the lecture agreed he'd won the best lecture of the day title, (clean) hands down.

He also covered a nightmare respiratory virus that was somewhat new to the galaxy, which up until recently none had any immunity to. The medics all vaguely recalled hearing about the disease and how the general public had reacted to it. People were barred from standing within six feet of each other. All had to wear masks that covered nose and mouth to prevent exposure to droplets. The general populace at large became terrified of their neighbors, terrified for their families, separated and isolated from any and all people. The galaxy had weathered the awful contagion as best it could, though in the end they were forced to more or less suffer through it until immune systems became well acquainted enough to fight back. Vaccines were created, medications patented, but millions of lives were lost before the disease began to release its vile hold on the galaxy.

The poor doctor had worn something of a haunted look while retelling the experiences of the awful virus. While the clones had been isolated and protected on Kamino, they realized the rest of the galaxy had suffered and died, losing loved ones, friends and family alike, fighting a different sort of war, though just as real as the one the clones were battling. The discussion got very real, very fast, and when the class finally ended, the men left feeling immensely lucky for having coasted right by that plague without any issues.

The sports bar was positively hopping with the raucous energy of the clones, finally freed from class and still brimming with amazement at the displays of the vendors. The new technology coming out had them buzzing, most especially the planned medical - evacuation dropship, complete with six bunks for patients. They could feasibly load a couple more in the floor of the ship, taking eight critically wounded with them on a first run. It had the men dreaming excitedly about the possibilities of saving more brothers from death or permanent maiming, if they could cut their field to treatment time down.

Volte and Kix were holding court at the bar, having shouldered their way in for a place there, and refused to give it up. Kix had pulled Minder in next to him so he could sit at one of the bar stools and rest his leg, while Sawbones stood next to Volte, a keen, watchful eye on the crowd of milling clones as they all chattered away about their classes for the day and whatever free goods they'd been given by the different exhibitors.

Whiskey ambled up, ordering a drink and then settling in next to the small knot of clones he'd taken to hanging out with. He and Sawbones started chatting, raising their bottles in greeting when Quarter strolled up to them.

Excitedly, Quarter asked Whiskey what he thought of the new medical platform. He knew they most likely would never need it on Coruscant, but it was neat to dream about it anyway. "I saw it had respiratory gas hook ups, built in monitoring cables that go to a central monitoring system, and even a suction system!," he burbled on. "That's got to make the forward operating medics happy, having all of those hardwired in."

"Oh heck yeah!," Sawbones grunted in reply. "It will come in handy that's for sure." Saw took a sip of his drink, his eyebrows quirking up at a thought, and mischievous light coming into his hard eyes. "Though that built in suction thing isn't a new idea. Right, Kix?"

Kix looked up when his name was called and said, "Huh? You summoned me?"

"Yeah! I was telling Quarter here that the built in suction system on that evac platform isn't a new idea. Is it, Vod?" Sawbones waggled his eyebrows a little and grinned at Kix in something almost of a leer. There was a story lurking there, which was backed up by the dull blush that crept up Kix's neck into his high cheekbones.

"Not nice, Sawbones," Kix said in a low voice, trying to warn his brother off of telling all his dirty secrets.

"Oh, I think it's completely necessary, don't you Quarter?" Sawbones grinned over at his other batchmate brother and saw him laugh, realizing where Saw was going with this. Kix gave Quarter a withering look, his face moving into a very resigned expression, knowing what was coming.

A small crowd had grown around their little group; somehow people always *knew* when tea was about to be spilled and gravitated toward it. The group had expanded to Scope, a medic serving under Commander Bly and General Secura, Friendly, an outgoing medic that typically patrolled Hutt Space with his battalion, Chance, a very young, red headed clone still working out of Kamino, Siren, Patcher, Patch, Voodoo, and Sentinel, the CMO of the 117th Recon Battalion. All were standing around, eagerly awaiting the gory details of the story about the infamous Kix of Torrent Company as a cadet.

"So, when Kix, Quarter and I were all baby medics back on Kamino, they had us go up on a training mission in one of the newer LA ATs that had some medical revisions. The two old training medics with us - they were like gods, you know? Full of knowledge and experience, untouchable by us shinies." Saw's eyes took on a slightly faraway look as he remembered back to the day in question. "Anyway, so these two clones, Duran and Morrow, take us up and were explaining the different switches and buttons on that particular ship, while we all sat around staring at them like dreamy kids. And I guess Kix looked particularly ripe for this little prank, because they focused on him."

Sawbones laughed ruefully, the memories making it difficult to get it out without giggling maniacally. "They were all, 'So this button is the suction button. When you push that button, it makes the LAAT go up, because this scoop on the bottom drops down, and changes the ship's altitude. Got it?' And Kix man, he was so wide eyed, like some young quivrey, staring back at them like they wore halos and light shone out of their ass.” The men in the group were starting to smile, a few low chuckles breaking out, envisioning the look on Kix's face as he bought this bantha shit story from the salty old medics. All of the men had been there in some way too; they were no strangers to hazing. Kix looked on with a sour expression on his face, though he was starting to smile against his will.

"Duran then goes on to tell Kix and the rest of us, 'So, if you hit the button again to turn off the suction, the ship will drop, because the scoop closed and it's no longer pushing the ship up, got it?' And Kix nods like the good little shiny he was - Vod was completely sold on this karking story," Sawbones laughed gruffly.

“Morrow like, leaned back in his seat and said, 'Okay kid, hit the button *now*, test it out.' And Kix did what he was told. And damned if that LAAT didn’t climb, just like they'd said it would." Saw paused to take a sip of his drink, while everyone shot some looks at Kix, half suspecting what was coming next.

"They had all of us at that point - we'd bought it hook, line and sinker," Quarter interjected with a low chuckle. "Gullible little babies that we were." The group all grinned and giggled, starting to realized what was about to happen.

Whiskey picked the story back up, "So then Duran tells Kix, ' Okay kid, hit the button to turn it off *now*.' Kix is all do do doooo (as Sawbones mimicked a silly kid ambling along cluelessly), hits the button, and then proceeds to scream like a girl as the ship bottomed out, dropping - I kriff you not - at least 500 feet in a second. We were all basically floating in air, zero gravity for a minute, watching our very short lives pass before our eyes, as Duran and Morrow laughed like two gargoyles at the group of shinies pissing themselves in front of them." Sawbones had forced the last sentence out through a stream of gurgling, wheezing laughs, while the rest of the group chuckled and gave Kix patronizing yet sympathetic looks.

"You know, those two karking a-holes never apologized for scaring a few years off our lives. I legitimately thought we were going to die," Kix snarled out, the embarrassing post, near-death experience still stinging. He looked back on it with humor, though he couldn't admit that to the group at hand. Kix saw Volte take a sip of his drink to hide a gleeful smirk, while Quarter chuckled at the memory. Kix gave his batch mate a hard look and sputtered, “Quarter, you've got no room to laugh - you screamed just as loud as I did and I know you had a short run of V tach. I thought we were gonna have to hit you with the paddles!”

Quarter positively giggled. “I can't deny it, they got us good. Those two jokers were some of the best training officers on Kamino. Force knows how they got away with even half of the stuff they did." Quarter shook his head in memory of the unparalleled shenanigans Duran and Morrow were famous for.

"Volte what about you? Got any good stories to tell from serving with the Dragon General?," Voodoo asked. "I heard Echo's first time up with her on that thing, it dove for a vulture droid and he screamed like a child over the open comm channels.” The group started laughing at the mental image of one of the more famous ARC Troopers embarrassing himself in such a way.

Volte chewed on some ice for a minute out of his glass, pondering the question. There were so many stories from Dragon Company, actually, most of which never saw the light of day. General Lin was rather infamous for tomfoolery herself, let alone the stuff she condoned within the ranks. "I wasn't there when that happened - that story was from the Battle of Teth and we weren't a Company yet. But she took Captain Primer up one day with her on that beast of hers, and when they got back he was holding onto her waist with his eyes screwed shut so tight we had to pry him off of her." The group all tittered with chuckles at that; Primer was known to be a brave, completely competent clone commander. They all struggled to imagine him afraid of anything, thought they all thought to a man they'd probably have taken any excuse to get their arms around General Lin if given the chance.

Quarter muttered softly into his glass, "You sure he was holding onto her purely out of fear?" He took a quick sip and then looked at Volte more squarely. "I've heard through the grapevine that he follows her for more reasons than just orders..." He saw Kix grin and gave his vod a wink, while Volte cleared his throat a little loudly and very obviously took a swig of his drink, shooting a quelling look at Quarter.

A new clone had joined the group about midway through the story, named Cheese. He was from the Mist Squad, under the 767 Recon Division, and the man loved anything related to gossip. Photography was a hobby of his, and he like to take group photos of his brothers when the opportunity struck. His eyes were sharp as he listened to the tea pertaining to the infamous General Lin. He suddenly pulled a data pad off his belt and held it up to snap a picture of the group, quickly blurting out "Say Cheese!," as he hit the photo button. The others stared back at him a little blandly; tolerating Cheese's habit was something most were used to by now. He'd already made the rounds through most of the clones getting proof of life many times over. They would soon realize the benefits of having allowed the somewhat socially awkward medic to record the conference in photos; the men would have many images of their brothers enjoying lighthearted moments, camaraderie and fun to look back on. Some of the men he captured in the holographic images on his data pad would not be there the next time the conference came about, and while all knew this, it was an unspoken, dark truth that moved beneath the surface like a cold current of air.

The party rolled on as more clones stuffed themselves into the bar, and Kix's night was made when Madi the young pediatrics lecturer popped up at the bar next to him, a little mischievous smirk on her cute face, one eyebrow arched as she watched Kix's face for a reaction. Volte did a double take at seeing her there, then laughed when he saw Kix's eyes nearly fall out of his head realizing she was there in person, waiting for him to speak to her. Volte looked over at Sawbones and Whiskey and sighed. "Guess I'll be crashing in your room tonight, boys."

A perky, bright voice answered him back from the other side of Kix. "Oh no! I wanted to get to know both of you."

Volte choked on his drink, his eyes going wide as he looked back at the girl in shock. She smiled back impishly.

Sawbones, Whiskey and Quarter all traded glances around, and Sawbones muttered, "We can leave the door unlocked in case you need the two of us to come rescue you at ANY point, Vod." He elbowed Volte and gave him a salacious wink, grumbling "Lucky bastards," as he sipped his drink, watching the trio head off out of the bar. Volte looked back over his shoulder, eyes wide like a prisoner stumbling off to the gallows, unsure of just what he'd suddenly been roped into, but unable to stop his feet from following the sprightly, cute girl leading him by the hand with a cheshire cat grin on her face, as Kix walked beside like a king ascending to his throne.

Credits:

Kix - CT 6116 Medic of Torrent Company, 501st Legion

Volte - CT 2403 Dragon Company CMO, property of CloneMedicKix

Sawbones - CT 2697 Wolfpack CMO, 104th Battalion, property of Wizardofrozz

Quarter - ARC 2525 Republic Intelligence medic, property of Hetalianskywalker

Whiskey - CC 6891 CMO 104th Battalion, property of Banks's-rat

Voodoo - CT 0127 Coruscant Guard medic, property of Sev-on-Kamino

Cheese - CT 2437, Medic of Mist Squad, 767 Recon Division, property of Homemade-clones

Friendly - Medic of 387th Battalion, 13th Sector Army, property of Multi-fandom-madness

Chance - CT 5243 Medic of Phoenix Squad, property of The-Bad-Batch-Baroness

Patch - Coruscant Guard medic, property of Sunshinedaydream

Patcher - CT 1110 Coruscant Guard CMO, property of Stargazingbunny

Siren - CT 6161 Coruscant Guard medic, property of 523rdrebel

Sentinel - CT 26-0207, CMO of 117th Recon Battalion, property of Liluthenerd

Scope - CT 4466 Medic of 327th Battalion, property of Mythical Illustrator

Stretcher - CT 3880, Medic of 327th Star Corps, property of A-single-tulip

Heron - Medic of 218th Company, property of King-chaos-world

Jab - Junior medic of Phoenix Company, property of Multi-fandom-madness

Captain Jaro - CT 1926, CMO of 16th Medical Battalion, property of Sweetmugofcocoa

Minder - CT 6334-2 Jedi Medical Company, property of Mythical Illustrator

Carpal - CC 6666 Coruscant Guard medic, property of Mythical Illustrator

Taglist!

@mythical-illustrator @multi-fan-dom-madness @wizardofrozz @moonlightwarriorqueen @523rdrebel @king-chaos-world @starrrgazingbunny @the-bad-batch-baroness @swarovski-yoda @homemade-clones @hetalianskywalker @a-single-tulip @banksys-rat @sev-on-kamino @vodika-vibes @sunshinesdaydream @liluthenerd @sweetmugofcocoa @lune-de-miel-au-paradis @villanousace @theogfulcrum22 @starrylothcat @anxiouspineapple99 @mire-draws-things @cloneloverrrrr @mandos-mind-trick @padawancat97 @dukeoftheblackstar @wolffegirlsunite @isthereanechoinhere96 @jediknightjana @wackylurker @starqueensthings @dickarchivist @amorfista @marierg

EMS dividers by MEEEEEEEE!

Final Dividers by @dystopicjumpsuit

#1st annual GAR medic conference #1st annual GAR medic convention #clone medic oc #medic oc #worksbyclonemedickix #kix's art #clone medic kix #OC CMO Volte #original clone characters #original clone trooper #original character #the clone wars fanart #oc sunday #the clone wars #star wars #starwars fandom #starwars fanart #starwars the clone wars #the clone wars fan #the clone wars fanfiction #tcw fanfiction #tcw fanart #tcw fanfic #star wars tcw #sw tcw

[filmnoirsbian]

So in hindsight this isn’t really that shameful but i FELT ashamed at the time!

so my dad is a teacher, and often when i was a kid (like 4-10yo ish) and had the day off from school but he didn’t (diff school districts) he’d ask if i wanted to come to work with him and i always loved it so my answer was always a definitive yes. like the vibe was that he taught one of those AP classes everyone who takes is really into and likes and he’s really cool, and the students always loved when i came and would ask him like “where’s ryan, when is he coming?” so anyway when i was in first grade there was this really pretty senior named ariana i who was in 2 of his classes (AP + elective) and the whole school day was like 4 periods bc this school is like one of those fancy private-esque public schools, so every time i went i basically spent the whole ass day essentially following this girl around bc i had a MAJOR crush on her. she was really sweet to me and showed me how to play lacrosse bc she was on the lacrosse team. so 7yo me was basically ready to get married at this point. and then….AND THEN! ! one time at the end of the day for some reason (they did shit like this a lot actually and i was disappointed when i got to high school and learned no one ever does this during class) a bunch of the kids in last period elective decided set up like a touch football game and invited me to play w them bc 7yo me pre-adhd diagnosis was like a fuckin caffeine singularity and i could outrun (or out-endurance) everyone except this one guy jacob but he’s not relevant to this story. so anyway we’re playing touch football and i just keep chasing down the other team’s quarterback and he can never get a chance to throw the ball bc he’s busy running away from me. but ariana was on the other team and by this point i would have punched a full grown adult in the face if she asked me to. so one of the other ppl on that team jokingly had this idea to get her to tell me that according to the rules of football i had to keep my eyes closed while chasing the other team or else it wouldn’t count when i caught them. i think they all thought i knew it was a joke but I DID NOT. so i did and i ended up running straight into a tree trunk and then everyone laughed and was like “hahahaha can’t believe you fell for that.” and that has been a core memory for my entire life ever since. some of them were like really apologetic but this one dude who i thought was really cool cause he built legos with me earlier just kept laughing and brought it up every time i went back after that. so until i got to college i was unable to let anyone find out a had a crush cause i thought they’d use it against me. jokes on lego dude tho cause he asked my dad for a letter of rec when he applied to college and my dad turned him down bc apparently he “slacked off on all his work and never got it done on time.” guess that’s why he had time to build legos with me in the middle of class

also i played this video game skylanders in like 6th grade and had a massive crush on this dragon named Cynder cause her voice was hot af. her tagline was “volts and lightning” and she breathed elcitricty instead of fireballs. but sooo hot tho

I love when yall send me memoirs

#asks #shameful crush night #genuinely i do 😊

[katsushika-division]

@aoyama-division Hehehehe...Sorry not sorry

The sun was high in the sky as it shone brightly upon the division of Aoyama and Karada Kessaku was in his kitchen making a protein shake for a quick workout before he had to get ready for a party his friend and leader Tomi Chōten was throwing in his honor at his manor. Karada quickly moved around in his kitchen. The only noise filling the air was the TV on the news channel. 

“Seems like last night another blood ba-”  

Karada turned off the TV, not at all bothered to learn what the news anchor was about to say. Probably another sob story going on somewhere in the country, but what else was new? He didn’t have time to hear it, not when he had a party thrown in his honor to attend soon. This was going to be one of the best birthdays ever! Nothing was going to ruin it! 

A Few Hours Later…

The sun had long since set, and the Chōten Manor was in full swing as nearly all of the Aoyama Elite was there to celebrate the birthday of one of its members. That person was none other than Karada Kessaku, who was busy with being wished a Happy Birthday, being given gifts, and generally enjoying himself. Karada, seeing Tomi and Luis, excused himself from his current conversation and excitedly walked over to his teammates. 

“Tomi! Luis!” Karada loudly exclaimed,  waving at them. “Killer party, as usual, man!” 

“To be expected. As if I would throw a subpar event.” Tomi bragged, preening like a peacock. Luis rolled his eyes at the statement, too, used to his leader’s haughty attitude. 

“Happy Birthday, Karada.” The chef genuinely told his friend. 

“Hahaha! Thanks, guys!” 

“Of course,” Tomi announced, snapping his fingers and summoning a servant carrying a tray with three glasses filled to the brim with champagne on it. “This party was thrown for you, Karada. A close friend of mine” All three men grabbed the glass that was offered to them and were prepared to drink in honor of Karada’s birthday. However, just before they could toast their drinks together, a loud, sudden laugh led all three men to jump up in shock.

“HAHAHAHA!”

The entire party fell silent as the laugh echoed across the room, making it hard to pinpoint exactly where it was coming from. 

“Who goes there?!” Tomi shouted angered that someone had dared to interrupt one of his parties. “Reveal yourself!” 

The socialite quickly got his wish as a figure landed in a crouch in front of Jet Set Trio. Rising from their position, everyone could get a good look at them. They were female and wore a black Kevlar body suit with a black trench coat trailing behind them. A black gas mask covered the bottom half of their face, preventing anyone from learning her identity but did nothing to hide the figure’s gold eyes that shined with malicious excitement. It did not take long for everyone to recognize her as “Cinder” the psychotic criminal currently at the top of Chuohku’s most wanted list. 

“What a warm welcome,” Cinder mocked, her voice sounding robotic due to a voice modulator in her mask. “I should expect nothing else from the so-called “elite” of Aoyama.” 

“How did you manage to sneak past security?” Tomi demanded from the known criminal. 

“You call that security?” Cinder laughed. “They were pathetic! All it took was a couple hundred volts of electricity, and they were out. So much for the Chōten family hiring only the best of the best.”

“What do you want?” Luis cautiously questioned, knowing full well what Cinder was capable of doing. 

“Me? Nothing, really.” Cinder drawled out with no one believing her words.  “But…..” The pyromaniac criminal pointed at Karada, causing him to jump a bit. “Someone wants to send you a gift, Karada Kessaku, and I’m more than willing to deliver~!” 

“W-w-what?” Karada sputtered, racking his head, trying to figure out who he had pissed off enough to send this psycho after him. Cinder just continued to stare at Karada, and if anyone could remove her mask, they would only find a deranged smile waiting for them. 

“If you think we’ll let you just harm Karada-” Luis growled, bringing himself to his full height in an attempt to intimidate the criminal. 

“Oh please, if I wanted to harm the idiot I would have placed a bomb inside the manor and just detonated it.” Cinder rolled her eyes, not at all scared by Luis' silly little display. “No someone asked for something with a bit more horror. Now I do believe it’s gift time!” 

“No, you dont!” Tomi shouted, pulling out his mic from inside his suit jacket. The rest of his team followed suit and pulled out their mics.

“How cute but too late! The show is about to start!” Cinder giggled. Then, before anyone could move an inch, Cinder snapped her fingers, and that’s when all hell broke loose. 

*Bang*

Karada jumped at the loud noise, afraid the criminal had set off a bomb. What happened next had almost made the bodybuilder wish she had set off one. To the horror of all the guests in the room, a waterfall of red liquid fell upon Karada and the rest of JST. Immediately, a metallic scent hit everyone, letting them all know what exactly they had been completely drenched in from head to toe. 

“Hahaha! This was so worth the trouble of robbing all those blood banks!” 

JST froze at her words, taking a minute to process what she had said, their faces twisting into a mix of disgust and horror, but before they could react further, Cinder once again snapped her fingers. 

*Bang*

Once again, a loud noise was heard, and sure enough, another waterfall of liquid fell on Aoyama’s team. This time, much to everyone’s horror, something black and goo-like fell from the ceiling, landing all over and around JST. The smell emanating from it was unbearable, smelling like decaying flesh. Cinder didn’t even flinch when she heard someone screaming from behind her too amused with the sight of JST gagging and nearly vomiting as the black goo entered their mouths to care. 

“Oh, am I glad I agreed to do this!” Cinder maniacally laughed. Turning on her heels, Cinder took in the sight of the audience, and to her glee, all of them were frozen in horrified shock at what had just happened. Not a person bothered to move as the criminal walked past the crowd parting like Moses and the Red Sea as no one wanted to be the deranged criminal’s next victim. Stopping in front of a window where Cinder mockingly bowed to them. “Bitches and Bastards of Aoyama I do hope you enjoyed this little show put on by the illustrious Cinder! Save your applause, please. It should go to the mastermind behind this glorious show, not me. Now that my work here is done I must bid you all adieu. Before I go one last thing…”

Then for the third time in a row, Cinder again snapped her fingers and the audience held their breath wondering what would fall next. The next few seconds were agony as everyone kept their eyes on JST, not even bothering to turn around when they heard the window being smashed as Cinder escaped out of it. The sound of her mad laughter grew fainter and fainter as she disappeared into the night. 

Finally after what seemed like an eternity instead of something disgustingly horrifying falling on JST again this time a banner fell from the ceiling with a message on it. It was short and to the point having been scrawled in a dark red, leaving many morbidly to wonder if it was written in blood. 

“FUCK YOU DEAD MEAT”

Several Days Ago…

“So why do you want to mess with that muscle-headed idiot, Touya-nii?”

“He made the grave mistake of insulting my darling Kai-chan recently on PROFILE. So it’s only fair that I get a little bit of revenge.”

“Uh huh… and would this not be considered a violation of your parole? Not that I give a damn if you kill the brain-dead bastard but if you get caught, aren't you afraid this will send you back to prison?”

“As much as I would love to RiP oUt HiS hEaRt and give it to Kai-chan as a gift you’re right about that it would send me back to prison but that’s only if I physically harm someone there's nothing that says I can’t psychologically harm them.” 

“Ooooh, that's devious and surprisingly smart of you,” Akari smirked.

“I spent a good chunk of my life on the streets Kari-chan. I didn’t survive by being a complete idiot.” Touya shrugged his shoulders. “Besides, I wanna see the smile on Kai-chan’s face when I show him the aftermath.” The blue-haired male swooned, already imagining the look on Kaiji’s face.

“There it is. So you’re using this as a reason to impress Kaiji while at the same time knocking down one of those rich Aoyama bastards down a peg…Alright, I’m in. What are you thinking about?” 

“Have you ever seen the movie “Carrie” Kari-chan~?”

“Oh, Oh, I like where this is heading…Tell me more, Touya-nii.”

Now In Katsushika…

Touya hummed as he sat on the vanity in his bedroom, getting ready to go down to Kobe to spend time with Kaiji. He had gotten special approval from his parole officer to spend the night as a reward for “good behavior”. How hilarious. However, Touya wasn't going to let go of this chance to spend the night at Kaiji’s. 

A huge smile spread across Touya’s face he saw his phone blow up with all sorts of notifications from PROFILE. Then, much to Touya’s delight, his phone lit up with Akari’s caller ID, and he quickly answered it, placing the phone up to his ear.

“Kari-chan~!”

“You should’ve seen his fucking face Touya-nii! Hahaha! Oh, it was priceless! I even managed to get the rest of those Jet Set Bastards too!”

“Thanks, Kari-chan! I owe you a favor big time! I know it was probably a headache to break in and set up everything.”

“Don’t worry about it. I managed to snatch a couple of expensive items from the Chōten Manor plus seeing them like that is more than payment enough. Anyway, I’m sending you the video so you can surprise Kaiji with it.” 

“I can’t wait to show him! He’s going to love it~!” Touya laughed, kicking his legs together in glee. “Alright, I need to finish getting ready Kari-chan. So I'll see you later!”

“See ya Touya-nii. Have fun.” 

“Oh, I will Kari-chan. Bye-bye~!”

Hanging up the call Touya was not surprised when just a few seconds later a message from Akari popped up on his screen. Seeing the video the deranged boy hit play and watched the shitshow that had just happened. As he watched the video Touya couldn’t help the laughter that slipped out of his mouth. It grew more and more unhinged the longer he viewed it until Touya was nearly shrieking with laughter. 

“HAHAHAHA! HAPPY BIRTHDAY YOU BASTARD!” 

Happy Birthday Karada! 😈 

#hypnosis microphone #hypnosis mic #hypmic #hypmic oc #hypnosis mic oc #katsushika division #death row block #touya kisaragi #akari himura #aoyama division #jet set trio #karada kessaku #tomi chōten #luis kōkyū #happy birthday karada 2024 #“gift” #get rekt karada