#i forgot how much i fear moths

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

i have not worn makeup since i got this cat, which was my first mistake. trying to remember the only look i know how to do, which is a brown smokey eye with perhaps just a touch too much gold in the inner corner highlight, gold liner to about the middle of the pupil, normal black liner from the middle of the pupil back and along the lower lash line. nothing fancy! nothing too dramatic! the gold and my eyelashes distract from the indifferently applied amokey eye bc i have never really learned how to adjust for a left eye with more of a hood than the right!

anyway this fuckin cat. hopped up on the bathroom counter, tail went bristle brush, thought about hissing, didn’t, but got spooked anyway and leapt off in such a way that all my makeup brushes somehow landed IN her litter box. under the sink. this is no huge loss bc they were elf from six years ago but like!!! bro!!! come on!!!!

#mackintosh #I am hissing: #a cardigan is classic no matter the occasion you literally cannot go wrong with a cardigan #over and over until i believe it #bc rn i do not believe it #i fear the oxfords look a little orthopedic #this is the best i can do with a hundred dollars and easily sixty of those dollars are nipping and tucking and holding #bc this is the kind of dress that needs spandex #all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well #the deal is that none of my other jobs have really given a shit how i look which is why a Real Job that Actually Means It when they say #hey when you come into the office on wends for setup we still need you to wear business casual #scary! i am a clotheshorse but not in a professional office way #and i had to get rid of and pack away so much stuff bc of the moths #that i genuinely forgot how to dress in non athleisure #bc that’s what holds up to washing and drying on max hot #AAAAAAA

[szczekaczz]

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#venty ahead #i feel so terrible and overwhelmed ever since the war in ukraine started last year #my country is bordering with ukraine and my government is so idiotic and stupid that i fear all the time that #they are going to do something so stupid and so unexpectedly we are going to anger the russia very much #plus my neverending dilemma of studying russian philology rn #plus wanting to leave these county out of fear but my mom would never leave and i could never leave her #plus the constant fear for the refugees in our country as poles are getting more and more anti ukrainian #and getting very loud and agressive about it sometimes #i mean to say #each time i realize ppl who don't live near russia and are not really affected by it simply forgot about this war many moths ago #it just blows my mind #how it doesn't affect them at all and i am affected by it every day since it started #idk if it's comprehensible in the end lol probably will delete it in the morning #i just feel nothing will never get better anymore and yeah

[voidpetrova]

everyone but you — kai parker x reader

☄. *. ⋆

content warnings and genre: swearing, sex — fluff, smut

˚ ༘♡ ⋆｡˚

synopsis: he hates everyone in the world but you

✧.*

you never thought you'd be drawn to someone like kai parker. he was manipulative, cruel, and indifferent to the feelings of others. but for some reason, you were different. perhaps it was because you were a supernatural creature yourself, and he could sense it. whatever the reason, he had taken an interest in you, and it had been both thrilling and terrifying.

kai had a reputation for being one of the most vicious and dangerous heretics in the world. he had killed his own family in the past, and he had slaughtered countless others since then. the people of mystic falls knew to fear him, to stay out of his way, and to never let their guard down in his presence.

as previously stated, you were different. you had met kai by chance, and he had taken an immediate liking to you. he had seen something in you that he didn't see in anyone else. maybe it was your intelligence, or your compassion, or your strength. whatever it was, it had drawn him to you like a moth to a flame.

at first, you had been hesitant around him. you had heard the stories about his cruel deeds, and you didn't want to get caught up in his dangerous games. but kai had sensed your reluctance, and he had taken it upon himself to prove to you that he was different. he had shown you a side of himself that no one else had ever seen. he had been kind, considerate, and even charming. he had listened to you when you talked, and he had made you laugh with his witty banter.

over time, you had grown to trust him. you had started to see the good in him, despite his dark past. you had even started to care for him, in a way that scared you. you knew that he was dangerous, that he could break your heart in an instant. but you couldn't help the way you felt.

kai had noticed the change in you, too. he had started to open up to you, to share his thoughts and dreams. he had even told you about his family, and how much he had loved them before he had lost control. it was a side of him that no one else had ever seen, and it made you feel special.

but even as kai opened up to you, his hatred for others remained unchanged. he still saw the world as a cruel and unfair place, and he had no qualms about hurting those who crossed him. It was a constant reminder of the danger that lurked beneath his charming exterior.

one day, you found yourself sitting with kai on the roof of the salvatore mansion, watching the sun set over your little town. It was a peaceful moment, and you were content to sit in silence, enjoying each other's company.

“i hate everyone in the world,” kai said suddenly, breaking the quiet. you turned to him, surprised. “what do you mean?”

“i mean exactly what i said,” kai said, his voice cold and bitter. “there isn't a single person out there who i care about, who i would go to great lengths to protect. except for you, of course."”

you felt a warmth spread through your chest at his words. “why me?” kai looked at you, his eyes serious. “because you're different. you see me for who i really am, not just the monster that everyone fears. you make me want to be a better person.”

the sincerity in his voice made you heart skip a beat. you reached out to take his hand, and he let you. it was a small gesture, but it meant everything to you. “i care about you, too, kai,” you said softly. “i don't want to see you get hurt."”

kai squeezed your hand in return. “i won't let anyone hurt me, or you. i'll do whatever it takes to keep you safe. i promise.”

as the sun sank below the horizon, you and kai sat in silence, lost in your own thoughts. for a moment, you forgot about the danger that surrounded you, the hatred that consumed the world. all you could think about was the person sitting next to you, holding your hand, and promising to protect you.

it was moments like these that made you believe that maybe, just maybe, kai parker wasn't beyond redemption after all.

as you sat there with him, the breeze blowing gently through your hair, you felt a sudden urge to be closer to him. you turned your head to look at him, and before you could even think about it, you leaned in and pressed your lips to his. at first, kai seemed stunned by the sudden kiss, but it didn't take him long to respond. he started to kiss you back eagerly, his hand moving to cup your face as he deepened the kiss.

your heart was racing in your chest as you opened your mouth to him, allowing his tongue to explore yours. every nerve in your body seemed to be on fire as you felt kai's hand move to your waist, pulling you closer to him.

as the kiss continued, you couldn't help but feel a sense of euphoria wash over you. you had never felt this way before, so completely lost in a moment with someone else. you felt like you could stay there forever, lost in the warmth of kai's embrace.

but eventually, the kiss had to end. you pulled away slowly, breathing heavily as you looked at kai, seeing the desire in his eyes. before you could say anything, he kissed you again, this time more intensely than before. all of your senses were overwhelmed as you kissed kai, his hands running up and down your back.

unable to resist the magnetic pull between you, you broke away from the kiss, gasping for breath. your eyes met as you silently communicated the desire to continue this stolen moment somewhere more private.

without a word, kai took your hand in his, his grip firm but gentle, as he led you down the stairs and through the house. the familiar creaking of the wooden steps echoed through the empty hallways as you followed him, a mix of anticipation and nervousness coursing through your veins. finally, kai pushed open a door that led to one of the guest bedrooms. the room was dimly lit, casting playful shadows across the walls and creating an intimate ambiance. his blue eyes locked onto yours, filled with a raw intensity that made your insides flutter.

as the door closed behind you, the atmosphere changed, charged with an electric energy. slowly, kai closed the distance between you, his hand reaching up to cup your cheek as he pressed his lips against yours once more.

his kiss was hungry, passionate, as if he had been starved of affection for centuries. the scent of him, a mixture of pine and a hint of magic, intoxicated your every sense, sparking an unquenchable fire within you. you fervently responded, your hands tangling in his hair, pulling him closer to you.

every brush of kai's lips against yours was like a delicious torment, sending shivers down your spine and igniting a fire within you that burned hotter than any magic spell. his hands roamed your body, mapping out every curve, as if he were memorizing every inch of you. you felt his lips travel along your jawline, leaving a trail of soft, lingering kisses. his hot breath tickled your skin, and you couldn't help but moan softly in response. the sound seemed to ignite a primal hunger within kai, as he pressed his body against yours with even greater urgency.

lost in a sea of desire, you tackled each article of clothing, needing to feel each other's bare skin against your own. with every touch, every connection, the tension between you intensified, pushing you both to the brink of sanity.

with a content sigh, you snuggled closer to Kai, feeling his warmth and his presence enveloping you. you were completely at ease with him, and as you gazed up at him, you knew that nothing could ever come between you. he bent his head, his lips grazing your ear as he whispered, “i love you, (y/n).”

the words were like a seductive caress, sending shivers down your spine and leaving you breathless. you felt his hand move to cup your breast, his thumb stroking over your nipple, sending a shiver through your body. you responded in kind, your hand sliding down to his waist, feeling the heat of his body through his clothes. you felt his cock, hard and pulsing against your stomach, and you couldn't help but feel a sense of pride that this man, this beast, this monster, was yours.

with a groan, kai rolled onto his back, pulling you with him so that you were straddling him. his eyes were feral, his lust and desire palpable as he stared up at you. “i need you,” he growled, his voice rough and husky. “i need to be inside you.”

you knew that he meant it, that he wanted you to take him, to claim him as yours. with a small smile, you nodded, your heart beating wildly as you sank onto him, feeling the heat and the power of him.

for a moment, time stood still. you were lost in the moment, lost in each other, and nothing else mattered. it was just you and kai, two creatures bound together by a force that was both magical and all too real.

as you began to move, the world faded away, leaving only you and kai, together in a perfect harmony. the sound of your flesh meeting was like a symphony of passion. the smoothness of your skin against his, the way your bodies fit together like two puzzle pieces, was a blissful harmony that seemed to soothe the very essence of your souls.

you felt his hand move, his fingers tweaking your nipples, sending a surge of electricity through your body. you could feel the heat of his skin against your chest, the rhythm of his heart against your cheek.

for a moment, you were lost in the sensation, lost in the feeling of being completely and utterly surrounded by kai. there was no world beyond him, no past, no future, just the two of you, intertwined and bound together.

and then, as if on cue, the world reappeared. the sound of birds chirping outside, the faint scent of flowers wafting in from the garden, reminded you that you were not alone.

you looked down at kai, seeing the expression on his face, the lust and desire still burning in his eyes. and you knew that this was a bond that would never be broken, a connection that transcended time and space.

“i love you so much, (y/n).”

“i love you, too.”

with a small smile, you leaned in to kiss him, your lips meeting in a soft, sweet kiss that was filled with love and passion. and as you did, you knew that nothing could ever come between you two. Not the world, not the past, not even the future.

you were his, and he was yours, forever and always.

#tvd #tvdu #the vampire diaries #the vampire diaries fanfiction #the vampire diaries fluff #the vampire diaries angst #the vampire diaries smut #kai parker #kai parker x you #kai parker fluff #kai parker x reader #kai parker smut

[tookthe-405]

On our way

Flashback 1: We were younger…

(I wanted some more backstory I’m sorryyy)

DAILY CLICK 🇵🇸

DONATIONS 🍉

(Not so loserish)ellie x fem!reader

a/n: some fluffy flashback from when they were 14 to give some happiness :)

Max and Chloe coded!! (Just realised that wtf)

put my whole childhood homoromantic friendship into this 😪

RILEY MENTIONED!?? they did you dirty my love

c/w: compulsive heterosexuality?!(not much though), a chicken heart?😭, a bit of fighting (ofc!), jealousyyyy, panic attack (yes again)

⋆｡ ﾟ☁︎｡ ⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡ ⋆ ⋆｡ ﾟ☁︎｡ ⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡ ⋆ ⋆｡ ﾟ☁︎｡ ⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡ ⋆

(Reader and Ellie are 14)

(4 years ago)

Readers pov:

9/14

Whatever negative, people say about eighth grade, it's true. Eighth grade sucks. Seventh grade is manageable. Sixth grade? fine but Eighth grade was a new level you didn't know you had to go through. Few weeks in and its already a nightmare for you and all your friends. Thank god you found some.

When you got into middle school a few years ago, you and ellie managed to persuade joel to send ellie to the same school as you. Which wasn't a hard decision for him, because in a small town in Boston, he didn't have that many options.

But you didn't get into the same class, which was quite scary for you at first. Ellie, on the other hand, is good at talking to people, sometimes a bit too well, and then she says things that she should probably have kept to herself.

However, you had problems at the beginning of the 5th grade. The fear of being rejected by people you studied with for a years had haunted you.

Some of the classes were mixed together and you still remember how quickly you scanned the room, so you could find ellie to sit next to her, and unsurprised there were a few people around her laughing. You stood next the crowd, too shy to get Ellie's attention. She didn't notice you at all at first, but talked and laughed with the classmates around her.

That was the first time you felt afraid of losing her to people who are more In so many patterns. For a few seconds, you just stood there and watched her. Her easy-going but also attentive nature, which attracted people like the light a moth.

It was like magic.

She played with the feelings and laughter like water. Light in her hands, without meaning and purely out of feelings, but so careful. This was her stage, she was in her element, and you would always just sit in the audience, with an astonished and envious gaze.

But then she saw you and brought a gap through the crowd to show you that she had secured a free seat for you, with her backpack.

But today it is no longer the case. Eighth grade is a lot of shit, but you've finally made friends in the meantime. For a matter of fact, you're talking to one right now, but you're too engulfed in your thoughts.

"Hellooo you still there?"

Your body stiffens and you quickly turn away from the window, into the direction of Isabella .

"What?" you completely forgot that you are currently in biology and In the company of a friend… and that you still needed to finish a partner project.

Isabella giggles softly.

“You’re always doing that, what is your head thinking about?”

she playfully taps your forehead with her index finger. You grin slightly and wipe her finger out off your face.

“Nothing I’m okay”

“I Hope so because we Are supposed to dissect a chicken heart and not stare out the window”

A glance at the table and there is the chicken heart she’s talking about.

“Yeah no thank you” you say with a grimace that makes her laugh.

“It’s okay we can google the tasks at home, this is torture.” She sighs, puts the lid over the heart and takes of her gloves, you do the same nodding.

“So” she turns to you again with that curious grin of hers.

“What have you been daydreaming about the past few days?”

You let out a nervous laugh and wave your hand in the air.

"nothing what am I supposed to dream about, so…"

She raises her eyebrows reproachfully, she knows how you lie.

"You don't have to tell me, but is it a certain someone who starts with E?"

Your blood freezes with shock, but also respectful fear, of her alleged knowledge.

"what i don't know who you mean" Sweat forms on your palms and you quickly rub them together so that they don't Stupidly betraye you.

"I guess I hit the bull's eye, I knew you liked him?" Your forehead frown on its own and your stress sweat turn into anxiety sweat.

"Him?"

Isabella nods. "Eliza, you like him… Right"

The first two letter almost give you a heart attack but then you just frown at her.

she seems confused by your confusion, you turn around slow, as you are sitting in the first row, to stare at the boy in the last corner.

He just laughed and pressed the chicken heart into his sitting partner's face.

Ew.

Isabella doesn't seem to notice how disgusted you are, because she gives you a promising and excited look. Something pushes you to lie, you couldn't control it even if you tried.

"Yes, that's it" a sad smile on your face as you say the words.

Before she can react, the door is opened in a loud swing and ellie is standing in the doorway, grinning, behind her a few boys and girls.

"Hey" she gives you a warm smile that you knwo all to well, her arms resting on the table.

Then she looks up at Isabella emotionlessly.

"Isabella"

"Ellie" she replies dryly.

Yes, the two don't like each other very much. Then ellie's smile turned, quickly, sending it back to you.

"Aren’t you done yet?"

"No, young lady, they are not, and you knock before you come in" Ms. Perlow's voice booms through the room.

Any normal student would be scared, which justifies this woman is scary, but ellie isn’t sacred at all.

Grinning, she raises her arms in the air, as if she’s been caught stealing. A few children giggle at her gesture, but the older woman doesn't think it's so funny.

"Ellie, it's the same every time, you make a clown out of yourself for God's sake, leave this task to the boys"

Mrs. Perlow looks away for a moment to massage her temples with her thumbs and pointing fingers, which you felt a bit sorry for, she was soo old. Ellie of course doesn’t care.

She quickly rummages for something in her jacket pocket and nimbly presses a small piece of paper into your hand.

"Okay, till next time, Mrs. Perlow," she calls into the room before disappearing out the door.

"I hope not," the teacher murmurs audibly, however, and whispers break out again, in the classroom.

Your fingers try quickly and unevenly to open the note.

Meet me at the new dinner down the street, I’ve got news and please don’t bring Isabella along

- your favourite person ever

P.S your hair looks pretty :)

With each step, you tousle the autumn leaves on the ground. It was kind of fun though, so you didn't stop, the scurrying sound of the dead plants in your ear.

Ellie mentioned a new dinner, which you have already drove by once with joel. After a few weeks ago, you passed by the former tourist center, which was soon to be renovated into a dinner.

Ellie thought it was better right away, because there is no one who wants to look around here in a small town Beverly farms. The eastern side of Beverly wasn't really interesting, she was right, but you always thought the little town was cute.

Here is everything you need and you have the sea right in front of your nose.

As you walk down the street with your backpack on your back, you think about what Ellie must have meant by "ive got news".

Before you know it, you'll be standing in front of the new store. "Seth's dinner". It actually looks very cozy, the light inside seems warm and a few people have already become aware of the place.

It seems to you just in autumn, very hopeful? A new beginning that is going well, a small but beautiful change in this small town. When you open the door, the door snorts cold from the air, the pleasant air surrounds your face.

There also seems to be a bar, graceful bottles on the wall and behind the counter. But otherwise it seems to be a normal dinner. Greasy smell of fries, burgers and beacons in the air, but on the order table it is written (in beautiful handwriting) that there should also be donuts and pancakes in the morning. In the evening, the bar opens.

At the counter, an older man is eyeing you, who is drying a glass. You've never seen him before, and he looks spooky right away.

Your head turns in every direction until you see the waving hand of Ellie, who had held a seat across from her in a corner of the table. It looks a bit like the dinners in Joel's old movies.

With a loud noise, you drop your bag and sit down opposite her. You let out a tired sigh, but then you notice Ellie's excited look. You shrug your shoulders uninformed.

"What?"

"Wait, I want to order before I tell you"

Her legs were constantly wriggling with hustle and bustle and you can't help but smile a little. The waiter came to your table and you two ordered 2 fries.

"Okay, tell me now" you say

Something good releases in your chest, you suppress the distracting feeling before it could reach the surface. The sparkle on ellie's face made you nervous in various ways.

"Okay, but promise me you won't be angry, ok?"

Okay, so the bad nervous feelings won. You strain straighter, ready for whatever might come your way.

"How old are we ellie, you don't always have to say that, when you've done something"

Ellie laughs so bright, that sound that you appreciate so much every time, as if it gives you water just before you dry out.

"remember how We wanted to go fishing with Joel this weekend"

You shake your head.

"You wanted this, not me ellie"

"yes, anyway, and you know Riley, don't you? From my English course"

Your shoulders slumped, just as you were about to answer, your order arrived. The old man from the counter. You automatically avoid eye contact. As he quietly, almost like a ghost, puts down the plates in front of you, he stops abruptly and stares at ellie's legs.

"Can you stop fidgeting like that, it drives me crazy"

His voice is exactly how you imagined it, rough, a little hollow somehow and he sounds like he's been a smoker for 10 years.

Ellie looks after him with a pissed expression on her face and starts shaking her legs even more out of provocation.

"Whatever, Riley wanted to come this time and her parents allowed it, isn't that cool"

You're not as enraptured by the idea as Ellie is and you tap with the tips of your fingers, and an unpleasant feeling in your stomach, on the table a little rhythm.

Ellie's foot bumps against yours and you look up at her even before she grabs your hand.

"Now I understand what the old man means, it really makes you nervous" she Chuckles and you just feel her hand for a moment. It lightens yours gently, but not considerately, as physical contact is normal between you.

Or at least it should be. But her fingertips triggered a wave of heat that spread to your face like wildfire.

You quickly flinch back, worried that Ellie might feel your pulse, which beats very erratically. Your thoughts are circling around, unsure if the feeling is positive or negative. It feels… nice? Exciting and it's directly addictive, you feel your inner self wanting to reach for more, but an indecent anxiety accompanies you every time you allow yourself to think this far.

"so you don't like idea huh?"

Your head goes up. Shes the same as always, reddish hair, green eyes, those freckles… Ellie's own gaze has descended. You never wanted to see her like that. Now you nudge her under the table with your foot.

"No, I think it's a good idea" you lie straight to her face.

The well-known grin creeps back onto her face and she stuffs a french fries into her mouth.

Then she proudly told you how she was sent to the school principal almost twice, but also about how she got a B+ in math and how the subject gets way too much hate.

You tell her that it deserves even more hate and about the weird interection with Isabella.

Ellie choked on a french chip and coughed so hard that Seth almost kicked her out. She said that she would know if you liked someone and that Isabella shouldn’t think she could be more important to you, than she really is.

This gave you a tingling feeling, so that you almost completely forgot about riley

"I don't understand your anticipation about something like that" Confused, you watch Ellie excitedly digging her fishing stuff out of the rack.

After joel voluntarily took her with him a few times, it became a little tradition and she got her own fishing set, which she takes care of like a mother.

"I like fishing and I like to eat fish, it's a perfect fit."

You're leaning your shoulder against the door of the garage when she bumps her head under joel's workbench.

“Ow”

He can't stow boxes well and safely. But there isn't much space here either, the green pick up truck, tools and the bench on which he has already built the craziest things for ellie.

"I don't get it no, I don't like the hunt and the taste of fish very much"

You always feel like an unnecessary murderer,since you kill the beings and it doesn't give you anything.

Ellie grabs her personal spare fishing line and packs it into her fisherman's backpack.

"Then you can leave the fishes you catch to me… if you catch any at all" She grins at you challengingly.

"Hey!" You point your finger at her. "I'm not that bad."

“No, I wouldn’t want to be reminded of how bad I am either, I get it." She says and you can hear her fucking smile in her voice.

"whatever ellie, i don't like it and it’s not because I’m not good at it"

"Oh no its not that your not good at it, its that your terrible at it"

Annoyed, you roll your eyes, turn around and leave Ellie in the room, but you both have a grin on your mouths. In the kitchen, Joel waits in his typical fisherman's outfit at the dining table, with a magazien about horse races.

He actually just looks like a forester. "Hey little one you ready for the trip?"

You let yourself fall across from him, on the wood table , which Joel must have built and sanded himself.

In the beginning, you had a lot of trouble with him, he was older and taller than most of the fathers you knew.

He was also a bit old to be ellie's father. Which, in the end,turned out that he wasn't. Not exactly.

That's why he was a little colder to you at the beginning, to test you. What does it take you to leave ellie, how quickly can someone get rid of you.

He wanted to know so he could protect her from it.

That's what you're understanding today.

Ellie couldn't afford to lose any more people, and you'd be lying if you said you would have done it differently in his place.

Yes, he was a bit intimidating at first, but after a few months he softened.

Now ellie worries that he loves you more than her, but you know the truth. No one could get close to ellie, just like no one would ever get close to sarah. Probably not even Ellie herself.

You really wanted to know what name would use Ellie for the both of you?

The thought of a name, It scares you both. Because it was more than friendship yet less than- "hey you okay?"

Joel and ellie stare at you.

You nod quickly and look at the clock.

”Didn’t she wanted to be here already?" Your question was more directed towards Ellie.

Then the house bell rang and your hope falls deep and painful.

Ellie's face is starting to shine again, and even though that was one of your favorite pictures, it started to annoy you very quickly the last few days.

"Wait, I forgot my gloves," she dashed up the stairs with her huge hiking backpack and her much too loud shoes.

Her nimble footsteps could be heard throughout the house. Your gaze flicks back to a very concentrated joel, who twitches his head towards the door, to make it clear to you that you should get it.

You let out a little sigh and wander extra slowly to the door, maybe she left. She didn’t.

But You can't lie, riley was pretty. and nice. clever too. It annoyed you to the bone.

"hey"

You look at her for a moment and immediately notice the backpack and the fishing rod. God ellie will love her.

"Hey come in"

You politely open the door for her, before she enters the house she quickly takes off her shoes. Jesus, good manners too.

"Riley, Welcome, we'll leave as soon as this girl finds her gloves" he laughs in his typical raspy voice.

"Don't talk about me if when not in the room," Ellie yells down and Riley giggles. "Thank you for taking me with you this time, Mr. Miller.“

You didn't know Riley, but you can tell right away that she's very intelligent and that you understand Ellie liking for her.

As much as you try to cover it up.

Joel shakes his head. "You can call me Joel"

Riley nods briefly, and Ellie shoes can be heard whizzing down the stairs again. When she sees Riley, she freezes for a moment, even though she knew she would be here.

For a moment you wondered why she did that, but then you got it.

"Hey Riley"

"Hi Ellie"

The drive to the lake was 20 minutes. And they were the worst 20 minutes of your life. Ellie wanted to sit next to riley so bad she left the front seat to you. She never does that.

From the mirror you could see the two of them laughing, talking as if they have known each other for years.

For the first time, it seemed to you that ellie wanted to share her stage with someone. It's as if she's brought someone from the audience to the stage.

And that someone wasn't you.

You didn't say a word the whole way. Not a word.

When the bluish lake was visible trough the many trees, you wanted to drown in it. Now you still want that.

The weight of your backpack bends your back right now, and ellie and riley never looked happier.

"Have you ever fished before, riley?"

you ask the tall girl.

She nods. "My grandfather used to take me on his trips sometimes."

"So cool," Ellie murmurs.

You thought everything was shit in this place. The lake looks so unwelcoming in the fall, as if it is personally trying to tell you to just give it up.

The old wood of the jetty squeaks and slips because of the humid air and you doubt the stability of the old thing. Joel prepares a place where he can fish in peace and quiet, and gives you younger people the freedom to do it on their own.

As the youngest in the group, it doesn't help that you really are bad at fishing, but you should be able to do connect the purr and the fishing rod.

Actually, you only have to manage to connect a fishing line, the rest takes care of itself.

Too bad you're so bad to make this fucking knot.

and you really try, but it just doesn't work. After a while you get too uncomfortable that you can't do it and you drop your fishing rod loudly on the wood.

Riley looks at you confused.

Joel was back at the car searching for the bait that disgusts you so much that you’re always afraid that the worms are still alive.

Ellie looks at you and stops at your bright red face. You can't read her look, you can't understand so much about what's been going on with her over the last few weeks, maybe even months.

But maybe you’re the problem too.

"Can you help Joel for a moment, we'll come right away" Ellie jerks her head in Joel's direction, as she talks to Riley.

She doesn't give you one last look before she goes past you towards the car.

The freckled girl steps forward and picks up your fishing rod, in front of you while you stare into the air like a little child.

"Whatever is going on with you today, the fishing rod really didn't deserve that"

You look downs a bit again to meet her eyes.

"What's wrong with you Ellie?"

"With me? nothing at all… What is wrong with me?"

Her shoulders tense just a little bit, but you don't miss it.

"The only thing you're talking about is riley, the only one you want to impress is riley"

Ellie takes a few steps back for some reason and looks behind you, probably at joel and riley who are still looking for the fishing lure, out of respect.

"I don't know what you mean"

You let out a snort and look at her. “I don't know you like that and it's driving me crazy"

"Why? Why can't I change, what's your problem?"

You want to seek closeness, her hand in yours to make the emotional distance disappear, but she takes a step back again when you try it.

It makes sense that she doesn't want that right now, but it still hurts incredibly how she runs away from you.

"It's not about you changing, it's good that you do, I don't care about that, but not who you do it with, Ellie" you remark.

For a second, she seems so far away, as if worlds universes separate you. In some summers, ellie and joel visit their family in texas, or drive into town for a few days. The separated time is not pretty, but neither is it gruesome.

Cause you can’t wait for her to come back, and she's just as excited about it as you are.

But I’m this moment, right now, you feel more separate from her than ever before.

"It's not always about you, I'm not your-"

Both of you weren't sure how it happened, because all of a sudden she was in the water. You don't know if you pushed her or if she fell in because of her distance steps. But both would be your fault.

The sound the jetty makes, the platch of the water, the way she is so shocked as soon as her face reaches the surface.

With your hand in front on your mouth you watch as she stares at you indignantly. Thank god she can swim.

Her eyes and the light green of the lake, bite each other just a tiny bit. It almost seems to you as if it was so destined, ellie and the lake. And maybe that was the case, but not in autumn.

You can't imagine how cold the water is and her blue lips testify enough. But Ellie doesn't budge. For a few seconds, she just stares at you. Maybe so that she can picture it again later or to make you realize what you just done.

You two didn't have to check if joel and riley noticed, you can already hear the stomping footsteps.

"Im sorry I-" you turn around so fast that you get dizzy and you almost fall into the lake too , you run so fast down the jetty that Joel can't stop you.

You're not quite sure where you're going. It all looks the same anyway. A play of colours, of orange and yellow on the ground and in the crowns of the trees. The sounds of birds and the dead leaves in the air.

As soon as you don't feel your legs anymore, you stop.

Your lungs sound like they're about to give up on you, and you are about to hyperventilate. It feels like you're always running, if not physical, then emotional.

You run when you're awake, when you're asleep, when you're sitting, Whether that's on ellie‘s old couch or when you have dinner with your family. Something scares you and it's always in the back of your mind, no matter where you are or with whom.

All of a sudden, your chest feels too tight and your head too much, but the world feels too small. It's as if all the air in the world is evaporating in front of you, and you can't do anything but try to get some oxygen with every breath. Your arms rested on your knees, your head spinning and-

"Hey?"

Your eyes rush open so wide and fast it almost hurts.

Ellie's clothes are completely soaked, so is her hair and she shivers slightly. And she's standing in front of you? She’s wearing an fishing jacket, a thick one and a wet one, but she doesn’t care.

"Hey it's okay im sorry I shouldn't have said that" she says it so fast, your brain almost misses it.

she doesn't ask if she can touch you, even if a precaution wouldn't have hurt you. At first only your hand, she grabs it very carefully and her cold skin makes you twitch a bit.

After that, she holds your cheek in her other hand to make you look up. You could still feel the drops of water hours later.

"Come here its okay, I’m fine" She takes puts both of her arms around you and one hand rests on your head.

She literally presses you against her. Her hand gently caresses over your hair. You've shoved her into an ice-cold lake and she's holding you like you're gold. As if you weren't a monster - as if you mean something.

Like a lost piece of a puzzle, your own arms sling around her and you put your head into her shoulder.

You cry so often, and you know it. You know how overwhelming it is for you, for the people around you, maybe even annoying, but not for ellie.

The animals of the forest hardly bothered, even if it was like the whole forest when quiet for a short minute. But you might have imagined that too.

"I'm really sorry ellie"

Your breaking voice is very low, though she hears it anyway.

"I know everything is okay I’m fine, I’m sorry too"

Out of surprise, you stiffen for a moment.

"I dragged you out here and hardly spoke to you. You're only here because of me" she explains and You can’t deny that.

You were going to stay like this a little longer, but suddenly ellie's breath hitches.

"don’t fucking move"

Her words run like a cold down your spine and into your ear, all the way to your legs. You were prepared for something that would tear you apart from behind But not knowing what it was almost killed you by itself.

Her arms loosen and turned you around a little in the other direction. Her eyes are still directed forward, into the forest.

When you slowly turn around, theres only a… deer?

You suppress the urge to tease Ellie, expecting that a Serial killer with a pointed hook was standing behind you, but the beauty of the creature was already enough to shut you up. It's still a bit young, probably still baby.

The white dots reminded you of freckles, of ellie.

The same ellie who was still standing next to you, way too close. But by too close you mean “exactly close enough”. Just perfect.

The two of you watch as the animal sniffs around on the ground. Ellie's wet hand prushes yours just a little.

A daring, yet intentional invitation, which you immediately accept.

The deer looks up even though you didn't make a sound.

And it's hard for you to breathe, as well as blinking.

This moment, this gracious moment should last as long as possible. It seems to both of you as if it is looking right into your souls, your hand squeezes ellies even tighter.

"Do you have your phone with you?"

With her big eyes she is still watching the deer. You shake your head.

"That's fine. I think it wont leave us, just for a little while.

a/n: I tried to make it a little less angsty (I failed forgive me)

INTERACT W LINKS ABOVE!!!! 🍉🍉

anyways hope you liked it pls repost and like!!! Next chapter the road trip will start I promise 🤞 (no hate to Riley btw I love her but let’s be fr reader would be jealous)

@yourelliewillms @bready101 @liasxeatt @darkerstarsstuff @elliezato @macaroni676 @crxmxnzl-c0rpzes @lovelyxbaby @yalaysbee @moonchild184 @a-little-bit-of-everybody @gosomewjere

#ellie williams angst #ellie williams fluff #ellie williams x reader #ellie williams fanfic #ellie williams #ellie x fem reader #ellie x reader #ellie x riley #riley tlou #tlou2 fanfic #abby tlou #dina tlou #tlou2 #tlou fanfiction #tlou #tlou hbo #joel tlou #the last of us fandom #the last of us fanfiction #the last of us #the last of us part 2 #ellie the last of us #childhood friends #Spotify

[ruthlesslistener]

So, you get asked about PK and WL a lot, in part because you're realistic about them being nuanced. I've rarely ever seen folks ask you about the Radiance, though, even you've mentioned you give her the same treatment. So, you got any headcanons, heartcanons, and gutcanons for her? Feel free to do as many as you want!

Okay so I long forgot the headcanon, heartcanon, gutcanon ask template because I've been chewing on this since [checks date] September 5th 2020, so instead you get a long ramble on the Radiance vs individual hcs for her since I don't really talk about her as much as I do the pale fam

Radiance...hm. She's a very complex character who frightens me on some personal levels, but I really am quite fond of her reguardless, because part of what scares me about her is how closely her anger mirrors my own (and that of my immidiate family). She reminds me very much of the aspects of myself and a few choice individuals in my blood relations that I do my best to avoid, rather than have a delight of a time pointing and laughing at, like I do with the flaws of myself I see in the Pale King. Except Radiance doesn't just have those flaws, she's also got the added Christian crusader imagery that decrees the death of anyone who opposes her that also reminds me quite a bit about certain things in my life I'd very much rather go without (I was raised Muslim. I'm sure you can connect the dots). So there is a level of discomfort there that keeps me from engaging with her character on the same level that I do with Hollow and the Pale King, which is something that I am sure many Radiance fans feel in turn about PK himself. No judgement there.

But that's personal, so I'm not going to get into it. Just putting a note of it here because it does very much influence how I write her.

The Radiance is someone who is, at her core, very very lonely, and is also fundamentally afraid of being lonely. She is Grimm's twin in my headcanon (or, as much as one can be a twin when you were both divinely spawned from the same event), but Grimm is also her opposite, and so he never really did much other than highlight how deeply different she was from the only ever person that she knew. They were spawned in a place outside of Hallownest, in the creation of the Dream Realm where there was nothing around them but other hungry Higher Beings grasping for power, and that in turn did little other than prove to her that the whole world was against her and that the only way that she could persist was to eliminate all threats to herself before they had a chance to attack her first (Grimm, on the other hand, was fascinated by death and the play of power among power-hungry gods, and was much more inclined to observe until they clearly became a threat to him, ao that he could learn from them first. This difference is something that lead to the schism between the realms).

She is an extremely emotional person, acting on raw passion before all else- but that's because being rawly emotional never let her down in the past. How could it, when her fury burned with the force of a thousand stars, and incinerated all that dared threaten her? And how could she be anything but furious, when she had nothing but proof that the whole world conspired against her, and it was her burning rage that beat back the darkness of the cold, unfeeling Void, the one thing that could destroy her and her sibling? She was not always angry- more often than not, she was lonely, wanting nothing more than something to care for and protect- but anger served her well and so it became her first line of defense against anything that threatened her, and she was always right because nothing bad had ever come of her in the past.

(This is because she killed most things that she feared before they had a chance to move against her. The utter destruction of the Void Civilization was one such occurrence, happening after she had settled in Hallownest, created the moths, and deemed those who worshiped the dark below as a threat to both her and her newborn children.) I also believe that the Moths were created just before or right after the schism between her and Grimm, her barely-younger brother; because if he would not listen to her and allow her to care for him and be her family, then she would simply make one of her own, a family that she could dote on and adore and had no choice but to love her. And while she very much drove that schism, it was still a betrayal that stung her to the very core. He was her brother! He was supposed to agree with her, to love her and listen to her! She only ever tried to protect him, so what does it mean for him to defy her? That he doesn't actually love her after all, and that if she truly desires a family of her own, she must make it herself. One that will actually love her. One that will not defy her.

So, to recap: the Radiance is a fundamentally lonely person. But she is also fundamentally a very, very fearful person, to the point of overwhelming paranoia. And she grew up in an environment where this paranoia was not only unchecked, but encouraged.

This is what lead to her overcontrolling nature- because when she was able to control everything, she was able to see all of the problems before they became too hard to control, and thus eliminate them from the very start. I headcanon that the bugs of Hallownest had no free will under her control, but it wasn't the same as the malicious infection that we see in-game; it was genuinely because she cared, to the point where she had to look through a thousand eyes and ten thousand minds in order to nurture her kingdom the way she thought was best. She didn't kill all of the Void Civilization- the beetles persisted, as we saw- but she had to control them anyways, to wipe their minds of what she did and to prevent dissent. The Moths had a level of freedom that the others did not, but this was only because she created them and placed them first before all other bugs, and so thought that they would never have a reason to dissent against her. Why care for freedom when you can have security, after all? She never once in a million years thought that they would betray her for the Pale King, because she never once in a million years ever thought that anyone could ever want something like freedom in exchange for an uncertain, self-made future. It's too risky, too dangerous. Too lonely.

(This is also why I headcanon that the moth civilization collapsed after they abandoned Radi- they had been coddled for so long that they had no notion of independence, and thus could not survive on their own in a civilization that made itself with free will. This absolutely does not excuse PK of potentially being involved in their downfall, because I do think he played a huge part in it, but it does account for their diminishing numbers without any indication of physical genocide. I've seen some think that they were hit the first and the hardest by the Infection but I don't believe that Radi, even with her vengeful qualities, would have done that-or if she did, then Seer made no mention of it, likely because of her tribe's guilt about bringing back the Radiance even if it isn't their fault.)

(Part of this headcanon also ties into another hc I have about Radi, which was that she was very involved in her rule and would answer to almost every prayer- including ones that involved illness or injury. If you prayed for the sickness to go away, then she would answer the call and abolish it. The Moths got first treatment, because they as her children knew exactly how to call her, but this also meant that when they switched to PK's rule where he advocated for independence and self-sufficiency based on problem solving, they suffered far more than the others who had to reply on learning their own medical care when Radi was too busy to hear their prayers)

That's not to say that Radiance was a bad ruler by any means, but we do know that she and PK are opposites, and we have records of how distant he was from his civilization, which indicates that Radiance was deeply involved by contrast- likely suffocatingly so. That's part of why I love to play with her and Grimm being siblings, to be honest, because he acts as a sort of neutral zone between the Pale King's style of ruling (by almost zero personal involvement) compared to the Radiance's obsessive control- he holds power over those under his command, but he also relinquishes that power when they fight back, and makes the break from the trope relatively stressless by wiping their memories and leaving them with a defensive charm (if Carefree Melody is any indicator). Likely this is because Grimm is a scavenger-god who has seen how many a kingdom has fallen to ruin, but I can also imagine how an exposure to the Radiance would have encouraged him to give his people more freedom of will while also continuing to engage with them at all, which the Pale King didn't do. But that's a Grimm tangent right there- the point is that I do believe the Radiance did everything out of a love for her people.

The problem is just that emotions are her fatal flaw, and when they don't suffocate, they burn. We know that she isn't just pure emotion made manifest- she's an insidious manipulator, and quite skilled at it, too. She didn't win over the Traitor Lord or break the minds of the bugs of Hallownest through sheer force alone (though I'm sure she had to in some cases...like the Hollow Knight). But everytime she makes a bad decision, it's because her emotions got the best of her. She is the inverse to the Pale King, whose fatal flaw was that his logic blinded him to the emotions he felt towards his children, and to realizing the Vessel Plan was doomed until it is far too late. She got herself to where she was by blazing forth in a fit of fury, and turning the hurricane of her betrayal into a punishment that the entirety of Hallownest got caught up in, whether they were innocent or not. She wormed her way into the minds of those who listened to her and brutally slaughtered the rest. She might have had some justification at first, when she was clawing desperately out of the dark of near-death, but that justification was snuffed out quick. Her anger is brutal, grotesque, vengeful, and all-encompassing. She hates you, the player character, Little Ghost, for what you represent and who you are, and she hunts you relentlessly, using the corpses of the friends and siblings she's killed to try to murder you. But it's not just self-defense: it's hatred. When Ghost challenges her in the Dream Realm, she didn't have to answer, but she did. Because she is fury incarnate, and she will not suffer the mockery of the void-tainted scion of her enemy.

She might have been a benevolent goddess once, but no longer. She's beautiful and majestic. She's also a genocidal monster. Her actions have justification, for they were self-defense and retribution for her betrayal- until she began to destroy the lives of innocents in her hunger for power. She's a complex character, a sympathetic one even, and is even more terrible for it.

So yeah, she scares me, even though I love her. But can you really blame me?

#hollow knight #hollow knight headcanons #the radiance #anon #reply #long post

[bproccoli]

it was a cloudless night. the moon hung high, cold light filtering through the window and casting angled shadows across the room. it made todd's limbs look unnaturally long as he walked the short distance to the opposite bed.

the mattress dipped down as he sat causing neil to open his eyes.

"what's wrong?" he asked, worried.

"i should be asking you," todd replied with a yawn, gesturing behind him. "i could hear you toss and turn all the way over there."

"did i wake you? sorry. i couldn't sleep"

"nervous for tomorrow?"

"a little," neil smiled. "rather than nerves it's more… excitement."

goosebumps formed along todd's arms from the cold.

neil noticed, adjusting his position before lifting the edge of the blanket. "here."

todd slipped inside, naturally gravitating towards the warm spot left by neil's body heat. his entire demeanor relaxed, sinking into the soft sheets, surrounded by a comforting scent, faint but familiar—neil's.

"want me to run lines with you?"

"you look like you're about to fall asleep any second."

"with how much i read the script, i can even recite it with my eyes closed."

a quiet laugh. todd felt—more than heard—it from where his and neil's shoulders were touching, separated only by the fabric of their clothes.

"is that so?"

"is that a challenge?"

"no, but go ahead." neil softly nudged todd with his shoulder.

todd started reciting the first verse that came to mind. it was oberon's.

i pray thee, give it me.

his hands wandered as he recalled each line, unable to stay still.

i know a bank where the wild thyme blows,

at first, fiddling with the edge of his shirt, just for something to do.

where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,

then it moved, to the left. like root to water, like moth to flame, towards neil.

quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,

until their pinkies touched, followed by the rest of their fingers, palm resting against the other's.

with sweet musk-roses and with eglantine:

neil's hand felt slightly cold. todd held it tighter to keep him warm.

there sleeps titania sometime of the night,

there was a rustle, as neil turned to look at todd.

Lull'd in these flowers with dances and delight;

and another, as todd looked back.

And there the snake throws her enamell'd skin,

he saw neil smiling, so gently, so fondly, that he almost forgot what he was going to say next.

weed wide… enough to wrap a fairy in:

neil laughed, dimples showing and todd's mind went completely blank except for one thought.

if he kissed it, would it sink even deeper?

and so he did, lightly, a swift brush of lips against skin.

neil froze mid-laugh, caught by surprise. todd watched as neil's wide-eyed expression faded from his face, as he slowly processed what happened, as his adam's apple unconsciously bobbed up and down his throat.

silence.

"what's next?" neil's voice was quiet, barely above a whisper.

todd's eyes flitted towards neil's lips.

neil caught it. fighting back a smile he asked, "the next line. what is it?"

"...i forgot. "

"you said you could recite it with your eyes closed."

todd stared at neil—eyes bright under the moonlight, back was the playful glint that had been absent the past few days. and so todd played along, he recalled the entire verse in his head until he reached the line where he previously stopped. then, he continued. and as he spoke, each line soft and breathy, he inched closer and closer to neil. until all that's left between them were warm exhales caressing each other's cheeks.

at the end of it all, he smiled, and asked quietly.

"can you kiss me now?"

neil's lips parted as he sucked in a breath. a beat, before puck's lines flowed from his tongue effortlessly, like second nature. only, it now carried a different meaning.

every word purposeful, he replied.

"fear not, my lord, your servant shall do so."

#650 words no plot just vibes #halfway through i forgot where i was going with this #so i just kinda followed the universal rule that says seize the gay or smth and it sorted itself out somehow #my tags are so stupid what does that even mean #i am very obviously sleep deprived gn ♡ #dead poets society #dps #dps fic #dps au #anderperry #neil perry #todd anderson #my fics

[redisaid]

The Moth and the Flame

Imodna kissed and presumably spent the night together and I had to write something about it. I wussed on smut because these girlies need to go slow, sorry.

I barely have the attention span for Critical Role, so please excuse the overt omission of all the lore I don't feel comfortable with including.

1767 Words

Read it on Ao3!

There is a new tension that pervades the silence of this room. Small, simple, and cozy. It had never been there before and seems to crowd the space Laudna had never considered too small until now. It thickens the air, heating it, and she feels like if she were fully and truly alive, she would be sweating for it.

Luckily for her, she is drawn to heat like a moth to a flame. Well, perhaps not so luckily, for as prone as she is to being burned.

Imogen, for her part, doesn’t seem to break into a sweat as she enters, having delayed a moment to help Zhudanna to bed. She’d stayed up late waiting for them, offering dessert made from the groceries they’d brought her. Butter cookies and hibiscus tea, heavily sweetened with honey and orange zest.

But the tension thrums anew as she comes to stand beside Laudna, regarding the small bed she kneels beside and lays her old clothes out on. Hands were better not idle, and have been folding for minutes now what should not take minutes to fold.

“I forgot how tiny this room was,” Imogen says, the quiet of her voice still not covering the drawl of her accent.

Laudna has always loved how it sounded. She’s not quite she’s ready to deal with implications beyond that simple fact. Perhaps that’s the fog that covers them both—the idea that these are not new feelings, just new acts against them.

It has led Laudna to overanalyze as she folds. To think too hard about a brush of lips over lips in a quiet corner of the market. Of how Imogen had to wait to ask, and truly not know the answer ahead of time, to do this. Had she not wanted the burden of the thoughts surrounding the answer? The heart-clenching fear of not wanting to ruin things. The buzzing of sudden wanting. The stomach pit deep anxiety of being dead and murderous and hungry for a power that destroys and being so unworthy of an affection for all those reasons and more.

Still, it’s Imogen that stills those thoughts again, not with her mind, but with a hand on Laudna’s. “You look nice in your new dress, you know. Already missing the old duds?”

Laudna looks nice in nothing. She oozes blackness and fears she reeks of death. Her skin is cold and pale. Her hair is thinned from falling out, wrapped around her spindly fingers more and more each day she wasn’t with Imogen.

There are some things a kiss won’t fix. There are some things she wants to let it fix anyway.

“No, no,” she finally replies. “Just trying to keep things neat.”

But they are always messy. Even this is messy. Imogen’s hand on hers, lightning scarred and reddened.

This world does not let them escape transformation. Things do not stay the same. They change. They ebb and flow.

Death is meant to be a state of finality. A lack of change. Laudna defied it twice over, and still feels she cannot keep up with the rate of change this world offers them. This life.

Imogen pivots, sits on the bed, doesn’t let go of her hand, though doesn’t hold it either. Her lightning fingers dance over cold skin. Scar for scar.

“Talk to me darlin’,” she says as she looks into Laudna’s eyes. “If I’ve made this too much—”

“You haven’t.”

Laudna is almost surprised by the immediacy of her answer. But, it is what she feels. What she thinks. And she knows that Imogen needs to know, because she’s used to just knowing.

And she’s so proud of her for being brave enough to ask and keep asking.

This is when the hand over hers takes hold, fingers curling into her palm as they squeeze. Imogen’s eyes crinkle at the corners as she smiles and it’s just about the prettiest thing Laudna has ever seen.

Has ever made, too. When she makes other things, they turn out strange. Not ugly, but strange. Imogen though, and the smile she saves just for her, are perfect. Not off-putting, not too wild. Perfect.

“I don’t want anything to be different between us,” she explains. “Just…more. Is that okay?”

More was a thing that had taught Laudna what hunger was again. Not even Zhudanna’s butter cookies could compete, delicious as they were.

More was not a thing she expected. It was not a thing she realized she wanted. Not until Imogen asked for it.

“Can I kiss you?” will play in her head over and over. If Imogen were to take that circlet off and have to bear the burden of her thoughts again, that would be all she hears. So Laudna supposes that will give her the truth of her answer. But she likes that Imogen is asking for it instead.

“Alright,” is what she gives her verbally for now, balling up her hand into a fist to squeeze Imogen’s properly.

She is warm and hums with an energy that’s always been there. Magic, certainly, but a bit of the same thing that clouds the room. Clouds, perhaps, isn’t the right word. Laudna realizes now that, though it is a heavy thing, it is pleasant. A thick quilt on a winter’s night. The skirts of her new dress. The sickly sweetness of Zhudanna’s tea.

Imogen’s fingers release their grip but do not leave her. They trace along bony knuckles and blackened fingernails, up to a palm with broken life lines that really should have told Laudna what to expect from the very beginning.

“I missed you so much that I don’t really know what to do with you, now that I have you again,” Imogen goes on, fingers still tracing those ill omens.

“Whatever you like,” are more words that surprise Laudna as they leave her mouth.

They are kissing again in a series of rapid movements. Hands leaving hands, then bracing to bracket thighs or roam a back and pull in closer. Imogen sits on the edge of the bed and Laudna stands, bending to her, as Imogen pulls and pulls her nearer.

She tastes like tea and cookies and the wheat beer Ashton bought them at dinner. She smells like the Spire by Fire and the market and the clean soap smell of Zhudanna’s linens.

Neither of them are particularly strong. They have other members of their party to rely on in terms of strength of body. But still, Imogen is stronger and Laudna is lighter—a bag of bones in a pretty dress. It only surprises her a little when she’s pulled at an angle too much and topples into Imogen, onto the bed.

They break this third kiss of theirs with a laugh.

Imogen’s fingers card through the curtain of stringy black hair that hangs above her as Laudna pulls back.

“I’m gonna be real boring about this, darlin’,” she warns. “But, I think I’d just like to kiss you a little more and cuddle about it and call it a night. For now.”

That sounds beyond lovely to Laudna. It breaks the heaviness of the air. The nervous energy she’s been storing in her bony frame finally begins to seep out. She lowers herself to Imogen, content then to embrace her just for that, laying her head on her shoulder as she remembers that she cannot hear these thoughts.

Laudna isn’t sure if she does or does not want her to. Still, she shares, “I would love that.”

Imogen’s hands follow her. Laudna is quite certain she will never want them to leave her again. One holds her by the hip, the other strokes the hair near her temple. It’s softer there, thicker, less worried from stress and death twice over.

“I missed you,” Imogen tells her again.

The words are not enough and they both know it. Laudna finds herself wishing for Imogen’s curse for just a moment to know her thoughts. To know if they shape into the same wordless, hollow longing. The black hole of worry. The looming red of the flaring moon. An ache now eased, but still recent enough to leave her tender inside.

These things, she reminds herself, are where she still lives—truly lives. She still feels and feels deeply. No black ooze or brushes with death or betrayals or evil women lingering inside of her can take that from her.

Imogen’s heart beats beside her mutilated ear, fluttering and deep. Laudna wishes for stillness for them, just for a while, so she might enjoy its song.

“I missed you more than I can say,” she finally tells her, though the words are not enough. They will have to do, for now.

Imogen is warm in a way that lets the heat creep into her body. It’s not the first time she’d held her, certainly not. Not the first time they have been tangled on this very bed. But it is the first time like this.

Laudna sparks that flame, placing a daring kiss onto a clavicle she’s just realized she always wanted to kiss. And that she doesn’t need to be ashamed for wanting that.

She is not grotesque and loveless. She is not too scary for Imogen, fun or not. Imogen asked. She asked for this. She wants it.

Laudna thinks she is fine with wanting it too. Especially the sound she hears rumble through Imogen’s ribcage as she kisses her just below the neck.

“Mmm—and here I was thinking you didn’t feel that way about me,” Imogen says as she bends a little to kiss the top of Laudna’s head.

How can she explain that she did, but she didn’t? She did. She wanted. But she dismissed herself before Imogen even could. She banished those thoughts before she knew Imogen could even read them. Perhaps that’s what she’d meant when she said she didn’t know if it was all right or not. Laudna herself had never been sure, because she couldn’t read minds, and didn’t know that she was wanted in her wanting.

But she is, really, like a moth to a flame. A pale, ghostly creature of the night, forever enchanted by brightness. No one is brighter than Imogen. No one ever will be.

Laudna kisses her skin again, wishing to taste the very spark that makes her shine. “I always have,” she admits, both to Imogen and herself.

She sleeps on it, tangled in purple hair, under the care of warm lips. Drawn ever closer to the flame.

Just as the moth, Laudna does not worry about getting burned.

#critical role #cr3 #imogen temult #laudna #imodna #fanfic

[imperfectercell]

You have a fairly large amount of Uub content (WAY more than the majority of DB artists/writers tbh) and you also seem to agree with the Janemba Kid Buu besties headcanon, so I wonder what it'd be like if you combined them?

Kid Buu and Janemba meet before time itself, becoming besties, only for Buu to one day dissapear, everything it once adored now contorted and warped. It leaves hell for the first time in eons, pulling any energy from the residents of hell it can (there seems to be far more than last time it formed, but it doesn't care to count them) and appearing in front of two figures. Goku, the one who aided in taking its form before and... Buu, but not Buu. A strange not quite Buu, apparently called "Uub" as Goku tells him to hide behind him. This confuses Janemba. Buu didn't hide, he fought and maimed until he either won or got bored. He teleports to him, and simply tries to speak with his old friend.

Uub doesn't know who this strange red person is, but he somehow knew his name was Janemba, even before Goku said it with more panic than he had ever seen on the man. But, stranger still, some itch on his subconscious, thoughts he wouldn't learn aren't his own till many years later, tell him to comfort this creature. He doesn't fear Janemba, even as he draws a sword. He knows that Janemba would never hurt him, even though he doesn't know how.

He sees a friend in him.

... Janemba is confused, shocked, every emotion under the sun. And Goku, always one for a risk for the greater good, powers down and tells Janemba what happened to Buu and Uub. Janemba is even more shocked, but he partly gets it. He feels saddened, betrayed and worse seeing Buu move on without him, but sensing his energy shows that he is the happiest he had ever seen him. Buu was always a conflicted soul, one that would bounce between happy and saddened, in control to following orders in a single second, and seeing Buu- no... Uub smiling at him with so little worry on his face is enough for him to move on. He gives a smile, the rare kind he hasn't done ever since he lost Buu, his face taking a moment to even remember how, before dissapearing back to his home.

(And if Goku would later feel a surge of power months later, only to find a child with an origin that even he wouldn't need to ask Bulma's help for, then he would be sure to tell Uub... eventually. Not Vegeta though, not till the child is much older)

[I appreciate you reading this far for what is basically fanfic. I originally planned for this to be shorter and focus more on their potential interactions as reincarnations, but the ideas for the start of it got away from me until I had all this written out]

i 100% forgot to answer this when i got it forever ago but. this is so cute and nice but anon i have to tell you. i have written a scenario almost exactly like this in me and my friend moths dms ages ago THIS IS NOT TO DETRACT from your very fun janemba and uub story, I love it a lot! but I do think it's very real of us uub buu and janemba enjoyers to have the same mind

#long post #janemba #uub #buu #ask

[rosie-b]

True Blue

Chapter 7: Birdbrains

Hawk Moth lowered his cane, setting the tip on the tile floor with a clack. 

The akuma was still visible from the window. 

“Are they any faster than normal butterflies?” 

You can read the rest of the chapter below or on AO3! And next chapter we should finally get to see Marinette transform with the Peacock, which I'm excited about : )

Classes were boring without Adrien. 

She’d known they’d be lonelier, but without him, Marinette found it hard to even concentrate in the nearly empty room.  

And, okay, maybe the lingering questions she had about Adrien, the other magic-born children, and Gabriel’s plan to akumatize Paris until he got the other magic jewelry he needed had something to do with her distraction, too. 

But mostly, Marinette just wanted to know that Adrien would be safe. The Agreste mansion was full of safeguards, but what if someone slipped in through the gate and stole his amoks? What if they turned him into a villain against his will and used him to fight his own father? 

She couldn’t imagine anything worse than that, except for Hawk Moth losing. Then, the world would be left with the scars of every akumatization, at least three dead parents who could have been saved, and more negative emotions without any possible comfort.  

And what if Golden Bug and Chat Grise revealed who Paris’s ‘supervillain’ was and what he’d been fighting for? If the nature of Adrien’s birth was revealed? 

They would call him a monster. They would take his amok and either break it or turn him into a servant they could control. For all Marinette’s doubts about M. Agreste’s actions, he was the one person who could protect her friend and keep him safe from the public’s wrath, and as much as Marinette feared the power of the akumas, she feared for Adrien’s safety��more. She only hoped that M. Agreste took the Miraculous soon and made his Wish before things got any worse. 

But after morning lessons, she witnessed firsthand why that wasn’t likely. 

Gabriel walked into the room just as Nathalie was dismissing her for lunch. 

“Miss Dupain-Cheng,” he said, standing stiffly and holding a small orange bottle in one hand. “I forgot to have Nathalie give you your medicine yesterday. I’ve had the prescription reordered, so you will be able to keep yourself protected from the magic’s poison until you fully recover.” 

Marinette blinked. She’d felt so much better after the first pill; wasn’t she fully healed already? 

“When will that be, sir?” Nathalie asked the question for her. Her voice was tight as she stood rigidly looking at M. Agreste. “How much longer will she be taking the pills?” 

Gabriel hummed as he ran a finger over the lid of the pill bottle he’d brought down. 

“It could be as soon as two weeks from now,” he said thoughtfully. “But there aren’t any side effects to the pills, so I see no reason to stop taking them before three weeks is up, for better protection.” 

“And after that?” Nathalie asked, tapping her heel on the floor. 

Gabriel set the bottle on Marinette’s desk and placed a hand on the back of her chair. 

“After that, she will be fully healed, so you’ll cancel the prescription and Marinette will return to life as usual, unless something else happens.” 

“Something else happens?” Nathalie’s face, usually stoic, betrayed a flash of frustration with her employer. 

Marinette’s stomach twisted as she looked back and forth between the two adults. Surely nothing worse than what she’d already done could happen to her now, right? 

Gabriel’s mouth thinned, and he drummed his fingers on the wooden chair. The sound went straight into Marinette’s ears. 

“Nothing unforeseen should happen. But it is best to be prepared, Nathalie. A woman in your position should know that by heart.” 

Nathalie scoffed and looked down. “I understand, sir. I’ll make sure Marinette takes the medicine during lunch from now on.” 

“Make it sooner,” Gabriel said impatiently. “As soon as she arrives, you should give her one pill with a glass of water. And she should take one now.” 

As he said this, a waiter walked in, holding a tray with a single glass of water on it. 

Marinette took the glass, nodding her thanks even though she was growing more confused every second. 

“Wouldn’t it make more sense for me to take it during lunch today?” she asked. “After all, I was just about to head to the dining room.” 

“Today, I have something else planned,” M. Agreste said, letting go of the chair and walking over the window nearest her desk. “There are always more chances to akumatize someone in Paris. The thing that will serve me best now is timing. Golden Bug and his accomplice are both around your age; surely it is their lunchtime, too. You are hungry, are you not?” 

Marinette swallowed the pill she’d hastily taken and nodded. Her stomach made a gurgling sound, and she flushed pink. 

Ms. Sancoeur pinched her nose and turned to go after the waiter. 

“Then they will be hungry, too. And no one fights at full strength on an empty stomach. I will akumatize someone again today, Miss Dupain-Cheng. And this time, I want you to be with me as I do it. Once you see the true nature of our enemies, I think your mind will be put at ease about my ‘villainous’ doings,” he said.  

Marinette could just make out the ghost of a smirk in his reflection before he turned around to face her. 

“Well, are you coming or not? Finish your water. We will have lunch after the fight if it goes ill or well.” 

“Coming, sir!” Marinette spilled some of the water as she rushed to swallow it all down.  

She didn’t really want to do this, but it was true that she still felt uncomfortable about M. Agreste akumatizing people. Maybe seeing things from his perspective would help her to lay her doubts to rest. 

M. Agreste led her to the atelier just like he had the day before, but this time, he went into the elevator first.

“I will transform and begin to narrow down the list of potential people to akumatize,” he told Marinette before he called the elevator. “Watch what I do closely. We will not be going to the basement again today.” 

Just as he said, this time the elevator rose up with him in it, going through a hole in the ceiling. When it came back down, Marinette got in it, pressed the second button she’d seen the day before, and swallowed as she left the ground floor behind. Glass elevators were cool, but she was more afraid of this one than most. Exactly how safe was it? Had it been included in the building plans gone over by the city, or was it a late addition that traded safety regulations for secrecy? 

There were no problems during this trip or any of the past ones, so Marinette brushed aside her fears as the elevator door opened and she stepped out into what looked like a secret attic. It was mostly empty except for a group of butterflies, a large window, and the man she’d feared ever since his first victim appeared on TV. 

Hawk Moth beckoned her closer with a hand.  

Marinette glanced at him, noticing the strange outfit his kwami had given him and wanting to look at it closer, but knowing now was not the time. Maybe after the fight, she could ask M. Agreste some questions about it. 

“There is a man by the Seine who is ready to receive my power,” he said. “Watch how it is done. There is no harm caused to him by this process.” 

Holding out one hand, Hawk Moth waited for a butterfly to land on it and loosely clasped his other hand over it. Marinette flinched, but the other butterflies looked fine, and so had the purified akumas Golden Bug released in the past, so this butterfly was probably unharmed. 

Then a strange light appeared in Hawk Moth’s hands, and the sound of electricity filled the air. Hawk Moth lowered his hands, and the akuma was revealed; a black and purple butterfly flapped its wings and began to fly towards the open window, which, Marinette noticed, was designed to look like a butterfly, too. 

“Fly away, my little akuma,” Hawk Moth said in a low voice. “Find the saddened man and akumatize him!” He raised his cane and twirled it over his head dramatically, probably showing off for her benefit. 

Marinette watched as the butterfly continued its slow flight path. 

Hawk Moth lowered his cane, setting the tip on the tile floor with a clack. 

The akuma was still visible from the window. 

“Are they any faster than normal butterflies?” 

Marinette immediately wished she could take the question back. She was alone in a room with Hawk Moth! He could just whack her with the cane or throw her out the window if she made him mad! But she knew him, and he seemed to like her. Would he really turn on her like that? 

“Oh, of course they are,” Hawk Moth answered in a pleasant, but distracted, voice. “Most butterflies fly at a rate of eight to twenty kilometers an hour. My akumas travel at double that speed, and the stronger the emotion they sense, the faster they fly. Have no fear, it will reach the man in no time.” 

As he spoke, the akuma flew out of their view, darting downwards with a sense of dogged purposefulness no normal butterfly should have. 

“Almost there,” Hawk Moth muttered. 

Marinette clasped her hands together and suppressed the urge to bounce on her toes. This was an awful lot of not doing anything, and it was making her more anxious than she’d like. 

A glowing, purple mask like the one she’d seen over Evillustrator appeared around Hawk Moth’s face, and he grinned as he looked out the window, across Paris. 

“Mr. Pigeon,” he said, and Marinette scrunched her eyebrows together. “I am Hawk Moth. That police officer stopped you from providing care for the city��s poorest, but neither this police officer, nor any other of the park keepers, should stop you from taking care of your friends. What would Paris be without pigeons? And what would pigeons be without you? Accept this power I give you to fight for the birds’ side. In return, all I ask for are Golden Bug and Chat Grise’s Miraculous. Do we have a deal?” 

There was a small stretch of silence, and then Hawk Moth turned to Marinette with a relaxed smile.  

“Perfect,” he said, and the mask disappeared.  

He took a step towards Marinette, who fought the butterflies swarming in her stomach and dug her nails into her palm as she struggled to return the smile. 

“Mr. Pigeon has accepted my offer of akumatization freely,” he explained to Marinette. “They all do, even if they don’t remember it. They all choose to fight on my side.” 

Marinette hadn’t known that. 

“Even the ones who regret being akumatized?” 

That was all of them. Their breakdown was on the news every time. 

“Especially those ones. They confuse their negative emotions with regret for their actions, but if they remembered the moment, they would only be sorry that they failed to win. Now, pull up the news on your phone. You cannot see through the akuma’s eyes as I can, so watch what is happening through the Goldenblog. As you’ll see, the city’s heroes do not fight fair.” 

They do use unconventional methods, Marinette thought with a frown. But they’d both been so nice to her during Evillustrator! She didn’t want to not be able to like them anymore. 

It didn’t take long for Golden Bug and Chat Grise to show up. As soon as they were on the scene, they called for Mr. Pigeon, who could apparently control birds as his main power, to give up his akuma. He shouted back something about it being the pigeons’ world now, and the akuma fight started in earnest. 

“Keep the little pests away from each other,” Hawk Moth snapped after Chat Grise nearly clawed the whistle from Mr. Pigeon’s neck while Golden Bug had him distracted. “They’re less efficient that way.” 

Marinette watched in confused awe as Mr. Pigeon commanded the birds to form a large ball around Chat Grise, lifting her up and carrying her away from the fight. 

“Good,” Hawk Moth praised Mr. Pigeon. “Ask this one to hand over his Miraculous nicely. If he doesn’t, we’ll have to use more... offensive action.” 

A tinny laugh sounded from Marinette’s phone. 

“Roo rooloo! Give me your Miraculous or face the wrath of my feathered friends, little bug!”  

The akuma flapped his arms excitedly while Golden Bug scowled and called for his lucky charm. 

“They never listen,” Hawk Moth muttered to Marinette. “They’ll never agree to a truce; they’ll never hear my plan out. All they care about is keeping the Miraculous under the lock and key of the Guardian. And he won’t allow us to heal Emilie or keep Adrien safe. As far as he’s concerned, Adrien should never have been made to begin with. To him, we’re only getting a just reward for our folly, and he does not care if we pay for it by our lives.” 

Marinette’s heart twisted painfully as she looked up from her phone at Hawk Moth. He was standing close to the window, his shoulders hunched forward as he looked down.  

“We tried for years to find another solution,” he said sadly. “But even now, when I have others fighting for me...” 

His voice trailed off as Chat Grise, with a large white spot on her suit, landed back on the screen with a snarl and chased away the pigeons who’d been crowding Golden Bug. He shot her a grateful smile, sneezed, and rubbed his nose with the back of his hand before tearing open the bag his powers had given him. 

“No! Control the birds!” Hawk Moth suddenly switched back to addressing the akuma, clenching the cane at his side. 

Onscreen, Marinette saw the birds desert Mr. Pigeon in favor of the seeds dropping from the bag. Chat Grise tripped the akuma with her baton as he stumbled over his own birds, and Golden Bug threw his yo-yo, cracking the whistle that had flown off Mr. Pigeon’s neck as he fell, now lying alone on the pavement. 

“No!” Hawk Moth clutched his head and cried in despair while Golden Bug threw his lucky charm in the air with a grin, miraculously ridding the city of any damage from the birds. 

With a sad frown on his face, Hawk Moth turned to Marinette, who slowly turned off her phone and put it in her pocket. 

“As you see, even with this bit of luck on our side, I have reason to fear that we may not win after all,” Hawk Moth said, unpinning the brooch from his neck and scrutinizing it.  

The same purple kwami from before came spiraling out of the brooch, practically wilting as it peered up at Marinette while moving further from M. Agreste.  

“I’ve been trying for weeks to secure those two’s Miraculous, and I don’t have any progress to show for it. I see now that you were right to have doubts about my plan. If it should fail, the city could be irreparably harmed, and I would have only myself to blame,” he said, pinching the bridge of his nose as his kwami slowly floated closer to him. “I must be the worst husband in existence!” 

It was a sad display. M. Agreste had thought he’d found the one way to cure his wife and save his son, but everything kept going wrong. No matter how inventive his akumas’ powers were or who he chose to fight for him, he kept losing to Paris’ favorite duo. And now, his last hope was fading. 

“Well, you are trying your best,” Marinette timidly offered. “You’ve already done more to save your wife than anyone else has. You offered to work with the Guardian to find an easier solution, and you make sure all your akumas were willing to fight for you. Besides, I'm sure Emilie would approve of all you’ve done for her! You’ve remained faithful to her even in the darkest of situations, and I think that’s all she could ask of her husband. But... you aren’t just a husband. You’re also a father, and it seems to me that you could spare a little more time to spend with you and Emilie’s son. Adrien needs you now more than ever,” she said softly, her heart beating wildly in her chest as she hoped she hadn’t overstepped. 

M. Agreste scowled for a moment, but then he looked to the side with a sigh.

“Perhaps you are right, Miss Dupain-Cheng,” he said, looking up at her with a smile. “I shall see what I can fit into my schedule. I am always busy, as you know. Nathalie does what she can to help, yet still... sometimes I wish I had someone else there, fighting with me. Someone with a power of their own— but it’s impossible,” he said, waving the notion off with a hand. “The only other Miraculous we have is the Peacock, and even though we do have medicine for its effects, it remains broken. Go on, head back downstairs and forget about this old man’s crazy ideas for a moment. It was time for your lunch, correct?” 

Marinette nodded wordlessly. She wasn’t sure she was so hungry anymore; witnessing the battle had been very stressful, and she’d been too occupied with what was going on in it to be hungry. 

But the attack, while somewhat predictable, had not been exactly what she expected. Who knew Hawk Moth asked his akumas for permission before transforming them? And he left so much of the plan up to them, granting them more freedom than she’d thought. On top of that, it was clear he cared about the people his plans affected, and even the butterflies he used! He had a good cause to fight for, and he was not the cold-hearted villain she’d once thought he must be. She didn’t like that it had come to fighting, but Marinette had to admit that Hawk Moth was genuinely trying his best to protect and heal his family. 

But he seemed to be losing hope in his own plan. Without an ally to fight on his side, the field was imbalanced; each battle ended the same way no matter what new powers he came up with.  

Marinette finished her day at the mansion and went home in near total silence, thinking about all she’d seen. Emilie, Adrien, Hawk Moth, Golden Bug and Chat Grise — she’d thought she knew whose side she was on before, but the reality was more complicated than she’d expected. 

She needed Hawk Moth to win. Was she sure he should have resorted to supervillainy without trying harder to reason with the Guardian? No. In fact, she would have preferred it by far if he’d stuck to peaceful methods, but once the first akuma struck, there was only one good way for this to end. 

M. Agreste had to make the Wish. Emilie had to get better, the other parents had to come back, and their children (especially Adrien) had to be protected from their amoks. The fabric of life was snagged and twisted; it could only be fixed by tearing out the bad seams and starting over.

Marinette saw that now. She was in this mess for good; there was no way out, and she didn’t want one. She wanted to help Hawk Moth, if only to make sure he didn’t cause lasting damage and not lose not just the battle, but the very people he fought to protect. 

She couldn’t stand by and watch Adrien’s fate be decided by two more teens who thought they were choosing the right side, but were actually being played by the Guardian. (And she was beginning to want to fight the Guardian on her own, because how could anyone not care about Adrien? Or the other magic children, and their parents? How could he be so heartless?) 

Marinette might not fully understand how Adrien was made or how he could be so human when it was magic that had written his DNA, but she knew that she’d protect him with her last breath if necessary. She could not allow Hawk Moth’s Miraculous, his last chance, to fall into enemy hands. 

She had to help him. But how? She could suggest new ideas for akumas, but there was no guarantee they would work any better than the ones M. Agreste came up with on his own. Besides, the real problem seemed to be that there were two (kind of three) people for M. Agreste to fight, but only one person able to fight on his side.  

Well, the akumas made that number two, but it wouldn’t be safe for him to fight alongside them, because he seemed to need the silence of his lair to communicate with them effectively. And if he suffered a defeat while in public, he could be unmasked and lose his Miraculous then and there! 

No, there had to be something else Marinette could do. Together with Nathalie, they could come up with something effective! 

M. Agreste had mentioned that there was only one other Miraculous they hadto fight with. The Peacock was broken, but what if there was a way to fix it? Whoever had crafted it must have known it could break someday; they must have built in some kind of way to make it safe to use again.

Even if there wasn’t a known way, well... Marinette’s parents had taught her that new paths could be made. That was how they’d gotten married, how they’d kept their bakery in business, and how they’d had the courage to let Marinette study fashion even though the odds were stacked against her. There was always a way, you just had to look hard enough for it. 

And then again, as long as the Wish was made successfully, it wouldn’t matter if the new Peacock holder got sick from using it. Because they’d just be healed like everyone else, wouldn’t they? So, was it really that dangerous? 

The warring thoughts in her head kept Marinette up all night, but deep down she knew her decision was already made. 

#bluewing au #ml fanfic #rosie-b writing

[lucigoo]

I forgot I havnt shown this one off yet lol. It has just been revealed as part of the @remuslupinfest. Enjoy. High Tide Came and Brought You to Me - Lucigoo89 - Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling [Archive of Our Own] Summary - Remus was cursed as a child and became a wermerman. 20 years later and he still hates himself and what he becomes once a moth. Maybe some new addotions to his cove will help him feel a bit more at peace with himself?

From Prompt 88 - A merperson was bitten by a were wolf. How does that work? I changed it up a little and he was cursed instead. As always, a snippet:

He heard the sound of displaced water as James rushed over to him. He must have swum as fast as possible. It had barely taken him 10 minutes to get to him. He waited as James gulped to catch his breath. “Right, shit…. Hang on,” he said as he opened his gills to grab as much oxygen as he could. “Right, what’s…. You ok?” he finally gasped out. “No!” Remus said, his voice shaking. “Rem, what is it? You just got home,” James said worriedly. “Theres… it shouldn’t be there. Someone’s been in my cave,” he said, worry and fear clear on his face. “How do you know, mate?” James asked softly. Remus gave him an incredulous look. “Because it’s there. In the middle of my cave.” “What is?” James asked. “Go look, I don’t, I don’t want to,” he said as he put his head in his hands. “What is?” James asked as he swam forward, suddenly pulling back with a squeal. Any other time, Remus would have laughed. This time, he was too upset to find it funny.

#Wolfstar #Remuslupinfest #Merman au

[that-foul-legacy-lover]

Ok ok so brainrot time. Tarzan AU. You’ve might have touched on this in previous posts but thought I would send you my take in order to cheer you up a bit.

So you’re a biologist from Sumeru, traveling to different forests across Teyvat to study local fauna etc etc. You are currently in Scheznaya and have greatly underestimated just how cold the nation can get, your jacket doing little to protect you from the harsh winds. The blizzard proved to be a formidable foe, however you continued onward, the promise of new discoveries too tempting to give up.

One day you’re out talking notes on a local boar species, one that you had nearly missed it due to it’s white coat blending perfectly into the snow. However in your excitement you forgot to pay attention to your surroundings, resulting in you being ambushed by some nearby hilichurls. You fought back, however these weirdly powerful hilichurls proved to be too much for you to handle on your own. As you lay on the forest floor, you felt the snow bite at your skin as you dove in and out of conciousness. Surely this will be the end, right?

Lucky for you however a certain mothman who had been observing you from afar for the last few days dive in just in time to defeat the remaining hilichurls. His panicked clicking was the last thing you heard before passing out entirely.

When you wake up you’re in FL’s cave swaddled in countless furs. Your wounds seem to have been treated as well.

When FL notices you’re awake he rushes over clicking and cooing at you as you struggle to process the current situation. Maybe it’s from the blood loss or delirium, but you reach out your hand and FL eagerly presses his head into your palm, nudging into it. You smile before a harsh shiver travels through your body as your arm is once again exposed to the winter air. Concerned, FL picks you up and sets you onto his lap allowing you to bury yourself into him. He exudes warmth you haven’t felt in ages, and you can’t help but be lulled into a deep sleep from his gentle purrs. Questions could wait until the morning, it was time to rest.

Oh god I’ve realized how long this has gotten I apologize… I hope life gets better for you hang in there💞

i'm really glad i saved this until today because i desperately needed it, thank you anon <33

the storm has only worsened overnight, the wind starting to howl and shake the trees- it's actually what wakes you up, and your foggy brain only wants to snuggle closer to the glittery moth monster holding you. he's asleep now, yet still purring lethargically, arms draped around your shoulders. reluctantly, you force yourself to slip out of Foul Legacy's hold, inching across the floor to check the supplies in your bag. even the slightest breeze bites at your skin, and your bandaged wounds ache whenever you move, the motion of rummaging through your bag sending sparks of pain dancing down your fingertips. there's not much in there anyway, but at least your notes are still intact.

a shiver runs through you when a snowflake lands and melts on your arm, and a sleepy rumble sounds from behind you as Foul Legacy blinks awake. he looks at you, half-awake and half-dozing, and ambles over. despite his size, he's very gentle as he covers your icy body with one of the furs, brushing your cheek with his claws and cooing. when you reach out your arms, Foul Legacy is quick to pick up and settle you in his lap, cradling you and pressing his forehead into the crook of your neck. questions burn on your tongue, but you can't manage to get them out amidst the claws carefully massaging your sore muscles and the warmth seeping back into your bones. instinctively you snuggle closer and feel the deep croon emitting from Foul Legacy as he relishes your company in the sea of his loneliness and fogged memories.

it's odd, how you're a stranger but he already cares so deeply for you. perhaps it's because you looked upon him with only awe and wonder, not fear and distrust. from what he knows, very few people liked him in the past, but you seem... different, and he rubs his cheek against yours and purrs softly.

back in Snezhnaya, the Harbinger Il Dottore scribbles something in a notebook before tossing it aside. another dead end. but no matter, it's simply another small setback, he muses through a sharp-toothed smile.

i'll find you soon, Tartaglia. no matter how well you hide.

#genshin impact #genshin childe #genshin tartaglia #foul legacy #foul legacy childe #childe #tartaglia #genshin tartagalia #chit chat #anon #*eats this* omnonmonmnomnomm #it was one of THOSE evenings and this made me smile #i have been hoarding it because i love it and today it was particularly needed thank you anon <33 #i couldn't resist adding some story hehe <33 #short scenario #other's stuff

[undertale-writing-times]

What would Lover, Passion, Beau, Cupid, Heartbreak, Pinks, and Rosy think of an s/o that loves to hum and sing to them? It's mostly just a soft gesture, one that they like to do because they can't always convey how much they love their darling datemate.

I think this would be adorable. You picked good characters too!

Lover: Oh she thinks that you're just the cutest thing with your humming, and will often join in just to see your reaction. She thinks that it's one of the softest and cutest things in the world, and she loves that you do it. She enjoys using her words to tell you how much she loves you, but the humming just has so much to it that she can't help but join in... she always cuddles up to you whenever you do it, purring lightly. She normally doesn't purr much, which makes it even nicer!

Passion: He might act like it's no big deal, and sorta stupid, but he thinks it's really sweet that you do that to show your love and affection for him. It's easier to deal with than words, that's for sure. Sometimes he might even join in on your humming, but don't expect him to. He might just wave or brush you off but you could always tell that he's listening with how he perks up when you start and stop. He won't ever ask you to do it but sometimes he'll lean against you and let out his own little hum, hoping you would start it up as well.

Beau: He thinks that it is just the CUTEST thing in the world. He loves to listen to you hum and will often start to hum along with you, while latched onto you in a hug. If he's ever feeling sad, he goes to see you cause you always make him feel better... and listening to you hum while petting the top of his skull never stops making him feel better. He loves your attention and affection, and he's always telling you how much he loves you during those times. He wants you to know how much you matter to him.

Cupid: It always gets him to smile. He loves the fact that his datemate loves him so much to do that, and he would always tell you just how much he loves it, cause he never wants you to stop. Sometimes he worries but then he hears the humming and how you always smile at him and... he doesn't worry as much. He knows that his brother thinks that this relationship isn't gonna work out well, but hey! So far things have just been perfect and he isn't nervous at all. Plus... what's the worst that could happen? He would never kill you, and if anyone else tries haha... he would slaughter them.

Heartbreak: At first, he might not like it. The only reason being was cause he didn't really know how to react to it. In the underground nobody was ever exactly... loving. They did things to get sexual and were only cuddly rarely. It was something both of the brothers disliked for a while, Lover forgot that feeling but Heartbreak grew to fear it. So, with how full of love it is, he has no idea how to react! He might flinch away at the first few times but slowly he starts to listen more and it does help him relax and calm down and if you do it while they're cuddling? He honestly might cry. I'm warning you on this now.

Pinks: Humming and singing for sirens is either between flirting, or threatening. When he first hears you humming and singing, while petting his skull, he knows that it isn't from you trying to threaten him, and that makes him really happy. He starts to hum along with you, his sockets shut while his tail moved through the water. You were such a strange, yet amazing, human. Having you as his datemate makes him really happy.

Rosy: Singing and humming like that is something that the moths sometimes used to show off that they were single and looking, or a courting thing. So, funnily enough, Rosy will perk up and listen to you then cuddle up against you. He will start to hum along, his wings flapping lightly. Rosy loves hearing your song and together you two would most likely sound really good! He's very good at singing, it's something that he's pretty happy about and one of his favorite things about himself... one of his favorite things about himself.

#Underlust #Underlust Sans #Lover #Lustfell #Lustfell Sans #Passion #Lustswap #Lustswap Sans #Beau #Dustlust #Dustlust Sans #Cupid #Unlust Sans #Lustmer #Lustmer Sans #Pinks #Mothlust #Mothlust Sans #Rosy #undertale alternate universe #undertale alternate timeline #undertale ask blog #undertale imagines #undertale au #undertale headcanons

[mandalhoerian]

NO TIME TO DIE | leon kennedy x oc | 4

pairing: leon s. kennedy x oc word count: 15K~ (again...) warnings: graphic descriptions of gore and the smell. cringy humor. she's coping. u know how it is chapter summary: Claire Redfield joins the party, and Leon has to compromise in allowing both girls to join him in his journey through the zombie-littered station, they have to stick together to survive. Meanwhile, Vera has found her purpose in pursuit of justice for Raccoon City and overcomes her fear through anger. READ ON AO3 ! CH. 5 ☆ NO TIME TO DIE MASTERPOST

Coming up behind Vera and closing the library spade door behind him, a delighted and equally stunned, “Claire?!” left Leon after he saw the reason why Marvin had called them back. He took a couple steps forward, elation emitting from him like sunshine rays, so full of ebullience that it bubbled over. 

Vera’s gaze skipped from him to the newest addition to the group. 

The ponytailed brunette in the red leather jacket with “Made in Heaven” written on the back underneath the winged and horned lady hugging a giant rifle was crouched in front of the sofa Marvin was sprawled on, she turned around to look at the source of the voice, and stood up, smiling charmingly with a hint of awkwardness in there. 

It showed in her face that she was thinking about how the dead rising from the oblivion crisis was pulling all the pretty people in like moths to flame.

Without hesitation, Leon shoved his gun back into its leg holster and jogged up to her, looking between the fatigued, harshly breathing Marvin and her. “I knew you’d make it! Are you okay?”

“You know, doing fine, the same old,” the girl said, sheepish, if there was a door sill, she’d probably put her arm on it and lean in. “Just surviving.”

Leon chuckled, relief written all over his body language, his wide back to Vera was visibly lax despite being concealed by the protective vest. “That’s good.” Snapping awake from some spell he was under, he spun backwards to face Vera, prettily abashed yet happy all the same — the boy within shadowing over his face. “This is Claire, I forgot to say. I came into town with her.” 

Vera was staying behind and observing, not caring all that much about how the two knew each other and letting it be known, before she had to skitter up to Marvin, attention taken away by a particularly harsh jerk and hiss from him. She put a hand on his shoulder, a chill going up her wrist at the cold and moist sensation from the damp material from him rapidly sweating, and gently nudged him backwards. “You need to lay down.”

“I lay down all the damn time,” he grumbled behind gritted teeth, Vera could feel the eyes on them. 

She helped him settle without putting much pressure on the tear in his side, covering him with the white sheet. “And? You’ll continue laying down until we’re finished getting that passageway open.” 

Marvin was displeased, but he’d live. 

Vera heard shuffling right behind her. When she looked back, Leon was offering her something, and the girl named Claire was glancing on with sorrow in her ocean blues, obviously lost and not sure what to do — the slight baby fat on her face pulled on Vera’s heartstrings.

“I’ve got some herbs. Green and red. You said red intensified the effect.” Leon uttered, voice low and reverent as if Marvin was sleeping and it would wake him up.

“Yeah that’s right,” she said, letting him place the herbs in her hands, their fingers brushed. She nodded, grateful. “Appreciate it.” 

He studied his superior, dejection straining his eyebrows. “You’re welcome.” Backing off, he caught Claire’s eyes, and motioned back to the reception desk with Vera’s station with a bob of his head. “We’ll be at the front, come on Claire.”

Claire said, “Okay,” but her worried gaze stalled, hesitating to follow Leon for a short while, then she stopped. “Is there anything I can do?”

“No,” Marvin asserted, pained but firm. 

He was about to follow it up with some foreshadowing, ominous bullshit like, ‘There’s nothing anyone can do,’ and Vera dismissed that before he could open his mouth, jibing at him. “Yes, yes, we get it, you’ve become a parrot at this point.” She put the herbs right under his nose. “Make better use of your mouth and eat your greens.”

Marvin could set someone on fire if looks had any superpowers, 

Vera didn’t see him sharply shoving her forehead with his fore and middle fingers coming, and she unceremoniously fell on her ass. He hadn’t even hit her or anything. A stupefied daze took over as to how she lost her balance that bad as she held the exact place he’d pushed.

Right behind her, Claire was panicking. “Oh my god.”

“If you disrespect me one more time girl, I swear to Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” Marvin began, shakily breathing out. “I will whoop your adult ass in front of everyone .” He held a wave of whimper in, showing Claire and the general direction Leon had disappeared off to. “And make it the only memory they will remember you by.”

Vera gaped at him, face perpetually stuck in that pre-laughter expression, deep down, she was sort of happy that he was this energetic. 

She didn’t know when Claire came to stand right beside her, but being helped off the ground startled her, she almost elbowed the girl right in the nose. Being sneaked up on was something of a hated thing to her, like one of those red pandas that stood up on its back legs and raised paws as if surrendering whenever unexpected danger rolled their way in — looked cute, but really, it was aggression on the red panda’s part, actually striking out with the claws on their front feet. As caricature-easy as Vera was to scare, she wished she could get rid of it, time had only made this reflex worse. 

After her sharp intake of breath, Vera muttered, “Shit, sorry,” to Claire in a voice only she could hear, that got answered by a breathy chortle only. At least she hadn’t dropped the herbs on her way down. She stood up with Claire’s help, dusting her ass and legs off with her free hand. “Damn, Marvin, is it that serious?”

He threw an empty water bottle at her, which she dodged at the last minute. “Get the hell out of my face.”

“You almost hit Claire.”

He hadn’t, the bottle was thrown straight to Vera’s left direction with scary precision and Claire was to her right. He still had it. The wind chimes of once a pipe dream rang in the distance and re-kissed into her weary heart, making room next to the problem solving realist running the place. All the talk about being conscious enough to give his final advice to Vera was bullshit, they agreed together. (Another resident stayed in the shadows and scowled at them, but they didn’t mind. Her name was dubbed the doomsayer and she would forever go ignored, the pipe dream’s music too hypnotizing for that.)

Sitting by his side was more of a dare than going up against an undead. Vera did anyway, trying Marvin. “As payback, you have to eat your greens.”

A toothy grin spread on her face as he did unenthusiastically. Marvin was getting ashier, and in spite of that, the herbs were the only thing sustaining the remaining light of life inside him, a fresh breath of solace in his suffering whenever he was supplied more, it was cruelly palpable. His pain ebbed away each time, sleep wandered within his reach — he needed more to hold on until they got to help, or help got to them. Vera didn’t mind being under fire from him in the slightest, so long as all Marvin did was complain and not actively sabotage their endeavors. She’d take it merrily. 

“That’s nuts,” Claire breathed, seeing as Marvin promptly started treading the path of consciousness and slumber. “Is it marijuana or something?”  

Vera half-expected Leon to come flying at the mention of the word, but he was away, hadn’t checked why they weren’t behind him either. The possibility of him advancing forward on his own wasn’t that slim, it made Vera leave her seat and wend her way to the front desk. 

“I’m not giving my cop dad weed, it’s medicinal herbs native to Arklay mountains, they’re basically magic. You’ll catch on quick, don’t worry,” she made it known back to Claire, who was keeping up with her. This was the second time she had to explain to someone the herbs weren’t what they thought it could be. “Also, what an introduction, right? Feeling like a middle school kid that got embarrassed by her parent in front of her friend.”

“I know the feeling. My brother used to love doing that. Especially in the presence of my guy friends.”

She caught a glimpse of Leon, Heckler & Koch in one hand and what looked to be a high capacity magazine in the other, engrossed in switching his bullets to his newly acquired custom part, a tightly gathered wrinkle between his eyebrows. Her steps slowed down as the restlessness alleviated, just taking in his appearance for a second, it hit her unexpectedly, looking at him from afar. Leon delicately walked the line separating pretty from handsome — he wasn’t rugged or hunky, a tall glass of water to be exact. He was beautiful in an impossible way from no man she’d seen before. Even the buttchin suited him. 

Was it the uniform that made him so attractive? 

Vera wasn’t into that kind of thing, she worked with the police, and not once did it particularly get her attention. But again, she also hadn’t come across a rookie ever since Rebecca Chambers, so had to begrudgingly accept it was Leon and not the uniform, damnit . 

“I’m Claire,” the girl behind her said, and it was ice water cascading from above, followed by a hot ripple of humiliation. Thank goodness Claire wasn’t right by her to witness Vera fucking ogling this man. “Claire Redfield.”

All thoughts draining from her brain, Vera abruptly spinned around. “Redfield? You’re Chris Redfield’s sister?”

Claire lit up. “You know my brother? I came here looking for him.” 

“Like, not personally but, our paths crossed quite a lot. I work here sometimes.”

The clatter of what probably was a gun placed on the desk momentarily disturbed her attention, but Claire’s hopeful distress was more pressing. “Do you know where he is? Is he here?”

He was a continent away, sniffing out the trail of Umbrella, as they were a Europe-based corporation before, Jill had filled her in about it one day, as they sat back to back in two different button-tufted red booths in a bustling, dimly lit diner at rush hour to make it difficult for them to be monitored by whomever Irons and Umbrella had put on Jill’s tail, exchanging notes sneakily. Vera was in disguise as a plain old secretary, looked to be wearing headphones and listening to her CD Walkman, drinking filter coffee with milk — normal filter coffee for nothing new, and milk filter coffee to signify she had news — as she kept busy reading a book and taking notes, and Jill was eating a whole meal. She had told Jill about the G-Virus, and Jill had replied with what had happened to Chris. 

She seemed to believe Chris had cracked under the merciless monitoring and the restricting choking grip Irons had on every surviving STARS member, and used that opportunity to continue his investigation, but Vera wholeheartedly believed Chris’ supposed explosion of anger was to get himself suspended so he could leave the city, it had to be a setup. 

Either way, he was lucky to have gotten out of Raccoon City at the perfect time. 

“He’s on vacation,” Vera told Claire, carefully and as neutral as possible. “Europe, I heard. He didn’t tell you?”

Claire’s eyes were darting around, her head lowered, either scanning her memory or trying to make sense of this. She shook her head, lethargic and confused. “No. No, he didn’t. That’s why I’m here, he hasn’t contacted me in a long while.” Sighing and blinking at a great rate, Claire said, “But this is a good thing, thank god Chris isn’t here to go through this.”

The sheer self-consciousness Vera had over her facial expression got her imagining little creaking sounds each one made. The irony of that. 

The remnants of  STARS that had been backed into a corner in the mansion up in the Arklay mountains  had come back different, haunted and paranoid, a husk of themselves; she wondered if Claire would be able to recognize her brother after hearing his voice over the phone, under the obvious reasons why he hadn’t reached out to her, maybe Chris also thought Claire would know something was wrong on the spot. 

Vera was truly understanding just what they had gone through only now. Claire had no idea what was happening, what had already happened, and what kind of imprisonment without bars had followed. The survivors of that incident were left to wait with an invisible executioner’s ax just above their necks, not only were they in danger, but their loved ones were wide open as the one supple, unarmored weak point of a dragon.   

It was understandable Chris wanted to keep her away from this, Vera respected his decision, it wasn’t her answer to give Claire — and frankly, what went on between the siblings was none of her business, she would keep her mouth shut.  

Cracking the solemn rainclouds over the two girl’s heads, Leon spoke up, the modification of his gun now complete. “You said you didn’t work here.”

Claire and Vera shared a look, and went up to where he was, right in front of the desk. She tried to remember the conversation, holding her chin and tapping her fingers on her lips in contemplation. “I said that?” 

“Yeah, when I asked how you knew me—”

“I didn’t particularly confirm or deny I didn’t work here.”

That baffled the blond, he shifted on his feet. “But you said—”

“I didn’t say anything affirmative about not working here.”

All the negative forms were basically meant to attack him. Leon blew out a loud huff, the fake annoyance was adorable. “You’re blurring the line.”

Vera pressed her lips together not to let a smug, conceited, silly smile take over her face. She was halfway triumphant, scanning Leon up and down and letting her gaze linger. “I’m all about blurred lines.” 

He didn’t get it. Of course he didn't, looking at her with a crinkled brow only. Cute.

Claire chipped in after that, thankfully not letting it become uncomfortable. “So, what do you do, exactly?” She then raised her hands defensively, like she just put her foot in her mouth. “I don’t mean that in a bad way. I also didn’t get your name, and…”

“It’s fine, this dude got in our way, blame him,” Vera extended a hand to her after rolling her eyes at Leon. He gave a look back that said ‘what’d I do?’ “Vera Kaplan. Private investigator, don’t have a card with me to give you right now, unfortunately. Pleasure to meet you.”

She could hear the click sound in Leon’s head as realization spread on his expression. “Huh.” 

“Claire Redfield, but you already know that,” the brunette said, her small smile clumsy as she shook Vera’s hand. “Sadly I don’t have any fancy titles yet, I’m still a student.”

No way, that’s why she had endearing, a bit plump cheeks?  “You’re a minor?” 

“I’m nineteen.”

“You’re just a baby,” Vera declared, earning a judging, raised eyebrow from Claire. “Holy shit, what are you doing traveling here on your own?”

Claire stood her ground with casual conviction, dour, obviously not liking being perceived as that. “I can hold my own, I promise.”

Chris would one hundred percent lose his shit if he was informed his baby sister dove head first into a city-wide outbreak (if the world was lucky enough, it was limited to Raccoon City only) when all he wanted to do was keep her blissfully ignorant to it. 

“And how old are you? You don’t look old enough to be lecturing me about that.”

“I’ll have you know I’m twenty-one, okay? Also you and I are not the same, I’m two years older, and employed. When you came here from where , with your barely adult self with what money?” Claire was about to protest, but Vera cut her off. “Doesn’t matter, road trip. Apparently on your own.”

Arms crossed, Leon leaned in as if he was telling Vera a secret, the air around him was of a disappointed father. “On a bike.”

“On a bike? Scandalous, missy!”

In reality, it was impressive. Claire looked absolutely fantastic in that biker jacket and now hearing she rode a bike as well only made her even cooler that it hurt Vera’s ego. 

“Ha-ha,” Claire didn’t seem to be exactly enjoying being ganged-up on. But alas, it was the fate of the youngest ones down under the food chain. “Why does everybody think I’m going to get in trouble?”

“You’re a Redfield, I can tell.” Vera sent a wink her way, circling around her to go behind the desk. “Your brother is famous for that here, guess it runs in the family.” 

“Yeah, he’s, um, how to put it,” Claire deliberated on what to say as Leon watched Vera look over the Toughbook, most likely attempting to discern what it was she was on about. “Not exactly… compatible with authority, I guess?”

“He’s shit at obeying orders, follows his nose, is immovable as a mountain?” She laughed, clicking away on the touchpad. “You can say it, don’t worry. I’m sure your brother won’t hear you all the way from Europe.”

 “You’d be surprised,” Claire said, putting her hands on the counter and tilting forward to see as well. “What are you doing by the way? Are you on the internet?” She was excited and hopeful, an icebound hook that plunged into Vera’s heart that relentlessly pulled. “Reaching out for help?”

The only help that had reached Vera this far was Leon, apart from two soldiers from Umbrella’s own task force itself who were only there to get a doctor out. No other help would be arriving. Vera was set on this, deep, deep down. 

She had a slithering suspicion why the people of this city had been left to their own devices and it would inflict the cruelest, most merciless, irreversible blight on someone’s humanity the second she decided to share the poison. 

As much as she hated to admit it, a possible answer to a prayer sent above was more concrete than being rescued. 

“Unfortunately, all connections are out, we’re on our own here,“ Vera said, eyes half-lidded with the world-heavy implication it held, the light emitted from the screen were needles obscuring her vision and she wiped that away, shook the uneasiness off. In the corner of her peripheral, Claire's optimism wilted away, a bouquet of flowers thrown in trash.  

Don't think, she repeated, Thinking slows you down, slow gets you killed. 

She followed that up with, "I'm pulling out the map of the second floor. Spade key goes to the waiting room." Glancing up at Leon, who had been silent for a while, she showed Claire as if she's introducing her on a stage. “Now, do you want to do the honors, Leon, or should I give the crash course?” 

They ended up collaborating to paint the whole picture to Claire: the only way out is the passageway underneath the goddess statue, it'll open when they find the three medallions corresponding to the slots in the puzzle on its plate, Marvin isn't doing all too well and needs medicinal herbs scattered around the station to hang in there until they clear the way. It's straightforward really, but it overwhelmed Claire, she had just gotten here, and she craned her head to look at the speaker like she was following a ping pong ball, gears turning in her head loud and fast.

She's a smart girl, though, caught on quickly. "This is a MacGuffin hunt," she said. "It sounds ridiculous on paper. I mean, how did they even build this without anyone remembering or knowing? Why so many puzzles?"

Vera thought so too, but according to her findings, this connected to the underground system Umbrella had been digging over the years like a whole ant colony spreading out, and it made complete sense when you put Irons into the equation, it's all part of a mechanism that falls into place. Raccoon City was an organism unaware of the parasite spreading inside it. "You'll hurt yourself if you try to make sense of it." 

"We just have to focus on getting out," Leon joined her, firmly raising his hands up to his waist level and down to get his point across while speaking. "It must be confusing, I know. To be honest, none of us here have any answers."

That was a creative way to stab Vera right in the heart, spit got stuck in her windpipe and she sneakily cleared her throat to get her airways to work again. 

What these two needed was to get away from this hellhole, not to be hit by exposition, she told herself, it would take ages to explain. Eventually , she would give them the truth, but not now, this wasn't the time. 

She wasn’t particularly hiding anything, not even intent on keeping it away from them, and hell, the whole city had a right to know that it was Umbrella that had done this. 

She really wasn’t… It was the fear. Again. 

The potential question that would follow was unconsciously holding Vera back, the reason why she was inadvertently running away from everyone in the station at the beginning. The fucking shame. Why didn’t you do anything?    

No excuse could ever be enough. 

"Sorry, I didn't mean to put you in the spotlight. This is all so bizarre, I mean," Claire shook her arm in the direction of the Toughbook in front of Vera, frustrated. "Gosh, we don't know what's going on, we don't have a way of knowing what's going on — if the internet was still up, we could have a way of knowing what's going on, and the people all around the world would, too."

"Rest easy knowing that I tried to fix it. Everything's busted," Vera said. The subject was circling back to questioning the root of this disaster, and it got her all tensed up underneath the unnaturally nonchalant exterior. 

"They have to be aware of what's going down in Raccoon City," Claire kept theorizing, contemplating, coming up with scenarios Vera wasn't interested in exploring. "They have to. This isn't just a local pandemic, it's — it's the zombie apocalypse. I don't get it, the city was all... And no presence of the army... This isn't even new, right?" She asked Vera, and the girl blinked in affirmation, not contributing to the conversation at all. 

The announcement ringing around the city in all streets, bouncing back from the skyscrapers and creeping into the forgotten, dark alleyways played in Vera's mind like a record: Attention all citizens. Due to the citywide outbreak, you are advised to take shelter at the Raccoon City police station. Free food and medical supplies will be provided to everyone in need...

She remembered how the TV made it sound, like a normal pandemic, looping ad after ad advising people to admit themselves to the hospital if they ever displayed horrifying symptoms too comical to be real: ravenous appetite, skin necrosis, blood congestion, the most normal could be considered clouding of consciousness and increased aggressiveness. 

The general consensus spread by mainstream news channels was that it was a strain of rabies, and there was no need to panic. In the now ransacked press room, Irons had given a press conference about how there was no need to involve the National Guard, and Raccoon City Police Department had it fully under control, speaking like he was the mayor, his natural charisma had dissolved the worries of every reporter around him, reassured smiles and restored hopes filling the room. 

Umbrella was trying to keep it under the wraps, and now, probably the United States itself was, as well. 

Raccoon City was fucked, it was on its own, being eaten alive from the inside out, there was no gentler way of putting it. 

"We're all alone here, Claire, nobody's coming to help." Vera's eyes and shoulders were drooping as if sleepiness was about to overcome her, but it was simply exhaustion, and what she was trying to imply dawned on Claire too, the girl's eyebrows pinching upwards together. 

Vera had long ago given up on waiting for help to come, this was a harsh reminder. 

It was easy to forget, Leon had made it so the moment he entered the picture with the incredibly captivating comfort of protection he provided. What a weird feeling it was to rely completely on someone as easy as this, Vera had wanted to, as humiliating as accepting it was, she had just wanted to let go, more than willing to assume Leon was ready to take it all and he was safe and he would make it safe.    

And he said, "We've got each other," soft and determined — the promised safety. A small puff of amusement came out of her nose. He sure was reassuring. An unexpected painkiller salve on a burn wound that she had been craving. "We can get out of here together."

"I'm sure we can," Claire nodded, still bothered about something, her voice climbing up in anger the more she spoke. "It just doesn't sit well with me that we have no choice but to survive alone. I didn't hear anything about Raccoon City before I arrived here, how the hell can they hide something like this? It's inhumane." 

Claire's rage resonated with Vera, what burnt away into embers and ashes caught on fire again, blood lava in her veins, the air she breathed, hot. 

No, it's not fair, it's not fair at all. To say it’s not fair is the least fair thing to say. All the people who rotted away, terrified and alone, gone or walking the earth as nothing but mouths watering for flesh now, either too lucky to have stayed dead or trapped in cages of exposed bone and falling flesh, just to be abandoned — what justice could set things right, did it even exist? 

Would any water offered like a sacrifice to a god ever quench the hellfire instead of flaring it up? If there was a heaven, it deserved to be burned down by the victims who'd been felled to this violation against humanity, it deserved to be brought down into hell they were living in  Raccoon City by the residents of it for staying deaf to the agony of the undeservingly damned, because despite the atrocities taking place in this city, the world was continuing to turn like nothing was happening. 

People all around this country were allowed the luxury of blissful ignorance. 

The answer simultaneously came to her as she remarked, "Wish we had a way of airing this live to spite whoever's trying to hide it, huh," like it was a passing conversation about how bad the weather is, no special tone, no indication of any underlying proposition. 

What it did was lighting a bulb in Vera's mind and another at the end of the road she thought was dark and endless. An electric shock of a chill surged through her body, and her heart came back to life like she'd just run a marathon, her jaw slackening. 

Keywords: spite, airing it, whoever's trying to hide it. Of course. Of course. If Vera was good at something, it was finding a way to do the opposite of what somebody wanted. 

They didn't want this out there, so Vera would make it so that everybody fucking found out. 

That had to be her purpose, it had to be her saving grace — and maybe it would be her swan song in the end, but that didn’t matter for now. 

She felt the phantom of Marvin sitting slumped on the box next to the metal desk, but couldn’t look back; her once strong, proud, and kind dad, now defeated and tired, but still thinking of her before himself. The echoes of his whisper were ice burns in her lungs. “Don’t go running around sticking your nose in dangerous places. Not again. Stay out of the shithole Umbrella has dug themselves in… Leave that to Redfield and the others… Stay safe. Forget about all this. Start a new life.”

No, she answered. Cowardice is over. 

“You did all you could,” Marvin insisted, spending all his remaining energy to beg her, a different man than the most stubborn goat he used to be, just to look out for her wellbeing — suffering himself, but still only thinking of her .  “You did your best, Vera.”

She hadn’t done enough , and that was about to change. For Raccoon City. For Marvin.  

Don’t think, thinking slows you down, slow gets you killed. 

Just move. 

Her hands were aware of what she should do more than her head or heart could. This was it from the start. She would feel it in her hands whenever instinct kicked in, fingers wiggled and her palms sweated — either itching to do something or make something. Vera was brain over brawn, but always thought it resided within her palms. Head was someone else, heart was another. She was the hands, and so she would move things, move people .  Get things done. Her hands had always made the improbable into reality, they crafted, they unmade — and now they would wrap around the neck of the haven of the clueless. 

The glint in her silver leer was akin to that of a reflecting light at the edge of a knife. All those responsible and all who turned away from those responsible, everyone , they all deserved to burn. And Vera would set her hands on fire for her redemption to move the flame along, be the match to spark a new circle of hell for the special wretched folk. 

It was about damn time. 

"I don't like the way you're looking," Leon interrupted her inner catharsis, apprehensive as he was concerned. 

A lazy, up-to-no-good Cheshire cat grin spread on her lips at that. 

After sitting down to clean both of their handguns and polishing them for good measure, she fought tooth and nail with Leon over joining him on the rest of the journey for the remaining medallion, and considering Claire, another civilian in his eyes, was on Vera's side and not accepting having to stay put, it was two against one. Well, two against two, when Marvin also supported Leon about the girls staying back. Claire wasn't having any of that, displaying a strong allergic reaction to being treated as she couldn't handle herself. More firepower for Vera, to be honest. 

It was an easy win when Vera had brought up how he was a walking, talking paradox, they were supposed to work together for survival but he insisted on doing things alone under the guise of protecting them. Leon didn't like being faced with the contradiction, and it felt terrible to put such a bothered expression on his face. 

Vera knew he did it all with good intentions and had no malicious bone in his body, but she was done taking it as an excuse to stay bubbled up in her comfort zone, done taking advantage of the well-meaning good deeds of him. He needed protection just as any other person in this literal state of emergency and she had little to no regard for his duties as a cop, he was a person to her — he was Leon , deserved shielding as any other person did, and she would protect him to the best of her abilities just as he selflessly protected her. 

Vera, not voicing her inner struggles of course,  had told them why she wanted to tag along. To document this disaster because clearly nobody was in the position to, for the sake of making their voices heard — she would get this all down so nobody could refute it and claim the citizens were caught in mass hysteria due to a case of rabies gone wild. Because they would. Umbrella's legal team somehow being able to save the day aside, that's exactly what the government would do to maintain stability in the country. 

Vera gave zero fucks about the wellbeing and the peace of mind of anybody, let them go insane for all she cared, they would remember Raccoon City, nobody would be able to forget it with this and declare it hadn't happened. 

Her primary objective was to grab one of the newly acquired Ricoh digital cameras from the darkroom that old-school officers had shelved as they were fond of their film rolls, and take videos along with pictures — the collection back at home she used for her job would provide better quality, but Marvin, naturally, had had no consideration for something insignificant such as a camera in the middle of a citywide emergency. 

Depending on how many external memory cards were available, the amount of photos and videos she took would change as well because she didn't want the outputs to be low in quality; higher quality took more space, and these models used four AA batteries to go, she hoped there wasn't any lack of them. Vera would have to be meticulous in handling and coordinating this. 

The more pressing problem, according to Leon, was Vera not being armed, only possessing a shovel to protect herself if things ever got chaotic, an alternate option had popped up in her head but she wasn't about to take away Marvin's last lifeline  for selfish reasons, thankful that borrowing his gun wasn't brought up at all. Though, it was back to helplessness all the same in the end. 

This made her a whole passenger princess, being dead weight he had to drag around was additional burden on Leon's shoulders and now Vera was on the same wavelength about getting that keycard to the shotgun so she could have something — or they could get to the STARS office to raid the armory, whichever would work. She had no business putting Leon and Claire in danger because of her. 

Leon had covered the entire first floor of the west wing, made sure any zombie he came across would stay down, and sealed any broken window he could, obsessively thorough if you will — he'd called it perimeter check; but Vera, literally sandwiched between him at point and Claire at her six, was glad for the completionist approach he had, the journey from the west office to the darkroom had taken less than three minutes with no bumps on the road except for the nauseating scenery of gore and blood hidden beneath the blanket of lightless rooms and occasionally lightning-lit dark corridors. 

Things you couldn’t see, you smelled . Vera could close her eyes or turn her head away if she didn’t want to look, but she couldn’t block the putrid, heavy odor of decay and over-spoiled meat out, hanging in the air like thick humidity would in the summer, it stuck to her skin and violated the back of her nose, made her see little shooting stars in her vision out of the reflex of her body wanting to throw up. Getting used to that was never a possibility, even when she had lived with it faintly lingering around the places assessed safe. 

She wasn’t alone in the sheer disgust shivering in her body, Claire had gagged the moment the smell in the west office had hit her, she was definitely stronger than Vera to control the contents of her stomach — all things considered, had her shit together better too, only a sharp intake of breath and a low curse each time she could discern something, but didn't lose herself like Vera had back then. 

Leon and Claire were frustratingly competent, and it was Vera that reacted normally to the world burning down around her, she was sure of it.  

The darkroom was a stark contrast to what laid outside of it, looking like a parallel universe where nothing had gone wrong and it was just a plain, old, boringly barren room save for a metal desk right in the middle of it hosting a typewriter with several files scattered on the surface, what looked to be an evidence locker facing the roller chair in front of it, and tall and narrow highschool type lockers for the benefit of personal uses of the officers directly to the right when entering from the door. The actual darkroom used for the development of photos was just ahead. The cameras she needed had to be stored in the evidence locker.

“We can rest here a bit if you both want to.” Leon checked the typewriter, running his fingertips over the paper still in place, and the sentence that was left incomplete. “The east side is uncharted territory and full of zombies, I don’t know how crowded it is but I know it’s going to be bad. Maybe you would like to, I don’t know, catch your breath before we go out there.” He looked at Vera, whose back was turned to him as she was going through the drawers of the locker in a heated manner. “I still think this is a bad idea.”

She finally found what she was looking for. A Ricoh RDC 300 — a pretty, silvery pink, in fact, shiny and clean as if it was bought yesterday. Perfect. “Don’t worry, don’t worry. I’ll be careful not to get in your way.” 

Vera took a peek at him while she turned the slim and rectangular camera around in her hand. Leon looked half-offended, and half-gloomy at something, she wasn’t sure what. “That’s not what I meant.”

Vera shrugged. “But it’s about that, isn’t it? You’re too nice not to say it, but I know. I’ll be out of the way, in my corner,” she made a walking gesture with her fingers, “Recording my stuff away, and when I get that Lightning Hawk or the shotgun, I’ll pay you back, pinky promise.” 

She was too far away to hook their pinkies, but she held her left one up anyway and wiggled it, a smile twitched at the ends of Leon’s lips, but it was but a weak spark in the cold, and he looked down bashfully. 

“She’ll be safe, we’ll cover her.” One of the locker doors Claire closed made an ear-scratching squeak, worse than nails on chalkboard to Vera, and she grimaced, her face almost folding in on itself. 

Leon hummed, eyes downcast, looking over a random document for some reason like it could be any use to fight the undead, spirits still low. Not knowing what else to say, Vera went back to her own business. Checked the batteries, all in place. Checked for batteries in the drawers, an unopened eight pack of them. Good. Memory cards? Five of them in total. Alright, she could do this. Thank hell’s bells for the officers for being this old school to not have used anything they stocked up on. 

“I’m glad this is a police station and this stuff is just laying about, imagine being stranded with no resources.” Claire was done looking through the other lockers, holding up a Maximum Standard brand box of 9mm parabellum handgun bullets. While reloading her revolver type small five-shot SLS60, she inquired. “Now what? What are we doing?”

“First things first,” Leon put the note down, tapping on it repeatedly with nervous energy. “We have to decide how we’re getting to that statue.” He was directly addressing Claire, she didn’t know what they were working with, and her vote would be the tie-breaker. “The final medallion is basically in something of a makeshift prison on the third floor, all locked away. There is a base for C4 planted on the bars already, we can blow it up. Or we can find something to pry the bars open for one person to slip through.”

“Claire also has to know,” Vera raised her eyebrows all the way to her hairline that they disappeared under her short bangs. “There are monsters here other than the zombies — think of it as overgrown mutated hellhounds — skinless —- blind and rely on sound only. They also have humongous claws and their tongue works like a frog’s. I know, ” she tilted her head and nodded to acknowledge the horror on Claire’s face. “They are much more deadly. An explosion will lure all of them.”

Claire shook her head, taking a second to recover from the unbelievable nature of the information she’d just been spoon-fed. “Then it should be our last resort.” 

“I know a bolt cutter is lying around somewhere.” Vera said to herself, forcing her memory. “I don’t remember where they took it, but it has to be out there. If you haven’t found it already Leon, then it’s definitely around the east wing.” 

Leon didn’t look hopeful. “If it’s a small one, I don’t think—”

“It’s big, like, I can’t carry it on my own big. I see you’re doubting me, but this is what we’ll do, we won’t use it to snap the iron away.” She drew invisible lines in the air and held her index and middle fingers out, pressed flush together, and shoved them between the hypothetical bars, palm facing up, and started opening her fingers, like how a scissor would. “Two of us will hold each handle and we’ll crank as much as we can. I know those things are damaged from the previous explosions already, they’ll give out.”

Leon was more interested in Claire, who had her arms crossed and was covering her face. “Why are you laughing?”

Claire tried so hard to keep it cool. “No, I’m sorry, carry on.”

“I’m missing something here.”

“No,” The younger one coughed to conceal a fit of laughter. “No, it’s fine.”

Vera gave her a knowing look. “Oh, kiddo. Laughing at that , really?”

“Come on, not the kiddo—” Vera was self-satisfied and Claire scoffed at that. “And hey, you’re not entirely innocent here, there’s no way you didn’t say those things like that on purpose.”

Leon looked like he was ready to whine ‘I need an adult’ in about a minute. “ Great , now there’s two of them.”

Vera shook the camera and pointed it at him. “Which means, you are the odd one out.” She clapped her hands like she was calling for a butler just outside the room. “Now, if we’re clear, I would love to continue the previous conversation about lickers before I further forget details.” Taking off her black backpack, she laid it on the desk and began rummaging through it. "Before you guys got here, me and the officers were working on a little project to deal with the problem. When it was for sure that the comms would stay unfixable, I had to rework it to help us survive so at least we had something, the transmitters weren't working so I took it apart.” Her hands held something up like it was her baby. “Made this."

Claire got closer to the metal desk like she had a hard time seeing what it was. "An... An mp3 player?"

"A modified mp3 player," Vera corrected. It was obviously a rather thick thing, two pieces having been wrapped together with vinyl black electrical tape. "What this does is allow me to stream music from any electronic device with a speaker in this place, powered up that is, of course. Works with radio waves. They're limited I know, but it's something."

She could see Claire wanted to take it and play around with it. "That sounds impossible, what the actual hell?"

"I dropped out of engineering school, I know my shit."

"That sounds like we should not be trusting you with this."

“Hey, kiddos who haven’t even chosen a major yet shouldn’t be talking.” 

“How did you even kno—”

"You'll come to see how special I am, eventually. He did." 

Vera leaned her head toward Leon, and he decided that was his turn to talk. "Yeah, real special. I could have used this knowledge before, y'know?"

“Valid question.” Not a question at all, not even a rhetorical one, only an underlying inquiry. Vera clicked her tongue against her teeth, sucking the air in. “I had given up at that point, so it didn’t even cross my mind. My brain got a reminder of it because I, in nature, am selfish and only get to work when it’s about me, so…” Her hands opened to the sides. “Do with that what you will.” 

It bothered her to no end Leon was looking at her that tenderly, like she had read him a poem of her own creation straight from her soul instead of simply being playfully mean. 

“So, uh.” She ignored him, tightness in her chest. “For it to work better, I suggest we fix the power to the east wing. Or the range is limited to the STARS office only I’m afraid.”

“One fuse was missing from the box on the wall, that’s why I had to crawl underneath,” Leon added. “You mean that, right?”

“Yep.”

“Okay,” Claire repeated, more to herself than anybody else, raising one finger for each objective. “Getting missing bolt cutters, some keycard for a locked shotgun, valve for a busted pipe blocking the way to an office, and now the fuse. Which one do we prioritize?”

Leon huffed with primordial fatigue, like he was a retired old race horse that had been put into race one more time against his will.  “Whichever one we stumble on first.”

This was the second time now. Stumbling on the thing he was searching for right after voicing his need for it, Leon wasn’t sure if it was his or Vera's luck. 

The keycard to the weapons locker room was found randomly lying around on a coffee table in an art room of all places, quite literally thrown at their faces as a blessing at the beginning of their descent into the east wing. Circling back to get the shotgun, then, would be lifting a massive weight from his chest. Now Vera didn’t have to be completely defenseless against zombies anymore —

— is what he was thinking, and Vera, stopping filming everything, had gone and quite literally lifted a zombie off him when he'd fallen down, shoving the wooden handle of her shovel between the thing's teeth and making it bite down on the wood instead of Leon's shoulder, the position reminiscent of a dog carrying a branch.

Leon, sprawled on the ground and propped up on his forearms, watched in awe, his jaw slack.

The choked sounds of the zombie snarling and gurgling and crunching of the handle at it harshly biting down scratched his ears, blending into the sounds of Claire's cracked and high-pitched, yet powerful scream-cursing at two other zombies closing in to get the fuck away from her and shooting. 

Vera did say, they will overwhelm you, and you don't want to be alone when it happens. Leon thought he knew what she'd meant by that, and also reckoned he'd manage to slip by and run, convinced in his heart he was better than letting that kind of thing happen. 

They were ambushed leaving the art room and things had fallen into chaos scarily quick to Leon's liking.

He had let his guard down too much. Got too confident. Because Vera had had his back until now, and always informed him of the precinct — he'd given all his weight to lean on her unconsciously. God, this was humiliating . Leon was supposed to be better than this. and yet somehow created the illusion that he was so methodical and in control this far. Fuck, he would have been gone by now if he didn't have Claire and Vera with him. He was bit, it was over in the span of a blink if Vera hadn't hugged a zombie from behind and did what she did. 

The survivalist kicked him in the stomach, left in his mouth the taste of the permanent gunpowder on his father’s hands. Claire's gun has five shots, one more and she has to fall back to reload, get it together, Leon thought, knocking the initial shock out of himself with concentration and springing back on his feet, bracing Matilda to shoot the thing Vera pushed sideways. He faltered and cringed when she swung the shovel down with all her might, smacking it in the head good, causing a loud clang to echo in the hallway with the metal end. He was surprised the zombie's head didn't fall off from how strong the impact was.

Leon finished it off, nodding appreciatively to Vera, he couldn’t see her face from how wild and tangled her hair was because of the struggle, but she somehow saw him doing that and nodded back as well. 

Claire used her last shot.

He was in front of her in a flash, shielding the girl fumbling with the revolver, a couple cartridges fell to the ground as she missed the slots. Leon didn’t waste time getting rid of the remaining zombie in two bullets directly into the noggin, expression tight in focus. The high capacity magazine worked wonders not letting his ammo run out when he had to fire back to back, reload time meant life and death in his situation. 

And then silence fell, broken in by heavy breathing from the three survivors, Leon had Matilda up and aimed still, following the corridor up and down to check if there are any other threats, and Claire crouched to pick up the fallen cartridges, and some of them were under the zombie that fell over, and she pushed the body off with a sound of disgust. 

Vera gave her back to the wall directly next to the art room door and sagged, hands on her knees. "That was a workout."

And a heart attack to Leon. 

"You're good, though." Claire arose, stashing the ones she picked up to the pouch at the back of her belt, dusting off her hands against her jeans afterwards. "Who thought a shovel would work that well?" 

Taking the camera out and taking a few photos, "Not Leon, obviously," Vera joked, and the name got his attention, he stopped looking at the door with the glowing exit sign above it. 

“ Shovel me impressed,” Leon  called, hearing Claire audibly groan at that, and once he was sure they were alone, he walked back, giving both girls a look-over, they didn't seem harmed. "You two okay?"

“Still in one piece,” Claire said, eyes dead at him from the previous joke. Hm. She didn’t like them as much, huh. 

Vera was examining the teeth mark and the splinters on the shovel, distasteful. "Can we get the shotgun already?" 

Leon voiced his thoughts on it for the first time. “You sure you’ll be able to use it?” He’s afraid of getting some kind of backlash for it, but for their survival, it had to be said. “I was thinking of giving Matilda to you and taking it myself. Don’t take it the wrong way, I know you have gun training, as a detective you must have carried a pistol with you — but it’s still not a shotgun.” 

Vera pressed her thick lips together and Leon tensed, thinking it was to hold something back — she appeared formidable when her face was neutral and all signs of friendliness pulled back from her face, it’s the shape of her eyes with the whites underneath the irises and how her eyebrows arch above them that gave her that natural razor-edged look, he’s never noticed it before, but even the smallest frowns made her look grim. “Okay,” she agrees gingerly. “Nothing to do about that, right? Logic is logic.” 

An uncomfortable itch settled out of reach in his chest. This girl had argued with him over the littlest things in the past hours, it didn’t feel good to have her give it up this easily. “Not gonna be a shotgun supremacist? It doesn’t deserve to be abandoned like that.” 

Claire eyed them in confusion, but recognition had sparked up Vera’s expression, and that was enough for him. It made her laugh in the end, the sound persevering against the carnage surrounding them lifting his mood up regardless. 

She pushed her body off the wall, straightening her back, akin to a stretching cat. “I did shoot my shot .”

“No,” Claire’s face twisted in distaste, fed up, she revolved around them to open the door to the waiting room, not stopping for them to follow. “I’m not listening to this corniness. Absolutely not. We are leaving.”

“She just doesn’t get us,” Vera bumped her shoulder to him, cordial, and spoke as if they were sharing a private conversation. “Kids these days.”

“I heard that!”

Leon adapted well and fast, but the change of face to dark and gloomy corridors to the well-lit space of the safety deposit room attacked his senses, the overhead lights were harsh with their potent white accent that washed the walls in an unappealing brightness that bounced back and stabbed his vision, accompanied by the unpleasant buzzing sound that radiated. Several weapon lockers lined each end of the wall, forming a spine to spine section in the middle of the room (he raided) before meeting a grating screen in the back that separated heavier firearms from the rest of the room.

That’s where his shotgun was. Leon’s hands were itching to get a hold of it, and he almost hugged it close when the keycard unlocked the box with a cheery beep. It smelled wonderful, polished and untouched. His shotgun. To think that the happiness of finding hip pouches to carry more could ever be topped. 

What should he name it? 

Leon was so invested that he didn’t notice Vera equipping herself with a shoulder holster next to him, only snapping out of it when she said, “Having a marriage ceremony in your head or something?”

He wanted to shoot something back at that, but the words died in his tongue as he finally detected the black leather framing her shoulders and the harness connecting it across her chest, a bit lower than her clavicles. It strangely looked too good on her, contrasted with the pink of her shoulderless skin-tight turtleneck, sending restless energy to his limbs. 

“Eyes up.”

Huh?

One raised eyebrow from her sent Leon going beet red in the span of a few seconds, about to overheat in the RPD riot uniform. 

The next minutes were a clumsy mess of him handing Matilda to her and mumbling irrelevancies about how she needs to take good care of her and how Matilda is the first gun he bought with his own money to avoid the fact that he was leering at her chest in broad daylight — right to Vera’s face, might he add. He was looking at the holster, but, shit, still. Why did the strap have to be horizontally above—

Stop. 

Why was Claire all the way over the other corner of the room anyway?  

Finally, he said an overdue, “Thank you,” to Vera, attempting to cough the little knot of embarrassment coiling around his Adam’s apple. “For what you did back there. With the, uh… With the shovel, choking the thing and all that.”

Leon knew what it took her to fight like that, he recalled crystal clear how she subtly relaxed every time he reassured, or, rejected her half-baked attempts to help him, she was scared as any other person could get. That’s why Leon admired how resolve and purpose had gifted Vera a certain tenacity, like liquid metal finishing the solidification process. 

To be saved this way by a person who overcame her fear, for him, — to feel protected , when he is the one who should be doing it disappointed and angered Leon towards himself. But the child in him was moved to tears, he hasn’t received shielding like that, ever, other than the officer who saved and overlooked his foster care system process. It made everything worse. There was no time for this kind of thing.  

She swayed her torso left and right, clasping her hands at her waist, a mischievous child at the eve of trick or treat. “So, what’s my reward for saving your life?”

He blinked, sweeped away from negative thoughts, befuddled, and managed to give a blundering smile. “Gratitude from the depths of my heart?”

Vera laughed at him, as she did often without him understanding the reason most of the time, and said, “You’re cute.” 

She tapped his arm as she passed him by, sending shivers to the surrounding area in ripples, walking away to find Claire, he could hear their distant talking, but the place she’s touched was burning despite the clothing material, and he was pretty sure the wires in his brain had gotten rearranged by the woody, sweetish-honeyed, vivid-spicy tone of her breath he caught a whiff off again and he was feverish for absolutely no reason now.

It took a helicopter crashing into the building to get him to stop thinking about it. 

They heard it first, the all-too familiar sound of the rotor blade beating against the air and Leon instantly thought back to the radio of the mangled police officer the very first time he ventured into the building. 

“This is 73-Bird—for rescue. —heading east—River. Touchdown at RPD—minutes.”

This was no military, but yes, someone who could fly them away was coming. 

Claire, Vera and he glanced at each other with the same dazed, questioning way— all three couldn’t believe this was actually happening, it’s good to be true. And it proved to be that way, as well, the sound got closer, closer , more alarming, spiraling frenzied like a fly caught between the curtain and the window, and Leon’s instincts took over, his hands shot forward to catch Claire and Vera by their arms to have a hold on both of them, and pulled them down with him on the ground to for collision, just as the ground below them almost gave out with the impact of being hit. It’s as if RPD was a toy house and the child playing with it was shaking it. The crash stole his hearing away for a little while, and ringing in the ears followed, yet he checked if the girls were fine. Stunned and shaken, yes, they’ll live, he decided. 

Rubble falling and the rustle of dust flying around ebbed in, and Vera took off unexpectedly, he called after her, pulse quickening, but she didn't stop and rounded the corner. The curse he sputtered was panicked. 

Claire and he moved to go after her, but the girl opened the door to the exit to step out in the rain, to get a better look at the crash site, he supposed. He didn’t move away too much to have both of them in his field of vision. Vera, one hand covering her mouth in shock, stood where her knees looked like they were about to give out any second at the end of the corridor rounding another one, and Claire held tight on to the railing of the stairs going down, flashlight directed to the crashed helicopter.   

“Someone’s in there,” Claire yelled at them. “We need to pull him out!”

Leon knew the guy is dead, the way he’s slumped over, shoulders not rising and falling to indicate any breathing — Claire didn’t see it, but he did. There’s no way anyone would make it out of that kind of crash alive. 

As if it’s on cue, everything caught on fire, the orange glow washed over Vera as she took a couple steps backwards. Leon’s heart dropped to his stomach, he stretched an arm out to her to beckon Vera back to their side. “Vera, it’s going to explode any minute, come here!” 

“Hold on,” she said, taking the camera out and flipping the screen up, fingers shaking as she pressed a button, not a fan of what she was doing in the slightest. “Let me get this on footage…”

“Don’t get too close, it’s dangerous,” Leon warned. 

Vera didn’t take much, and jogged back to step out outside just beside Claire to film it from another angle. “I don’t know how war photographers do this,” she lamented, and Leon understood then, not being able to save the pilot and now having to film the metal cage on fire containing his corpse was eating at her. “I feel like shit.”

“You can stop any time, you know?” Claire reached out gently. 

“I don’t have the luxury to stop,” Vera sighed, snapping the camera shut, the rain on her doubled the melancholy dripping from her voice, but she was stern with herself. Claire put a hand on her shoulder and patted understandingly, and Vera’s face turned down to look down at the sight. 

Leon only saw her profile from where he was standing, she was bitter, but at least Claire was sharing it with her. They all stood in silence, paying respects to the passed pilot. 

There’s one thing, though. What made the helicopter spiral out of control was Chinese water drop torture to Leon’s brain — he couldn’t have been infected and the possibility that it was hit is a whole other can of worms, it’s all a giant hand squeezing Leon from his ribcage and not allowing him to breathe to the full capacity. Leon sensed a threat, but couldn’t explain why. 

He had to forget about it for now, because Claire dangled half her body down the railing. “Is that the bolt cutters we are searching for?”

Vera leaned to find what Claire’s looking at, the tops of her turtleneck a darker pink already because of the rain. “Oh shit, it is. Who left it lying around on a barrel?” 

She attempted to skip down the stairs but Leon caught her from the elbow, gently pulling her behind his back, the ends of his fingers not covered by the glove warmed up — he’d done that without thinking and panicked that he moved Vera like that, he could have just told her to stop and that she shouldn’t rush into places and that he was point, damn it. She also had Matilda now, he needed to trust her more. 

Leon’s face heated up, but he didn't want to dwell on it, taking the W-870 out (he was stuck between Wendy and Willa for the name), going down ahead of her with steady steps carefully — observing and listening. She asked who could have left it there and it had given him the idea that a zombie might be waiting for them, concealed by the stairs. 

He was right. Snarling and hissing became audible the more he descended, but there was also metal furiously clanging against metal. The zombie had been handcuffed to the railing, a final attempt by the officer it used to be, no doubt. Leon puts it out of his misery, and gives the two the signal to come down.  

Vera was also right, the bolt cutter was bulky and nearly half her height. While she could barely lift it, Claire took it with no difficulty, cutting the chains around the door’s handle  — they at long last had secured the way out of here, maybe he was ahead of himself when they didn’t have the medallion yet but Leon now believed they really could pry open the bars with this and get to the statue. 

It’s done. 

They circled back to the place where Officer Edward got teared in two, and a wave of nausea went up Leon’s esophagus at remembering all the blood and the sheer mass of bowels, and the odor, god, the odor.  

“We should go back from where we came,” Vera interrupted the fight in Leon to let the stomach acid stay in its place. “The shutter at the end of this road is closed, remember?”

Leon needed to smell some mint or chew gum or something, his insides were feeling like they were moving the more he remembered Officer Edward. He forced himself to think—something else. “I, uh…” He swallowed, but there was no spit in his mouth, it all evaporated. “There was another door around this level we could open with the bolt cutters.”

Vera trailed the path to where he was looking with her own eyes. Her face fell. “Ah,” she mumbled. 

Claire didn’t let them fall into awkward silence, as they had guests, she aimed her revolver and started firing at the little group of zombies that were slowly heading toward them. “Heads up, guys.”

Vera had her camera ready before Matilda, and filmed a little tidbit first as Leon also joined the fight. When she was done and satisfied, she took Matilda out. “Finally I get to test this pretty girl. Let’s see how sharp you are.” 

Leon was a classic weaver stance user, that was the most common way the police used a handgun, and he also used the Harries technique to go along with it as well. Vera opted for one-handed shooting, and did something he hadn’t really seen before —  curling her non-shooting hand into a fist and bringing it up to her body with the palm facing her, the arm to her hip level, and holding it close to the chest, exactly like the classic karate punch. She knew what she was doing. One-handed shooting was something that was mastered after having basic training. 

She was a good shot as well, it shouldn’t have been this surprising to Leon, the girl was something of a gunsmith, and her father was a policeman — if she hadn’t picked it up herself Lt. Branagh must have taught her. And with her added to the firepower, they’d cleared out the zombies pretty quickly, all things considered.

“This is supposed to be the east office,” Vera said. 

Claire got rid of the chains once more. “They must have shut it down like this for a reason.”

Leon cocked the shotgun. “I’m hearing zombies inside, get ready. ”

He didn’t expect Claire kicking the door open. Leon was hoping for a sneakier approach such as simply twisting the knob, as one did when entering a room, but Claire obviously thought differently. The sound woke otherwise dead and harmless looking zombies. Leon didn’t think this was planned and calculated by Claire, but it was the right move nevertheless, they got rid of them pretty fast. The shotgun was incredibly effective, one shot was enough to put one down for good. 

Upon exploration, they found the large capacity fuse to be used on the shutter at the end of the hallway to gain access to the main hall, and the valve handle to stop the steam in the men's locker room that would allow them a way into the west side of the place. Additionally, he’d helped himself to a flash grenade and hooked it to his Sam Browne, while Vera was more interested in a green herb and some gunpowder. 

She got a bit moody, stuffing the things she got in her backpack. “This is going too smoothly and I’m worried now.”

“You’re gonna jinx it,” Claire hushed her.

 

She jinxed it. 

In hindsight, Leon should have been suspicious about the lack of activity from the infamous lickers Vera couldn’t stop talking about. In her own words, they were monsters compared to the zombie mainstream. 

She’d even built a whole mechanism around these things — wonder when that had become customary to Leon and not some insane work of wonder that should have blown his mine just as it did Claire’s? Molding himself to fit in the best shape for survival had taken away his sense of normalcy, the questioning of the weird , he got used to anything uncannily pronto. Claire did that enough to fill his shoes at the moment, and Leon kept the wanting to cross the bridge when he got there mindset moving for their sake. He hadn’t forgotten about the lickers, but wasn’t hyperfocused on it either, there were other immediate objectives that required his priority. 

It went down like this: 

Things were smooth sailing after clearing out the east office, Leon wanted to cover the whole ground because if they were to open the shutter, Lt. Branagh would be out in the open to any zombie coming from the east side, so they had done that instead of avoiding zombies for the sake of not wasting any ammo. 

One pitch stop to drop the herbs they had gathered for Lt Branagh later, it was time to make for the STARS office and stock on all the gear they could before they got the hell out of the station for good, they would be carrying the lieutenant around and moving a lot slower to accommodate him — it was essential to keep moving to not be caught by zombies, so more firepower had to fill in for the lack of speed. 

The valve had fit perfectly to close the steam off, easy to crank, too. The sitting dead body on the built-in bench right in front of them when they passed the blown wall to the women’s locker room slumped onwards and fell, but wasn’t a zombie. 

Things started going south the moment they stepped into the west hallway of the second floor. Leon was immediately attacked with the whistling and whooshing of a strong wind accompanied by the persistent pitter pattering of rain — a window was shattered, and shattered was an understatement , it was nearly gone, made more sinister by the end of the corridor obscured by shadows. Something was wrong. The hair at the back of Leon’s neck stood up as a series of chills went down his spine. His immediate train of thought made a sharp turn to, “What did that?” 

He motioned for the girls to stand behind him, brow crinkled with distress, unusually quiet about it. If one of them asked why, he didn’t have any reason other than something being off. 

He scanned the area posthaste, the door opened to a little foyer before the corridor started directly continuing ahead to the right. To his left in the bottom corner were a lot of stacked furniture varying from barrels to chairs and a platform ladder, and a little crevice formed between them and the coffee machine next to it. The automat didn’t exactly fit to the corner, because a coffee table took space directly flush to the leather couch of the other wall, but still, a person could stand in the small cranny left available in the curve. 

The couch in the corridor had some 12-gauge shotgun shells and he got them slowly, cocking the barrel open and reloading the weapon. Vera came up to him while Claire checked out the coffee machine, but he tapped his lips with an index finger, wordlessly telling her to stay quiet, eyebrows hanging low on his face. She, thankfully, got the hint, and shook her head as if to ask what’s wrong, and with the help of the light of his flashlight bouncing off the wall, he could see the concerned glimmer in her silver eyes.  

He heard tapping. They both did. 

It sounded like a dog with untrimmed nails walking on a laminate floor, except, the direction was off , it came from above. 

Leon, ever so slowly, lifted his flashlight up — it revealed something stuck to the ceiling. At first glance, a fleshy blob. 

He didn’t get to reconsider as the thing screeched; shrill, inhuman, feral. 

Vera’s exhale stuttered and his body thought faster than his brain did, hooking an arm around her neck and cupping a hand on her mouth before it could transform into an audible hiccup, that way, she was pulled flush against the nook that formed between the side of his body and his arm, one would think they were giving each other half-hugs to pose for a picture. 

Her shaky warm breath was on the exposed part of his fingers and tickled his skin, but Leon couldn’t check on her. He was frozen in place as an overly thick lasso looking limb shot out from it, and grabbed the body lying directly before the broken window. Then the crunching came. Worse than a dog eating bones. 

— and the squish of something wet and soft and gummy, followed by liquid pouring on the ground with each bite. 

What the fuck. What the fuck. 

Vera wasn’t exaggerating. She wasn’t exaggerating at all. This thing had the form of a humanoid, but not the appearance — flayed off skin, exposed skeleton and glistening bloodied muscles straight from an anatomy class, the whole brain exposed with no sign of scalp anywhere with pulsating veins all around… And the mouth, all protruding, ravening sharp fangs, all fangs , munching on skin and bones as if it was buttered toast. It clung to the ceiling with all fours like a bat would, four skeletal claws nailed into the concrete, not one predator in the wild had anything of the sort, it was something out of a horror movie. 

And it was too close. 

He looked at Claire, she was a deer in the headlights in front of the machine, the flashlight on the thing had made it visible to her as well. Leon, yet again, brought an index finger to his lips, miming her to move to the little crevice between the coffee table and the automat, overly exaggerating his lip movement to spell, “Slowly.”

She did without sound, her revolver was out and ready, her back to the corner, unblinking wide eyes not leaving the licker even for one second. 

Leon tried to even and quiet his breathing, and not let the shaking get the better of him. Good, good . Now to back off with Vera. 

His thumb tapped her on the cheek to get her attention, and he dropped it off her face when she met his eyes to point at the alcove between the stacked furniture and the coffee machine. He had her move behind him, his back to her front as they synchronized their steps to retreat —

— Further and further… 

As the licker moved with them, too, stalking closer to them, trilling and moving its head around. 

His fingertips found the smooth handle of the shotgun strapped to his back, gripping it but not taking it out yet, afraid the tiniest rustle would get that thing’s attention. Every little creak instantaneously was a thousand times louder to his ears — like he was the licker now, time crawling to a slow-down as the possibilities unfurled just before his eyes.

He stopped in his tracks the moment heard the crinkle of Vera’s backpack pushing against the wall, but still his back was pressing against Vera wary and guarding enough for her breathing to fan the back of his neck like he could somehow make her disappear. His heart beat furiously, blood racing to the tips of his fingers in hot waves that caused everything else to pulse, including the corners of his vision.

Vera’s breathing got more shallow and rapid as the licker closed in on them, he was sensing some movement from her behind him and— and if it reached its tongue out, it would be able to brush the top of Leon’s head when —

Killing Time by Metallica?

Rock music had begun to blast with the strength of a thousand suns somewhere around the corridor… The STARS office! 

It was so loud that the licker’s scream didn’t even reach his ears as it scrambled towards the source of the music, away from them at last, but he did hear Vera whisper, “Oh thank fuck.” 

Leon stiffened when her falling head collided with the naked skin of his nape, the hair on her brow tickling him. She had literally melted against him, oh god. 

Warm air from her panting got under his uniform, and glided straight down his bare back, sending pleasant surges of goosebumps all over his heating body. He couldn’t control the treacherous shudder, and the change of his heart’s pace, getting appalled at himself right after, what kind of person would feel that certain way when seconds ago they were about to—

That thought slipped from his hands like a balloon taking off when Vera sharply pulled back from him upon noticing Leon doing that, and said, “Shit, sorry.” 

The husky, low, yet feminine voice right behind his ear didn’t help. Not in the slightest. 

But Claire did. She snapped him out of it, scream-whispering, “What the fuck do we do,” but it wasn’t enough to overcome the intensity of the rock music and call the licker back to them, fortunately.

He took a couple steps forward to give Vera (himself) more room to breathe, he was on fire right now because of the threat of the licker , not for anything else, he told himself — assured so. “I’m gonna shoot that son of a bitch down.”

The accumulated energy had to go somewhere. 

Vera gripped the mp3 player tighter. “Leon, those things are tough—”

“Their brains are right in the open, yeah, it may be tough for someone who doesn’t know where to aim, but I got this.” He finally pulled the W-870 out. “I also have a shotgun.”

A couple stressful moments of frenzy once discovering that thing to be a jumper later, powered up by Killing Time to oddly gas him up, Leon had it over with, proving his hypothesis about the exposed brains to be right with no injury coming out of the fight. It was a good thing he’d told both of them to stay behind, because with the rate that licker trashed around to land a hit on him, one of them was bound to become collateral damage and he did not want to think about that — firing a shotgun in a narrow space was also an immediate no with crowding around him. 

Vera was just around the corner filming the whole thing, and the tingling at his nape didn’t fade away the whole time, but  at last, the STARS office.

Leon had to admit this place was the most pleasant one to be in compared to everywhere else, at least nobody had died and reanimated here. The navy blue walls and the classic wood wainscoting were clean and remarkably shiny, the trophies and pinboards adorning every wall were neat and tidy; though moving boxes, scattered papers all around the back-to-back wooden work desks and out of place cream rolling chairs made it seem like a whole hurricane had passed through the room — it just wasn’t the zombie kind. 

The office had four workstations, two of which were split desks that could accommodate two persons each, for a total of six desks. What seemed to be the captain's desk also was tucked away within a tiny private office to the left as they entered through the door. The armory, housing a variety of superior weaponry compared to the security deposit room, was positioned on the left side of the office, while dispatch radio equipment was located on the right side. It clearly had been tampered with and panels were left open with a toolbox lying around on the ground, making it clear this was Vera’s doing as her statement was that she had been working on getting the comms up and running before.

“Oh my god,” Claire pushed through, making a beeline for something that had gotten her attention. “That belongs to Chris!”

She was referring to the brown version of the same Made in Heaven leather jacket of hers hanging from the wall directly under some trophies, one of them reading “Marksman Contest Winner: Chris Redfield”. Rushing there and shoving the chairs away, she gripped the shoulders and the hems of it lovingly, and accidentally kicked the electric guitar leaning away from the wall. 

Hearing the sound it made, Vera teases Claire from the computer desk she’d immediately made herself home in. “Careful with that! Man, kids these days.”

Leon was busy looking over the desks and getting little tidbits about the people they belonged to, he raised his head to smile at Claire scoffing at that. 

He asked, “What are you up to?” 

“Getting this armory open,” she responded absentmindedly, clacking away at the keyboard. Some loading bars and code at the half of the screen showed up and flowed down, but he didn't really understand any of it. Hacker too? Literally who was this girl? “Normally this requires a USB dongle key exclusive to STARS members only, but we can’t be bothered to start a manhunt for that. I’m brute forcing my way in. It’s gonna take a sec, so make yourselves comfortable.” 

Claire already had, Leon assumed she’d found her brother’s desk and it was why she had taken a seat on the chair and looked through the drawers and the computer. 

Leon didn’t let the question stay inside to crawl around like a worm later. “How do you have such a variety of skills?” 

“I was a restless kid,” was her explanation, with the flattest tone ever. “Wanted to do a lot, interested in a lot, got bored too quickly so moved a lot. My dad indulged me.”

“That can’t be it.”

“I also am a genius, so that helped.”

Claire thought she was kidding, so she laughed at it — Vera had told them she dropped out of college after all, but Leon was ready to believe what she was saying, there was no other explanation for the things he’d seen she was capable of. “Genius how?”

“Finished K-19 at around twelve kinda genius.” Vera began to count, swaying left to right with each bullet point while she still worked on cracking the armory open. “Took an apprenticeship on gunsmithing for shits and giggles kinda genius. Entered Raccoon City University at fifteen kinda genius. Used to make robots kinda genius—”

Eyes wide as plates, he coughed. “Okay, I get it.”

He sort of had that figured out, but damn. How had he come across Inspector Gadget over here in the entire city during the zombie apocalypse? 

She was too good to be real, what the hell?

Leon really had spent all of the luck he would have in his life for this very encounter: — Vera would fix the combat knife whenever it was at the brink of breaking, watch his back for enemies using the security cameras, had the maintenance of Matilda going until she had joined him and Claire for the journey but even then she was handling the making of ammo with gunpowder that the other two didn’t have it down quite yet — and now bypassing a security system because she didn’t want to go look for a key? 

He was having a hard time accepting a person like this could exist and he couldn’t hide it from seeping out to his exterior, though it was more of a baffled admiration than anything. 

“And, açıl susam açıl.” There was a particularly strong keystroke that elicited a beep from the armory, the grated door sliding open. She spinned in the chair to face them, legs crossed and hands meeting each other in devious pride under her chin, striking a villain pose. “Can hack my way through kinda genius.” She stared Claire down, who had slowly risen out of the chair in disbelief, and gestured to the opened area with a hospitable hand. “Ladies first.”

Ladies first, huh, so much for the chivalry. 

Because they had started to bicker in the shake of a lamb’s tail over the 24-round capacity .380 ACP submachine gun and the Lightning Hawk, a 7-round capacity .50 AE MAG like two girls fighting over a guy in one of those cheesy soap operas. 

Leon wasn’t even given a choice as he apparently had the shotgun and should be content with that. 

In the end, Vera had ended up with the Lightning Hawk, because the magnum used rare MAG ammo, which she knew how to make with gunpowder, and the submachine gun used standard cartridges that would be more useful in Claire’s hands as — the only setback about the magnum, Vera said, was that it was too loud and had a lengthy focus time, mumbling something about how a gun shop had the perfect suppressor for it and how sweet it would be to go get that.  

She tried to return Matilda back to him, but he let her keep it, advising to conserve the magnum in case another one of those lickers popped up somewhere, Leon was pretty sure it was more effective and powerful than the shotgun and would one-shot them on the spot. 

He got a clove as thanks in return for that, another mystery solved as to why she smelled nice, and before he could dwell on it, they were moving again, this time, for the final destination. 

The question "What happened here?" from Claire, after seeing the demolished state of the west storage room got Vera wound tighter than wire past its breaking point, posture an iron rod as she stalked behind them, a drag in her steps transitioning into fast and on the border of stomping, it doesn't escape Leon. It appeared like he's not paying any attention, but really, his eye was on her. That thing about Vera blatantly avoiding the subject and lying after instigating she knew exactly what happened resurfaced from the back rooms he'd temporarily forced it into. 

Something about the way she gripped the handle of the bolt cutter with Claire whilst Leon grabbed the other screamed she wanted to take it and bash it everywhere she could, facial features so controlled that it was on the verge of breaking to reveal something. A layer here was invisible to them, no, they were prohibited from entry. 

For what reason, Leon could only imagine, but not even the success of prying the bars open when it was an incredible victory could get her to express genuine happiness, she was somewhere else distant, dissociating as Claire had exclaimed a vindictively excited, "Yes!", throwing the bolt cutter away as if it was a mic drop. Only a shadow of a smile presented itself on Vera, but it was still short-lived, instead, she separated from her backpack and slipped in to reach the other side, not even sparing a brief look at the scattered bodies to her right, glowering at the statue instead. 

"Notebook?" 

Leon handed what she wanted to her, unfortunately the space was too small for him to force his way through, Claire and Vera did fit, though. He was stuck gripping the bars like a prisoner longing for the outside while they were obscured by the gigantic woman statue, only the ticking sound of the puzzle turning was audible, but compared to the other ones, something similar to a door's rusty hinges was there.

Someone was frantically flipping through the puzzle, and it was Vera. The flashlight was being moved around. "Fucking hell, everything's so dirty, I can't see shit. Do you think that's the girl?"

"I only know the middle one is definitely the bow and arrow, see this poking out here?"

"Yeah, that's fixed, then. Good eye, kiddo. I'm gonna go ahead and assume this is the head and hope for the best." A tongue clicking by Vera. "Nobody thought to clean this up? That ass is a fan of these statues, why'd he leave this one unattended?"

Leon perked up. She meant Chief Irons — had referred to him as an art fanatic before. 

"Who?" 

"The chief," she said, not hiding it. "He's obsessed with his art collection, you'd think he would send someone to keep this one clean. Look at the state of it."

"Yeah, with all this gunk... I don't know, I'm totally lost on the serpent."

"Serpent?" She let out a scandalized gasp. "Fancy word. Smart for a kid."

Claire laughed light-heartedly. "Can you stop with that?"

Leon was feeling left out here.

"Maybe when you're in your thirties. And that's a strong maybe." 

"Hey, uh," He called in the end. "What's taking so long?

"The puzzle's all rusted so we can't really see the symbols," Claire explained. 

In Vera's sigh existed the inconsolable anger fit of a child. "Process of elimination it is."

Lt. Branagh was — he wasn’t awake. No movement. 

He used to be restless, twitching and groaning, hissing with the pain of his injury, not able to fall asleep and only drifting off into a torturous cycle of half-consciousness thanks to whatever the herbs were doing. The sight of him motionless dropped into his stomach, leaden and tight, every muscle in his body tensing up like overly tuned violin strings. His automatic reaction was to seek Vera, whom he couldn’t even witness the reaction of, he’d frozen up while she had run ahead to get to her father’s side. 

Claire, making it so Vera couldn’t hear, trailed off into a wobbly, “Is he—”

“I don’t know,” he murmured, hands fisted at his sides, not able to avert his eyes from the sight of how despairing and urgent Vera was calling for the man to wake up, hands all over his shoulders, torso and body, checking for anything. “Let’s get this open.”

“Leave it to me,” Claire affirmed, taking the final medallion from him hurriedly. “Go check on them, she’s panicking.”

“Got it.”

He was sicker — much, much sicker, the color of his complexion was nearly all ashen, and the blood had blackened into a darker color to suggest the injury was probably arterial, but Leon couldn't fathom how, as the place he was harmed wasn't near any major arteries. A horrible, terrible, omination filled his lungs with water, a possibility so destructive that even considering it was something his brain was protecting him from by shutting that down immediately. 

Still, no matter. He was still breathing, he was alive. Leon wasn’t about to abandon this man to die and he certainly wasn’t going to leave a daughter fatherless. He would carry the lieutenant on his back all the way outside the city if he had to. 

Leon refused this portrait of tragedy, he wasn’t going to let down the people he was to protect. 

Grinding and scraping rising from the friction between stone and metal rose from where Claire had gone, and Leon momentarily glanced behind to see the goddess statue's platform rolling down and away, unveiling an elegant iron gate and darkness beyond where only heavy specks of dust danced around. 

“I’m waking him,” Vera swallowed thickly, her hand on Lt. Branagh’s shoulder, a pleading shine to her eyes that she probably wasn’t aware was there. She looked so small in that moment, not at all the confident young woman she was moments ago, crouched between the crate and the couch. “We gotta go.”

The gentle approach wasn’t working from what Leon had seen. Had he lost that much blood? 

So he puffed out his chest and stepped forward to reach out and shake him awake, voice loud and determined. “Lieutenant Branagh! Marvin! It’s time to go!”

The strength and speed which the man shot out from his place of rest, and the snarl he hissed caused both of them to recoil back — the growl, that growl, Leon knew. 

He knew , but he couldn’t believe it. This wasn’t happening, it couldn’t be.  

“Hey, Marvin…” He raised his hands like he was approaching a feral animal, Vera was still very much in shock. “We need to get you to help right now.”

Lt. Branagh’s glassy, unseeing eyes found Vera — scared and startled, what he saw snapped him out of whatever he was going through, it truly woke him up, and Leon thought the man was about to collapse any minute, panting ragged and shaky, full on whimpering in agony.

“Dad,” Vera exhaled, touching his knee, and the lieutenant flinched away, slumping sideways and away. “Dad,” she tried again, trying not to let the hurt into her voice, but her face told otherwise, Lt. Branagh couldn’t see because he wasn’t looking, but Leon could. “We got the passageway open, let’s get going, c’mon.”

That weak voice did some shit to him that hurt Leon on a physical level; he had to clench his eyes shut as if a hit was coming his way and inhaled deeply — get it together, he ordered himself. 

A sudden shift in his demeanor happened and the snakes of anxiety that something bad was going to happen spread under Leon’s skin. This was a big whiplash. “Fine.” It was torture to see him pry himself off the couch, refusing to be helped when Vera reached out. “Lead the way.” 

Vera also didn’t understand, but wanted to hold him anyway. “Okay… Hold on to me—”

He snatched his arm away from her, looking forward directly at something, hawk-focused, features twisted grim. “Let the goddamn way, go.”

Claire, watching everything without withholding the pity, looked away and went down the stairs, guided by her flashlight, when she knew for sure all of them were following her. When Leon looked down to see how the mechanism had been reworked to open up, he noticed the three medallions were on the three steps each, leading to the stairs going underground; they looked like normal fancy decorations from this angle.  

Claire’s own flashlight had revealed a small bunker with a table and a strange replica of the police station on it. And when she took the final step down, motion-sensor yellow tinted lights flared above, filling the space with a soft, welcoming brightness. Deeming it to be safe, Leon also descended the stairs, but only one pair of footsteps followed.

Only one pair of footsteps. 

Stone and metal grinding shook the walls around them, and he whirled behind to see before the platform of the goddess mechanism boxed them in that Lt. Branagh had taken out all the medallions—

and that he was still in the station, separating himself from them. 

The guttural shout Vera let out before she lunged for the now wall-covered door would haunt him for the rest of his days.

tagging: @ocappreciationtag @shadowsofrose

#leon kennedy x oc #leon s kennedy x oc #leon s. kennedy x oc #resident evil oc #leon kennedy #story: gravedigger #era: no time to die #oc: vera kaplan #leon s kennedy #leon s. kennedy #shai's writings #ocappreciation #allaboutocs

[prismatic-souls]

This is it, The last part of this tale, (At least, The last part which I shall prompt from you, You have creative freedom with this as long as I am credited)

_________________________________________

It was decades before these terrible kidnappings had happened, Before the wyrm had even came to this place,

A child lay sleeping in his bed, Which the moths had constructed for him, His fur was a greyish white and his four proud horns were rare in moths.

he awoke to a strange black substance invading his room, It looked so scary!

"Mommy, Daddy!*

He cried, But neither could hear.

He was viciously torn apart

Even a hundred years later, The radiance was still grieving

Oooh! I love this one! Thank you so so much wyrms-tale! Your prompts usually give me a fun thing to do when I have time!

---

The Moth tribe was always friendly, hardly ever engaging in anything that could be seen as combat. They were diplomatic, which their god, the Radiance, had been described as on many occasions. She was a god that was as loyal to her followers as they were to her, so, she trusted the most loyal to protect her child. The child's parents, both gods, could not care for them alone, as they had their duties to tend to. Although they seemed to meet the child in the Dream World, where they were able to see how their child was growing up, and to allow them to play, show things they learned, and talk.

Their unique features labeled them as the Radiance's child, the four horns were an almost completely unique feature. Two horns were already rare on moth children, let alone four.

Tragically, they were stolen away in the night. The firstborn child of the Radiance, gone. Not a trace of who took them left save for void that had trailed down the walls, puddled on the floor, like something made of liquid void took the child.

-

As the child lay in bed that night, staring at the ceiling above. Near-opaque glass held lumaflies that made it look like the stars on the surface. Although they winked out of existence as a opaque darkness flooded the room through a single point in the wall. The child was terrified, the shadow twisted and warped, not a single source of light was to be found in the room where it was.

The shadow grew, and the child felt the fear of someone watching them. Something in the shadow must be watching them. Paralyzed in fear the child could only watch as it covered the room, leaving only their bed and them untouched. The darkness was vast, yet so very claustrophobic. They couldn't see. They felt like they were being suffocated by the shadow, but they knew that they could breathe.

Voices whispered around them and they sat up to try and get up. To run, get anywhere but their room. The moment their feet were nearly on the ground, they hesitated. Moving back into the center of the bed, they curled up into a ball, their wings folding around them, and their knees tucked to their chest.

Crying they begged for someone to come find them, they shouted the names of their caretakers, but nobody came. They sat, quietly whispering for their mother to take them away, despite knowing she couldn't.

When the moths awoke, the child was gone. They conveyed the message to the Radiance, and mourned her loss with her. No matter how hard the Radiance would search, she could never find the child again. Her first, and only child, gone.

There was never a trace of the perpetrator of the act, she would never know if her child was okay. She would never know if her child still lived. Oh, she had her suspicions about who took them, but she would not do anything until she could confirm.

Time flies by when one has many a duty to attend to, and slowly, but surely, she forgot about what happened. She forgot her child. Her moths never brought it up, as to avoid the distress in realizing that she forgot her own child.

The realization was inevitable.

---

I wasn't sure how to carry this one out, so I did a split "perspective" thing. One is more like a storyteller, retelling the story, and the other is more of a third person pov of what happened that night.

Thank you so much wyrms-tale, I enjoyed working on prompts from the Firstborn AU that you're working on. I hope I was able to give you some inspiration for it.

For the last line I originally planned to pair it with another line, but I like the implications of it, it leaves it up to whoever reads it. It's always been something I've been a fan of. I like the mystery and interpretation of what happened.

[raineyes1104]

To See You Again: Chapter 2

Astraea was hungry yet again. But what else was new? She hadn't been fed a proper meal in... Gods, how long had it been by now? It felt like an eternity... Astarion was most likely long gone by now. That, or he had forgotten about her. She sighed, gazing up at the ceiling of her cell. She shouldn't think like that. Surely, he was still alive... Vampire lords weren't one to kill their spawn, that much she knew. As much as Vorstra loved to torment her, she always kept Astraea alive.

"Astarion... Where are you now...?" She mumbled weakly to herself. She barely had the strength to stand anymore. She was thin as a rail, her ribs jutting out and her stomach caved in from centuries of malnourishment. Astarion's face was starting to become a blurry memory, and yet she clung to that memory like a moth clings to candlelight. If she forgot about him, just as she had forgotten the faces of her family, she would truly be broken beyond repair. She tensed up as she heard footsteps approaching. Vorstra. That couldn't be anything good.

"Rise and shine, my pet~! It's a beautiful new night! And since you've been behaving so well, I thought I'd gift you with some food!" She laughed cruelly, tossing a dead, putrid rat through the bars. "Eat up, now... We want to keep you alive, don't we~?"

Astraea gagged at the stench of the rotting rat. No way in hell did she want to eat it, but she couldn't exactly afford to refuse. With a wave of disgust rolling over her, she sank her fangs into the carcass and began to drink. The blood tasted like bile, but she knew how desperately she needed it. After she had drained the rat of its filthy blood, she began to tear apart its flesh, consuming it quickly as her stomach churned.

Don't throw up, don't throw up, don't throw up... She thought to herself, clutching her stomach. "Th-Thank you, mistress..." She mumbled pitifully.

"Good girl..." Vorstra purred, entering the cell, and striding over to her, tracing her fingers along Astraea's jawline. "You're such a filthy, pathetic little thing... And yet I favor you, all the same."

"If you call this treatment your favor, then I hesitate to think of what you do to the rest of your spawn..." Astraea spat, squirming. "Get your disgusting hands off of me."

"Now, now, that's no way to talk to your owner, pet." Vorstra tsked, slapping Astraea hard across the cheek. "My little pupster needs to be taught some manners!"

"Do your worst. I can endure it..." Astraea snarled, glaring defiantly up at her captor. Even as she said this, her body trembled with fear, giving her away. As much as she hated to admit it, Vorstra terrified her. She knew that in her current state, she wouldn't stand a chance at defeating Vorstra in a fight. Perhaps that was the exact reason Vorstra kept her on the brink of death. She let out a yelp as Vorstra kicked her in the gut, feeling a sickening snap as one of her frail ribs cracked. She hissed in air through her teeth, glowering up at her captor. "A-Astarion will come... He'll get me out of here."

"Do you realize how long you've been saying that, my dear~?" Vorstra chuckled darkly, planting her heel on Astraea's throat as she choked. "Two hundred years, now you've been spouting that nonsense. And yet... Your prince is nowhere to be seen. He hasn't even attempted to breach my castle, which means he must've forgotten all about you."

"No!" Astraea let out a guttural roar, struggling. "You're wrong! He would never give up on me! Th-There must be a reason why he hasn't come yet!"

"Be that as it may, the fact of the matter remains. He still hasn't come for you, nor will he ever come for you. Just face it, pet. You're mine to play with, for all eternity..." Vorstra taunted her, grinding her heel into Astraea's throat.

Astraea was too weak to put up a fight. And she knew that if she stayed conscious, she would only have to live through the pain Vorstra would inflict upon her. So, with a sigh, she let herself sink into the blanket of darkness that came up to envelop her.

At least, in her dreams, she could be with her beloved again.

#baldur's gate 3 #astarion #tav #fanfiction #to see you again

[lilyandthetulips]

December

It is December and we must be brave - Natalie Diaz

It’s the 1st and brave is easier said than done, so you have to sit in the sun and pull in a breath and hold it there because that’s all you can really do right now (doesn’t it feel so good? That air? I forgot I could do this) And you need to explain, again, to someone else that it didn’t work out and yes it was their loss and yes the right person will come when you least expect it and yes I am so young and hot and everything will be okay. So I write that on a sticky note and tape it on my mirror in the hopes it will stick (ha!) and it does for the times I’m yelling Bikini kill in my car, but not for the times that Bob Dylan comes on shuffle and I remember a certain way their shoulders slumped when they sat on the edge of the bed. 

Summer comes hot and heavy and thick, sliding down my back, the grass feels too warm between my toes, too green, too squishy. Remember spring? Remember how you named it after them? But it’s December Lil, not spring, and you must be brave. Tread lightly in the yard, deathly afraid of Christmas beetles and dog shit bombs, throw a slobbery tennis ball and ask Maple what she’s doing over and over and over even though you know she can’t answer because she’s a dog. Escape to the valley, find comfort at night, let the TV static bug noises hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm let the fence out back give way to the tangled trail between Queensland and New South Wales. Nothing but bush and mountain ranges and tall, stiff grass and snakes and rabbits and kookaburras and yowies and moths that think it’s funny to fly at your face. The dogs tap tap tap behind you as you go to make tea. You stand in the door frame and sigh and sip and yell oi! When someone pipes up behind you. Imagine ducking under the barbed wire with Cella and Maple in tow and running through the dry bushes and making friends with a yowie, tall and hairy and shy, and making feral howling noises and never thinking about spring again. I bet yowies don’t care about Bob Dylan.

I fear my phone that disgusting little brick of cells and wires and fingerprints full of things I don’t want to see or hear, hateful brick! I saw something just now in its evil little face and I don’t want to eat anymore. I should anyway. Can I please have a six-inch white with classic chicken not toasted thanks no cheese thankyou can I please have lettuce spinach carrot and onion just mayo please yeah salt and pepper thanks yes please I will take my free cookie yeah it’s been a busy shift lots of messy cunts leaving clothes in the fitting rooms what about you? Did you know that 37 of Bob Dylan’s songs have a woman’s name in the title?

I am unmoored. Intellectualise the need for attachment all you want but it will still be there, a tiny stone at the bottom of your stomach, rattling around with the lunch you forgot to eat. There is too much nuance in the grief of it to be explained in simple, scientific terms. Anxious attachment, avoidant, secure. It’s more abstract than those. The need to find someone else’s hair on your pillowcase when you strip the bed, the need to sit quietly together and talk about playing crack the egg when you were a kid. I can’t believe there was a time when I didn’t feel like this. But it’s December now! Come on! I will swim in the pool and crochet till my fingers are stiff. I will loop fuzzy yarn around and around and around my hand until the blood is constricted, my fingers red and puffy. I will scan bar codes and have sex and poke dog antibiotics into tiny chunks of beef mince. I miss my Yowie friend when I come back home, down from the mountain. I slam into the back of someone’s Hilux, I sweat on the curb in my crocs as translucent green radiator fluid slowly spreads along the bitumen. I sweat and I cry I apologise I call my dad. My tears are big and fat and I drop them everywhere and I don’t care (I do).

Oh, root rot! All my roots turn brown and slimy and I don’t know why. I pull them off and poke them down the drain. Now all my pothos stems are turning black and all my nails are growing long and I don’t know what to do about anything anymore. I place the pot in the sun on my deck and sit next to it like an old friend, this plant who has grown for years off my shelf, watching me work and squirm in bed, watching me read and pace and play the harmonica and crack open fortune cookies and take the fortunes way too seriously and do anything but write. Steadily pushing out a chain of waxy leaves, splitting the surface of its stems over and over and over. If it could speak it would probably laugh in my face and say something cryptic like One should feel freedom of the mind. And oh! What’s this? This tiny spec! It couldn’t be, could it? It is! Contentedness in the sun, my nose turns up, an earnest face, to the simplicity of the light. Ah, how quickly it can change my thoughts. It’s almost embarrassing.

God, here we are, we’re almost there, the edge of the cliff, hug yourself tightly now. December the 25th. Panic! I don’t want to be here anymore, I don’t want this body, I don’t want this heart. I don’t want these memories. I can’t just up and leave my bones, my skin, my muscle. I have to be here and play it out, I have to keep going knowing what I do about my past. I’m trying to say that sometimes it’s just too much. I’m trying to say that I have to carry the weight of everything I’ve ever felt, everything that everyone says I’m supposed to feel. Can’t I trade it in? These experiences? I don’t think I want them right now. Can’t I dump this sandbag of feelings slung over my shoulder on the concrete with a huh like the sound of being punched in the stomach? December is a black hole. Tie up your loose ends, throw away the receipts and 7/11 sandwich wrappers catching under your driver’s seat.

December’s language is imprecise grief - Nelly Sachs

“It’s basically medical at this point.” The grief. I say this to Zan in the Falcon. We are talking about the fear, the black hole. Fear of what? We don’t know. We are talking about how everything is going really well but I am still terrified. Terrified of everything that has ever happened and everything that will ever happen, it’s the 31st. An earnest conversation in running water. We are in the valley again, I am crouched at the mouth of a rockpool, water swells my bikini bottoms. I am shivering, I am small, I am humming It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue. Zan says this is their favourite place and I tell them that’s a bold statement for someone so young. I make paint by scraping wet rocks together, something I did when I was a kid. The grass is hot again and the blades are too wild and fat out here in the rainforest. Teens in a car are snickering at us as we grab our towels from the car park, I forget I’m not one of them anymore. When you’re sixteen everything feels like the end of the world. I’ve had so many end-of-the-worlds, I guess I could say the same for 21.