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sparrowsage · 5 months

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The Warehouse: Digging Up Old Memories

Buckle up, because this piece is something. I really enjoyed writing this piece, even if it is a giant emotional show lol. A huge shoutout and thanks to @flowersarefreetherapy for giving me the general idea for this piece! I hope I did it justice! And thank you to @darkthingshappen, @oddsconvert, and @whumpcereal for cheering me on as always!

HEED THE WARNINGS FOR THIS ONE!!!

TW: Minor whump (Jayden is 14), head injury, threatened noncon drugging, implied noncon (off screen), threatened noncon, mentions of past noncon and torture, implied future noncon, character death (off screen), suicidal thoughts, adult character referred to as 'boy', adult language, heavy grieving ((If I missed anything, please tell me and I'll add it!))

“No, I’m sick of doing this shit!” Jayden yelled, stepping back from Logan as the Keeper moved in closer, towering over the teen. “You never stay true to your word! I can’t let you stand by and hurt Sparrow after I’ve done everything you’ve asked me to do!”

Sparrow stared at the two of them, wide-eyed as fear grabbed hold of him. Sure, Sparrow’s challenged the Keeper’s here plenty of times, but that was because whatever ended up happening would happen to him. Jayden fighting back like this? All for his sake? It was thoughtful, but he couldn’t handle the wrath of the Keepers.

Logan backed Jayden up against the wall, his hand shooting forward to the kid’s neck, taking hold of his throat in a tight grip just shy of suffocating him.

“I’d be real careful about your choice here, boy. That piece of shit over there doesn’t deserve a hero, let alone a scrawny one such as yourself. Everyone always comes to the realization that they can’t escape this fate, one way or another. It’s easier for the both of you if you just follow my orders. So what’ll it be, pretty boy? Are you going to show me and the bastard here how much of a good listener you are and suck me off or are you going to continue your little defiant act thinking you can best me?”

Jayden’s hands were around the Keeper’s wrist, doing his best to try and scratch Logan in an attempt to get the hand off his neck, but it wasn’t working. He was too weak. At the question, Jayden stared right back at Logan, his expression sharp enough to cut diamonds.

“Jayden, please-,” Sparrow tried, on the verge of getting up from his spot against the wall by the door. Logan had told him to stay put and that if he moved, he’d force Sparrow to watch the worst Showing he’d ever put Jayden through.

“Shut up, runt,” Logan growled, his head turning slightly in Sparrow’s direction. “He has to make this decision on his own.”

There was silence for a couple seconds and Sparrow could feel the anger rolling off the both of them in waves.

“You and this whole place can go rot in hell. I’m not following another one of your stupid orders just because you think you deserve respect,” Jayden finally spat, bracing himself against the wall before kicking his foot out, his heel landing a direct hit to Logan’s crotch.

The Keeper could hardly brace himself before Jayden’s foot connected with his crotch, Logan doubling over for a moment, his hand never leaving Jayden’s throat, before a loud, angry scream erupted out of his mouth.

In a fluid motion, Logan used all the strength he could muster and lifted Jayden by his neck and threw him to the left over by his desk. Sparrow watched on in horror as he saw the fear and terror flash across Jayden’s eyes as he went flying before the back of the teen’s head connected with the sharp corner of Logan’s desk. He crumpled to the floor as Logan doubled over again, letting out small groans of pain.

“Jayden!” Sparrow shouted, his body jerking momentarily as he went to get up, but remembered Logan’s threat from earlier, causing him to stay in place.

He wasn’t getting up and there was blood leaking out onto the floor. Sparrow couldn’t tell if he was breathing.

“Jayden, get up!” he cried out, Sparrow’s whole body frozen in fear.

“Shut the fuck up!” Logan yelled, his head turning sharply to look at Sparrow.

“No, please, he’s not getting up!” Sparrow pleaded, his fists white with how tight they were balled up. “Please, I’ll do whatever the fuck you want, just take him to the medical ward, please!”

Logan chuckled slightly as he was finally able to stand up straight again. “Oh, you think a bit of pleading will convince me to get him treated? As if. The little shit deserved it, thinking he could fight back like that. Besides, you stupid mutts always seem to recover. He’ll be fine come tomorrow.”

Instead of continuing on with what he had planned, Logan gave one last look to Jayden and Sparrow before deciding to leave his office. There’d be time to do things with them later.

Sparrow let out a snarl as Logan passed him to leave, waiting for the door to shut before he rushed over to Jayden, his hands hovering over his body, afraid that a single touch would make his friend crumble into dust.

#####

“No, you have to let me stay with him!” Sparrow shouted, desperately trying to fight his way out of Josh’s grip on him. “Let me go!”

“You’re scheduled for a Showing and there’s no way you’re missing it,” Josh growled, his grip seeming to get tighter the more Sparrow fought. “He’ll be fine and you’ll get to go back to the main room and see him once the Showing is over.”

“No, he needs me to stay with him since you fuckers won’t take him to the medical ward! Let go of me!”

Josh stopped trying to drag Sparrow forward and out of Logan’s office, instead pulling him in close with an iron tight grip on both his wrists. Their faces were mere inches apart and Sparrow could feel the warmth of his breath. “I won’t hesitate to inject you full of muscle relaxers, boy. You know as much as I do that you’ll do anything to fight back during these things, so do you really want to give up being able to move all because you want to sit by your little friend?”

Sparrow’s body froze at the threat, his eyes going wide for a moment. Josh was right, he couldn’t go through a Showing drugged up like that. He’d have no control (not that he did during Showings) over anything. He couldn’t get injected with that stuff.

Josh smirked as Sparrow stayed still, finally continuing towards the door to the office. “That’s what I thought. Once it’s over, you’ll be able to spend as much time with the little runt as you want.”

#####

Sparrow wasn’t proud of the Showing he just went through. It had to have been the most compliant he’s ever been during one, but he didn’t want it to be dragged out. His only thought and priority was getting back to Jayden to make sure he was okay.

Josh had been surprised with how compliant he had been, as was the audience that showed up to watch. It was utterly embarrassing, but he didn’t care enough to not do it. He would have been the most compliant pet in the entire facility if it had meant getting out of that Showroom faster.

Once the Showing was done, Josh walked him back to the main hallway before leaving him there to do his own thing. The moment Josh left him, Sparrow started running to the main rooms, his heart rate picking up as he tried to get to the room as fast as he could.

Sparrow was almost certain Logan would have moved him out of his office during the Showing, so the most logical place to put him would be one of the main rooms. That, or Jayden had woken up and Logan kicked him out of his office and he made his way to their spot in one of the main rooms. If Sparrow didn’t see him in there, he wasn’t sure what he’d do.

When Sparrow finally made it to the doorway that led into the main room he and Jayden usually ended up in, he scanned the entire room, trying desperately to locate his friend. His anxiety was starting to climb with each face he saw, none of them being the young teen before his eyes landed on a figure in the corner where Jayden and him sat most of the time.

He was there, sitting in his normal spot, looking completely fine. Jayden was waiting for him.

Sparrow did his best to make it over to the back corner of the room, nearly tripping over several pets as they tried to sleep or just pass time, not even bothering to let out any kind of apology before making it over to his friend.

“Jayden!” he called out, falling to his knees in front of his friend before embracing the teen in a tight hug.

“You’re okay! You’re okay, you’re okay, you’re okay,” he said, his voice going quiet as he spoke, letting things sink in. His friend was okay, he was alive and that was all Sparrow cared about.

“Of course I’m okay. Do you really think a bump on the head would keep me down?” Jayden joked, hugging Sparrow back.

Sparrow pulled back slightly, his hands still on Jayden’s shoulders, afraid that if he let go, Jayden would disappear. “It’s just - you collapsed once your head hit the desk, a-and Logan refused to bring you to the medical ward, and then I was dragged off for a Showin-”

“Sparrow,” Jayden interrupted, his voice a bit firm, “I’m alright, I promise. I can’t die that easily. Besides, we promised each other we’d find a way to escape this place some day. I can’t go back on my word, now can I?”

Sparrow wiped at his eyes, tears starting to form. “I’m just happy you’re okay. And you’re right, we are going to escape this place one day. Just please don’t go pissing off any more Keeper’s. Leave that to me, I can handle it.”

Just then, the entire main room started to fade out, a black abyss surrounding the two of them. Sparrow didn’t even notice, his entire focus was on his friend.

Jayden looked at Sparrow with a soft smile, his head slightly tilted to the side.

“I know you can. That fighting spirit is what’s giving me hope that you’ll be able to make it out of here alive. If you hold onto that, you’ll be able to escape. Just keep fighting. For the both of us.”

Sparrow faltered a bit at that. “W-wait, what do you mean by that? We’re going to get out of here together.”

Jayden didn’t answer, continuing to give Sparrow that soft, warm smile that he cherished so much as he slowly faded away. Before Jayden was completely gone, Sparrow reached forward, trying to grab hold of him before he fully disappeared, leaving Sparrow alone in the dark abyss.

#####

Sparrow woke with a jump, jolting up from his spot on the floor of Damon’s office. Looking around the dark and empty room, Sparrow couldn’t see Jayden and was a bit confused, but mostly worried.

Where was he? Jayden had just been in front of him a second ago. He wanted that back, he needed it back.

The more he woke up though, the more things finally started to settle in.

Four days ago, he had been brought back to the Warehouse from his two week stay at Volkov’s island, having gone through his ‘welcome home’ Showing yesterday. Two months ago, Damon had been put in charge of training him, starting up a brand new hell for him to navigate on his own. Five years ago, the Keeper’s gave up trying to train him because he was deemed a lost cause and couldn’t be trained, instead just using him as a free-for-all and overall enjoying causing him pain, discomfort and humiliation. Seven years ago was when he had watched Logan give his one and only friend a death blow and then later finding out that Jayden had died all alone while he was in a Showing Josh forced him to go through, unable to be with him in his final moments to make him feel safe and loved.

As reality came crashing back, Sparrow couldn’t help the gut wrenching sob that erupted out of his throat, the pet clutching his hands close to his chest as he curled into himself.

Ever since it happened, Sparrow had done all he could to repress that memory to the point that he couldn’t remember it at all. All he chose to remember was that Jayden died. Everything else, how it happened, the look of fear and terror right before his head connected with the desk, how much he tried to fight back as Josh dragged him off to the Showing, Logan’s fucking taunting once he finally told Sparrow what they did with Jayden after he died, he wanted to forget and never remember.

He had no idea why the memory resurfaced. It had been so long ago, yet now he could remember every detail clearly, as if he were reliving it in full. It was the worst pain he has ever felt and would probably ever feel. And what made it worse was that his head went and twisted the events, giving him the false hope that Jayden was alive and fine. But Sparrow could never see him again.

After a couple more minutes, Sparrow wiped the tears from his eyes, trying to get his breathing under control. It had to have been close to morning, if he had to guess, and Damon would be here soon to put him through another day of hell. If the Keeper walked in and saw him crying or saw the evidence that he had been crying, Sparrow would never hear the end of it.

Before he could put a cap on his emotions, he felt another sob bubble up from his chest and before he could stop himself, he reared his fist back, sending it straight towards the wall beside him. The wall stayed intact but Sparrow let out a loud shout before biting his tongue, cradling his hand.

Why couldn’t one of these guys have killed him too? Why couldn’t he have had the peace that his friend had? All he wanted was to be with Jayden again, because he was the only one that made this place bearable. His smile and laugh lifted his spirits no matter how he felt and his presence made Sparrow feel safe, even though there wasn’t a single thing either of them could do when the Keepers came for them. If he didn’t have that, if he didn’t have him here, there wasn’t much of a point to keep fighting.

The pain that now pulsed from his bleeding and possibly broken hand acted as an anchor to the real world for him and Sparrow was able to stop the tears from falling, taking in a couple deep breaths before he felt like himself again. Damon would probably point out his hand when he came in later, but right now, Sparrow didn’t care. If Damon was overly concerned about it, he’d get it looked at because unlike Logan, Damon wasn’t going to sit by and have a wound that looked serious enough unchecked. Sparrow had no doubt that the Keeper wouldn't let him die before he himself molded Sparrow into the perfect pet.

Taglist: @mannerofwhump, @honey-is-mesi, @painful-pooch, @whumperfully, @hiding-in-the-shadows, @flowersarefreetherapy, @goronska, @blueyellow8green, @oddsconvert, @darkthingshappen, @whumpcereal (if you want to be added, let me know!)

#The Warehouse #Sparrow Cresky #Jayden Cresky #Minor whump #head injury #threatened noncon drugging #implied noncon (off screen)#threatened noncon #mentions of past noncon and torture #implied future noncon #character death (off screen)#suicidal thoughts #adult character referred to as 'boy'#adult language #heavy grieving

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comfy-whumpee · 7 months

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Echoes

Whumptober Day 10 - "You said you'd never leave me." CN: referenced domestic violence, minor whump.

Jax taglist: @bloodybrambles, @wildfaewhump, @lektric-whump, @that-one-thespian, @raigash, @burtlederp, @rosesareviolentlyread, @eatyourdamnpears

Savvie, Izzy and Jamie belong to @ashintheairlikesnow.

She says, “You said you’d never leave me.”

She is staring at him from across the metal table. The inmate jumpsuit is a good look on her, he can’t deny, and he likes seeing her hands cuffed to the table too, unable to grab or touch him anywhere at all. Her nails are short and round and unpainted, which he has never seen before.

She says, “You’re mine, Jax.” She has tied her hair back from her face and it makes her look more her age. He looks older than her, has for years, because of how they have lived. But now, she looks as haggard as he feels, without the makeup he is used to seeing on her.

He doesn’t have an answer for her demand. He remembers promising many times that he wouldn’t leave her. He’d never betray her. He couldn’t. That always satisfied her well enough.

Of course, the moment he could, that all became moot. But he’d said all the right promises without worrying about that. Looking to the future was never his strong suit, anyway.

“I thought you loved us,” Savvie continues. She doesn’t need him to reply. “I thought you cared about us, as a family, Jax. But you just wanted to hurt us.”

Jax thinks about her nearly dropping Jamie when he spit up on her shirt. He thinks about Izzy coming into the kitchen white as a sheet from one of her ‘talks’. He thinks about how sound carries in her old house, and how both kids have heard his screams.

“My poor babies.” Savvie is a one-woman show of grief. Her eyes glitter with crystalline tears, but they don't leave him, watching for his reaction. “You can’t take them from me. They’re mine, Jax. I’ll fight for them. I just need to see them again, to make sure they understand what’s happening, to make sure they know why you decided to break up our family.”

“You did that, Savvie,” he interjects. “You did that every time you took me away from them.”

“You never wanted them,” she replies dismissively, trying and failing to gesture with a rattle of chain. “You just wanted to lecture me about them. It’s thanks to me they even exist.”

That is all true. But none of it matters. It stopped mattering as soon as there became real children involved. He couldn’t just abandon a baby to her.

“You’ve ruined our family,” she adds. She’s been refuelled by his words. He needs to stay quiet. “It will never, ever be the same, after what you’ve done. I hope you’re happy, Jax. I’ll never be happy again.”

His mouth is already open to speak, to retort, when she adds the rest. But it only becomes more true. “Here’s hoping.”

“Daddy,” she sniffles, arms tight around his waist. Her face is pressed into his stomach and he strokes her hair gently. “I’m sorry, daddy,” she hiccups. “Please d-don’t go without me an’ Jamie, please.”

“I’m not going anywhere without you two,” he promises. He gently loosens her arms, but keeps hold of her hands as he drops stiffly to one knee. He meets her wide, tear-filled eyes. “Hey. I said I’d never leave you two, didn’t I?”

She stares at him, full of fear. He should have seen it coming, of course. He can’t talk about a holiday without reminding her of Savvie’s version of a weekend getaway: kids abandoned with zero warning, sudden trips to the airport while they were still asleep, Jax dragged along on half-baked promises that Isaac would send someone.

“I want to go on holiday with you both,” he promises her. Her little hands are gripping his back, her fingers soft and warm against his callouses. “That’s what holidays are like now. I will never run away on holiday without you, especially not if you are sleeping.”

“Never ever?” she asks, her gaze so afraid and so desperately trusting.

The weight of his words feels so heavy, knowing she will hold onto them tightly, repeating them over and over to herself. How to pick words that will comfort her through all their uses?

He starts with the fundamentals. “Family is me, you and Jamie.” No Mommy. No Savvie. Not even grandpa makes the cut, at the end of the day. With this established, he adds, “Family holiday has to be me, you and Jamie too.”

She leans forwards, asking for a hug in that careful way she has with touch. Touch with him, anyway. She isn’t this cautious with the others.

He hugs her close. “Never, ever,” he repeats. Sometimes he likes to imagine how long he could go without un-hugging his baby girl. He could sleep with her in his arms again. He can eat with her on his lap. Walk the dogs with her in his arms. He could keep hold of her forever.

Of course, it’s just an instinct. He lets her go. “And,” he adds, to lift her spirits, “you get a say in where we go on holiday, now. We choose together.”

She doesn’t care as long as she’s with him, he knows. It’s the same for him. But maybe, with some time, he can get her excited for the holiday, and give her back some of the joy she never had.

Here’s hoping.

#whumptober2023 #no.10 #you said you'd never leave me #whump #past trauma #comfort #recovery #minor whump #abandonded #jax

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whumpacabra · 2 months

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Day 19: “Please don’t.”

Scar reveal, knife wound [minor], minor wound treatment, alcohol use, blood, implied past violence, bar fight mention

[Directly follows Barfight]

Drifting down from the adrenaline high, brushing off the praise and thanks of the other bar patrons…it was nostalgic. Warm. Familiar.

(He had done this before, during the Before.)

“I think you got us free drinks for the rest of the night East.” Tierney laughed, hand clapping East’s back. Alister smiled at him, gratitude in his eyes.

“Next time save some ass kicking for the rest of us, eh?“

East rolled his eyes, feeling Tierney’s hand slide away from his back.

“Next time I’m sure there’ll be more than one prick so you’ll have your pick - ”

“East you’re bleeding.” Tierney’s whisper was urgent, even if the smear of blood on his palm was relatively unconcerning. East knew the fucker’s knife had cut his jacket, he hadn’t felt it break the skin.

“I didn’t notice - probably just a scratch.”

“We should clean it up though.” Alister had him fixed with a concerned expression. “I don’t think Nate will take kindly to knowing we got into a bar fight. Best to hide the evidence best we can.”

“I’m fine, really - ” There was no arguing with both housemates. East swallowed back the rest of his drink and sighed. “Fine. It probably doesn’t even need stitches.”

The three made their way to the bar restroom, rowdy patrons slapping East’s arm and shouting thanks and congratulations to him as he passed. The repeated, unexpected, unwanted contact was making him sick. Safe behind the closed bathroom door, the reality of what he had agreed to sunk in. He glanced at his reflection in the dirty mirror, skin pale and clammy. East turned suddenly and grabbed Tierney and Alister by the shoulder.

“Don’t ask. Please don’t.” He hoped his reaching out, his purposeful eye contact drove home how serious he was. He hadn’t thought about his back - what was there - for months now.

And here he was letting another man’s hands touch his bared scars and bloodied skin.

(Jackson would be proud.)

(Smith would be jealous.)

Tierney stared up at him with wide shining eyes, glancing to Alister who nodded grimly, brow furrowed in cautious concern.

“We won’t say a word. And we’ll be quick - I know you don’t like touch.”

“Unless you’re knocking another guy’s lights out.” Tierney muttered with a weak chuckle, but East let a smile soften his own face to show that he appreciated the joke. He took a deep breath, removing his hands from their shoulders and nodded to Tierney.

“Get me some vodka. Let’s get this over with.” He turned back to the mirror, shrugging off his jacket - the rip in the back was almost invisible, and any blood blended too well with the dark material to see. He slowly unbuttoned his undershirt, hands growing shaky.

(He took comfort in the fact that the blood on his knuckles wasn’t his own.)

East glanced up at the mirror, the scars on his chest so small and faded with age he could hardly outline the patch of skin that had been replaced. He looked to Alister’s face, eyes gentle and encouraging. Safe.

He took a slow inhale as he pulled his shirt back off his shoulders, and exhaled as he shirked the sleeves from his arms. He grimaced down at the pale green plaid patterned shirt - blood stained a palm sized blotch just below the back of the collar. East didn’t look up to see Alister’s reaction. He didn’t need to.

His hearing caught the stutter of breath, the almost imperceptible shift in breathing before someone spoke. And Tierney’s pattering footsteps, before the door opened and closed.

“I got the - ” He cut himself off, swallowing his words. East took another measured breath, running the tap and holding his bloodstained shirt under the cold water.

“Could use that drink, Tierney.” He managed to mutter, listening to the footsteps approach and seeing the shimmering shot glass out of the corner of his eye.

“You good?”

“Yes. Hurry up.“ He didn’t mean to snap, to take the shot glass from Tierney so violently and swig it back to feel the liquor burn down his throat. A half decent distraction from the hands touching his back.

“It’s not too deep - you, you’re right it probably won’t need stitches.” Tierney was making a point of not looking at East’s back while Alister worked, practically jittering with nervous energy. Alister hummed to confirm Tierney’s observation.

“Just gonna clean it up and get a bandage over it. Don’t want Nate worrying where this blood came from.”

East focused on the gradually fading bloodstain on the shirt in his hands, red washed pink by the icy water. He would have to volunteer for wash duty this weekend - the last thing he needed was getting in trouble with Nate for getting into a bar fight, even if he didn’t start it. He turned off the tap, wringing blood tinged water from his shirt and straightening up as Alister finished.

(The fingers weren’t poking, weren’t prodding - so much like the featherlight touch of Jackson ghosting over those jagged letters when they bled fresh and raw.)

“All set?” He asked, rolling his shoulders to feel the itchy plastic and adhesive of a fresh bandage just below his neck.

“Yup. You really gonna wear a wet shirt for the walk home?”

East struggled back into his button down, the damp fabric fighting him. He responded to Tierney’s question with a shrug and a nod.

“It’s pissing down anyway out there. We’ll all be soaked to the bone before we get home.”

[Concurrent to The Mademoiselle]

(Part of my Freelancers: Changing Tides series)

#whump #scar reveal #knife wound #minor wound treatment #alcohol use #implied past violence #bar fight #freelancers #awoo. <- i am the most fulfilled I've ever been in life but i am also the busiest and most socially burnt out i've ever been in life #have some more no context wolf-east recovery #febuwhump #febuwhump2024 #febuwhumpday19

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whump-in-the-closet · 1 year

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Merry Whump of May

@themerrywhumpofmay

May 9th- “We’ll burn that bridge when we get there.”

[collar | lost | roof]

***

(tw: lady whump, mention of past torture, minor character deaths, mention of dead bodies, gunshot, bad coping mechanisms— smoking addiction is implied)

Mal ran like she had never run before. The blood on her sleeves was not her own.

It was supposed to have been a simple con. They had promised the noblewoman nothing but the finest blades. The money would be paid upfront and then they would vanish, the expected delivery never arriving.

It was so simple, she had been allowed to accompany the crew on it.

But now she was running into the night, lungs burning for lack of air and eyes burning with unshed tears.

You messed up.

You messed this all up.

God, Xiang would kill her. Her leg twitched at the thought of what Xiang would do. There was a jaggedly circular scar in her calf, courtesy of Xiang.

Xiang had ordered an arrow to be shot through her fucking leg.

Mal didn’t know if she was more terrified of the dead body she had left behind or of what Xiang would do to her for leaving without the money.

The dead body with empty eyes.

Gold in her hair and blood on her lips.

The noblewoman was a corpse now.

And it was Mal’s fault. It was all her fault.

Mal stumbled to a stop, her hands clammy and stomach churning. The tell-tale signs that she was about to be sick. Which she was. Violently.

Light from an overhead lamp fell gently over her, its touch bronze and smelling of smoke.

The smoke didn’t come from the lamp– crouched just out of the circle of light, a man sat in the shadows of a building’s steps. He smoked a cigarette comfortably, the tip glowing with a dull light. He stared up into the sickly-coloured night sky and paid no mind to the person that had just thrown up all over the base of the lamp.

Mal ran her tongue over cracked lips. She looked behind her. There were shouts in the distance but she decided they were still too far away to be very concerned.

She walked over to the man. “Do you have an extra one?”

The man glanced at her, exhaling a puff of smoke. When he spoke, his voice sounded like it had been shredded. “Do you have money?”

“...No.”

The man smiled, closing his eyes as he inhaled the cigarette. “Too bad.” He didn’t seem to notice the blood covering Mal. Or he merely didn’t care.

“C'mon. I need one.” She needed the steadiness a cigarette would bring. She needed to keep her head together– to keep the image of a dead noblewoman in the back of her mind-- and for that, she needed a cigarette.

He didn’t open his eyes, but reached into his tattered jacket and pulled out one cigarette. He flicked it at Mal, who caught it with numb fingers. “Don’t expect a light from me.”

The shouting grew louder and Mal fled.

She turned a sharp corner, retreating into comfortable shadows.

A cat hissed at her from the sewers as she kicked up at water, splashing the small creature.

Mal winced an apology. She found a lighter in her jacket– thank the gods she never went anywhere without one– and shoved the cigarette into her mouth. Lighting as she was running was a bit hard, but not impossible.

She stopped only for the first welcome inhale of the cigarette. And for the exhale.

The alleyways branched into a dozen different directions, all lined with refuse and filth. A few were flooded. She turned to go back the way she had gone and was greeted with more shadows.

Lost.

Maybe that was a good thing. Maybe they wouldn’t be able to find her if she was lost. Well. There was really only one thing to do.

Mal sat down by the sewers and waited until the shaking in her hands had stopped.

The only light came from the glowing end of her cigarette, bright against the shadows.

Maybe if she had a cigarette during the con, it wouldn't have all gone to shit.

She had been on the roof. Watching for any sign of officers or guards or anything slightly off. Like Xiang had said. She had done everything Xiang had said.

Well, not everything.

Waiting on the roof. Waiting on the roof, bored out of her fucking mind. The noblewoman had been talking. Just been talking and talking and talking, and how was she supposed to know that a noblewoman was that good with a pistol and sword?

There had been a gunshot. And Dar was on the ground, bleeding, twisting in on himself. Yan had been run through with the noblewoman’s sword.

Mal exhaled smoke, staring out into the shadows.

She had left three corpses behind. Not just the noblewoman’s.

A dripping wet cat made its way down the cobbled street. Its ears were pressed back into its skull as it stalked past Mal.

Mal inhaled the cigarette and breathed it out her nose. “Rough night, huh?”

The cat ignored her.

“Yeah, me too.”

The cigarette was nothing but a stub and Mal put it out on the bricks. “I need to find more.”

I need to get out of town. Before Xiang finds me.

Mal flicked on her lighter and watched the flame. She turned it off and the flame vanished. Clicked it on. The flame appeared, impossibly bright.

On and off.

“I guess we can burn that bridge when we get there.”

#sorry did not have a time to edit out the character's names and replace them with whumper/whumpee #also im not sure if this is lady whump #because its kind of just. dark. and angsty #she killed the person she was supposed to con and didnt even get the money and now her boss is going to murder her #but i digress #mwmday9 #themerrywhumpofmay #whump writing #lady whump #cw minor character deaths #cw death mention #cw implied murder #cw past torture #cw bad coping mechanisms #cw gunshot

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lizzyverydizzyyo · 6 months

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D.E.A.N | Chapter 30 - Peak

Masterlist and overall summary of the whole novel is here. | Prompt on trope-appreciation-tuesdays that inspired this is here. | @whumptober-archive

Fandom : Original Work

(I) (II) (III) (IV) (V) (VI) (VII) (VIII) (IX) (X) (XI) (XII) (XIII) (XIV) (XV) (XVI) (XVII) (XVIII) (XIX) (XX) (XXI) (XXII) (XXIII) (XXIV) (XXV) (XXVI) (XXVII) (XXVIII) (XXIX) (XXX) (XXXI - END)

AO3

Wordcount: ± 8086 [Also very action-heavy, so I can’t cut it into two chapters]

TW: Suicide Pact, Suicidal Ideation, Depression, Dread, Minor Character Deaths (antagonist), Blood, Injury, Weapon, Gun, Firearms, Shooting, Drugs, Graphic Depiction of Violence, Gore, Explosion, Medical Instruments and Treatments

He can sense it’s nearly over, although he doesn’t know on whose favor fate will fall into: his side or the enemies’. All who remain are now left to lick their wounds pitifully, wondering if they’ll ever get back to the way it was. Mark tells himself that, at least, ones dear to his heart are still breathing on this God’s green earth.

Whumptober 2023 Themes (last 4 and Alt. Bonus only):

Day Alt. bonus — Aftermath of Failure

Day 28 — “You'll have to go through me.”

Day 29 — Troubled Past Resurfacing

Day 30 — Bridal Carry | “Not much longer...”

Day 31 — Emptiness | Setbacks

Whumptober 2022 Themes (post-event, not completionist):

Day 11 Alt. — Ambushed

Day 24 — Fight, Flight or Freeze | Blood Covered Hands

Day 26 — No One Left Behind | Separated

This story is set in the last half of 2016.

——

Once they’re in the open, they whip their heads left and right, trying to figure out which vehicle Angie and Doctor Lowe are near to. There are two vans: one on the far side of the left, and the other on their right but close. It’s probably not helping that everything is dark.

He didn’t realize how late it is. No wonder many sections of the headquarter looked dark before. What time is it anyway?

Suddenly, they see Angie’s head poking from behind the van on their right. Her arm follows, showing up from the other side of the van to wave to them.

“Angie!” Mark calls out happily, although he still makes sure he keeps quiet.

Anna and Mark sprint to close the distance.

He doesn’t know about Anna, but he feels warmth washing over him with his heart feeling a little lighter. Like giant boulders are lifted off his shoulders. Like hope.

“How did you get here? How did the bomb go?” Anna blurts out quickly.

“Long story. I survived. That’s all that matters.”

“Okay. True,” Anna replies.

Mark gives himself a few seconds to scan Angie and Doctor Lowe quickly, seeing some cuts and bruises here and there, and scratches on their clothes, but they’re alive and well and standing firmly. They’re all okay. Mostly.

Across him, Angie throws a slight look towards Nick in Mark’s arms, one arm lolling on the side and dangling weakly. Nick is quiet and not moving, his head laid against Mark’s chest, but his own chest still rises and falls. Angie stares at the bloody palm of Nick that’s hanging down. She doesn’t point it out.

Which is probably for the best because they can’t afford to panic and spread the anxiety towards each other. They need to be steady and quick now.

“Get in,” Doctor Lowe tersely instructs Mark while Angie walks towards the back of the van to open the doors. It’s not locked.

Mark frowns while looking at the van, pausing a few steps away. He scans their surroundings and sees no one else beside 5 of them.

“What?” the surgeon turns around to him exasperatedly.

“Is this safe?” he asks. “Did any Helga people get to it?”

“It’s fine. I’ve been here all the time we were separated,” Angie says urgently to Mark. “The agents in charge of guarding the backyard just left for the inside not too long ago, so the vehicles were still protected from any sabotaging.”

Mark contemplates for a few seconds, but ends up closing his eyes and sighing as he accepts Angie’s explanation, so he steps forwards to approach the van.

“The keys?” Angie asks him.

Mark faces her fully to give her better access to Nick’s pockets on his utility belt. Nick stays still, eerily silent. He doesn’t react at all to Angie rummaging her hand through his many pockets until she gets to the one with the handful of metal keys.

“Okay, good, lay him down there,” Doctor Lowe instructs him once Angie has the keys in her palm. The surgeon points to the far side of the van’s interior.

Mark bends down his body a little so that he can fit into the back of the van as he steps into it. He climbs into the van’s inside while crouching, still with Nick in his arms, but when both of his feet are firmly on the floor of the van and he is pretty much squatting, he starts shifting his legs one knee at a time to kneel. He shuffles that way a bit until he reaches the divider between the back of the van and the driver section so that he can deposit Nikolai on the floor.

Nick is still unmoving with face leaning against Mark’s chest and one arm lolling around, even until he gently lays Nick down.

“No, no. Sit him up a bit. His legs can’t be higher than the rest of his body,” the surgeon interjects, pulling on Mark’s arm a bit to stop his movement.

Nick finally makes a sound by groaning weakly when Mark tries to pull his body up into sitting position, while Doctor Lowe pulls his legs straight from slightly bent position. It seems to be very important that Nick’s legs are lower than his torso as he is bleeding like this, as said by Angie too before the first surgery.

Once they’re settled inside, Doctor Lowe turns back to pull the doors in and slam them closed. Only then does Mark take off his helmet and put it away. He takes off Nick’s helmet next to see his face and gauge how he is doing.

Nick’s eyes are half-lidded, blinking sluggishly once in a while. He looks extremely pale with cold sweat drenching his body and wetting his hair. Even his skin is cold to touch.

“Kid, just last a little bit more, okay?” Doctor Lowe now says as he crouches to sit next to Nick across from Mark, both facing the weakened boy. The old face uncharacteristically shows strong emotions and non-clinical concern, for once.

Nick’s thin hands are on top of his own abdomen, but they’re not really pushing on his wound strongly, probably because his energy is completely depleted. Mark kneels on one knee in front of him as he puts his own palm on top of Nick’s to push at it firmly.

Nick winces and weakly shifts his head to the side.

“Sorry, I’m sorry. We need to put pressure on your bleeding,” he tells Nick softly.

Nick turns his head forward again to look at him, face seemingly half-conscious. His breathing is labored and dragging, and when Mark takes Nick’s left wrist to feel his pulse, it’s faint but abnormally rapid.

“Why the fuck are we not driving yet?”

He sees Doctor Lowe raising his head to look over Nick’s head towards the divider, his face urgent with a somewhat angry look. He has never been a patient man in all the time Mark has known him, after all.

“Hey,” the doctor calls out again, “what are you waiting for?!”

He bangs on the divider, making Nick wince and moan in pain again. Mark glares slightly at the surgeon, but the man doesn’t seem to care.

“We’re looking for the key!” they both hear Angie’s muffled voice.

“Do it fucking faster!”

Even with the divider, Mark can hear Angie and Anna frantically mumbling with each other, “Where the fuck is the key? Is it this? No, that doesn’t fit, fuck! I don’t know which one? Did they not say which key is for which car! Oh my god…” with metal jiggling.

“Jesus fucking Christ, are you serious, you dumb bitches? Go now!” Doctor Lowe yells out incredulously.

“We’re trying, okay?!” follows with more metal clanking from both women in the front.

“For fuck’s sake, just cut the cord and start with it!” Mark now screams in turn in frustration.

“Are you fucking serious? No! It’ll just destroy the car!” Angie responds from the front.

Nick shifts his head to the side again, weakly gasping with eyes barely open.

“Angie! Anna! Come on!” Mark yells again after looking at that.

He hears more metal jiggling and hissed arguments from the front, and he is about ready to get out and sort the problem out himself, but then he hears the van sputtering then humming to life.

“Gotcha!” he finally hears from Angie.

Mark and Doctor Lowe unconsciously exhale in relief and sag their bodies at the same time. He can even hear Nick exhaling weakly too.

He turns to Nick again with a tight smile, trying to be calming and reassuring.

“This is it. We just have to reach backup team and it’ll be over. You’ll be okay there,” he says softly.

Nick simply looks back at him, seemingly fighting against his exhaustion so that he can keep his eyes open. He winces a bit before blinking weakly, then his eyes stay half-lidded until they all can feel the motion of the car starting to be driven away.

Of course, in ideal situation, it’s better to drive slowly and carefully so that Nick isn’t jolted around while bleeding like this, but there are still dozens of Helga people they’re trying to run from in here, and possibly even more who are still trying to reach this headquarter. They don’t have any other choice but to accept Angie hitting the gas and speeding up along their path until they reach Central Hub’s backup team.

Doctor Lowe and Mark have just taken off their guns and put them on the floor when they simultaneously push at Nick’s shoulders instinctively. He is whipped from side to side at a sharp turn Angie is taking, so they’re making sure Nick isn’t knocked around—especially on the head—and injured more.

“Argh…” Nick immediately yelps in pain at the sudden movement.

“Sorry! Sorry! I’m sorry,” he soothes Nick.

He can see tears flowing from the corners of Nick’s swirly blue-brown eyes as they’re squeezed shut. In turn, Mark squeezes Nick’s shoulder a little to calm him down. Eventually, the van is going at a more even pace with less bouncing as it seemingly settles on an established road.

“You keep pushing on his wound. I’ll try to connect to backup,” Doctor Lowe eventually instructs him.

He simply nods and sits down with crossed legs so that he is in a more comfortable position to hold Nick. His own right shoulder is leaning against the divider as he keeps his left palm’s pressure at Nick’s abdomen. Mark sees Doctor Lowe sit on his heels while clicking on his watch for a while.

The old surgeon tsks.

“The reach is too short with this,” he comments.

“Well, yeah. It’s for a contained network. It’s not meant to be far,” he responds.

“It would be nice if it can. I was hoping its reach is far enough considering we don’t have any of our heavy-duty laptops.”

“There is our satellite map on the dashboard, isn’t there?” he inquires.

“For them,” the surgeon nods his chin to the front to refer to Angie and Anna, “but not us. We can’t see where we are from here. Can’t prepare.”

Oh, that makes sense.

“I guess we should just keep our comms open to connect to backup’s network.”

“I’d rather not do that for too long. We can be intercepted. There are only 5 of us here,” the old man informs him, finally clicking the button on the earpiece itself, seemingly disconnecting from 1034’s headquarter’s network.

Mark too ends up clicking on his earpiece to disconnect it.

There is no point in connecting to 1034’s headquarter anymore since they’re leaving that place and won’t need to communicate with any of them. He knows they’re not going to send more chaperone agents for Nick because there simply are just not enough agents to fight Helga in the headquarter itself.

It’s better to make sure their connection isn’t intruded on by any non-authorized party by turning it off completely.

He almost falls asleep due to his extreme exhaustion and lulling silence for a while when Doctor Lowe suddenly talks to him.

“Shift him a little,” Doctor Lowe instructs Mark.

He furrows his eyebrows.

“I need to see behind us,” the doctor explains, pointing at the screen on the divider that’s supposed to show the back of the van through the small camera on the door.

“Oh.”

Mark gently slips his right arm between Nick’s back and the divider to circle Nick’s body from behind, pulling him closer almost to an embrace until Nick’s head is lying on Mark’s right shoulder instead of covering the screen.

He doesn’t realize the intimacy of the gesture until Doctor Lowe stares at him for a few seconds.

He is about to push Nick away a little bit to minimize the too-personal sense of their position, but when he sees Nick’s closed eyes on the pale exhausted face, he just doesn’t have the heart to do it. Who’s going to have a problem with it anyway?

Doctor Lowe ends up shaking his head and rising to kneel so that he can get closer to the screen and turns it on.

It crackles a bit before he sees the screen coming to life. Not that it’s going to help in telling them where they are, especially since it’s dark outside, except just to see if their environment is safe.

For quite a while, all they do is just glance at the screen every so often while mostly ignoring it in favor of laying back and closing their eyes to get a little bit of rest. They’re not really expecting anything noteworthy to happen, but he hears a bang on the divider from the front.

He and Doctor Lowe furrow their eyebrows and look at each other.

“Look at your watch! What colors are they?” he hears Anna inquire.

“What? What color? What are you talking about?” he shouts back with a perplexed expression.

“There are incomings shown in our satellite map. Are they our guys?”

He immediately straightens up his back with an alert look, just as Doctor Lowe does. They whip their heads to look at the screen.

It’s not obvious in the beginning, but he can see some dots following them from behind that are getting closer and closer and eventually appearing like several vehicles that are not D.E.A.N issued.

Oh, fuck.

He looks at his watch over Nick’s head and shoulder who is still leaning against his chest, clicking a button on the side to turn it on again.

They’re all brown pulsating dots following from behind.

“Oh, shit,” Doctor Lowe whispers horrifically.

“Nick, Nicky, get off, I need to move,” he says to Nikolai, trying to be gentle even if he is about to lose his shit.

Nick flutters his eyes open and winces, seemingly having fallen asleep before.

He hates being rough with Nick, but he has to quickly shift Nick’s body away from him so that he can move to grab his rifle again.

Doctor Lowe is kneeling while slamming the seat covers up, seeing what’s inside their under-seat storage. He frantically grabs all manners of firearm cartridges, from long rifle ammo clips to boxes of handgun bullets from the inside. Mark can see that besides those, there are explosives too like grenades and some smoke bombs.

There are also different kinds of rifles there, seemingly more of a sniper rifle type, along with some rifle tripod mounts.

Sniper rifle be damned. He’ll use them when he has to. Bullet is a bullet once it’s in someone’s skull.

“Wha…” Nick mumbles with half-lidded eyes.

“Don’t worry about it,” he says distractedly as he starts reloading several magazines worth of bullets for his pistols, then inserting a long ammo clip into the chamber of his rifle along with Doctor Lowe.

Not long after, they immediately hear shots hitting the back of their van.

Shit. He thought they’re out of the woods already.

Doctor Lowe frantically rummages through the storages again, muttering furiously to himself.

“Doc, you got bullets. What are you looking for?” Mark asks in frustration.

“I need sticky tapes for the rifle mounts.”

“What?!”

Doctor Lowe sits on his heels again while turning towards him.

“I’m not Addrianne or Mary who can probably shoot the fucking moon without rifle mount, all right? I need a steady mount.”

“Just shoot with your machine guns!”

“You do it! I’ll find some tape.”

Mark tsks incredulously, but he does grab his helmet to put it back on before pushing open the hatch on top of their van. He takes a slight look at the screen to get a feel of what kind of enemies they’re dealing with before popping his head up with his machine gun pointed to the back.

There are 5 jeeps following them.

“How the fuck did they know about us?!”

Mark ignores Doctor Lowe’s question to start pressing his rifle trigger, followed by resounding shots and strong recoils that hit him much harder than usual with his current shooting position. He mostly hits the windows and non-vital parts of the enemies he can see.

When he pauses a bit, he observes them and finds that they all look fresh and battle ready, maybe even more combat-trained than the ones swarming 1034 before. There are women there too, ones who look as military-trained as the rest.

He absently thinks about Doctor Lowe’s question.

He doesn’t like the thought that maybe there was a planned breach of information about their strategy. These enemies look especially prepared for this kind of battle, while the ones in 1034 look more like low level thugs of the syndicate who just happen to be given firearms.

He bows down his head under the hatch when the other side returns the shots, waiting until they stop so that he can shoot again. On his left a little bit behind him, he hears shotgun shots and cocking from Anna who is poking her head out of the window to shoot with him.

He feels their van swerving to the left sharply, feeling himself knocked to the side and hit hard on the chest by the metal opening of the hatch.

“Fucking hell, Angie!”

“I’m avoiding their shots!”

He breathes hard as he steadies himself, pointing his machine gun again to shoot mostly at the driver of the jeep closest to them.

They seem to know his plan, so that jeep also swerves to the side to avoid his shots.

“Move!” Doctor Lowe yells at him from under.

Mark looks down to the inside of the van and sees Doctor Lowe holding a short rifle tripod mount, presumably with sticky tape on the bottom of the feet.

He pulls himself down to allow Doctor Lowe to stick the mount to the top of their van, using the opportunity to pull another long ammo clip to be slung over his shoulder as preparation before the current one runs out.

“I don’t think that’s how you’re supposed to install that!” he half-shouts.

“Shut the fuck up. I told you I’m not a sniper. I’m just doing what I can,” Doctor Lowe shouts with voice half-muffled by the windy surrounding. “Now give me that rifle!”

Mark looks down on the ground to see the different kind of rifle usually used for precision shooting. He simply grabs that and follows the surgeon’s instruction.

Unlike their automatic machine guns which can shoot endlessly as long as they keep pressing the trigger and have ammo clips attached, the rifle Doctor Lowe is using right now is semi-automatic. It requires him to pull the trigger each time he wants to take a shot, although he doesn’t have to keep reloading each time.

Mark kneels on one knee with his own rifle strap slung over his shoulder again, both of his arms holding the gun itself, while he faces Nick.

The younger man’s face is alert and scared, no longer has any trace of sleepiness as before. Mark’s heart clenches at the deep fear shown on that bony and pale face, undoubtedly in pain too at the sudden movements Angie keeps making.

Nick is holding the sides of the opened seats for dear life.

“What’s going on, Mark?” he asks shakily as he starts crying again.

“It’s fine. We’ll deal with it,” he softly says, once again saying it both for Nick and himself.

Eventually, Doctor Lowe removes his rifle from the mount and pops back down to gather more ammos and fill the chamber with them once again. Mark uses this opportunity to pop back out, and he starts shooting again.

He aims lower this time, trying to point at the wheels.

Their van swerves to the side once again, so he groans as the corners of the opened hatch hit him on the chest again.

“Argh!”

“Sorry!” Angie simply shouts.

He starts shooting again once he is sure Angie is done with her swerving. He hits one person, and he can see the man’s body flopping to the side and bowing forward. The driver next to him doesn’t flinch or look away from the road despite having her comrade shot to death next to her.

Mark starts pointing his gun at another jeep now, going for the passenger shooter again. He only manages to shoot the person’s shoulder, but that’s good enough. She’s not going to be able to shoot properly like that.

He pulls back, going down into the van again to take a break from the harsh recoils and avoid the shots from the other side, so Doctor Lowe rises again with his semi-automatic rifle after reloading it.

Doctor Lowe focuses on the scope, taking a shot more carefully and slowly. Mark can only guess what’s happening. The only way the people in the back of the van can see what’s behind is by looking at the screen, but that has a limited view.

He hears another shot from Doctor Lowe, followed by loud crashing, but before he can catch what’s happening, there is another bang to the back of the van, so now the screen crackles then goes black.

Oh, great. Fantastic. As if they weren’t already stuck and cornered before.

Even so, Doctor Lowe lowers himself again, gathering ammos to be inserted into the rifle chamber again.

“Your turn,” he tightly says as he keeps focusing on inserting some ammo clips.

“What happened?” he asks.

“Got one of their drivers.”

He furrows his eyebrows as he thinks about what Doctor Lowe means until he raises his eyebrows in surprise.

The driver shot by Doctor Lowe either got injured enough that they can’t steer the vehicle well anymore, or killed so the jeep swerved around uncontrollably until it hit another one.

Basically, taking two enemies’ vehicles at once.

Not like Addrianne, my ass, Mark thinks.

“Your turn, Hayden!” Doctor Lowe yells at him.

He immediately jumps up over the hatch to point his gun again.

As he guessed before, there are now only three jeeps still following them, while the other two are falling behind so far in the back. Still, that doesn’t mean they can’t change drivers and start chasing his team again. He doesn’t know if their jeeps’ engines are damaged enough to stop them completely.

He squints his eyes at the recoil of his rifles, still not used to how harsh and painful it is while being shot this way, but he keeps going. He quickly pulls the end of the other long ammo clip to start inserting it into his machine gun’s chamber. He cocks it after it’s inserted and starts shooting again.

He got two, but only some back passenger shooters, not any driver like what he aimed for.

“Here,” Mark hears Doctor Lowe call to him.

He pops in a little only to see the surgeon handing him a smoke bomb. He would prefer the grenade, but they’re still too close to throw it safely, so he accepts the smoke bomb anyway.

He pulls away the pin with his teeth and throws it far into one of the jeeps’ open roof. There is clanking and harsh hissing before smoke quickly seeps out of the can and fills the jeep. The jeep swerves wildly to the side after that and gets left behind.

Two more to go.

He starts shooting again for a while until his ammo runs out.

He only manages to simply graze the remaining chasers instead of causing substantial damage to his enemies. Behind the two jeeps, he starts to see the jeep left behind after the smoke bomb, and it’s gaining on them. He also sees another one, which is one of the two crashing jeeps that Doctor Lowe shot before.

Oh, fuck. It’s going up to four again, then.

Doctor Lowe and Mark keep taking turn shooting either with machine guns or sniping rifles, or even a shotgun they find after rummaging through the under-seat storage more carefully. Once the ammos for those run out, they take out their pistols, which are not ideal because they’re not as strong as machine guns or as precise as sniping rifles, but better than not fighting back at all.

He can feel his worry and panic starting to rise again each time he pops back down and sees more and more empty bullet boxes and used clips.

“Hey kid, you need to hold on really tight on this seat, okay?” Doctor Lowe cryptically tells Nick as he points at the jutting metal under the opened seat.

He doesn’t understand why Doctor Lowe is saying that considering Nick is already holding onto the seat so tightly.

Nick is no longer pushing down on his abdomen and seemingly hasn't been for a while, which means he’s been bleeding more than they would have liked compared to if he’d been pushing at his wound. He’s getting even paler, grimacing more often after every swerving and jolting from the speed of Angie’s driving.

He faces where Doctor Lowe is pointing.

“Wha… about—”

“It’s okay. Mark is gonna help you with your bleeding,” the surgeon cuts him off, instantly knowing what Nick means.

Doctor Lowe cocks his head to the side to point at Nick. Mark gives a questioning stare for a bit, but obeys the surgeon’s command.

“You hold on tight too,” the old man says cryptically again, but doesn’t wait for Mark to comply before popping out of the hatch.

Mark simply kneels down facing Nick with one hand pushing at the wounded abdomen and another gripping a handgrip tightly as the doctor tells him to.

He’s not sure what the surgeon is planning until he hears loud boom and a sense of this van almost being flipped over, roughly knocking him over to the floor. Thankfully, he pulls his left arm from Nick’s stomach quickly enough to throw it above his head so that it’s cushioned against the metal body of the under-seat storages.

Still, the force of it brings sharp pain to his forearm that can’t help screaming in pain. He feels like he has broken the bone in his forearm, or at least given it some deep musculature damage.

Nick thankfully gets thrown into his arm too, so his head isn’t knocked around too at the harsh bump the van was put through.

“What the fuck is wrong with you, Doc?” he cries out angrily.

The doctor simply pops back down to bend down and grabs an item.

“We have no bullets,” he tightly says without a care towards Mark’s offense.

“And you didn’t think to warn us before throwing a fucking grenade?”

“I did.”

The surgeon knocks at the divider twice before popping his head back out while gripping another grenade.

This time, Mark is more ready.

He elongates his legs to tightly push against the under-seat storages on both sides. He pushes feet against the left under-seat while his lower back is pushed against the right one. Being tall has its perks, it seems.

One of his hands is holding onto a handgrip attached to the divider while his other hand is putting Nick almost in an embrace again. Nick too is holding on to a handgrip on the other side of the divider, while his other hand is pushing at his stomach.

He hears another kaboom and feels the van jolts around roughly, but without throwing his body around since he has good enough grip on his surroundings. It happens three more times, each time adding more and more aches onto his body due to the rough jolting, on top of his muscles being forcibly and endlessly taut.

Nick too keeps keening in pain, fisting Mark’s shirt desperately while leaning over and sobbing.

After the third explosion, Doctor Lowe bends down to frantically crawl all over the floor, repeatedly slamming the seat covering of the storage loudly. He keeps mumbling to himself like he is possessed, until he eventually reaches the one closest to Mark and Nick near the divider.

“Move over,” the surgeon tightly orders him.

Mark has to bodily carry Nick in his arms to move him away so that Doctor Lowe can turn that storage upside down too.

They wince when they feel harsh shots at the back of their van, now being dented by the repeated firings of strong firearms.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

Nick’s half-lidded eyes land on the surgeon’s back.

“Wha… what’s—what’s going… on?” Nick stutters weakly.

Doctor Lowe’s shoulders slump again, giving Mark another jolt of fear. It’s never good when the surgeon slumps like that. The beer-bellied man then weakly sits on his heels with his head leaned back while exhaling shudderingly.

They hear more shots, and the dents get deeper.

The doctor still doesn’t face Nick or Mark, and instead bangs on the divider.

“Anna! Why aren’t you shooting?!”

Mark can feel his heart thumping on his chest painfully, faster and faster the longer it takes for Anna to reply.

“There is no more bullet,” they all hear Anna shout with her own resigned voice.

“Try to find more! Under Angie’s seat or something!” Doctor Lowe tries again.

“We tried, Doc. We can’t find more!”

Just as she is done talking, they hear more bullets shot in their way with clanging sound. Mark realizes that one manages to lodge itself into the door of the van.

He feels cold washing over him.

Nick shudders in his arms, and Doctor Low stares helplessly at that bullet.

Everything feels like slow-motion, or being submerged into a pool with a sense of detachment the more bullets shot in their way. There are now several bullets being lodged into the van’s backdoor. One of them is even pushed out into the inside of the van by another bullet shot to that hole.

“No…” Nick whispers horrifyingly with tears starting to flow from his eyes again, “…no, I don’t—I don’t wanna… go back…”

He whimpers again.

Mark hopelessly stares at the closed doors with many bullets lodged into them, as does the old surgeon in front of him. He feels a sense of cold dread in his chest. In his arms, Nick turns away from the door and pushes his face into Mark's shoulder instead.

“No… I don’t want them to take me again… please, I don’t want to…”

Mark squeezes his eyes closed at Nick's muffled and desperate mumbling and tightens his arms around the fragile body, accompanied by more shots towards their van.

“It’s okay, everything’s gonna be okay. You’re not going back. You’ll be okay,” he whispers gently to Nick as the boy keeps crying in his hold.

He moves his hands to rub Nick’s back up and down, tucking Nick’s head into the space between his neck and shoulder, cradling Nick like a child.

“It’s okay, it’s gonna be okay, don’t worry, yeah?”

He knows it’s a lie, of course.

There are four jeeps worth of highly trained Helga members on their tail. Maybe more, considering their screen is broken and they can’t see outside if there are more jeeps coming. They’re cornered. They have no weapon—no bullets, no protection, no means of fighting back.

God knows how long they still need to go to get to Central’s backup.

They…

They lost.

But he keeps rubbing Nick’s back up and down, continuously telling Nick that everything’s going to be fine.

Eventually, Nick whimpers, “Just… just kill me… please… I don’t want them to take me back…”

“No, don’t say that, come on,” he whispers gently to Nick’s ear, hating that Nick is trying to shatter his self-made illusion.

Across from him, Doctor Lowe stares with just as much emptiness on his face. The man even looks scared with glistening eyes.

Nick pulls back to face him fully.

“Just kill me…”

“Nicky, don’t—”

“I know we’re stuck, Mark.”

He stares back at Nick’s sure face, even if it’s wet with tears and pale.

“Don’t let me go back to them, please…”

Mark breathes out shakily, wincing once in a while when he feels more shot at their van.

“Just kill me…”

Nick chokes on a sob after that, face terrified but resigned at the same time.

Behind Nick, he sees Doctor Lowe digging into his pants then pulls out four glass vials.

Mark stares at them, catching a glimpse of ‘morphine’ and ‘100ml’ on the labels.

“No,” he firmly says to Doctor Lowe.

“You know we’re done, kid,” he tells Mark gently.

“No, we’re not. We’ll be fine.”

Doctor Lowe gives him a heartbroken and pitying look, but…

They’ll be fine. They have to be fine. He doesn’t have to kill Nick to prevent him from being taken back. They don’t have to kill themselves so that Helga can’t torture them back. They’ll be okay.

They’ll be fine. They’ll be fine.

Even if there are more bullets lodged on their door, they’ll be fine.

They’ll be fine, they’ll be fine, they’ll be—

“I’m too old for this shit, son,” Doctor Lowe says with palpably heavy sense of exhaustion as he takes one bottle from his palm and keeps it in his own vest pocket.

Four bottles and one taken by Doctor Lowe already.

He gulps painfully.

Nick… Nick has to have one. He deserves that, at least.

It’s either Mark, Angie, or Anna whose fate in Helga’s hands will be uncertain.

Mark bites his lip, feeling terrified too with cold realization seeping into him. He feels his eyes getting wet, suddenly thinking about his mom and how he never got to say a proper goodbye to her, or Jackson. Or the others in his team.

How Nick will never get to taste freedom, except by taking one of those bottles.

It’s so unfair. Why is it all so unfair?

He hugs Nick tighter with his own closed eyes and tears flowing down his cheek.

“It’s okay,” he continues softly again to Nick’s ear, “you’ll be okay. They’ll never take you again. I promise. You’ll be okay.”

He keeps doing that, delaying the inevitable, trying to find it in his heart to help Doctor Lowe injects the content of that bottle to Nick’s vein when push comes to shove. And it will come to shove.

There are more shots to the van, and he feels deep plunging in his chest again.

Maybe he has never been cut out for this. For being a D.E.A.N agent. He doesn’t think a true D.E.A.N agent should be this shaky and terrified at the face of danger they supposedly signed up for.

“Wait.”

He opens his eyes and stare back at the surgeon.

The old man’s face is confused with furrowed eyebrows.

“Do you hear that?”

“Hear what?” Mark asks back.

“There are shots fired,” the surgeon replies with widened eyes.

Mark glares, feeling angry at the fact that he’s emotionally being yanked around. The surgeon is the one forcing Mark to come to terms with what they’re going to face, but he is now the one being obtuse and playing around.

“I can fucking see that, Doc,” he harshly replies.

“No, look,” the surgeon says, curiously with a smile blooming on his face, “there are shots outside.”

Mark glares even more at the surgeon’s demented game.

“I’m aware. I have ears and eyes.”

“No, listen,” the old man emphasizes.

He stays glaring with Nick crying in his arms while refusing to look at the door with bullets lodged all over it. He doesn’t understand the point of Doctor Lowe saying all of these stupid shits.

But then he furrows his own eyebrows. There is something strange about the gunshot sounds.

Obviously, he can sense some bullets being shot in their way, be it through sound or the vibrations once they hit their van, but he still turns his head towards the doors along with the surgeon.

“These are not shot towards us,” he concludes.

On top of that, he finally hears some really loud whooshing above them, enough to penetrate the metal body of the van and into their hearing.

Mark quickly clicks on his earpiece comm, almost missing it in his haste. Immediately, there is a crackling sound of it connecting to a network.

Mark clicks on his round button.

“This is CC75 reporting in. Are you 1056? Over.”

“Oh, god,” he immediately whispers out.

“I repeat. This is CC75 reporting in. Are you 1056? Over.”

Mark shakily clicks on his square button while looking at his watch, seeing light blue dots all around them.

“We copy. Confirming this is 1056. Over,” he shakily replies.

“What’s your code? And is the informant with you? Over.”

“This is MT56. And yes, the informant is with us. Over.”

At that, Doctor Lowe jumps up and slams open the hatch again.

Mark immediately looks up, now realizing that the whooshing sound are from several helicopter blades.

“YOU’RE LATE YOU FUCKING BASTARDS!” Doctor Lowe screams with his hand thrown upwards while cackling like a maniac. “WHOO HOOO!”

Mark chokes out a half-laugh half-cry at the surgeon’s excited yell.

They still hear more shots, but it’s clear that it’s more between backup’s heli and the Helga members chasing them, rather than between those members and their van. He can even hear slight booming while their van is jolted around a little. He can only guess that it might be from backup’s grenade launchers.

Doctor Lowe pops back in and basically lets himself drop to his ass while leaning back on his arms, still laughing once in a while. He has tears too on his face despite the weirdly soothing chuckles.

Mark closes his eyes and lets more of his own tears drop to his cheeks, but out of relief. He hugs Nick even tighter while burying his face into the black hair.

“I told you we’ll be fine, right?” he whispers to Nick’s ear, now being honest.

Nick wraps his own arms around Mark too and pushes his face deeper into Mark’s neck, sobbing too out of relief.

Mark hears more crackling, so he clicks his square button again. He hears a different person talking this time, with a voice he is more acquainted to even before going into D.E.A.N.

“Agent Hayden, I have informed Agent Kingston and Agent Basset that you should drive forward for 20 more miles with two of our helis and three other backup’s vehicles, totalling 40 protection agents until you reach our rescue station. There are Medic agents ready to treat the informant’s puncture wound on his abdomen and other injuries all of you might have sustained. Do you copy? Over?”

“Yes, we copy, Agent Callahan. We’ll meet rescue teams in 20 miles. Over.”

“Good. Unfortunately, we can’t send all of our backup with you because we’ll need to assist 1034, but I think 40 agents are plenty enough to protect 5 of you. Do you copy? Over.”

“Yes, we copy. Of course, Sir. We’ll manage with that. Over.”

He is about to click circle to turn off his comm, but he hears another crackling signifying another request to connect to him.

“Good to hear you, son. Would love to hear Jackson too, but I bet he’d be proud of you anyway.”

Mark chuckles.

“Thank you, Sir. I’m trying my best.”

“Oh, I’m sure you are.”

He waits for a bit, but eventually the familiar senior agent says, “CN94 over and out.”

The van continues to go for a while, with the shooting sounds eventually ceasing to the point that the bumping motions have become calming and lulling them all into a state of half-asleep. Mark makes sure to continue staying awake for the most part so that he can help Nick put pressure on his wounded stomach.

He doesn’t have the energy to think about what it means that Nick is leaning slightly to the side so that he can keep lying on Mark’s chest. Nick’s black-haired head is tucked so deeply under Mark’s chin that he can feel his lips slightly touching the dark sweaty strands. Mark’s arm is also still circling around Nick’s back and putting pressure on the wound that way.

He doesn’t even realize it when the van starts to slow down until it comes to a stop.

Suddenly, the doors to the back of the van are slammed open with lights flooding the space. He has to squint and put a palm over his eyebrows to adjust to it.

He sees several people wearing D.E.A.N’s standard uniforms with bulletproof vests on top who are pushing a gurney towards them, rolling it until it touches the back bumper of the van. Some step into the van itself to help Mark and Doctor Lowe shift Nick around until they can deposit Nick onto the mattress.

The bed is adjusted into a position where it bends upwards in the middle so that Nick isn’t completely lying down. An oxygen mask is quickly fitted onto his face with his head raised a bit so that the elastic band can be pulled behind his head. They put his head back to the bed again after that.

He doesn’t really notice Doctor Lowe walking away to be treated himself.

They immediately start wheeling Nick away, but before they can move far, Mark already steps forward quickly to approach the gurney without thinking. Nick too suddenly lifts his head with a desperate whimpering while reaching out to Mark. When Mark is close enough, Nick quickly holds his hand and grips it tight.

“Sir, we need to insert IV in him for the transfusion and other medications.”

“Let me go with him,” he insists, ignoring the other Medic agents who are trying to get him to sit down and be treated too.

He can’t be bothered to think about himself until he can see Nick safe.

“We’ll need to get him to a medic facility and into a Central Hub HQ. He is a critical informant.”

“He is a 21-year-old human trafficking survivor with PTSD. He is not just an informant,” he replies firmly with a little bit of offense and anger on Nick’s behalf at how they just reduce him to another mission object.

“Yes, sir, we’re aware,” the agent firmly responds to him without reacting to his impassioned words, “but he is still our critical informant, and we need to transport him to a safe confidential location as soon as possible.”

“Let me be with him until then,” he insists.

The Medic agents stare at him then at Nick who is still gripping Mark’s hand, no inhibition in his exhaustion and severe blood-loss. One of them sighs.

“Just until he is ready for transport to a medic facility.”

“Thank you,” he responds with deep relief and gratitude.

“And you’ll need to be treated too in one of the tents.”

“Yeah. With him.”

They give him an unreadable look, but he is too exhausted to think about what that means. They end up simply wheeling Nick into one of the medical tents with Mark on the side still continuously holding Nick’s hand.

Mark can see other agents being wheeled into some tents too, some arriving with helicopters. He assumes those are agents from 1034 and their backup after they decided Nick had plenty of backup agents protecting him already. Some of those arriving agents are able to stand and walk by themselves, but some have to be helped to move around. Some don’t move at all.

He doesn’t know what’s their exact status, and he is too afraid to think more about it, so he focuses on Nick again.

The Medic agents start pulling at Nick’s clothes to unzip his bulletproof vest and outright cuts up his shirt to get to his wound. Nick whimpers a bit at the sudden touches from strangers around him, so Mark squeezes his hand and whispers, “It’s okay, they’re not hurting you, they’re taking care of you, don’t worry”. Nick seems to calm down at that, and the Medic agents give him another unreadable stare that he is starting to get irritated with.

Is it so strange that he wants to calm Nick down and make sure that he is okay?

Nick reaches out shakily to move his hand out of Mark's grip and closer to the lower side of his bulletproof vest. He furrows his eyebrows seeing Nick's movement until the pale frail hand eventually hovers while the boy mumbles half-consciously, "Hmm... you... your bleeding..."

Mark feels warmth in his chest, relieved that Nick is safe enough to be able to feel concerned for someone else. And touched that in his muddled sense, Nick still cares about his condition.

"It's fine. Just lightly grazed. I'll be okay," he says as he bends closer to Nick's ear and squeezes Nick's palm lightly.

One of the Medic agents frowns with a disapproving look, seeing as the blood is copious enough to warrant a guess that it's slightly more than a superficial wound. Whether it's because he is minimizing his injury or because he keeps refusing to be treated until Nick is done, he doesn't know.

Nick shifts his head again to stare more directly at his right waist.

"Hurts? Doesn't... hurt?"

"I'll be fine," he chuckles, "don't worry about me."

"Hmm..."

Nick continues looking like he hardly has wits about him, unfocused despite trying his hardest to cling to consciousness.

The Medic agents keep treating Nick regardless, cleaning up his wound and entire front torso with disinfectant. He is guessing it also contains anaesthetic so that Nick isn’t too in pain when they cauterize his wound with the cauterizer. One of them lifts Nick’s palm that’s not gripping Mark’s palm and starts palpitating the skin to find a vein until she settles at one spot. Another Medic agent brings her a plastic pan with IV attachment instruments and materials in it.

After that, it’s pretty straight forward until the saline and blood bags are attached to Nick.

There are agents firmly walking out of a newly arriving helicopter, and the Medic agents who are caring for Nick turn to look at those agents slightly before looking back at Mark.

“He is going to be transported now.”

A firm dismissal.

But Mark doesn’t really care. He still walks to follow Nick’s gurney even when Nick has let go of his hand, maybe because the mask also disperses sedative so that he doesn’t feel afraid anymore being bounced around between strangers without Mark.

Eventually, they lift the bed to raise it and insert it to the heli with Nick being shifted around a bit. Mark sees that those swirly blue-brown eyes are closed, and his breathing is steady. Nick might have fallen asleep or unconscious, but he seems okay overall.

The helicopter’s blades are spinning again, creating strong gush of wind around. Mark has to put an arm over his face to soften the blow, then it takes off.

Mark would have liked to follow Nick all the way to the medic facility, and maybe beyond, but he does understand the need for the separation and confidentiality, so when some Medic agents clear their throats, Mark turns to them to dutifully follow them into a tent and sits on one of the beds as instructed.

Mark closes his eyes and leans his head back while they fuss over him. He takes a deep breath, finally letting himself feel the entirety of his shaky body, along with his exhaustion and the pain of the last many hours—and maybe even days or weeks—washing over him, but also deep relief.

When he opens his eyes again, he fittingly sees the dawn breaking with the sun starting to peek out of the sandy landscape.

A new day. A symbol of everything horrific happening before, now over.

Not everything is well and good, of course, considering there is still the question of Nick’s condition—which he doesn’t know whether he is allowed to be told or not after this.

There is also deep grief when he sees agents being wheeled on gurneys into several medical vans and helicopters, some of them fully covered by white sheets as their bodies and the fabrics are smeared with deep red, while the others are in varying degrees of being injured.

Even after this, there will most certainly be many more missions to deal with the rest of Helga. Undoubtedly going to be much more difficult than this.

But the yesterday of chaos is over. It’s really over.

It’s all okay now.

He can finally breathe easy, until the next mission.

***

(I) (II) (III) (IV) (V) (VI) (VII) (VIII) (IX) (X) (XI) (XII) (XIII) (XIV) (XV) (XVI) (XVII) (XVIII) (XIX) (XX) (XXI) (XXII) (XXIII) (XXIV) (XXV) (XXVI) (XXVII) (XXVIII) (XXIX) (XXX) (XXXI - END)

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samtheacesheep · 7 months

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Work Description:

Murphy’s Law gets Melissa hurt, when she and Milo are trapped and alone.

———

@fairytalepsuedonym

#whumptober2023 #no.25 #‘they’re not breathing!’#mml #fic #minor whump #blood and injury #past child abuse #mml monsters au #I wrote a thing

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flowersarefreetherapy · 2 years

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Shadow of Stars: Chapter 1

(the AU is here!)

CW: Implied past spice, mentioned character deaths (minor and in the past), past parental death, grief, angst

Star sits on the throne, looking out over the crowds of people coming to offer their tributes. Another good harvest has come and gone, so the people bring their praises to the gods in hope of a better harvest the next year. It is a time of joy and excitement, children’s laughs filtering into the palace from the streets outside.

This was his parents’ favorite time of the year. They loved meeting their subjects, talking with them, hearing their concerns, doing everything they could to ease their burdens.

Of course, that was before the outerlands were laid to waste, the Shadows coming out of their caves in the darkness, leaving behind bloodied husks, sacred lifeblood bleeding into the soil from hundreds of perfect bite marks. Before the armies rode out in pursuit of the killers and came back with missing limbs and missing friends. Before Shadows crept through the palace and killed the king and queen, most of their children, and their bodyguards.

Before he learned the man whose bed he had been sharing that night was one of them.

Star closes his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose against the memory. Of Daniel’s chilled hands on his body, breathless moans filling the space, how good he made him feel, over and over again. How they didn’t get to sleep until the first rays of sunlight began to show over the treetops.

His family had been dead for hours by then and Star woke up with those life-taking fangs inches from his face.

“Your Highness.”

Star opens his eyes to see Robin approaching. Their face is lined with grief, the same grief his eyes echo back to him every time he looks in the mirrors lining the hallways. If it weren’t for the Shadows’ annoying ability to mimic a human, he would cover every one.

“The elders wish to bring the complaints of their villages.”

“Right,” Star breathes. “I f-forgot.”

“There’s no shame in that, your highness. There is enough for you to be worrying about. If you wish, I can have Thaddeus handle them?”

Star debates it for a moment. Thaddeus has the knowledge and the experience to handle the large crowds, but he isn’t the king. His words only have so much weight.

And its your parents’ tradition. Honor them in this way.

“Thank, thank you, but I, I can do this.”

Robin nods and steps back, the hem of their cloak brushing against the floor. Star contemplates for a moment asking about the raiding parties hunting down the Shadows, if there was any progress. Thaddeus and they led the army now and the kills of Shadows had doubled. The couple worked in perfect harmony. There was no need to micromanage them. If there was a problem, one of them would let him know.

The grand hall shines in the afternoon light. Everything is painted with a sheen of gold. The burgundy tapestries lining the walls turned the color of old blood, the marble floors blinding to look at. Still he expects to see his father sitting on the throne, looking out over the room with a commanding presence Star dreams of having.

“Your highness,” Thaddeus says, dipping into a low bow. He stands at the foot of the throne, hand resting lightly on the pommel of his sword.

“At ease,” Star whispers, unable to stop himself from glancing at the giant oak doors that hold back the complaints of the villages. He can hear the hushed whispers from the other side. The hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

“What’s the report?” Robin asks.

“All forty-two villages have sent representatives. Longport and Icland have new representatives. Their old ones were taken by Shadows.”

Robin curses. “Thank you.”

Thaddeus nods. Not the formal salute after giving a report, but the casual one that comes with years of friendship. Well, marriage, in their case. Star turns away before he is reminded of his parents dancing across the balcony.

Or the secret dreams he carried in his heart of waking up in Daniel’s cabin, making tea in the morning, helping with the chickens and sheep on his farm, watching the small bugs light up the night sky, as if his namesakes had come down to play with mortals. The youngest prince didn’t have the weight of the kingdom on his shoulders and Star had wished he could make a life away from the finery and diplomatics of the palace, somewhere quiet with the man he loved.

Loved. Because the dream died the night he learned Daniel was a killer.

Star tiptoes to the throne, hesitating. He takes a deep breath before sinking down onto the thin cushion. The wooden back pushes the circlet into his curls as he rests his head against it, sucking in several deep breaths to keep from being sick.

“Your highness?” Robin whispers.

Star curls his fingers around the armrests of the throne and breathes, “One, one–I. . . I’m ready.”

He lowers his head, smoothes out the light blue vest he wears, and nods for Thaddeus to open the doors.

Tagging the whole crew: @blood-is-compulsory @darkthingshappen @whump-for-all-and-all-for-whump @whumpinggrounds @pigeonwhumps (let me know if you want to be added/removed!)

#Star my beloved #Daniel the protector #Thad #Robin #minor character death #past character death #angst #grief #implied past spice #vampire au #fantasy au #fantasy whump #shadow of stars au #parental death mention tw

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pigeonwhumps · 1 year

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Small Spaces

Immortal Cannon Fodder masterlist

Taglist: @extrabitterbrain @wolfeyedwitch

Phoenix tries out being in a small space to prepare for their next mission. It doesn't go too well.

1.6k

CWs: claustrophobia, panic attack, flashbacks, past abuse, past child abuse, telepath whump, mentions of human trafficking, emeto, begging

"So I go through the vent and Santhiya will be there to help me down, right?"

"Yep," confirms Kai. "She'll remove the cover from that side and be ready for you to bring the explosives inside. Once Lian and I have cleared the compound and transferred the data, we blow it all to kingdom come."

"Fucking finally," growls Santhiya, and Morfydd nods fiercely. Phoenix is yet to encounter this particular group of traffickers, but they know that Santhiya was instrumental in helping rescue some of their victims from a burning building before she was even officially part of the team. This is personal, especially for her, and Phoenix isn't about to let everyone down. Even if it is a very small space.

It feels weird, actually planning for explosions. For Phoenix at least they're usually on-the-spot things, to get them out of tight spaces. They don't usually involve so much planning.

Although Phoenix may have, admittedly, enjoyed liaising with engineering on the explosives a little too much.

"Earth to Phoenix. Ready to see if you'll fit in the vent?"

Phoenix nods, looking at the long rectangular cardboard tube that's been put together on the living room floor. It's the size of the vent, and it's so small that their chest goes tight just looking at it. It's about the same size as the cupboard in their old team's quarters.

This isn't a good time to try this out. Not after seeing them again, bringing all the memories back. They haven't slept properly since, and that always makes things worse. But it needs to be done.

They take a deep breath and drop to their knees in front of the makeshift vent.

It's not that long. It'll take a few minutes at most. It's okay, they'll be fine.

Phoenix crawls into the tube. It's small, far too small, their skin feels like there's bugs skittering over it, but there's a light at the end and they focus on that. It's light and it's not going away any time soon, no-one's going to take it away as punishment, it'll be fine.

The light dims, and they rub their wrists, sleeves suddenly feeling too tight and far too cold. The light's not gone, it's dimmed, Indigo's not here to take it away, but everything's too hot and too small and it's closing in on them.

Phoenix blinks and they're shivering, freezing cold, the only light moonlight passing through a tiny crack in the wooden planks, and in the morning Alicia will patch up their knees and they'll go to school still freezing inside, and no-one will notice because this is just normal, why would anyone notice? By tomorrow evening everything will be healed and back to normal, but for now they're stuck here, in the dark and cold with the old wood creaking, trees rustling, chest tight and twisted up, unable to breathe properly, the suffocating walls closing in around them.

Phoenix blinks again and they're back in the pitch-black cupboard, insides burning, wrists in cold metal, their breathing's picking up and the walls are closing in and they don't know how long they're going to be punished for, they could die in here with walls like that.

"Please." They don't know who they're begging when there's no-one who'll listen but they do anyway. "Please, let me out. I'm sorry. Please."

Kai frowns as Phoenix comes to a halt partway through the cardboard tube. They were making their way through steadily and then they just... stopped.

"Are they okay in there?" he asks Lian, who's down the other end. He peers into the tube with a frown.

"They look fine, but... they're just not moving."

"Give them a couple of minutes. It's only cardboard, but–"

Kai's interrupted by Santhiya throwing up on the carpet. When she looks up, wiping her mouth, her face is chalk-white, eyes red-rimmed and urgent.

"Get them out of there," she croaks. Kai gets up but Morfydd's already moving, tearing apart the cardboard with intense concentration.

Phoenix is huddled up, arms around their legs, head in their knees. Shaking harder than Kai's seen in a while.

Kai glances at Morfydd, who nods, and crouches down in front of Phoenix.

"Hey. I'm gonna pick you up now, nice and easy, that's it, arms around me." He speaks lowly, pulling Phoenix's unresisting arms around his neck and lifting them up against him. They're still far too light, and drenched in sweat. "Let's get you sat down, yeah? Easy does it. You're safe, Phoenix."

"I'm sorry, sir," murmurs Phoenix, mind somewhere else entirely, "I've learned my lesson."

Kai stiffens slightly, then forces himself to relax, sitting on the sofa with Phoenix on his lap, their head buried in his neck. He rubs their back.

"Shh. Easy, you're safe."

Morfydd drapes a blanket over Phoenix's shoulders and Kai looks over at them as they sit on the sofa arm beside him.

"Cheers. How's Santhiya doing?"

"Not too well. Lian's looking after her."

"I'll leave him to it then."

Morfydd reaches up a hand and rests it on Phoenix's arm. "They were begging. I don't think it was loud enough for anyone else to hear, but... do you know who it was?"

"They called me sir when I picked them up, and there's only three people I've ever heard them call that," replies Kai grimly. "The other members of their former team."

"Fuck," breathes Morfydd.

"Yeah."

"Will it be too much for them if I stay? I know it is for Santhiya, but I need to help someone. I can't just sit by while my friends... well."

"No, you can stay. They trust you. I'm going to turn into a wolf, see if that helps. It does sometimes. Stay though."

Morfydd nods. "What about the mission?"

"Well, we've got over a fortnight until the next shipment goes out. That should be enough time to calm Phoenix down and complete the mission. And I was thinking maybe Santhiya could take Phoenix with her? We'd have to test the weight though. I don't know. But they can't go through the vent."

"No." Morfydd holds Phoenix gently as Kai transforms and curls around them. Phoenix, still mostly out of it, snuggles into Kai's fur, burying themself in it. "They really do like it. You're okay, Phoenix. You're safe."

Once Phoenix is out of the cardboard tube, Lian takes Santhiya by the arm and leads her over to the opposite sofa. Morfydd arrives soon after with a blanket and a mug of hot chocolate, draping the blanket over her shoulders. Santhiya holds it in a white-knuckled grip, the other hand lifting the mug to her mouth, absently taking a sip. She looks awful, haunted, ill, in a way that Lian's rarely seen.

"Santhiya?"

"They're so scared," she says quietly, almost in a monotone. "So scared. Their mind was screaming. I haven't had my defences falter so badly in a long time, since... well, you know... but they smashed through them all. They're so scared. So much. It's them I've been hearing at night sometimes, I recognise it now. The fear, the pain... how do they stand it?" She blinks, eyes bright with unshed tears. "How do they stand it all?"

"That's a question only Phoenix can answer," says Lian. "Along with some others." He rubs Santhiya's back and she sways slightly, looking at Lian with more focus. "How are you feeling now? Any quieter?"

"A little. Still making me nauseous."

"Hey, Kai, are you and Phoenix going to stay here a while?" he asks, not looking away from Santhiya.

Kai gives an affirmative yip.

"Okay. I'm taking Santhiya somewhere quieter." He helps Santhiya to stand, blanket still wrapped around her shoulders, and puts his arm around her waist to hold her steady. "Let's go to your room, come on."

Santhiya nods, putting one foot in front of the other until they reach her bedroom, Lian sitting down with her on the edge of the bed.

"Better?"

"Yeah. I can think again now." The colour's slowly coming back into her cheeks, and she drums her fingers on Lian's leg. "I think... maybe I should've guessed it was them, waking me, after what happened last week. They told you, right?"

"About bumping into their team downstairs? Yeah. No wonder they're getting nightmares strong enough to break through your defences. I mean, only Kai knows what actually happened with their team, but it was clearly bad. Kai wouldn't have spent so much time away if it wasn't."

Santhiya snorts wetly. "I think 'bad' is an understatement. Their reaction... I never want to see them that small again."

Lian nods, handing his friend a tissue. "How are you, though? How's your head?"

"Sore. Fuzzy. Phoenix's mind was a lot. I can still hear their screams."

"Let's get you some painkillers then. Do you want me to stay?"

Santhiya nods, swallowing the pills. "I need a distraction. And I want to try building up my defences more. Not right now, but... later. That sounds bad. I just... it's too much."

Lian shakes his head. "It's not bad, Santh. You shouldn't have to hear people in distress when you're not prepared for it, even if they're your friends. We can certainly work on that."

"It doesn't seem right. I can hear people's worst thoughts but I can't do anything to help. It's not fair."

Lian sighs. He's heard many variations on those words in his time mentoring Santhiya. "One person can't do everything. Just knowing people are in trouble, telling us that, that can be enough. Besides, with Phoenix specifically, your presence as their friend is enough to help."

"But they're so– so hurt. How can just my presence help so much? It doesn't seem right. They can't be that fond of me."

"They are. Believe me, Santh, I've seen the way they look at you. They really, really are."

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whumpacabra · 6 months

Text

Haircut

Past whump of a minor [8-10 years old], implied past abuse, restraints mention, nonsexual nudity [bathing], haircut, Ghost has no parenting skills

[Follows Ghost finds a kid]

They didn’t understand the outside, but the concrete floor of the garage they could work with. Whatever his game was, they could learn. They were a quick learner.

He was fiddling with various valves attached to old copper pipes, though he kept glancing over his shoulder as though he was afraid they might run. They wouldn’t. They knew better. The weight of the shackle and its short length of chain still attached to their leg was reminder enough of why they shouldn’t run.

The sound of sputtering, running water and a sharp curse pulled their eyes from the broken link of chain. The man stepped back from the dusty, dirty shower tucked in the corner of the garage.

Adjusting the knobs within for a few moments longer, he swept the curtain closed and turned to them. Finally, he gave them instructions.

“Shower. Get cleaned up. I’ll find some clothes for you before you get out.” His eyes flickered to their ankle as they limped forward, but he said nothing more as he disappeared through a door to the house.

They pulled the curtain back, the plasticky fabric speckled black with long dried mildew. There were cobwebs in the corners now bejewel by the warm mist, and a bar of withered, green soap sat soaking in the corner.

They stripped and stepped into the shower, doing their best to keep their racing heart quiet. Normally they bathed in the tub, water ice cold and the pale man’s steady hands threatening to hold them under if they splashed too much or cried too loudly when soap stung fresh cuts.

This water was warm, alien but comforting. The soap only stung the ring of half healed but still broken flesh that bordered both edges of their shackle. The soap smelled good, a sharp scent that reminded them of a spice they could always smell on the pale man’s breath, but never tasted. Not directly.

The soap didn’t smell so good anymore, and the water was too hot. They stepped out onto the well worn mat beside the shower and shivered, watching the water still black with the filth from their skin swirl around the drain half clogged with spiderwebs.

The man returned, a bundle of fabric in hand. He looked at them and quickly diverted his eyes before closing them, breathing slow and controlled.

They wanted to cry, panic building in their chest. What did he want?

“Take these. Dry off and get dressed.” He held out the fabric in his hands in their general direction, eyes still closed. They stepped slowly forward, gingerly taking the towel and the bundle of dry clothes wrapped inside it from his hands. There was a tension in his shoulders as he turned his back them. His hands were twitching to form a fist.

Their heart dropped like a stone as they stepped into boxers too wide to sit securely on their narrow hips. He was angry. They tried to think of what they did wrong. Maybe he wanted them to stay in the shower longer. Maybe they weren’t clean enough. Maybe he just didn’t like how they looked.

The pale man always threatened that they were too disfigured and ugly to love. That he was the only one gracious enough to care for them, that anyone else would kill them out of fear and horror and disgust.

Maybe this man realized this. Maybe he was walking across the garage and laying out a blue tarp to keep their blood off the cement when he killed them.

Their eyes traced the work table to his right. They could reach the screwdriver if they sprinted. But there was no anger in his eyes as he glanced over his shoulder at them.

Just something sad and tired.

“Come here.” They walked onto the tarp, keeping him and the nearest improvised weapon in their line of sight. He picked up a plastic case from the work table and produced a strange contraption, plugging the cord into an outlet that crackled angrily.

The machine hummed to life, miniature blade biting open air before he switched it off. His eyes still looked at them with something they didn’t recognize. They realized there was fear on their face before they schooled their expression to quiet.

“It’s just a buzzer. I’m going to cut your hair. There’s no saving that mess.” He gestured, spinning his finger around. “Turn around.“

They nodded stiffly and turned, shoulders tensed and squared. Whatever he wanted was alright, as long as they stayed alive. He took a handful of their matted locks in hand, lifting it away from their still damp neck.

“Is this alright?” Again they nodded, hoping he couldn’t see the shake of their shoulders that threatened to hunch up and pull away from his oddly light grip.

They waited for pain. For the blades to bite into the itching flesh of their scalp.

Instead of the buzzer glided against their skin, warm and humming as it worked. The mats of their hair were too thick to cleanly cut away, and it took the buzzer several minutes of biting at the mangled patch of hair before a weight suddenly dropped from their head. A clump of damp, black hair was splayed across the blue tarp behind them like a drowned rat.

“You alright?” He held the still humming buzzer aloft, hands hovering and not touching them as they raised their own hand to feel the freshly opened gap in their hair. The texture was strange, the air kissing their skin cold and new and itchy. They dropped their hands and nodded. He grabbed another clump of matted hair and continued.

The blue tarp grew black beneath their feet as their own hair fell in heavy clumps. Their hands twitched, itching to feel that new and somewhat pleasant sensation of their freshly shorn scalp again, but they resisted until he finally stepped back and clicked the buzzer off.

“How’s that? Better?” His hand was rough as he rubbed it over their head, brushing away stray pieces of hair. They leaned into his touch, foreign but welcome, not grabbing or pulling at them. When his hand left they turned to meet his eyes, gingerly rubbing their own hands over their head.

It felt clean. It felt new. It felt good.

They nodded, expression blank. An uncertain smile twitched at his lips before he turned abruptly to put away the buzzer.

“Pick up the tarp and dump the hair out the back door. By the red flowers.” He paused as he unplugged the buzzer’s cord. “It keeps the deer away. And the sparrows might use it in their nests.”

They didn’t understand entirely, but they did as he asked. They could learn this game, they might even win. This was something they could work with.

[Before Parenting Advice]

(Part of my Freelancers: Changing Tides series)

#whump #past abuse #restraints mention #whump of a minor #minor whump #rescue #comfort #bathing #haircut #freelancers #no context november #i so desperately want to post my swansong AU but i have committed to no context november #which means i cant give you a coherent narrative day by day #so have some old RJ whump I wrote forever ago :]

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whumpinthepot · 1 year

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30 days 30 lines challenge - day 16

TW: Child endangerment/whump (I’m so sorry)

—

She protested as expected, but after some time and prompting Clarence was able to get her to take a small sip of it. To which she spat on the ground right away, and cupped her hands over her mouth with a shaking head. Her whimpers muffled through her fingers.

#im sorry I want to get past this part 😭😭😭😭#my poor baby mouse 😭#breezy’s post #rats race #mouse #clarence #tw minor whump #tw child endangerment #whump #whump writing #30 30 day 16 #30 days 30 lines challenge

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lizzyverydizzyyo · 6 months

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D.E.A.N | Chapter 28 - Labyrinth

Masterlist and overall summary of the whole novel is here. | Prompt on trope-appreciation-tuesdays that inspired this is here. | @whumptober-archive

Fandom : Original Work

(I) (II) (III) (IV) (V) (VI) (VII) (VIII) (IX) (X) (XI) (XII) (XIII) (XIV) (XV) (XVI) (XVII) (XVIII) (XIX) (XX) (XXI) (XXII) (XXIII) (XXIV) (XXV) (XXVI) (XXVII) (XXVIII) (XXIX) (XXX) (XXXI - END)

AO3

Wordcount: ± 7824 [Very action-heavy, so I can’t cut it into two chapters]

TW: Gore, Graphic Depiction of Violence, Graphic Depiction of Death, Guns, Weapon, Firearm, Explosion, Minor Character Death (antagonist), Blood, Injury

Everything is bathed in blood, danger, and flame. Whatever plan they all had before is now out of the window. They realize they’re not going to get out unscathed, but they have to try to keep the casualty down to a minimum like their lives depend on it (they truly do).

Whumptober 2023 Themes (last 4 and Alt. Bonus only):

Day Alt. bonus — Aftermath of Failure

Day 27 — Matches

Day 28 — Sacrifice

Day 29 — Troubled Past Resurfacing

Day 31 — Emptiness | Setbacks

Whumptober 2022 Themes (post-event, not completionist):

Day 11 Alt. — Ambushed

Day 26 — No One Left Behind | Separated

This story is set in the last half of 2016.

——

The resounding footsteps of running people accompany them while they crouch behind the covering desks and other barricades, even if those footsteps are going away from them in the opposite directions. They hear gunshots immediately as they get to another wall where they can finally stand and fully run.

Angie looks down on her watch, trying to see the closest path to the backyard again. Over her shoulder at Angie’s screen, Mark sees the previous 5 agents in their team becoming grey dots instead.

Another bait team.

Anna and Doctor Lowe mostly act as the protectors for the other three, while Mark stays behind all of them to give protection from the back, so Nick is caged between the four of them.

“This way,” Angie states suddenly.

They take a sharp turn to follow Angie’s direction.

Mark tries to look at his own watch, noticing worryingly numerous brown dots near them, but he tries to focus on the fact that they haven’t been noticed so far and that most of those dots are approaching the middle of the headquarter and the front courtyard.

“Wait!”

They all immediately stop at Angie’s cry. She turns to the people behind her, raising her wrist to show her screen with an amalgamation of brown dots right in front of them.

Oh, fuck.

“Do any of you hold a detonator?”

They all turn sharply to Doctor Lowe.

As an explanation, he raises his own watch with the screen dragged far away to the front side from where they are, showing 2 pulsating but static white dots. One is around 4 meters away from them, while the other is much further.

“We cannot detonate that one!” Angie says incredulously, referring to the dot closest to them, “We’re too close.”

“I’m asking whether any of you have a detonator, not whether we should blow that one up,” he expands with a deadpan look.

Anna slowly reaches into one of the pockets in her pants, and they all stare at her. Her hand emerges with a small and thin 2-by-3 inches square item, looking sleek despite being an object of destruction. The buttons on the front side are also so thin they might as well be touchscreen, although there is a screen there to show which explosive the detonator is locked onto.

“The other is supposed to be held by Luke,” Anna informs while waving her detonator.

Doctor Lowe tsks.

“I was hoping you or Angie hold the other one,” the old surgeon says as he looks at Mark and Angie respectively.

Mark doesn’t think he would ever be trusted with one, considering he is sometimes too rash and emotional, especially when it comes to Nick.

And right now, he is very emotional about Nick.

“Well, considering Luke is supposed to stay and guard the front courtyard, they probably think it’s better to give the detonator to him than me. Since I’m supposed to leave and can’t detonate it once I’m out.”

Doctor Lowe sighs, resigned at Angie’s explanation.

“Okay,” Anna takes charge this time, “we can walk a little here to go here,” she shows her own watch while they huddle together, her finger on the screen dragging in a half-crest moon motion instead of a straight line to somewhere between the two explosives, “and we would be around 6 or so meters from both explosives, so we can detonate either of them safely.”

Mark furrows his eyebrows and looks up.

“You want to make a detour again?!”

“Not as far as what you suggested before,” Anna replies with a blurry eye roll due to her visor.

Mark frowns at the obvious jab.

“Look,” Anna says again, appearing nonchalant about Mark’s offense, “once we get here,” she taps again the spot she is proposing, “we can detonate the first one to draw out most of them to the other side. Because the second explosive is closer to the backyard, and that’s where we’ll go once the first bomb is exploded.”

Mark doesn’t like to admit that her plan is more strategic than his plan before.

Maybe that’s why she is the deputy in their team.

“We have to go around a bit so that they don’t see us, but after that, it’s straightforward.”

“Will they go there, to the explosion? Or will that just spread them around?” Mark tries again to challenge her, although his concern is genuine too. “I don’t think it’s logical for them to go to the explosion site since it’s going to be unsafe.”

Anna stares at him and to the rest, gears turning in all of their heads.

“We need to draw them out to that spot first before detonating. Taking as many of them out as possible. Then with the explosion sound, we’ll run to the backyard so they can’t hear us,” Angie offers this time.

“We’ll bomb them all?!” Nick asks incredulously.

“Yes, it’s going to be effective in taking out a lot of enemies at the same time.”

“They’re people! You don’t explode people!”

“Nick, they’re Helga people. Is it really a great loss if they’re dead?” Anna asks exasperatedly.

Mark glares at Anna for forgetting the codename. Anna simply rolls her eyes again.

“But… you’re gonna explode them…”

“Yes, that’s what ‘detonating bomb’ means,” Anna responds to Nick again with a deadpan voice.

Marcus can tell Nick still looks flabbergasted beyond his tinted visor now that they’re huddled close.

To be fair, to non-trained civilians in normal situations, the thought of coldly exploding and destroying a human being’s body might be too gruesome to handle. But they’re not civilians right now. And it’s not a normal circumstance. They have to turn off their humanity for a bit if they want to survive.

“Okay, how do we do that?” Doctor Lowe takes charge this time.

“What Lena did before,” Angie suggests, pointing to the area around them. “There are stuff here we can throw.”

“Or we can shoot to that direction,” Anna counters while cocking her head to the direction where they plan to draw the Helga people to.

“They’re gonna come to this direction instead,” Mark argues, “since the shot is coming from here.”

“They’re gonna hear that wall getting shot,” Anna explains again with her thumb pointing at a wall on the site near the first explosive they’re planning to set off.

“No, better to throw stuff there,” Doctor Lowe replies, siding with him and Angie. “He is right. If we shoot that wall, they’re gonna go to the ammos source direction instead.”

Doctor Lowe then suddenly reaches out a hand to Nick’s medical bag, making him cluelessly stare at the surgeon. The old man rolls his eyes.

“Give me your bag. I’ll take some non-essential vials to throw.”

After few seconds of Nick just staring, Doctor Lowe takes matters into his own hands and yanks the bag from Nick’s hold. He doesn’t waste time rummaging through the inside and taking some glass vials, presumably to throw as bait. He then shoves the bag back to Nick.

“Okay, lead us,” Doctor Lowe says tersely to Anna. Anna obliges and starts walking carefully and soundlessly.

She alternates between looking to her front and her watch to guide them all to the spot she chose before, and maybe they should have been more focused on their surroundings instead because they see a Helga member in front of them that they can’t avoid. The Helga member is walking backwards while looking around, and his eyes eventually fall onto the five of them.

That man snarls and reaches a hand to his pants where his HT is located.

“Oh no, you fucking don’t, you piece of shit,” Anna hisses angrily and pounces on him.

She puts him in a headlock while her other arm is reaching into her utility belt to where her holster is. The man is fighting her off, clawing and hitting her as she struggles to slip her left arm between their bodies to reach for her handgun with silencer. Considering she is right-handed and was preparing to use the gun with her right hand, her hands’ positioning now is a disadvantage to her.

Mark kicks the man’s hand to get it away from his radio so that the bastard doesn’t reveal their location. The man opens his mouth to scream.

Anna quickly pulls back her left arm to focus on covering his mouth instead.

Even so, the man manages to let out a slight scream and muffled callings to his other comrades, so Mark decides to just shoot him point blank in the face. He tries not to follow his instinct to hug Nick when he hears Nick whimpers and sobs.

“You hear him? That’s Todd!”

“Where is he? I heard a shot!”

“Fuck,” Anna hisses as she casually pushes off the man’s body from her cradle, seemingly not affected at all by having a man shot to death in her arms.

“Run!” Angie whispers hurriedly to rush them.

They turn around to face the direction they were already going for, with Mark having to forcibly pull Nick’s wrist to get him to move.

Doctor Lowe swings his arm to throw one vial behind him to the spot they chose before, but it falls short, not reaching the wall. It’s too close to where they actually are right now.

“Oh, shit.”

They immediately hear running footsteps in their direction, though fortunately, not too close.

“Just fucking detonate it now!”

Anna keeps running with the rest of them, but she follows Doctor Lowe’s command and pulls out her detonator and clicks around a bit.

They immediately hear a deafening kaboom and a chorus of loud pained screaming. A gush of strong wind with debris flying suddenly hit them until they almost stumble to the ground. Mark hears ringing in his ears for a bit before it slowly fades.

A bit too close, but they had no choice.

They all look down on their watches again, seeing a bunch of brown dots now stagnant and unmoving. Eventually, some of them do not pulsate anymore on the screen, but they can still see some brown blips moving around.

They didn’t take out as many Helga members as they would have liked.

“We need to draw them out to the other bomb now,” Angie informs with racing breath.

“I’d rather we focus on getting the fuck out of here,” Marcus responds to her.

“They’re gonna follow us!”

“They’re going to, regardless! We need to get Bel out of here,” Anna hisses to Angie, taking his side for now.

Angie pauses, so they pause too with exasperated breath.

“Give me the detonator.”

“Angie—”

“We need to get them away from you all,” Angie insists at Anna’s interrupted complaint.

“Angie, we’re already down to 4 agents protecting Bel,” Mark argues back. “We’ve sent Eclipse and Robert as baits away from us. We can’t afford to waste another agent for bait.”

“You’re not gonna be alone once you’re in the backyard. There are guarding agents there.”

Anna stomps her feet and throws her hands to the side exasperatedly.

“Trust me,” Angie tries again in calmer voice.

Anna stares, and he can hear her deep but dragging breath. Eventually, she tsks and stalks to Angie and shoves the detonator into her palm.

“You’re on your own,” Anna curtly tells her.

“I know,” Angie replies gently, almost like a resignation.

They all stare at Angie a bit like they’re mourning and wordlessly saying goodbye. Mark personally feels something plunging in his chest with a sense of emptiness. It’s very unlikely they will see her again alive.

“Doc, give me some of those,” Angie says once the split-second moment of mourning is done. She points at the surgeon’s hand that’s holding some supposedly non-essential medical vials. “I need to break them somewhere so that they can hear me.”

Doctor Lowe drops some on her hand.

Maybe Mark is imagining it, but he can see the same slumping of the surgeon’s shoulders as before, like when he was just done doing Nick’s restitching in this headquarter’s med bay, making him appear much older and more exhausted.

The surgeon pivots quickly, almost like he refuses to look at Angie any longer, then tersely says, “Let’s go.”

Before they even start moving, they already hear Angie’s running steps to the opposite of where they’re going. Once they’re far enough to not hear Angie’s steps anymore, they start hearing machine gun shots and glass breaking that they know are from her. Presumably, to bait the remaining Helga members to her while thinking that she is battling some of their comrades.

They all signed up for this. Mark has to remind himself of that.

He doesn’t know what to feel as he lets his feet lead him, instead of his head. Once in a while, they pass by stray Helga members that they coldly shoot to death. There is a sense of uncomfortable detachment in him.

Sometimes, they have to battle those men in hand-to-hand combat because they’re too close or they can’t reach their firearms fast enough. Some only requires fists and smashing of their enemies’ heads into the ground, but sometimes they need their daggers plunged into their enemies’ bodies, in whatever body part three of them can stab those bastards.

Worryingly, some of those people seem to be closely acquainted enough to Nick to recognize him despite the helmet and non-descript clothing, so they have to keep battling and killing those enemies before those men can sound the alarm to the other Helga people.

As the latest Helga bastard they killed lays dead before them, they see Nick leaning heavily against the wall while breathing hard and choking with sobs. They know Nick is not trained for this kind of exertion or battle, especially so soon after surgery, but his apparent shock and trauma from witnessing all of these are not helping his physical frailty.

He drops down to his knees with a resounding thump next to his medical bag, pushing his palms against the ground so that he doesn’t fall to his face.

“I can’t…”

Nick then leans back so that he is sitting on his right thigh, one hand going to the visor of his helmet, although he doesn’t open it. Mark can hear the whimpering and the weeping, muffled by the helmet.

“I can’t do this…”

His head turns up to face Mark, Anna, and Doctor Lowe while his shoulders are shaking with his sobs.

“Bel, there are Helga people around, we need to go!”

Nick doesn’t heed him, only looking down again while continuing to cry. If anything, he drags his body to the side so that he can lean back against the wall with his sprawled legs bent to the side. He leans back his head too until he looks up slightly, although Mark isn’t sure if Nick’s eyes are open to stare at his ceiling behind that tinted visor.

“I’m tired. I can’t—I can’t go on… Please…”

Nick pulls his legs closer to bend them and hugs them, hiding his face between his body and knees. His shoulders continue to rise and fall in time with his weeping. It uncomfortably reminds Mark of when Nick was still handcuffed in their old headquarter’s holding cell.

“Oh my god,” Anna huffs out with irritation and desperation, “Bel, please, not now.”

Nick continues to quietly cry, his medical bag abandoned on his side.

Doctor Lowe growls and turns around with one hand on his hip and the other on his head like he is about to massage his temples. Anna slings away her machine gun from her shoulder to put the barrel on the ground, leaning forward with crossed palms over the stock and forehead laid on the back of her palms in frustration.

Mark bites his lip, pushing down his anger and impatience, then he exhales before walking towards Nick. He kneels down in front of Nick and slings his rifle to his back. He then puts his palms gently on the bottom of Nick’s helmet, pulling it up so that the half-Russian boy looks up at him. Nick is hiccupping as he cries.

“Bel, I know it’s all horrific, and you’re in pain, and you’re tired…”

He searches Nick’s eyes behind the tinted visor.

“I understand. This is all too much, even for me.”

Nick chokes again with another sob.

“But it will be over. Very soon. All we need to do is get to our van…”

He looks around to the general area of the backyard before facing Nick again.

“…drive you to Central’s backup, and then it’s done.”

He keeps his stare at Nick, trying to give gentle expression and hoping Nick can still see it somehow.

“It’s all gonna end soon. But you have to take these last steps.”

Nick is still hiccupping, but his crying seems to have tapered off.

“After that, you’re free. You will be safe.”

Nick doesn’t reply, but his breathing has grown quieter. More calm.

“I promise you, just these last few steps, and you’ll never have to see any of this ever again, okay?”

He doesn’t know how accurate it will be to the end of their fate on this day, but they all have to believe in something to keep going. This is as much for Nick as it is for him.

“Just few more steps, okay?”

Nick still breathes shakily, but when Mark reaches out his arms as an offer, Nick’s trembling arms finally reach out to him back. It takes a lot of effort, almost like Mark is hauling Nick’s entire body up by himself, but Nick eventually stands.

“Ba—bag?” he asks to Mark, so quiet he almost doesn’t hear it.

Mark is still holding Nick’s forearms to steady him when he looks down at the medical bag Nick dropped before.

“Okay,” he gently says, slinging Nick’s arm to his shoulder while he bends down to grab the bag.

He can sense that Nick still needs something to hold onto so that he can stay standing. Once he has the bag in one hand, he offers it to Nick so that he can hold it again. Mark needs his hands free to use his rifle again.

Nick shakily hugs it to his chest, his legs still shaking just as hard as before when he tries to walk forward.

He topples to the side again, thankfully with Mark ready to catch him. The other two run immediately to Nick when they see just how truly weak he is. Mark immediately hears a pained and exhausted groan from his side.

Nick is really not lying when he said he can’t do this.

Eventually, Nick drops down again to his knees, one hand grappling with the medical bag to keep it in his hold while the other is pushing against the floor to support his body.

Even if he is not crying and being emotional (not that Mark believes he even has any energy to cry again), it is obvious that he is truly at the end of his limit.

“Drop it.”

Nikolai turns his face up to Doctor Lowe with a confused body language, just as Mark and Anna do.

“Wha—what?”

“Drop the bag,” Doctor Lowe tells him tightly again, his eyes still wandering look around for danger.

“But… the—the uh… medical stuff—"

“Just fucking drop it!” Doctor Lowe now growls with a hazy-looking glare through his visor, “It’s weighing you down and a fucking neon light on your head that you’re who they’re looking for!”

Out of shock and intimidation, Nick immediately drops the bag from his hold with a fearful shuffle backwards on his knees.

Once the bag is on the ground, Doctor Lowe slings the strap of his machine gun so that it’s on his back instead. He then quickly darts his hands to open the clip that locks the medical bag and rummages through the inside frantically. His hands dart out again once in a while to bring out whatever he can grab to shove them into his many cargo pants pockets. Eventually, he starts shoving them into Mark’s hands and Nick’s hands too.

He furrows his eyebrows.

“Put them into your fucking pockets, you idiot,” the surgeon hisses at him now.

Mark’s face opens with understanding, so he slings back his gun too to grab as many medical tools and vials as possible, along with Nick and Anna.

Eventually, he can see them all pausing and struggling to shove things into their pockets, even the ones on their vests. There are only so much their uniforms can carry despite their design, and even with the utility belts.

“Can’t fit,” Anna murmurs in frustration.

Doctor Lowe’s hands are hovering in the air with many vials and tools in them, staring at the three of them one by one.

“Shit.”

Doctor Lowe looks down again towards the medical bag. There are still many things inside the bag, and the contents were as minimal as possible already, considering the surgeon was already pretty picky with his nurse before they started escaping.

“Okay,” the old surgeon says lowly, gears visible turning in his head before he inhales and exhales deeply.

He puts the things down on the ground while Mark and Anna look around to make sure they’re still safe.

“Here,” Doctor Lowe says, pointing to the ground where he put the medical things he just held, “let me see what we have.”

All three of them then put down the things in their hands that don’t fit their pockets.

Doctor Lowe furrows his eyebrows and stares at those items intensely. After a while, he starts darting his hands again towards the first mound of items, then the inside of the medical bag in turn. He grabs some items from the two sources to put them into a different spot.

“Put your things here too,” Doctor Lowe says while shortly looking at Mark, Nick, and Anna, then points at the previous group of items Mark assumes is for things the surgeon is still trying to decide whether to bring or not.

He quickly pulls out the things he put in his pockets before, followed by Anna and Nikolai, although he is not sure this is a good idea since it’s just taking valuable time for escaping. He doesn’t really voice it, intimidated by how serious Doctor Lowe looks. Thankfully, the surgeon seems to be able to work fast in deciding which ones to take and which ones to leave behind.

Most of the things he leaves in the left-behind mound are vials of meds and gauzes, while sharp things like surgical scissors and blades are shoved into his own pockets. Mark is suspecting those are brought both for medical needs and self-defense or weaponry use. The surgeon does take some vials of meds, some Mark recognizes as antibiotics and pain meds, then the old man quickly shoves the items towards three of them randomly.

At some point, Mark stops keeping track of what items are shoved into his hands or trying to speculate on why. Doctor Lowe is deciding and moving too fast to keep up with.

“Can’t fit anymore, Doc,” he says eventually.

Anna looks back at him and nods.

“I can’t fit more either.”

They all look towards Nick who is clearly hopelessly trying to fit more items in his pockets and failing.

Doctor Lowe sighs, darting a look at the mound of left-behind items and the medical bag.

“Let’s just go then. This is the best we can do.”

He listlessly agrees in his mind, although he still isn’t happy about it because he doesn’t know if they will be together all the time. If they get separated and Nick gets injured, the person with him might not have what he needs, and Nick himself probably might not have what he needs either.

But Doctor Lowe is right that the bag and the excess contents are more of a hinderance than helpful at this point. They have no choice but to abandon them.

“Okay, let’s go,” Doctor Lowe says while still half-crouching.

Mark and Anna automatically sling each of Nick’s arms to their shoulders and help him stand. The time spent deciding what items they should bring seems to have restored some of Nick’s energy, and the lack of medical bag weight certainly helps too, so now he can stand again on his own.

They immediately continue running with their backs bent forward, trying not to be seen so that they don’t have to attack any Helga person and waste more of their bullets. Once in a while, they pause abruptly when they notice some stray D.E.A.N agents battling with other Helga members. Mark can feel himself wincing instinctively at the repeated shots on the walls or random barricades they’re stopping behind, even if it’s not directed at them.

When the shots stop, they run again.

Sometimes they’re not so lucky as to not be seen, so they have no choice but to shoot back like previously until those men step away for cover from Mark’s group’s bullets. These moments are always used to run away, hoping those men don’t realize Nick is amongst the four of them. They can’t afford to wait for those people to pop out again to exchange more shots.

Rinse and repeat.

It might have happened a lot just in the last few hours alone, but when they have to sneak around while approaching enemies they can’t avoid, using their handguns with silencers to shoot those enemies dead right in front of his eyes hasn’t gotten any less shocking and disturbing.

Once, Doctor Lowe sneaks behind one lone enemy holding his surgical blade, then pounces to wrap his arm around the man’s neck and plunges the blade to the jugular. Other times, it’s Anna or him who has to shoot the enemies point blank right on the head or face, close enough to basically blow up their skulls.

Nick repeatedly whimpers and looks away, sobbing quietly while saying ‘Oh god’.

Mark mourns the fact that Nick has to see more of these disgusting, traumatizing things on top of everything he has gone through. Not to mention, Mark is among the ones doing the acts. He wonders if Nick will feel terrified or disgusted with him later.

Jesus, even Mark feels like he needs to throw up despite understanding that these killings are necessary.

He doesn’t know how Doctor Lowe and Anna do it without flinching, especially the surgeon. Never mind the shockingly proficient combat skill; that man unshakably does all of these things despite having undoubtedly taken Hippocratic oath to “First do no harm.” How could all of this be so easy for him?

Being much more senior than Mark helps, he supposes.

At some point, he realizes that they’ve traversed quite a lot of distance, but he feels like they’re all wildly turned around at this point. He doesn��t know whether they’re closer to the backdoor now than they were long ago when they just started escaping.

Suddenly, their watches vibrate urgently, so they all look down only to see the screen automatically snapping to the previous white dot. It’s pulsating faster and faster with one dark blue dot near it and an amalgamation of brown dots following.

And then another kaboom.

They instinctively bring up their arms as cover while bowing down, although they don’t feel any gush of strong wind almost knocking them over like before, or painful concrete bits and pieces hitting them roughly.

After a while, Mark looks down again on his watch.

The dark blue dot is still pulsating, but it’s stagnant. Just like the crowd of brown dots around it.

He closes his eyes and gulps with cold sensation washing over him.

If the dark blue dot stops pulsating, he is just going to tell himself it’s because Angie is locked onto a communication with another agent. Instead of any other possibility. He’ll let go of his delusion once they’re all out of here.

Right now, he needs it.

“Move it!”

At the angry cry of Doctor Lowe, he looks up from his watch and starts running again with the remaining and pitiful members of the chaperone team.

He notices now after traversing the zigzagging layout of 1034’s headquarter that, blessedly, there are very few Helga people they need to hide from or attack. In fact, they don’t see one at all for quite a while.

They feel safe to take a glance at their watches once in a while, dragging the map with their fingers here and there to see if there are obstructions, and taking turns directing each other.

Until Anna slips on something and launches herself forward violently into the ground.

She groans and turns her body around quickly.

It’s only then they all realize that it’s not just ‘something’ that made her fall, but a leg set out in front of her intentionally to tackle her. It’s followed by three armed men coming out of the intersection of walls they are trying to cross.

“You. Fucking. Bitch,” one of the men grits out in an angry growl, “You took out so many of us.” He stalks towards Anna sprawled on the ground who is now shuffling backwards to avoid them. “Took our fucking whore too and refusing to give him back to us.”

The men seem unaware that Nick is amongst them, visibly having a furious tunnel vision towards Anna and Anna only, but Nick whimpers behind Mark and Doctor Lowe, so all of those men snap their necks to turn behind them. Doctor Lowe gives a split-second look to Nick while hissing out, “Fuck, why did you do that?!”

It doesn’t matter. Those men already heard Nick and recognizes his voice.

“There you are, Russian doll,” the same man says with disgusting smug voice as they now stalk towards Nick, “We’ve missed you, you know?”

Mark automatically steps right in front of Nick to cover him from the Helga bastards while Nick shakily whispers, ‘no, please, no’ with his back planted on the wall behind them.

One of the men reaches into his pocket for his radio. They’re all facing Mark, Nick, and Doctor Lowe, so they don’t realize Anna already standing again and going for them.

Doctor Lowe and Mark ready their pistols, but refrain from shooting yet because of Anna in the background, but once Anna has the man reaching for his radio in a headlock, they both pull their triggers several times to the other two men who then scurry out of the way to where they were coming from. Anna is now struggling to keep her headlock on the floor, her other hand on the top of the man’s head.

As much as Anna is flexible and quick, helped by a small stature, it still proves to be a little bit of a problem as she is crushed by the much bigger man on top of her. Mark can’t afford to help Anna or even look at her because he and the surgeon are busy shooting the two men as they pop their heads out once in a while.

Mark and Doctor Lowe have nowhere to hide, while those two men can hide behind the wall of the intersection, so those two men choose to shoot him and the surgeon instead of Anna since both are the easy picking. He is guessing those Helga people also don’t want to accidentally shoot their own member in Anna’s arms.

Eventually, though, they hear a sickening crack.

He sees the man on top of Anna going slack and slumps to the side.

Anna doesn’t waste time kneeling and shooting too with her machine gun, and now those remaining two men also have nowhere to hide because they’re being shot from two directions.

Still, at some point Doctor Lowe hisses, and Mark notices red seeping out of the surgeon uncovered upper arm. He thinks about just leaving those two men to minimize further injury, but those men have heard Nick, so they must be eliminated to prevent them from snitching to the other members.

As they exchange bullets, he finally hears one of their enemies yelling “Gah!” in a pained voice. Right after, a thumping sound follows.

When they brave themselves to go see the intersection, he sees a dead man with eerily opened eyes and another one crouching while hugging his bleeding hand near his chest. The remaining man looks at three of them with Nick behind while whimpering like a fucking coward, no longer angry and smug.

“Please… please… you broke my radio and killed the other guys… just let me live… I won’t say anything…”

He keeps shaking and blubbering, but Anna simply slings her machine gun again to point it to her front, pressing on the trigger for several seconds without any hesitation.

“Let’s go,” she simply says without any change in her expression after killing a hopeless enemy, turning around to continue their journey.

Mark tries to steady himself by saying in his head over and over again that they’re the enemies. It’s either him and his team or them.

Four of them start running again, taking a slight turn from the intersection to go to their original intended direction. From his side, he can hear Nick’s labored breathing getting louder and louder and Nick’s pace getting slower. Doctor Lowe and Anna turn back once in a while to rush Nick, repeatedly saying the many iterations of ‘Come on, just a little bit more, Bel’ to the increasingly weakened boy.

At some point, they’re too focused on encouraging Nick that they don’t realize they’re facing another intersection. They’re not looking at their watches at the right moment to notice the brown dots on the right and left ways of the intersection.

Mark hears yelps and groans from his front, but when he looks ahead, Anna and Doctor Lowe are already gone.

Oh, shit.

Mark halts his steps suddenly and instinctively reaches out his left arm to keep Nick from continuing forward. Mark takes several steps back, his arm still out to push Nick back a little. He looks around, trying to see where the other two have gone and who took them.

It happened just a few seconds ago. Those Helga members must still be around.

He hears another scream, recognizably sounding very Anna. Then a few seconds later, he hears a grunt and hitting sounds, this time unmistakably from Doctor Lowe. But they’re both from different directions. Anna from the right and Doctor Lowe from the left.

There is crackling in his earpiece so he clicks square, hoping it’s either of the two.

“MT56? Do you copy?”

Mark sucks in a breath while closing his eyes in relief.

“MT56 copy. AJ56, do you copy? Over.”

“Oh, thank fuck you’re still alive.”

“Doctor Lowe is gone too. Where the fuck are you?”

“Mark, don’t wait for me. Just go. Do you copy? Over.”

Mark furrows his eyebrows.

“I copy. But you want us to leave you? How many are you fighting now?!”

“He needs to get to the backup soon,” Anna replies firmly.

“I told you we’re both alone! We need you!”

“Just tell the backyard barricading agents to go with you if I’m not there when you get to the van. Do you copy?”

“But—"

“Just get him the hell out of here!” Anna responds, more whispery. In the background, he hears some running steps.

He is about to reply with something when Anna suddenly says, “AJ56 over and out.”

He tries again to click his left and right arrow then square several times while looking at his watch, calling out “Anna? Anna? Do you copy?” when he gets to the dark blue dot that signifies Anna’s location before,but she is adamantly not taking the call. Or she can’t.

He looks around, quickly clicking his left and right buttons on his shoulder to go back and forth between the dark blue dots he can see on his screen, including the one he connected to before. Each one stops pulsating as he clicks the square button.

He calls for Anna, Doctor Lowe, or Angie desperately, and none of them replies. He doesn’t even know which dot is which person at this point. Eventually, he settles with connecting to random colored dots and calling out anyone he can think of until he ends up with the closest dark blue dot again.

“Anna, do you copy? Doc? Angie? Do you copy?!” he tries again, sounding more urgent but still with whispery voice.

All he hears is just crackling static. No difference.

“Fuck.”

He leans his head back and exhales deeply in frustration, trying to push down his panic.

Nicky needs him. He’s the only one the younger man has right now.

He turns around to look at Nick behind him, the skinny body shaking visibly. He quickly reaches out his left hand.

“Hold my hand and do NOT let go. Do you understand?”

Nick nods frantically and immediately grabs his offered palm.

In any other time, he has a feeling he would be pleased about it, but right now, he is in too much urgency and adrenaline to not have it heavily overshadowed by fear and worry. He immediately takes off running.

Nick yelps slightly when Mark starts pulling his hand, but he quickly adjusts to Mark’s movement and pace while still tightly holding Mark’s palm.

They keep running with sounds of shots and screaming alongside explosions around, their faces and eyes thankfully protected by their helmets from debris and pieces of broken wood or concretes flying around. The dust also visibly dances around even beyond their tinted visors, thankfully out of inhaling risk also because of their helmets.

Mark pauses slightly, and that’s only when he sees a giant conglomerate of brown dots on the watch near them with loud voices of the Helga people themselves that they can hear. He’s learned enough from all this time running around that they really should minimize looking away from their front so that they don’t get more nasty surprises for not paying attention.

He sees another pulsating white dot near him, but with no detonator, that’s not useful to him other than so that he knows to not linger around just in case another agent needs to detonate it.

He finally reaches the last wall turn reaching to the backyard that they saw before —when there were still 12 of them—and he feels tentatively hopeful.

Well, he should have never been hopeful at all.

He hears another loud yelp and rough yanking from his hand, and when he turns around, Nick is gone.

“Fuck,” he hisses out as he is starting to panic.

He immediately runs to the direction where he can still see glimpse of Nick’s legs kicking about, ready to fight for Nick back, but then someone pounces on him until he is harshly thrown to the floor with an angry man on top of him. He struggles to push off the man from him so that he can follow Nick, knowing that the longer Nick is out of his sight, the further he will be taken.

He kicks up his leg to knee the man’s groin, earning him a loud scream from on top of him. At the moment of weakness, Mark pushes him off to the side and quickly reaches for his handgun holster to take it out, shooting it twice right on the man’s left eye.

He exhales shakily and gulps down his nausea, then he rises to run to the direction where he sees Nick last. He really has no other option but to swallow his horror and run as fast as he can if he wants to get Nick back safe and sound.

Mark continues running, feeling himself increasingly loathing how 1034’s headquarter layout is complex and winding and really, really confusing. A headquarter for less than 20 people has no business being this complicated.

He looks around the many turns he can take in just one hallway, repeatedly checking his watch for the closest dark blue dot. He runs quickly following its direction around the hazy mapping, once in a while clicking on his shoulder to try to connect with any of the dark blue dots he can see.

“EL56, this is MT56,” he tries his guess that it might be Nick, “Do you copy? Over.”

He looks back down again at his watch for a split-second before looking up again, whipping his head left and right to see if he can find the heterochromatic-eyed boy. The person on the other side of his earpiece comm doesn’t respond, but the dot still pulsates.

He repeats it again, choosing still not to use Nick’s other codename just in case some Helga people already figured it out. He rotates again through all the dark blue dots he can see, and while none of them respond, all still blip in and out.

“Aghr! No!”

Mark halts his running, turning quickly to the direction he hears the scream from.

That’s Nick.

He doesn’t think before sprinting to that direction, especially when he hears muffled screaming and cries from Nick with harsh voices of unfamiliar men following. He even hears some thuds and groans that certainly come from Nick.

He turns around the corner and sees Nick pushed down on the ground with his helmet off, hands held behind his back and a bloody bruise on the corner of his lips. He can even see some bleeding on Nick’s hairline. The boy is wincing while the men around him menacingly stand over him. One of them even has one leg pressed onto Nick’s back until he groans in pain and pleadings.

“You motherfuckers…” he grits out with a sense of fury he has never felt in his life while rising his arms to aim his pistol.

He doesn’t hesitate to pull the trigger several times, steps firm as he stalks closer.

It’s clear that those men thought they’re alone and successful in getting Nick back that they don’t even realize they’re being attacked, not until one of them suddenly drops lifelessly to the ground.

Unfortunately, the son of a bitch’s body falls down right on top of Nick until he grunts and winces in pain again like the breath was knocked out of him.

“You piece of shit!” the remaining three men look up to stare at him. They look furious too.

Mark immediately puts back his pistol and pulls the sling of his machine gun to switch to it, aiming the barrel at those men. It’s a good thing that Nick is on the ground while those men are standing. Slow too, compared to Mark.

He starts indiscriminately pressing the trigger and aiming it left to right slightly to rain bullets on all of those men. They have no chance of fighting Mark since he immediately attacks them before they can get ready after trying to keep Nick down.

He clenches his jaw and snarls behind his visor, feeling the thrill of each recoil as he sees the men getting hit repeatedly by his gun.

One falls down while holding his abdomen. Not dead, but close with zero chance of running from Mark’s wrath once he gets to him. The other two grunt while being hit, leaning over in pain but still standing.

Unfortunately, one of them has the sickening idea of pulling Nick’s hair up roughly to use him as a human shield. Nick shrieks in pain, and Mark now just realizes that the side of the face he didn’t see before has a blooming bruise on it. Nick’s right eye is blackened by a hit to the face, Mark is sure, and with a small cut on his cheekbone.

Motherfucker.

He’s really going to fucking kill those bastards. Drag it out for as long as he can when he gets his hands on them. How fucking dare they touch Nick like that?

The two still-standing man pulls Nick up completely to stand while his knees buckle several times.

“Stand up, you fucking whore,” one of them hisses at Nick while pulling his hair up even more. Nick yelps but pushes his body up with his hair being yanked roughly.

“Get your fucking hands off him!”

They simply run sideways still using Nick as a human shield, leaving the remaining injured man behind. They can’t even be bothered to help one of their own, basically condemning him to die with Mark’s hands.

Mark breathes heavily. He feels like he’ll shatter his own jaw.

He is so, so very enraged right now he could explode.

Oh, he’s gonna raise hell on those bastards. He’s going to make them regret ever being born.

“Wait, guys! No, wait, come on!”

The man with bleeding abdomen and shot legs keeps dragging his body to the side while leaning on his right thigh, trying to go to the direction of the supposed comrades who left him behind. The more Mark stalks towards him with sure steps, the more frantic that man’s dragging becomes until Mark is only one foot away from him.

“No, no, come on, dude. I can’t do anything right now. He’s not with me anymore. Please just let me be,” the man shakily begs with tears starting to flow from his eyes.

Fucking pathetic.

Mark raises one leg until it’s bent perpendicular to his knee and kicks out at the man’s face as hard as he can. The man shrieks in pain while he is thrown to the side. The man doesn’t give up trying to shuffle further, now on his stomach and dragging himself with his hands. Mark can hear his shaky crying when he sees the other dead man next to him as he keeps dragging himself away on the floor.

Mark simply steps near the head and roughly stomps on the back of it until he hears several loud cracks. He doesn’t check whether the man has died or not before he points his machine gun towards the skull and presses the trigger for a few seconds. A guarantee that the man will rise no more.

Each flash and recoil of the ammo being shot bring some sort of demented joy in Mark. Maybe he is broken by all of this horror, but he really can’t give a shit.

After that, he bends down to take Nick’s helmet on the floor, sensing that the half-Vietnamese boy will still need to hide his identity once Mark gets him back. Mark clasps the chin strap onto his belt, desperately hoping he’ll manage to get to Nick again to return it.

He doesn’t waste time anymore to run towards the direction where he suspects the other two men are bringing Nick. He feels the ball of rage inside him rolling, not wanting to wait any longer to get his hands on those bastards.

***

(I) (II) (III) (IV) (V) (VI) (VII) (VIII) (IX) (X) (XI) (XII) (XIII) (XIV) (XV) (XVI) (XVII) (XVIII) (XIX) (XX) (XXI) (XXII) (XXIII) (XXIV) (XXV) (XXVI) (XXVII) (XXVIII) (XXIX) (XXX) (XXXI - END)

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samtheacesheep · 1 year

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Chapter 3 Description:

Melissa wants to know where Milo has been.

#whumpril2023 #whumprilday9 #’who did this to you?’#minor whump #trauma #past child abuse #mml monsters au #I wrote a thing

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bittersw33t-lotus · 1 year

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Great Timing

Simon ‘Ghost’ Riley x Fem! Reader

Cw: minor violence, profanity, bodily harm, attempted assault, blood, whump, creepy dude

Summary: Reader gets off work late and encounters a man who follows her home with malicious intent until your neighbor comes home early from deployment.

A/N: THIS IS MY FIRST GHOST FIC DONT JUDGE ME 🔫🔫🔫

You sighed in exhaustion as you walk out the doors of your work, instering the key into the lock securing the place, you head straight to your car. It was another nightly overtime stay at work, this has been going on for four days now but luckily your boss gave you a few days off as a token of appreciation which made you just as eager to get home and into the comfort of your bed.

Reaching your apartment complex you mind began to grow fuzzy and blurred with sleep slowly taking place. You got out of the car and began heading to the door entrance of the complex, completely unaware of the lingering figure hiding in the distance eyeing you like prey. You unlocked the complex entrance, using the key card the owner provided you with, you walk in entering the lobby, completely oblivious the figure that slipped through the door before it could close and lock, while you make your way to the elevator.

Pressing the button to the elevator, the doors soon opened as you stepped in, your eyelids so droopy that you almost missed the number ‘4’ button to your floor number. You take your your phone out and examine the screen as it turns on as the doors began to close, ‘3:26,’ you read on your Lock Screen before unlocking the device. You got out earlier than you usually did, these past few nights you wouldn’t leave work till nearly five in the morning.

A dull thud spooked you out of your thoughts, shedding the drowsiness you had felt earlier, your head snapped up at the elevator doors to see a hand between the metal opening forcing the doors to open back up revealing a man in his late 40’s. You didn’t want to assume but the man seemed to be homeless with how dirty and ragged his clothing were, he also had the stench of alcohol lingering off him. You knew some thing was wrong the minute you laid eyes on him, making eye contact you was the way he eyed you, like some piece of meat. Your stomach churned in discomfort and a need to run.

He loomed over you which made you feel even more uncomfortable. You wondered where he even came from since the lobby seemed completely empty, especially since it was 3 in the morning, until a thought occurred. Could he have snuck when you opened the door, you questioned in your mind causing you to tense up, the thought alone seemed to trigger your fight or flight response a little as the need to sleep was shoved into the back of your mind. That was the least of your worries.

You didn’t want to show your panic so you gave him a quick weary smile chucking awkwardly. “Oh, sorry I didn’t see you coming…” you muttered as you curled in on yourself, the man said nothing for the next couple of seconds and just stood there eyeing your figure up and down making you inwardly wince in disgust.

After what felt like minuets he finally moved into the elevator, you shimmied to the very back corner as he stepped in and leaned up against the back wall a little too close for your liking. You scooted over the the side wall of the elevator nearing the controls and doors, as they finally closed. You tried to ignore his staring as you turned to look at the elevators controls. “Uhh… which floor are you going to?” You look at his trying to seem calm to the best of your ability but you already knew you were failing.

He gave a quick glance at the controls before looking back at you causing you to look at his feet. “Four.” He said in a raspy voice, you hummed as you looked back to stare at the floor. The voice in the back of your head was beginning to scream louder to make a run for it but you had no idea what you could do. You’re sure everyone was asleep and definitely wouldn’t answer the door at this hour of the night, but you also couldn’t risk him finding out where exactly you lived. If you tried to make a run back to your car and he followed you’d not only make it obvious but it’d also be dangerous.

A plan came to mind, it was your best chance, “oh looks like I already pressed your floor on accident,” you laugh nervously pressing the third floor button as a way to get closer to the lobby.

He seemed displeased as he responded with a small, “oh.” The digits on the small screen above the doors showed each floor going up. You needed to take the stair cases since the elevator was no good, hopefully he isn’t ballsy enough to follow you as you get off.

The ding of the elevator chimed as you reached the third floor, you’re quick to walk off hearing the doors begin to close, sigh in relief but your breath stills as you hear another set of feet softly pad behind you. You glance over your shoulder and all senses in your body go on high alert. He’s trailing behind and smiling in a way that send a chill up your spine. The voice in your head screams so loud you can no longer ignore it, “RUN!” You wasted no time and began to dash for the stairs. The man chuckles following in pursuit.

He grasps your shirt and yanks you back giving you whiplash as you make harsh contact with the floor. You grunt as you try to get up but your arms are soon pinned and a weight is forced upon you. The man is on top of you as he laughs. “Relax honey I just wanna have fun.” He chuckles, you’re legs thrash around not being pinned causing your knee to make hard contact with his groin causing to shout in pain, his grip looses and you take the chance to kick him off you, he goes back and is flown to the wall, a loud thud coming for it. You quickly rise to your feet and run for the stairs, you contemplate for running up stairs to your floor or to the lobby but decided for the lobby. You defend down one flight before you hear the door slam open, you knew it was the man so your begin to skip a couple of steps to decedent down the stairs faster. “Come back you bitch!” He shouts out.

Relief comes once you reach the end of the stairs and see the lobby door. You swing it open not bothering to close it as you ran across to the entrance, the man quick and hot on your tail you fear you might not even make it to your car. You snag your car keys from your pocket and walk right out the door and make a b-line to your car, parked a few feet away.

The man soon come out the door and looks around to before his eyes land on you, your car not to far from you. Both of your were too focused on one thing, you both failed to notice certain tall bulking figure dress in all black with a black balaclava.

Simon had just barely arrived home, his deployment was expected to take longer but due to the his great performance along with the 141 they were able to go home a week early. He had just gotten out of his truck and heading to the back to grab his duffel bag when he was suddenly alerted by the sudden occurrence, the complexes front door swinging open by you as you ran out, you seemed to run with urgency and by the look on your face it was something bad and it seemed to have terrified you, but from what? His question was answered when the door was slammed open again and out came a man in his late 30’s or 40’s, he clearly was a homeless guy and possibly a drug addict, he stopped look around, he completely overlooked Simon, probably due to his dark clothing the the parking lot poorly lit, the guy scanned the area searching for something until his sight was set on you and wasted no time in following you in pursuit.

This set alarms off for Simon, the man was obvious chasing you with malicious intent, he quickly began to run after you two, he reached down to his upper thigh toward his handgun that was strapped to his thigh, he gripped the weapon and pulled it out of its holster. Simons mind screaming at him to get the guy and protect you before he could lay a finger on you.

You were only a couple of feet away until the man lunged and tackled you to the solid rough ground. Pain eachted though you as some areas of your bare skin scrapped against to ground, your pants ripping and exposing your skin and scaling it as well. Blood beginning to seep out from the wounds. “Get off!” You screamed out, you body pinned down, your legs pinned by his, you wrists helps down with one hand and hair violently pulled with his other hand causing you to cry out.

Before the man could speak he was suddenly jerked off you. In a flash he was on the ground, Simon pinning him to the floor. The man tried to shout until a cold metal was shoved into his mouth, which he soon found out was Simons gun. “You fucking bastard.” Was all Simon shouted before he pulled the gun away and angled the butt of the gun to the man and swung it down to his face over and over.

You had turned on back to see a hooded man in all black on top of the homeless guy and beating the shit out of him with something I his hand but you couldn’t tell with how fast he kept swinging his arm. You watched in shock hearing the homeless guy cry out begging for mercy and even apologizing which unknowingly made you smile and feel a little better. After a few good hits the hooded man stopped, which gave you the chance to look at what was in his hand, it was gun. Was this your neighbor, you wondered, you’ve seen him around once in awhile and only really greeted each other, you converse aged rarely but one time he told you his name was Ghost, which you found odd but didn’t really mind, you knew he worked in the military with him gear and uniform especially with his cargo pants that had his gun strapped to his thigh, seeming the strap you just thought of confined that this guy definitely was your neighbor.

The homeless man lied on the ground limply, groaning and slight cries of pain coming from his now bloodied face, you had a feeling his had a few facial fractures, you swore you heard a few bones cracking from him every time Ghost made contact with his face. You wiped away some tears you didn’t know you had as Ghost loomed over the guy, breathing heavily, your sniffing was what broke him from his trance as he glanced over his shoulder to look at you. He was able to get a good look at you to realize you were his neighbor too, he let out a few breathes of relief too see only a few scratches on you.

“You alright yn?” He asked, his voice deep and out of breath.

You let out a shaken breath you didn’t know you were holding as you nodded. “Thank god you were here.” You whispered staring at the homeless guy who knocked out a few second ago. Ghost really did a number on him, you thought examining his bloodied face, his nose looked broken and bent.

Simon sighed agreeing with you. “You’re lucky I just barely arrived, had I arrived later or earlier…” he pauses, the possibilities that the man could’ve done to you spooked him more than he’d like to admit.

Simon didn’t finish his sentence and opted to staying silent a long with you, you sat on the ground catching your breathes until Simon moved to place his gun back in his holster with the butt still bloodied along with his hand. He rises to his feet walking over to you and held out his gloved one. You grasp it, it felt warm even through the material of the glove, he grasps your hand softy but secured enough to help you up as he lifts you up to your feet like nothing.

He called the cops so you two waited with Simon standing by the man watching him like a hawk ready to ounce at the slightest movement. He tried his best to distract you with some conversations, when the police finally arrived, they had an ambulance to come and take the man, they got your information and asked for details of what happened, they soon wrapped everything up and took off.

“Cmon, let’s get you cleaned up.” He says leading you back inside the apartment. You completely forgot about your injuries till Ghost mentioned them. You almost told him that you could take care of yourself but ultimately decided to just let it happen. It was silence on the way up, the elevator was a little awkward but once you two finally arrived on your floor Simon finally broke the silence. “I have a first aid kit in my place if your ok with that?” You nodded the adrenaline finally subsiding and the aches and stings start coming through.

Simon noticed a slight limp in your walk, some blood soaking around your injures, and some blood still seeping on the injuries from your bottom lip and forehead. As if you could read his mind you spoke before he could voice his concern. “I’m fine I just feel a little sore is all, maybe I pulled my leg but it’s fine.” You mumbled seeing your door and Simons door in view turning into the hall.

Stopping at his door he pulls out his keys, unlocking the door to his flay you follow him in as he stands to the side allowing you to walk in before closing the door behind you. “Make your self comfortable on the couch I’ll be back with the kit. With some aspirin and water. ” He says turning on the light to reveal the living space as he walks down the hall.

You plop yourself on the couch with a sigh until a wave of pain crashed through you, a groan left your lips, you leg burned as you look down at it. You soon realized the blood beginning to seep through the fabric of your clothes leaving a tiny blotch of a deep crimson. Carefully lifting up the fabric of your pants the wound fully came into view. It was ugly, your leg was dripping a lot of blood for such a minor injury which worried you fearing you could possibly need stitches.

“You didn’t tell me you were bleeding.” Simon spoke, the sudden noise of his deep voice spooked you not even hearing his footsteps and seeing him walk over to the side of the couch.

“Jesus Simon, you’re like a damn ninja creeping around so quiet.” you mutter, rolling up the material. Simon kneeled in front of you placing the kit on the coffee table. Opening the box, he fished out a gauze pad, alcohol pads, and bandages. He took his gloves off revealing his bare hands, you watched his movements but even the feeling of his warm skin against your leg startled you.

Simon ignored your comment as he remained silent, you worried you might've soured his mood especially since he practically saved your life and brought you inside his house to take the time to attend to your wounds but you’re thoughts were cut short when he handed you the bottle of aspirin and water.

“Thanks.” You muttered taking the bottles, taking out two pills you drop them into your mouth before opening the water bottle. You take a swig before swapping the liquid and pills. Ghost prepped the stuff as you did so waiting for you to finish.

"Brace yourself," he spoken breaking the silence and your thoughts. Before you could process what was happening, Simon brought the alcohol-soaked gauze pad to your wound. you hissed in pain, the hot searing pain outnumbered out the cold wetness of the pad. your leg was kept still by Simon's hand gripping your calf to be still, you were were too busy with the pain to think much about how impressively strong his grip on your leg was.

As Simon was close to finishing up, you kept your eyes on him, you didn’t want to stare and seem rude or make Simon uncomfortable but this was the first time you really got to look at what the mask didn’t hide. You took in the little scar of his right cheek that disappeared down into the mask, the hairs on his blond eyelashes that were beautiful and long and what most entranced you were his eyes. They were a beautiful hazel, the color vary based on the different lighting. With the light shining on half of his face one eye shined like a diamond reveal a beautiful honey brown color while his other eye was dark like an abyss.

Unfortunately his eyes were to enticing that you failed to process the movement of his head turning up to you, his eyes boring right back into yours and the movement of his covered mouth, “You gonna keep gawking at me or are you gonna answer my question?” His gruff voice broke you out of your trace as realization hit your mind, you face began to burn as your mind screamed at you in embarrassment.

“Uhhh- I- I… What…. What was the question?” You muttered nervously, avoiding looking at Simon feeling shame from being caught.

“Are you okay to walk or do you need help?” He repeated still kneeling down beside you causing him to look up at you.

You didn’t wanna admit it but your legs couldn’t keep you up anymore. As nice as it would sound to have Simon help you and be up against his body, you saved him the trouble. “I’ll be fine. Thanks again Si.” You thank him before you ‘try’ to pull yourself up to your feet only to pathetically look like an elderly person due to the couch being close to the ground. Your face burned in embarrassment as you plopped back down on the couch and looked at the floor in defeat as Simon still stood there in silence just watching you. “I need help…” you muttered.

You heard Simon snort as he steps to you and sets your arm over his shoulder and slipping his hands beneath your back and knees and lifting you up bridal style. You gasped and wrapped your arms around Simon tightly. “Simon?!” You called out but he didn’t bother and began to walk towards his door.

“Welcome.” Was all he said taking his hand beneath your back to his door knob, twisting the knob and opening the door, not worried about you falling with the death grip you had on him. The trip only took a few steps until Simon reached your front door. Slowly he lowered you down as you eased your grip and stood on your feet. You could feel the cold begin to replaces Simons warmth which made you shiver. “Got your Keys?” He asked, you nod before fishing out your house keys from your pocket.

As you finally unlock the door, you began to limp your way into your home until Simon gently grasped your left arm and swing it over his shoulder lifting most of your weight off your injured leg. You were going to protest but decided against it and savor the help and warmth he provided you.

“Where to?” He asked, silence for a second until you bobbed your head towards the hallway.

“My bedroom, last door at the end of the hall.” You say, making your way towards your door you turn the knob and make your way in. Simon helps you settle onto your bed, sitting at the edge of your mattress. As soon as you got settled Simon began to make his exit muttering an awkward ‘goodnight’ until you spoke. “Simon,” you call out making him stop at your doorway. He turned around and eyes you, “Thank you, really, you saved me. I don’t know what the hell I would’ve done if you hadn’t arrived at the right time. I don’t even know what would’ve happen to me had you not been there…”

That thought seemed to haunt not only you but Simon as well. The mere thought of seeing you in a gruesome way triggered memories he wish he could burn out of his mind. He sighed and walked back up to you, setting a hand on your shoulder, he could see the thought was troubling you the most. “Me too, ‘m glad your not too beat up. And there’s no need to thank me.”

“We’ll I mean you took me to your place and took the time to help deal with this mess so, and in a way I should be thanking you.” You mumbled shifting your legs to examine the bandages.

“‘S fine, jus’ wanted to make sure you’re alright. You should get some rest though, ya look like shite.” He chuckled.

You laughed out an “ass,” before nodding. “Can’t deny that though, I’ll clean up and head to bed then. You get some rest I’m sure you need the extra sleep coming back from deployment and then having to deal with all the fiasco.”

“You sure you should do that?” He asks.

“Yeah, I’m sure, the aspirin should be kicking in here in a few, I’m sure I’ll be fine. Stop worrying and get to sleep.” You joke.

Simon nods gives you a small pat on your back before making his way out of your room. “Alright, I’ll see you around,” he says,

“Good night Simon.” You smile.

Simon grabs your doorknob and began to close the door before looking at you once more you could see his eyes slightly wrinkle, he was smiling. “Good night (y/n).”

~~~~~~~~~

Just as you suspected the aspirin finally kicked in a few minutes after Simon left. You did what you needed to do, shower and avoid getting your bandages wet. After dressing in your sleep wear, you walked to the kitchen for a drink when you noticed a paper on your table. Picking it up you examined the numbers written on there with a note below it.

‘Here’s my number If you contact me, also lock the top lock on your door. -Simon’

You smiled at the note before taking your drink, setting the cup down with the note still in hand you make your way to your front door seeing the bottom lock already locked, you lock the top one before heading back to your room.

You sit on your bed and grab your phone before putting in Simons number into your contacts.

You: Got your note. top is locked, thanks 👍🏼

It didn’t take long till you got a text back.

Simon💀: No problem, stay safe and be more aware of your surroundings love, I won’t always be around to save your arse.

You laughed trying to ignore the nickname as you finally settle into your covers.

You: Yes Sir 👍🏼

Simon💀: Good girl.

#simon riley x reader #simon x reader #ghost x reader #simon ghost riley x reader #mw2 ghost x reader #mw2 x reader #cod mw2 x reader #cod mwii x reader #cod x reader

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pigeonwhumps · 1 year

Text

Cookies and sweaters

Finding Safety masterlist

Taglist: @littlespacecastle @whumpymirages @flowersarefreetherapy

Aaliyah and Cass, along with the other rescues in Sandy's safehouse, bake cookies for the Christmas tree and get presents.

Set on their first Christmas Eve in the safehouse, a few weeks after their arrival there.

CWs: BBU, pet whump, recovery whump, implied past non-con, briefly mentioned past minor whump, past dehumanisation, past degradation, self degradation

The key turns in the lock as they're kneading the dough, and it feels like time stops in the little, too-messy kitchen.

Aaliyah freezes, heart pounding, hands holding the cookie dough. Tom, little Tom who makes her head hurt, crawls under the kitchen counter, arms around his legs. And Letitia scurries to greet whoever's entering (please let it be Mx Sandy and Cass and Xiu back from shopping, please don't let Mr Jacob have forgotten something, he's supposed to be away from here for Christmas, please, please).

"Welcome home, Mx Sandy."

"Thank you, Tish. How's the morning been?"

"Good, Mx Sandy. We started making the cookies for the tree and, and Tom's made a calendar."

"That's great, honey. Do you want to show me?"

"Yes, mx."

Aaliyah stands up straighter, dropping the dough. It's far too messy in here, she really hopes Mx Sandy doesn't punish them for it, or at least that she only punishes her, please, please. Tom and Letitia don't deserve to be punished. People never like mess, it's far too much to hope she won't be punished at all.

Mx Sandy enters the room, followed by Letitia nervously, then Cass and Xiu, both carrying bags which they set down in the corner before washing their hands.

A tiny bit of Aaliyah unclenches. It's Cass. Cass is safe. He's safe he's safe he's safe. His eyes immediately lock onto her and he limps over, standing beside her. She finds his hand and squeezes it.

"Let's have a look at this dough then," says Mx Sandy, and Aaliyah steps aside, in front of Tom's table. She has to hide him, has to get Mx Sandy to punish her, not him. He's so little.

Mx Sandy looks in the bowl. "What flavour did you use? Orange zest, right?"

"Yes, mx," says Letitia. "Is it, is it okay?"

Mx Sandy beams at them. "It's perfect. It's alright, Aaliyah, you won't be punished. Or you, Tommy, you can come out from under there if you like."

Tom crawls out and stands slightly behind Aaliyah, clutching the hem of her oversized top. "You, you promise?"

"I do. There's nothing wrong with making a mess here."

Tom nods. "I, I know. I, I'm sorry, I forgot, with, with the white rooms and the, the white walls, I, I forgot, I forget, I can't–"

Aaliyah turns and wraps the boy in her arms. He's so young, so small. An adult now, Mx Sandy thinks, but he wasn't when he came here, apparently. He makes her head hurt but she can't not comfort him.

"That's okay, honey," murmurs Mx Sandy, "we're here to remind you. Does anyone want to start rolling out the dough?"

"I will," replies Xiu softly.

"Good girl. Tom, want to show me your calendar?"

Tom nods and peels himself away from Aaliyah, wringing his hands. He has a smudge of cookie dough on his glasses, and he swipes at it as he crosses the room and picks the decorated paper plate up from the table, a mini tear-off calendar stapled underneath. He's drawn a jungle scene, of course.

"That's excellent, honey."

Tom beams. "Thank you."

"You should all choose a cutter for your cookie. Cass, Aaliyah, Xiu, have you ever made tree cookies before?"

Cass doesn't respond at all, and Aaliyah shakes her head (she's never done any baking, Master didn't buy her for that, and he wouldn't have let her touch his food anyway. She refuses to think about the bake-at-home dog biscuits she was made to prepare for Cass one time). Xiu says, "No, Sandy. I did cooking and baking for my Sir but not these."

"Okay. That's okay. I'll show you how to make them. Or Tish can, if you'd like, Tish? You're an expert by now."

Letitia looks away shyly and nods.

"Excellent. I'm going to put away the groceries."

Aaliyah frowns. Isn't that a pet's job? She can't say anything though, and she watches as Mx Sandy opens the fridge and starts piling food in out of the bags. Xie've even bought some of those stringy cheese sticks she likes so much.

Aaliyah really doesn't understand why xie're so nice.

Letitia picks up a tree-shaped cookie cutter and lays it on the flat dough. "You take the cutter and, and press it down on the dough until it goes all the way through. Then you poke a hole in the top and, and put the cookie on the tray." She demonstrates, placing the tree-shaped cookie on a greased baking tray. "See? Now you can do it."

Tom bounds forward to pick a giraffe cutter, and Letitia smiles fondly at him, stepping back so he and Xiu can make their cookies (Xiu's picked a little cat. It's cute). Cass lets go of Aaliyah's hand but doesn't move himself. Aaliyah steps forward to choose hers. Maybe if she does, Cass will follow.

There's a lot of cookie cutters on the table and Aaliyah blinks, overwhelmed by all the choice. There's so many, how can she choose? She shouldn't be choosing anyway, that's a people thing, it's for her Master to do.

But he's not here anymore.

Someone's tapping her on the hand and she turns to see Tom bobbing up and down beside her.

"You, you having trouble deciding?" Aaliyah nods. "Do, do you want some help?" She nods again, and Tom looks over the cutters thoughtfully, choosing a moon and holding it out to her. "If, if you like."

Aaliyah smiles and nods gratefully, taking it in both hands. She heads over to where Xiu is carefully pressing her cat into the dough. Xiu glances up at her.

"Do you think we're doing this right?" she asks softly.

Aaliyah hesitates and then nods. It looks like how Letitia did it anyway, so it's probably okay, right?

"Good. I wouldn't like to make a mistake. That would be bad."

Xiu's designation is, was, partly Domestic, and Aaliyah wonders if her Sir was a perfectionist, the way she's so careful with everything. Careful movements, careful chores, careful cookie cutting. Aaliyah steps up next to her and cuts her own cookie, making a hole at the top of the moon with the end of a teaspoon. She transfers it to the tray beside Tom's giraffe.

"You can cut some small ones to eat too in a minute," says Mx Sandy, passing by to put a jar of peanut butter in the cupboard. "They won't need holes. Let me check we have all the tree cookies first."

Mx Sandy crosses to the tray with a smile, ruffling Tom's hair on the way. He beams.

"We're one cookie short," says Mx Sandy after a quick count. "I know which one is yours Tom, Letitia... Xiu, Cass, Aaliyah? One of you? You don't have to make one if you don't want to, but it's a nice tradition."

"Dirty mutts don't touch things used for people food, mx," says Cass roughly, hunching his shoulders.

"You're not a dirty mutt, Cass," says Mx Sandy firmly, "and you eat food made here normally, what's the difference with these?"

"That's made for me, mx. I do not, um, dirty anything meant for people. But I might touch the dough making a cookie and dirty mutts shouldn't do that. Not if people will use it too. Begging your pardon, mx."

Mx Sandy bites xir lip. Aaliyah shuffles closer to Cass and puts her arm around him. He has to make a cookie for the tree!

"Okay. Okay, Cass, we'll work on dissuading you of the dirty mutt thing later, because you're not one but I can't see a way to persuade you of that right now. For now, just know that you're allowed to touch things. You can make yourself a cookie, Cass, that's allowed. Why don't you choose a cutter?"

Cass looks down at Aaliyah, who nods. Mx Sandy said he can make a cookie, so he should make one!

Warily, he approaches the cutters spread out on the table and looks them over. He picks out a star gingerly with two fingers and holds it up.

"That's good. Cut some smaller ones too, if you like, so we can eat them."

"You're, um, sure, mx?"

"Yes. Go on, before Tom uses all the dough."

Tom looks up from his mini jungle of cookies, turning bright red. "Oh, I'm, I'm sorry, Sandy."

"It's fine, honey. You carry on. There's still enough dough for Cass."

Cass cuts his cookie and places it on the tray, and by silent agreement the others stay back, letting Cass and Tom cut the small cookies. Once they're done, Mx Sandy puts the tray in the oven.

"And now we wait. We have some presents to give you all. They're nothing bad, all good things. I hope you'll like them. But first, shall we put some music on? Any preferences?"

Cass shifts awkwardly and glances at Aaliyah. "Please can we have, um, no Christmas songs, mx?"

Aaliyah shudders at the memory of Christmas Day fights and Christmas songs playing as Master... well. No, no Christmas songs.

"Of course. Tish isn't fond of them either."

"Carols specifically," says Letitia, folding against Mx Sandy's side. "Too long in my box under a Christmas tree."

Mx Sandy presses a kiss to her forehead and murmurs something Aaliyah can just hear.

"I'm sorry, honey."

"Was your parents, not you," Letitia mutters shakily back.

"But still, if it wasn't for me–"

"–I might have gone to someone who wasn't, wasn't as kind," finishes Letitia firmly. Mx Sandy pulls her into a proper hug.

Cass exchanges a look with Xiu and squeezes Aaliyah before stepping away, Cass pulling what Aaliyah thinks might be clothes out of a shopping bag while Xiu piles them neatly.

If they're the presents... if Cass helped choose them... maybe they're not too bad.

Mx Sandy steps away from Letitia and takes a shaky breath. "Okay. Okay, right. Thank you, Cass, Xiu. I'll put on the mixed playlist we made earlier in the year, yeah? Aaliyah, Cass, we'll add some songs you like to that soon." Xie fiddles with something on xir phone and a country song starts playing out of the speaker. "So. Presents. You can all sit down if you like, you don't need to stand around."

Aaliyah, Cass and Xiu sit down, Cass slumping over slightly with a wince. His leg must be bad if he's visibly wincing, and Aaliyah leans against him, trying to share her body heat. Letitia frowns at him and crosses to the microwave, putting a reusable heating pad in.

"You sit down too, Tish, I'll do that," says Mx Sandy, and Letitia nods, taking a seat beside Xiu. Tom leans against the side, feet tapping away.

"Is, is it okay if I don't sit, Sandy?" he asks nervously, and xie nods.

"Sure. It always is. Here you go, Cass." Xie hands Cass the heating pad wrapped in a Christmas tea towel, and he presses it to his thigh.

"Thank you, mx."

"No problem Cass. You can use them when you like, you don't have to wait."

"Yes, mx."

Aaliyah squeezes his hand. She knows he hates asking for things, hates the feeling that doing so makes him weak. Master used to laugh at him and call him a 'bad, weak mutt' when he couldn't walk properly, and she knows he's scared of that, too.

"Aaliyah, yours is on top, you okay having it first?" She nods, insides twisting with nerves, and Mx Sandy passes her a bundle of fabric. She unfolds it, grateful at least that it's not wrapped.

It's a sweater. A Christmas sweater, like she's seen some spectators at Cass' fights wear. She banishes those memories from her mind.

It's... strange. This sweater clearly isn't meant to show her off. She pulls it on and it's just... warm. Baggy, oversized, and she pulls the wool over her hands, curling into it. It's dark blue with snowflakes and a large reindeer in the middle.

She loves it. She smiles widely and bows her thanks.

"You're welcome, honey. Cass chose it."

Aaliyah turns to Cass and gives him a hug.

"That's a white-tailed deer," says Xiu suddenly, and Aaliyah turns to her as she claps a hand to her head. "I don't know where that came from, my apologies."

Aaliyah shakes her head. She doesn't mind. It's another piece of Xiu, before... before.

"It's fine," says Mx Sandy concernedly, "do you want some painkillers for your head?"

"No, thank you, Sandy."

"Okay. Do you want to tell us about the deer?"

Xiu nods. "On Aaliyah's sweater, it's a white-tailed deer, not a reindeer. Reindeer are shaggier. I don't know how I know that though."

"Because whoever you were before WRU did. Don't pressure yourself, more memories might come back if you wait." Xiu nods. "Okay, Tommy, you're next."

Tom takes his bundle of fabric and unfolds it. He makes a small sound of delight and throws it over his head, grinning.

His sweater is more of a sweatshirt, with a racoon in Christmas lights and a Santa hat, surrounded by a knit pattern.

"Thank you thank you thank you!"

"I thought a fleecy sweatshirt would be better for you," says Cass, "I know you cannot stand wool on you."

Tom beams.

The rest are all knitted. Xiu has a pattern of penguins on blue, and Mx Sandy has a green sweater that looks like a Christmas tree that makes Letitia burst into giggles. Xiu flushes proudly at the reaction. Letitia herself has a bright red knit with a llama on, and Cass has a dark blue sweater with dancing Santa Clauses on that he puts on carefully, almost disbelievingly, wrapping the wool around his hands.

"Thank you. It is the warmest thing I have had of my own in a long time." He makes a choked sound somewhere between a sob and a comment, and Aaliyah wraps her arms around him before he can make a comment about mutts not getting proper clothes – not that she knows he will, but Master used to say that a lot.

He feels soft in this jumper.

Mx Sandy smiles around at them all. "I'm glad you like your presents. And thank you so much for mine."

"You paid," objects Xiu.

"Still. It's from you and Cass." Cass smiles slightly. "D'you want to decorate your cookies now? I'll get out the writing icing and sprinkles."

"May I make white icing?" asks Xiu.

"Go ahead."

Aaliyah watches as Xiu makes white icing and Mx Sandy fetches the rest of the cookie decorations. There's different colours of writing icing and lots of sprinkles and all sorts, and she feels that twisty, nervous feeling in her chest again.

"Just decorate it how you like. There's no wrong answer."

She swallows and nods, reaching for a tube of yellow writing icing. Carefully, making sure the line doesn't wiggle too much, she outlines the edge of the cookie. Then she uses some of Xiu's white icing to stick multicoloured sprinkles down the centre. She doesn't know how she remembers how to do this, and she's not going to think about it or it'll hurt her head. She looks to Mx Sandy for approval.

"That's very good. Do you like it?" She nods. "Then I like it. Once the icing's set you can thread some of this ribbon through the hole."

Mx Sandy passes her the green ribbon and some scissors, and Aaliyah cuts a length, then runs it through the cookie, looking at Mx Sandy's one from last year as a reference as she ties the ribbon.

She looks around at everyone else. She's ahead. Is that okay? Finishing first has always been a bad thing in the past, but this isn't that, is it, so maybe, maybe it's not too bad? Cass squeezes her shoulder.

His star is more complicated than hers, with a little face in the centre, and he's struggling a little to tie the ribbon. Not being allowed to use his hands for much other than fighting for a couple of years didn't really lend itself to being able to do complicated motions easily, she supposes.

She taps him on the arm and when he looks at her, gestures, "You want help?"

"Mutts don't–" Aaliyah cuts him off with a firm swiping movement with both hands, creating a cross. No, no, not that, Master's not here, he's not a mutt. "Yes. Yes, thank you, Aaliyah."

She smiles and takes the ribbon, tying it carefully in a loop. Cass puts his arm around her.

"Happy Christmas."

Aaliyah leans against him contentedly. Yes, yes it is. It might not quite be Christmas Day yet, but for once, for the first time, this is a happy Christmas. She realises, quite suddenly, that although she was created for Master, and she was mostly okay there, she was never actually happy. Not like she is now. She tries not to feel guilty about it, because surely she should be happiest with her Master?

But she wasn't.

A tear drips down her cheek.

Where she's happiest is right here, with Cass and everyone else. Especially Cass. He– he should have more than being treated like a fighting dog, and now he does.

Master took her and Cass on a walk, once, when the truck broke down and they needed to get to and from the Christmas Day fights. Aaliyah had been holding Cass up as he limped, bleeding, and as she'd looked in the windows of the houses they'd passed, all yellow and bright and warm-looking and full of people laughing and smiling nicely, she'd wished, briefly, that she was safe and warm and loved like that. It had been wrong to think, of course, so so wrong, but...

But, now she is. Now she gets to have that. She wipes her cheek and smiles at Cass, tapping the morse code message Letitia taught them on the tabletop.

Happy Christmas.

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