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mylifeisactuallyamess · 3 years

Text

General Hux x Female Reader/Kylo Ren x Female Reader

A/N: I literally kicked this out this morning, and I am posting it now before I change my mind. Bring in the Knights… I clearly woke up this morning and chose violence.

Warnings: alcohol, poison, blood, torture, Hux and Kylo finally work together, minor character death. Not a pretty chapter at all.

Word Count: 3530

Read Chapter 12 here on AO3.

Start from Chapter 1 here.

The ride in Kylo’s Command Shuttle was quiet, just the sound of the pilots communicating, a few troopers lounged in the seats behind you and you could feel their gazes upon the back of your neck. Your brain was fried, only a few hours ago you had woken up fully dressed and alone in Kylo’s bed. He hadn’t spoken much, letting you eat breakfast in comfortable silence while he scrolled through a datapad before announcing his business was concluded here and he was withdrawing the fleet from Canto. The unasked question of whether you were coming hung in the air and you chose to ignore it, getting up and dutifully following him to the ship. You were sad to see the beautiful place fall away, maybe once the war was over you could come back. Visions of returning with your arm linked with Hux’s made you smile a little but when they flickered out of existence and were replaced with your arm in Kylo's, your composure slipped.

The shuttle alighted smoothly in the main hangar, the refiltered air filling your lungs and you already missed the freshness of being planet side. It didn’t surprise you that Mitaka was ready and waiting to bring Kylo up to date on the latest, leaving you with a single trooper to escort you to Hux’s quarters.

The ever unchanging silence curled around you, filtering into the cracks of your damaged soul and expanding. Making an ache start in your chest, one you couldn’t suppress until your soft cries pierced the quiet. You had thought long and hard over Hux’s abrupt change in behaviour, bringing you to the conclusion that he was hating himself for opening up to you. For allowing so much of himself to be exposed in one go, so now he was clamming up and pushing you away. It didn’t hurt any less but you supposed it would be like this, one step forward and two steps back. You expelled a long breath thinking it was a dance you were committed to, no matter the outcome.

You had a quick shower, putting on a nightgown and robe now you were once again governed by the day cycle of the ship. You didn’t expect to see Hux tonight so you opened a bottle from the restocked cooler, pouring the clear liquid over a couple of rocks of ice before settling on the couch and picking up the datapad to read the manuscript you were invested in but you couldn’t focus. The words blurred into one on the screen and the alcohol made everything hazy. Your heart jolted when the door opened and you heaved yourself off the couch in surprise, clutching the arm to hold you up as the room spun slightly.

“Armitage,” you mumbled in surprise. “I didn’t…I wasn’t expecting to see you….today—night?” You frowned at your own nonsense. This wasn’t how you wanted him to see you, not now, not when he possibly needed you.

“In all honesty I wasn’t sure you’d be here.” He replied. He carefully put his hat on the table, slowly followed by his gloves and then his coat which he hung on the back of the chair. You watched him approach the cooler, his slender fingers wrapping around the bottle and looking at the label.

“Did you finish work? Are you staying?” Your tongue felt thick, your body was at a fever pitch and you stumbled when you tried to head in his direction.

“Armitage…” you lifted your hand trying to focus on it but your vision blurred. “I can’t…see.”

“What?” His response was whip sharp and you winced against the sudden pounding on your head. You cried out as your legs gave way, collapsing to the floor in a heap. Your vision swam, your breaths were laboured and a tingling sensation was racing over your body. In the dark corner of your mind you realise this wasn’t just too much to drink. You heard him call your name but you were sinking, not able to hold onto him, everything was melting before you. Disappearing into a cloud of black smoke and you couldn’t find your way out.

Hux watched Ren pace up and down the small area outside your private room. Actually it was a medical room set aside for the Supreme Leader, he’d had you directed there when he saw the urgent message for a medic to Hux’s quarters. Every footfall that sounded from the large man set Hux’s teeth on edge but he bit back a rebuke. The force user hadn’t lashed out yet and Hux wasn’t going to give him an excuse. Hux also wondered why he was here, the fleet was chasing down a lead on a new possible Resistance base so surely his attention would be better elsewhere than on Hux’s wife. Both men looked up as the door opened and a Dr came out, his face was grave and Hux felt the blood freeze in his veins.

“Supreme Leader, General. She has been poisoned.” Hux had already deduced that fact and he felt a flash of annoyance that this was being repeated back to him.

“What else?” He demanded abruptly.

“I’ve had to put her in a medically induced coma so her body can recover, it seems there is some damage to her internal organs and…” he swallowed nervously as the two most dangerous men stood glaring at him. “It seems this is one poison we haven’t encountered before.”

“Just put her in a bacta tank,” snipped Hux, not understanding why they were wasting time telling him this.

“They can’t,” rumbled Kylo. Hux frowned, hating the extra insight he had.

“Why not?” He could feel his temper slipping, his teeth clenching together as he glared at the doctor wanting him to answer and not Ren.

“The poison seems to have some bacta resistant qualities….” The floor rolled under Hux and he swayed slightly, if they couldn’t find an antidote the poison would keep eating away at you until your body gave up. “I seem to have slowed the effects, by keeping her body cold and slowing the blood flow but we need an antidote within the week, she won’t be able to stay in this state for long without accruing serious deficits.” Hux wanted to double over, he wanted to accept the pain that erupted from his centre and scream at the floor, but he didn’t. He wanted to barge past the doctor and hold you in his arms, he wanted to rip through his ship and shoot his own troops in the face if they so much as looked at him wrong. It wasn’t until Kylo removed his hand from Hux’s elbow that he realised the Supreme Leader had been holding him upright.

Hux’s feet finally became unstuck from the floor and he moved into the room, his heart in his mouth as he looked at you on the bed. The chill blankets glowed a soft blue colour, a tube was down your throat helping you breathe. Sensors were placed across your forehead and he felt the rage bubble up inside him, who would poison you? Why would someone do this? He also wanted to yell at you for drinking out of a bottle that clearly wasn’t First Order approved, which meant someone planted it and they were still in the ship.

“I’ve already got the Knights tearing through the ship.” Hux resisted rolling his eyes and chose to frown instead.

“Is that wise Ren?”

“Do you want them found?” He snarled, stepping up to the other side of your bed. Hux studied the feral look in his eye, the tenseness of his posture and the hatred that flared in his expression, until his gaze slid to you. His hand rose as though to touch you but thought better of it, curling his leather covered hand into a fist. His expression softened for a moment before looking back up at Hux. “I will let you know if we find anything.”

“Shouldn’t I be there?” Hux asked, not happy to be pushed out of such an investigation of his own personnel.

“Maybe you should stay here and be with your wife,” mumurmed Kylo.

“She’s in a coma. She doesn’t even know what day of the week it is, let alone if I’m here or not.” He couldn’t sit here staring at you, seeing how helpless and weak you were. He wouldn’t be able to sit and watch you waste away before him without doing something to try and stop this.

“Fine.” Hux moved to follow the Supreme Leader out of the room, his fingers flexing and a little ripple of anticipation ran down his spine. It had been a while since he got his hands dirty.

He couldn’t explain it, the way this trooper’s screams fed something twisted inside him. He leaned heavily against the wall of the interrogation room, sweet collected on his upper lip and he swept his damp hair off his brow in a fluid motion. Ren had shed his tunic, his corded muscles bulged, his pale skin flushed as he stretched an arm towards the man kneeling on the floor. Fresh screams erupted from the bound trooper and Hux momentarily closed his eyes as if basking in the sound.

A part of him recoiled at the unwavering way Ren ploughed through people's minds, he showed no mercy and Hux felt a stab of jealousy that Ren himself was clearly going to all this trouble for you. Hux had been told you had breakfast on a private balcony with the Supreme Leader, leaving in a hurry and then you were seen heading to his private room on Canto Bight. Hux wasn’t an idiot, but he had hoped you wouldn’t have stabbed him in the back so early on.

“Ren, stop.” Hux managed to say as the trooper’s heart rate spiked off the charts and the man fell with a clatter to the floor. “Anything?” Hux winced, his voice sounded loud against his tender ears. Kylo rolled his shoulders, sweeping his dripping hair away from his face before shaking his head once. It had been two days, two full days and night of torture, screams and questions all coming up with nothing. Hux gripped the datapad in his hands, his arms trembling as he fought the urge to throw it against the wall, screaming his hatred and frustration out. He’s always looked down his nose at Ren’s temper tantrums but now it was all he wanted to do, to break something or someone, to exercise his absolute fury out until he felt exhausted. He hadn’t slept for two days, he was already at his stimulant limit but he still considered another shot.

“You should rest.”

“No, I'm fine.”

“It wasn’t a request, General. You’re no good to her dead.” Hux contemplated ignoring the order altogether but he knew he needed a rest. He felt stretched, his breaking point was within reach and what good would he be if he was in a bed in the medbay as well? He wordlessly handed over the datapad as medics came to retrieve the trooper.

“You’ll keep going?” He asked brusquely.

“I will see you in 10 hours,” stated Kylo but Hux paused, his coat resting on his forearm.

“Five,” he countered.

“Eight,” Ren shot back.

“Six.”

“Done.” Hux nodded before leaving the room. He had six hours to pass out and then he was going to find out who did this to you.

Kylo waited until Hux had gone before slipping from the room and heading to his own quarters. Ap’lek stood outside the door in full armour, his executioner’s ax grasped in his hand as he stood guard. They didn’t exchange words, they didn’t need to. The door opened and he came face to face with Vicrul, his scythe blade resting on his shoulder ready to swing at a moment's notice. He stepped to the side to let Kylo in, revealing the scene in his quarters. There was a dark haired man kneeling on the floor surrounded by the rest of the Knights, Cardo had his arm cannon pressed into the back of his neck, Ushar had the kinetic charged end of his club in position ready to stun the man if necessary and Trudgen sat before the prisoner running a whetstone along the blade of his vibrocleaver. The sound rang out loud and clear in the silent quarters as he swept the stone with long strikes against the massive blade. Kuruk appeared from the bedroom, performing his checks and making sure the quarters were secure.

Kylo made his way to crouch before the shaking man, slowly running his eyes over the First Order uniform and seeing it was ill fitting.

Has he said anything? Kylo looked up at Trudgeon, the only Knight without his mask on.

No. Came the swift reply followed by another singing note from the blade.

“You won’t get anything out of me.” Kylo turned his attention back to the prisoner.

“We just did,” he stated softly. The prisoner looked up and Kylo could see the man had already surrendered to the idea that he was going to die here.

“The Resistance is not dead. Our spark shines bright in the Galaxy.” Kylo looked at him, just staring as he tried to decide how he was going to play this.

“Vicrul.” The Knight stepped forward and Trudgeon moved out of the way, tossing his chair away with a loud noise. Kylo rose and Vicrul took his place before the prisoner, removing his pastillion ore helmet and placing it carefully on the floor before locking gazes with the prisoner.

Sweat began to bead on the man’s brow, his face quivering the longer Vicrul looked into his eyes. Kylo could feel it, the ripples in the force that his Knight created, the darkness manifested and clung the Resistance fighter, gathering around his head. The other Knights all watched, their own vibrations reacting to their brothers and only the prisoners laboured breathing sounded in the room. It didn’t take long before a scream ripped the air and he began to thrash in the Knights grip, lost in nightmarish visions that only he could see. Kylo let Vicrul have his fun, showing the prisoner visions that would make a Wookiee cower, his screams increasing in pitch. His eyes rolled into the back of his head and he began to convulse in the firm grips of Cardo and Ushar.

“Enough,” said Kylo softly. Vicrul broke eye contact and picked up his helmet, the darkness retreated and the prisoner blinked rapidly as though the light was too much for him, his entire body heaved and he looked wildly around.

“What are you going to do to me?” He cried, his voice full of panic.

“It depends what you tell us,” Kylo gestured to the armoured men around him. “My Knights are bored so I suggest you cooperate.”

“Wait wait! Can’t you just search my mind? Take the information for yourself?” Kylo turned away as the Knights shuffled forward, closing ranks around the prisoner.

“Where is the fun in that Major Wexley?” The man was screaming before Kylo had even made it past his door, Kuruk followed and silently traded places with an eager Ap’lek. “Let me know if he says anything. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.” Kuruk nodded and silently watched his master walk away. They knew where he was going.

Kylo sat at your bedside, his large hand covered yours and echoes of what was happening in his quarters shattered the quiet of his mind. He could feel the force pulsing with the darkside, spreading its touch through the ship. It manifested in different ways, someone pulling a risky move in the training ground and hitting their opponent harder than necessary, an officer shouting at his staff for a simple misdemeanour that should have been dismissed. A fight breaking out in the cantina between two troopers who didn’t like each other, a moment of blind frustration from a medic who threw what he was holding, letting it shatter against the wall.

The Knights had found Wexley trying to slip into a TIE and escape, Kylo hadn’t told Hux. The General was on a cliff edge as it was, Kylo didn’t need him on a murdering spree before all information was dragged from the Resistance pilot, so Kylo let his Knights have a reward. Their energy was chaotic when unused, it needed a release every now and again.

He moved his hand along your cold arm, hating how lifeless you looked, you were still alive. He could feel your light but the warmth was weak and fading. Kylo hoped this pilot had some answers because he didn’t know what he’d do if they didn’t find the antidote in time. He cast a quick eye over the machines noting how your numbers remained steady even though you ebbed ever so slowly away.

He still won’t talk. Kylo sighed, feeling the disappointment in Vicrul’s thoughts.

I’m on my way. He stood, bending over you and peering at your still face for a moment before sweeping abruptly from the room.

The first thing he could feel was the pilot's pain, it radiated out in all directions and Kylo clenched his fists against it. The next thing he noticed was the smell, blood, sharp and tangy against his nose. The floor was slick with the red stains, blood spatter littered the walls in spectacular patterns and Kylo came to a stop looking down at the pitiful man as he bled out onto the floor, his skin was pale, drained of colour because it now painted Kylo’s quarters. He crouched down beside Wexley who was laying on his side, the First Order uniform ripped and tattered, ruined beyond repair much like Wexley himself.

“Are you going to talk?” Asked Kylo softly.

“No.” He admired the man's tenacity, but his time was up. The screams that spewed from him had a hoarse quality, like his throat was too tired, his lungs had no air but Kylo didn’t care as he raced through the man's memories. He had planted the bottle, but it wasn’t meant for you, it was meant for General Hux. The antidote was a plant out in the Teth system. One of the few wild systems left in the Galaxy and travelling there and back again in the time frame left would be a risk, but it was one Kylo was ready to take. He withdrew from the dying Major, his memories growing dark as his body gave up.

“Ready the Night Buzzard,” he demanded. Kylo stood, hearing the last breath from Wexley before moving, his Knights following obediently behind as he began to make his way to the hangar.

Hux woke to the sound of his alarm, swiping it off the screen of the datapad feeling unusually refreshed. He had slept in his uniform so he could get up and find Ren straight away. He walked through the corridors of the Finalizer pleased to see his staff avoiding his gaze as he marched along, this investigation was reminding everyone who was actually in charge here and bringing out Hux’s ruthless side for everyone to see served as another reminder that he wasn’t to be messed with.

He stepped into the interrogation room, taking in the emptiness before turning smartly and heading to the bridge. His lips bruised together in irritation, if Ren had found something and left Hux out he was going to explode. As soon as he entered the bridge Mitaka was at his side.

“Sir, the Supreme Leader gave strict instructions not to wake you.”

“What’s happened?” Snapped Hux.

“The Supreme Leader and the Knights have left for the Teth system.” Mitaka told him.

“Left? What do you mean left?”

“They have gone to retrieve the plant needed for the antidote for….for…..” For you. Hux didn’t have time to pander to his Lieutenant and his sad emotions right now. He tutted, since when did you become such a beloved member to certain people who weren’t him? “He also said to tell you there is a mess in his quarters, but he wanted you to see it before it was cleared up.” Hux left without a word, what an earth could Ren want him to see?

Whatever Hux had imagined on the way to the Supreme Leaders quarters did not prepare him for the sight that met his eyes. Did he really need to see this? Hux was no stranger to torture and death, blood didn’t bother him, violence was his way of life but seeing this gruesome scene did indeed turn his stomach slightly. He also recognised the Knights' handy work.

“Do we know who this is?” He asked a Major who looked rather grey coloured.

“Apparently this is…was Temmin Wexley, Resistance pilot and the person who planted the bottle in your quarters, sir.”

“Clear up this disgusting mess. It has lingered on my ship long enough.” He snapped, displeasure and disgust making his expression contort. He left, stepping the familiar path to the medbay realising now all he had to do was wait. And he hated waiting.

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hidden-otaku-stuff · 3 years

Text

Brokenhearts Club - Same Room

tw: mentions of breakup, toxic coping mechanisms, drinking/alcohol, mentions of violence (he throws his phone), cursing

Word count: 2.7k

Pairing: Iwaizumi Hajime x gn!reader

Genre: angst, very very mild fluff

AN: There were no such things as happy endings.

Collab Masterlist | Playlist

*Inspired by Same Room by JP Saxe

I watched a TED Talk on our break, He had a smart person accent

He said, "Don't look through the photos", Then I looked through our photos

A haze filtered over his eyes as he stared down at his phone. In the background, sappy love songs played as he ignored the bodies in the room. His fingers itched, tapping on the app. He swiped to the side, tapping on the Hidden from View folder and revealing its haul. Thousands of photos and videos opened on his screen. He tapped on the first one he saw. His heart lurched as he remembered.

Just to spend a couple days with me

You flew halfway 'round the world for me

Iwaizumi was exhausted, feet, knees, and shoulders tired from all the patients he had visited that day. He had been running around the clinic, fetching this and that for Utsui. He slumped against the door as he entered his apartment, sighing heavily. He threw his keys into the bowl by the entrance, letting his bag fall off of his shoulders as he walked into the kitchen. As Iwaizumi turned on the tap, something caught his attention. He froze, staring at the suitcase before he shut off the sink.

“(Name)?” He called, stumbling over his feet as he flew through his apartment.

“Haji!” You squealed, popping up as the door to his bedroom was flung open.

“(Name)!” Iwaizumi stopped, his mouth drying as his heart stuttered as he was rooted in the doorway - shock filling him.

What were you doing here? The last he knew, you had finals that you had to take, projects to finish. You should still be in Tokyo!

“Wh-what are you doing here?”

You grinned at him, standing up and opening your arms to reveal the teal jersey you wore. “I finished my projects and exams early and I figured I’d come surprise you.”

Iwaizumi shook his head, a dopey grin on his face as he ran forward to embrace you, arms wrapping around your waist as he held you to him. “God I’ve missed you so much.”

“Surprise,” you tease, blowing on his ear. “I’ll be here for a few weeks. Try not to miss me too much when I leave though, yeah?”

“Oh baby, I always miss you when you aren’t around.”

Iwaizumi shook his head, the dull ache of the alcohol searing his throat. He swiped through the photos and videos from that trip.

“Oh Haji, look!” You beamed at him, sparkly pink mouse ears perched on your head as you pointed up at the castle. “I can’t believe we’re here right now!”

“I did promise to take you here one day, didn’t I?” Iwaizumi teased, warmth filling his senses.

His thumb was a blur as he swiped through the photos of you and him in front of the castle. He paused, staring at one in particular.

“One day, when I put my ring on your finger, I’ll bring you back here, okay?”

“Haji!” You gasp, giggling. “You don’t have to.”

“I want to.” He squeezed the hand on his waist as he tucked some hair behind your ear. “Gotta make you the happiest person on Earth at the happiest place on Earth.”

“Who are you and what have you done to my brute of a boyfriend?” You tease, shoving his chest slightly.

His heart skipped a beat as he pressed a kiss to your forehead. “Maybe your brute of a boyfriend didn’t realise how much he’d miss you when you weren’t around.”

You blink up at him with doe-eyes, love and devotion in your eyes only for the spell to be broken by the photographer’s approach.

“Here you go!” He grinned, showing you the camera. He had perfectly captured the heat in your cheeks as Iwaizumi whispered in your ear. The photographer swiped through to the next photo to one of Iwaizumi kissing your forehead. “You’re both such a lovely couple.”

“Thank you,” Iwaizumi replied in perfect English, smiling.

“Enjoy the rest of your day!”

Iwaizumi picked up his glass of scotch, chugging the rest of it as he stared down at his phone. His vision blurred as he proceeded to swipe through.

“What are you doing here, moping by yourself?” Iwaizumi looked up, scowling as Oikawa stood here, a hand on his hip. “And why didn’t you say hi when you got here?”

Iwaizumi rolled his eyes, shaking his head as he willed his tears away. “Maybe I didn’t want to see you, Shittykawa. Think about that?”

I strategize a path to the bathroom

So I don’t walk past you

“Is it us you don’t wanna see, or (Name)?”

Mattsun leaned against the table, tilting his glass of whiskey as his eyes fell on someone.

Iwaizumi’s throat constricted as he saw you.

You, in all your angelic beauty, stood with some of your old friends from Seijoh, chatting eagerly. He watched as your plush lips moved, noticed the crinkle of happiness in your face, the way your outfit hugged your body is such a perfect way.

“Didn’t expect to see (Name)?” Oikawa asked, voice soft. He looked over at you, sad for not only his best friend, but also for you. He’d shipped you two the most.

Iwaizumi gulped, shaking his head as he waved at a waiter, getting his glass topped off before downing that. “S’not that.”

“Then what?”

“Gotta go to the bathroom,” Iwaizumi said bluntly, slamming his glass down.

“Go to the one that way,” Mattsun advised, pointing to the left. “(Name) won’t see you if you do that.”

“Thanks,” Iwaizumi grunted.

Make us try to fake our way through

"Hey, how are you?"

Iwaizumi slipped in the direction that Mattsun had pointed in only to accidentally bump into someone’s shoulder. “Iwaizumi.”

Iwaizumi flinched, recognising the all-too familiar voice. “Sawamura? What are you doing here?”

“My partner invited me.”

“Ah.” Iwaizumi’s brow furrowed. He shook his head. “Hope you have fun then, Sawamura.”

“You too, Iwaizumi.”

Iwaizumi swiveled, making his way towards the restroom. He cursed the hall for being so dark as he bumped into another person. “I’m sor-” the words died in his mouth as familiar (e/c) eyes turned to found his.

“Haji.”

The sting of the familiar nickname caused his heart to throb, his stomach churning. “(N-Name),” he stuttered, shock evident in his features.

Weren’t you on the opposite side of the room? How did you get in front of him so quickly?

“H-how are you?”

You smile, shrugging a shoulder. “I’m doing pretty well. How are you? Are you back from California then?”

He gulped, nodding. “Yeah.” He cursed his voice for cracking. “Been back for awhile now.”

“That’s good.” You both stand there awkwardly, staring at each other. Iwaizumi’s throat constricted, words clawing up his throat.

“Listen-”

“Well, it was nice seeing you.” The words caught in his throat as you gave him a small smile. “Maybe I’ll see you around sometime. We can catch up or something.”

“Sure,” he choked out, hurt and pain flashing through his eyes.

Why not now?

Wait, was he even ready to have that conversation with you?

“Bye!”

You turn, disappearing back into the crowd to leave him staring blankly at the spot you had just been in. He blinked, shaking his head before he turned back to the direction he had just come from - the urge to use the restroom vanishing along with you.

It's hard to summarize three years

More like four years

With each step, flashbacks ravaged through his mind.

“Hey, (Name), can I talk to you?”

You look up from your lunch, startled. “Oh! Sure thing, Iwaizumi-kun.” You stand up, “I’ll be right back,” you smile at your friends before following the wing-spiker to the vending machines. “What can I do for ya?”

Iwaizumi froze, your dazzling smile freezing him in the spot. He cleared his throat, shaking his head. “Do you wanna go out sometime? Today maybe?”

“Oh!” If it was possible, you grinned brighter. “Sure, I’ve always liked you.”

“Wait, really?”

You nod happily. “Yeah! Ever since we met last year as first years.”

He blinked. “Me too.”

“You liked you since last year?” You put a hand on your hip, a teasing lilt in your voice.

Iwaizumi scowled, “I meant I liked you too. Since last year. Dumbass.”

Your giggle made his heart fluttered. “I know.” You lean up, pressing your lips to his cheek. “See you for our date later then, Iwaizumi-kun!”

He shook his head, cursing his memories.

“Aw, I love you.” His head snapped up, hearing someone’s voice echo those words in a playful, mocking tone.

“Hey.”

You plopped down on the bench beside him, elbowing him. “I’m sorry about the game.”

He shrugged, pulling a hand out of his pocket to grab onto yours. “S’no big deal.”

“It is to you.” You squeezed his hand. “You were amazing out there, Hajime.”

Iwaizumi snorted, shaking his head. “If I was so amazing, why do we lose to Shiratorizawa every time?”

“Mmm, that’s not your fault though,” you pointed out. “And there’s always next tournament. You have time, I believe in you.”

He sighed, shoulders slumped. You look curiously at him. You’d never participated in sports or competitions, not really understanding what it was like to work so hard for something only to be beaten every single time.

“I love you.”

His head snapped up, brows furrowed as his jaw gaped slightly. “Wait what?”

You shrug. “I said I love you.” You squeeze his hand. “I love you, Iwaizumi Hajime and I think you’re the best spiker in the whole wide world!”

He rolled his eyes, shaken out of the spell you’d cast over him. “I love you too, dumbass.” He muttered under his breath.

“What was that?” You tease, blinking at him with those eyes that sparkled like the setting sun.

Iwaizumi cleared his throat, tugging you closer to his side as he rested his chin on your head. “I said I love you too.”

Oh, to hell with all your silver linings

And I'm tempted to distract myself, I'm trying not to

“Iwa-chan, you never call me anymore!” Oikawa’s whiny voice called Iwaizumi to flinch, his eyebrows furrowed in irritation.

“Maybe if you weren’t such an annoying little shit I wouldn’t avoid you,” Iwaizumi growled. He leaned back, throwing his head over the couch.

“You’re so mean,” Oikawa grumbled. “Is this because you broke up with (Name)? Or did they break up with you?”

“Oikawa,” Iwaizumi warned, a sharp tick in his voice. “Don’t go there.”

“Why? Isn’t it better now? You can go pursue your dreams, move to new countries and do whatever you want.”

“I said leave it alone!” Iwaizumi bellowed, hanging up the phone and hurling it away from him. He stood, pacing as anger pulsed through his body. He didn’t need a reminder of how ‘good’ life would be without you. He just wanted you. He wanted to come home to you, wanted to hold you in his arms at the end of every night.

He stalked towards the fridge, throwing it open and reaching for a beer before he paused.

Drowning his sorrows wouldn’t do anything. Wouldn’t change that you were no longer his, and he was no longer yours. With an irritated click of his tongue, he slammed the fridge door shut, leaning his forehead against the cool metal.

He needed a distraction, but not like this. He sighed, peeling one eye open to notice the gym bag peeking around the corner up at him.

Maybe it was time to start working out again.

Internally he laughed. Wasn’t that exactly what he was doing now? Drowning his sorrows with the golden ichor that drove even the most controlled of humans into chaos and sin?

His feet started moving faster and faster, needing to escape from the suffocating weight of his memories. Not now, not in this room where everyone - especially you - could see him.

He didn’t need the world to know that he wasn’t over his ex.

Everyone wants an explanation

And I don't know what to say anymore

He still remembered the first time that people had found out that you’d broken up. The wave of texts that he had gotten when he first posted a photo that didn’t feature you, but featured another girl.

“Hajime, let’s take a photo together!” She pouted, crossing her arms.

He rolled his eyes but allowed her to. She was just a friend, someone he’d met in class. They’d met up at a party and somehow he found himself posing for the photo, letting her throw her arms around his neck as she took the selfie. In his drunken state, he barely noticed the intimacy of it before he posted the photo onto his InstaFeed.

[Oikawa]: Wow, she’s looking close! Won’t (Name) be jealous ;)

[Mattsun]: damnnn, California changed ya, Iwaizumi!

[Makki]: Woof woof! Mind giving me her number?

[Oikawa]: hold on, where are all the pictures of you and (Name)??? Did something happen?

[Makki]: Wait, did you guys break up?

[Mattsun]: whoaaaa, when did this happen?

Iwaizumi shook his head, staring at his InstaFeed before tapping on the archive button and bringing up the hundreds of pictures - the ones that featured you. He stared at your face, tears welling up in his eyes.

[Oikawa]: oi, don’t ignore us

[Iwaizumi]: it’s none of your business. Now fuck off.

He shoved his phone back into his pocket, turning back to the girl as he reached for another beer. He didn’t want to think about this.

Not now.

Not when all he wanted to do was call you.

“What happened between you two?” Oikawa asked, looking down at his best friend as Iwaizumi rejoined them at the table.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Iwaizumi snarled, anger in his features.

“Haji.” Your voice came crisp and clear through his computer as he stared at your face through the screen.

“What’s wrong?” Iwaizumi frowned, hearing the slight tremor in your voice.

“I..I can’t do this anymore.”

“What?”

You swallow, finally meeting his eyes and he noticed how red and swollen they were. “I don’t wanna do this distance thing anymore. You’re doing so many great things and I just...You deserve better.”

“Wait, baby, what are you talking about?”

“Haji, I love you so much,” you force out, giving him a teary smile. “I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

“(Name), wait-”

“Goodbye.”

The beep of Zoom ended the call as Iwaizumi stared in anguish at the screen.

“She didn’t want to try anymore, I guess,” Iwaizumi shrugged. He stared at you for a moment longer.

You looked happier - sounded happier too.

He sighed, sipping from his glass just as he noticed who slipped to your side. A hand settled on your hip, causing you to start before you looked up at the person who the hand belonged to.

He could just imagine your voice - soft and doting as you leaned up to kiss Daichi’s cheek.

At least you found someone close to home, someone who would always be there for you and someone you could depend on.

Iwaizumi turned back to his table, ignoring the pitiful looks from his friends as he sought out the bottom of his glass. He never imagined how badly it would hurt - just how much the smallest glimpse and interaction of you would throw his emotions into turmoil. Another sigh left his lips.

He couldn’t do this any longer.

Couldn’t be in the same room as you.

“I’m leaving,” he announced bluntly, slamming his glass down before grabbing his coat. “I’ll see you guys later.”

In his wake, he felt the heat of your eyes on his back.

Did you still think about him like he thought of you?

Did you feel the same pain that he did when he saw you?

Did you ever think about your relationship with him?

He shook his head, swatting away the malicious thoughts that threatened to overwhelm him. He had to get away, now. There was no more ‘us’ when it came to you, and there never will be. He could only hope that the next time he saw you, he wouldn’t have to run away.

After all, it shouldn’t hurt this badly to be in the same room as you, right?

*****

AN: All I felt was *pain* writing this ahahaha. Hope you enjoyed my addition to this collab!! Please be sure to check-out the rest of the incredible writers of @babythotshq !

general taglist: @kaizumi @newfriendjen @kyomihann @cheerysparkle @seiijixcia @shoyomeow @tsumue @terminallyvolatile @aruhappy

collab taglist: @suhkusa @momoinot @boosyboo9206 @ariasnight @heykoutarou @celamoon @kweenregent @Arriverderciroque @vicassa@badgirlputin @ashhhh26 @luckypartyranchmug @throughtheinterstices @koushisun @postsfromthe6 @chaelysian @ynjimenez @2o-done @hohochaan @thatnikkixx @69owo @Solarskiesdream @mattsuns-prettybaby @shirachu @moonlightaangel @madusas-girlfriend @d-angerboys @lulu-102 @anejuuuuoy @tsumue @satansassbutt @Killmeplz-uwu @serihandfn

#iwaizumi x reader #iwaizumi hajime x reader #iwaizumi angst #iwaizumi hajime angst #babythotshq #babythots collab #brokenhearts club playlist #babythotscollab #bbthots #skye collabs #bbthots collab

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heartofsnark · 3 years

Text

Can You Feel The Sun? (Chapter Nine): Lazarus Rises

Notes: I’m on a roll with writing this. I’m honestly, a little nervous with sharing this chapter since i go more into Johnny’s backstory and like...my headcanon of it since CDPR gave us nothing. But hopefully it works. I also haven't written Johnny's voice in a while, so ahhhh.

Word Count: 12098

Chapter Warnings: Death, brief mentions of child abuse, drug use, alcohol, war, ableism, pov switches but not in the usual way.

If you haven’t yet, you can read the previous chapter here!~

Oblivion wraps around her like a blanket.

There is no existence.

No pain.

No world.

No V.

No Aidan.

Every anxious little thought, every guilt soaked burden; swept away with the reaper’s scythe. Years of running and death has finally caught her.

Then all at once it seems to let her go.

It's a flicker at first, neurons firing up again, rewriting and rebuilding themselves. No true sensation or senses; just existence. World still dark and lost to her, but not she is not lost to it, or some version of her isn’t.

Pain hits her before anything else, a crack in her skull, or where her skull should be. She has no sense of her body, only the vague notion she exists and is in pain. And when every sense returns, the world coming back….

It’s not her own.

There’s a fog around her, a fuzzy filter muting it all. Like trying to recall a memory from too long ago. And she sees and she hears, in a body that isn’t hers. She’s smaller, the world seeming to tower around her. A blazing sun burning overhead in the bright blue of the sky. Playing outside on a sweltering day with bruised knees and grass stains on cheap children’s jeans. A mothers voice calling for Robbie to come home for lunch. She catches a reflection in a puddle, there’s a blur to it, but the dirt smeared face of a dark haired boy looks back at her...at himself… for a moment.

The world shifts and with it comes a pain she can’t truly feel, a belt whipping through the air and welting a back that isn’t her own. Vision blocked by skinny arms marked with cigarette burns, hiding a face from the next lash. A boot gnashing into his side, the thick fog protecting V from the pain he feels. When he clambers to his feet, spitting blood she can’t taste, despite seeing vignettes through his eyes. He walks through a musty home, where the floorboards creak and threaten to break under his feet. A mirror showing a dark eyed boy with a split lip.

Then she’s watching the hands of this boy she doesn’t know, playing guitar. He plucks and strums at strings until they bite into his fingers, until he leaves them speckled with blood. And then he plays more. Gifted an acoustic, stole his first electric but forgot to klep the amp alongside it.

Playing in a musty crowded garage with a young boy with olive skin. Each playing away on instruments, the sounds and words all muffled to V. The pair play badly until they play great, she doesn’t hear, but she knows…

Tequila and cigarettes before he’s old enough to buy them. V can faintly feel the burn of the booze and the warmth of the smoke.

Stealing anything that can be tucked away in his pockets. Spray painting every wall he sees. Cherry bombs in mailboxes, picking a fight with anyone who sets him off and most people do. The faint burning of anger in his chest, she can feel it as if it’s her own. In and out of detention centers, a system that can put him away for petty theft, but never lift a hand to stop his father...

Military reps scouting out young, poor troubled boys, seeing nothing but canon fodder when they look at him.

Knocking on the door and that same olive-skinned, dark haired friend answering. She can hear the words but knows what’s being said without them. Both fog and clarity. ‘Robbie’ is enlisting, off to say his final goodbye to Kerry, a name she doesn’t know how she knows. He comes running down the street after him, before ‘Robbie’ can get too far away. Neither old enough, children. One made of lank and the other with baby fat still clinging to his cheeks. But the military knows boys can take bullets just as well as men. They need bodies, age irrelevant. Forged documents with Robert John Linder scratched across it. That name...

Blurs of training, a mop of dark hair shaved from his head. Separated from Kerry, stationed in different platoons, finding another friend who sticks by his side; both hardened by the military. Lank becoming muscle. Give optics, interface plugs, tech he doesn’t want, but they pry open his skin and put it in anyway. Anything to make him a better soldier.

Then they’re in combat, muffled gunfire. People brutalized; shot, blown apart and chrome shoved into whatever remains; treated cruelly both by the enemy and the corps that shipped them out there. The heat of Mexico and the smell of gunpowder. Enemy ambush, the faint ting of a grenade hitting the ground. Then Robert is on the ground, shoved there and the body of a friend draped over his own. A heavy boom, shrapnel tearing through his left arm and size, burns across the skin. But nothing compared to his friend… A grenade meant for him is taken by another, the pair rushed away to medical attention when the air clears.

He wakes up without a left arm and scars across his torso, pulling tight at his skin. His friend gone, remains thrown out and tags offered to Johnny, the man who died for him nothing but a number, canon fodder in the corp’s war. Not even a day passes before they’re shoving chrome onto what’s left of Robert’s shoulder, eager to give him another chance to die for them.

So, he runs, deserting and heading to a Night City that V has never seen. He climbs into a dirty motel bed and refuses to crawl back out, watching a ceiling fan turn until Kerry pulls him out. Older, more weathered, still young but neither of them quite the children they were before they saw the war.

And music becomes his life. Kerry and him scream their words into any microphone they can find. Blaring concerts, they sound as if they’re coming from three rooms over to the merc, but she can feel the energy through the memory. Long nights writing lyrics and melodies. A band forming around them, three more members coming into the fold. Grimy smoke filled clubs and a cramped pathetic excuse of a tour bus. Shows that turn into riots.

Cigarettes and tequila aren’t enough anymore. He pops pills like candy, snorts anything that will go up his nose, drinks everything but vodka, and fucks any pretty thing that looks his way.

A woman with freckles and blue mohawk kicks his ass when she catches him balls deep inside a groupie.

A blonde thrown into the back of a van.

An anger and rage burning like wildfire in his chest.

It all blurs and rushes; V never fully feeling what’s going on. All senses are fogged, seeing the snapshots of someone’s life through his own eyes. But she doesn’t feel linked, still distanced from it all. Barely able to think or decipher what she sees through the haze of it all. Just watching blips of a life not her own flickering by, with knowledge she shouldn’t have.

Its the feeling of graffiti covered steel pressing against hands that first pushes through the fog. Hands that feel like they’re hers, but aren’t. One inked flesh and the other chrome. V can feel the body move as if it’s her own, but she has no command of it, muscles flexing to open double doors. Surrounded by the halls of a grimy little club. She can smell smoke and sweat, she’d gag but she can’t seem too.

There’s music somewhere, muffled by distance but nothing else now.

Fog lifted, she's both connected enough to it to feel everything, but separate enough to question what the hell is going on? There’s a tangled mess of emotions in her...his…. Their head. Her own fear, anxiety, mingled with a burning rage pitting in his core.

There’s a girl leaning against the dirty wall of the club, watching V...or whoever she’s stuck inside of as they walk down the hell. A little smile playing on her lips. Thoughts flitter around V, in a voice that’s not her own. Chick’s cute enough, might of been worth a quick fuck, if he wasn’t rushin’ for time.

“Hey…”

V wants to ask her what’s going on, if the girl has any idea, what the girl sees when she looks at her. But her hands don’t move to sign and when she feels her mouth move, a different voice, different words, come out. The same rough voice that thought of fucking the girl in a dressing room.

“Hey.”

“You all right?”

No, none of this is alright. V screams inside a head not her own, but she can feel the pride rolling in his chest, a smirk on his face. There’s an anger mixed with it, he’s going to settle a score, leave a mark. Those thoughts and feelings rattling around.

“Never been better.”

“Sure don't look it…’

There’s a scoff in his throat, she’s got no idea what he’s got planned. He continues around the corner, a man at the end of the hall standing before a set of double doors. The letters above say its backstage. Green hued fluorescent lights only draw attention to the grime as his boots click over the floor. That smell of cigarettes and sweat still hangs heavy around her, she thinks it may be coming from him, the man she’s playing passenger in. Oh god, that smell is him, isn’t it…

What the hell is even happening? Dex killed her, didn’t he?

“I can't let you on!” The man yells out at him.

The fuck he can’t. His anger flares, a sliver left arm brought up, slammed into the guy's throat as he’s shoved into a wall, a gun held in chrome fingers. There’s a mirror against it and V can see the man she’s living life through now. And those foggy vignettes press at her, he’s much older now. Face angry and with a scruffy beard, dark hair grown to his shoulders.

His name was Robbie..? Robert.. ? Something, like that.

“Hey hey, we're chill,” the man begs ‘Robert’. He certainly looks too old to be a Robbie.

‘Robert’ lets the guy go with sneer, furious the guy would ever try to get in his way as he marches towards the doors. Abandoned music equipment and the music shoots in volume, a man blocking ‘Robert’ from getting up to a stage. Where four people play what sounds like older dad punk rock.

‘That smack, drag drunken roll

Chips are bashin' in my top

Ridin' high, my slots are shot

Metal burnin' beneath my skin

I'm chippin' in, chippin' in’

V would wince if she had control of her face, his face, does she even have a face anymore? The music is good, but painfully loud, something she could enjoy if only she could lower the volume. Phantom limbs she no longer has urge to turn the volume down on hearing aids that don’t exist.

“Heh… 'course you're high.” The bouncer in front of the stairs rolls his eyes at ‘Robert’ then steps aside.

‘Robert’ climbs up the short staircase, music painfully loud to V but exactly where he feels at him, bright lights down on him. A familiar face, Kerry from ‘Robert’s’ memories, is the one who sings.

Until he’s pushed out of the way, gun still in ‘Robert’s’ hand as he grabs the microphone. Looking out into a crowd of people who stare up at him, an entire club room of people cheering and yelling for him. Shirts with tha bright red demon symbol, Samurai across it. Adoring fans, hearing his words, people who know his message, heard it loud and clear. Common men and women beaten down by the corps that rule their lives, that tear them all down for the chance to make an eddie. And tonight he’ll show them all there’s a bite to his bark; he’ll make his mark, topple Arasaka and do what he should have done years ago.

“Tonight I'm…” he pauses, leaving that mark may be the death of him, he’s damn near sure it will be, “I'm here to say goodbye to all of you.

And he begins to play to the cheering crowd, a final show before he changes the world. V would cry out if she had the mouth to do it. Music shakes the venue, ‘Robert’ playing guitar and screaming lyrics into a mic, completely taking the show from Kerry. He channels his anger, his fury, into his music. Screams his rage into the mic. And it's a cacophony for the merc tucked in the back of his skull. She can feel her own stress and pain, but she also feels his energy, his love of this. Even through the anger, he knows that this is the place he belongs.

This is hell, she thinks as he sings. The idea that every hell is tailored to an individual, everyone has their own personal idea of torment. This is her’s. She died and now she’s doomed to live in the head of some foul smelling rocker who plays nothing but music her sort of ex liked. Surrounded by loud sounds, foul smells, and no control. This is hell, her own special little hell. And she’ll be stuck here forever, for being an atheist or bi or a whore or a murderer… one of those did it.

After an agonizing hour, the show closes down. More sweat is now clinging to her current vessel’s body and V mentally screams at him to take a shower, but no panicked thoughts seem to reach him. He’s completely unaware of her...presence… in his head. Sweat slick, ‘Robert’ puts away his axe and lights up a cigarette; smoke settles in his lungs, the cloying taste of tar sticking to his mouth. But there’s a relief in him, a tension leaving him, nicotine soothing him if only for a moment.

Two women are settled down on the steps of the stage, in clinging tacky clothes. Groupies there to claw their way into the pants of anyone who’ll have them, entire fucking lives dedicated to riding the dick of someone more important than them. Because playing fleshlight to a rockerboy is the closest they’ll ever get to making a difference in this world.

“You're wastin' your lives, followin' us around like dogs.”

If she had hands she’d hit him. The women scowl at him, obviously taken back at the rockerboy talking down to them, like he hadn’t been thinking of fucking a girl just before the show. Like his eyes didn’t look over the curve of their asses and cleavage. If one of them asked he’d be inside of them in a moment, just has to make them feel like shit first.

“What crawled up your ass?’

‘Robert’ sneers and rolls his eyes, walking past the stage. His fingers wrapping around the door handle, he was thinking about something he was going to do, toppling Arasaka. There’s a determination in his walk, a goal he’s marching off too, still hints of a soldier in his steadfast gait. The hell is he planning? How could some rockerboy take down a mega corp? There’s a faint but steady sound past the door, a whirring sound.

“Johnny, wait up!”

He turns, answering to the name she hasn’t heard until now and it’s Kerry running towards him; chasing after him like he did all those years ago, when he followed ‘Robbie’ right to war. She’s not sure if it’s her or ‘Johnny’ remembering it.

Kerry is older now than he was in the memories, though he looks younger than Johnny. A tall fluffy mullet of dark hair, a scraggly mustache, and a half finished sleeve of ink on his left arm. His hand wraps around Johnny’s wrist, pulling him the rocker closer.

“Don't do this,” Kerry warns, “You can still change your mind.”

“Get over here man,” Johnny pulls Kerry in closer, a hand cupped to his friend’s face,“Fuck this band. Not your crowd, not your noise, do your own thing.’

They’re close enough to see the scar above Kerry’s lip and the freckles that dot his neck. Johnny taps his finger against Kerry’s chest as he brings his hand from the shorter man’s face. Kerry’s always cared more for the music than the message, more about fame than impact, Samurai more Johnny’s baby then his. But fears kept Kerry from chasing that solo dream as much as he wants, dipping his toes but never taking the chance to fully dive in. Kerry always needed a good kick in the ass to get where he needs to be, might be the last one Johnny can ever give him.

“Bastard. Tsh… Gonna miss you something awful.”

There’s a softness in Kerry’s voice and smile, a fondness that only comes from lifelong friends. A soft warmth nestles in Johnny’s chest as well, for the first time she feels his lips pull into something she can almost call a smile.

“See ya in the next life, friend.”

With that Johnny puffs on his cigarette and turns, leaving out the door, the whirring growing louder. The source of it shown; a helicopter landed outside the club, blades spinning and whipping up dust. A woman stands nearby, a wild teal mohawk, someone Johnny knows, fuzzy memories of a tumultuous past.

“You're late,” she yells out over the sound of the chopper. Hands on her hips, eyes glaring at him. Always tries to play like she’s pissed, but never could resist him.

“Love it when you're mad. Gets my southern blood pumpin',” he teases with a grin and V can feel the reality of his words, a throb in his dick behind his leather pants. And she doesn’t like that, her discomfort at feeling what it’s like to have a dick oddly mingling with his lust.

“Get in. 'Fore I change my mind.”

Johnny makes his way to the helicopter, climbing inside, blades achingly loud. Two people already sit in the chopper. A man with chromed skin and fatigues, a woman fiddling with a computer. Her face is obscured by a helmet and visor, only black painted lips showing.

“Silverhand,” the man greets him.

Johnny...Silverhand…

“Hey, Shaitan,” he greets as gears start to turn in V’s head, a head she no longer has.

Johnny’s ex, Rogue, comes walking towards the helicopter as he turns back to the open doorway. Her name only known through Johnny’s thoughts skittering around her, but it sounds strangely familiar to V as well. Johnny extends a hand to help Rogue into the chopper, but she ignores him. Prideful bitch, he rolls his eyes.

“Get us in the air,” Rogue yells to the unseen pilot, shoving a headset into Johnny’s hands, “here, put this on, and it stays on, got it?”

Johnny pulls it on and the helicopter starts to take off, the world falling further and further below them. The sign at the top of the club comes into view; The Hammer, Johnny taking another drag on his cigarette as Kerry steps out the back door. Silverhand flicks the out onto the cement as his friend watches the chopper fly off.

As the helicopter flies through skyscrapers and towers, V struggles to take in where they are. Night City, but not. Towering buildings and screens blasting ads, par for the course in the city of broken dreams. But the ads are for products she hasn’t heard of or ones discontinued and no longer sold. The buildings look rougher, not quite the same slick clean look of the city she’s come to know.

A city consumed by corps, a vile cesspit with ads as far as the eye can see, each desperate to wring out one last eddie from the masses. The entire system designed to crush people too apathetic to do a damn thing about it. Exploited, violated, used for a profit, and thrown out the second the corps get what they wanted. And the people just take it. No longer questioning why there’s no more farms, only land stripped for profits and nomads forced to abandon their homes. No longer questioning why real food is a rarity, why the priciest drink on the market is filth free water. No longer questioning why someone like saburo is pushing a hundred and the average Night City citizen won’t see forty. Corruption and apathy, best friends united to create the city of broken dreams. He’d burn it all down if he could, but truthfully can’t imagine himself anywhere else…

So… he’ll burn it all down, die for it if he must, and something better can be built in it’s ashes.

A building in City Center holds a large holo-display showing the time and date; August 20, 2023… Fifty years in the past, the day Arasaka Tower was destroyed. And given his thoughts, she knows where Johnny is headed. That name, Johnny Silverhead, rattles through her. She’s heard it before, a few times. Half listened to conversations with Ava about music, where V would just nod and hope it earned her pity kiss. A name brought up by Jackie when discussing the tower being blown up, shots thrown back in… Rogue’s bar. The older woman with gray hair and the young adult with a wild teal mullet are one in the same.

V is in the foul smelling, cigarette smoking body of a rockerboy turned wannabe terrorist on his way to set off a nuke that will kill over a quarter million people.

“Piers're on fire. Pacifica's cut off, shut down. APCs on the streets of Watson,” Shaitan explains, stationed at the machine gun turret beside Johnny.

“Sons of bitches.”

“Skull-crackin' out there… that us?” A voice, the pilot maybe, asks over the headset.

“Johnny's idea. Weyland's drawing Arasaka's attention away from the tower.”

“Collateral damage part of the plan, too?”

“This isn't the cub scouts, Thompson, Chew it up, spit it out,” Rogue tells him, no hint of fear or remorse in her voice as the chopper starts to come around a tower.

A pillar of black metal with the Arasaka logo emblazoned at the top of it in silver. Levels of the tower get smaller towards the roof, from the distance there’s the bright red flash of holo warning signs forbidding entry. As they ascend higher and higher, the barrage of Arasaka soldiers and turrets atop the tower come into view.

“Target range acquired.”

“Make it rain,” Rogue commands and Shaitan begins shooting off the machine gun turret.

Gunfire rings through the air, Arasaka soldiers yelling out as they fire back, automated turrets beginning to fire at Shaitan. The chopper stays rotating, hovering but never still, to avoid being shot out of the air as the chromed sniper works to clear the roof. Blood painting across the metal as Shaitan blasts through them.

“Fuck!”

Enemy fire, Arasaka fire, blasts through, Pinging against chrome and metal, practically sparking. A lucky shot, or three, ripping through Shaitan’s shoulder and he screams in pain, falling onto his back. Rogue yelling out as she kneels down to check on him, Shaitan convulsing in pain.

“Taking over!”

Johnny takes over the machine gun, optics connecting with the turret sights. Arasaka soldiers flood the roof, nearly impossible to keep track of them; not even a moment passes before Johnny is firing off the gun. It's rapid and brutal, an onslaught as the reverberation of it shakes his body. But there is a hint of strategy beneath, taking out the automatic turrets first, blasting each one until they explode into shrapnel. Only when the final one is in sparks does he turn to the soldiers, Their sidearms can’t compare to the heavy fire. Blasted full of hole at rapid fire, blood and brains spraying.

A body of corpses and shrapnel left across the roof. He pulls away from the gun, unzipping a duffle bag. A white constructed mechanism, wire, switches, and a giant nuclear energy warning across it. He’s about to plant a nuke in Arasaka. Fucking stop it, you idiot, all you do is cause more harm than good. She tries to scream inside his head, but nothing comes of it. The helicopter lowers down closer to the tower roof.

“Murphy?” Rogue calls out.

“Found our access point. Get moving.”

“Johnny, remember the plan?” Rogue asks as Johnny zips the duffle bag and slings it over his shoulder.

“Get the payload on the elevator,” he jumps from the helicopter, “arm it, let gravity do its thing. Explosion rocks the foundation, tower crumbles - chaos, screaming, roll credits.”

He pulls out a gun, a heavy duty pistol, Malorian Arms 3516, Last True Friend etched in it.He spins it between his silver fingers, flourishing and completely unneeded. It’s smartlink tech, synching with his cybernetic arm. And she can feel a sort of dampening of his feelings and emotions, that rage burning in his chest starting to simmer down, a colder more calculated anger taking over.

Rogue and Murphy run ahead of him, across the roof, through the piles of bodies. Johnny follows behind them down a flight of stairs on the side of the building.

“Exit window's gonna be tight,” Rogue tells him, brandishing her own side arm as she comes to wait by a door.

“Jacking in,” Murphy connects a small computer into an interface, “Is grass green, do birds fly, do cats eat bats, do rats shit gnats?”

“Mainframe's not your playground, Murphy, c'mon. Evac announcement - broadcast it across all frequencies and let's get movin’.”

“Sheesh, who wrote this manifesto?”

“Really need me to answer that question?”

“Jesus, Johnny, you've gone of the deep end. And that's comin' from chairjock,” Murphy tells him, interface with a spider avatar drifting across the door, before it slides open.

Johnny rushes through and down a flight of stairs as Arasaka guards running to meet him. He shoots the first in the head, point blank, brains splattering. The gun is powerful, devastating, sending a reverberation through Johnny’s silver arm. Enough that bone would have broken in the recoil. The guard no longer recognizable.

The second guard stays further back, at the bottom of the second step. Johnny slams a trigger on the back of his gun, shooting flames out towards the guard. The man screams and staggers back, flesh burning as Johnny follows up with a shot through his chest.

A third one follow, stumbling over burning remains, when three shots go through his skull, Rogue taking him down. The two continue down the spiraling stairs, stepping through blood and ash. The meet another guard at the end, who fires off his hand gun rapid fire.

“Shred the whole fuckin' lot!”

The pair take cover behind the corner banister, Johnny reloading his gun with another twirl, before jumping back up. He shoots twice through the guards chest, watching the man fall in a bloody heap as they reach the end of the staircase.

They go through a doorway and two more guards greet them, gun’s trained on the two edgerunners.

“End him already! That’s an or-”

The guard's yell is cut off by a bullet ripping through his shoulder, a second through his chest. His underling going down a mere moment later, with a headshot from Rogue; room cleared. Blood soaking into silver and marble floors. Johnny’s eyes focusing on the elevator across the room.

“Murph?” Rogue calls out the netrunner’s name, her avatar showing on Johnny’s optics as she starts to hack the elevator.

“She sought it with thimbles, she sought it with care, pursued it with forks and hope…” Poem finished, the elevator doors open.

“Johnny payload.” Rogue yells out, but Johnny’s already across the room, making his way to the elevator. He brings the bag down off his shoulder, placing it down, crouching, and unzipping it.

“Bushido II - bomb's name was what?” He asks, in a slow sly voice, entertaining at least himself if no one else.

“Wrap it up, we gotta delta!”

“The ‘Demolitron’,” he sets the charges with a light hand, “we're good to blow.”

He stands up and leaves the elevator, no hurry, only determination in him as he walks back towards Rogue. Like this is just a regular Thursday night.

“'Saka elites incoming! Run for it!”

“Get the fuck out of there, Johnny,” Rogue yells as he steps away, “shoot the cables!”

He does just that, blasting through the elevator cables, the carriage with the bomb dropping down through the lower levels.

“Get the rotors spinning! We're on our way!” Rogue yells out to their pilot, but there’s something rattling around in Johnny’s chest. He’s got to save her. It’s his only chance.

“Not done yet still need to feed this to their subnet,” he waves a small handheld computer in the air. Rogue’s face twists and grimaces, infuriated.

“I fucking knew it!” she swings her hand through the air, fingers clenched like she could strangle him, “This was never about "corporate colonialism" - this was about your groupie output wasn't it?!”

“Nah, you wouldn’t understand, Rogue.”

“Givin' you four fuckin' minutes. Chopper's not gonna wait one sec longer.”

“Door lock breached. Arasaka sons-a-bitches incoming,”

“Love you, Spider,” he jokes as he pushes through double doors, the woodwork of a lobby greeting him a moment before an armed guard can.

“Whole world loves me.’

“Fuuuck!” He yells out, something between a frustration and excitement as he blasts a hole through a guard's chest.

Johnny reloads before stepping out further, quickly having to pull back into the doorway for cover through the marble passageway. Two guards coming from a corridor on the left, a third from the right. The tower is made of rectangular balconies wrapping around, corners and curves to hide around. He fires around the corner at the guard on the left, taking a leg before a second shot takes their hide.

A bullet whips past his head and he pulls back, guard coming to him, in front of the passageway. He slams his hand on the trigger, a plume of flames engulfing his enemy, before finishing them off with another shot. He rounds the corner and slams forwards into the third guard, knocking them off balance for a moment. Johnny swings his fist out, rings colliding against their jaw, they hit the ground. He fires a shot point blank into their head, continuing on his way.

A staircase in the left of the room, across from the stone garden in the midst of the balonied section. He rushes up two sets of stairs, reloading along the way. It brings him to the upper level of the stacked balconies, a guard directly across the gap on the other side. The first shot Johnny fires splits the banister in front of the guard, the second shot rips through them.

Three guards rush out from another room and Johnny pulls back, stepping down some steps, reloading. The movement forces the guards to come through the doorway, one at a time, letting him line up a shot that blasts through two at once, the third gagging as his friends' brains splatter and cling to his face. But he barely gets a moment to process before he’s dead too.

Johnny runs up the stairs, stomping over corpses, as he goes around the corner. There’s a doorway that leads down to what looks to be a board room. One more guard down with a quick clean headshot, brains now sprayed across a vase of flowers on the table. He walks over them around the corner and towards a paneled wall.

“Closing in on the access point,” he tells Murphy and the panel opens up, revealing a main frame.

“Slot in.”

Johnny pulls out a little computer, stickers across the top of it. He flips it open and plugs it into the terminal. A little interface coming across his optics, Uploading Virus: Liberator.

“Sweet ICE-breaker,” the runner speaks up again, “Foreign, right? Just, wonder if we know anyone who can switch the subnet protocol…”

“Hilarious. You gonna help or not?”

“Do spiders spin webs? It's time we caught some flies.”

“Thanks, Murph.”

“Now, just for good measure…”Murphy trails off for just a moment, “Holy cybercow, we’re on TV! Take a look.”

A large TV mounted on the wall pings on, tuned to a news cast. Johnny shifts to the side to watch it. Brief clips of chaos flashing by in snapshots as the anchor talks over them.

“And we turn now to Arasaka Tower, its evacuation ongoing after an unidentified terrorist organization released a manifesto threatening violence. The terrorists stating their desire to, quote-unquote, "topple a monument to corporate colonialism." Night City's mayor, Mbole Ebunike, has issued a statement declaring that he will bring the full force of the law to bear in response to any act of terrorism. Going now to our reporter on the scene at Arasaka Tower. Hopefully, he can shed some light on this situation as events unfold.”

People might finally wake up. There’s a swell of pride in Johnny’s chest, that this will finally send his message, finally change the world for the better. And V thinks of the rebuilt tower, now with remembrance monuments, but rebuilt and still standing proud fifty years later. The virus finishes uploading, Johnny unplugging his computer and tucking it back in his pocket.

Took too long, but better than never. Stay safe, Alt.

“All set. Now get outta there. They're movin' up! Hit the roof, quick!”

Johnny rushes through the board room and around the bends of the squared balcony, heading straight to the double doors on the other side. Just as he reaches it there’s a heavy blast, wood and metal shredding as Johnny is forced backwards.

Pain shoots through his back as it collides with the floor, looking up where the door was blown through. A man stands in the destroyed remains of it. A tall man in heavily armored Arasaka garb, wielding a heavy duty shotgun. Cybernetic arms, a black cyberware jawed, and adornments of metal across his forehead.

“Shit! That's Adam Smasher!”

Adam Smasher, the same borged out man protecting Yorinobu? He jumps down from the ledge, hitting the floor in front of Johnny with a heavy thud. He’s different than in 2077, more human, a healthy more flesh colored face behind the cyberware. Fuck, Johnny curses mentally and starts firing shots at Adam. The devastation of his Malorian doing nothing as they fire into Adam’s cybernetic arms, the top of the line chrome holding up under each fire.

“Johnny, run!”

He wants to fight, wants to teach Smasher a lesson the borged fucker won’t ever forget. Every fiber of his being screaming at him to stand and fight. But there’s a nuke on a timer, falling down to the depths of the tower. There’s a helicopter getting ready to fly off. And while he doesn’t mind dying today, expects he just might, Rogue and Spider are waiting on him. He doesn’t need the last thing he hears to be their nagging… or for Rogue to make the chopper wait on him. So, he swallows his pride, as foul as it tastes, and makes a run for it.

Johnny pistol whips and shoots an Arasaka soldier on his way out the door, reaching the stairs back out to the roof. The door shuts behind him before any more soldiers can come after him.

“Murphy!?”

“Door's sealed, but it won't hold for long. Run, Johnny. Like the wind.”

He can see Rogue ahead of him running up the stairs. She should have been back in the chopper by now, she waited on Johnny. Rogue will bitch him out and nag until she’s blue in the face, but she’d never leave him behind. Wrapped around his finger, no matter what he’s done. Johnny runs quickly up the stairs, to the roof, three steps behind Rogue as she jumps into the chopper, as it starts to lift off without him.

“Johnny! Move!”

He jumps, grabbing Rogue’s outstretched arm, fingers wrapping tight around her forearm. Rogue tries to pull him inside to safety, when his fingers begin to slip. Something fires in the background a whistling noise, as his hand catches in Rouge’s, fingers twisting tightly together as she pulls. A boom rings out, hitting against the chopper with a spark and a shake, he slips right from Rogue’s grip, world going out from under him as she plummets back down to the tower roof. His back hits the metal with a crash, head bouncing against the cement, pain shooting through his body. Pain blurs his vision as the helicopter spins overhead, watching as the pilot regains control and they’re forced to fly off without the ill-fated rockerboy.

Boots thunder against the floor around him, Smasher coming into view. Johnny’s silver arm shakes as he tries to reach for his gun, nerves on fire after the fall. Smasher throws down his heavy shot gun, kicking the gun away from Johnny’s fingers.

“Smasher.”

“Told ya, Johnny boy. Told you I'd end you someday,” Smasher all but snarls, a compartment in his cybernetic arm opening, Johnny’s staring down the barrel of the hidden weapon.

Johnny holds his arm out, only for it to be shot, chrome sparking as it’s blasted. Vision going out as he passes out. It only feels like a moment, a blink and the world returns.

The rattling of wheels against cement, strapped to a gurney. Bright and silver, a moon hangs high above the skyscrapers. Dirt and dust fly through the air, dancing around him like confetti. Faintly he hears sirens, hears screaming, hears cries. And when he shifts his head, to look further back, he can see the plumes of fire and smoke.

“Yes, he’s still alive,” the Arasaka doctor wheeling him says, spoken in Japanese, but understood by Johnny...and by extension the merc tucked in the corner of his mind. Everything hurts, no other memory so sharp, so clear. Able to feel every bruise and cut, like she’s truly him.

“Understood. We're en route,” the worker says above his head.

And Johnny falls back into darkness again, unable to keep conscious, the sound of explosions and chaos erupting around him as he passes out. It’s impossible to know how long, black void blanketing it all, time losing its meaning and grip on them.

It's a sharp slap across his face that wakes him back up, blood clinging to his lips. Blinking as he tries to take in his surroundings. He’s tied down to a chair, two guards standing before him. In a slick little room, a stretch of windows across the back wall, a bright mushroom cloud of destruction going off in the distance. Charge should have finished going off by now…

“Your associates - who are they? How did you acquire fissile material?” The guard questions him.

“Gonna give good cop over there a chance to say something? C'mooon…” Johnny sasses his interrogator, looking at the second quiet guard.

Then the guard sucker punches him, knuckles slamming into Johnny’s gut with a sharp crushing pain.

“Which terrorist organization do you belong to? How did you acquire fissile material?”

Another slap, backhanded and harsh against his face. His head forced to the side where he sees a man walking into the room; an older Japanese man, Saburo Arasaka. The corporate leader walks with his hands behind his back, a younger woman in all black following closely behind.

“Old man don’t look too impressed with your efforts,” Johnny taunts.

Saburo and the guards bow to each other, the old man speaking in Japanese, “leave us. I wish to look him in the eye.”

“Hot damn,” Johnny rolls his eyes, “done and gone.”

Saburo keeps his back turned to Johnny as the guards leave. The woman sets up a tech station by his chair. Her flingers click against a keyboard, looking at a screen before she finally speaks in a soft voice.

“My husband died in that tower.”

And Johnny’s stomach drops, pits with something akin to guilt. He can still see the burning clouds, the explosions in the distance through the window. Something went wrong, charges weren’t meant to be that strong. An evac announcement, charges just meant for the tower, a message. Not this. Casualties sure, everyone knew that was inevitable, but…

“But there are fates worse than death,” the woman tells him, fixing a metal wreath over his head. Wires connecting it back to her computer system.

“I… didn’t want him to die.”

“Why did you do this?” Saburo asks in his native tongue.

“To bring an end to the madness you wreak.”

“I have found that people lie, most often deceiving themselves. Not So the dead…”

Saburo finally turns to face Silverhand walking closer, stalking closer. And Johnny spits at him, blood and saliva now sticking to Saburo’s face, red staining the wrinkled skin. There’s barely a twitch to the old man’s face as he wipes the spittle and blood from his face. Disgusted but not stopped.

“Fuck you!” Johnny yells out for good measure, voice rough in his throat.

“The dead are so very, very loud,” Saburo scowls, “And yet, lying is not in their nature. It is so… humbling - to listen to the dead speak… Begin.”

The techie turns a switch and Johnny’s optics start to glitch, distort. Cyan fuzz piercing through the world as a UI screen appears. Soulkiller Primed: Commencing Engram Transfer. An crackle of electricity starts to course through him, a scream leaving him as his body convulses, Neurons cracking and frying as the world around his shakes, trembles, then finally cracks apart.

And V dies, not for the first time.

Darkness overtakes him, near oblivion. Only the vaguest notion of existence, suspended in time and reality. In a cold black choking void. Enough awareness, just enough, to know fear. Overwhelming fear, terror, trapped under the thumb of Arasaka. Never knowing when, if, there’s an escape. Never knowing what can, will, or has happened.

Time loses all meaning in digital purgatory.

And then sunlight starts to breach through. A haze over his vision, like watching sunlight through fogged glass. He can see the sunlight but he can’t feel it, maybe it’s an Arasaka trick. Trying to convince him he’s free, that he’ll ever see the sun again, just to rip it away before he can ever feel it’s warmth on his skin.

Then the view shifts, like someone turning their head, seeing the world through someone’s eyes. The sun beating down on a campsite, nomads, but their cuts and colors unlike any he’s seen. Not the Aldecaldos for sure, that much he knows. Might be some sort of experiment? Corps have never been above testing shit on people, nomads seen as less than human by most folks in the city, means they get away with it.

Someone calls the name Aidan, a mother calling for her child, the girl...he’s seeing the world through That feeling that knowledge seeping into him. A tent with an older woman and a young girl, a mirror in the tent catches a reflection, showing him Aidan. A young sunburnt nomad child with dark hair and gray eyes Nearly identical to the other child he’d just seen.

And in a blink, like a slide changing, the world changes again. Training sessions for the nomad kids. Taught to be strong. The kids made to fight each other, to spar, and losing meant going without food for the rest of the day if they were lucky. A beating if they were considered particularly pathetic. Some nights she won. Other nights watching other kids eat. The worst nights spent in a tent, mother rubbing salve on her injuries.

She’s taught how to load a gun, repair an engine, and kill without shaking before she’s seen her seventh birthday.

Members of the ‘family’ culled before everyone. Because they were sick. Because they were weak. Because they were a burden. They could drag the rest of the family down, The Herd must be culled so that they can stay strong. For the best of the family.

Gareth, an older man of the nomad family, gets sick. cancer running rampant in his body, treatment available but timely… expensive. He’d sneak toasted marshmallows to Aidan on nights she’d be made to go without anything….

He begs to die on his feet rather than his knees like most cullings.

His wish is denied.

Aidan’s father forces a dying man to his knees, pressing a captive bolt pistol to the back of his skull and killing him in front of the family. For their own good.

And one day, Aidan gets sick too. Johnny can’t feel it through her, through the snapshots, too disconnected. But he gets a rumbling of it through her. Body aching, head in agony, world constantly spinning enough to make her puke.

She tells no one. Refuses to be the next one culled, no doubt her father’s rules apply to her. Her sister, the same age and near a picture perfect copy, frets over her as they go to pick through a landfill. Instructed to spend evenings in search of anything useful to the family, to earn their keep. A ringing in her ears, world spinning as the noise builds and builds until silence strikes and she drops to the ground.

The world has gone silent. She wakes up in a med tent, but can hear nothing. A world of noises and chaos now silent.

And a stone faced father comes barging in, he’s saying something, but she doesn’t know what. Flinching in threadbare sheets, knowing the signs of his cold anger, but not what’s driving it, not how to fix it. Nails dig into her shoulder, dragged from the medical tent and out into the midst of the camp sigh. Vision blurred by tears. She yells out what’s happening, but can’t hear the words.

But she knows the press of the barrel against her head, the touch of the captive bolt pistol, how they cull the herd. She was weak, defective, broken. Nomad family gathered around, watching her cry and scream, unable to hear herself. Weak and pathetic before them all.

Then a pair of hands grab her, save her, pull her away and into a hug. Her mother holds her tight, crying, screaming, then kissing the top of her daughter’s head. Whispering words she knows won’t reach her. Aidan is saved, she doesn’t know what’s said. What spared her life. But she’s allowed to live on.

Her mother and sister learn ASL with her; the only two who never shun her, protecting her too much if anything. The implication clear whether in kindness or anger, she’s weak now. Defected. But her father expects her to work harder, to prove his mercy wasn’t a mistake. That this child earned her right to live.

She earns hearing aids years later[ and cries when she first puts them in; the world is too loud, too painful. Aidan keeps them low and continues using ASL.

A homeless teenage girl in a town they ransack; long dark hair and heavy makeup. Calls herself Avarice, they call her Ava. She tries to sign to Aidan and the young nomad girl is in love that easy, desperate for someone who cares enough to meet her even halfway. Despite it all, she begs Ava to join The Herd. Because maybe hell is more bearable when you’re in love.

She’s dragged to the med tent one night, told she needs a checkup, no rhyme or reason. Knowing better than to fight her father when he’s barking orders. They sedate her, clan doctor holding her down and forcing her into unconsciousness. She awakes with a scar across her lower stomach. Sterilized. So, she’ll never pass along defective genes.

The next snapshot doesn’t feel much longer after, older but not by much, a year maybe. When The Herd is swarmed by an rival nomad clan, one they’ve fucked over one time too many. Aidan trying to drive one of the cars to get her sister and mother away from the ambush. When a rival vehicle slams into them, a screech of tires, the gnash of metal. Eira and Aidan safe, but their mother is pinned between a caved-in door and the center console, bleeding where shrapnel pierces deep into her legs.

Trapped until Aidan’s father and a group from the family find them, The three women pulled from a crushed vehicle, the mother the only one gravely injured. Aidan follows as she’s dragged to an emergency medical set up.

Legs too damaged, it'd require a double amputation, prosthetics or cyberware. Easily doable. Nowhere near beyond saving if they’d act in time, take the time. But they never do, never truly will. Aidan begs for her mother’s life, like her mother did for her. For her father to have mercy just one more time.

And the bolt pistol is put in her hands. She’s told to do it. To cull her mother, to be strong, to put the family above the individual. A test of her strength.

She refuses, screams, and points the gun at him. And he mocks her tears, mocks the way her hands shake. He rips the pistol from her hands, she fights and pulls with him. But he’s over a foot taller, stronger, leaves her black and blue; crying on the ground with his boot on her back as he takes the gun and kills her mother.

And once her mother’s body is burned to ash, she runs.

Years of traveling, towns across NUSA, some faces are kinder than others. Eira and Ava sent to track her down, to kill the traitor.

Eventually she finds herself in Night City, but not the one Johnny knows. Newer, slicker, brighter. But the corruption and apathy remain, chrome even more common place than it was before. Folks more metal than flesh, every ripper doc with back alley tech.

She meets a friend, Jackie, Johnny knows his name despite never hearing it. A big ‘tino fucker covered in gaudy gold chains who helps her settle in. Taken into his home. Merc work, scummy nothing jobs, merc janitors at best. Jackie pulls her into a tight hug, the nomad unsure of what to do as his arms wrap around her, face pressed into his chest.

Then there’s a sharp pain, nerves and neurons firing off as everything is suddenly real. No haze or glass between him and her memories. Face tucked in against fabric, a chest, but there’s no warmth. No heartbeat. Arms wrapped tight around a body that’s cold and limp, one hurting like it’s been ripped open. They feel like his own, it feels like it’s his body.

He can feel the movement of muscles, the beat of the body’s heart. How the face is twisted up with tears running wet and hot down the cheeks. It feels like him, but it's not. Smaller, thinner.

No more ‘chicas’, ‘jainas’, or the odd ‘mija’. No more smiles that outshine the sun. No more nagging her to look on the bright side. No more bear hugs or hands the size of her head ruffling through her hair. No more Jackie….

Thoughts not his own swim around his head, the voice feminine. What the hell is Arasaka playing at? Playing someone else’s memories, trying to make him sit in the backseat of someone else's life? An experiment, they going to try to twist him, fuck with his head?

“Mr. Welles has passed. Where shall I take his remains?” An AI voice asks, in some tech cab with a bleached digital butler staring at her.

He’s got to find a way out, there’s got to be a way? But how do you leave someone’s head?

The body, her body, moves without his permission. Able to feel it like it’s his own and he can see just who’s corpse she was clinging to. Jackie… The same guy who took her in, now dead in the back of a cab. There’s a pit in her stomach, a tightness in her chest; he can feel her pain…

He’s both separate and intrinsically connected, his thoughts and feelings distinct enough, but her own still overwhelming.

”W-what?” She says...what was her name Aidan, Brayden, Hayden, some shit... Frat boy name on a nomad brat.

She stumbles over her words, sounds like she barely knows how to talk, might be the blubbering. Fuck if he knows or cares. Her grief, while he can feel it around him, surrounding him from where he sits in her head, is her own. He’s got bigger worries, bigger fish to fry. Former nomad, now a merc, but that doesn’t meant she can’t be with Arasaka. Corps hire mercs, use nomads as scapegoats, all sorts of shit. She could be in on whatever the fuck this is.

He’s just got to figure out what exactly the fuck this is, what Arasaka’s plan is. A way to get intel from him? Prodding at memories by seeing if someone else’s sparks something?

“The Excelsior package provides for the disposal of passenger remains free of charge. I merely require a destination.”

“I…he-he’d want to be with his family.”

“Mr. Welles' closest blood relative is Guadalupe Alejandra Welles, proprietress of the El Coyote Cojo bar. I will make sure to deliver him safely. Mr. DeShawn awaits you in room number two-oh-four. ”

Her hands are stained with blood, her forearm has a gash down it. He can see the traces of Mantis Blades, one ripped out. Something happened, flashes of dangling off an Arasaka branded hotel, holding her friend up. Red everywhere, fighting Arasaka guards. Doesn’t mean she didn’t work with them, how else would they somehow plant him in her head, in her memories.

She squeezes her friend’s shoulders and presses her forehead to his, feeling the cold of his corpse.

“See ya in the major leagues, Jack…”

She gets out of the back of the cab, she’s dressed like a corpo, he realizes when her eyesight catches her body. White blouse, stained red with blood, black slacks. Rain is pouring down on her, as she walks through a dirty alley. She doesn’t seem to notice Johnny’s existence, his presence in her head. Everything he thinks, tries to scream without a mouth, doesn’t earn him a response.

Then again, if she is with Arasaka, might be told to ignore him. He’d be pulling his hair out if he had a body, if he existed beyond some former tarmac rat’s mind. She walks through a door into a filthy excuse for a motel, the No-Tell. There's chatter around them and he catches the rambling of a tv, something about Saburo Arasaka. But she doesn’t stay to linger, doesn’t let him fully hear it. Something about the old fucker’s life.

But she’s at the door of a hotel room before he can hear much, bloodied knuckles knocking against the door.

“It's V,” She says, knocking again when there’s no answer. V? Since when is she V? Where the fuck did she get V from?

The door opens and a guy comes out, giant fucker around a foot or so taller than her, so was her newly departed friend. Which begs the question, how tall is she?

God, he’s stuck in the skull of some munchkin merc, isn’t he?

Everyone, everything is… bigger. A hand on her shoulder, nearly the size of her head stops her from stepping forward. And he hates it, someone putting hands on him, controlling him so easily, he tries to force her hands to punch the ugly fucker. But it doesn’t happen, hands clenched at her side. How the hell does she fight anyone like this anyway, she’s half the height of everyone she meets.

“He waiting.”

V, Aidan; whatever dumb fuck name she has is allowed into the motel room. A man inside, puffing away on a cigar, watching the news. He can feel her worry swelling inside of her as she clears her throat, the man doesn’t look Arasaka. But the little runt of a merc has to be attached to them somehow. He’s not one to give Arasaka too much credit, be none if he had his way, but they’re not dumb enough to put his engram in any klepto punk’s head.

Arasaka uploaded his engram, scorching him with Soukiller, he remembers that. Mikoshi is where they store them, digital souls tucked away, where they got the tech to play with the human mind. If she made it there, they had to have trusted her.

“WNS… N54… Even the pirate networks… You blowin' up everywhere! And the Jackster? He out in the car?”

“He’s...dead.” Having to say it, having to hear it from her own lips. Stuck in the whiny mind of an Arasaka asslicker, wonderful.

“Condolences friend and the relic?”

The relic? Arasaka’s ultimate project, what they needed Soulkiller before. There’s always been a constant murmur about it, Arasaka looking to commodify the human soul. Must have finally rolled it out after they fried him.

“Here,” she explains by tapping her chipslot, is that how he’s here?

“Hmm, I was afraid of that…”

“What?!”

But the relic, they advertised it like imaginary friends, or some shit. If he was on that, she’d be able to see and hear him right? Unless Arasaka fucked up…

“Saburo Arasaka,” the man, Dex, paces, “Dead…?! You got any notion of the shit you pulled me into?! You offed the fuckin' emperor! His majesty! Anyone with so much as a pinky toe dipped in this mess is as good as dead!”

Saburo’s dead, old sack of shit finally kicked it… and Johnny’s in the killer’s head. Memories, her’s, creep up. Ones he didn’t get in the brief glitches of memories before. Saburo’s body, dead limp and collapsed on a hotel floor. Ripping the dogtags from his bruised neck. Means Johnny won’t get the satisfaction of offing the bastard himself.

“I didn’t kill Saburo! I- I-”

She stumbles and trips over every word; can she act like she didn’t fuck up any of this? Like she has no role in Jackie and Bug’s deaths… He’d gag on her feelings if he could, a blubbering child, those memories may be a mystery to him right now. But he buys it, if he couldn’t manage to kill Saburo, he doubts some miserable little half pint could, chick can barely get a sentence out. Which means he very well may still be tripping around in the neurons of some shitty nomad turned bootlicker.

"No shit?l Tell that to the ‘Saka ninjas they send after you!”

“We...we got to leave Night City.”

“You don’t say.”

“Call Parker, we close the deal, collect our eddies, and go off the radar.”

“A’ight, settle down, Gotta be tactical about this. Parker, eddies, then we leave the city limits behind. But first… Your face… got blood all over it. Bathroom's there. Go get yourself cleaned up.”

She nods and makes her, their, way to the bathroom. Dex is going to trick her, pull some shit, Johnny can see it a mile away. Chick’s outnumbered, outstrength, if they think she’s a risk and Dex made it clear he does, he’ll drop her. But she doesn’t see it, walking into the bathroom and settling at the sink. The mirror lights up, showing her face, giving him the first good look at her since those foggy memories of childhood.

He sees traces of that kid; gray eyes and her face is soft. Young, delicate, but with a heavy layer of blood coating iit.

Her blood and Jackie’s.

He can taste the bile in her throat, as if his own, can feel the burn of it and the churn of her gut as she pukes into the sink. It's not the first time he’s ended up with the taste of someone elses puke in his mouth, though it’s her mouth, he supposes. She pushes her bleached blonde hair off her face as she retches, streaking blood through it.

If she would have refused the job.

If she had gotten them up the ladder.

If she had been stronger.

If she had been stealthier.

If she had gotten them through the lobby quicker.

If she could have convinced Delamain to get him to a doc.

If she knew better first aid.

He tries to shut it out, the knots in her guts, the ache in her chest. Her thoughts spinning around her head and what feels like his. Surrounded by the feelings of another, he can’t fucking live like this, there’s got to be a way out.

She washes the blood from her hands and face; Jackie wanted this for her, one of the only people who ever wanted anything good for her. If only for him, she owes it to him to finish this job.

Can she fucking hear him? He tries to mentally scream at her, he’s going to find a way out of this, if he has to claw his way out of her damn head! Slamming him in the head of some grieving merc, that Saburo’s idea of a sick final joke? Making him feel someone else’s pain meant to make him talk? Meant to give everything away? If hell exists, Saburo better be burning or Johnny will set the son of a bitch on fire himself.

Nothing works, nothing seems to draw her attention. Johnny thinking to a void as she leaves the bathroom.

She’s punched clean in the head as soon as she steps out the door, to the surprise of no one but her, the rattling of her skull and shock of pain hitting Johnny like it’s his own head. The merc is knocked to the floor and a boot kicks into her gut for good measure. Her head stomped on, beaten to the ground like all five feet of her is a truly dangerous threat.

“Can’t risk it, V,” Dex levels a pistol with her temple as she writhes on the ground, “‘Member our first convo?”

“I’ll fucking kill you!”

“Seems I've chosen the quiet life, after all. No blaze o' glory for me.”

And Dex pulls the trigger, a bang in the dirty motel room as he fires a shot into the merc’s head. Agony and terror, gagging on blood, darkness, cold, and fear… then nothing.

And Johnny dies, not for the first time.

Death relived, but through the eyes of another. The bullet hits. Soulkiller scorches. And the world around the two rewrites at the moment of their second deaths. Reconstructs and digitizes. A liminal space within the net. Structures like the squared mazes of balconies and stairs within Arasaka Tower of 2023.

But everything made up of digital matter, pixels of color collected loosely to form the shapes against a black backdrop. Nearly everything a shade of blue, but hints of red bleeding through.

Nothing moves or feels like reality, floatier, less certain. And it all moves, pixels twitching, it all shifts, all seems… alive.

That where V finds herself, dying again but through Johnny, an echo of the pain from his torture still seeming to stick to her. But when she looks down, it’s her, but not. Like the world around her she knows seems to be constructed of these pixels, data, a bright red hue to her But it all forms to be her. Her arms, her painted nails, her freckles, her scars. They move with her permission, no one else’s.

But what is happening?

The biochip, maybe? But it’s meant to show someone like an imaginary friend, not put you in their lives, then send you to the net. At least she thinks this is the net, remembering descriptions Bug had given her. And by all intents and purposes, she should be dead.

Data around her shakes, reverberates, brightens and stretches across the hall around her. There’s a thrum to it all, that she can hear, no physical limitation in the net… Then it stops only to reveal something new. A flash of bright red, standing out in a sea of blue data. It forms the shape of a person, composed of red data and negative space, their back to her as they lean forward on the banister.

V signs from instinct, but finds no translator, forcing her to speak, “Hey!”

She rushes towards the figure, they don’t answer her call, maybe they know what’s happening? But as she gets close, they push off the banister and turn. Their figure blurs as they move away from her, but she sees a closer glimpse.

It’s a man, not as tall as Jackie, but still over a foot taller than her. Shoulder length dark hair and what looks to be the outline of sunglasses on his digital form. Even in the strange form, she recognizes him. The man’s who’s death she just lived, moment after her own. Johnny Silverhand. He blips away as he turns.

The flash of red, his form, now further away, on the stairs of the lobby.

“Hey, sir!” she calls out again, trying to sound vaguely polite as she rushes towards the stairs, he has to know what’s going on. He stands from the stairs and blips away just as she reaches them.

She runs up that first set of steps seeing his form sitting on the second, “Johnny!”

And he’s gone as soon as she reaches him, like they’re playing some sort of game, does he not hear her? She knows damn well he’s not deaf, if she can hear in this place, he should be able to. She reaches the top of the stairs, reaching another balcony railing, him around the corner on the adjacent side of the square floor. His back is to the banister, hands on it. Paying her no mind.

“Robert!” She yells his full first name, remembering seeing it scrawled in chicken scratch across an enlistment form. But she turns the corner and he’s gone.

But when she turns her head she sees his back again, down a narrow passageway made of more negative space than blue data. She walks across the negative space, hands skimming the data that forms it’s walls, each step taking her closer to him. She heard three different names, unsure of which may earn her an answer.

“Robbie! Robert!”

Neither name spurs a reaction, he doesn’t turn, doesn’t speak. Only stands at the end of hall, shifting in pace, as she continues her way to him. And she stops when she’s within arm’s reach, he hasn’t blipped away, hasn’t ran off. Able to see fully now, the red data particles that form a bullet proof vest, the cyberware left arm. V reaches out and taps a finger against his shoulder.

“Johnny?”

He turns to face her and she doesn’t know if she should feel relieved, or terrified.

“And you? Who are you?”

Her answer catches in her throat, mouth half open when it hits. White hot blinding pain ripping through every nerve, head and world shattering as she screams. Like she’s been torn open, every part of her stripped raw and set on fire. Everything vanishes from her sight as she cries out.

V’s contact UI blips, blurry as data fills it, system reboot. Her senses return to her, slowly and steadily as systems reload. The arm her blade was ripped from burns, open nerves exposed to the air. Her head feels shattered, aching as if it’s been broken apart. There’s a stench of trash and filth around her. There’s a weight on top of her, heavy, firm, crushing down onto her lungs. The warmth and stick mess of blood clings to everything. Caked across her skull, down her neck, her arm.

The diagnostics flicker away, but her vision still struggles. A cyan fuzz clings around and distorts it all. Her depth of field is cut off, half her vision seemingly gone. Not aided by the fact that it’s dark, looking around she can see trash thrown atop her. a cold sheet of metal lays on top of her. Metal and plastic of discarded goods lay beneath and around her, jabbing uncomfortably into her flesh.

A landfill, if she were to wager a guess, Dex tossed her out like trash. How is she not dead? How hasn’t she bled out?

She doesn’t know the answer, but she knows if she doesn’t do something, she’ll die anyway. Favoring her left arm, the right still damaged, she pushes up on the sheet of metal. Muscles scream in protest, pain shooting through them as she forces herself to put her weight into it. And she rolls it off of her and she can breathe a little easier, move a little better. A bit more light allowed on her. But she still can’t see very well, like her right eye is closed.

Tempting fate, she presses her hand to it, sees nothing, when she closes her left. The world goes black. She touches the lid, feeling the blood that mats her eyelashes, she pries her eyelid open with her fingers. Nothing. Down a blade and an eye, she needs to move. Vik can fix those, he can fix this.

She shoves a TV off of her legs, twists up s to see the sky. Silver and orange light color the world, moonlight and fire, plumes of dark smoke coming from somewhere she’s in some sort of pit or ravine within the landfill, a wall of dirt and trash around her. An upward climb to save herself.

V forces her body to move even as it aches and screams in pain, forces her shredded arm to grip even as she can see the tendons twitching through the mangled remains of it. She forces blood soaked fingernails to dig into dirt and grip abandoned pizza boxes for traction, slips her aching feet in between wires and appliances for foot holds.

“Fuck!” she screams out loud, but can’t hear it, as she loses her traction and starts to slip. She extends her left blade, sinking it into the wall of muck and trash. Her right arm stings, throbs, begs to release a tool it no longer has.

She uses her blade to help pulls herself, dragging herself up and up with every sink of it into the muck. V’s thankful she’s lost her hearing aids in the process, hell maybe Dex stole them back to recoup some losses, but it means she can’t hear her own curses, her own groans of pain, her own rattling breaths with bruised lungs

And she reaches the surface. Rusted remains of god knows what surrounds her and a trashcan fire burns not far away, but she’s out of the pit. She pulls her feet under her and she tries to stand, body shaking, swaying, trembling with blood loss and pain.

But for a moment, she rises.

She stands, looking out across the landfill of trash, cyan fuzz still glitching around her, and for a moment...maybe she’s okay. Maybe she can walk out of this, find Vik, maybe she can be okay.

V collapses with the next step, body all at once going out from under her, mocking her hope. Mocking her moment of stupid fucking hope as her back meets the mud. It mingles with blood, collides with her gore, and sticks to her open wounds. She lays there in muck, just breathing, her lungs ache with the strength needed just to do that. Each one feels fainter than the last. Her eyes start to close, feel too heavy, her right one might very well already be shut… she wouldn’t know. A mangled mess of who she once was, now laying in filth, surrounded by trash.

Maybe she’ll not move again… maybe this is a fitting end. A childhood of scavenging landfills, thrown in a dumpster her first night in the city, and dying in a landfill; maybe the world has been trying to tell her something all along. She’d never have to face Mama Welles, Misty, or Vik; never have to tell them she failed Jackie. Maybe she’ll just let all go, never even have time to grieve, maybe it’s best to just let it all go…

“Wake the fuck up, Samurai. We got a city to burn.”

A rasp of a voice rings out and she gasps, opening her eyes. A man kneeled over her, one she knows well, but he’s no longer digitized and she’s not looking through his eyes. Silver fingers pull his aviators off of his face, dark brown eyes scrutinizing her. His form isn’t solid, glitches like old vhs footage.

But...

She heard him.

#cyberpunk 2077 #silverv #johnny silverhand #cp2077 #fem v #aidan v becker #aidan becker

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missputotyra · 3 years

Text

Monster boy Encyclopedia- MDZS- Gusu Lan 1

“Welcome to Gusu Lan I assure you there is nothing wrong , I just don’t think humans and non-monsters can handle what the Cloud Recesses has become all at one .Please take this Stone and experience our true home at your lesiure . - Lan Xichen , Current leader of Gusu Lan.

- So Gusu Lan’s main base The cloud recesses is an Eldricht Demon realm . Which is why Xichen has filter over it for someone who is a good Cultivator like him it’s pretty easy to look at Gusu Lan in its full warped Eldricht Beauty with out going insane .

- They have a lot of Harpys and Were rabbits around the

- this dose Bring Concerns about about Sizhui the only human there who sees the true Cloud Rescesses everyday and is still sane . There are. Many theories that people have which includes Him actaully having a personal Filter , him being adopted at an age were he could adapt to it and the most ridiculous being Sizhui being a higher Eldricht Being hiding using Sizhui’s body as a way To manifest itself.

- Kamen Riders , Lilim and Patron Librarian also seem to be able to by pass the Filters on Cloud Recesses and not go insane.

- the Realm is described as A visual depiction of Music the Fauna is often as Living Lyrics, notes that’s Fly ,walk like normal creatures and the Scales move like snakes across the Sky and thier are constant beautiful mesmerizing voices singing the music of Gusu Lan

- but inside there a grating dissonance takes over the Mind of those unprepare for Gusu Lans True beauty. You’ll want to stay there forever and Turn into one of them an You’ll become a Slug , a Shoggoth , An Eldricht priest Or Very rarely a Mindflayer

- Shoggoth and mindflayer seemingly lose thier natural Pigment and turn white and Blue when joining the Sect. Shoggoth also lost thier Butler like devotion for a more familial devotion

- Though many of these Shoggoth were abandoned by thier masters to dry out on the mountain and thus felt betrayed

” what about these Slugs . Well the Slugs were originally Human members of Gusu Lan.”

Xichen seemed to change hes serene Tone for a more Melancholy one looking at one spefic Slug person with two Juniors one was a Slug like Him and other completely human . The Slug Junior seemed to have done something wrong as he was being pulled the older slug .

“Who was that you asked ? Hes my Younger brother Wangji…. I mean Lan Zhan .Wangji is a courtesy name.”

- Wen wanted to Assert Dominance . Basically in an Archery match the sects have every year in Wen sect no body from Wen sect came in the top 4 Lan Wangji came in 4th despite throwing the competion halfway ,He's brother Xichen came in second ,Jin Zixaun was third and in first was JC's Adopted Brother Wei Wuxian . This made Wen worry

- The first thing that Wen did was attack the cloud recesses of Gusu Lan .However Wen didn't just stop at forcing them to burn the place down not they did something worse after they had burned the Cloud recesses they then release a Large amount of Parasitic Slugs on the poor sect and since thier Home was burned they had no where to go , since Wangji 's Leg was broken and everyone left to run Wangji was infected more severely than most of the sect .

- However Lan sect was Surprisingly resistance. to Changes these Parasitic were making to thier bodies and Lasted a long while until Xichen came back with allies .Where Qiren inform him of the state Gusu Lan was in , If the slugs weren't removed they'd all sex addicted feral frankly ugly eldritch Slug creatures known as Deformers and says some have already transformed and left the sect in search of what ever unfortunate partner they can get thier hands on.

- Luckily, the Order of the Chief god heard the Plight of the sects fighting against Wen's sect and thier healer/doctors could help them . Not really ...the order of the chief god are kinda horrible people when it comes to monsters including the Chief god himself and When Xichen asks for help removing parasitic monsterizating slugs from members of his sect most healers/ Doctors from the order turned him down saying Gusu Lan was a lost cause and Xichen couldn't get help from healer's or doctors from the area even with help of Jin Guangyao and Nie Mingjue asking around when they weren't fighting no one would take the Job as it would require a skilled surgeon and Gusu Lan's resitiance to the change was dwiddling .

- Xichen started to notice that his own brother would sometimes attack him in a brief feral Lust fuel rages before snapping out it as if Wangji couldn't discern Xichen as his brother .

- Xichen was getting desperate he didn't want anymore of his Sect to become these feral minded sex fuel Monsters that barely any remembered who they were. Even if they did win the Sunshot campaign , Wen would still have the last laugh .Xichen even consider infecting himself with the slugs so that he'd aleast be able suffer with his sect in thier final moments of being human and being capable of having rational thought .Even though Jin Guangyao and Mingjue protested him doing this they both knew thier was no point Xichen was going to go down with his ship . “That was until a strange man who was eating cake at the other table put down his fork he seemed to have be from Zipangu“ Xichen countined his Story ”however Mingjue got more defensive when he saw the strange belt around his waist the man was a Masked Rider one the orders many Hero's several of whom help us out in the fights against Wen. “

- However this rider stated that he meant no harm as he hand over heard Xichen's plight about the parasitic slugs and give the men the hard truth ,The order doesn't operate on people with these Parasitic slugs inside them because Removing doesn't prevent people from becoming monsters.But it dose save thier ability to think rationally though they become an entirely different monster from a deformer .

- The rider then said He'd offer to help as he's known through the order as being a Master surgeon able operate on any organ. Xichen accepted his offer with tears of joy and hope it wasn't to late to save his brother and Uncle .

The Rider called his two female assistances over and told them they were headed to Gusu lan's Section of the battle field and then to the cloud recesses itself

- The Cloud Recesses now regard this rider and his assistances as a hero who selflessly put themselves on a the order's chopping block as they resisted the order commands not to help them .

” The Rider told me to call him Brave as to not give The order any reason to attack Gusu Lan .” Xichen snapped out his Reminescening when you ask a question “ What are the Slug people called now well Beforers .”

Beforers

- Beforers and Deformer are a Type of Eldricht Slug monster That was an Idea that me and a friend came up with during her Recent Star Wars obsession . I expanded upon Cloud Recesses and Beforers After taking a look at Junji Itos Uzamaki you know the story where people turn into snails and spirals .

. - yes Gusu Lan being Eldricht beings is inspired by the Eldritch Lan Au I personally found it on@angstymdzsthoughts

- Anyways beforer just like Other Eldritch monsters are Weird . Beforers and Deformers are classified as Tritionia subspecies as they look like Sea slug though thier body structure mimic The struture of blue Dragon sea slugs( though they often are seen with legs ) they can have the Look of anything kind of sea slug.

- Deformers come from a Parasite . Deformers are basically Feral Eldritch beasts that basically Attack anyone the see as a potenial Vessels For the slug parasites and Taking them out is A basically only one way to become a Beforer as previous Said Gusu Lans Music can also cause humans to become beforer .

- So Beforer don’t manifest Genitals until they take partners. but they do Birth Asexually little slug creatures That eventually turning into Beforers basically cloning themselves

-Yes Beforers are Hermaphrodites like Normal slugs .

- They a look plumper and Gain Long tentacles like appendage that grow from their lower back that seem to have mind of its own after Taking a partner.

-yes The Tentacles are infact Their Partners dont worry they can change back at will . They do the weird Transformation thing all eldritch monster do.

—-

“ What Am I ? ” Xichen looked in confusing “ I’m A Kind of Subspecies of the Dark Priest , I guess you could say I’m an Eldritch Priest.

“ A few month Of living in this Realm I start having dreams I was in the water in the deepest Depths of the ocean and a voice saying that I should Join my people and teach them of the Great old ones. ”

Eldritch priest

- a Subspecies of the Dark Priest Who are more connected to the the Great Old one .

-They are more Cultish in behavior than the Dark priest of the Fallen god.

- usually keep doing thier Jobs of recruting people into the great church of Cthulhu even after obtain partners.

- What Eldritch priest transform thier Partner into is Entirely thier Choice Among the Eldritch Monsters .

You notice the strange almost Mint green colored cloak or was it a pale Yellow it was twice as Large as Xichen and it was really dark inside but , Did you see two scary looking yet familar Faces in that cloak . Your suspicions were confirmed by a hand Coming out and stroking Xichens Face it’s had Yellow sleeves so they had to be from Jin .

——-—

Notable individuals In Gusu Lan

Name: Lan Xichen

Species : Eldritch Priest

Notes: He’s smiles all the time and it’s kind of unsettling . Their are often Golden and/or Green Masses attached to Xichen so hes Most likely Taken .

Favorite color: …White I’ll describe it as white

Favorite Types: Caring and tender people

Status: Taken?

-———-

Name: Lan Qiren

Species : Beforer

Notes: He’s Apparently Lan Xichen and Lan Zhans Uncel

Alot people like the “Moustache”

looks more like Chromodoris willani

Favorite color: Navy Blur

Favorite Type: …he hasn’t really thought about that I guess Mature and Gentel

Status : Singel

————-—

Name: Lan Zhan

Species : Beforer

Notes:

He looks so Sad

he Hates the Leader of Yunmeng Jiang with hidden burning Passion and Lan Zhan wrote down he wished that “ The Leader of Yumeng Jiang be put to sleep like the dirty mutt he is.”

Lan Zhan also wonders why BoJian( MDZS oc) is Even friends with Yunmeng Jiang‘s Leader

Likes rabbits

looks like Glaucus Aka Blue Dragon sea slug

Favorite color: Red

Favorite Type: he Drew a picture that looked similar to current Yiling sect leader if he was human . When we mentioned this he immediately tagged along with us to Yiling .

————-—

Name: Lan Jingyi

Species : Beforer

Notes: He was Born a Beforer it’s believed he split from Lan Zhan

We thought He and Sizhui were twins but they arent

sweet kid ,Huge mouth ,forgetful

Looks like Chromodoris elisabethina

Favorite color: Blue

Favorite Type: I don’t know someone like Jin Ling !?

Stautus : I’m not ready to marry yet !! ;-;

———-—

Name:Lan Sizhui

Species : Hes Human

Notes: The only Human Gusu Lan

Lan Zhan says he came from Wen

As Said before This is Strange because He’s only a Junior and hasnt Gone insane for Gusu Lans Beauty

Favorite color: Periwinkle

Favorite Type: I have no idea I guess I follow Jingyi and Say someone like Jin Ling

status: Not ready

#eldritch #eldritch!lan #mo dao zu shi #mdzs #mo dao zhu shi #lan xichen #gusu lan #lan sizhui #lan zhan #lan wangji #kamen rider #kamen rider ex aid #monster boy #monster girl encyclopedia #alternative universe #crossover au #crossover

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kashimos-hajime · 4 years

Text

soldier | amaranthine (1/6) | b.b.

summary: a boy and a girl went off to war. they fell in love and the devil laughed.

WARNINGS: swearing, MAJOR angst, more fluff than usual wow, heckie doo dah they kiss, blood and vomit mentions, a lot of pain, guns, needles, trains pairing: bucky barnes x fem!reader word count: 7.5k

a/n: written for @the-omni-princess and their writing challenge! i really couldn’t help it, i loved bucky and this reader so much i turned it into a series. my prompt was soldier by fleurie. gif not mine. this series will have a happy ending ON GOD

amaranthine masterlist

Head in the dust, feet in the fire Labour on that midnight wire Listening for that angel choir You got nowhere to run

Sunlight filters through dust and Bucky Barnes thinks it’s too fucking sunny for a day in the trenches. His feet blister as he shifts against the wet mud wall. His stomach is hollow and he closes his eyes. Chains wrap around his bones, tying him to his mud post. Mud caked beneath his nails and a strange crackling feeling festering between his legs and his gut, Bucky Barnes tries to sleep for the first time in three days. All he can feel is the mud through his soaked uniform. Yesterday, it rained like Hell’s flames had reached earth, and beneath molding wood, Bucky had tried to keep his soldiers as warm as he could.

He can’t remember the last time he was dry.

“Sarge, it’s your turn,” a soldier calls and his eyes open as he raises his head from the mud wall. Dried mud crumbles from his head and he grabs his helmet, wedges it beneath his arm and lets his muscles scream. His stomach wails and his head spins when he stands but he blinks the dust away and instead sends a nod to the soldier who begins to lead him through the maze. Hand dragging along the crumbling trench wall, he heads through the pits he knows too well to where the rest of the 107th are waiting. They mumble him greetings as he walks between their legs and bodies, some of them groaning when he steps on mud that leaks out dirt water. They’ve yet to see them yet, then.

Every soldier that’s gone in has come out remarkably brighter, and these men look more ashen than death.

He doesn’t know what to expect. Suddenly this medical corp was doing a standard health check while not in combat, and safe to say, it raised Bucky’s suspicions. He continues walking and walking, his blisters bleeding and he’s sure he has some trench foot or some other shit. His feet have been swimming in water and mud for days.

His eyes scan the back of the soldier’s head. Clean helmet, new uniform and boots. Lucky him.

“They’ll take good care of you, Sarge,” the soldier announces all sudden-like and Bucky’s head rings. “Get you into right fighting shape.”

From then, it’s a blur. Hands take him and pass him on to other hands. They take off his clothes, pour warm water over his head and clean him inch by inch. The water turns dark with red and brown when they’re done and he’s sure he can feel the lice in his hair jumping ship before they show him to another tent and then another, each one doing something different.

The last tent is when his mind finally plays catch up.

“Sergeant Barnes?” a voice calls as his blue eyes drift warily around him. Beside him are other soldiers, countless rows of them. Some of them are bleeding through their bandages, there are three crowded around one bed playing cards, and he’s alone in his bed. He glances down at his hands, tough with calluses and scrubbed clean of dirt before raising his head.

“That’s me.”

“Perfect.”

The voice. His eyes find the voice and then he sees her. Her mouth moves and he hears her say her name, but all he can think of is one thing: angel. She isn’t wearing white, and she doesn’t have wings or a halo. Instead, she has dark half-moons imprinted on her face and messy hair and a fixed smile, and she’s anything but an angel, but it’s the only word Bucky can use to describe her.

She has the inexplicable draw, and when he blinks, a little too stunned for words, her fixed smile softens.

He sits up a little straighter, and his heart beats a little louder, and for the first time in days, weeks, months, Bucky Barnes doesn’t feel the cold or the wet or the pain.

“Ma’am.” He clears his throat and she laughs as she sets down a tray of food in his lap. His hands instinctively reach to grab and when her fingers brush his, a jolt sends shivers up his spine. She’s the warmest thing he’s touched in days. The woman wears a uniform similar to his with tough stains along her front and in the creases of her jacket and when she bends over to pull the blanket away from his feet, he can spot the dirty rags stuffed into her pockets. A trained nurse, doctor maybe. “Ma’am, you don’t need to worry—”

“You were written down as potentially suffering from trench foot, Sergeant. I’m just going to take a look, treat it, and then I’ll be on my way,” she says, her voice lilting and soft, different than the sound of screams that seem to echo from tents away, the sound of soldiers cheering whenever they win a game of cards.

Bucky looks down at the tray of food. A bowl of hot soup, dry bread with cheese and a steaming cup of coffee has never looked so delicious. As he picks up the spoon to dip into the soup, he glances at the nurse who takes hold of his ankle. Quickly grabbing a hold of his tray, he steadies it and she sends him an apologetic look down the way. “Sorry.”

“No problem.” He smiles and his face stretches strangely.

It occurs to Bucky he hasn’t smiled in ages, and the woman’s tiny smile in return is enough for him to keep his own grin going.

“Where are you from?” he asks even though it’s painfully obvious. He only speaks because it’s almost humiliating to eat and watch her inspect his feet, especially when he can occasionally catch the glances she sends his way; it’s almost as if she hates the silence as much as he does.

“South London,” she says, slowly setting one foot down. “They soaked your feet, correct?”

“They did. Never been so dry.” She chuckles and the sound is music to Bucky’s ears as she sets down the other foot. “I’m alright to leave, ma’am?”

“You need to be treated first,” she cuts him off, shooting him a narrowed glare. “Talcum powder is extremely helpful. It’ll keep your feet dry for longer and reduce the chafing between your socks and your feet.”

“A miracle.”

“Hardly.” She sends him a quick glance to see if he’s eating before beginning to pat the powder down over his skin. “You need to keep your feet as dry as possible, and expose them to the air, or you’ll be losing more than skin.”

“Hard to do in the mud, ma’am,” he says with a shrug, chugging down his coffee and she catches her bottom lip between her teeth as she pats white dust over his other foot. He wiggles his toe against her palm and she shakes her head with half a smile, gently nudging his foot with a stern rub. “The rain gets everywhere.”

“I know. It’s advice I still have to give, though.” She claps her hands, white dust springing into the air in a cloud. Waving it away, she bends over to grab pillows and shoves them beneath his legs, exposing his blistering feet to the other soldiers who care to look his way. Wiping her palms along her pants, white streaks down the dark green before she pulls out clean socks and sets them by his bedside. “Put these on when you’re discharged. I hope I don’t have to see you again, Sergeant Barnes.” A sort of yawning ache splits Bucky down the middle as she brushes hair out of her face and turns to pick up a second tray of medical supplies.

“Any siblings?” he asks suddenly just to keep her around. She blinks, turns to check if anyone needs her, and then perches on the edge of his cot like a pretty little bird. Her tray balances in her lap, tools glimmering against the stark-white of a roll of bandages. He brings a spoonful of soup to his lips and it warms him all the way down to the belly. A bit of it dribbles down his chin and she reaches over with a thumb to wipe it off.

“Three brothers,” she says, withdrawing her hand. Bucky’s lips part and he sucks in a soft breath as she smiles again, this time wide enough to dig into her cheeks. It changes her—makes her younger and softer. Against the grey of everything, she is enchanting. “Twin older brothers and one baby brother.”

“That must’ve been the worst.” He smirks, eyebrows raising and she hides a laugh unsuccessfully. Bucky’s been told he has an infectious smile and he’s glad war hasn’t taken that away from him. She scoots closer to the head of the bed as he eats and as she nears, he can almost count the stars in her eyes.

“My brothers never stopped getting into trouble and I always got caught in the middle of it. They taught me how to fight and we fought all the time…” Her voice fades away and Bucky frowns, eyebrows furrowing together. “Until the war happened.” Her smile slips away and her eyes no longer bare the bravery to meet his. A muscle in her jaw ticks and Bucky almost reaches for her hand. Almost. He cocks his head, letting his drying hair fall into his eyes and she looks at him again, this time not as warmly, this time with emptiness.

“My brothers fled to America a few months after they declared war,” she says. Some nameless, faceless men in Bucky’s head appear and he tilts his head, lips pressing together in a firm line. He could try to imagine a selfish man with her features, or maybe a man hiding under a hood as he boarded a ship with the same eyes, but he can’t. Not when his sister sits right before him. “Because in England, they can’t conscript the last son of a family.”

His thoughts crumble to ash.

“But you’re here,” he whispers and she looks down at his tray, unseeing.

“I am,” she agrees, wistful, regretful. When their eyes meet again, Bucky wonders if she feels the heat, too. “And you? Any siblings?”

“Three.”

“And you’ve left them behind, too.”

“You’ve been at war much longer than I have,” Bucky points out and she tilts her chin up. The grey sun that streams through the tent flaps hits her face and she’s almost blindingly radiant in a way that breaks a man’s heart. Shifting in his seat, he blinks and tries to keep that image of her, an angel in grey light before it’s gone. She ducks her head to tuck away hair from her face and he twists to set down his tray of food beside him. “You know, I used to braid my sister’s hair before school,” he says and she looks at him, eyebrows shadowing her eyes. “Can’t be rusty when I get back.”

She laughs, almost incredulous, and very, very tired, and Bucky can see the minute the weight seems to lift off her shoulders. She sets down her tray and leans back on her hands, lip caught between teeth as she tries to bite her smile down. It only makes Bucky smile wider.

“Sergeant Barnes, would you please braid a girl’s hair?” she asks, dewy sweet, and Bucky nearly melts in his bed. Mouth dry, he clears his throat and pulls at his blanket.

“What would I get in return?” He plays for keeps, and the angel grins, leaning towards him. His eyes fall to her lips as she brushes hair out of his face. Bucky can barely breath at the featherlight sweep of her fingers.

“Would my everlasting affection suffice?” She cocks her head and waits for his answer, fingers stilling on his cheek as his eyes flicker from her lips to her eyes. He wonders what it would taste like, to kiss her. Maybe it’d taste like coffee and cough syrup, or gunpowder and ash. Whatever it is, Bucky wants to know. So he nods

“I s’pose it would.”

The cell reeks of dead rat and rank shit. With the wet drip-drip-drip of water leaking from a crack in the ceiling, Bucky digs his shiv into the cement. Scratching the tally mark, he lets the ugly grating of metal against the wall ring in his ears. A mind-numbing pain rests in his veins and just the mere effort of dragging his arm up the wall to run the point through the mark again is nearly too much. His mind swirls in a twisted knot, one that only tightens with every waking moment.

Whatever they did to him—lacing fire and ice into his blood, carving him from the inside out and sharpening his every sense until he can hear the roaches crawling on the walls—has changed him. Somewhere inside him knows he’s different, disfigured on a level he cannot understand.

He lets his hand fall to the cot as the sound of rusted metal echoes down the hall.

“Let go of me! Bastards!”

Blinding candlelight streams into his cage and Bucky raises his head wearily, twisting onto his side to watch as German soldiers haul a furiously struggling figure between them. Muffled grunts and the sound of fabric rustling catches his ear as he blinks away the stars in his eyes and drops his shiv, hiding it beneath his ratty blanket.

“Herr Schmidt promised you your life for your compliance.”

“Let him choke on my compliance!” The voice rings in his ears as he pushes himself to a sitting position and his metal cell opens before the sound of a body colliding with the floor fills the silence. Bucky blinks hard, trying to get used to the golden light before it shuts him in the darkness once again, but the guards are already closing his gate. The person splayed on his floor gets up, rushing to the metal bars and slamming their first against the shaking thing as the soldiers laugh.

“What the hell?” he mutters, rubbing his eye and one of the soldiers look to him.

“You have company, Sergeant Barnes. Enjoy.” The sneer that seeps into the parting word causes an unwanted shiver to crawl up Bucky’s spine as the body crawls into the middle of his cell and collapses, letting out a sob. Propping himself on his hands, Bucky tries to remember where he’s heard this voice before.

His brain feels burned, and the harder he thinks, the more it seems to whine.

“Barnes?”

His name, whispered harshly and echoing in his four walls of prison, is the answer to his prayers, the answer he least desires.

“Angel,” he utters, breathless as he slides to the floor. The rough cement crates against his weak, bony knees and hands take hold of him as a wet face presses against his cheek.

“Sergeant Barnes.” She all but melts into his embrace, and she burns with the heat of ten million stars, all too hot for his own feverish fingers yet still he digs his nails into her back hard enough that his bones ache. “What did they do to me?” she whispers, shaking, and Bucky pulls her back by the shoulder, one hand cupping her head gently.

“How long have you been here?” he asks carefully and she searches his gaze. “Where were you?” Her breaths shudder against his palm as he wipes away the tears from her face and in the grim, fading light, he can see blood leaking from her ear, dripping warmly onto his knuckles.

“After Azzano, they attacked the hospital.” Her breath, hot as summer rain, chills him to the bone. “They managed to evacuate all but the last few tents and they caught me.” A disgusted twist in her lip, her eyes unfocus. Bucky cups her face, feels something thrum in her pulse and she looks up, looks through him. “They said I was to be put under tests, and I’d be lucky to survive.”

Bucky’s hand on her shoulder trails to the collar of her shirt, gently hooking a finger and tugging. Colourful smudges of purple, blue, yellow, and green smear her skin. The effects of needles, huge and plunging and painful. If he looks close enough in the dark, he can spot the entry points, stabs that haven’t healed.

A flicker of fire burns brighter in his belly than the one that already soaks him in its heat.

“I don’t feel very lucky, Sergeant Barnes,” she whimpers. Bucky’s eyes flash back to hers, and when she blinks, fresh tears run over his skin. “It hurts everywhere.”

“You’ll be okay.” He brings her into his embrace, a hand on her head and the other wrapped around her back as he closes his eyes. Her arms slither around his waist and he presses his cheek against her temple. “You’re going to be okay, angel.”

She is silent. Two weeks and they’ve already beaten hope out of this place. Perhaps she isn’t quite used to the freezing agony set in her bones yet or the ache of ligaments tearing and building again as every fiber of her turns to steel. Bucky wants to tell her it’ll get better, but he doesn’t know himself.

“You’ll have the bed,” Bucky promises and she pulls back immediately to protest but he shakes his head. “My ma would smack me if I didn’t insist.” He half-smiles and his muscles stretch pleasantly in his cheeks as her arms draw away slightly. Her hands rest on his hips and he nods to her.

“You’re my patient,” she protests and he chuckles quietly. It’s a raspy kind of sound and it sounds hollow the more it echoes, but he means it. “I’m supposed to take care of you.”

“Angel, you took care of soldiers for years before I came around,” he starts, and something in her eyes flickers. He cups her cheek, the dim light barely lighting her features. The swollen bags beneath her eyes have only grown worse since he’s last seen her, and she’s lost what little healthy glow she had that coloured her face. “I think it’s time someone took care of you.”

“Sergeant Barnes, I—”

“Bucky,” he says, brushing limp hair away from her face. He can hear her thunderous heart, or perhaps it is his beating between his ears, louder than the ocean. “My name’s Bucky.”

“Where are the rest of the 107th?” she asks that night as they feed on cold soup. Bucky’s fingers tremble but the pain has receded into a tiny knot at the base of his skull. His arm feels like it’s about to drop off his body and with every move of his neck, heat and bruising pain spreads into his chest. She drops her spoon too loudly and they both flinch.

“They separated me from them after they began the tests,” he mutters, letting the cold broth slither down his gut. “No one came back from the isolation ward so I thought for sure I’d be dead.”

“Well, neither of us are.” She’s leaning against the metal frame of the bed, her knees tucked to her chest. Her scrappy uniform is scuffed with dirt and wet from the mold growing beneath their feet but Bucky merely smiles softly. His back against the wall, his feet are outstretched before him. He’s quite sure if she stretches her legs too, their boots would touch. “How many doses have they given you?”

“Two.” He sets down his bowl in his lap. She looks into her own, stirring, the metal cup perched on her knees. “You?”

“One.” Something in Bucky’s arm begins to tingle, as if the injection sites open wide at the sound of her voice. He lets his head tilt back until he knocks into the stone. “They kept me in another part of the factory to treat workers before they decided to use me like some lab rat.” Fabric rustles and a presence looms near him as he closes his eyes. Something warm is set in his lap and he lifts his head wearily as she settles in beside him. “You should eat.”

“What?” He picks up the one fresh ingredient to their meal, a slice of warm bread, and shakes his head. Picking it up, he tries to hand it back to her. “No, you need to eat—”

“You’ve been here longer, Sergeant.”

“Angel—”

“I get the bed, and you get the warm bread.” She seems to sag into her shoulders and he frowns slightly. “It seems only fair.” Her hair is slick with dirt, sweat and oil as she rests her head on his shoulder and he tilts his head until his cheek presses against her scalp. Her boot knocks into his as he rips the bread apart.

“Fine. Can’t deny you a thing,” he whispers and she shakes with a silent chuckle, weak and tired. “How’re you feeling?”

“I don’t want to move away from you,” she murmurs blearily, her eyes closed as she turns her head to him. Her nose brushes his jaw as he swallows. “Tell me a story.”

“About what, sweetheart?” he asks, and the warmth of her is so comforting he could cry. Human touch that isn’t sharp and painful and terrible has caused his body to soften. Her body has twisted towards him, her knees bent and her legs hooked over one of his. “I can tell you ‘bout Brooklyn, I guess.”

“Would you?” she asks, exhausted, small, fading. She loops her arm through his, curls herself around it as he bites into the cooling crust. He swallows quickly, feeling it lump together on its way down to his stomach.

“Yeah, and I can tell you ‘bout Steve. He’s my best friend and I made him ride the Cyclone once on Coney Island. I gotta bring you there, the lights at night on a warm summer day… it’s the prettiest sight…”

He can tell the instant she slips away from him, the subtle change in her breathing and her heart rate, the peace that overtakes her face, the tender warmth that seeps into his own bones. He gently brings the slice of bread to his mouth, devouring it in two or three bites before picking up his bowl of soup again. Sipping quietly, he is careful not to disturb her as she squirms against him, seeking something warmer than what he can provide. He carefully sets down the bowl and wraps his free arm around her, squeezing gently in hopes that it’ll give life to her frigid skin.

His own heart thuds in his throat when she lets out a soft sigh and melts into his body. He tilts his head, nose in her hair as her breath puffs against his neck, soft as snow. He closes his own eyes and his mind wanders as her arms, wrapped around his arm, hold him even tighter to her own chest.

A small bomb explodes in his chest and he smiles even though no one’s looking.

Bucky Barnes has never really loved a girl before, but in this moment, as her body fits into his like it is meant to be and he sits, rots, in an Austrian prison with poison running through his veins, he is sure he will gladly die for one.

It’s by the third dose for her do they understand best how to take care of one another. Bucky can usually tell when they’ll take one of them away by the meal they present. It’ll be warm, almost hot, and rich with nutrients their bodies crave, and in the mornings, fresh towels and ice will be shoved into their cell like they swelter from the heat.

They toss her into the cell with a rattling slam with a promise to return for him soon but Bucky doesn’t say a word in return. An agonizing mess, his angel lets out a soft moan as he scoops her into his arms. The smell of clean soap and sweat clings to her skin, her hair slightly damp from the shower they always force upon them before the doses. Dark, reddening marks imprinted into her temples, her eyes stare sightlessly ahead as he lays her down on the cot. He dips a towel into the bowl of freezing water.

The soft clack of ice against the metal bowl echoes in his head as he numbly wipes away the sweat, gently cleaning her tears and soothing an ache he knows festers between her temples.

“Doctor…. Prisoner… 56899…” The words slip between her lips, soft and jumbled as she turns her head away and the pit inside of Bucky widens as he tries to catch her eye.

“Angel,” he whispers, running his hand over her cheek. “Come back to me.” Turning her face towards him, he lets out a sharp breath as her eyes stare through him. “Hey, hey, hey.”

“Bucky?” It’s like magic the way a soul seems to fill her body in a moment’s notice. Life pours into her eyes, and a hand grips at his sleeve.

“Hey, angel.” He dips the towel in ice once again and she raises a hand gently to touch his face. Her fingers tremble, clammy with sweat, as he blinks. A strange smile stretches her face and he thinks she’s laughing at him as he wipes away the blood from her ear once again. “What’s so funny?”

“You’re crying, Sergeant Barnes,” she whispers fondly and Bucky blinks again, just realizing the heat that floods his face is not from the factory that works around them. Her cold fingers swipe away the wetness from his cheeks, spread it over his face and he resists the urge to press a kiss to her palm. Instead, he uses his free hand to hold her palm to his cheek. A shiver runs down his spine. “Who’s gone and broken your heart?”

“I think you know the answer to that,” he says. She laughs again, painful and quiet, and this time her eyes flutter shut as she slips away from him. Despite how much stronger she appears with muscles that flex and wane beneath his arms, he sees the cracks they split into her soul. He hopes the love he harbours for his angel is enough to seal every single one.

He knows it is not.

Bucky Barnes doesn’t tell her he loves her.

He doesn’t think he can bear the thought of telling her and disappearing the very next day, but perhaps it’s the little things that count.

“There’s enough room on the bed, Sergeant Barnes,” she had said, and they started to sleep together on the small little cot barely fit for one, Bucky slightly hunched over her as they fell asleep in each other’s arms. Their legs entangled and more often than not, it ended with one of them squished against the wall and the other flush against them, but it was always worth the morning blush.

“Have my blanket,” he had insisted as autumn swept over their prison cell and warm food was more and more of a necessity. Even though they didn’t need to eat and hunger no longer clawed at their stomachs, Bucky always remembered to share the slice of warm bread with her as their fingers turned numb and chattering teeth filled the silence at night.

“Hold my hand…” as fingers entwined with fingers.

“I’ll take care of you…” accompanied the sound of blood dripping onto the stone floor.

“When we get outta here…” followed by a million promises and the scratch of the shiv against the stone wall.

It’s the little things that count.

“You’re upset.”

Her voice is soft, gentle as snow as Bucky runs a towel raggedly through his almost-dry hair. He twists on his bed to see her standing there, in a new uniform and hair damp as it falls around her face. He thinks she’s never been more effortlessly gorgeous. Life has returned to her cheeks and her eyes spark.

“Angel,” he says with a smile and he scoots over to allow her room next to him. After a wash, he can almost imagine feeling like a new man. He tosses the towel onto the pillow behind him as she sits down. “Did they feed you yet?”

“Just had a quick wash. I was planning on eating with you,” she chirps, sliding an arm around his waist. Tugging him towards her with extraordinary strength, she smiles as Bucky ducks his head underneath her chin. Wrapping his own arms around her middle, he closes his eyes.

“I’m not upset,” he mumbles as her hand trails up his back and runs through his drying hair. “I’m just relieved we got out.”

“I know it’s more than that,” she whispers, gently tugging his head to meet eyes. When he finds her gaze, he feels boneless. A warmth floods his blood and a smile overcomes his face, small, tired. “You always let your guard down when you think no one’s looking.” But I’m always looking are the words that hang between them.

Bucky swallows and cold flashes over his body.

“Let’s give it up for Captain America!”

“You think Steve’s gonna last till next week?” he asks quietly, hands falling away from her. He flinches back when her hands reach for him and he doesn’t see the hurt that settles on her face. “We saw soldiers die, friends bleed out, and you think Steve is gonna be different?”

“He is different.”

“Yeah, so they’ll have him fight the good fight.” His words are bitterly strung out and he wants to put a hole through the wall. “They’ll have him on the front lines and I’ll be right beside him because I can’t abandon my best friend. A best friend who I can barely recognize, and—”

“Bucky, he’s still your Steve.”

“I’m supposed to protect him!” Frosted silence pools into his heart as his breath comes in rattled gasps. His heart hammers against his ribs and he can hear hers, a gentle beat. “And I failed. So that’s the rest of my life; that’s what I’m going to do. Make up for every time I wasn’t there for him and every time I couldn’t stop him from getting hurt—”

“Steve’s changed. Even you can’t protect him from war,” she says and Bucky, with a humourless smile and darkness in his cold blue eyes, shakes his head.

“I can damn well try. If not me, who?” A hollow where his heart should be swallows him whole and he only sees the darkness of the Austrian factory, the vomit and blood after every session. The soft sobs as he whispers he can’t remember his ma’s face. Rebecca is nothing more than a fading memory. “I’m not letting this war take more from me than it already has.”

“Neither am I.” Her hands are folded in her lap and despite how desperately he wants her touch, he feels like he’s just seconds from falling apart. Sucking in a deep breath, he brings his shattered pieces together and silently tells her not to disrupt the broken glass. “If you spend your whole life protecting him, who protects you?”

“I don’t need protection.”

“Bucky.” Her sigh sweeps into his ears as she reaches for his arm and he jerks back, standing sharply. His knees shake and he feels the soreness in his feet as he meets her eyes. Her eyes glisten as she blinks against the fading dusk and he turns away to the tent exit. He barely takes a step before she pipes up again. “Does he know?”

Turning around, he barely utters, “What?”

“What we went through. Does he know?”

“That’s not important.”

“Like hell it isn’t!” She storms up to him, face an effigy of wrath as she grabs his arm. Turning it over in her fingers, she pulls up his wrist so he is forced to stare at his own veins. They run, bulging and blue-grey, and he can hear his own blood flowing. “We got fucked over, Sergeant Barnes. You don’t even remember what your mother looks like and you say it isn’t important?”

“It’s war! I’ve been gone too long.” Bucky rips his arm from her grasp as something in him slants.

“I never forgot my brothers’ faces until I went in there.” She throws an arm out, points to some distant corner of their tent but her glazed eyes do not stray from his. “Sometimes, I can’t even remember their names and you’re no different, and right now, it isn’t about Steve. This is about you and what happened to us back there!”

Heat bubbles underneath his skin and when she does not speak, it’s almost as an avalanche rushes through his body. “I’m trying to forget what happened to me in there! I have a job to do and I can’t… I can’t be distracted because that will get Steve killed. People die every day and I’ve gotten used to it, but I won’t let my best friend be someone I have to leave behind in No Man’s Land. I thought you of all people would understand.” Sticky, humid air clouds his face and his vision blurs as he collapses to his knees. Hands immediately land on his shoulders, slide down his back as he’s pulled into a spine-crushing embrace.

“Oh, Bucky, I do,” she whispers. She pulls him back, cups his face and the suppleness of her skin causes his shuddering breaths to hitch. He sucks in a huge gasp as he continues to crumble. He slips between her fingers as he desperately tries to pull himself together but with her every swipe of his tears, he only shatters. “I promise I do. Just let me take care of you when you can’t do it anymore.” Her thumbs brush underneath his eyes as his hands on her hips squeeze and she lets out a gentle sigh. “You can fall apart on me. I promise I’ll protect you.”

“It’s not worth it. I’m… I’m… not worth it.”

“It’ll always be worth it if it’s you,” she promises and his eyes close. Another rush of tears spill over her fingers as gentle lips press between his eyebrows. “Besides—” Her voice whispers over his skin as she tucks her chin in to look at him. His forehead presses into her sternum as he melts into her body. His hiccuping breaths shake his shoulders jerking as she runs a soothing hand through his hair, down his back—“if you’re not worth saving, then neither am I.”

At this, Bucky raises his tear stained face to his angel and shakes his head, stubborn as they come. His heart slows in his head and cool wind kisses his wet cheeks. Their lips almost brush and his breath shudders in his throat.

“I will always save you no matter what.”

She smiles, a soft exhale that could almost be a laugh puffing against his cheek as he shifts against her, sitting up straighter. She pulls back, wiping her hand along his jacket and he sniffs, a small, watery grin cracking over his face.

“You’re quite the romantic, Sergeant Barnes.”

“How many times do I gotta tell you? My name’s Bucky.” He can hear her heart quiver as he touches her face, spreads his fingers along her cheek and gently guides her closer until he can taste the smoke and lime that clings to her skin. He can hear her breathe his name, a gentle sigh before their lips meet, and he thaws underneath her touch.

Her fingers brush his jaw as he closes his eyes and the feel of her mouth, chapped and warm against his, is ecstasy.

Their first kiss is everything and nothing Bucky has ever dreamed it would be. A desperate clash of tears and lips and teeth, yet softer than anything he’s ever known, he knows one thing is certain in his life now.

He has found the love of his life, and only Death will do them part.

The wind is knocked out of him the minute he sees her. His angel has managed to steal his heart all over again and Bucky wonders how he’s going to survive the night when his eyes are glued to her. Clean, soft, and radiant, she stands there almost bashfully, waiting for him to notice her. Her smile splits her face as he remembers to close his mouth.

“Sergeant Barnes,” she greets politely as she looks up at him. In her heels, she looks as if she could rule the world. Bucky barely manages to greet her before clearing his throat. His cheeks pool with heat and he looks down at his shoes, running a hand through his hair. “Where are you off to?”

“Captain Rogers invited me to the Whip and Fiddle for an important meeting.”

“How strange. I was invited as well.” She grins as he extends an arm and she leans over to kiss the corner of his mouth. Bucky’s cheeks flare up and he turns to look at her. She loops her hand through, holding him close as they walk down the street and Bucky places a hand on top of hers along his arm.

“Who’s the lucky man?” he asks as if he isn’t walking the most gorgeous dame in all of London to some bar a few minutes away for their first date.

“A very brave soldier,” she replies. Her heat seeps through his jacket and he turns to look at her, trying to come up with a compliment adequate enough to express how much he adores her. “You look very handsome, Sergeant Barnes.”

“Can’t compare to you, angel.” Her smile becomes tender under his gaze and she pauses just outside the pub. Inside, the frosted glass glows with the heat and with every swing of the door, merry singing and the beginnings of Dum Dum telling a story sweep into the cool air. Words pound at the back of his teeth as he stares down at her, looking so pretty in the warm lamplight of London. “How’s your family? Did you have a chance to see them?”

“Mum’s doing okay. Dad was out with my brother so I was a nice surprise to come home to.”

"It sounds like a warm welcome, doll.”

“You know, they would love to meet you, too.” He blinks, hand stalling from where he’d been brushing a strand of hair out of her face. “I told them about you, if that’s alright…”

“They know about what happened to us?” His voice is tight, just the mere mention of it burning down his arms.

“No.” She looks guilty and Bucky wonders if the weight on her shoulders has always been there. “Mum’s got enough on her plate with my brother leaving and all. He’s, he’s actually travelling to Oxford soon so it was necessary for me to say goodbye and Dad… I don’t think he can take it. He’s lost two sons already.”

Bucky runs his thumb down her cheek, planting a tender kiss against her forehead.

“When this war is over, we’ll find them,” he promises and she smiles, pressing her lips eagerly against his. He can’t help the huge grin that spreads across his face and he chuckles into her mouth as she plants her hands on his cheeks and holds him there, kissing him again and again. “Give me a chance to show you Brooklyn ‘n’ Shelbyville, where I was born, Coney Island… We can take the Railroad and everything.”

“Too many places for a time like this,” she teases, pulling back. “First the Whip and Fiddle, then I show you around London and then we go to America.”

“Deal.” She smiles up at him, like they’re not in the middle of war, like they haven’t just escaped prison with blue serum running through their veins, like they’re still the boy and girl they were before.

“Let’s go in. Steve’s probably waiting,” she whispers, turning to look at the warm, fogging glass. Bucky turns, glaring at the door. Suddenly, meeting Steve doesn’t seem so inviting. Her hands trail down his face and rest on his chest as she sighs longingly. “I don’t want you to go back in there.”

Turning around again, he takes her hand from his chest and kisses her fingers tenderly. “I’m staying right here for a while longer,” he murmurs, knowing that this is not what she meant at all.

A cool chill sweeps between their bodies and Bucky tucks her into his body, wrapping her in the tightest embrace he can manage. She’s all supple muscle, carbon bone, and she’s taller than before yet all Bucky can think of is protecting her.

I love you. I love you. I love you, he thinks, eyes closing as he rests his chin in her hair. He can feel her heart beating like a soft drum through her back as she drags her hands up his shoulders.

“You’re the only one who understands,” she whispers into the wind, yet his ears still catch it all. She buries her face into his chest, her fingers digging into the ridges of his back as he brings a hand to cradle the back of her head. “Please don’t leave me.”

His eyebrows furrow together and he doesn’t even feel the wind bite at his skin until his fingers turn purple. His chest aches and everything inside him cracks like glass under pressure. Winding, and winding, long and elegant in a catastrophic kind of way.

Never, never, never. I love you more than anything. How can I ever leave you? He wants to scream it into the night, tell her until she understands.

I love you, I love you, I love you.

“A zip line?” she says dubiously, the snow dotting her hair as she sits by the fire. Heat and frost play at her face, bathing it half in white light, and half in blazing orange. “It doesn’t sound very enticing.”

Bucky forces a smile and kisses her for what he doesn’t know is the last time. She tastes like beef jerky and mountain water, and he can hear Morita making some wise crack about how gooey the Sarge is being. “You won’t even notice I’m gone.”

“I always notice,” she retorts.

It sounds an awful like a confession Bucky can’t bear to hear right now.

They leave at dawn.

The last thing he does is slip an envelope into her rucksack and he prays that he’ll be back before she can open it.

When his fingers slip, there’s a moment in time that freezes. He teeters on the edge of life and death, and he can see Steve’s outstretched hand just before his.

And then he falls and a million and one thoughts fly from his head.

All he can think of is broken promises and the Coney Island lights. The wind that rips away at him is like the way the Cyclone had tossed him through the air, safely bound by the metal bars, but this time, there is nothing holding him back.

He throttles through the air, collides with something sharp and jagged before rolling down, through snow and ice, and his vision swims in inky black as he struggles to breathe. His lungs are paralyzed and his skull splits open as he tumbles over and he thinks the blood is coming from his head? Or maybe it’s his nose or his throat or how can he still think with all of winter’s wrath surrounding him? His head is buried in snow as he tries to remember what it was like to breathe again.

Snow falls softly around him, landing on his face like tiny kisses and it is almost as if his heart leaps to his throat. Blood bubbles at his lips, his whole body wracking with agony. He sinks into the snow, ice the pillow beneath his head. It dribbles warmly down his cheeks, leaking from the corner of his lips and the snow melts in the heat of his essence.

Wind caresses his face gently and he swallows a thick glob of blood that catches halfway as a sob pushes its way up his throat.

He wonders how long he will stay here, broken and dying, until Death comes to collect him, but then something grabs his boot and his eyes jerk open.

Wolves. Wolves will eat me alive, he muses, too tired, too dizzy from pain to fight. The blurry grey-blue canvas above him stretches above him, brighter than anything he remembers seeing, as he raises his head blearily. Men take him by the legs and pull, something he can barely feel as his bones click into place.

“Sergeant Barnes?”

“Angel?” he mumbles beneath his breath, eyes rolling back into his head as it slams back into the snow and he thinks he can hear her laugh echo in the ravine above him. “I’m sorry…”

For every promise I’ve broken, for every day I won’t be here, for every time I never told you I loved you. For loving you and leaving you. For leaving you. For loving you.

I’m sorry.

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consumedkings-archive · 4 years

Text

ancient names, pt. vii

A John Seed/Original Female Character Fanfic

Ancient Names, pt vii: anything that touches

Masterlink Post

Word Count: ~6.4k (sorry I’m a clown)

Rating: M for now, rating will change in later chapters as things develop.

Warnings: Language, some “light” religious blasphemy (it’s Far Cry 5). Strong canon deviance from here on out. Uhhh brief mental breakdown that implies disassociation, and also some weird Joseph/Deputy if you squint real hard. Like REAL hard.

Notes: This chapter was a blast to write, mostly because I got to revisit that ICONIC scene (iykyk). That's pretty much the last in-canon thing we're going to have; the dialogue is essentially the same, but it felt important for me to have Elliot's experience of what it was like, when she was still soft and new.

Y'all the HOPELESS romantic in me is SUFFERING through these two but. I swear!! I swear. I SWEAR. Also anyone who tells me John doesn't want a partner who can put his ass in the dirt can fight me in hand to hand combat, because home boy needs it.

Thank you, as ALWAYS, to my sweet talented beautiful incredible @starcrier for proof-reading when this stuff is still in trash stages, and the ever-dutiful and perfect @empirics, who doesn’t even go here and yet???? Still stans and ships like she do. We love.

As always, thank you again to everyone who reads/comments/whateva! I’m so grateful for anything and everything and I just want to make it clear that I would not continue writing without you. Tysm!

John had never felt dread like this.

It was strange, the way it crept upon him as they walked to the trees. It was dark out, but the clouds had cleared so the moon and stars above were perfectly visible; it wasn’t as though he couldn’t see, and the closer they got to the trees, the more assured John felt that the van was there, or had been there. He supposed he didn’t know if the cultists had made off with it or not.

No, he wasn’t feeling dread about the fact that they were on foot, or that Boomer was nowhere to be seen, or that it was dark, or that he didn’t know for absolute certain that he was going in the right direction.

He felt dread because they were alive: because they were free, because there was no cultist in sight. He felt dread because Elliot was clutching his hand in hers, and her other hand was gripping his forearm, and she no longer moved with the surety of the apex predator she had made herself out to be in a very short period of time. Her feet hit the ground with heavy, unsteady thuds, their progression through the field and to the trees painfully halting. He had a very vivid memory of Elliot telling him, I’d rather you let me eat shit when he’d tried to steady her from falling, just a few days ago.

She wouldn’t look at him, either. Not directly in the eyes. He didn’t know if this was another side-effect of whatever they’d laced her with, or if it was Elliot, or if it had anything to do with the way she’d tried to pull away from him when he’d first found her in the field.

“Elliot,” John said, trying not to sound frustrated as her nails dug into his arm, “loosen your grip a little.”

Her lashes fluttered. She said, “Okay,” but then nothing changed, even though she looked like she was trying, as though the faculties with which she normally operated were so severely hindered that she wasn’t even aware if her body was doing the things she was willing it to.

He didn’t bring it up again. Even when he thought certainly her grip was going to bruise, even when his arm began to ache.

By the time they got to the trees, the moon was high in the sky, and John’s legs burned with the effort of merely walking. That was all it had been, walking, but the longer he turned it over in his mind that they were headed into a trap, the more laborious the movements became. They waded through the trees, the moonlight only barely filtering through now, until he saw it: the van.

At first, he felt relief. And then, immediately after, crashing into any good mood he might have left, was the paranoia. Why did they leave it? he wondered, hesitating. A trap. They want us to get back into the van.

But if they were trying to trap them, why wouldn’t they have just... kept them?

“John.” Elliot’s voice dragged with exhaustion. When he looked at her, her cheeks were flushed with fever, and her pupils were still huge—but not as much as before. “I’m so… tired.” Her body swayed a little, her eyes struggling to stay open; she was crashing, hard and fast.

“Stay here.”

Carefully, John pried his arm out of her grip, sitting her down in the nook of a tree’s roots before creeping his way over to the van. It was empty, and open, as though the cultists had just taken them and left it as it was. He wasn’t about to get caught a second time, so he moved quickly—climbed into the back, grabbed the backpack Elliot had filled with food and Tylenol, and reached for where he thought the guns were.

“Fuck,” John said. Gone. Everything else was left, except for the guns. And his glasses. Fuckheads.

He stuffed the pack of cigarettes and the lighter into the backpack before he slid out of the back of the van and made his way back to Elliot. Her face was buried in her knees, her fingers absently curling and uncurling, something that John knew was just an Elliot thing—he’d seen it when she was at her most stressed, when she was trying hard to stay rooted.

John reached out and touched her shoulder. Even though he’d been clambering through the brush, the gesture startled her, her head jerking up and her eyes looking at him for just a second before diverting.

“We can’t stay,” he said urgently. “Come on.”

She nodded numbly before she took his offered hand, hoisting herself to her feet and trailing after him past the van and out closer to the road side. He thought, briefly, about yelling for the dog, or trying to whistle the way Elliot did, but the idea of making a violent range of noise to fetch a beast from somewhere deep in the woods—if he even was there—did not sit right with him. So instead, he found them a spot that was still within the trees, but pressed into the slope that led up to the road, and sat Elliot down again.

Now that he had a moment to sit, a moment to think, his brain flipped a switch into a necessary, self-preservation panic. Just a little adrenaline, to keep him awake, surely; because he didn’t want to be sleeping any time soon.

John couldn’t push the image of Elliot, pressed against the earth, crying , out of his mind. What had she seen? What did they do? His mouth burned with the itch to ask, but he couldn’t bring himself to, not when her eyes couldn’t stay on one place for more than a second.

“They didn’t—they didn’t do it to you?” Elliot asked him, after she took the tylenol he gave her dry and picked a chocolate chip out of a granola bar. John turned his gaze to her, cocking his head to the side. She still carried with her that dreamer’s sway, that soft loopy tone to her voice that reminded him she wasn’t yet quite herself again, but he thought it sounded like she was clearing up. Hopefully.

“Do what to me, deputy?”

She blinked down at her hands. “Drug you.”

He hesitated. He’d certainly gotten something , though he didn’t think it was anything like what they’d given Elliot. “Not the same,” he said after a second. “But I was asleep, for a while. For hours. I don’t know how long.”

“I wish I had been sleeping.” Elliot’s voice was miserable. She had never been so small, he thought, than in that moment, and she tipped her body over until the side of her face was on the ground. And then, after her eyes had drifted shut and a lapse of silence had passed, she mumbled, “They probably thought I was a bigger threat than you.”

John fought the urge to smile. It only barely worked, and he was glad, because he didn’t need Elliot getting a bigger ego than she already had.

“Yes, Rook, you’re very scary and intimidating. All—what, four feet, eight inches of you?”

“I’m five foot four, you fuckhead.”

A wave of relief washed over him. He rested his head back against the tree, exhaling softly.

“Go to sleep, deputy,” he murmured, “so you can go back to being the bigger threat.”

For the sake of both of us.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

For the first time in what felt like years, Elliot slept.

It was fitful sleep, to be sure, plagued by a strange, blurring color-scape of nightmares and fever-dreams that haunted the corner of her sleeping vision. It all just lurked around the edges, never an image that she could pin down or find, only ever something that was present enough to fill her with a persistent terror. Voice melded into each other, overlapping; fragments of noise and color drifted in and out of her, like a tree shedding petals in a fiercer wind.

When she woke, light was just beginning to try and creep over the distant mountains. It wasn’t enough to feel like a real morning, like the day time , but enough that the milky glow of it filtered through the tops of the trees; the earth smelled wet and fresh, and her clothes were a little damp from sleeping on the wet ground. The sky stretched, gray and soft as wedding silk, through the tops of the trees. She wiped the water from her face.

I smell: the earth, the rain, the grass and wind. I see: the light, the sky, the tops of the tress. I feel —

“Ah, sleeping beauty awakens,” John said. His voice sounded gravelly; maybe he hadn’t slept at all, this whole time, which somehow made her stomach twist a little even though she didn’t want to care about what John did or didn’t get to do.

“Fuck off.” She groaned, coming into a sitting position and feeling her head immediately swoon with the effort. The back of it pulsed with a splitting pain, and she remembered the red-haired man from before, telling her to go back to sleep just before he slammed her head into the floor of the van. “God—what the fuck —”

“It’s so lovely,” John intoned, and she got the impression maybe it wasn’t lovely at all, “to have you back at full capacity again, deputy.”

Elliot pressed the heel of her palm to her head. “That asshole that works for Ase smashed my head in before he drugged me.”

John’s eyes narrowed. “Let me see.”

She stilled and closed her eyes against the splintering pain at the back of her head; she heard John shift where he was sitting, and then his hands against hers, brushing them away from the back of her head. Elliot tried not to think too much about how warm his hands were, how comforting the calloused feel of them was, or how gentle they were when he combed the hair out of his way. He clicked his tongue a little, hands dropping from her hair, and suddenly Elliot’s stomach plummeted, too; the loss of contact sent her poor little drug-addled lizard brain reeling.

“Well, you’ve got a nasty cut,” John said after a moment, “which is mostly scabbed over. And a bump that will probably be the size of an egg by the time it’s done.” His voice slid her out of her strange little panic, her desire to grab his hands and put them back on her face, even when that exact nightmare she’d had was stopping her from being able to meet his eyes for very long.

Elliot swallowed thickly. “Goody.”

She thought she could hear a smile in his voice when he said, “I’m sure you’ve had worse, Rook.”

“Don’t call me that.” She tried to force more heat in her voice, but she was so tired ; it felt like she hadn’t slept at all. John made a mild noise that might have been amusement, and then shifted where he sat before coming to a stand and stretching. Elliot asked, “Did you sleep?” and then immediately kicked herself ( because why would she care ), but it was too late to take the words back.

Her gaze flickered to John’s face and then immediately away. The strange dream—nightmare?—that she’d had of him, cradling her face, his touch searing through her, my Elliot , lingered on her skin still, heavy like a cinder block tying her down. It made it hard to look him in the eyes; she was afraid she’d see the flowers again.

“No,” he replied, and if it bothered him that she wasn’t looking at him very much, his voice didn’t sound like it. “Someone had to make sure those crazies didn’t come back.”

She scoffed, struggling to her feet. “The term crazies coming out of your mouth is impeccably comedic.”

“I’ll be here all night.”

Elliot shouldered the back pack and glanced around. The forest was quiet, and there was no sight nor sound of Boomer anywhere. She could only hope that he’d been out and away from the van when everything happened, and that he’d had the good sense to stay hidden. He was a smart boy. She tried not to worry too much.

At least, she would keep telling herself that, until proven otherwise. But she wouldn’t be whistling for him anytime soon—not with how easily they’d been tracked down by Ase and her fuckhead assistant.

“I suppose we should go on foot from here,” she said, a little mournfully, regretting the reasonable nature of her statement. She saw John grimace out of the corner of her eye.

“I suppose so, deputy.”

She heaved a sigh, fingers fluttering over the cut on the back of her head absently before she nodded. Her clothes were wet, she was nursing a raging hangover from whatever the fuck she’d been drugged with, and she’d eaten half a granola bar in a little over twenty-four hours. And if the drag of her breaths in her chest — even when she was taking a normal inhale — were any indication, sleeping in wet clothes had done nothing to improve her sickness.

Elliot set off, marching through the underbrush to get out of the woods and closer to the road. They passed the van again on their way out, and she thought, fuck, I’d kill John to get one more cigarette out of there, but she knew she shouldn’t. They probably had some kind of—bomb, or tracking device, or—

But in her heart of hearts, she knew that wasn’t true. They didn’t utilize machinery the same way that Eden’s Gate did. And if they wanted her and John dead, well. They would have killed them already. So even though she knew this, and thought it to herself, she couldn’t bring herself to go back to the car.

I see your color, mor, Ase had said, her voice like a thousand whispers against her skin. Elliot’s throat felt tight. She turned to John suddenly and said, “Hey, do you speak Swedish?”

John brushed past her. “What do you think?”

“How are you so unhelpful, and all of the time? Don’t you get tired of being useless?”

He laughed, and Elliot felt a little spark of indignation light in her chest. All of John’s strange tenderness—and she hadn’t forgotten, even if it was fuzzy, the way he’d held her face and said it’s me, Elliot, like he was supposed to be a comfort to her—

(and he was, now, what a sick thought, )

—was gone, and instead she kept thinking about the stupid fucking expression on his face when he’d said, so you think I’m attractive, then , because there was nothing more irritating than John Seed knowing he was attractive. It wasn’t like he needed her to tell him, so why he’d tried to wriggle the words out of her was beyond her comprehension; although Elliot supposed it could be explained that John hadn’t had anyone chant yes at his face for perhaps twenty-four hours, so how was he still sustaining himself? He must be craving attention, starved for it.

“You are the most annoying fucking person I’ve ever met,” Elliot announced, so that she could abruptly shove any and all thoughts of John’s hands on her face out of her head, huffing a little as she worked to catch up with him.

And then John turned around so suddenly that she careened straight into his chest, his hands landing to steady her shoulders—( warm, she thought absently)—and he said, “I know,” with all of the arrogance that she knew him to have. “Give me the backpack, deputy. If they are tracking us in some sick game of hide and seek, they’re going to hear you huffing and puffing from fifteen miles away.”

Elliot mustered all of the spite she had in her—which was not as much as she would have liked—and said, “I hate you, John Seed.”

“You’re going to have to find a new slogan,” John rumbled, sliding the backpack straps off of her shoulders, “because that one just doesn’t ring very true anymore.”

She let him take the backpack; not because she liked that he was being helpful, but because her shoulders screamed in relief. The more and more sober she became, the more her muscles ached, like she had been involuntarily tensing all night, and now they burned . John might as well have punched her entire body over and over again, with his stupid rings.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” she replied, fishing the tylenol out of the bag and swallowing two. John rolled his eyes.

“Look, I can tell when you’re lying to me,” he said. “And I know that I’m irresistible, not only because I saved you—”

“Do not —”

“—but because, as a man of God, I am infinitely more wise than you, as well. If there is one thing that I would know about a woman of wrath, Deputy Honeysett, it’s that the one thing she wants is to feel in control of herself, and I’m exactly the man who can give you control.”

Elliot could have, perhaps, not picked a less-Godly man than John Seed; the only exception would be one of his brothers. His words rattled around in her skull. Was this the stupid shit he told himself? That he could give her control? Here, in the woods—soaking wet, sick, split open, walking for God knows how long on foot—and that’s the sales pitch he was going with?

Her jaw clenched, blistering the headache behind her eyes under an impossible heatwave of pure ache , and she pinched the bridge of her nose. “You’re—fucking—”

John waited, patiently, much to her fury: but the words would not come to her, color fractals splintering even when her eyes were closed, driving frenzied neurons to fire off pain signals over and over again. When she opened her eyes, for a second, an aura stretched across her vision, like someone pulling saran-wrap tight right over her face. She thought she might puke.

“I’m fucking...?” John prompted, and when she only shuddered a breath, his tone shifted a little. She couldn’t tell what to , but his voice was different when he said, “Deputy?”

He sounded, quite suddenly, like he was very far away from her. She tried to open her eyes again. The world wobbled unpleasantly, and the ground stretched beneath her until it felt like she was on a moving conveyor belt. She saw herself , standing there numbly, heels of her palms pressed against her eye sockets in a desperate attempt to quell the migraine.

“Elliot.”

John’s hands came to her face, yanking her back into a painful reality. He was too close now, smelling like wet earth and forest and a little bit like sweat, the rough, warm palms of his hands holding grounding her back to reality. He said, “Earth to Elliot.”

“Yes,” Elliot managed out. She couldn’t muster up any vitriol; one of her hands gripped John’s wrist where it cut through her peripheral. “I’m here,” she added, and she didn’t know why she said it like that , like she’d been somewhere else—maybe because she had. “Just—this head wound is really fucking with me. We have to get moving, and—”

She heard, a few feet away from them, the sound of a car door slamming. Her brain immediately jumpstarted; first, she thought, oh those fucking Swedes, and then her brain tried to say, or maybe it’s Jerome, or Grace, or —

It was neither of them. Through the haze of pain, Elliot heard the sound of Eden’s Gate’s radio playing, the sound of boots hitting the pavement.

“Well,” Joseph sighed, “if it isn’t the lamb and her shepherd.”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Joseph Seed is a particularly difficult man to pin down.

She never meets him once, either before she goes off to the Academy or after, and she’s glad for it. After she gets back to Hope County, after she gets cleared by the psychiatrist, after she gets back to life-on-normal, she thinks she’d be happy to never see Joseph Seed. Not because she isn’t religious, but because she doesn’t like his brand, because the doomsday-ing and the wriggling past legalities of owning land or, perhaps, even people make her skin crawl.

Elliot doesn’t think she’d ever be able to walk herself into his compound. She doesn’t think she’d ever be able to look Joseph Seed in the eye, but she doesn’t have a choice , the helicopter planting them squarely in the compound.

The ground is wet, fresh from a recent rain, and slips underfoot. The night is clouded above with no stars in sight. She feels almost like she’s in a dream, Joey walking ahead of her as the U.S. Marshal bickers with Sheriff Whitehorse, back and forth. She’s barely listening. She feels eyes on them, burning, angry and defiant shouts coming from the onlooking Eden’s Gate members, and she hears the sound of dogs barking in the distance.

They get to the church. Inside, the congregation is singing Amazing Grace, and the crickets match its feverish pitch, sliding along her skin.

“Hudson, on the door and watch our backs,” Whitehorse says, when the Marshal— Burke , Elliot thinks absently, that was his name —acquiesces to doing things the way Whitehorse wants to do it. “Don’t let any of these people get in. Rookie, on me.”

Elliot nods, her gaze focusing sharp again. Whitehorse has taken a risk, bringing her out when she was still so green; she wasn’t going to let him down.

Not that he has much choice. They’re short-staffed as it was anyway.

“And you—” Whitehorse looks at Burke, his expression faltering, tired. “Just… Try not to do anything stupid.”

Burke claps him on the shoulder. He is all easy confidence, surety of foot, the kind of confidence Elliot wants to have some day. She hopes she doesn’t become tired, like Whitehorse. “Relax, Sheriff,” Burke says, “you’re about to get your name in the paper.”

But Elliot isn’t paying attention to them. She’s thinking about the armed men and women skulking around, and the dogs barking in the distance, and the sound of the singing from the inside of the church.

Joey’s hand briefly touches her shoulder. Her dark gaze is soft, and she squeezes Elliot’s shoulder before she says, “You’ll be fine.”

Whitehorse doesn’t look pleased by Burke’s comment. He doesn’t even look assuaged, mildly. He pushes the door open, and Elliot sticks close to his heel, as the singing comes to an abrupt stop; the church is dimly lit, with most of the light coming from behind the man at the front, his silhouette carved obsidian so that his features are obscured to her.

They walk slow. The man says, “ Something is coming. You can feel it, can’t you?”

His voice is a rich-willow timbre, decadent. The gathering of the cultists turn, their eyes piercing into the trio. Elliot’s heart is slamming against her rib cage. She doesn’t have a gun pulled—would never, not without Whitehorse’s blessing—but she wants to, not to fire but to warn. To keep them away.

“We are creeping toward the edge, and there will be a reckoning. That is why we started the Project—”

They’re dirty, and bedraggled. Elliot’s throat tightens. Why would they choose this? Why would they want to be like this?

“—because we know what happens next. They will come. They will try to take from us—take our guns, take our freedom, take our faith.”

Burke looks back at her, his hand floating and tense, ready to pull his gun at any moment. But he beckons her with a crook of his fingers and she does as he bids. Closer now, Elliot can see that the man is not alone; to the left, a tall, rugged red-head, his arms crossed, his expression stony. To the right, a soft young woman, dressed in white, dreamy. And just behind Joseph, a handsome, dark-haired man; a man that Elliot recognizes as John Duncan, but now is told by Joey is John Seed .

Joseph’s shirtless, which should be ridiculous and comedic but only serves to make him look both polished and feral in equal amounts. Golden light from outside drenches through a window cut to be the same shape as the emblem of Eden’s Gate, and it bathes him; he is golden, soft and sharp all at the same time.

“Sheriff, c’mon,” Burke says, because he is not charmed; he, too, thinks it is ridiculous. Whitehorse holds up a hand to steady him.

“We will not let them.” Joseph Seed’s voice flexes, furious and controlled. “We will not let their greed , or their immorality or their depravity hurt us anymore. There will be no more suffering.”

Burke is furious that the sermon —if it can be called that, which Elliot would argue that it cannot, knowing the Seeds—has continued this long. She hears him say, “No, fuck this,” and he pulls the paper out and holds up in front of the man’s face.

“Joseph Seed,” Burke bites out, “I have a warrant issued for your arrest, on the suspicion of kidnapping with the intent to harm. Now, I want you to step forward and keep your hands where I can see them.”

Elliot’s gaze flickers. She feels sick to her stomach. Joseph lifts his hands; he is soft, again, no longer fervent, no longer yelling, and his gaze fixes on her.

“There they are,” he says, his voice quiet. “The locusts in our garden.”

Members of Eden’s Gate—armed, ragged, feral —slide their way between them and Joseph.

“You see, they’ve come for me.” Other members are beginning to get angry. They’re yelling, now, as Joseph says, “They’ve come to take me away from you , they’ve come to destroy all that we have built,” and the voices raise in volume, and Burke puts his hand on his gun and Whitehorse yells for him to stand down and Elliot’s fingers itch and she thinks, oh, no, this is when I’m going to have to shoot someone.

But Joseph steps down from his platform. His hands brush the shoulders of his supporters, and they part for him, quieting the crowd, quelling their noise. Behind him, John steps across the stage, his eyes narrowed and sharp, studying them; he moves like an animal, prowling.

“We knew this moment would come. We’ve prepared for it,” Joseph says, gentle. He ushers them away; they brush past Elliot, her head turning after them, thinking certainly one will grab her, choke her, kill her, but they don’t.

“— and I saw, ” Joseph is biting out, pointing at Burke, and then looking at the sheriff, “ and behold, it was a white horse. ”

And then Joseph is looking at her. He lifts his hands to her. His eyes are fixed on her, and she feels a strange, uncanny thrill slide through her. Joseph looks at her like she is the only person in the room, like all others have blinked out of existence and it’s only them.

That’s why, she thinks, the feeling of it making her heart ache a little. That’s why they choose to be this way. To belong to someone.

She knows that’s what it is. She knows that’s how he’s gotten these people to follow him: because he looks at them like this, with longing, like there is nothing in the world that he wants more than to take them into his embrace.

His voice is breathless, soft, covetous, jealously cradling her in velvet swathes: “ And Hell followed with him.”

Elliot feels frozen. Petrified. Her stomach churns. She can feel the eyes of the Seed siblings on her. Burke jerks his hand at her, breaking her out of her reverie.

“Rookie, cuff this son of a bitch.”

Joseph is holding out his hands, obedient and compliant. “God will not let you take me.”

Burke says it again, maybe different, she can’t remember because the blood is rushing through her head, so she does as he asks. Her hands might be trembling. She takes Joseph’s hands and slides the cuffs on them, and he leans into her like he’s going to breathe her in or swallow her whole and almost purrs —

“Sometimes, the best thing to do is to walk away.”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

John’s hands slid from Elliot’s face. The first thing he felt when he saw Joseph was relief —sheer, pure relief, that it wasn’t the Resistance that had found them and that it wasn’t Ase and her man again, but that it was his brother. Over his shoulder, too, John could see Jacob in the driver’s seat of the truck, his face stony and hard as always.

The second thing that John felt was dread.

Joseph’s expression was unreadable. It almost always was, he supposed, but now the fact that he couldn’t tell what Joseph was thinking struck a hot cord of fear inside of him, because he was reminded—now and painfully—that Faith was still lost to them.

“Joseph,” John managed out, his hands drifting now from Elliot completely, where before they had slid to her shoulders. “I’m so glad to see you.”

“You could sound like it,” Elliot muttered, and he shot her a look before he turned back to his brother, immediately crossing the gap from him to Joseph, standing on the road. Joseph watched him steadily, and once he was within arm’s reach, John stopped, hesitating.

“We were on our way to you,” Joseph explained, his voice steady, a soothing balm to John’s frayed nerves. “We heard talk on the radios that our sister had been taken, but we didn’t get a response when we tried to contact you at the ranch.”

John nodded. “Yes, it’s—there’s so much to tell you—”

Joseph’s hands came to rest on his shoulders for a moment; and, much the same way that John had done to Elliot, Joseph took his face in his hands.

“We’re so glad you’re alive,” Joseph murmured, his expression softening just that much . John felt the relief flood his system immediately at the gentle contact—merciful, healing, the way Joseph liked to be. “And that our dear deputy is still with you. Compliantly, too, it seems.”

Elliot’s voice was hard as flint when she said, “Yeah, well, you missed the last twenty-four hours where this fucking idiot had us cuffed together.”

Behind the yellow lenses of his glasses, Joseph’s gaze flickered to wherever Elliot lingered behind John, over his shoulders. His brother stared at Elliot for a moment; there was something in the way Joseph locked his gaze on the blonde that made John’s stomach twist uncomfortably, and he couldn’t quite pin it down, either, couldn’t get it to stop squirming long enough for him to figure out what it was.

“And yet,” Joseph said after a moment, his voice a low drawl as his hands dropped from John, “you are here, unburdened.”

John turned to look at Elliot. She still had to be in pain; she might have been trying to hide it, because of Joseph, or maybe even still because of him , but he could see it on her face, in the way her fingers curled and uncurled themselves absently, absently digging her nails into her palms. But this little give-away of hers meant nothing to anyone else, because the lines of her face were sharp and unrelenting.

Elliot’s gaze did not once leave Joseph. John recognized on her face that same odd, cold calculation she’d had when she’d thought about choking that Eden’s Gate guard out. If there was, he supposed, one person that Elliot hated more than himself, it was Joseph; perhaps she was thinking about all of the ways she wanted to kill him , now.

“Well, coincidental, we were on our way to you , Joseph. There’s now a problem one size bigger than your little cult.” Elliot said, her shoulders relaxing. She crested the hill up to the road, her feet hitting the pavement with more surety than she’d had since she’d woken up. It was like seeing someone that she hated had poured adrenaline straight into her body, and now she moved with the same precision she always did—though if the weariness in her expression was any indication, she was only half capacity. “How lucky .”

Joseph gazed at Elliot, as though John didn’t exist—as though no-one and nothing else existed, in that moment, except for her. John’s stomach lurched again, once more, with feeling! a wicked voice shouted in his brain, rattling around, keeping him nice and distracted so that he couldn’t figure out quite what it was that it made him feel.

“Fated,” Joseph agreed. His voice was almost sly. “One could say.”

“One could,” Elliot shot back, “but one shouldn’t, if they don’t want to sound like an idiot.” The words shot a jolt of fearful anticipation through John—not only because he thought, Joseph is only so merciful , but because he was sure that it reflected back on him, the way she felt so comfortable insulting Joseph.

“Deputy,” John snapped, and she glared at him, her brows knitting together at the center of her forehead. Joseph smiled pleasantly.

“Mouthy,” Jacob said from the truck, his voice clipped, “for someone who wants our help.”

Elliot bit out venomously, “Fuck you,” just as John said, “ Elliot ,” their voices overlapping furiously, and she looked at him again. There was something accusatory in her gaze. John wanted to pluck it out of her, break it apart so he could figure it out: but there wasn’t any time for that now.

Her hands curled into fists at her sides, like she was going to fight Jacob right then and there, and John wasn’t entirely sure that she wouldn’t, pushed enough. He turned back to his brothers and said, “She’s agreed to help and get Faith back.”

“Not for nothing.” Elliot’s add-in was sharp. “I get to use the radios to contact the resistance and tell them to get the fuck out of Dodge.”

Joseph’s gaze fluttered between them, just for a moment—landing on Elliot for a heartbeat longer than it did on John—and then he stepped back, gesturing for them to get into the back seat of the truck. The blonde stepped on without John, brushing past him and flinging the door of the truck open before hoisting herself inside.

“How much do you know?” John asked as he climbed in after Elliot, shoving the backpack behind one of the seats. He tried not to think about the way Elliot’s eyes stayed pinned on Joseph, or the way her body had gone rigid, like at any moment she was ready to throw her fists in the direction of the nearest Seed brother—and certainly now, she had her pick if that were the case.

“Enough,” Joseph replied. He closed the passenger seat door and Jacob pulled the steering wheel of the truck until it was turning around. “But I’m certain you’ll be of more help.”

John opened his mouth to elaborate and give what information he had at the top of his brain when Elliot said, abruptly and without pretense, “You’ve come so unguarded, Joseph. Doesn’t that make you nervous?” and John turned his head to stare at her in disbelief.

Fucking insane, he thought. She wants to die. Does she ever stop?

But Joseph only laughed. Through the rearview mirror, John saw his eyes make contact with Elliot’s, and he said, “Jacob is sufficient protection on his own.” He paused, something slick and cool in his voice when he added, “But your concern is touching .”

“That’s an interesting choice of word. Not what I would have picked, though.”

“When we heard the radio chatter,” Jacob interrupted, before John could will himself to tell Elliot to shut the fuck up while he was still within hitting range, “Joseph told everyone to hunker down while we identified the threat. For once, it wasn’t a little girl playing with a shotgun.”

The accusation lay there, unspoken: Jacob had made it clear many times that he was certain he could snuff Elliot out faster than anyone else, either deeming her useless or shaping her into the perfect killer. If Joseph would just let him, he’d said, he would see.

But Joseph had told him to wait. To let John—persuasion was his specialty. Let John show us.

And John didn’t miss the way that his brother said it; Joseph told everyone. An opinion had been overruled, and it wasn’t Joseph’s, and Jacob hadn’t forgotten.

Elliot’s mouth opened, rearing up to say something; the indignation had been lit in her gaze, furious. He would have been comforted that she was back to normal—no longer trembling, no longer somewhere far away from him—but he knew that Jacob had much less tolerant than Joseph did.

“I grabbed the cigarettes from the van,” John said tartly, before she could get going. “Smoke one.”

The unspoken words lingered. Chill the fuck out. Occupy your mouth with something else. Something that John didn’t think he’d say to her, out loud, unless he was feeling particularly confident that she wouldn’t strangle him to death in front of his brothers.

“Good thinking, honey ,” Elliot drawled. His eyes narrowed at her. She stuffed her hand into the backpack, searching until she found them. The blonde only looked mildly surprised through her rage that they were actually there.

When she rolled down the window and lit it, John relaxed a little and continued, “We’ve had a run-in with their leader. They’re armed and organized.”

Elliot stayed quiet. She settled back against the seat, deep into the corner of it, closest to the window, as though she couldn’t stand how close to them all she was, and took a long drag of the cigarette. The orange end of it burned until it was a sunspot in his vision.

John’s gaze drifted over her for a moment. Still, she wouldn’t look at him; she only spared him furtive glances through the corner of her eye, but never met his gaze, never going farther than his mouth.

“Ah.” Joseph’s gaze remained fixed on the road, his voice interrupting John’s thoughts. “So there’s now one more breed of locusts in our garden, it seems. Easy enough to exterminate, I think.”

“And how, pray tell,” Elliot asked, her voice sly, “do you plan to get rid of a new breed when you can’t even get rid of the old one?”

Jacob’s fingers tightened and flexed on the steering wheel. John could see a small smile tick the corner of Joseph’s mouth.

“If you get one flat foot on the devil’s wing,” Joseph replied, “you can get him to do just about anything you want.”

#far cry 5 #john seed/deputy #john seed/ofc #fc5 #my writing #fic: ancient names #ch: elliot honeysett #ch: john seed #but WHERE IS BOOMER #I SAY #THE AUTHOR #also like 2 instances very close together of john looking at elliot and joseph wanting to kill each other but ignoring him at the same time #and going #*hmmmmmm*#*don't like that*#so you know #idk what's even going on anymore i'm just in this wild ride with yall

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yugkapildev-blog · 4 years

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Top 07: Best Video Editing Software For Beginner

If video isn’t already an important part of your content marketing strategy, odds are it’s about to be. Web content is taking a turn toward video whether SEOs and content marketers like it or not. Nearly 50% of marketers are adding YouTube and Facebook channels for video distribution in the next year; one-third of online activity is spent watching the video, and video itself is projected to account for more than 80% of all internet traffic by 2019. 80%!

For those looking to continue to grow their organic traffic, that means one thing:

Not an expert? Don’t know how to edit videos, have a video studio, or have a bona fide video specialist to shoot and cut your features? That’s alright! The goal of today’s blog is to show you that with the right video editing software, you too can churn out sleek, professional video content—regardless of experience—and keep your content strategy ahead of the curve.

Let’s dive in! Here are our recs for the top 10 best pieces of video editing software or video editing apps for beginners—from cheapest (i.e. free!) to most expensive

01 apple imovie

so to those of you working with PCs, this one won’t really apply; but we’d remiss to leave it off the list. If you’re looking for simplicity and elegance, it doesn’t get much better than Apple iMovie. iMovie’s ten high-fidelity filters are some of the classiest in the video editing game; and if you’re shooting on your iPhone, or have been editing a project on your iPad, you can use AirDrop to wirelessly and seamlessly transfer your project over to your Mac. One of iMovie’s most coveted features is its green-screen, or “chroma-key” tool, which allows you to place your characters in exotic locations—Hawaii, say—at a moment’s notice. Want to overlay the scene with “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”? iMovie ties directly in with iTunes and GarageBand, so you can easily implement custom tracks and sounds. When your movie’s finally ready to ship, release it into the wild using iMessage, Facebook, YouTube, or any other of iMovie’s succinctly connected platforms. Standout Features: Seamless Apple product integration; green-screen; audio and social platform integration

02 Lumen5

How to Edit Videos Without Much Technical Ability We’ll put this more in the category of a video editing “tool” than video editing software, but for social media marketers who want to create fun, flashy social promos in the blink of an eye, Lumen5 is a no brainer. Here’s a short little feature we made for a recent blog postLumen5 markets itself as a tool that turns blog posts into social promos. While the process isn’t perfect, and you’ll likely have to do some tinkering to get your blog content looking just the way you want it, the rest of the video creation process is a cinch. Merely refine some copy that teases your blog post; drag and drop some gifs, screengrabs, or video clips; add some music, and your engaging social video will be ripe for Facebook and Twitter. Standout Features: Blog-to-social-promo creation; drag-and-drop interface Pricing: Create as many 480p videos as you want with the free version; or, for $50 per month, upgrade to 1080p HD. 3. Nero Video One of the cheaper options around ($49.99), Nero Video holds its own on this list—it comes well-stocked with a lot of the tricks and effects you’ll find among other products vying for video editing supremacy, and as far as software for beginners, you can certainly do worse. If you’re going to spend money learning how to edit videos, however, you might want to steer clear. Nero just doesn’t have the speed and functionality of some of the other products listed here, and if it’s value proposition is its price, $50 is still not all that cheap.

03. Corel VideoStudio

VideoStudio has all the characteristics of the other top-of-the-line products on this list, including 360-degree VR and 4k support, but it also has the distinction of being the first piece of consumer video editing software to offer motion tracking—which, if you’re not already familiar, is a feature that allows you to track specific objects throughout your cut (if you wanted, say, to point an arrow at one of your characters, blur out his face, or bestow him with a funny hat). Most of the products on this list come equipped with motion tracking, but VideoStudio still boasts one of the best motion tracking systems around. One of the knocks on VideoStudio is its speed, which lags notably behind some of the faster systems on this list, like CyberLink PowerDirector and Pinnacle Studio. Still: for a one-time payment of $51.99? You can do much worse. Standout Features: Motion tracking Pricing: One-time payment of $51.99 5. Filmora from Wondershare When it comes to free video editing software, Filmora is about as multi-faceted as they come. Filmora is Wondershare’s standard, simple, high-quality video editing offering; but Wondershare also offers FilmoraGo (for mobile editing) and Filmora Scrn (for screen recording and editing). The design is intuitive and easy to use and comes replete with filters, overlays, motion elements, transitions, and a small selection of royalty-free music. Here are a few more of the “basics” Filmora offers: 4k and gif support are boilerplate features for most video editing products today, but one thing Filmora does particularly well is titles. Title tools are trending in video software, and while Filmora’s doesn’t have the functionality of say, an Apple Final Cut Pro X, which can superimpose 3D titles over your videos and rotate them on three axes, it nonetheless has some snazzy titling features for the money you’re spending. Another Filmora feature beginners to video editing will find attractive is “Easy Mode,” which allows you to create fun, polished edits by merely dragging and dropping clips, choosing a theme, and selecting music. Standout features: Title tool; mobile and screen editing; “Easy Mode” Pricing: Starts at $59.99 for a lifetime license; or, $39.99 for a year.

04. CyberLink PowerDirector

we stretched the meaning of “software” a bit earlier; now, we’re going to stretch the meaning of “beginner.” We included CyberLink PowerDirector on this list because its interface is, at the end of the day, pretty straightforward. Head to the product page, run through the tutorials, and you’ll be alright. There is within the interface, however, an embarrassment of options and effects. If you’re not willing to invest the time in learning all of them, it can get a bit overwhelming. In terms of rendering, PowerDirector is regarded as one of the fastest video editing systems around. It also operates consistently in the sphere of the innovative and cutting edge. PowerDirector led the charge in the switch to 4k, and today, it’s one of the first systems to support 360-degree virtual reality footage. Price: you get what you pay for! $79.99 gets you unlimited access to one of the most capable pieces of video editing software around. Standout Features: Lightning-fast rendering; the comprehensive suite of effects Pricing: One-time payment of $79.99 Adobe Premiere Elements We include Premiere Elements on the list mostly because it’s been an industry leader in the video editing game for some time. And $79.99 is not egregious, but we’re here to say that at that price, you’re mostly paying for the name. In the time since Premiere Elements’ inception, too many other products have surpassed it in speed and capability for us to place it among the cream of the crop. That’s to take nothing away from Premiere Elements’ usability, though—specifically for beginners. The Guided Edits feature makes Adobe Premiere a particularly attractive option for beginners, as it allows them to take on both quick edits and advanced projects with substantial assistance from the software. So while Premiere Elements lags behind the competition in terms of speed, 3D editing, multi-cam, and some other advanced features, it’s still a great choice for the beginner looking for a comprehensive suite of effects, and some guidance on how to implement them. Standout Features: Guided Edits; simple interface Pricing: One-time payment of $79.99 8.

05. Pinnacle Studio

At the higher end of the Corel product line is Pinnacle Studio—which, at $129.95 (the amount you’ll need to pay to edit 360-degree and 4k content with the “Ultimate” version), costs more than twice as much as VideoStudio. What do you get for the extra money? Well, not only does Pinnacle come readily equipped with all the features you’d expect from an upper-echelon product—motion tracking, 360-degree VR support, 4k support, multi-cam, etc.—but you’d be hard-pressed to find a faster product on the market in terms of rendering. For all of its features, Pinnacle’s interface is still as user-friendly and intuitive as anything on this list. Thus, is you have the need for speed, and you don’t mind shelling out a few extra bucks for it, Pinnacle might be the product for you. Standout Features: Top-of-the-line rendering speeds; a full range of features and support Pricing: One-time payment of $129.95

06. Adobe Premiere

Pro With a virtually unmatched suite of features, 360 VR and 4k support, and a newly implemented ability to store, organize, and share assets online with a team, Adobe Premiere Pro is perhaps the most complete piece of video editing software around. Here’s a recent video promo for our free AdWords account structure guide we cut using Premiere Pro. One of the more dazzling of Premiere Pro’s tools is the Lumetri Color tool, which offers color adjustment and manipulation on a par with that of Photoshop. The multi-cam feature is also a winner—whereas most systems allow you to work with a limited number of camera angles, Premiere Pro’s latest iteration allows for an unlimited amount. Throw in a wealth of titling options, readily connected ancillary apps (like Photoshop and After Effects), and a flexible, easy-to-use interface, and Premiere Pro is a no brainer. Standout Features: Multi-cam and coloring options; title tool; easy integration with Adobe Products; straightforward interface Pricing: $19.99/month

07. Apple Final Cut Pro X

For the most advanced, least fiscally prudent of beginners, there’s Apple Final Cut Pro X. $299.99 might be a little steep for a product you may well have a difficult time understanding; but for those among you who enjoy a challenge, and who aspire to some level of professionalism in video editing, why not go for it? Apple has made the transition from iMovie to Final Cut Pro more painless than ever—so if you’re the kind of guy or gal who enjoys him/herself an Apple product, and has worked with iMovie to the point of mastery, it might be time to splurge on Final Cut Pro. The power is still daunting; the interface, significantly less so. Standout Features: Magnetic Timeline; Touch Bar support Pricing: One-time payment of $299.99 Some Final Thoughts Are you content or social media marketer looking to get in the video editing game for the sake of keeping up with the growing video trend? Don’t stress! Any of the above software apps would make a fine choice for a beginner. Think about your budget, your current level of expertise, and how much time you’re willing to devote to learning a new skill. Whether you're looking for the best video editing software for YouTube or the responsibility has simply fallen on you to get your team’s video marketing strategy up to snuff—don’t wait around deliberating! Get invested in one of these video editing products, and make it yours.

#adobe premiere #apple final cut pro x #pinnacle studio #apple imovie #lumen5

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kitashiwrites · 7 years

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I'm sorry my post was really aggressive. I still stand by my point that it ISN'T fair to dismiss Mor's romantic feelings (or lack thereof) towards Az, but how I acted was really awful. You don't have to post this publicly, but I hope you know I'm very sorry. My intention wasn't to try to start drama, but just receive an explanation over WHY you still ship Moriel. My way of going about it was TERRIBLE. I know sorry is just a word, but I'M SORRY.

2/2 I didn’t send you three asks. I only sent you one? Just to clear that up.3/3 I also didn’t send more than one ask. :/

Okay Anon. While I find it extremely hard to believe because of the timing (especially because for as long as I have been on here, I have RARELY gotten asks, let alone 3 in such quick succession that are so similar), as well as the fact that you clearly don’t stand behind your words because you felt the need to do this all on anon/have to make sure we know that you still think we are wrong, I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt & accept your apology.In regards to your question, why I still ship Moriel, @sarahviehmann honestly said it best in her original answer to you: “ACOMAF was written in a way that intended for them to be shipped. So those people spent a year building up their fanon and meta and so forth, only to have the rug pulled out from under them.”

(For the sake of everyone, I’m putting this under a cut. It got way long.)

I hated ACOWAR. I’ve made no secret of that. I’ve also made no secret as to WHY. I’ve been writing fic for this series for over a year, & heavily focused on ACOMAF. I started when there were literally 7 fics posted to Ao3. Basically all of my free time at home & all of my breaks at work were spent either writing fic, discussing the series/meta with people here/talking my poor friends’ ears off over dinner, or planning fic for characters I wanted to explore in POV fics like Rhys, Tamlin, & Tarquin. Hell, I still have a 10 chapter Amarantha POV pre-ACOTAR through ACOTAR fic that’s over half written at 16k that I originally wanted to try as a surprise for my readers. I read ACOMAF enough times that I honestly would have said that I knew those characters as well as my own family, knew exactly what happened in which chapters, & got many comments here & on Ao3 from people who felt I’d captured the characters correctly, so I felt pretty good about what to expect going forward.

When ACOWAR spoilers came out, absolutely nothing made sense with what we knew or had been prior established canon. Most of all in regards to Mor, Rhys, Feyre, & Lucien, but I’m going to specifically focus on Mor, since she’s at the crux of the issue at hand. In Mor’s case, we took a woman who is described in ACOMAF as “a queen who owned her body, her life, her destiny, and never apologized for it” & says to Feyre, “I once lived in a place where the opinion of others mattered. It suffocated me, nearly broke me. So you’ll understand me, Feyre, when I say that I know what you feel, and I know what they tried to do to you, and that with enough courage, you can say to hell with a reputation. You do what you love, what you need”, & in ACOWAR made her a victim in circumstances that make absolutely no sense for the character we had known up until that date. Queen of the Hewn City? She wasn’t even treated with enough respect to be prepared to go into a meeting with her abusers, let alone shown that she is in charge. The first real female friend Feyre has ever had? Regulated to acting like a jealous girlfriend around Cassian whenever Nesta got too close. And speaking of Cassian, it was pointed out in another post (I’m sorry I don’t have the link right now) that the Cassian & Mor moments read like they were originally Az & Mor moments & were hastily changed when suddenly they weren’t supposed to be even friends. Nothing in this book read like it had been edited for continuity.

There are many bloggers who are far more qualified than I am to speak on Mor’s coming out scene, & while there was a divide, there were quite a few I know & follow who felt it was poorly written/bad rep, & I agree with their reasoning. Besides the fact that I don’t believe for one dang second that no one in the Inner Circle at a minimum would have picked up on something bothering Mor in 500 years or that she wouldn’t have at least told them even if she hid everything from Keir, there is the fact of Azriel. Azriel is in love with her, no disputing it. But it is mentioned by Rhys that Az has always thought himself unworthy of her, & Mor says that she could take her clothes off in front of him & he wouldn’t do anything. Does that sound like someone who is trying to avoid him because she isn’t interested, or someone who is creepily stalking her? In the Nessian short Wings & Embers, Cassian speaks on their relationship as well: “He wasn’t stupid. He knew she and Azriel were … whatever they were. Knew Azriel had been in love with Mor from the moment she’d strutted into the war-camp five centuries ago. And Cassian had been jealous—of Mor’s shy glances at Azriel in those first few weeks, and the fact that his dearest friend and brother … was looking at someone else.”

I’m not going to rehash Wings & Embers or ACOMAF for you. But as Sarah said, it was clearly written with them as a ship in mind, & this is from the POV of a character that has known them since the beginning, not just a few months like Feyre.

Why I still ship Moriel at this point? Because I ship it in any form. I love her & Az together period, even as friends. This ship was one of the ways @illyriantremors & I bonded originally, before we found out how much else we had in common & she became as good as a biological sister to me (I call her my Threadsister for a reason), because we shipped it back in the beginning before there was really any fic for it because it was overshadowed by Feysand, Nessian, & Elucien. Moriel was our Nessian; the unconfirmed side-ship with so much potential & evidence to back it up. When Sierra met SJM at San Diego Comic Con last summer, SJM dedicated Sierra’s copy of ACOMAF to Moriel. Why the af would an author do that if they planned to destroy a ship in the next book from the beginning?

We still love Moriel because it is hard to let go of something you’ve loved that much after you’ve been strung along & then had the rug pulled out from under you with no actual basis in ACOMAF to say “oh, it was there all along”; like when rereading ACOTAR through the ACOMAF filter, as I like to say to people, & seeing the clues that were left to the deeper story for Rhys. For me, those were not in ACOMAF upon reading it again after ACOWAR. I noticed you using my tags in your defense of yourself to Sarah regarding why I wanted to ignore ACOWAR &, by your interpretation, erase Mor’s sexuality. If you had read any of my blog at all after ACOWAR, you would have read that isn’t true, but I’ll spell it out for you: I want to ignore ACOWAR & what it did to my favorite characters’ personalities/their interactions with each other. I want to forget that Mor’s agency was taken away from her & that she was regulated to a plot twist. I want to forget that Az has been made out to be a creepy stalker. I want to forget Rhys treating Mor like she would be too emotional to deal with the negotiations with Kier & Eris & so he & Az didn’t tell her. I want to forget Feyre using Lucien to make Tamlin jealous in the Spring Court while she dismantled it from within & putting him in danger. And so much more.

I personally hate the book for multiple reasons, ranging everywhere from inconsistent characterization to grammar/editing issues. But I’m stuck with the facts it gave us, which is why writing fic is so hard to even consider anymore. It made everything about the series, not just Mor & Az, something I no longer can love with the intensity I once did, & the fandom diminishes that love more & more everyday with their bullying of people for not believing exactly the way they do, which is exactly what you contributed to when you sent those asks to myself & Sierra. And honestly, I couldn’t care less what you think of me. But if you had even looked at one of Sierra’s actual written posts/answers to asks—just one—you would have seen how quiet she’s been about her love for them as a ship & how determined she’s been to not to offend people while she’s been trying to come to terms with losing something that has been a lifesaver for her, to the point she has mostly stopped contributing to the fandom at all. She posted two Moriel drabbles during her birthday week because she was inspired by the Azriel candle I got her for her birthday, & as she said to you in her response to your original message, they were her way of saying farewell to Moriel. And guess what: even though it isn’t canon, people liked them.

I view Mor as bi, & if she’s given a healthy, happy female love interest in a future installment, then awesome. I want Moriel at least as close friends because I genuinely don’t think Az (at least the one from ACOMAF that actually made sense) would begrudge her if he knew the truth. Would he be sad? Sure, but I think he would support her nonetheless, just as the rest of the Inner Circle would. But I have absolutely no faith that SJM will give Mor anything good because she can milk the drama and turmoil she’s created, & I have no desire to see the characters & ships (across the board) I have loved so much destroyed any further.

I think @my-name-is-fireheart put it perfectly in her chime in on Sarah’s post: “Also, we should keep in mind that Mor expresses sexual attraction to men, she just prefers women. How she feels about men romantically is also blurred, though it’s slightly more clear. She says she doesn’t think she loves Az romantically but she doesn’t want to try it just to see.” SJM didn’t even know how to break her own ship apart properly to fit what you suggested, which is a good chunk of why we are even having this discussion right now.

I know Moriel is no longer canon. Cazigan (Cassian/Azriel/Mor) isn’t canon either, but I still love that. I have enjoyed their interactions with each other more than anything else since they were introduced in ACOMAF. The entire Inner Circle made me so happy for their closeness & how much of a family they were. I feel for a plot twist & a couple extra Benjamin Franklins, SJM destroyed everything that made one of my favorite characters in the entire series who she was (a strong, independent woman who didn’t let her circumstances break her & showed Feyre how not to let hers break her) & made her a poor caricature of herself, & made Az something he never has been before either because SJM hastily had to make her new & poorly executed addition work.

I shouldn’t be surprised though. This is the woman who attempted to retcon Eris of all characters into a decent person. And also took away any modicum of being able to read Tamlin as the multifaceted antagonist he had been & just turned him into a completely hateful ass with no loyalty to anyone to further drive home how perfect Rhys is supposed to be (which he definitely is not in ACOWAR, & I say that as someone who loved the morally grey character of Rhys).

TL;DR I ship Mor with Az in any form, even as friends, Mor being bi is not an issue, & I have lost all respect for SJM as an author after ACOWAR for giving us a poorly written/poorly edited product after the anticipation/hype this book had. Make of that what you will; I don’t care. I’m out of effs to give, & your ask & the other Az one I received, no matter who it was from or what your intentions were, pretty much tipped the scale in favor of me wanting to step back even further & have nothing to do with this fandom ever again.

I would ask that next time you think you have a problem with someone (because I doubt Sierra & I will be the last people you do this to), please think about how it comes across & think about your target. Your original ask was terribly hateful, & there is no amount of apology that can take that hurt away. And you would be amazed how far a little kindness & grace when asking a question instead of an accusatory message can go.

This explanation is more than you probably bargained for when you started this yesterday, but that’s the last I’ll say on any of this.

#kitashianswers #Anon Answers #Moriel #Mor deserved better #Az deserved better #anti-SJM #anti-acowar #long post #sorry to my followers #discourse & meta aren't my thing #but seriously #sending hateful messages to people is never the answer #especially on anon

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artificialqueens · 7 years

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Katya and The Space Barbie (Trixya)- Squeaky

Number one reason not to buy a sex doll from a sketchy, space shop— she might come to life.

(AN: really short, smutty one shot)

The galaxy is infinite, and Katya’s horny.

Those two thoughts aren’t related, but they occur to her at the same time. The spaceship is lightly vibrating because Katya’s running low on fuel; the vibrations aren’t helping her growing state of arousal. In fact, it’s getting harder and harder to think. The safety straps around her waist and chest are tight, and the reminder of how she’s strapped down makes her squirm against the hard leather.

Katya’s sure she took a left turn at the milky way before hitting accelerate. Or…did she? The directions blur together, and her navigation system took a hit. How am I going to make it back to Mother Ship now? Ask?!

“Uh, this is Captain Zamo from Sputnik reporting in to Headquarters. I’m operating a craft without navigation. Do you copy? Over?”

“Yes, I copy. Are you lost, Captain Obvious? Over.”

Katya internally groans at the sarcastic drawl of Alaska’s voice. Great, if she wanted a tongue lashing, she’d have dialed up her mother. Now, she needs to ask for Alaska Thunder’s help. God, there had never been any other girl at Ru’s Space Academy who gave her shit like Alaska.

“I’m not lost, ‘Lasky, just not…spatially coordinated. Over.”

“That’s the definition of lost. Over.”

“I’m lost when I say I’m lost, which I’m not. Lost that is. And aren’t we all existentially lost in the scale of this never ending universe splattered with stars and sperm? Over.”

Silence.

Katya sighs and presses the voice command: “I’m lost.”

“I’ll see what I can do, Captain. Hmmm….says here you’re approaching Planet Booberella. I’m sure you’ve been there before? Over.”

“Never,” Katya lies and then flushes as she realizes she forgot to say ‘over.’

Wow, way to be obvious, Katya.

“Well, I’m sure there’s a, uh, first time for everything. Pull over for fuel and directions. Over.”

She types in the coordinates for Planet Booberella. It’s infamous for well…boobs and bombs. The women and men there are just as likely to blow you for a copper piece as they are to blow you to pieces for the wrong word.

Katya hesitates before pressing the intercom: “Bets on if I’ll get fucked or sold into space slavery? Over.”

“Bet you’ll meet an alien girl and fuck her over so bad she’ll sell herself. Conversation- OVER.”

Katya bites her lip.

Is Alaska still mad about that whole date thing? Probably. They’d ditched the food and went straight back to her Cube for ‘dessert.’ Katya remembers how she’d pushed Alaska onto her knees. God, Alaska looked so pretty, still in her spandex uniform, with her face buried between Katya’s thighs. They’d fucked on the bed and couch and table. Alaska had come apart so easily under her fingertips. While Katya hasn’t been back to her Cube in months, she bet that Alaska’s ripped up uniform is still there.

“Thanks for the help, Coordinator Thunder. Any chance for another dinner when I get back? I can’t cook, but I could microwave us some popcorn…think about it? Watch the Cult Classic Contact? Over.”

Silence.

Well, losing friends and herself in space is kind of Katya’s specialty. Sputnik’s sput-sputtering down, and Katya’s not going to bother legally landing. She zooms down to one of the Black Market Pods to get herself situated in Tittington. Fuck, why is this whole planet a bad sex pun? It’s the biggest joke in the cosmos.

Katya jumps out, breasts bouncing in her shiny suit. It’s skin tight. Just the way that she likes it. All five of the mechanic’s eyes trail down to her chest as she slides him her platinum card.

“Oi, I’d be careful going out with ‘em bullets on yer chest,” he drawls.

“You want one less eye, huh?” Katya asks as she runs her hand down her thigh to grab her lazor gun and then presses it to his throat.

The mechanic puts his webbed hands up: “Peace, peace. I’ll be done refueling and patching up in an hour. Looks like the engine’s on its last leg.”

“Do a good job, and I’ll give you a tip,” she promises, and Katya regrets her words as soon as she turns. She can feel all five eyes against the curve of her ass. Katya leaves in a huff. Doesn’t anyone in this galaxy have a heart?

“Hearts! Hearts for sale! Buy three and get a kidney for free!” An old lady, porous skin covered in green ooze, wheezes up at Katya.

She flinches. Ugh, it’s like Miss. Fame used to say back at the Academy- ask and the universe will give.

Katya amuses herself by stopping by a hologram store and flipping through the intergalactic net. She gained six new followers on her travel blog. Then Katya goes next to the local, seedy sex shop.

It’s full of gadgets and gizmos that have been scattered all over and somehow filtered down here. The shopkeeper, a cute drag queen named Violet, winks at her when she enters. They’d met and fucked the first time she’d got here, and Katya had never been held down so tightly or fucked so thoroughly as she had with Violet. Katya leans against the counter-

“So what you got in stock, V?”

“Oh, possessed butt plugs, ancient dildos, and…I shouldn’t be showing you this but…” Violet bounces to the back and comes back with what looks like a Barbie Doll box. Katya’s spent enough years in her childhood watching reruns to recognize it. But what’s it doing in a place like this?

“I’ve heard of a lot of fetishes, doll…but never any involving barbie dolls?”

Katya takes the package in her hands. This doll has big blonde hair up in a pigtail and a Judy Jetson hooker-like costume. What is even supposed to be? A flight attendant? Katya turns the box over and reads ’Here To Satisfy Your Wildest Fantasy- it’s Trixie! Your favorite sex Barbie proves that life in plastic IS really fantastic.’

“It’s small for travel convenience,“ Violet explains. “But press the button in the back, and it blows up. She’s got interchangeable parts for maximum pleasure- since Barbies don’t have any. I just got it in stock, so I don’t know what the reviews are.”

“So I’m like…your test rat?”

“Mm, more like a sexual experiment,” Violet says with a wink.

Katya is horny, but she’s never tried out a sex doll before. From what’s heard of online, they usually come with a remote control, but the Trixie doll doesn’t have any.

Violet puts her hands on Katya’s: “What do you say? Buy it now, leave me a sweet review on Yelp, and I’ll give you 50% discount, Kat.”

Katya does like the novelty of getting a souvenir from Booberella. Maybe Alaska will get a laugh out of it too…if she ever speaks to her again.

“You know what? I’ll take it."

Katya pulls out a couple gold coins from her back pocket. She’s glad Booberella is part of the galactic union. It makes buying sex toys all the more convenient. Violet bites down to check that they’re not fools gold and then sends her off with a wink.

Katya’s pleased to see that five-eyed-creep has taken good care of her Sputnik. He leers at her and then the doll pressed up to her chest. God, I’m horny but not blind.

She salutes the planet with a middle finger as she zooms off.

Then she’s back on course for the Mother Ship. Katya sets the ships destination and leaves it for auto pilot. She’s still tightly strapped into her seat as she swivels her chair around to inspect the doll she bought. Katya gently runs her hands across the plastic casing.

"Hello, there, Trixie,” she whispers. “Now, let’s see how you look outta the box.”

Katya tries to be neat, but she ends up tearing it open. Looks like a Barbie that she saw in the kiddie holograms. She never had one when she was little, so Katya takes a moment to run her hands through her soft, blonde hair. Skin’s tight and plastic. Katya flips up the white skirt, but it’s smooth- neither cunt nor cock to be seen.

She undoes the velcro of the back of doll’s dress to find a switch. It’s OFF right now. Does she really want to do this? Maybe just to say that she tried it.

Katya slowly undoes her seat belt, sucks in her breathe, and presses ON.

There’s a mechanical 'whirring,’ and the doll gets so hot in her hands Katya drops it.

Fuck!

There’s a bright white flash, smoke, and Katya’s bent over, coughing.

“Thank god someone got me out of that box,” comes a voice from the mist.

“W-who are you?”

“The voice of god- who the fuck do you think it is? I’m the sex doll you just bought and turned on. Though gods know why considering my line’s been recalled,” a humanoid figure parts the white. “Name’s Trixie. Mattel. Trixie Mattel.”

“Uh, Katya. Zamo. Captain of Sputnik and- what do you mean recalled?”

If Katya was low key aroused before, now her nipples are pressed against the tight latex of her uniform. Trixie’s got thighs like woah!, flirty eyes, and lips that should be illegal. There’s something eerily android-like about her movements, but the thought only turns Katya on more.

“Mhm, seller musta ripped you off.”

Fuck Violet.

“W-what do you mean? Are you broken?”

“Rude,” Trixie simpers as she stands between Katya’s spread legs. “I mean that’s why they say- our line is prone to uh…malfunctioning?”

“In what way?” she gasps as Trixie drapes herself on her lap. Katya runs a hand up her smooth thighs, admiring how shiny they are. When Trixie giggles, her silicone breasts bounce. They may be fake, but Katya really wants to slide her hands up and squeeze them. But even with Trixya leaning forward against her chest, Katya feels strangely shy. That’s new.

“We’re self conscious. Can pass the Turning Test. Hate to be turned off and put away….and,” Trixie dramatically pauses as she leans in. “Known to have something as horrible as feelings.”

“Are you telling me a planet called Booberella accidentally created sentient life before anyone else in the galaxy?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

“But,” Katya gulps as Trixie cups her face in her cold hands. “H-how’d you know all this? I just took you out of the box?”

Trixie’s lips are pressed up to Katya’s lips as she whispers, “This isn’t my first game of make believe.”

Of course Katya ends up with a sentient fucking sex toy. Trixie smirks at her horrified expression as she straddles her lap. Those thick thighs have a rubbery texture, and Katya’s not sure what to expect when Trixie impishly raises up her skirt. There’s…nothing?

“Tell me which you prefer,” Trixie demands. “I’m trying to follow the steps I was programmed with- one, assess owner. Two, satisfy needs.

"Both? Either? Uh….”

Trixie rolls her eyes: “Problem with assessing is when people don’t know what they want. Let’s start slow and then I’ll give you what you need, baby.”

Baby? The words make Katya flush and squeeze her legs together as Trixie pulls her in for a kiss. Her lips are glossy and soft. She tastes like cherry lip gloss. It doesn’t feel much different from kissing Alaska.

Trixie unzips her uniform, so Katya’s heavy breasts are revealed. Then her wet tongue is lapping at them. Katya squeaks and clenches at the sudden pleasure. Everything’s gone from 0 to 100 real quick. Trixie’s pink tongue slowly circles her nipples, and Katya flushes as she runs her hand through Trixie’s soft hair.

“A-ah, Trixie, fe-feels-”

“Good?” Trixie finishes for her, pulling back so a strand of saliva still connects her to Katya. “I’m state of the fucking art. Just filled with crippling, existential dread.”

Katya gasps- “Me too!”

Trixie tilts her head, confused, as she leans back. Her eyes are filled with a curiosity that doesn’t seem natural to the rest of her. Katya didn’t know what she expected, but it’s not this. This is straight out of a TV show. Straight out of a science fiction novel. Straight out of a poorly set up porno.

“So you don’t mind the idea that I’m filled with anxiety and neurosis and could disobey you? Put you over my knee and spank you just because I wanted?”

Katya bites her bottom lip and gasps, “S-sounds kinky to me.”

Trixie smirks: “You’re a fun one, huh?”

Then she sinks down onto her knees, and Katya hasn’t had anyone since Alaska. So the sudden tickle of Trixie’s fingertips against her still covered thighs makes her gasp. Katya’s wriggles out of her uniform, flushing under Trixie’s eyes. She’s not wearing any underwear.

“Such a good little captain, aren’t you?” Trixie demurs as she presses a fleeting kiss right above Katya’s wet desire. She’s been on space Odyssey for a month, so she’s not as neatly shaved as she’d like to be. But Trixie doesn’t seem to mind. Why would she?

“Oh, so how do I, uh-”

“Open your legs,” Trixie orders with a snap of her fingers.

Fuck. Katya’s eyes flutter at the direct command, and it sends a sudden shiver up her spine. She loves to be told what to do like that. She’s always commanding her ship, so it’s nice to have someone else take the control away from her. Katya never thought a recalled barbie doll would be the one to do it for her.

Then Trixie’s burying her blonde head between Katya’s thighs. Her tongue’s lapping at Katya’s wet folds. She whimpers. Katya runs her hands through Trixie’s hair again, and, wow, this feels real. It is real, isn’t it?

“I-I’ve ne-never met someone like you,” Katya gasps.

“You’re not really the type who usually buys a sex toy.”

“I’m glad I did,” Katya admits, flushing at the vulnerability, as Trixie looks up at her through her long lashes. The wetness of Trixie’s tongue has her leaking all over her Captain’s chair. Her toes curl in her space boots, waiting for more.

“Your better than the last one,” Trixie says, and her eyes are softer than before. She leans up to press a kiss against Katya’s lips. She squirms in her seat, and Katya needs something more.

“Trixie,” Katya gasps, unsure what’s she even asking for.

“Shhh, I got'chu, baby,” Trixie whispers.

There’s a soft whirring and when Trixie lifts up her skirt again, there’s a toy strap there. Katya wants to try out all her functions, but she bites her lip at the sight of the phallic toy. Trixie roughly pushes her around, so Katya’s turned and pressed up to her chair. She holds the safety straps, arching her back in anticipation.

Then Trixie’s pushing inside of her, and Katya mewls in pleasure. She’s been on edge, humming with low arousal all day. Finally, Trixie’s got a hand wrapped in her hair and is moving into her just like she needs.

“There you go, Captain Zamo,” Trixie whispers in her ear as she fucks her, speeding up her pace.

“A-ah,” Katya moans.

It’s the position in her chair, and the way Trixie’s pulling her hair as she fucks her that pushes Katya over the edge. With a whimper, Katya squeezes her thighs together. The liquid spills down her shaking thighs.

Oh, god, she loves how helpless she is.

Trixie pulls out of her and whispers: “Again, Captain?”

“F-fuck yeah.”

Katya’s horny, and the universe is so wonderful. This is exactly what she wanted.

#katya zamolodchikova #trixie mattel #trixya #au #oneshot #cis!katya #doll!trixie #space foolishness #lesbian au #squeaky #rpdr fanfiction #submission #smut #katya and the space barbie

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leonawriter · 7 years

Text

The Blade of Marmora Will Be With You

Read it on AO3

Fandom: Voltron: Legendary Defender

Characters: Shiro, Keith. Also: Antok and Kolivan.

Pairings: None yet.

Summary: When Ulaz said those words to Shiro, they were meant to be taken literally. As time goes on, however, Keith finds being the only Galra - even one disguised as a human - in a group dedicated to taking out the Galran Empire, with two of the last Alteans in existence on board, a bit more difficult than he'd planned.

...

The last thing Shiro knew before blacking out was pure panic, as well as frustration and fear at being restrained, seeing these people in masks and holding implements and being unable to not see purple even though he knew that their faces were pink, that of the voices he was hearing, some were even familiar, but no one was listening to him.

No one was taking him seriously.

There was a needle in his (human, organic) arm, and darkness enveloped him once again, despite his efforts to resist.

...

The first thing he knew when waking up once more, was that he wasn't bound.

This was always a good thing, his mind supplied, although that didn't necessarily mean that he was in a good situation. He tried to follow the thought through, but the details eluded him.

After that, everything filtered through bit by bit - he could feel wind, on his face. There was sunlight shining on his face, not starlight. He was warm.

He opened his eyes, to see someone looking back. Familiar black hair, familiar red and yellow jacket. Familiar look of worry on his face.

Keith.

...

"It's good to have you back," Keith's saying.

They're stood outside, watching the sun rise, although he's having a hard time getting Keith to look him in the eye, for some reason. It almost reminds him of the time when he'd caught a hot-headeded kid being lectured again for starting a fistfight.

"It's good to be back."

He smiles for a moment, at the fact that he's back on Earth, that he's home, before realising that nothing was ever as simple as that. Earth was in danger. Imminent danger.

Keith's hand on his shoulder grounded him, however, to the here and now.

"What... happened, out there?" It almost looked as though Keith's eyes were searching for as many answers as he wished he had to give. "I had no idea where you were for so long, and then..."

"I wish I could tell you," he sighs out. He notices Keith blink at him from the corner of his eye, but he carries on. "But, my head's still pretty scrambled. There was an... alien ship, somehow I escaped. It's all a blur still."

Trying to think of anything more decisive than that comes up with an unhelpful and worrying blank in his memory. Keith, he notices, is now looking away, face scrunched up in a look of angry frustration he'd seen more than a few times before, but he hadn't a clue what the context would be in this situation.

"Right. Of course."

Then again, he had missed a good year of the kid's life. It could be anything. Or it could be nothing at all. Though knowing Keith, it was probably something.

"How did you know to find me, anyway?"

Keith sighs, and reaches around to bring out the knife that Shiro now remembers he's always carried with him - but now, like only a few other times he can remember, the hilt is uncovered, and the glowing symbol is clearly visible.

A symbol that Shiro remembers somehow.

He's seen one exactly like that, somewhere, at some point, before.

A knife or blade like that, which hadn't been on Earth.

"I was told someone would be crashing to Earth in a Galran pod, I just didn't know it'd be you," Keith's saying. "Do you... recognise this?"

He stares at it for a few moments longer, as though burning the symbol and the blade into his mind will help. Hoping it might trigger something off. And maybe it does, because the next thing he knows-

"The Blade of Marmora will be with you."

He shakes his head, trying to chase down the memory that the words come with, but everything is still a mess - he knows that they come with the escape, he knows that they're linked to how he was able to get into a pod in the first place. He knows that they are, somehow, linked to a blade just like the one Keith is holding right now.

He also knows that if someone had been in the position to do all of that, then they could not have been another prisoner - they had to have been a Galra.

Keith, meanwhile, is nodding, looking as though he's a lot more relaxed.

"Ulaz sent me a communication when he set the plan in motion to spring you free. He told me a pod would be coming to Earth, and to help them. I'm just happy it turned out to be you."

Ulaz. That's his name - the Galra who helped me. But then - this-

"But that doesn't make sense. Keith, I've known you for years. How could you possibly be in contact with aliens, let alone-

The ones who did this to me.

But if Keith and his memories were correct, then the Blade of Marmora - or whoever they were - hadn't done this to him at all. They'd helped him.

His head hurt.

"I... that's because I came to Earth not long before that. I'm not human, Shiro. But I promise, I'm not like them. The Blade and I - we're nothing like the Empire. I was sent to Earth as part of a mission. To stop the Empire from gaining even more power."

Sent on a mission? But we first met when you were thirteen!

He opened his mouth to protest, because that couldn't be right, but Keith's expression hardened suddenly for just a moment, and at the sight, he found that there was nothing he could say anymore.

"What kind of mission?"

Keith bit his lip, looking back at the run down shack everyone had stayed at for the night. He seemed torn between something, before finally giving in with a sigh and turning back to face Shiro.

"You should probably come look at this."

...

"See, Kethe? This is how you thrust. And this, the parry. Remember, you will always need to be able to both attack and defend yourself with your blade in both its short and long forms. Adjust for range. Again - show me how you do this again."

He did so. Again, and again. Until his arms ached, and his legs were sore. Until he could defend himself - or attack - when woken up and still only half asleep.

The Blade relied on vigilance and not letting anyone be left without the skills to stay alive at least until they could get out, get to safety, get free. Almost everyone was mission-ready - even the ones who would prefer not to.

Even the children.

It was war, after all. No one could beg for mercy or plead with the Empire to let them be. Some had even learned this firsthand. Like Kethe had, with his mother taken from him, and his father often gone on infiltration, hardly ever present.

"Victory," Antok told him as they worked on his letters, forming the shapes with a brush. It's an old tradition, putting down words without using technology, but it's also one that the Blade insisted on keeping alive. "It is something that as fighters, we strive for. But at the same time, we must also pick and choose what we deem a victory. Is it our blade in another, the fact that they are defeated? Or is it knowing that you are safe? Victory takes many forms."

He nods and listens, just as he has listened to the stories of the Blades that have come back from their own missions, with their own tales of victory and near-discovery and defeat.

Antok ruffles his head-fur and Kethe wrinkles his nose, rolling out of the way - he isn't a child anymore. He's almost ready for his first mission. That's what they keep telling him, at least.

Some of his yearmates have already gone - onto ships, into the military, into mundane, boring things such as accountancy and shopkeeping. Some more exciting than others. All are dangerous, all live in fear of discovery.

The Blade of Marmora only survives because no one knows where it is, or when it will strike, or even that it exists at all.

...

"Come."

He looks up, only to see the face of Kolivan their leader, and rises to follow, silently but with his fur standing on end due to nerves.

His anticipation of a mission is rewarded when he is lead into a room with several others, all looking deadly serious. Maps are strewn on the table's surface, and the walls are covered in symbols that he doesn't recognise at all.

"Kethe. You have been chosen for a mission of extreme importance. And it is one that, at the current moment, you alone can accomplish."

He hadn't understood until they had explained just how true that was.

A Lion of Voltron - found. On a watery planet that was far, far too close to where the next rounds of the Empire's patrols would take them. A few more days, not even a week, and it would be lost.

"No Lion of Voltron must be allowed into the Empire's hands." He knew that as well as any. "It must be retrieved, undetected, and taken far enough away that it will be safe. You must ensure that it remains that way. No matter how long that takes."

Not all of them had the gift of being able to manipulate quintessence in the ways of the druids - Kethe, however, despite his inability at the art of infiltration himself, had always been able to create a glamour, blending in with relative ease.

....

He had gone with another Blade, both of them in full armour and their helmets covering their faces. Kethe knew who they were despite that, though, just as they knew who he was. The helmets were to protect them from being recognised by the Empire, not from each other.

Their ship was small enough and unremarkable enough to go unquestioned through space, but big enough that, should the need arise, it could carry the Lion to it and Kethe's final destination with no problems.

On reaching the Lion itself, however, Kethe was quick to realise just how difficult getting the thing onboard might be, with the Lion unresponsive and its particle barrier unrelenting and unflinchingly unhelpful, making it fractionally bigger than the space their equations from a distance had told them that they would need.

Unless they found a way around this, they'd be stuck.

After two days stuck on the ball of water getting increasingly frustrated, with only another day until the next patrol was due to arrive and find all three of them if they didn't make a move quickly, Kethe rested his head against the glowing blue particle barrier, fists on either side.

"I grew up with stories, you know. Stories about Voltron. It always ended with, 'and then Voltron came along and saved the day', or something like that. But if we don't move, then... none of that can come true. The Empire is looking. Not just for us, but for the Lions. They've always been looking. If we... if we don't move, they'll find us. They'll find you. I don't know why you won't let either of us in - maybe you just don't like us or something. But we aren't trying to take you. We're the good guys." He sighed. Pushed himself away. "I just - I was sent here to make sure you were kept safe, all right? I'll... we'll do what we can."

He's a few paces away when he hears the sound of machinery moving, and he turns back to the Lion in astonishment. The mouth had opened, allowing entry to the ship. Kethe wasted no time in racing aboard, just in case the Lion might decide to change its mind.

What he wasn't expecting was to be hit by a sudden wave of lethargy and ease after feeling the hours go by tick by tick, a presence almost playfully curious at the edge of his mind, filled with ideas and thoughts and emotions.

You're small? Small and purple and young!

He wasn't that small, and he wasn't that young, and he was affronted by the realisation that this was what the Lion thought of him, but there wasn't any time to argue the matter.

You'll do for now, was what he had a feeling the Lion was trying to impart. We're no match but at least your feet reach the pedals.

He spent most of the week-long journey it took to find a decent planet to land on at odds with the energetic yet laid back Lion he was, like it or not, sharing space with, and who complained non-stop when he chose somewhere hot and dry to land, because at least it was somewhere the locals weren't as likely to come looking.

He felt warmth and regret and longing from her when he left to get his bearings on the strange planet they'd chosen. Loneliness. And something else.

He painted the blue lions on the walls of the cave as he found his way out, leaving himself something to remember the place by, and beginning to regret having landed somewhere so hot himself, with his fur sticking to his skin in uncomfortable clumps, the yellow sun too bright.

...

"I come back after two years and there's been a- a cave in? Is this what this is? Or is it just you trying to keep me out? Do you want me to feel grateful that because I can't get in, no one else can either? Because. I'm pretty sure that's. Not. How. This. Works."

He looks human, now. That's what they're called - humans. Thin, furless skin that burns easily, with no claws to speak of. The Garrison cadet uniform he's wearing sticks to his back as he kicks one of the rocks and tries to resist the urge to scream, tears already leaking out of his eyes.

He had already known upon leaving the Blade that he was unlikely to be able to return. His mission was to ensure that the Blue Lion remained safe. That was all. A mission that could well last longer than his own lifetime.

But now, he was trapped.

Earth... didn't have interstellar travel. Not truly. Their shuttles and space stations were primitive, and he knew that if the Empire arrived, it would be like trying to fight blasters with wooden sticks.

Still, though.

The mission stood. He still stood. Stayed - not that he had any choice, now.

He took photographs of the area, made sure that he knew where to go back to if he needed to in the future, and left.

...

He found out because there was a Garrison-wide assembly dedicated to mourning the loss of the Kerberos crew. He found himself staring blankly at the images displayed on the screen at the front of the auditorium, breath coming in quick and fast, feeling all of a sudden as though he needed to run, or find a better hiding place, he wasn't sure which.

He cornered Iverson while all of the other cadets were leaving, and the man put a sympathetic hand on his shoulder that Kethe - Keith, now, it had been Keith for over three years, now - hardly felt.

"I understand how hard this must be, kid. Shiro meant a lot to us all."

He shakes his head, in an attempt to free it of the daze that it had gotten into. To make some semblance of sense of things.

He needed to know what happened - what had really happened.

"Are you sure it was pilot error? Absolutely sure?"

He thinks that his hands are shaking.

"We received the reports from the crew sent to investigate when we hadn't heard anything back. It happens to the best of us."

His head, buzzing. He felt his cheeks flush. Eyes hard and full of dread, he pushed past Iverson on his way back to his dorm, and waited three painful days before sending out a transmission asking for a status report from the Blade, with an addendum that the security of his mission was in a potential compromise.

It was. If the Empire was what had happened to Shiro, then Earth didn't have much time until the Empire's spread came this far out. And if that happened - then rock slide or no, Blue would be in danger.

The report came two weeks later, and a day after that, he found himself kicked out of the Garrison for a 'discipline issue' - for trying to call bullshit on the fact that they were covering up something that meant everyones' lives were in danger.

...

"Thank you. For trusting me."

Shiro speaks quietly, just before they're about to go back in to meet with the others again and see whatever it was that Keith had been working on that he apparently feels ready to share.

The kid - young man, now; more than that, alien, possibly Galra young man - huffs, with a tense smile, but at least it's an honest one. There is, he's realising, a lot that's changed, and a lot to get used to.

But he can. He wants to.

"Heh. I could say the same to you."

He just shakes his head and carries on, thinking to himself about how young Keith had been when they'd first met, and his mixed feelings on the matter of a kid as young as that thinking in terms of missions and war at all.

...

AN: From the official stats, 'The Blue Lion is the friendliest of the Lions and most accepting of pilots.'

Also, the fact remains that they really don't make a good match - like Lance, Blue emanates feelings of being relaxed and/or energetic when Keith would prefer to feel tense and/or prefer to focus on just one thing, thank you. Keith only got in because he pretty much asked, plain and simple. But Blue also sees him as a kid - he's 17 when the series starts, and this whole set of flashbacks are about four years ago.

Kethe was basically a thirteen year old stringbean covered in fluff. YOU try not mothering that kid.

#voltron #voltron stuff #galra keith #marmora Keith #Leona fic #the blade of marmora will be with you

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