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senanatheskenana · 5 months

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Sorry if this is weird but I haven't seen anything like this before but could you maybe do some sort of headcanon for genshin characters with a s/o that had a cryptic pregnancy. Like they leave for one day or come home after a couple hours and s/o is just like "yeah I didn't know" while holding a newborn. Again sorry if it's weird

Sure, this sounds super interesting! Also sorry if this took a while i haven't been as active recently but ill try to get more into the fandom soon <3

(Ill only be doing the male character since the nature of this would be a little hard to plan out for the female characters, hope that's ok)

Genshin Men Reacting to Cryptic Pregnancies

Kaeya

Kaeya looks at you like you're crazy. He legitimately believes that you've just picked up some newborn orphan to baby-trap him without getting pregnant.

Well, at least that's what he believed until he saw what the tiny child looked like up close.

There was no room to deny that the child looked strikingly similar to him; dark blue hair and tan skin. The only difference between them was that this tiny baby had your eyes.

And as his tiny fingers grab the air in front of Kaeya, he becomes increasingly aware of what has happened.

You were pregnant for nine months. You gave birth.

And he wasn't even there when you did- he was drinking like his social life depended on it at the tavern.

"I'm a terrible husband," he laughs, incredulous of himself.

He couldn't turn such a child away, even if he wanted no children. It would be obvious who had fathered one of the two blue-haired people in Mondstadt.

Diluc

Diluc is at a loss for words.

He doesn't doubt you, he's known you so deeply that he can see in your eyes and in your body that you've been through something.

So when you hold the tiny infant out towards him, he carefully takes her into his arms as if she were a treasure so valuable he could not bear the idea of tarnishing it.

He presses her warmly against his chest and looks at you in such a way that you know he is not at all upset with you. In fact, he then looks away and places a triad of light pecks on her short red hair.

"I wish i had known" he says ruefully- and for a moment your heart sinks as though you think he was disappointed in such an outcome.

"If i had known sooner, we could have prepared a nursery"

Venti

Venti isn't quite sure whether he wants to run away from you or towards you.

It wasn't that he didn't like you anymore, or that he didn't want children.

He simply worried that he would not be a good parent, staying late into the night in bars playing music and over-drinking. He could see those days flying away from him in the eyes of the child.

But still, he could not harbour resentment for such a young, uncomprehending thing. Something that depended on him so greatly- far greater than any normal mortal had ever depended on him as an archon.

No, to him this was special.

He thought about it. Yes, his days of drinking every day were behind him. But something new would soon replace them. He traded wine for a son who loved him like no other would.

Venti surely had never planned on this, had he known you were pregnant he would have tried harder to break his ugly habit of day drinking.

But what is done is done, he thinks.

Now he just had to raise a child. How hard could it be?

Albedo

He sums it up as a curiosity, rather than sentimentality. He admits that yes he loves you, but this thing, surely he was only keeping it alive- feeding it, burping it, changing it- to satiate his curiosity of how it came to be in the first place.

Firstly, he was under the impression that he was infertile, let alone thinking you were pregnant. It simply wasn't something he accounted for.

But you see it differently to him. You can see that what Albedo is denying as intrigue was really paternal love. You weren't quite sure whether he was trying to deny it, to keep the child at arm's length, or whether he was just dense. That wasn't something anyone had really associated with Albedo.

He supposes that, in a way, the baby was rather cute. It abstained from taking on many of his attributes, which he found himself thankful for. If he was honest, the baby was more similar to you in appearance. The only thing he theorised may be a piece of him showing was the fact that the child seemingly could not take their eyes off of their surroundings.

Its a gradually thing, a feeling that develops over weeks of caring for it. What started out as wonder at how it happened slowly melded into the realisation that he no longer cared, and the point was that it did happen, and he was content with that answer for once.

Xiao

Xiao very nearly drops off the earth after you show him the child. It could not be his- or yours- he's sure he would have been able to sense the pregnancy if you were.

The weeks after are filled with worry and Xiao's absence. He sits atop the roof of Wangshu Inn, looking out at the city in the distance, wondering if you and, by extension, 'your' child is still there.

He's desperate to take another glance, to put his guilt to bed, to prove to himself that the child could not be his. He's also terrified it could prove the opposite, leaving Xiao in more guilt than before and with more responsibilities.

Xiao may have never seen you again had it not been for Zhongl's insistence that he appear to him. With you sat beside him.

At first glance, he comes to realise that it is undeniable that the child is his. He could feel it, stronger than any feeling he had ever felt before. He felt his heart clench painfully inside of his chest as though it were crying for the moments they had wasted.

But he still can't bring himself to touch his child, too afraid to stain it with his sins.

He cries against you that night, sobbing apologies into your shoulder and muttering promises to his son.

Tartaglia

Bro straight up does not even question it. He's heard of such things before and he's so sure and secure in your relationship that the idea that it isn't his or yours doesn't even cross his mind.

If he's honest, its obviously his. The ginger hair was a big hint.

Ajax is honestly incredibly happy- he's always wanted a family of his own and he feels as if this was a gift from the archons. A child that no one outside of him and you know exists yet. He's aware of how good a position that is given how high his place in the fatui is.

He cannot resist telling his family, asking them to keep if close to their chest for the baby's sake.

He didn't get the chance to look after you during the pregnancy, so he's making up for it now. He won't let you do anything in the first few months.

"Stay here gorgeous, I'll feed her!", "You worked so hard you deserve an hour where you aren't looking after our child", and "I just found the CUTEST little outfit in the boutique- look!" are all common things to hear now.

He hasn't brought it up yet, but he really, really wants another one. One that he can help you with during the pregnancy and anticipate.

Zhongli

I feel as though there is no way for you to be pregnant and have him not know at some point.

In fact, he tries to hint it to you in the beginning and later outright asks you if you're pregnant. When you deny it, he's astoundingly patient, waiting for you to realise it yourself.

He understands that it must be absurd to hear that you were pregnant when you have no symptoms of it.

So he makes it a point to always be close by, or to have someone (usually Xiao) keep an eye on you.

It's just an average walk through Liyue Harbour when you drop to the floor and groan in pain. Your husband is immediately there to steady you, offering his strong hand for you to crush.

People gather around you both in concern, encircling you like you were some spectacle. Zhongli tells them to step away, and as people start to realise the gravity a green-haired doctor slips past the crowd.

You give birth in the street, never realising you were pregnant before leaving the house.

Kaedehara Kazuha

Kazuha has always been fairly good at going with the flow and this was no exception.

If he was honest, he knows that even if it wasn't related to you both, and you just picked it up off the street he would never refuse it.

He does his best to accept things and help you with things after, to make sure you heal well.

He's never cared for a child, let alone his own but he's willing to try his best in doing so.

And he's an outrageously good father given he had no time to prepare.

He fashions a baby bed on the crux, sleeping with the baby on his chest every night before finishing it.

It's you who finds out that your child will only sleep when sung to, after Kazuha has been doing so for the first few weeks.

Kazuha hadn't expected this but he has to admit that having a child has made him feel at home in every place as long as it is with you.

Thoma

Immediately Thoma panics. Though not for the reason you expect.

"Now I have to give short notice when asking for paternity leave"

Of course, he doesn't make it your fault, he's aware it's half of both of you.

When the Kamisato siblings find out, Ayaka is extremely excited. Thoma is given paid paternity leave, and Ayaka gets to coo at your tiny baby, marvelling at how it managed to occur.

Thoma is a wonderful father and he always volunteers to get up in the night for feeds and changes.

Fatherhood suits him well <3

He may have one moment of apprehension about the pregnancy, briefly questioning whether you had really given birth.

Before he reigns himself back in and realises that he knows you would never do something like that.

Arrataki Itto

Cue five minutes of pure silence while he tries to understand what you just said <3.

Bro didn't even know that was possible, like no way.

But at the same time, he understands that you wouldn't joke about this sort of thing. Plus the baby has horns just like her father.

He's in a state of shock for a few hours, a dumb expression painted on as he sits down cradling the baby oni.

And then finally he responds.

"Wait so this is like mine? I have to keep it and like look after it and stuff?"

Gorou

Gorou could smell something different with you from the beginning but with nothing to go on he didn't press it.

And at some point he just stopped noticing it, there was no reason to assume when he saw no real change in your behaviour.

Until he sees two resistance members charging towards him and beckoning him to follow them as they run off once more.

And that's when he finds you, sat low against the wall of a hut, sweaty and tearstained.

And then he hones in on the babe tucked between your arms and chest.

And then the guilt hits him. He could have known this might be the case, surely he should have made you leave just until he was sure of the outcome.

"I- I forced you into battle... And-and you were pregnant."

Kamisato Ayato

Ayato is very sure that you would never lie to him but he knows that the circumstances will be suspicious to many and that those who doubt may spread rumours given your unmarried status.

He loves you and he'd sooner die than have people spread vicious lies about you like you were some harlot.

But he really can't bear the idea of giving up your son.

So he bites the bullet and he, you, and Ayaka make a public appearance when you both introduce your child and the godmother, Ayaka <3.

People talked about you both but he couldn't care less when he had something so beautiful to look forward to now.

Tighnari

Tighnari is also there to watch you suddenly give birth. However he remains calm, easing your pain with herbs and scents.

He kisses your forehead and squeezes your hand to reassure you of how well you're doing.

He has never had experience with one in person but he knows of them, and he takes the subsequent weeks observing you and the baby, all while caring for you both.

He hadn't expected a child so soon but he had desire for a whole family someday so he took it in stride.

He takes great pleasure telling Collei, knowing how excited she would be.

Cyno

Cyno feels his whole heart thump when he comes home from a week of work away from you to see you in a chair, rocking a baby back and forth.

"Are you babysitting for a friend, sweetheart?"

You jump as if you didn't hear him enter and then relax when your eyes find him in the doorway.

"Not quite," you murmur as you play with the baby's tiny hand/

He grows curious and gingerly steps closer until he is beside you, looking down at the child.

He'd recognise that hair anywhere. And those eyes.

He felt as though he was looking back at himself from his past.

Instinctively he reaches out to gently caress the small face that peers up at him.

And then he looks back at you as if asking for an explanation. How did this happen? Surely, he would have realised you were pregnant.

Scaramouche

No. He's unwilling to even entertain the idea that you were pregnant with his child, to begin with. He was sure he was infertile. there was no way this thing was his.

And its that simple to him, you think. He leaves and you never meet again.

What you don't know is that Scaramouche, now Wanderer, is none the wiser to your existence, and the child you share.

Sorry, that's quite a sombre ending. I would like to mention that with Scara, he would ultimately return to you if he knew you <3

#xreader #genshin impact #genshin zhongli #genshin impact xiao #genshin headcanons #genshin imagines #genshin impact angst #genshin impact imagines #genshin impact fluff #genshin impact x reader

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whorerificstuff · 1 year

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Humans are so weak, so fragile; Scaramouche hated that, and you, you were one of them. A painful reminder that your life is as fragile as a strand of rain. Quick, short, inconsequential...yet he ignored them, he ignored your humanly flaws and embraced all you could offer to him, welcomed and cherished everything that you have. All but except....

He was scared when you told him you were pregnant with his child. He wasn't ready he never was, really. But that soft look on your face and the soft blush spread across your cheeks when you told him you were carrying his child. You twiddling with your fingers expecting for a reply and that shy smile you gave him hoping he too was as elated as you. It made him think that maybe it wouldn't be too bad...as long as you're happy.

Oh how he wished he was wrong. He would rather have you miserable but alive. To have you with him. To selfishly have you.

One moment he was smiling holding the infant, the next his face was of distress as he hears the midwife calling out for your name, but you remained impassive and still.

The feeling was too familiar. That dreadful feeling.

You couldn't have?

Scaramouche did not dare finish the thought. He placed the infant on the futon, the baby, his newborn son wrapped in the softest of cloth in inazuma, was just a few feet away from where you laid, afraid at what he will witness would drop the baby. His hands were shaking, he was terrified, he didn't want to know why the midwife keeps calling your name, he didn't want to know why you aren't calling for him, to give you your child that you've been anticipating so much. He gulped, took a step away from the baby as he went close to you, every step was getting heavier and nauseating it made him seem like he was far away or maybe you're the one drifting away, away from him.

He looked at you. Your face looked as if you were having a peaceful slumber, even though your hair disheveled, even though some streaks of hair were sticking on your pale skin, even though you held no emotions in your soft features, as your eyes closed shut, you have always been a beauty even when you sleep. Even if you wear the ugliest of clothing, nothing could be on par or be compared to you. You jest that he was even more beautiful to which he protests.

He brushed his hand against your soft cheek. He noticed that the pink blush that was always so present on both your cheeks are slowly loosing its color.

You were just tired. Yes, you're just really tired.

That's what he thought.

You were screaming and crushing his hand during the whole labor, of course you're tired. Right? He tries to muse himself.

He could only hear the thunderous clap of the skies and the loud drops of rain as they fall on the shingles of the roof. Quite fitting with the trepidatious atmosphere. His eyes were staring at your unmoving form as if you were a doll; a lifeless thing. Your chest didnt have any motion that signifies you're breathing. He had seen many humans behave the same, but they were all lifeless.

Dead.

The midwife excused herself to give the family a moment, not before muttering a mournful sorry for the loss. To which Scaramouche scoffed, telling her you were just resting. The midwife gave him a pitiful look as she bowed and exits the room.

She doesn't know what she's talking about. You are fine.

He reached out for your hand intertwining them with yours. You used to have a habit of holding his hand in your sleep, he thought it was cute. He was hoping you would do the same thing like you usually do in your. He frowned when your hand remained limp, your fingers did not curl to lock with his and every passing minute he stood beside and held your hand, your body begins to grow cold. The warmth that he loves, the same he wish he could also give was beginning to vanish till he couldn't feel the warmth no more.

He felt something drip on the back of his hand, where he held yours, another drip and another and another, it went on.

He never realised he was crying until now.

He was crying. How pathetic. That's what he used to think but you changed that.

"Wake up" he said expecting for you to do so. But no, you remained laid on the futon.

"Open your eyes" still nothing.

That's when he begins to sob. The dreadful suffocating feeling he kept inside, freed. He was on his knees holding your hand to his cheek asking and begging for you to open your eyes to see your baby, that your baby wants to see you too. But your eyes remained closed.

The grief was infinitely unbearable, he was drowning in pitiful sorrow. You shouldn't be dead not too soon at least, you promised him to stay with him, you promised him that you'll follow wherever he goes, you promised him that you'll raise the child together.

The child

Scaramouche scurried to where the baby was. It was awfully silent. Too silent for his liking. He heaved a sigh when he saw the baby was just sleeping.

You wanted a baby, you wanted the baby, not him. He never wanted one to begin with. He went along with you cause you were so happy having it. If only he got rid of it before it developed inside your body, but you'll only hate him if he did so. The thought of having his baby made you elated and yearn for the day to meet them. But was it really all the worth losing your life? To not be able to see you?

Scaramouche cradled the baby in his arms. Amazed by how it slept after his father's wailing.

He took a good look at the baby. None of his features resembled you, the baby was the spitting image of his father. Scaramouche was saddened that not a single ounce of your identity were present on the baby.

Now that you're gone what was he going to do now? It was supposed to be the two of you. You and him were supposed to raise the baby together. Not just him he has no bit of idea how to raise a baby, it was all you. He doesn't even know if the baby was human or he be considered as a divine being or if he's going to live without a mother and a father who want nothing to do with the baby nor raise one.

At that he made a choice. Something a parent would never do to their child.

Scaramouche went to were you still laid dead, with a baby in his arms. He moved the fabric down to let the baby see you, his mother. Not that it's going to remember you.

"That's your mother. She's beautiful isn't she? She's the love of my life"

The baby let out a soft hmm as if answering his grieving father.

Another batch of tears decide to flow out of his eyes. Hugging the little baby and repeatedly apologising to him because of what his father is about to do, apologised to you of what he's going to do to your baby.

Scaramouche kissed your forehead,his tears dripped and falls delicately on your face. Saying his last goodbyes and I love yous to you.

Scaramouche wiped his tears while still holding the baby it coos while wriggling in its little cocoon blanket, slowly opening its eyes. He has the same purple eyes as his father. He laughed. Your baby doesn't resemble you at all. He could just imagine you getting upset.

Scaramouche's heart clenched. He wishes for you to, he wishes for you to get upset, that it wasn't fair your baby got all of his father's features and not his mother's. He wishes to see you holding your baby. He wishes for you to see you and him made something so beautiful, he wishes you weren't weak, He wishes you were still alive.

You would hate him for doing this, you will hate him for doing this. All those efforts you made to keep the baby growing inside you safe and healthy was all for nothing. He could see you crying for him to stop what he's doing but he didn't want to raise the baby. He was too damaged too broken hearted to raise a baby. He's not fit to be a father.

So instead, he gave him up to a young couple.

They were coincidentally had been trying to conceive a baby but that never came, the wife wanted a child as for the husband, he went and look for a child that could fill the whole in his wife's heart. But to no avail. Until that knock on their doorstep, and there were they met an eccentric fellow, whose eyes devoid of emotions, with him was a baby wrapped in a white blanket, enough to warm the infant. The young man did not say much but for the couple to raise the baby as their own to which they happily took.

Scaramouche bit his tongue, he already cried far too much. He can't cry now. It's too late for regrets, he had already given his son to the couple. With that he turned and left; not saying a word not even to his baby. Not even bothering to look back. To take one last look at the life you bore and grew to love, the life that also took yours.

The couple just watched his figure disappear until they closed the door and looked at the baby that blessed them. Flabbergasted they were to see such a beautiful baby boy. The baby that look quite too similar to that of the young man who bestowed them the little blessing.

Scaramouche was now out of sight from prying eyes. He had a clear view of the home of the couple where he left his son. A gentle wind decided to softly blow pass him. It felt soothing as if consoling him. Was it you? Do you forgive him for what he has done? Did he made the right choice?. He'll never know. He let out a whimper.

"I'm sorry, Y/n..I couldn't..I just couldn't... you're not here"

•

This is not revised and is subject to changes in the future.

I wrote this while sleepy so I have no idea what's going with the flow of the story, grammar and choice of words🙇.

And I really apologize in advance if it's cringe it's my first time writing. Well I did wrote something 3 days ago(?) but it was more of a suggested plot than a story.

#scaramouche x reader #scaramouche x yn #scaramouche #scaramouche genshin impact #scaramouche genshin x reader #kunikuzushi x reader #kunikuzushi #kunikuzushi x you #kunikuzushi x y/n #genshin impact #scaramouche x reader angst #genshin impact angst #kunikuzushi x reader angst #genshin x reader angst #genshin angst #angst #the balladeer

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em-writes-stuff-sometimes · 1 year

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ñuhus prūmӯs (my heart) │Chapter 6: Retribution (NSFW!)

terms of endearment ‘verse: see my Masterlist for the correct series order!

Chapter 1 │Chapter 2 │Chapter 3 │Chapter 4 │Chapter 5 │Chapter 6 │Chapter 7 │Chapter 8 │Chapter 9 │Chapter 10 │Chapter 11 │Chapter 12 (COMPLETE!)

Synopsis: Childbirth is the duty and dismay of all highborn women. Together, you and Daemon experience the trials, tribulations and triumphs of expectant parenthood. Your husband seeks justice.

(Set post-episode 7, though Daemon never married Laena or Rhaenyra.)

Thank you to @angelqueen04 for beta-ing! Thank you also to @evisnotok, @ewanmitchellcrumbs and @ajthefujoshi for holding my hand throughout the drafting, teehee!

Triggers: incest, age gap, purity culture, detailed depictions of pregnancy, graphic violence, graphic depictions of blood and torture, graphic depictions of murder, erectile dysfunction.

He can hear you screaming the moment he alights upon the top of the stairs.

“Guards! Guards!” he roars, already running.

Bolting down the corridor, his mind whirls with terror. What will he find when he gets to your rooms? He braces himself, thoughts whirling uncontrollably. Thoughts of stained sheets and the scent of copper and death upon the air, your tear-stricken face wild and wretched with the anguish of being ripped apart by babes too small to survive, the still forms of infants in miniature, slick with blood and already greying upon the ground below you—

What he discovers is infinitely worse.

The Mallery knight is engaged in a tussle with an unknown assailant, the clash of steel ringing in his ears and reminding him of battles past. You lay on the stone floor beside a body, one of two, your face and hair and gown wet with gore. A man straddles your legs, brandishing a knife that inches its way toward your belly. Toward his heirs. You’re giving him a good showing, kicking your legs and shoving at his weight with all your might and shrieking—but you are not strong enough to sway the encroaching threat of the blade in his hand.

“Shut up, girl!” The malefactor grapples against your stubborn hands preventing the knife from reaching its target, holding it at bay. “Not ‘ere for you… just them babies in you. Hold still!”

“No!” you yell, spitting in his face. The man snarls, backhanding you. You yelp.

Daemon moves instantly, unsheathing Dark Sister and striding toward the fray with barely a second thought. The Valyrian steel slides through flesh like butter, piercing straight through the assailant’s back and up through his ribs while being careful to miss his heart.

Non-lethal, painful. I want him to feel this.

The man shouts, dropping the knife. He yanks the sword out and kicks him away from you, sneering as he watches his prey scramble through the ooze of his own life essence. He’s still alive. Daemon casts aside his sword and falls upon your attacker, taking up the other man’s blade and slicing cleanly across the jugular, just enough pressure to release a gruesome spray that wets his face and tunic. He wants this creature to die bloody.

“Daemon—”

He presses his thumbs into the cut, smiling darkly as the man thrashes and gurgles. Ichor stains his skin and fills his nostrils with the stink of metallic warmth, humanity reduced to its basest form and lashing about in its final throes—

“My Prince—ah!”

In his periphery, he catches a figure scrambling from the room through the narrow server’s passageway, Mallery falling to the ground and clutching his leg. The man below him is still twitching. He cannot let him go until he is certain he’s dead, until he has paid the price for daring to lay his hands on you.

The guards burst into the room from the main entrance, taking in the scene with shock. Fucking useless.

“What the fuck took you so long?” he growls, releasing his hold on the man below him. He’s dead. The knowledge that he has taken care of this immediate threat to your safety soothes him somewhat. And yet, not all have been vanquished. Jerking his head in the direction of the opening in the far wall, he says, “One of the attackers escaped. After them!”

They nod hastily, sprinting away with a clang. Daemon readies for the influx of more people; the Kingsguard, the servants, the nobles, his fucking brother—

“Daemon…”

Your weeping reaches his ears, little fingers brushing tentatively against his shoulder. The gentleness of the motion breaks him from his violent spiral. His gaze jerks to yours, the burning rage cooling to a simmering ember as he takes in your terrified demeanour: wide eyes and quivering lip and tears tracking through spattered crimson akin to grisly warpaint.

You swallow. “He—he—”

He is momentarily struck by fear. What if you’ve been wounded? What if your pains have started? That old urge to run at the first sign of strife rears its ugly head, but he tamps it down viciously. I am not that man anymore.

“Sh.” Pulling you bodily to him, he feels the weight of you solid in his arms and on his lap, a reminder that he has not yet lost what is most important to him.

She is safe. She is safe. The rest can wait.

He runs his bloodied hand along your jaw, down your spine, across your belly, cataloguing every iota of you as though it is the first time he has ever held you. It might have been the last. He cannot help that the movements are rougher than he’d like, frantic and desperate.

“Are you alright?” he asks, trying to keep his voice gentle so as not to plunge you further into hysterics. “The babes?”

You nod shakily, tugging his hand back to your swollen middle. And oh, what a moment to feel the thudding motions of his children, the first time he has been able to lay a palm there and experience the sensation himself. They are active within your womb, small thumps and jabs that are more delicate than he had expected—but they are alive.

Tears burn in his eyes, angry, boiling things that he cannot, will not let loose. Not now.

He bands an arm beneath your knees and lifts you from the ground—the cold stone is no place for his little niece, his sweet baby wife—reassured by the heaviness of you and his heirs all. Conveying you swiftly to the bed with hardly a care given to the large stains smearing across the covers, he supposes you shall need an entirely new set of chambers, what with the mess soaking the stone ground.

Several arrivals occur in quick succession. Four of the Kingsguard enter and move immediately to secure the perimeter, one breaking off to aid Mallery across the room by tamping the ichor oozing steadily from his leg. Good man. He’d have hated to have to slay your sworn shield for incompetence, but his performance had been admirable in the face of the odds laid before him. It looks likely that he will not be able to use the limb again, though.

The healer woman is the next to toddle in, exclaiming in dismay at the sight. Your lady-in-waiting—and oh, fuck, the body that had been beside you is the other, he realises—follows swiftly on her heels, immediately bursting into tears when she absorbs the carnage.

Ūlla picks her way around the debris in a manner that is almost comical. “Princess! Princess! Are you safe?”

One of the Cargylls—he can never fucking tell them apart—steps before her, blade pointed in her direction.

She scoffs. “Move, boy! Pah—are you ‘Princess’, then? Go away!”

As much as he’d love to see the ensuing standoff, now is not the time. It’d be best to have the physician verify that you and his heirs are well. No doubt the shrew will bring you a measure of matronly comfort that he cannot.

“Let her through,” he commands.

The knight steps aside reluctantly, allowing her to proceed onwards. Daemon moves away for the woman to begin fussing over you, for your attendant to step into place so as to comfort you. He is wrenched by the sound of your plaintive whimper when he has gone too far for you to reach.

But needs must—this is not over.

He rolls over each of the attackers lying dead on the ground with a foot, examining them with pursed lips. There’s a blotch on each of their cheeks. At first, he assumes it is no more than a discolouration of the skin, perhaps a curious disease or a sign of familial relation—but leaning closer and wiping some of the blood away reveals that they are in fact identical stars carved and scarred over. Seven points.

Mellos makes his way inside, no doubt summoned for Mallery. It is a rare occasion indeed to see him act decisively; he dithers in overdramatic fright but for a moment before moving along to his task.

Lord Cunttower himself appears then, accompanied by his bitch of a daughter with the King in tow.

Daemon sees red.

“You,” he whispers, or maybe he shouts it. He can barely hear anything over the pounding in his ears as he shoves his brother’s prized lackey against the wall, cursing his lack of a blade. “You’ll die for this.”

“Daemon!”

“Look at her!” he snarls.

Hands wrapped around the man’s throat, Daemon revels in the distressed gasps and choking gags as the lord’s face slowly turns purple. The snake tries to pull at his grip, but a pompous fuck from the Reach is no match for a seasoned Targaryen warrior. Viserys is at his back, pulling at his shoulder with his one remaining hand. No doubt that is the Hightower whore crying out from further away.

“Look at my fucking wife, Otto! Mark my words”—he hounds ever closer to see the panic and the fear in the eyes of a man so usually unshakeable—“if this is your doing, not even the King or the gods themselves will stop me from taking your head—”

“Guards!”

“Kepus!”

He is dragged back by the nearest of his brother’s soldiers, forced to release his punitive grip. Otto sags with a guttural heave, water streaming from his eyes and clutching at his neck. Alicent rushes to her sire, staring between him and Daemon with sheer distress painting her features. Her hands flutter uselessly over the bruise already blooming across the flesh, though her overtures are quickly batted away.

“What is the meaning of this?” Viserys asks, even greyer as he looks about the scene of your attack; the blood, the bodies, your sworn shield emitting a muffled howl through a strap of leather between his teeth as the Grand Maester cauterises the wound. “What—”

“They ca—came for the babes.” Your speech is slack and monotone now that the shock has properly set in.

I can’t fucking do this, Daemon thinks.

He nudges the healer out of the way and ignores her grumble to sit beside you on the bed, to clutch at you once again and remind himself that you’re here. You grip his hand for support, heedless of the dried gore flaking off between joined palms.

“Three of them,” you say, numb. “They—oh, gods. They killed Miriam. They killed her.”

“Sh.” He presses his lips to your head, the smell of the rose oil apparent even through all the blood. She’s safe. She’s safe. He turns to your present company, to the figures of the King and Queen and Hand, arranged in various poses of horror. “This was not an accident. These—these scum knew what they were doing. They made their way into your Keep. They meant to slaughter your daughter’s babes, and in doing so, murder my wife. This is treason, Your Grace, of the highest order.”

Viserys looks as though his spirit is about to part from his body, pallid and desolate in the face of this hidden menace. “But why?” he asks, a child at prayer.

Daemon scoffs at the naivete. Is his failure to acknowledge the wound he has let fester for so long really so great? Of all the people in this room, the King ought to know best that all choices have consequences.

“My daughter’s never caused harm to a single man, woman or child,” the King continues. “Who would do this?”

“Ask him.” Daemon glowers at Hightower, who is still covering the line of his neck with his own hand.

The man makes a noise of incredulity. “I have been ever loyal to your King and your House these many years, Prince Daemon,” he says, or tries to. His voice is gravelly, raspy in the way that belies a considerable trauma inflicted upon the area. He affects a moue of outrage, though the alarm lingers. “To accuse me of such a—grievous crime—as to engineer the slaying of the Princess’s babes is simply preposterous!”

“And to what cause?” his daughter asks, forcing an aura of regality. It does not suit her. She’s far too common to view as anything more than a descendant of wildling savages. “Where is the benefit to doing such a thing?”

This time, Daemon cannot help but snort aloud. He stands, passing you back into the care of the healer, who has gathered a basin of water and some rags with which to start shedding you of the layers of congealed blood upon your face. You do not need to hear this part, and so he strides closer to the trespassing forms before him.

This time, he directs his poisonous inquiry to the Hightower woman, finally laying the truth of the matter bare.

“Have you yourself not openly alleged that the Princess Rhaenyra’s sons are bastards, my Queen?” He keeps his tone deliberately light, though it is clear all can sense the danger lurking beneath each intonation. “It stands to reason that, to those who might be persuaded to believe such falsehoods, my wife would be her heir by right of precedence. And if my wife should bear a son? Well, that makes your son’s claim rather difficult to advance, doesn’t it?”

“How dare you accuse me—”

“Enough!” his brother say, hushing himself when he notices he has caught your attention across the room. His next words are spoken far softer. “Did I not say that such rumours would incur a stay in the Black Cells? I do not wish to hear speculation as to the legitimacy of my grandsons!”

“Your Grace.” Daemon genuflects.

His rage is a seething, smouldering thing, but he needs Viserys on side if he is to tear the capital apart to find this cunt and rend him into pieces. There are plenty who believe him to be an unreasonable beast when the fire burns through his veins, but he is more than just an unmoored conflagration; he’s a fucking Prince, and he knows how to play the game when the occasion calls for it.

Assuming a countenance as servile as he can manage, he appeals directly to his brother. “Close the city gates,” he begs quietly. “Give me the City Watch. Let me root out the last of these cu—these reprobates, street by street, door by door. Let me gift my wife the justice she is owed.” He steps aside so that Viserys can see straight to you, to the way you have begun to tremor despite the huddled warmth of the women who are tending to you, to your face streaked scarlet with the blood of others, to your hands clasped tightly against your belly in protection of your children. “Please. If not for me… then for her.”

Viserys may be a wretch, but he loves Aemma’s girls.

“This affront must not be allowed to go unpunished,” the King says, suddenly weary. “I give you leave to find this assassin, brother, so that we may learn who has placed a price on my daughter’s life.”

Daemon is one step closer to meting out punishment. He can already taste the death and destruction that awaits. Staring down the Hightowers, he says, “I will find the perpetrators, Your Grace. And there will be no mercy for those responsible.”

Let this be a warning to all who believe the Rogue Prince to be a tamed man. He is a fucking dragon, and this city will soon feel the flames of his wrath.

He gives Rollingford the orders to start the search without him.

“Thin build, dark hair, has a star cut into his right cheek. An old wound.” He rattles off all he has gleaned from his observations and yours and Mallery’s testimonies to the Commander of the gold cloaks. “Likely to be bleeding, probably limping on his left leg. I want him located. I want him surrounded until I arrive. No one is to touch him. This one is mine. Is that understood?”

“Yes, Ser,” the solemn soldier says, snapping to attention jerkily before striding off with his captains in tow. He is already issuing directives as he rounds the corner.

Ser. It is easy to sink into the role of combatant, doing away with titles and courtesies to embrace the mortality and mayhem of battle—but he cannot allow the bloodlust to consume him just yet.

Though you insist in a small whisper that it is not necessary, he carries you from your (old, spoiled, defiled) chambers to the King’s rooms himself. It is a temporary respite for you and your staff until the final attacker has been caught. He chafes at relinquishing you to your father’s care—it tastes strangely of defeat—but even he cannot deny that these apartments are the safest in the city, if not the Realm.

There is a self-indulgent joy that seeps through the cracks of his fury at the sight of Viserys so flummoxed by your insistence that he remain as you are bathed and dressed in nightwear, finally free of the wash of thick crimson that had crusted in your silver hair and stained your blossom-soft skin. His brother’s own bed has been stripped and redressed for your use, a surprising concession—or perhaps not. You are one of two pieces left of Aemma, after all.

Daeron had been brought to you for comfort, and you hold him as tightly to you as you had held your dolls in gummy fists as a tot, meek and withdrawn. It makes his chest ache to see you so terrified.

He uses the very last of his patience to help the healer woman coax watered dreamwine to your lips, to bundle you in tight in the bed beside your brother, to stroke at your hair and your belly and hum some half-recollected lullaby from your childhood or his until your eyes droop, exhausted and overcome.

As he rises to depart from the room—to seek his retribution—he shares a glance with the King, one that is mayhaps a beat too long to lack meaning. In it, he tries to convey what he cannot say aloud. ‘Protect her for me. Keep her safe while I cannot. Do this for me, brother.’

It is the first time in many a year that he is united in common cause with this man. A single nod, and then he exits, the Kingsguard closing ranks and barring the door from all who may seek entry.

The air is sharp with the chill of night and the stifle of smoke wafting from lit torches, the dim orange smoulder a gloomy spotlight throwing the shadows of soldiers into stark relief. Daemon can hear the cries near and far of alarmed citizens and distressed patrons as the City Watch raids homes and taverns and storefronts. The sound is intoxicating, a pulse of vicious pleasure loosening the strain in his shoulders and the tightness of his breath.

This is what he does best—bringing chaos and cruelty to his enemies’ doorstep. It’s a reminder of the fate that awaits those who dare to cross the House of the Dragon. Until this man is found, the entire city is his enemy.

“My Prince.” Rollingford falls into step beside his horse as he crosses into the Great Square, seemingly appearing from the shadows. An impressive skill. He slides down from the saddle, absently patting the mount’s flank when he chuffs at the motion. With an arched brow, he wordlessly prompts the Commander to continue. “We have guards manning all seven gates, as well as postings along the Blackwater. The harbour has been closed and the ships at dock searched, and the men are working their way through the city.”

“Good. What of the High Septon? I want him questioned. Make use of Largent.”

“The—the High Septon?” Rollingford asks. He does his best to sound carefully blank, but Daemon can hear the underlying pitch of nervousness.

“Yes, the fucking High Septon,” he snaps. “He’s here, isn’t he? Some business with the King. Tell him that the Prince wants to know why three assassins bearing the Seven-Pointed Star attempted to murder my wife and heirs earlier tonight. If he resists—bring him to me. I care not for the wrath of his gods.”

“Ye—yes, Ser.”

He doesn’t actually believe the Faith to be responsible for the attack. Those petty worshippers have become unmanned since the days of Jaehaerys, and the High Septon is far too gutless a creature to conjure up such a scheme. He also doubts any of the man’s underlings have the capacity to act without first being thoroughly vetted by the circuitous bureaucracy of the Most Devout. But it will send a message that none are safe from his wrath, one he hopes will lure forth the real culprits.

It nears dawn when the search bears fruition. One of the soldiers—Cressey, he thinks, or perhaps Hayford—brings forth a location.

“We’ve got ‘im surrounded, milord,” he says, “so ‘e’s not likely to escape. But those nearabouts all say they saw a bloodied man with a star on ‘is cheek limp inside and not come out. That was some time ago.”

It might just be a form of irony that the answers I seek are to be found once more in the whorehouses of King’s Landing, he thinks to himself.

He retraces the familiar route to the Street of Silk—straight down the Street of Sisters, left onto the Street of Flour, right along Copper Street—the sound of hoofbeats against cobblestone overloud in the early morning. It is easy to tell which of these establishments houses his quarry, the glimmer of the gold cloaks easily recognisable even in weak light.

The men part for him as he stalks along the way directly to the heavy oak door. Curious. Run-down, moth-eaten and hosting some of the most common girls in the Realm, this particular brothel had been one of the cheaper bastions of debauchery in his youth. A fuck was a fuck no matter which way it was dressed, though, so it is not as though he had refused their attempts to solicit his coin. A good Prince is a fair one, after all. The door is new, and already he can see signs of refurbishment in the scrubbed-clean stone and the pale thatching of the roof.

Daemon barges directly inside, immediately being struck by the thick clogging scent of incense and sweat and bodily fluids. Gone are the thready chaises and faded portraits and the half-destroyed staircase. Instead, the space is dark and richly furnished in deep reds and blacks, the walls inlaid with lacquered wood and gleaming with the flicker of burning braziers.

Several whores squeal at the suddenness of his importunity, turning wide kohl-lined eyes to his form from where they sit in the laps of strangers in various stages of undress about the open foyer. He scans each of the patrons critically, seeking out one who matches the description of his target.

Bald, pot-bellied, pockmarked, old, young, yellow hair, black hair… A veritable array of men soused on drink and desperation, and yet there is no sign of your assailant.

A woman moves from the shadows, her speech carrying above the sighs and moans despite the soft, lilting cadence. “Welcome to the Gilded Doll, good Ser. What pleasures do you seek this day?”

I know that voice.

“Mysaria.” His long-time paramour smiles teasingly at his shock, flicking her dark hair over her shoulders at the recognition. Little about her has changed since their separation. “I thought you’d be in Pentos.”

He had left her there in the Prince’s palace what seems like so long ago now. It is strange to think upon the version of himself who had been so afflicted by desire for Rhaenyra. Sometimes, he forgets you have only been wedded to him for a comparatively short period. There is a settled comfort in his life with you, a conviction and dependence that still surprises him. Peace is not a feeling he thought he’d ever find in marriage.

“My place is in Westeros, My Prince,” she says. She steps closer—too close. His tense demeanour does not go unnoticed, for she wisely elects to drop the carefully cultivated mask of temptation to speak honestly. “You are not the only one who has been called back to these shores by those in need.”

He scoffs. Ah, yes—I’d forgotten about her delusions of grandeur. “And you’re doing your great philanthropic work as the madam of a brothel? I suppose it’s not a terrible advancement for a common whore.”

“Not so common, perhaps.” Her crimson lips twist, the old insult stinging still. She will accept a great many indignities, but never has she abided being regarded as someone unexceptional. “My women are well-cared-for, which is more than I can say for most of the brothels along the Street of Silk.”

He rolls his eyes, already growing bored by the conversation. He’s not here for a reunion. “Such a noble cause. Effigies ought to be built for you, I’m sure.”

“What brings you here, Daemon?” she asks.

“A trio of assailants tried to murder my wife earlier this evening,” he says, afforded some measure of privacy by the collection of sounds filling the room. Though his blood is up by the promise of violence, there is none left to fill his cock—and truthfully, he does not know if the sight of whores’ tits or the wet squelch of overused cunts or the shrill performances echoing from the second floor are even enough to elicit such a reaction now. He’d much rather stare at your tits and hear your moans and fuck your cunt. “Two have been dispatched, and the last has been tracked to your establishment. You’d do well to tell me where he is.”

She stares up at him but for a moment, something unreadable in the set of her features.

“I have a great many customers walk through these doors, My Prince,” she says, brow arching challengingly. That veiled insolence had been what had drawn him to her in the first place, when she was just an exotic dancer from Lys baring her body for him and his lackeys in the Blue Pearl. So few dared to test his famed temper, fewer still who’d let him fuck them whichever way he pleased. It rings hollow now. He wonders if her defiance had always been so trite. “You will have to describe the man to me.”

He rattles off the description in a short tone, a warning that she ought not to tarry much longer lest his malice seek out the nearest recipient. Her answer is prompt, wary: “Second floor, fourth door on the right.”

He pulls Dark Sister from its sheath in a pre-emptive motion, again startling those nearby, and makes to climb the steps.

“Daemon.” She lays her hand on his arm, stopping him briefly. “Try not to destroy the furnishings. It costs a pretty coin to maintain such luxury.”

She knows me well. He nods, and then pulls away.

The surprise of Mysaria’s return is one he discards to the recesses of his mind for the time being, allowing the ire to scald in his veins as he trudges to the far quieter upper landing. The sounds of groaning and rustling are muted, almost far-off, a mere backdrop to the thunder of his heart in his ears.

So close. I’m so close.

The fourth door does not open on first attempt. He tries again. Locked. Once more. He takes a few steps back and slams his full weight into the barricade, bursting the wood clean off the hinges.

The whore inside screams in fright, clutching her shawl to her chest. ‘Tis strange to see a clothed whore in a private room, he thinks, surveying the mousy-haired woman and her dull brown eyes and too-thin lips. How drab. That she is still dressed is a promising sign, one that suggests that mayhaps she is not alone. He looks around the room for another; there is no evidence of any company.

Then, he spots the wardrobe ajar, a slight wobble to its frame—as though a heavy being has flung themselves inside. There.

“Get the fuck out,” he growls, levelling the whore with the most vicious look he can muster. She squeaks and darts out into the hallway, vanishing from sight.

His focus affixes itself once more to that sliver of darkness, within which he is certain his mark has tried to hide. He tarries, waiting to see if the other will make the first move; he cannot help the incredulity that arises when he encounters nothing but silence.

Does he honestly believe he has successfully concealed himself from retribution?

With a baring of teeth that is more a grimace than a smile, Daemon strikes, darting forward to fling the door wide and grasp onto whatever part of the man he can reach.

“Lemme go!” your assailant yells, crying out as he is dragged free from discarded gowns and thrust onto the floor.

How… disappointing. He’s already pissed himself, and Daemon hasn’t even had the opportunity to make him regret ever stepping foot in this world yet.

“I didn’ do nuffink, good ser—”

He cuffs the man across the face, a return upon the strike so callously landed across your sweet little face. It knocks more than one tooth loose, leaving him dazed and groaning on the ground, the fight abruptly beaten out of him.

“You were in the Red Keep earlier,” Daemon says, pulling the commoner upright by the hair and dealing another wallop to the nose. An audible crunch sounds out as the bone gives way beneath his knuckles, and the man moans weakly, stunned and bleeding from his leg and his face. “Your co-conspirators are dead. Tell me what I want to know, and your end will be quick.”

He matches your account exactly—dark hair, thin, and that fucking star emblazoned in scar tissue across his cheek. There is a curious pin on his lapel, an insect of some sort rendered in metal.

“I dunno what you mean,” the wretch moans, caterwauling when Daemon steps down on his fingers and grinds them into the ground. Each digit gives way with small pops, pulverising into jagged puzzle pieces no healer is skilled enough to patch together. “I wos here visitin’ my sister, and I ain’t done nuffink in no Keep, Ser!”

I’m almost glad for the resistance.

“A pity,” Daemon says. The man relaxes at the affected resignation in his tone. His mistake. “We’ll do this the hard way, then.”

He shoves the man against the wardrobe and drives Dark Sister cleanly through the meat of his shoulder, pinning him to its surface like a butterfly on canvas. His screams are piercing, surely disrupting the business taking place throughout the brothel. The scarred star stretches grotesquely as he vocalises his agony.

“Who sent you to murder the Princess? Who?!” Daemon snarls, twisting the blade for good measure. Scarlet trickles from the wound, blooming dark down the fabric of the man’s shirt. The howl that releases itself from his throat is nearly inhuman, a drawn-out choking heave that tingles in his extremities. “Talk!”

“I—I—I’m sorry, we wos offered coin—there ain’t none to be had wif the Order—”

Pathetic. Daemon had hardly needed to incentivise him overmuch and yet the scum is already spilling everything. No wonder he had run. Cowards never change their stripes, after all.

“A Poor Fellow, are you?” he asks, angling the blade up slightly and pushing in just a little further.

Daemon had suspected as much. The Seven-Pointed Star is a sure indicator that the attackers are sworn to the Faith Militant, though it is obvious that the evening’s trials had not been the work of those particular sycophants. It seems that an attempt has been made to lay the plot at the High Septon’s door—which means the architect is intelligent.

He continues his line of questioning, manipulating the hilt of his sword to widen the wound, each press shredding fresh slices into overwrought tissue. He basks in the squalling and weeping below him, the singular sound of flesh rending apart, the rich heady aroma of fear and gore. The desire to split open his guts and feed him his own entrails is tempting, but this is not the time. He needs information.

“What price was enough to make you abandon your precious Faith and risk eternal damnation, hm? Three stags? Four? A gold coin?”

The man gasps, spasming with each shift of the blade. “Three! Three, Ser—”

Three gold coins. A wealthy mastermind, then. It narrows the field considerably. Only the nobles at court would have that kind of coin to spend on a plot with a variable chance of success.

Daemon brings his foot down on the Fellow’s knee, crunching the joint beneath his steel-capped boot. With an almighty crack, the bone gives way, its owner leaning to the side to vomit. The acrid stench of sourness permeates the air, tangling with the scents of blood and piss.

He sneers, kicking the man’s leg for good measure. It splays at a misshapen angle, bent back upon itself on the ground. The jagged edge of his shinbone has pierced clean through the back of his knee, a macabre lance of pearl-white tearing through skin and muscle.

“A measly three coins to murder a girl heavy with child,” Daemon mocks. “A Princess. Your gods must be so proud.”

“Please!” The craven weeps, spitting blood and bile from his mouth. “Please.”

“Tell me what I want to know. Tell me who ordered the attack.”

“I—I—I dunno his name, Ser. He wears a hood. Calls himself the Firefly.”

Daemon nods absently in acknowledgement, his mind ruminating over this discovery. It is not an epithet he recognises. Firefly. He’ll have to conduct a careful search to find the owner of this sobriquet.

He refocuses his gaze upon the last of your assailants, the remaining member of the trio who had so callously threatened your life and the lives of his children. As pathetic as this creature is, he has been rather valuable in providing enough intelligence to further his own search. But the man has outlived his usefulness. Daemon cannot afford for his benefactor to learn of his loose tongue.

“In the name of the Princess, I—Daemon of House Targaryen—sentence you to die.”

In a single swift motion, he wrenches Dark Sister from the place where it is embedded and basks in the vile satisfaction of hearing the man release an unearthly squall. He swings the sword in a high arc, the momentum slicing cleanly through flesh and sinew and bone and cutting the shriek off at its full. Blood sprays over his armour and across his face, the wayward Fellow’s head rolling across the floor.

Daemon removes the pin from the man’s shirt and stows it away for later examination, using one of the whore’s ruined dresses to wipe his blade clean of gore. He surveys the scene. The door is splintered upon the ground, the wardrobe soiled and defiled, the room itself a painting of crimson upon lumber and metalwork, silks and leathers.

Fuck. He’s made rather a mess of things. Restitution will have to be made.

He leaves the body where it lay, having little care for the remains now he is dead. For now, the job is done. It is with a sense of relief that he retraces his steps back to the lower level of the brothel. The whores and patrons stare at him with mingled shock and fright, taking in his red-soaked armour and ichor-stained face. At the sight of him, the whore from earlier darts up the stairs. She will find her brother dead in her rooms, his life essence puddling out upon the floor and seeping into the wood.

He turns to Mysaria, fishing out a handful of coin and holding it out to her. She takes the proffered gold with an arched brow, surveying his dirtied form with an unimpressed expression.

“For the damage,” is his gruff explanation, tipping his head in the direction of the upper landing. “Unavoidable.”

The whore starts to wail her lamentations from above.

“I see.” Her feline eyes glitter dark and mysterious, lips tipped up ever-so-slightly. She had always found his aggression captivating, and it seems such a sentiment remains unchanged. He shifts in discomfort. She leans further into his space, laying a careful hand upon the line of his arm. “I hope you found the justice you had sought.”

He grunts, making no move to encourage her.

“It is good to see you again, Daemon,” she adds, looking up at him through sooty lashes. Her body presses closer, just shy of touching. He doesn’t know if she holds back to avoid sullying her gown or if she intends to tempt him into closing the space. “You would be welcome here if you should want the company of one of my girls. Or mine.”

Her breath, wine-tart and candied, puffs against his jaw.

“I don’t,” he says stiffly. He is poised, rigid, barely restraining himself from the urge to throw her bodily from him, to backhand her for daring to touch what is not hers by right. “Take your damn hands off me.”

She is as beautiful and sensuous as ever, but she does not arouse desire in him the way she had once done. How the mighty have fallen, he thinks.

Should a version of Daemon from his youth encounter him now, he would make of himself a laughingstock for the single-minded veracity of his ardour for his own niece, a girl half his age. But how could one return to consuming boiled mutton after partaking in roast venison for the first time? Mysaria had been a companion and nothing more. You are his—niece, confidant, wife, lover, mother to his heirs. There can be no other now. That she thinks she might persuade him to wet his cock in lesser cunt is insulting.

At once, her seduction ceases, the veil of allure dropping and resettling into feigned amiability. He has insulted her—but why should it matter? Dragons do not concern themselves with the opinions of sheep.

She smiles dryly, stepping aside to clear a path to the exit. “Then I wish you farewell,” she says.

There is nothing left for him here but the ghosts of a former life. It is easier than breathing to turn from her gaze, to cast her aside as a memory from long ago, to stride past her and leave her in the past where she belongs.

He departs the Gilded Doll without another word, mind already settling on returning to you.

You are still asleep when he enters his brother’s rooms.

“Gods be good,” Viserys mutters, hobbling over from his chair as he takes in the sight of Daemon covered in blood. What did he expect, he thinks in irritation, that I would sit down for a civilised meal with her attacker? “I can only assume you found him.”

“The last one is dead,” he says, unbuckling his baldric and setting Dark Sister, scabbard and all, upon the table as quietly as he can. Through the gauzy drapes, he spies your still form ensconced in the bed. “I got the information I needed.”

“Must I ask for it, or shall you tell me?” the King asks.

Daemon glances over at him. Dark circles bloom purple-grey under his eyes, the contrast to his blemished skin so severe it is as though he is looking at a human skull instead of a living man.

“Not now.” He suppresses a shudder at the malformed creature his brother has become. “I’d like to get this shit off me.”

The bath is warm, but he takes no joy in it. Now that his enterprise is concluded, he is left with naught but his own thoughts. If I had been there, she wouldn’t have been risked so dearly. If I’d refused to leave, she’d be safe and happy instead of fearful and desolate.

He tries to tamp down the maelstrom, scrubbing vigorously at his flesh and his hair as though to physically force the notion from his mind. By the time he is done, the water is pink, flecks of dried blood forming a ghastly film upon the surface.

All he wishes to do now is sit by you. He bypasses Viserys, treading barefoot through the sheer curtains and settling himself gently upon the mattress beside you. In repose, your expression holds none of the fright or devastation that had marred it so many hours ago. You are young, sweet, mouth slack with sleep and cheeks plump and rosy from the heat of the coverings over you.

His eyes burn again. I’ve failed to protect her. Stroking your wild silver hair back from your temple, he trails his fingers along the line of your jaw, over the curve of your lower lip, your throat.

“She has not awakened,” the King says softly behind him. “The boy’s gone to his lessons, but—well, I thought it best not to rouse her.”

“Good,” he murmurs, hand wandering below the sheets to feel the swell of your belly. There is faint movement, and relief blooms anew at the liveliness of the babes within your womb. Tap. Tap. Tap. He had almost convinced himself that it had been a delusion conjured up in his maddened state. “She needs to rest.”

You stir faintly, and he brings his palm to your face once more. You lip insensately at his thumb, easing back down into unconsciousness. A creak to his left makes him think that Viserys has sunk into the chair beside the bed. He can feel the stare boring into him, though he has little desire to entertain whatever it is that has his brother so absorbed.

“When you sought my daughter’s hand,” the King begins, “I assumed the worst.” He knows that. “You are not the sort of man capable of providing the care she needs: patience, attentiveness, placidity… devotion. Someone who would regard her as the treasure she is. Yes, when you asked for her, I thought all manner of abhorrent things, even if you were the one she chose for herself. I was so certain you would destroy her.”

So little trust in me, as always. There is a point to this spiel, a mellow timbre that suggests the aim is not to remonstrate—but to hear how lowly his brother thinks of him is nonetheless cutting.

The King huffs a laugh. “Imagine my surprise, then, to see her so… happy with you.” Daemon stills for a moment, then carefully resumes caressing your cheek, smoothing over the contour of your chin. “She is a new person to me now, and I regret that I was not able to grant what it is she needed to best thrive. I have many regrets… but I do not regret conferring her upon you,” Viserys says. “I was wrong, Daemon. You make a fine husband to my girl. And I am glad she can give to you what I never did.”

Oh, brother.

There was a time when he wanted nothing more than to earn his brother’s approval; when the attainment of such was a far-off dream, one that would have required him to unmake and reforge himself anew so that he might finally earn what ought to have been his all along. The denial of it had made him bitter and angry, a hot-tempered rake of a being that had terrorised nobles and commoners alike with debauchery and hostility and brutality. It is ironic that having the man finally—finally—proclaim that longed-for praise carries none of the weight he once imagined it would have.

His worth is no longer shackled to the whims of an ailing King. Perhaps it is unhealthy or even unfair to place the care of it in your hands—but for all his poisonous ambition, he knows his is not a nature meant for standing alone. The second son of a second son, he has been bred and built to seek purpose from those designed for a higher calling than he. How he had railed against his fate, once! And how very poetic it is that he has found himself so beholden to you.

He does not need Viserys anymore. But he nods and thanks his brother nonetheless, pays little mind to him as he departs from the room, and waits for you to rouse.

It normally takes time for your faculties to return to you after your eyes first open, but it comes to no surprise that consciousness strikes you with full force after the evening’s events. Your eyes snap open and you jolt, casting about for a half-moment before alighting on the form of your husband. He adjusts himself so that he reclines against the headboard, allowing you to easily wiggle your way onto his lap.

Fretful and fragile, a baby princess seeking protection in the arms of her big, strong uncle. Moisture wets his clean shirt, your face buried against his chest and little fingers clutched to his sides like you are afraid he’ll vanish. He pets over your spine and breathes you in.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asks, breaking the silence.

You shake your head, voiceless. He’ll not press you yet, not now—but there will come a time in the near future where you’ll have no choice but to recount the attack. He needs as much intelligence from as many involved as he can seek out if he is to determine the identity of the Firefly.

You are small and quiet and slow-moving as the day passes, wanting little else than to cling to him and doze. He doesn’t know what to do with this version of you. He is helpless to conceive of a way to break you from this strange trance. Guilt and fury and exasperation mingle like noxious fumes inside his body, pressing against his chest cavity and constricting around the organ there like a bloodied fist. Each hushed whisper, each tenuous tremble, each lamenting little-girl rebuff of all save him only serves to spur the tumult within.

“Is… Are they all gone?”

You finally string more than two or three words together, sat upon the edge of the bed in your new chambers. They are nice enough, he supposes, though he’s not particularly enthused by the prospect of being so close to Viserys and the Hightowers. For a moment, he thinks you are speaking of the attendants that had flitted in and out of your presence throughout the afternoon, but the uncertainty of your countenance suggests otherwise. His stomach drops.

“Those—those men?” you clarify, voice cracking.

Daemon lays Dark Sister back upon the desk and tosses down the cloth he’d been using to work away at the stray crusts of ichor, returning to you.

“Yes,” he says, sinking down upon the mattress.

You lean into him, warm and real and alive. Alive. “I was so… frightened. I thought I was going to di—”

“Don’t.” He shakes his head. I cannot hear it, cannot abide even the thought of it. “Don’t say it.”

You pause, staring up at him, nodding when you take in whatever expression has affixed itself on the planes of his face. He jerks slightly when you push yourself up on your knees and bring your lips to his, hot and wet and sweet. It is ingrained into the foundations of his very self to press into the kiss, to cradle your jaw in his hand and feel the throb of your pulse feed into his skin, his cock twitching in his breeches. There is no pleasure to it, but instead a disconcerting agony that prickles along his shaft and cools the fire that ought to stoke itself.

He draws away, suppressing the tremor that threatens. “What are you doing?” It comes out more abrasive than he’d like.

“Please?” you ask, mouthing at his lower lip, desperate and frenzied. “I—I just want to feel something good again.”

He understands that need. Hells, it’s a feeling that has fuelled many of his own debauched eves across the brothels in King’s Landing and the Realm beyond. Though he cannot fault you for the urge to drive away the memory of those who had nearly carved your babes from your belly (I wasn’t there, why wasn’t I there), his body is refusing to heed your wishes and rise to the occasion.

It tears at him to tilt back into you, to crowd against you and take your mouth with his own, to press his tongue to yours and pull the hem of your shift up. He drives you down into the sheets, nipping at your throat and shoving a finger then two into your grasping cunt, feeling the way the silky walls catch and ripple eagerly as he hooks into the high soft sponge of you, listening to you gasp. You writhe and moan below him, tugging at his pants and taking hold of his cock, and it begins to burst to life in your capable hand. He looks down at you and his mind flashes to the way you’d looked beneath that man, red-stained and terrified and scrabbling to save your own life, and he cannot—

He lurches away from you, from the memory of what had nearly happened. I wasn’t there. You try to pull him back down, but he shakes off your touch. “No. Stop, sweetling.”

“Why?” You pout, reaching for his shaft and making a soft noise of confusion.

Oh. Whatever blood had fought to stiffen him up has dissipated, leaving him limp despite your best attempts to coax it to rise.

“I said—” He bats your hands away, suddenly wrathful. Stumbling off the bed, he stows himself away and fumbles with the laces, whirling on you. “You almost died, and you want to fuck?” he asks, grinding his teeth and snarling at you. “What in the hells is wrong with you?”

He regrets it as soon as he’s said it—even more so when he sees the bewildered tears begin to collect along your lower lashes, lip quivering and looking so, so small. Why wasn’t I there to protect her, she could have di—

The room feels like a cage, like iron bars squeezing tight against his flesh, he has to get out, he has to get out—

“Daemon. Daemon!”

He flees the trappings of your apartments, past the Kingsguard manning the doors to the bedchamber, the hall, Maegor’s Holdfast, leaving you there upon the bed alone.

Scarcely even realising he’s left his blade behind, he moves with purpose throughout the Keep. He knows not where he’s headed, only that he must find a safe haven where he might begin to pull together the edges of himself that are fraying to bits, threatening to send him crumbling.

It hurts. It hurts unlike anything he’s ever felt. The anguish only serves to wind him tighter, a maimed creature lashing out at the world for its suffering.

His steps lead him aimlessly around his childhood home, and he indulges the wanderlust. He avoids the main thoroughfares, not wishing to encounter the absurdity of courtly gossip on his day. The journey takes him past the Great Hall and the Small Council chambers and through the servants’ passages, down to the scullery and the royal cellars. He pilfers a carafe of wine from the kitchens, imbibing periodically as he trudges through hallways and up flights of stairs. Eventually, he makes his way to an old sanctuary from his youth, a lone balcony in an abandoned portion of the Holdfast overlooking the courtyard and, beyond, the Dragonpit.

Daemon leans against the edge and stares blankly at the horizon, taking steady draughts from the jug and letting the drink numb the sharp stabbing pains of his thoughts. The wine loosens him, slows the racing of his heart, and time finally starts to run leisurely again.

She might have—She nearly—

“Princess said you ran from her.”

Fuck. He ignores the healer woman as she shuffles forward, joining him in the dimming light. Her eyes bore into his side profile, but he won’t give her the satisfaction of acknowledging her.

“Said you were angry,” she croaks.

It is the truth, but it is still unpleasant to hear.

“How is she?” he asks. It is relatively easy to assume she’s ventured forth in search of him after making her customary rounds to her sole charge.

He hopes she can hear the words he does not say. Are my children well? Will they survive this?

“Good. Babe both good, too.” He despises how unlike herself she is being, how gentle and kind her tone is. It is not the way she speaks to him usually, and he wants at least one thing to remain normal and logical and sane around here. “You are very, very lucky,” she adds.

He grunts. He doesn’t feel it.

She sighs, thumping him on the back. “You are rude boy. But you are good to her. She need you now—no more hiding.”

“How?” It takes him a moment to realise it is he who has spoken, a rustle upon the breeze. That damned wine. He can no longer control the torrent that he has kept tamped down and locked away, the dogged attempt of a man long accustomed to outrunning all weakness. “How can I just—pretend?”

“Pretend?”

Swallowing the lump in his throat, he tries to put into words the venom that is eating away at his insides. “That I’m not fucking—terrified.” Daemon hisses the term as though it has personally offended him.

To finally say it aloud is both a bizarre release and an epiphany of sorts. He’s overcome with the curious urge to laugh at the realisation.

Fear. How common of him. But it rings true nonetheless, and the rightness of the admission settles in his bones. How can he not be afraid? There’s an ever-present threat to your life somewhere in this place, a place that should be safe and happy and home for you. Someone has marked his children for death before they are even allowed the chance to breathe air on their own, to open their eyes and see what exists outside the safety of their mother’s womb.

And you are a Targaryen woman. In any other context, this makes you superior, a diamond nestled in amongst the coal. But he cannot help but recall those names once more, the names of your forebears who had undergone the toilsome task of childbirth and met their end there.

Alyssa. Daella. Gael. Aemma. Laena.

He will not survive your death, should it come. With the ever-expanding heft of the babes inside you, the possibility that he might have to face such a dreaded reality looms closer by the day. There is not a fucking thing he can do about it, either. There’s no physician or liniment or spell or prayer that he can avail himself of to keep you alive, to keep you with him should your body fall to the conquering force of childbed.

The woman—Ūlla—hums consideringly. “Fear is… natural. Human,”

He finally turns to look at her. Her countenance is warm, sympathetic, a tilt to the head that belies something other than the deep-seated vexation he had been sure was all she’d felt for him. She takes his hand, and he lets her. All at once, he is a boy again, clutching onto his lady grandmother as his mother’s pyre burns gold in the morning light.

“We all fear something,” she says. “It is stupid to try and push it away like it never happen. Do not waste time to master your fear, or you will forget to live. To fear is to love, boy—and you love her, yes?”

He nods. Gods help him, he does.

She smiles, squeezing his grip. “Then the rest is for later. Go to her—love. And let yourself fear. It is okay.”

The sky is darkening to deep amber by the time he is ready to return to you. He takes the long route back to your new chambers, concealing himself from public view as much as he can, for he does not wish to incite the rumour mill of King’s Landing to pass judgement on his dishevelled state.

You are almost exactly where he left you, though you’ve settled back against the pillows with a book, appearing for all the world as though it is an evening like any other. It isn’t. When you see him standing at the door, he fully expects you to rail at him, perhaps to cry or even avoid him.

Instead, your lips twist compassionately, eyes impossibly soft, and you put the tome aside. “Come,” you say, patting the space beside him.

And how can he refuse?

Daemon clambers onto the mattress, shuffling into the open space of your arms and collapsing there in your embrace. The hard bulge of your belly pushes against his chest, a reminder of everything pure and real and necessary, everything he has fought for. What I would die for.

He cannot speak his apology aloud. It sticks to the roof of his mouth, coagulating in the liminality between his body and the air. Cursing himself for his inability to perform something so simple, he buries his face into your breasts, breathing in the smell of you, the feel of you, safe and whole and alive. His eyes burn.

“It is alright, kepus. Sh.” Your palm strokes the back of his head, trailing between his shoulder blades and up again in soothing rhythm.

My darling, forgiving girl. You are everything to him, and you are here.

The tears finally fall.

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willows-escape · 1 year

Text

Love, Love, Love | AHS Tate Langdon x Reader

Pairing: AHS Tate Langdon x Reader

Summary: You died. A pity. You were stuck in a house filled from the basement to the attic of people past who'd met their untimely fates. A pity. Your boyfriend, the love of your short life, stopped talking to you; spending his time hanging out with the bane of your existence. Violet. A pity.

Warnings: you die, terrible communication skills, angst to fluff, smut smut smut, reader tries to be in charge- tate nips that in the bud quickly though, restraint, oral (fem receiving), banging on the basement floor lel, they get caught, creampies, slight make up sex, tate makes you taste yourself haha whoops, jealousy, tate and violet bein friends- she forgave him and whatnot, he makes a jokey reference to what he said about f-ing violet in the show but that’s just because it’s tate

You were cold. So, so cold. Desolate and drained of life, splayed out and unnervingly still on the floor beneath you. Your own dead body was casually propped in front of you, as if it was the most normal thing in the world. Another milestone in the traumatic circle of life in which you lived.

You heard pitiful sobs ringing out alongside hushed whimpers, 'i'm sorry, i really tried. I promise.'

'It's okay,' you murmured, words hushed and tension building in your throat.

'I still love you.'

But did he love you?

You found yourself pondering this question lately, eyes narrowed and lips bitten to shreds as you silently sat on the floor of the attic. It was safe to say you were relatively adjusted to the whole being dead thing now, having made yourself acquainted with all the other lone spirits wandering the house.

'Come on, Beau, gimme a turn with the ball,' you smiled, watching the small boy prod, push and throw the small toy around in glee. It was heartwarming watching him be so happy and in his element, but also it twisted your guts knowing why he was doomed to the fate he shares with you.

Eager to play with you, the ball was quickly pushed along the dusty, splintered floorboards. You reached out to it, but the enthusiasm behind Beau's push caused it to roll further and faster than you'd anticipated. Giggling, you pushed yourself out of your cross legged position and followed the ball to the entrance.

The attic door was open, meaning the ball had fallen from the attic floor to the hallway beneath you. You knew that since you were a ghost you could technically just materialise yourself in any room you wished to be in, but you had a habit of trying to stick to doing things the traditional way when you could help it.

'Tate, don't be an asshole,' you heard a familiar voice snicker beneath you, accompanied by a boyish laughter that somehow always managed to set fire to your skin. Except this time, your skin prickled, your faux blood tingling as if your veins were flowing with lightning.

'You know you love me, Vi.'

Even with another girl, Tate still managed to be the only thing to make you still feel alive.

Your mood had effectively been soured, the ball no longer of your concern. You disappeared, ignoring the confused whining of the little boy behind you. You felt too betrayed to care.

If there's one thing that ignited your nerves, it was the shrill screams of children. The sound had you bristling on edge, agitated and digging your nails into the palms of your hands. The affection and care you held for kids didn't apply when they were crying their little hearts out.

'Are you okay, Nora?' you asked sympathetically, watching her grimace at the infant laying in the cot beside her, as if she were looking at the devil himself. The baby was crying out, for what you didn't know, but it didn't seem like it was going to chill out anytime soon.

'I don't wish to look at it,' she stood up, hands wiping themselves against each other as if to rid herself of the suddenly dirty germs of her child. 'Where's Vivienne?'

'Having a family night with Ben and Violet,' a new figure peaked up, the hauntingly familiar voice turning your taste buds sour and causing your saliva to run dry.

Shaking her head in irritation, she tossed a blanket in your direction before turning to exit the main area of the basement, 'I'll be back once it's calmed.'

You groaned. Not only had you been left with a small, screaming child, you were also sitting in front of the man who hadn't properly spoken with you since your death- and had clearly moved on just fine and dandy. As if you'd meant nothing.

Rage simmered in your chest, begging to slip off your tongue and rear it's ugly head at the object of your anger. But you kept yourself collected, it was no use sobbing until your lungs collapsed or beating him with your fists as you unleashed the pent up sadness and confusion you held.

And not only that, this was only time you'd been near his vicinity since your death, and yet he was still only talking about her.

There was an awkward silence drifting between you both, feeling his coconut coloured eyes raking over you as you stood up to attend to the responsibility you'd been left with. You lifted the baby into your blanketed arms, humming a familiar lullaby as you rocked back and fourth gently. The crying didn't cease.

'Do dead babies need diaper changes?'

Your lips pursed. The first words he felt worthy of saying to you after your death... was asking if ghost babies could piss and shit? You almost laughed at the ridiculousness of it all, what else could you expect from him? That was the boy you knew, as dense as ever.

'Nope,' you responded blankly, 'You've been dead longer than me, would've supposed you'd have figured out dead people don't have functioning organs by now.'

'I dunno, but babies are babies. What else can they do except shit, eat and sleep?' he mused, his relentless gaze still lingering on your figure.

'Well, now he's only left with eating and sleeping.'

The silence settled in once more, and you tried to ignore how much you loved having his attention. You bitterly reminded yourself that if it weren't for the Harmon's spending time together, he'd leave you to be with Violet in a flash.

'I'm sorry.'

'Whatever for?' you inquired, voice light and airy as if you didn't understand why he felt the need to say such a thing. What could he have possibly done to feel the need to apologise?

You heard a disgruntled sigh from behind you, his frustration clearly becoming too overwhelming to contain. Good, you thought, be annoyed. You couldn't give less of a shit.

'Can we just go back to normal? Please?'

Normal?

Normal.

He, all of a sudden, felt as though it was time to go back to normal? After abandoning you, choosing another over you, betraying you, he felt it was time to pull on his big boy pants and act like all of this just never occurred? You'd known he had a slight fear of rejection, but you never expected him to have the audacity to not even face what he'd done wrong. To ignore it and attempt to sweep it under the rug, as if it were just a dry spell in your relationship that meant no harm.

You scoffed, placing the no longer crying angel back into his crib. You brushed back the few strands of hair he possessed, before looking to face the antsy man behind you. The nerve.

'Can't do, sorry.'

You walked off, disappearing as Nora came back to attend to her baby. Loving him conditionally once more, returning to care for and treat him as her own- on her own terms.

Much like somebody else you knew.

'I don't know what to do,' Tate groaned, 'I don't know how to get her to talk to me again, y'know? She's just like, gone cold. Like I don't exist.'

Ben Harmon sat across from him, arms crossed as he listened to the boys ramblings. It was almost entertaining how Tate had seemed to have gone full circle, and yet didn't have the self awareness to realise he was back where he started. No longer obsessing over his daughter, thank god, but another girl who'd enraptured him. Another girl who was, funny enough, also trying to cut contact with him.

'We can't force people to do thing's they don't want to do, Tate. If they don't want to talk to you, then that's their choice. They don't owe you a conversation.'

'Don't you think I know that?'

It was also funny how even though Ben had vehemently refused to ever see Tate as another client in his life, or in his death, here he was. Sitting across from the pouting man child who had begged him for help one last time, promising that this would be the final occasion where he'd ask for his assistance. For some peculiar reason, Ben didn't believe this would be the last.

'Is this week the first time you tried to talk to her?' Ben questioned, the unfortunate realisation sinking in that the situation was more hopeless than he thought as Tate nodded his head. 'Why?'

'I dont knowww,' he whined, head thrown back and eyes closing as he reveled in his self pity. 'I just, I don't know, I was scared.'

'Scared?'

'I feel like she died because of me, like I failed her. Like she'd have been better off without me meddling in her life, so I thought why meddle in her afterlife too? She didn't need me making her even more miserable.'

'Did she give any indication that she actually thinks this way of you, Tate?' His brows furrowed as he took in what the blonde boy was saying, trying to make sense of how he'd come to this conclusion in his sick head. Sick being the keyword, of course his thought process made no sense. Tate's mental state wasn't normal by any means, so it took jumping through plenty of loops to try to understand him.

Many, many loops.

'I mean, no,' Tate fiddled with his fingers, looking down at his hands as he tried to hold back his tears, 'I fucked up.'

'Yup.'

'Do you think I can fix it? Like I did with Violet?'

Ben paused his thought process, staring the boy in his eyes as he spoke through gritted teeth, 'Violet? What have you been doing with my daughter?'

'Nothin', nothin'' Tate quickly reassured, raising his hands in surrender, brushing off the older man's piercing stare. 'I have my eyes set on y/n now, me and Violet are longgg gone. Still cool to hang out with though, yesterday we-'

'I don't want to know what you've been doing with my daughter.'

'Gee, relax. I fucked her once, years ago,' Tate scoffed, rolling his eyes as he chuckled, 'She was a great time for a virgin though, she was sooo wet-'

'Enough,' Ben seethed, standing up out of his leather armchair as he walked towards the door. He opened it, pointing in the direction of the hallway.

'Hey, I was just messing with ya,' Tate softly spoke, trying to diffuse the situation. He didn't really mean what he said about Violet, his numerous encounters with you had made everyone before you seem as if they never happened. He just wanted to get on Ben's nerves a little, like the good times. Plus, Tate couldn't leave yet, Ben hadn't solved his problem. And he'd rather get gunned down dead again before leaving the office without a plan of action to get you to reconcile with him.

'Tate, you know what your problem is?' Ben approached him, hands making aimless gestures as he continued his rant. 'You don't have boundaries, you don't think of the affects of your words and your actions before it's too late. Consider people's feelings more and you wouldn't be in this situation for the second time.'

'Well, ow,' Tate cringed, face scrunching up as he took in the mean spew of word's Ben had thrown at him. He knew he didn't deserve niceties, but that didn't make his harsh words sting less.

'I won't repeat myself, Tate. I want you out.'

Reluctantly and with an angered scowl on his face, he disappeared.

'Fucking talk to me!' He cried, arms tightly clutched around your frame, holding onto you as if you'd vanish if he let go. You gritted your teeth at his sobs.

You tried forcefully removing his desperate arms from around your body, but your efforts were useless as they only spurred him to cling tighter. His salty tears were soaking the white fabric of the dress you had died in, your nose scrunching as you felt the wet patch press against you unpleasantly.

'Where we you when I wanted to talk?' you angrily mumbled, struggling to even lighten the grip he had purchased around you. You were stuck, and you knew there was no point wasting your strength. He was a stubborn boy.

'I'm sorry, okay,' he hiccuped, his breath hitching in his throat as he babbled on aimlessly. You understood a small fraction of his words, not even enough to string together a sentence, but enough to gather what he was trying to convey. You really didn't want to have your resolve shattered, but if you had to listen to his pitiful pleas any longer you were going to snap.

Snap, as in, take his soft cheeks in your hands and give him a fat smooch, and forgive all the heartbreak and pain he'd put you through recently.

But, you wanted to hear him beg a little more. You were quite cruel. However, there was a small, nagging fear in the back of your mind you'd needed relieved.

'Tate, what about... what about Violet?' you softly asked, your voice barely audible under your breath. You were scared, so fucking scared. What if he immediately let you go upon realising what you said, coming to his senses as it dawned on him that Violet really was the better option? That you weren't enough for him after all?

You knew enough of Tate and Violet's history to be aware that they'd been something once before, something intimate and that there had been a shared attraction between the two. You didn't know the extent, nor did you wish to know all the details, but there was something. And that was enough to have you on edge.

'Violet?' Tate looked up at you, tear stained cheeks gleaming and red as he sniffled. 'What- did Violet say something to you? Whatever it was, it was a lie! Is that why you didn’t wanna talk? Violet?'

'It was nothing that Violet did,' you stated, running your hand through his poofy, blonde locks for comforts sake. For your or his comfort, you didn't know.

'Then why?' his voice cracked as a sob escaped his throat, his head nuzzling deeper into your hip. He was on his knees beside you, puffy eyes, lips and cheeks pressing against you.

'You're just always with her,' the mental wall holding the sea of emotions you were harbouring collapsed, your cries matching his as you slid to a sitting position. Tate didn't let you go, keeping a firm grip on you as you joined him on the floor. 'You seem so happy together, and you haven't spoken to me since, well- you know when. And you and Violet used to be a thing, and I heard you say that you knew she loved you when i was upstairs in the attic one day and I just-'

'You're stupid,' Tate chuckled through his tears, arms adjusting to bring you against his body in a loving embrace. You felt the safest you had in a while, coddled in his arms against the wall of the basement. It was peaceful.

'I just need to know, Tate,' you brushed his fringe back as you gazed into his eyes, the love you'd left bubbling under the surface of your being, threatening to explode out of you. He was so beautiful, and you were yearning to let him know. 'Violet or me? I'll forgive you for not talking to me, won't even ask why you did all that. I just need-'

'You.'

You smiled, pulling his stupid, pretty face towards you to indulge yourself in what you'd been missing. His love.

Although, you still wanted to make him beg.

'Why'd you stop?' he huffed, nudging his face towards yours to capture your lips in another heated kiss. He'd gone so long without you, and right now, he was feeling selfish. He was intent on taking all of you.

'Proving I can make you feel better than Violet,' you laughed at the forlorn expression etched across his face, his hands tightening their grip as he attempted to pull you into him. He wanted you to become one with him. He wanted you so bad. Needed you.

'Babyyy,' he whinged, tugging on the material of your dress. You didn't move an inch. Now you'd made up with the love of your life, you were going to make sure the next hour of the rest of your relationship was going to start with a bang.

'Take your pants off.'

A goofy smile spreads across his lips, his grip untangling from around you as he reaches down to undo the zipper of his jeans. His hands were ready and brisk, making quick work of his clothing as he slid it down his legs. He'd been waiting for this since the last time you'd made love.

That was a part of the difference in how he viewed you and Violet. Violet was a quick fuck, an easy release, a one and done kind of deal- if he had known your pretty little ass would've waltzed into his life, he wouldn't have touched her like that with a ten foot pole. They were similar, true buddy material, but you were the breath of fresh air he needed. The change of pace he craved. You kept him sane, while Violet ignited his instability and made him lose himself. He hated losing himself.

You reached out with your right hand, your left keeping you stable and upright while you kneeled in between his spread legs. Fire was accumulating in your tummy, your arousal twisting and enkindling your insides. You saw the appendage beneath the flimsy material of his boxers twitch, a small wet stain signalling his desperation. His cock throbbed as he waited in anticipation for you to finally make contact with his aching hard on.

You traced just around the outline of it, watching his eyes as they followed your hand going round and round his dick. He needed your hand, mouth, cunt- anything, he just needed to feel you touch him. He'd missed your touch more than anything.

'Please?' he cheekily peered up at you, biting his lip as he smirked. You rolled your eyes at him, reminding him you weren't going to give him what he wanted unless he begged. Properly.

He entertained your false sense of dominance for slightly longer, until he saw your hand nearing the dripping mess between your legs and he'd immediately decided he'd had enough of the teasing. He wasn't going to get left out of the fun.

Before you could even process the change in position, you were knocked onto your back and your hands were pinned above your head. That was fucking hot, even if you were slightly winded. If Tate wasn't situated snug and firm between your legs, you'd be rubbing your thighs together, desperately searching for friction against your clit.

'Woah,' you giggled, smiling up at Tate as he frantically kissed down your cheek to the bare skin of your neck. His hands trailed down to your parted thighs, sneakily making their way beneath the flimsy skirt that was doing little to nothing to hide your clothed mound.

He toyed with the lace of your underwear, getting back at you for the torment you put him through not moments before. He watched as you bit your lip and rolled around impatiently, wanting his fingers in your dripping folds, rubbing and soothing the ache in your pussy. He just laughed at your insatiable need, leaning closer to cover your lips with his as he finally pushed past the barrier keeping you two agonisingly apart.

‘Oh, shit-' you moaned, trying to relieve your hands from the relentless grip your sweet boyfriend currently had around your sore, red wrists. You never knew pain could feel so fucking good. The fingers of his free hand were exploring every inch of you, tentatively circling your hole before rising up to your sweet bundle of nerves. He loved watching you fall apart beneath him. It was addictive.

Smothering his fingers in the flowing essence dripping from your hole, he bought them up between the two of you as he once more parted from your plump, swollen lips. Your cheeks warmed at the pruned state of his hands, eyes entranced as you noticed the way your arousal dripped down him. He alined his fingers up to entrance of your mouth, words that didn’t need to be spoken aloud hanging off of the edge of his tongue. Your eyes widened.

‘You- you want me to—‘

‘Open.’

One word was all that needed to be said for you to scurry to fulfil his orders. You parted your lips as he requested, watching as he lowered his fingers past your opening before laying them flat against your wet muscle. ‘Suck.’

Eyes fluttering shut, you wrapped the ring of your lips around him as you tasted the manifestion of your excitement. It didn’t as taste as bad as you expected, sweet even. You laughed mentally as you recalled all the fruit you’d love to indulge yourself in when you were still alive. Must be that.

You lapped your tongue over his digits, moving your head back and forth as you took every inch of them that you could. His breathing was becoming laboured, watching you as you sucked him in as if he were a lollipop for you to feast on. He quickly removed himself from your mouth, shuffling further down the floor until his hot breath was right above where you wanted him the most. He tugged your underwear down your legs, wrapping his arms tightly around your thighs as he hurriedly dipped his head between your soft thighs.

His tongue was cold as it came in contact with you, sending you jolting as he devoured everything he could get his lips on. Your wetness smeared across the lower half of his face as he pushed his lips closer against you, taking every little drop you were giving him. Your moans and whimpers spurred him on, his greed taking over as he meticulously circled his tongue around your sweet spot. His hips had a mind of their own, pathetically rutting his cock against the basement floor as you pulled him closer by his mess of hair.

You can feel him moaning against you, the vibrations sending sparks through your sensitive area as you squealed in surprise. You tried to pull away from his ministrations, but the grip on your thighs kept you anchored to his persistent hot mouth.

Kissing down from your clit to your needy hole, he trailed his tongue around the ring of your cunt before pushing past the barrier into your dripping warmth. You cried out, unintentionally clenching around him, legs quivering as he tongue fucked your hole as if it were his dick.

Speaking of his dick, it was feeling very lonely and like it wanted in on some of the fun. Finally pulling away from between your legs, he moved forward until he was face to face with you.

‘Hi,’ you laughed, taking in his blissed out appearance. His lips and the tip of his nose glistened, his cheeks pink and pupils dilated. His hair was a poofy, untamed ball on the top of his head, showing signs of your tugging and pulling from how it had knotted together.

‘Hey, greetings and salutations,’ he smiled back, placing a firm kiss on your lips. You deepened the kiss as you wrapped your arms around the curve of his neck, your heart soaring as he enveloped your body in his arms.

The sounds of your wet lips smacking together filled the air, your mind oblivious as you lost yourself in the way his soft lips felt against yours.

‘A-ah, what-‘

You felt something prodding at your entrance, his squishy tip forcing your walls to spread around him. You gasped, feeling your insides stretch to accommodate his average size. You certainly weren’t expecting that.

Taking the opportunity as it presented itself, his tongue slithered it’s way into your mouth without a second thought, twirling around yours as you shared spit. He slid inside of you inch by inch, groaning into your mouth as he finally bottomed out. He could feel your cervix kissing his tip, and his eyes rolled to the back of his head in ecstasy. He missed this- missed you.

Supporting his weight on his palms, his arms rested against your head as he dragged his hips slowly back and forth. Usually your love making was a lot more intense, rough. It was pounding that left you sore for days with a limp in your step. But right now, you were both making up for the days you’d been without each other. Right now, you needed each other more than you needed to finish.

You could feel his balls making contact with your ass as he thrusted in and out of you, your vaginal walls stretching and tightening as he entered and left you. You feel so fucking full with him inside of you, realising how much you missed being stuffed with everything he had to give. Your juices were dripping down his cock, watching droplets of sweat gather on his forehead as he worked you both closer to your orgasm.

‘Can I hold you, please?’ you looked up at him, not missing the way his eyes clenched shut before dropping onto you like a bag of potatoes. You wrapped your arms around him, legs coming up to encompass his waist as he continued to make you both feel good.

‘I love you,’ Tate moaned, arms coming down to pull your thighs up into him, making sure you take every inch of him. ‘I love you, I love you, I love you, I love-‘

‘I love you too,’ you cry out, brain going blank as the blonde boy randomly sped up his rhythm. Every thrust of his hips had him pulling you up onto his cock, genitals rubbing together as he took everything from you that he could. Every drag of his dick inside of you, every kiss of your lips. He didn’t know what he would do if he were to lose it all again, if he lost you.

Reaching between your sweaty bodies, he circled your clit as he pounded into you harder than before. Your cunt tightened, the pressure building in your muscles becoming so much you felt ready to explode. You were going to snap, the floodgates were going to open and you were going to cum all over Tate Langdon’s cock. You looked fucked out and exhausted, your body ready to give out as you took his last few thrusts.

‘Shit, cumming-‘

Your cunt spasmed as you came undone around him, ears ringing as you writhed and squirmed in his hold. You could feel his ejaculate shooting into you, painting your walls white with his cum. He slowly fucked it into you, noting with a dozy smile how great it was he was dead and couldn’t impregnate you. Well, not likely, he soon grimaced.

After a few more slow, gentle thrusts, Tate removed his flaccid cock from your sopping hole as he turned to lay beside you. You both turned to each other at the same time, loopy smiles on both faces that neither had the energy or care to try and hide.

You finally felt whole again.

‘Are you done? It’s not just you in this basement, you know.’

Hayden’s shrill voice calls out, her tone less than pleased at the sight of you two, fucked out on the ground.

‘Jealous?’ Tate remarked, wrapping his arm around you as he pulled you into his chest. You burned red in shame at forgetting your location, which just so happened to be the hub of every single dead person in the house.

‘Fuck you.’

first attempt at smut lol, hope was okay. feedback would be appreciated! <3

#ahs #evan peters #tate langdon #tate langdon x reader #tate langdon smut #ahs imagine #ahs murder house #evan peters x reader #kit walker #kit walker x reader

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darkmodechaoticlight · 10 days

Text

Accidental

Satan was all bluster when he told Evie that he wanted her to bear his children. But that night when they were attacked by Angels in Gehenna- his daughter came into the world. I hc that Satan and Evie were in a dangerous battle when Evies water broke. Evie had hidden the pregnancy during the previous battles of Gehenna, knowing that Satan would worry more of her than his people. -Evie had an extreme pain tolerance and like her family rarely expressed pain. A small twinge in her leg or up her spine was all she felt as she was killing the angels with the other devils. Their blood seemed to fuel her rage. -She was able to rip one angel apart before she growled in pain. Something truly demonic. Satan and the others recognized the cry of pain being the Call of a Prince. The Angels, alarmed shift aim to Evie and her incoming child. She was able to summon a barrier as she was ankle deep in angel blood. -Satan heeded the call immediately, answering in a soothing tone even if he could barely be heard over the rush of battle. Sitri openly offers Satan his blood to make the weapons of his king. Ppyong was able to stay by Evie's side before Satan made his way over to the protective bubble. -Satan only saw her blank face, the pressure was there, the pain that had flared up not so long ago was now gone. But the babe was incoming (Ppyong: It was the first time I had ever seen a head coming from that place.) Weirded out by her apparent no reaction to labour he had to scramble to catch his daughter. She was alive, and filled with the same rage as her parents. Her cries seemed to have heralded the end of the seige. -Satan got first skin to skin contact with the baby. He is very protective of his daughter, being very active in her care. Evie chuckled when he only let her feed the infant before taking care of her. -Satan allowed his first born be named after Evie's mum, another devil called Maia. -Maia was fairly average compared to her incoming siblings. A soild seven pounds even. She looked like Satan, down to the blinding red eyes and pale pink hair. Bonus: Satan: *Sharing the news that he had an heir, sending a picture of a sleeping Maia in his arms to the King Group chat.* Asmodeus: Lucky for you and our dear Evie, I love milfs Satan: Keep your lubed up hands away from her! Asmodeus: Don't be so coy Satan, don't you remember Woodstock? I'm sure we could come up with a compromise Beelzebub: Does this mean shes free? Belphegor: So shes been broken in. Thank you Satan. Lucifer: Now that was uncalled for. Belphegor: Well, if shes keeping her side of the bargain with bearing our heirs she better enjoy her free time now.

#what in hell is bad #whb #地獄のどこが悪い #prettybusy what in “hell” is bad?#whatinhellisbad #evelyn #whb satan #whb asmodeus #whb belphegor #whb lucifer #maia #the king bicker in the group chat #especially after the surprise birth of Maia #Solomons descendants coochi game so strong #she makes the kings act like giddy fans #leviathan is jelly af of Satan

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arcofacatboy · 4 months

Text

Remember when, towards the beginning of Unwind, Connor sees a storked baby on someone’s doorstep?

Connor has just escaped the juvies less than 48 hours beforehand. Right now, his main focus is not getting caught by juvies and being unwound as a result. He has Risa and Lev to look out for - not that he knows either of them very well at this point - but his main goal, at this point, is saving his own skin (literally). Connor didn’t object when his classmate, and fellow unwind, Andy Jameson, sacrificed himself for him. It was implied in a Facebook post (all the way back in 2011!) that Connor and Andy were friends - and Andy was ultimately unwound because he saved Connor’s life. Andy is never mentioned again. Connor feels no guilt over Andy entering a divided state for him.

And yet, when Connor sees that baby on the doorstep, he panics.

It’s not like the general public in the Unwind Universe care about storks that much. Starkey was tormented by his status as a stork - everyone else thought he was a joke because of it, and he hated himself for that. Bam feels similarly, and is no stranger to becoming aggressive with those who try to belittle her because she was abandoned as a baby. No adults seemed to want to help them in this regard - they sent Bam and Starkey off to be unwound in the end, because their status as storks and the lack of affection from everyone in their lives came to be too much, and their anger was no longer contained and internalized. Bam lived - but Starkey ultimately died because he, more than anything, wanted to be something other than a stork to be unwound, who wouldn’t amount to anything.

But that’s not the point here, really. Connor doesn’t know Bam or Starkey, let alone that Starkey will die at his only remaining hand. He’s not panicking because someone he knows is a stork, and is suffering because of it. Someone he knew was a stork, and died because not a single person in his neighborhood cared about keeping him alive.

A baby was put on the doorstep of Connor’s parents. They knew why he was there - they had been storked, and they were now legally, and morally, obligated to take in the baby as their own.

But they already had a seven year old and a four year old! Two boys, no less! They had no need for a third son. Surely no one had seen them be storked by whatever irresponsible girl had gotten herself pregnant and given her baby up to good, hardworking people, who shouldn’t have had to bear the burden of her bad decisions.

Surely no one would notice if they just moved the baby to the doorstep of the neighbors. Surely they wouldn’t mind raising a son.

But no one said a damn thing.

Two weeks later, the baby boy showed up on the Lassiter’s doorstep - again.

He was visibly sick, so close to death that only then, out of pity for the infant, did the Lassiter parents take him in. He died in the hospital - most likely alone, having never known a world in which he was wanted. He never knew a world in which he wasn’t passed from porch to porch, doorstep to doorstep, suffering, alone and sick, because of the silence and apathy of everyone around him.

Everyone in the neighborhood came to the baby’s funeral, a funeral that was only held because it would have looked terrible for the Lassiter parents to not hold a funeral for the baby that died on their watch, and was technically their son. And they all cried. They knew they were all responsible for that baby boy dying, so they cried and cried, never admitting guilt, never admitting that one of them could have saved the baby’s life - and they chose not to.

Connor was only seven when the baby died. And yet, at sixteen, the death of the baby still haunts him. And here he is, face to face with the same situation. There is a baby on a doorstep - and the recipient of this precious gift is complaining about having to care for another unwanted child.

He remembers the death of the baby who could have been his neighbor, or his baby brother, if anyone around him had showed an ounce of compassion. A horrible thought strikes him.

This baby could suffer the same fate.

Connor is already so close to death himself. He could be caught by juvies at any moment. If he gets caught, Risa and Lev could die, too.

But, if he doesn’t act now, so could the baby.

So he goes to save her. He confronts the recipient of the storked child with no real plan. He just wants to save the baby. He can’t let another baby die because of human selfishness and apathy.

Risa steps in, making up a lie that she and Connor are the baby’s parents, and tells the recipient that she’ll take her baby back. Risa is furious with Connor, and chews him out. What could make him do a stupid thing like that? The three of them could be caught at any moment, and a screaming, crying baby isn’t going to make escaping persecution any easier.

But Connor couldn’t let Didi die.

Unwind came out in 2007 - it celebrated its seventeenth birthday last November. Unwind is now so old that, if it was a teenager, it couldn’t be unwound itself! So why bring up a well-known scene from the very start of the book.

Like the book itself, it comes back to Neal Shusterman.

@nealshustermanreal - remember what you wrote. While The Schwa Was Here might have been your first critically acclaimed book, Unwind is why you’re here today - why you are anything to anyone. And while all your books (that I’ve read) have complex themes of morality, like the anecdote I just mentioned above, remember that Unwind is what most people who know you, know you from. They know about Baby Lassiter, and they know about baby Didi. They know that silence, apathy, and complacency does more harm than good - they know that because of you.

And yet, here you are. People are dying in droves, and the people that aren’t dying are being injured, having their homes destroyed, being forced to watch their loved ones die, or otherwise being terrorized. Palestinians are dying. And yet, you wait over two months to say anything about it. You wait until your book tour, promoting a graphic novel you wrote about another genocide, is over. You send out an email quietly, an email that only those who are subscribed to your newsletter will see. And your statement seems to be an afterthought, squeezed between a paragraph on how you approach presenting your books on tour, and links to where you can buy a signed copy of your new, shiny graphic novel about genocide. And this is what you say.

Most of your fans, at least on this platform, know of this email. We’ve all seen it. But I want to focus on that last part.

“I’ve taken a stand - by refusing to feed that mentality. The situation is tragic for everyone. We need empathy everywhere.”

You are being selfish. You wish to try to see why both Israel is justified in their slaughtering of Palestinians, and why Palestinians don’t deserve to be slaughtered. This is not a topic in which you can have your cake and eat it, too. Either you support the country who has proven that they will continue to murder Palestinians, destroy every aspect of their culture, and bomb every place that Palestinians cherished and loved, or you denounce that. Your refusal to acknowledge that the citizens of Palestine are the current targets in a genocide, to acknowledge that Israel will call anything or anyone they don’t like “Hamas” to slaughter them without criticism, and to acknowledge that all of this was the result of Israel wanting to destroy Palestine does not paint you as someone who is refusing to feed a black-and-white mentality. It paints you as someone who, because they aren’t being directly affected by this genocide, doesn’t think it’s their problem. That, by definition, is apathy.

This isn’t a perfect comparison by any means, but.

You are leaving Didi to die.

#arc of a scythe #scythe #the toll #thunderhead #neal shusterman #aoas #gleanings #unwind #unwholly #undivided #unbound #unsouled #connor lassiter #risa ward #lev calder #lev garrity #nealfanart

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mad4turtles · 6 months

Note

Can I get some Uncle Tello- Baby/Toddler Casey Jones Jr bonding fluff? Their bond is just so cute and funny to me & I just keep thinking about Donatello "I don't like kids, but if anyone even breathes wrong in Casey Jr's direction I will not hesitate to take someone out" Hamato aka 'the grumpy, protective uncle who grows to love his nephew very much but would never willingly admit it outloud (especially to his twin. Too bad for him Leo most likely already knows. again. twins lol ). Cause I can imagine poor guy had a hard time coping with the fact that CJ can destroy anyone's "emotionally unavailable bad-boy" image with little effort if you give him the time. And Donnie learned the hard way 😂

I am SO sorry this took so long! This prompt is golden and I love it, here you go!

Donatello tolerates children. He doesn't hate them because, believe it or not, there is a difference between the two.

He understands from a logistical standpoint that children function differently from adults. They're still navigating the world, cry when a need isn't met, laugh when you tickle them or someone falls on their face, and put everything and anything within reach in their mouth to figure out what it is and if they can eat it. Most of the time, the answer is no.

Donnie understands that, so he tolerates children. And as the world caves in and he's forced to intermingle with more humans and Yokai than he'll ever see (the numbers dwindle daily, but who's counting?), his tolerance builds. Though his position in the Resistance—Keeping Everyone Alive Under Six Feet of Earth and Limited Oxygen—keeps him cooped up in his lab and limits his interaction with people in general, on the odd days he's not locked in there with a sign that reads 'Keep Out or Get Bit', he'd say he does a decent job. Take that, autism.

It's on one of these odd days Cassandra Jones kicks the door of the mess hall down with enough force to send it flying, holds up a dirty bundle with a squirming thing inside and screeches. “I have acquired a child!”

And that was that.

Well, not really; there was a lot of screeching, demanding, explaining and even more frantic demanding involved. But Donnie barely remembers most of it. He'd been busy staring at the little pink face peeking out from the ragged cloth wrapped hastily around a tiny body, wondering how and why anyone would abandon him.

Logically, he knew why. Babies smell, they're defenceless, needy and loud. All recipes for disaster—death—in the alien apocalypse. Logically, he knew it was better to cut your losses and ditch, lighten the load, ease the burden and raise your chances of survival.

Emotionally, irrationally, he wanted to find the blood mother and kill her himself.

Regardless, Cassandra had claimed him, named him—Casey Jones Jr, of course—and the Hamato's had a new family member.

Cass was a mother, and Donnie was suddenly an uncle.

Cassandra, despite herself, is a great mother. She feeds, clothes, bathes and teaches Jr with the ferocity and vigour she's always had in spades but dipped in a new warmth and love Donnie never would have associated with her. It's unexpected, but Cass wouldn't be Cass if she weren't screwing Donnie's perception of reality in her every waking moment.

April and Raph dote on him something awful with baby voices and whatever toys they find or have donated to them by other understanding and indulgent parents. Mikey cries when he takes his first steps. Draxum gifts him a Yokai necklace made from dragon teeth and scales.

(“He can eat them once his feeble infant teeth fall out,” he explains while stoically cradling the giggling infant on one clawed palm, outwardly indifferent yet impossibly gentle. “They will harden his skin and strengthen his bones to iron. No Krang would dare stand in his way.”

“We are not,” April says, “feeding dragon teeth to my nephew, Draxum.”

“As his grandfather, I should have some say in his dietary requirements. Cassandra agrees with me!”

“I will bury you, Draxum,” April growls in a tone that promises unspeakable violence. “I will bury you deep.”

“... understood.”)

Leo lets him chew on his mask tails while rocking him to sleep. He also cries like a bitch when the little pink thing looks him in the eye, drool dribbling down his chin and his gummy smile miles and miles wide and says—“Weo!”

(Donnie thinks Splinter would have loved him just as much. Shared with him the stories and legacy of their clan, sang to him the same old Japanese lullabies, enthralled him with the tales of Lou Jitsu, everything he'd wanted to do should he ever become a grandfather.)

Donnie doesn't see Casey much. Not by choice, but he's a busy freaking turtle and one-year-olds are notoriously for being loud, distracting little things that Donnie cannot afford, now more than ever.

He knows their chances of winning the war are slim at best and impossible at worst. Hope can only take you so far, crazy mystic powers or not. They've already lost so much of their world. They've already lost Dad.

So Donnie needs to focus, work and keep working so they won't lose anyone else. Anything less than the best possible outcome is not a thread of logic he is willing to follow.

Then there's a knock at his door.

Without turning from his multiple screens, mystic or otherwise, Donnie grunts, “It had better be good—”

Cassandra bursts through the door, blazes across the room, dumps something on Donnie's lap—“HOLD THIS I WILL RETURN SHORTLY SHUT UP AND THANK YOU FAREWELL!”—and slams the door behind her on her way out.

Donnie sits bamboozled in his chair in the aftermath of her whirlwind. He stares at the scorch marks her feet left on the floor, the angle his door sits at after she'd slammed it near off its hinges—

“Ba!”

—and at the one-year-old pink thing she'd left to drool on his lap.

“Oh hell no, hell no—Cassandra Bernid Jones!” he hollers to no reply.

How in the shit could she do this to him?! Why in the shit?!

Junior giggles at Donnie's misery, kicking his bare feet madly and clapping damp hands. He must've had his fingers in his mouth. Joy.

“Cassandra, come back for your child or I will feed you to the nearest Krang Hound!” Donnie shouts. Unsurprisingly, his only answer is more of Junior's incessant giggling. Pudgy fingers reach for Donnie's face and Donnie lifts him higher, further away. Junior shrieks with joy.

Growling, Donnie activates the mechanical arms in his shell to carefully lift the child off his lap as he stands, holding him at a fair distance. The child is delighted by this and kicks harder, screaming with unbridled joy and having the time of his life. Donnie stares, fighting a scowl and a flinch because dear god how can something so small be so ungodly loud?

Donnie wants to smash something. Ironically, the indirect source of his ire keeps that desire at bay, but it doesn't stop him from grinding his teeth.

He's busy running updates on their freaking security system, the only thing keeping the Krang from finding them and killing everything that breathes. Cassandra knows this, everyone knows this, he'd sent them an email about it! So why, in the ever-loving shit, would Cassandra literally drop her child off with the one person who has a history of only tolerating children? Sure it's his adopted nephew, but he can only last so much in the presence of his own blood relatives for Christ—

He doesn't realize he's hissing, a low guttural thing rivalled only by Raphael at his angriest, until Junior stops laughing.

As much as they postured and played with fashion, aesthetics and trends as teenagers, Donnie and his brothers are mutants, and by (non-freaky)human standards, they are not conventionally 'pretty'. And according to many honest human comrades, April included, they can be downright unnerving sometimes. Mostly when they're pissed off, their animal roots seeping through the cracks of the humanity instilled in them by a loving father. They growl, hiss, click and roar, bearing their teeth and snarling like beasts. It's worse for Donnie and Raph, the carnivores of the family and most prone to biting; Raph's size doesn't help, and Donnie has easily frightened some of their biggest and strongest Yokai allies with a flash of fangs or a warning hiss.

It's not something he likes about himself these days. It never bothered him until they were forced to interact more and more with humans who had no qualms pointing shit like that out, even now with literal aliens prowling their ruined world. Still, he's learned to roll with it like he does with everything else.

But Casey Junior looks at him—his peeled lips revealing sharp fangs grit tight in a snarl and a hiss he can't curb fast enough—and he starts crying.

Oh shit.

“Oh shit,” Donnie says, flapping his hands, ire forgotten as panic takes over. “Oh shit, the child is crying and I am the cause. Cassandra will kill me, then Draxum will bring me back as a zombie so Raph can kill me again.”

What the hell does he do? Make funny faces? Pretend to trip over and fall flat on his snoot? Kids love physical comedy, pain is always funny! Or maybe he—or—oh who is he kidding, he's screwed. And the baby is still crying, kicking his feet and red in the face. Donnie lowers but doesn't touch him, biting his lip as his thoughts race. Not even five minutes and he's proven he cannot handle a child. How does Raph do this? How did Dad put up with this for seventeen years—

Oh wait, there's an idea. What did Dad do?

Trick question: Donnie knows exactly what Dad did when they were younger, and eight times out of ten it worked. The problem lies with Donnie and his intense aversion to all things stinky and gross and loud, all of which Casey Jr is.

But Donnie has seen and lived with worse even before the world went to shit. He lived with Leo and Mikey as his little brothers; they piss him off like it's their personal mission, but he loves them so fiercely it's painful. He'd look death in the eye and double-dog dare it to do its worst for them.

This is his baby nephew. He's not been around nearly as long but surely, surely, Donnie can get over himself for him, too.

(Even if he is a busy turtle working his ass off at the end of the world. But family is different. Family trumps everything.)

So Donnie swallows, takes a deep breath, takes Casey from the mechanical arms before dismissing them into his shell—“I'm doing it, I'm freaking doing it—” and pulls Casey into his arms, holding him tight against his chest.

The crying doesn't magically cease as Donnie had hoped, but it dies down into kitten-like sniffles that do—something to Donnie's heart, squeezing and twisting it in a way he hasn't felt since Mikey was this small, maybe smaller. Whatever it is, it compels him to cup the back of Casey's ebony head and press his (grossgrossgross) face into the exposed crook of Donnie's neck.

“Um... there there,” he says clumsily, patting Casey's back with his other hand. “Cease your crying. It's making my knees hurt and my chest do weird, fuzzy things I don't have time for.”

Casey turns his head at Donnie's voice, frighteningly alert.

Hm.

With a claw from his battle shell, he pulls his purple hood up, shielding Casey from the neon glare of his computer screens and LED lights around the lab.

“I apologize for scaring you,” he says a decibel softer. Casey turns his head again in response, still sniffling but significantly calmer. “I am angry, yes, but I am not angry at you. It was unfair of me to show my ire that way, especially in front of you, child who is easily frightened by loud noises and yet is scarily perceptive of the moods of the people around you...”

Casey lays his head against Donnie's shoulder, blinking up at him with big watery eyes. Donnie blinks back.

This is... not awful. It's progress. Progress is good. This is good.

He tears his gaze from Jr's—as deadly a weapon as Mikey's eyes for sure—and sways from side to side the way he used to do for Leo when they were young and scared. He hums a tune under his breath, one from that Ghibli movie about little people; he can't remember the film's name but the song at the end was cute and catchy as it was corny. Even years later, he remembers the words—

“I'm 14 years old, I am pretty. I'm a teen tiny girl, a little lady. I live under the kitchen floor. Right here, not so far from you.”

The sniffles die off, Casey's pudgy fingers grasping Donnie's torn hood, tiny nose buried against cool scales. Donnie keeps going, softly rubbing Casey's back the way Dad would rub his shell during Donnie's worse days. The memory brings tears to his eyes, so he shuts them before they can fall.

“Sometimes I feel happy, sometimes I feel blue. In my dreams O I wish I could... Feel my hair blowing in the wind, see the sky and the summer rain, pick a flower from the garden for you. Beyond the lane there's another world, butterflies floating in the air. But is there someone out there for me?”

By the end, Donnie looks down to see Casey fast asleep, sucking his thumb and drooling on Donnie's shoulder. For a breathless moment that lasts an eternity, Donnie is spellbound, staring at the little pink thing—a biological miracle someone had so quickly discarded on the barren streets of a dying world, a little life that had persevered despite every odd stacked against it, Cassandra's son, Donnie's little infant nephew—he cradles in his arms. For the first time he doesn't care for the slimy drool coating his shoulder, the bacteria or anything his body and brain would outright reject.

Donnie stares at Casey Jones Jr and finally pins a name to the fuzzy feeling in his chest.

Oh.

“Oh,” he says. Jr snuffles in his sleep.

---

When Leo turns a corner to find Mikey, Raph, April and Cassandra huddled outside Donnie's lab doors, he almost turns around to avoid the oncoming storm of Donnie's short temper. The gossip in him wins out in the end as he squeezes between Raph and Cassandra to peer through the crack in the door.

What he sees has him gaping like a fish.

Donatello Hamato—the Resistance's resident genius and hermit—sits languidly at his desk surrounded by screens, one hand tapping away at holographic screens, breezing through emails. The other arm curls around a babbling Casey Jr, grubby hands clenched tight on one of Donnie's old rubber fidget toys as he gnaws on it like a dog with a bone.

“The shipment from Asia's remaining base in Hong Kong should be arriving at the port between noon and sixteen hundred hours tomorrow,” Donnie rambles, eyes scanning a long wall of encrypted mystic text.

“Ba!” Casey cries around the toy, kicking his legs.

Donnie nods with a hum, scratching his chin. “Yes, I agree. Krang activity has intensified alarmingly at the Old Port since the refugee extraction six months ago, but there's no time to plan a safer route...”

“Ba dee ba!” Casey blows a messy raspberry. Not missing a beat, a mechanical arm pops from Donnie's shell to wipe the baby's mouth with a cloth before discarding it.

“You're right, Jr. I suppose there's no helping the matter. We must brief the teams as soon as possible to discuss the matter, rally what factions we have at our disposal—”

“Eeeee!” Casey screeches before bursting into giggles.

Donnie brightens. “Of course! We could send the drones! They're stealthier and won't incur a needless massacre at the hands of psychopathic aliens. If anything, we shall be doing the massacring once I've outfitted the drones with my newest Genius Built trademark mystic weaponry! Excellent idea Casey Jones Jr, what would I do without your added brilliance.”

“Don-NEE!” Casey cries.

“Yes yes, I'll send the email and hopefully one of those dumb dumbs will actually read—wait, what did you say?” Donnie drops the screens and plucks Casey off his lap to stare him in the face with wide eyes. “Did—Did you just—did you just say—?”

“Don!” Casey giggles, wiggling in Donnie's grip. “Don don don don don! Don-NEE!”

Donnie stares and stares and stares. A stupidly happy grin splits his face in two. “Oh my god.”

“Oh my god,” Mikey breathes with a matching grin.

“Would'ja look at that,” Raph chuckles, his smile a proud, fond thing.

“Knew he had it in him,” April nods.

“Which means Leonardo owes me fifty bucks!” Cassandra quietly whoops.

Tearing his eyes away from the horrendously cute picture of his twin and nephew, Leo aims a sly grin at Cassandra. “I would if we still used actual money as a source of income or trade.” Cassandra's grin drops like a stone, and Leo fights an evil cackle that would make Draxum proud. “Cash hasn't been a thing in years, Cassandra dear. Get dunked on.”

“Bite my ass, you di—!”

The door abruptly slides open the rest of the way and they tumble to the floor in a heap. Above them, Donatello stands unimpressed, brow raised and one hand on his hip. Curled in his other arm, Jr babbles happily and reaches for Cassandra.

“Evening all,” Donnie drones as they clambered guiltily to their feet. “To what do I owe this displeasure.”

“Nothing at all!” Cassandra said, shooting Leo a poisonous glare before opening her arms to receive her son. “Thank you for looking after my child, I will take him back now and relinquish you from your—”

“A-bub-bub-bub!” Donnie turns slightly, putting Jr out of her reach. “I have decided that Jr may stay a few hours longer while I run the regular diagnostics and schedule that meeting you no doubt heard about while you were unceremoniously eavesdropping at my still broken door—thank you for that Cassandra, by the way—he is no trouble presently and makes an excellent rubber duck to bounce ideas off. Don't you agree, Jr?”

Jr snaps his head up to beam at Donnie. “Ah!” he says. Donnie's impassive face melts into a rare smile that Leo aches to see. He's not smiled like that since before Dad...

Cassandra's arms flop to her sides. April, Mikey and Raph stare, rendered speechless until April lifts a finger. “... er, Don, are you sure—?”

“Quite sure, Commander O'Neil,” the impassive mask returns, but Donnie's fooling no one. “Now if you don't mind, Jr and I are very busy bees and must get back to work, so begone. And while you're at it, please issue this new warning to the rest of the base: 'I have only had Casey Jones Jr for five hours, but if anything happens to him, I will kill everyone in this base and then myself.' Good day.”

“Goo' 'ay!” Casey chimes and Leo has a front-row seat to Donnie's delighted crooked smirk right before he slams the door shut in their faces.

There's a beat of silence.

Then Raph claps his hands. “So,” he draws out with a strained smile, “who saw that coming?”

“Me,” Leo sings.

“You bet against him!” Cassandra booms. “With non-existent money!”

Leo shrugs, motioning them to follow him down the hall. “Only on principle. I knew he had it in him. Jr is family and Donnie loves attention and family. It was bound to happen.”

“Aaand it was stupidly cute!” Mikey chimes, floating by them with his hands tucked under his chin.

Leo thinks of the tingle he'd felt in his chest hours ago when Cassandra first ditched—ahem—dropped Jr off with Donnie, of the familiar tune from an old, corny yet hopeful film from their childhood humming from the fringes of their Mind Meld, of the glee and soft, new, helpless love bleeding from Donnie's gaze, his smile, as Jr babbled his name.

Leo smiles. “Yeah. Stupidly cute.”

---

Reblogs are appreciated! Feel free to drop more requests! For those of you still waiting, thank you for your patience I will get to them soon! :3 <3

#rottmnt #my writing #rottmnt fic #rottmnt movie #bad future rottmnt #bad future timeline #casey jones jr #casey jr #uncle donnie #i love them with all my heart #they are family your honor

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liz-allyn · 1 year

Text

sugar and vice, pt. 20 [mob!tasm!peter x fem!reader-oc]

summary: no more running. no more cages.

words: 10.7 k

chapter warning: heavy chapter warnings for S&V John Walker (it's a warning), SA, death, violence, gore

series warnings: mob-typical bang bang violence, hurt/comfort. Spicy smutty situations. spousal abuse. family trauma. Drug use. coercion. manipulation. kidnapping. gore. blood. toxic/yandere!peter (maybe, sorta), negative self talk, shameless forced proximity trope. ‘only ten one bed oops’ trope, imprisonment. slowest burn. a dash of questionable and/or morally grey intentions. extremely toxic relationships.

This version of TASM Peter is not canon. The relationships and characters here are not healthy.

Don't date a mob boss.™️

18+ You’re responsible for your own media consumption, but if you don't know these TWs by now, then don't go here.

Back to Part 19.

Note: your comments and notes keep me alive, but please be careful to use section breaks and spoiler tags!

Part 20

Once when she was a little girl, she cut her baby sister’s nails. She had to. It was something that their mother would have done—should have done—but she hadn’t been home in several days. Her older sister had the most experience, but she was stuck working a double shift. Rebecca had been sick with a cold for days, and Selena was just a toddler.

After all, it was her job to look after her younger siblings.

So that left Honey in charge.

Poor Gabriella. The infant couldn’t stop scratching her face. Red lines marked up her round cheeks like tiger stripes. Honey knew if any of the children had too many marks, people would start to notice. Then something bad would happen, her mother assured her. People would come and take Gabriella away.

She tried everything to prevent the baby from digging her tiny claws into her own skin. She tried rolled socks as makeshift mittens. She tried using a bath towel as a swaddle, but that turned out to be an awful idea once the infant realized she was stuck and didn’t like being restrained.

By contrast, being tied up wasn’t something that ever bothered Honey.

The obvious solution was to trim her nails. She had to. It had to be done. They didn’t own a pair of nail clippers, Honey knew that. But it was on her to fix things. She was in charge. So she took a pair of kitchen scissors and tried her best.

After that, she was never okay with the sight of blood.

It used to bother her tremendously. She’d become agitated for a few days out of every month. Her other sisters would joke about it. ‘She must be on her period.’ They were right.

As a teenager, the smallest knick from shaving her legs in the shower would send her into a dizzy spiral. Over time, it got better. John changed that.

Mrs. Walker became an expert at cleaning up blood. She learned to ignore the smell or at least put a dab of Vicks beneath her nose to block the stench.

The only helpful thing she learned in high school chemistry was how blood cells expanded when coming in contact with warm water. Thus, her teacher told her, cold water was best for removing blood stains.

“You know. In case you ever have to hide a dead body.”

It was a joke. Until it wasn’t.

John changed that.

She sat on the tiled floor of her bathroom, shoulders slumped and expression blank. Now, it was impossible to get rid of the blood on her hands. She could strip off her clothes and burn them, but she felt it on her skin. She could shove an entire eucalyptus tree up her nose, but the scent would linger.

She was stained in rust colors, starkly contrasting the pristine ivory of her bathroom. Silently, she gazed at how the blood crusted on her skin, following the ridges of her pores like brush strokes in oil paint. The cotton hoodie and joggers she’d been wearing were soaked through. There had been so much carnage and death she didn’t even know whose blood she was wearing.

Helen’s. Johnny’s. Her own, probably. Blood from ‘that’ guy, whose scalp was torn off.

Eddie’s blood.

All that was left of his life stained her skin. She should be nauseous by now. She should be at least a little woozy. But, instead, the thought of just washing him away made her want to die inside.

She would wear it, then. Needed to wear it—she had to. On her arms and face. On her neck. On her chest, like a scarlet letter. Irreversably stained.

Is this what it means to be desensitized to gore?

Indeed, she felt nothing at all.

What happened, happened. The Bunker was in shambles. It would take months to repair. Would have if Peter hadn’t instructed them to burn everything left.

Every piece of incriminating evidence, every tool at their disposal, and every chapter of their history was on fire underground. Nothing would be left, no matter when the fire department showed up. Johnny had re-routed the gas lines years ago. With the flip of a switch, everything would go up in flames. Nothing could be salvaged. It would be an empty cave filled with useless, charred artifacts from an irrelevant time.

On second thought—she considered—that’s what she felt.

It was as good of a description as any.

After that morning’s attack, she was dropped off at the Penthouse. Peter would follow soon after, they told her. She shouldn’t wait up.

She had limped into her bathroom to clean off the remnants of the massacre. There she remained, for over an hour. Couldn’t get up off the floor. Couldn’t force herself to get in the shower.

At this rate, she may never be clean again.

Her eyes wandered to the smartphone beside her, tucked near her thigh.

John’s phone.

This was the weapon that killed Eddie Brock.

The second she had entered her room, she pulled the cursed object out from the box spring. She wanted to hand it over quickly so that Peni could analyze it. Could... study it, or whatever it is that tech nerds do. Honey would do anything to fix things.

But nobody cared about the phone. It was as good as a gun without bullets. A time bomb, two seconds too late. It was of no consequence.

She picked up the smartphone, glaring down at it with contempt. Sticky red fingerprints covered the cracked screen. Her blood. Their blood.

Eventually, she came to a stand. Then, bitterly, she dropped the phone into the toilet bowl, submerging it in water.

Peter was finally home. But it didn’t feel like home.

His home was on fire, riddled with bullet holes. Just like the home he grew up in.

He stood before the full-length mirror in his wardrobe and wiped the blood stains away with a damp, pink-tinged towel. His flesh was now rubbed raw. The cotton fabric felt like sandpaper against his tender skin.

The obvious solution was to take a proper shower. But he didn’t have time. He only needed to get enough blood off to pass in broad daylight without someone calling the cops if they saw him. He wouldn’t get very far if he looked like an ax murderer.

With all the rage he held inside, an ax was unnecessary. Overkill. And yet, not enough ‘kill.’

He had redressed in clean clothes, wearing a pair of midnight-navy trousers with creased edges that were sharp enough to cut. He paused midway through buttoning a crisp, white dress shirt, momentarily taking in the gruesome sight of himself.

His torso was a canvas splashed with deep purples and reds, stretched over a frame of broken ribs and pinched nerves. His eyes rested on the delicate box chain around his neck, which held two gold wedding bands near his heart.

Ben and May’s wedding rings. Tarnished. Stained with blood.

He quickly reached for the towel.

Minutes later, he carefully shrugged on a matching double-breasted blazer, wincing as he pulled it over his shoulders. Every part of him felt broken, in every possible way. But physical pain hadn’t stopped him yet, not when something more important was driving him.

He regarded his reflection with tight lips. He didn’t wear this jacket too often. It was a tuxedo cut and hung looser than he was accustomed to, making his frame appear boxy. A little too retro, maybe.

Perfect for concealing weapons. After all, he was dressing for a funeral.

His skin prickled. He was familiar with the sensation. He recognized it instantly, like an earthy scent before a rain shower. Honey’s reflection came into view as she approached the doorway behind him.

The sight of her covered in blood made his stomach clench. He reminded himself that it wasn’t all her blood, and only then did the tension in his chest release. But not entirely.

“Thought you were getting some sleep.” Peter’s tone was flat. His eyes flicked back to his reflection as he tugged on the lapels of his blazer.

He didn’t say it as a question; rather, he stated it as an expectation.

She stared back, unfazed, wearing a stone expression. “What are you going to do?”

Similarly, it wasn’t a question. More like a demand.

He briefly glanced at her before returning to the mirror. His jaw set firmly. “You don’t wanna know.”

She marched into the room. “You’re going after John. I want to help.”

“Help me?” he repeated with a scoff. “I don’t think so.”

Her forehead creased, offended. “Look, I can help—”

“Just what do you think is about to happen right now?” he snapped. He squinted his eyes, turning on his heel to face her. “Ya think we’re just gonna pull up on ‘em and that’s it? Ya think he’s just sittin’ around at home watching TV?”

“No,” she said. Her tone was unwaveringly resolved. “I think he’s expecting you to come after him.”

“No shit,” Peter sighed with frustration. “I’m expecting to be expected.” He fixed a stern gaze on her, tension pulling at his vocal cords. “Only difference is I don’t care if he knows I’m comin’, or how many cops are in my way. There’s only one way this ends, and it ends bloody. And you don’t want any part of it.”

He brushed past her and stomped towards his bureau. Her eyes followed each movement, crackling with lightning bolts. “Fuck you, telling me what I want!” she hissed. “This is my mess, too!”

He pivoted toward her. “And what, ya think killing him is gonna fix it?” His face went grim, sorrow etched into his features. Remorse welled in the bottom of his eyes. “Think it gets easier after that? Ya think it’ll make you somehow feel better—?”

“I don’t care about feeling better!” she barked back. He neatly flinched at the sharpness of her tone. Fury bubbled beneath her skin. “The only thing I care about is that he suffers.”

Peter contemplated her for a quiet moment. “Well,” he said, voice soft. His melancholy briefly overshadowed his rage. “You don’t need to worry about that.”

He didn’t meet her eye. Instead, he studied the grain of the wood beneath his feet, letting his shoulders deflate. He looked beyond tired, deep lines creasing his features and flecks of gray in his beard. Yet, when he lifted his chin, his eyes were resolute. He arched his path to avoid her.

Unsatisfied, she trailed him with fire in her eyes. “How will you know where to find him?”

“I’ll figure it out.”

“Who’s going with you?”

“Stop asking questions, Honey.”

She grasped him by the shoulder and yanked him around to face her. “Jesus Christ! The phone is gone, you unbelievable asshole! Do you really think I’d tell anyone—?”

“You’re not getting involved,” he stated firmly.

“Not involved? Are you fucking serious?!”

“Too many people have already gotten hurt.”

“Holy shit,” she blanched, freezing in place. Her eyes widened in horror. “You’re not telling the others, are you?”

He paused, for eons, she thought. Peter tried to keep his face neutral, but it was useless under her scrutiny. His eyes were ablaze with stubborn resolve, lips in a line. He turned his back and continued down the staircase.

Blinking rapidly, she watched him walk away. She felt dizzy, but not from weakness. Instead, rage pulsed through her veins, each blood cell embedded with fear. She rushed after him, hot on his heels.

“You’re going in alone?” she growled, her nose crinkled. “That’s your fucking genius plan? Go in, guns blazing, and hope you don’t get yourself killed?!”

“I have no intention of getting killed,” Peter said. “Not unless I’m taking him with me.”

His reaction enraged her further as they approached the base of the stairs. “Who does that work out for, huh?” she spat.

Ignoring her, he marched on. Peter spotted one of the guards standing watch outside his office door. “Rollins!” he ordered, voice booming. “Bring the car ‘round.”

“Yes, sir—”

“Rollins, don’t you dare bring the car around!” she commanded, blocking Peter’s path and skewering him with a defiant glare. It was as if she dared him to move her. His dark eyes flashed angrily as he clenched his jaw. He looked as if he was considering it.

Rollins stared at the two of them, back and forth. Frozen with indecision.

Enraged by his sudden hesitancy, Peter’s nostrils flared. He shot a dangerous glare at the guard before glancing down at the young woman with ire.

He lifted his gaze back to his man, narrowing his eyes. “Rollins...” Through gritted teeth, his guard’s name sounded more like a declaration of war.

Rollins sprang into action. “On it, sir.”

As his guard disappeared, she kept her feet rooted to the floor like a mythical beast guarding a castle. She breathed flames from her mouth and conjured curses and plagues with her gaze.

“You asshole—you’re in such a hurry to kill yourself!” she said viciously. “Who for, huh?! You think this is about the others? For Miles? You’re not doing this for us, Peter! And you’re not doing it for Eddie, either!”

“You’re damn right, I’m not!” he snapped indignantly, jabbing his finger into his bruised sternum. “I’m not doing this for anybody but myself!”

Heat radiated from him in waves, like steam from a hot spring. He bent his neck, leering over her. Volume dropped low, his voice thickened into a threatening rumble. “If I were doing this for Eddie,” he said, “I’d make ‘em watch me kill everything he ever loved, ya feel me? ‘Course, I highly doubt you were ever on that list, so you’ve got nothin’ to worry about.”

She barked a bitter laugh. “So this is, what, payback? Your stupid, dick-measuring way of defending my honor?”

“This isn’t about you, Honey,” he said, dark as night. He leaned down until his lips were inches from her forehead, eyes as cold and sharp as a jagged iceberg. “If it was—knowing what I know now,” he added breathily, “I promise you—it wouldn’t be anything like this.”

A misleading smirk formed on his lips, betraying the brutality staining his thoughts. She felt the heat of his rage in each whispered word.

“No,” he said, deathly grave. “For what he did to you—I would keep him alive for as long as I possibly could.”

The unabashed, murderous smile on his lips sent a shiver down her spine. Her discomfort didn’t faze him this time. He didn’t care how scared she was of him. If anything, the more afraid she was, the better.

“He’s a disease,” Peter ranted, directing his frustration back towards himself, “that I’ve allowed to spread. He’s a threat to everything I give a damn about! And I will not let him hurt somebody else I lo—”

Blinking, he cut the sentence short, just millimeters from a leap he wasn’t willing to take. She stared intently up at him, unaware that she was holding her breath.

He pursed his lips, eyes heavy with regret. He looked away, avoiding her gaze while he composed himself. Finally, he took in a slow, tense breath. “I need to do this, Honey,” he whispered ruefully. He had calmed slightly, swallowing back his rage.

The only thing left behind was a tiny, heartbroken remark. “It’s the only thing I’m good at.” The corners of his mouth turned down sharply.

She didn’t hesitate. “Even if that were true, you don’t need to do it alone.”

He shook his head in frustration. “Why are you so desperate to know what it’s like to kill somebody?”

A vicious yell burst out of her mouth. “I already have killed somebody!” she shouted, as if it were obvious. Her voice echoed off the walls while anguish pooled in her eyes. “It’s my fault Eddie is dead! I know it is—”

He shook his head again. “It’s not your fault. It’s mine—”

“Of course, it’s your fault!” she roared. “It’s both of our faults!”

The comment stunned him, only slightly less than the bitterness of her tone. He snapped his mouth closed, taken aback.

Despair twisted her face, and anger lit up her eyes. “Don’t you get it?” She was green with sickness, spitting out words like they were poison. “This is what he does! He turns people against each other!”

Peter stayed quiet as he observed her intensity. Her feet were rooted while her whole body raged, “He turns you against yourself! He twists you up until you can’t even trust your own instincts! Until you hate yourself enough to feel like you had it coming!”

A dam had broken, and a river of acid spilled through her lips. Resentment from years of abuse writhed in her chest like a tsunami, threatening to flood every street in New York. Her fingers itched to wrap around the collective necks of the city and drown it in her devastation.

She pointed at Peter, eyes flashing furiously. “You’re willing to get yourself killed because you feel responsible for every bad thing that’s ever happened!” She jabbed her thumb back at herself. “I’m willing to suffer in silence because I feel responsible for every bad thing that’s happened!”

“Meanwhile,” she added, with a livid hiss, “John Mother Fucking Walker—who is actually responsible for all of this—feels Nothing. At. All! Because he is a fucking psychopath!”

Peter blinked, contemplating her in silence. Her firm eyes narrowed on him. “That’s how he beats us, Peter!” she exclaimed. “Fear! Guilt! That’s how he wins!”

The frustration in her voice reverberated off of the walls, sending a tremor that penetrated the bedrock. Peter observed her, stoic save for the sorrow in his gaze.

Her chest heaved as unshed tears dampened her lashes. Exhausted, she sighed heavily. “I am tired of letting him win,” she said in exasperation. She was more composed but no less grave. “And if you think you’re gonna do what I think you’re gonna do—which is go after him alone—then that’s exactly what will happen.”

Peter’s eyes glistened, red-rimmed and raw. His silence stretched on forever until she was nearly inclined to choke him for a response. Eventually, he simply bowed his head, casting his eyes down.

“What if fear and guilt are the only things I have left?” It was a meek, feeble reply from someone so powerful. She blinked up at him, watching as he chewed on his lower lip. “Wish it wasn’t that way. I wish I had—”

He stopped, leaving the thought unfinished.

“Doesn’t matter what I wish, does it?” he said. “Doesn’t matter what coulda been.”

A crease formed between her brows. Her face softened. “Peter—”

“Just let me say this, please,” he blurted out with urgency as if the words would claw their way from his chest. “I need to.” She regarded his desperate gaze, and eventually, she bobbed her head gently.

He gazed down at her. His lower lip twitched for a moment. “I had my suspicions about your past,” Peter explained mournfully. “Knew something bad happened, but... bad shit happens to everyone, though. First, I thought it was your mother. Then after Pym, I... I figured it was some old boyfriend, some jerk who treated you like trash.”

Her face flushed red. When she looked back at him, his glazed eyes were fixed on her. Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. With shards of glass on his tongue, he murmured, “I-I didn’t know... wh-what he—”

“I don’t blame you, Peter, if that’s what you think—”

“I didn’t wanna know,” he firmly replied, silencing her. Guilt weighed down his features. “Didn’t wanna ask, if I’m bein’ honest.” He gulped, nearly choking on his words like a razor blade stuck in his throat. “I was afraid of what I would do if I knew the truth.”

She felt warmth sting her eyes, tears budding at the corner of her lids.

“I thought, I guess—” Peter’s voice tremored before he pressed on. “I-I thought I could save you. From what, I didn’t even know. Maybe that was my mistake all along.”

He raked his fingers through his hair, eyes heavy with shame. “I was so stupid. I’m the one that let him in. I let this act—this dance between us—I let it go on.” He sniffed with a bleary gaze. “He played me against me,” he declared with finality. “My fear. My doubt, self-hatred—whatever you wanna call it. Whatever voice in my head that tells me... th-that you... You could never love somebody like me.”

She flinched at that. Her resolve to remain stoic buckled under her feet.

His eyes dropped to his feet. “I told myself this was just business, and that if the Feds could use you, so could I.” Vulnerability poured from his eyes as they met hers. “I pretended it didn’t kill me every time you looked me in the face and lied.”

Despite his apology, her stomach twisted with shame.

“And each time it happened,” he explained, “I couldn’t figure out what they had on you. Something awful, I figured. Something that scared the shit out of you.”

Peter looked at her somberly, lower lip wobbling and eyes dark with regret. “I thought it was me.”

Her face crumpled at his admission, grief seizing her at last. She bit down on her lip to keep a sob from escaping.

“It’s like he already won,” he said, with a broken soul. “I thought I was the one he wanted.” He sniffed, peeking down at her through wet lashes. Deep, raw heartache thickened his voice. “Turns out, it was you all along. And I led him straight to you.”

Her vision flooded with tears at his admission. It sounded like a confession from a dying man. After a few gut-wrenching moments, Peter lifted his chin and met her eyes, resolved. “That’s why I’m doing this without you, Honey. This is my mistake to fix.”

Overwhelmed with grief, she stared up at him in a daze. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she gently shook her head to protest.

“I’m sorry, Peter,” she said. It sounded like a eulogy.

His eyes glistened as he nodded, love and loss in their depths. “Me too.”

He gazed at her, the coffee color of his irises shining bittersweet. She stared up at him in adoration and agony. She debated whether she should wrap her arms around him and cry or kiss him dizzy.

He paused, letting his eyes linger, then turned away and trodded down the hall. “I’m gonna fix this, Honey,” he said. “I promise. You’re free.”

Perplexed, she darted after him. “Wh-what—?”

“No more running, no more cages,” he resolutely replied. She followed closely as he approached the oak doors to his office. “Won’t hafta be afraid of anyone comin’ after you. Not Fisk. Not me. And not some asshole ex. ‘Cos win or lose...I’m ending this. Tonight.”

She fluttered her lashes with concern, following him blindly into the room.

“Why wait?”

Honey stopped short in her tracks like her feet had been fused to the floor. Peter froze. Swayed dizzily. The tiny hairs on the back of his neck didn’t just prickle, as they had been since the beginning of their conversation. It inverted, the sensation feeling like his skin had peeled off and been turned inside out.

John Walker coolly watched them come to a sudden stop. He lounged back casually in the executive desk chair with a devil-may-care expression and his leather oxfords up on the tabletop. Stunned, they stared at the lithe man with growing alarm. The icy blue of his eyes twinkled with delight at their fear, fixing them with a Cheshire smile.

“Why don’t we do this right now?” he shrugged nonchalantly.

Each bruised muscle in Peter’s body went rigid. In a matter of moments, he was hit with a surge of emotion that he barely managed to contain beneath his skin. Pupils dilated, fingers shaking, heart pounding—fury washed over him, and all Walker had to do was smile.

Over the sound of blood rushing, Peter registered the fluttering palpation of her heart.

His Heart.

His Honey.

She was terrified.

It reminded him of the moment she walked in on the meeting between him and “Steve,” only this time it was worse.

An arctic chill surrounded her from the ice running through her veins. She paused mid-breath, rendered motionless, eyes wide with horror. For a moment Peter worried if she would ever start breathing again.

His palms began to tingle. He kept his attention straight ahead, while he fought between the urge to comfort her and the visceral need to tear John’s face from his skull.

Before he could do either, another warning sensation—sharp and jagged, like his name being carved into a chalkboard with a steak knife—sliced through his brain.

After having been suppressed, ignored, and nearly incapacitated by the Symbiote, his senses were in overdrive. Every cell in his body alerted him to impending danger, which came in the form of footsteps.

He turned quickly, dragging Honey behind his back, as he laid eyes on the new threat. Three of his guards, Malick, Ward, and Rollins—fucking Rollins—stepped into the room. Ward and Malick were vigilant with their weapons drawn, but Rollins sauntered at a leisurely pace. He glanced over at his boss, unworried, and a malicious grin widened his lips.

Peter’s shoulders slumped as he realized that their bullets were meant for him. He frowned sourly, betrayed. “Jack,” Peter coldly muttered, hiding his disappointment beneath the threat in his tone. “Wha’cha up to?”

Rollins simply shrugged. “Sorry, Boss,” he smirked. “‘S’just business.”

Peter’s eyes darkened as he observed Gideon Malick aim his pistol at Honey, while Grant Ward slammed the office door closed, locking them in. With Rollins drawing his sidearm, three guns were now trained on him and the shaking woman behind him.

Peter couldn’t see her face but didn’t need to. He could feel her fear radiating through his fingertips. Her body became both lighter and heavier as if her bones had turned to water. He sensed her increasing dissociation, barely tethered to the Earth and dangling at the end of his reach. Only terror cemented her feet in place. She was sluggish as he pushed her closer into his back as if he could somehow hide her there.

“I have to say, Pete,” John called to him matter-of-factly. Peter split his attention between his backstabbing guards and the monster seated behind his desk. “At first, I was impressed with your organization. But it seems like you have a few serious issues with staff retention to sort out.” John spoke with a self-satisfied smirk, kicking his feet off of the desk and coming to a relaxed stance. “You should think about setting up a meeting with H.R.”

“Believe me,” Peter glowered at John, briefly glancing at Rollins with clenched teeth. “It’s a priority.”

John took an unrushed stroll to the front of the desk before leaning back on the corner’s edge. He moved through the office as if it was his home. It was unnerving for Peter to consider how many times he might have been there without his knowledge, with his treacherous guards granting him access to anything he wanted.

“‘Course, I always thought you shoulda gone into human trafficking,” John said, with a mockingly sincere tone. A crease split Peter’s brow, his face twisting with revulsion. “You would’ve made a very lucrative pimp.”

Peter glared at him, disgusted, as he chuckled softly at his own joke. The laugh faded, as did the humor in John’s ice-blue eyes. They narrowed with contempt, looking beyond Peter to the trembling girl behind him.

“Lord knows you got the world’s biggest whore right behind you,” he sneered maliciously. “With a mouth like hers, you’ll get anything you want. If you throw in an extra five-thousand dollars, of course.”

Peter felt her bristle at the jab, and he reached back further to steady her.

“Don’t look at her,” he ordered coldly, never breaking eye contact. “You don’t get to look at her. Ever.”

The blonde snickered, licking his lips scandalously. “Oh, I’ve done a whole lot more than just look.”

Peter’s jaw tensed at that.

John’s humorless gaze turned into a cold glare. “I don’t know if you’ve heard,” he added vindictively, “but that’s my wife you have behind you.”

Despite his own outrage, Peter kept a straight face. He listened intently, studying how Walker’s nostrils flared and how his pulse sped up at the sight of the couple embracing.

Good, he thought. He needed every second of time he could get.

Peter took a step backward with her, slowly approaching the wall.

His eyes lightened, and a callous smirk formed on his lips. “You mean that’s ‘your wife’ I’ve had beneath me,” Peter sneered lewdly.

The remark splintered beneath John’s skin. Peter watched with satisfaction at how the blonde’s brow twitched. He could smell the agitation leaking out through his pores.

“Yeeaah,” Peter chuckled mockingly, fueling John’s anger. “She told me all about you. Short story. If ya catch my drift.”

Peter took another step backward, bumping her along, teeth flashing with amusement. “In fact,” he parried, matching John’s sardonic tone, “maybe you should talk to a doctor about your little problem. You know, instead of torturing women.”

John glowered with his lower lip curled. “Well. Since we’re sharing.” He tilted his head with a predatory grin, while his eyes shot daggers at them. “I wouldn’t trust everything she says. The girl’s a freak. She tell ya about all of her filthy rape fantasies, too?”

Her breath hitched. A tiny shiver racked through her body. It was barely noticeable to the other men, but to Peter, it felt like a tectonic movement. He could hear the way her stomach shifted, her nausea roaring in like a rising tide.

“She likes it rough,” John snarked. “It’s practically the only thing that gets her off. Pretty fucked up, if you ask me.”

“I didn’t ask you.” Inwardly, Peter seethed, resentment darkening his gaze.

“‘Course not. Why take my word for it?” John laughed, having momentarily taken the upper hand. He glanced around at the other traitors mirthlessly before turning back to Peter. “Why don’t we just find out for ourselves?”

Peter’s anger spiked at the insinuation, rage stuttering his heartbeat. He watched as John glanced at Rollins and the other men with a menacing grin. Cruel laughter trickled from the traitors that made his blood boil further.

He took a measured breath. “I know you boys don’t know me that well,” Peter remarked calmly. “But lemme be very clear.” He slid his eyes over and leveled a threatening glare at the men behind Rollins. “Anyone touches her, and I’ll send ya back home to your families in garbage bags.”

Peter’s men dropped their smiles suddenly. He heard a stutter in the heartbeats coming from that direction as they attempted to suppress their reaction. “Don’t take my word for it,” he said directly to Rollins with a murderous gaze. “You know what I’m capable of, Jackie.”

“Is that what you did to Gwen?”

Peter’s anger spread through him like epinephrine as John carelessly spat out his deceased wife’s name. His shoulders tensed, and the cords in his neck pulled tautly.

“You send her back to her daddy in a body bag?” John snickered. “Sure—Call me a shitty husband. But at least my wife never took a swan dive off of the Brooklyn Bridge.”

The fresh swell of rage in Peter’s belly twisted him into knots. A gentle press from a tiny palm on the middle of his back was the only thing that anchored him.

“Oof. Hit a nerve, did I?” John grinned with satisfaction at how the color drained from Peter’s eyes and complexion. “What else did you two lovebirds talk about?” he said. “She tell ya about our little talks late at night?” He grinned salaciously. “Lotsa juicy stuff.”

Peter swallowed hard, unflinching.

“She told me everything,” Walker continued. “Her plan to seduce you. To pretend she cared about you. How much she despised you.” John tilted his head, musing. “How’d you put it, Peach? You could ‘never love a monster like him’?”

He heard a soft gasp from behind him. As strong as their resolve was, the remark punctured its armor. Honey clenched the fabric of his jacket, her touch pleading for forgiveness. Steadfast, Peter took another careful step backward, keeping her close.

“‘Course, that’s no big surprise,” John continued ruthlessly. He could see through Peter’s indifference, knowing each word cut into him like a jigsaw. “‘Everyone that ever loved you is dead.’ Ain’t that right?”

Honey gripped Peter’s shoulder tighter, a swell of nausea creeping up her esophagus. Her vocal cords were paralyzed, with nothing but a whimper escaping her lips. “No...” she muttered breathlessly, stunned and enraged by the twisting of her words.

“Poor, pitiful Peter Parker,” John said in a sing-song voice. “Sad, psychotic little orphan boy. No mommy. No daddy. His aunt and uncle both turned into swiss cheese.” He punctuated each word with viciousness, spitting them out like curdled milk. “Clinging desperately onto the memory of his dead whore.”

Nostrils flaring, Peter glowered at John, dipping his chin. Another step backward nearly had the woman behind him up against the wall, backing her carefully up to a marble-top bar. “Gloat all you want, asshole,” Peter mumbled with disdain. “She still dumped you.”

John’s eyes flashed red with a serpentine hiss sliding off his forked tongue. “And yet, I’m the one that finger-fucked your girl while you were on your little date! Greedy slut was wetter than a swamp when I touched her—”

“Liar!” she screamed, voice cracking like shattered glass.

She lunged forward but Peter blocked her. He practically shoved her back, her spine hitting the edge of the bar. A chorus of chuckles erupted, with Rollins, Ward, and Malick joining in on John’s amusement. She stumbled backward, using her hands to steady herself until she came in contact with a metal object on the bar top.

A camera.

Peter’s old camera. On top of the box disguised as a book.

Both items were out of place.

Presented out in the open, where they shouldn’t have been.

Honey’s eyes darted back up to the front.

“S’okay, Honey,” Peter muttered, his glare still trained on Walker. He held his arms behind his back as if to hide her from view. It formed a ‘cage,’ concealing her movements as she stealthily shifted the camera, keeping her eyes forward. “The longer this clown talks, the more desperate he sounds.”

John’s eyes flashed with malice. “Oh, you wanna hear what desperate sounds like? How ‘bout I push your little bitch off the roof, huh? Have your men make you watch me turn another woman you love into Humpty Dumpty. She’ll be runny eggs on the sidewalk in a matter of seconds—”

“Why are you all still smiling?” Peter sharply cut him off. He shifted his glare from John to his snickering accomplices. “Is it ‘cos you're scared? Or are ya just that stupid?” The laughing ceased immediately as Peter fixed John with a cold gaze. “Either way, you’re about to be a dead man.”

With her hands behind her back, she blindly fumbled to lift the lid of the box. Her fingers scavenged across the bottom, expecting to find a weapon of some kind, or a knife, or perhaps even—

“Lookin’ for this?” John said. The bang of a gunshot deafened her.

A splatter of wet, hot liquid covered her cheek and she flinched at the sound of an agonized cry. She screamed. At the gunshot. At the blood. And at the sight of Peter dropping forward to his knees in excruciating pain.

“No! No! No!”

She could hear her own shrieking in the distance as she grasped at him. Groaning, he writhed in agony. His hand, once again bloody, clutched a bullet hole piercing his upper right shoulder. She threw her already-stained palms over his, adding his blood to the fresco decorating her flesh.

Tears spilled down her cheeks. Lip wobbling, she glanced up with wide eyes as John pointed Peter’s pistol at them menacingly.

“Did ya really think I wasn’t gonna search this place for weapons?” he scoffed in offense, glaring at them through slitted eyes.

Nostrils flaring and teeth clenched tight, Peter breathed through the pain. He scowled up at John feeling like a flaming sword had severed his arm at the shoulder. His heart hammered as he watched John raise the pistol again, this time aiming between his brows.

“Please, don’t!” Honey sobbed. “John, please! I’m begging you!” She wrapped her arms around Peter as if she could shield him.

The smile faded from John’s lips. Contempt radiated from his blue eyes, turning them into blackened sapphires. “C’mon, Peach. We both know you can beg better than that.”

Peter shoved her away from him, jumping to his feet. He charged and knocked John’s aim off target. Another shot rang out and pierced the wall next to her.

Shrieking, she dropped to the floor and cowered down.

With one bloody hand on John’s wrist, Peter smashed him in the abs with his injured arm. He put his back muscles into the punch, snarling as the bruised flesh burned like his body was on fire.

His rage partially numbed the pain as Peter advanced forward. He shoved John back into the desk. The injuries made each move sluggish, but Peter managed to land another hit, this time to John’s face. With his other hand clenching the gun, he slammed it into the tabletop, loosening John’s grip. With another vicious whack, the weapon fell from his hand and clattered out of reach.

Amped with adrenaline, Peter reared his uninjured arm back. Balling his fist into a cannonball, he drove it down hard enough to break through concrete.

Right into John’s palm.

He blinked, stunned. Looked up at John. His face twisted with confusion, as the supposedly weaker man grinned smugly up at Peter.

“Oh, yeah,” John smiled with red teeth, slowly crushing Peter’s hand like an empty aluminum can. “And then there’s that.”

With a flick of John’s wrist, he inverted Peter’s arm and tossed his body like a garbage bag. Peter collided with the wall and toppled to the ground, sending plaster and drywall raining down.

John straightened up, taking labored breaths as he adjusted his light blue collar, now dotted with tiny spots of crimson. He fixed Peter with a wry smile. “I know about your little science experiments, too,” he smirked. “Your buddy Eddie stole the outdated model. Say ‘hello’ to Anti-Venom.”

John rolled his shoulders, tipping his head to crack his neck. As his joints popped, he rolled his eyes back into his skull—literally. Honey gaped with horror as she watched her ex-husband grin at them with a demonic stare, pure white engulfing his eyeballs. The milky, opaque clouds in his eyes seemed to part in the middle, like a crocodile opening an inner set of eyelids, revealing the dilated pupils of his sadistic stare.

Peter struggled to get on his hands and knees as John stalked towards him, feet heavy with malice. Honey screamed with almost no breath, “Peter, look out—”

In a flash, John was on him, jabbing his elbow into his back. Peter gasped at the stab to his spine, feeling another rib snap. The force slammed him chest-first back to the floor. With dazed eyes, he glanced blearily at the secret box, now tossed to the ground a few feet away. Photos of May and Ben were scattered about, among the shards of broken glass, chunks of wood, and twisted metal.

Weakened from the fall, the gunfight, and now the beating, Peter strained to reach for the box but was stopped short. Walker’s steel fingers clamped on his shoulder, yanking him to his feet. He jabbed a boulder-like fist into Peter’s sternum, violently ejecting the air from his lungs.

Honey sprang to her feet, grabbing a chunk of wood and charging toward them. Rollins and Ward were there instantly, scooping her up and restraining her.

She writhed desperately, screeching as they twisted her arms back. The sound of her attack vexed Peter, as he straightened his back, landing an upward thrust of his fist into John’s chin.

“Get off of her!” he hissed at Rollins and Ward, but John intercepted him.

Like thrashing wild animals, they pummeled each other until sweat and blood coated the floor. Yet, with every hit, John seemed unfazed. Whatever was running through his body was just as formidable as the Symbiote that had once possessed Peter. Both men tossed each other about, but Peter was at a disadvantage.

“Stop!” Honey cried out painfully in a shrill voice, which wrenched Peter’s heart. “John, don’t do this! Stop it!”

Peter swayed with cloudy eyes as he felt John hook his fist into his jaw. It felt like being hit in the face with a brick. Right after, John landed another jab with the opposite hand. And then a third. And a fourth.

“No, John! Please stop! Just stop! Please!”

His vision blurring, Peter jabbed left, only to have his wrist caught in John’s grip. With a twirl, John wrenched Peter’s arm out of its socket. He doubled over and howled in agony, his dislocated arm hanging limply at his side.

“John, stop it, stop it, please, stop!”

“When I’m done with you,” John whispered in Peter’s ear, “Fisk will have to scoop up what’s left of you with a shovel.”

Fighting to stay conscious, Peter met the man’s vindictive glare. John’s piercing blue eyes locked onto his. “Yeah. Wilson Fisk. I said his name. Wilson. Fisk. Meanwhile, you’re running around, afraid to say it like he’s Bloody Fucking Mary.”

Peter was on the floor again, launched into a glass console table. Unable to break his fall, the glass and metal crunched under the momentum of his body, shattering in all directions. He rolled, coughing up blood, his face covered in bruises and cuts. His vision swam, gaze darting across the room until he spotted the secret box.

With one arm limp, he dragged himself forward with the shoulder that had been shot, inching closer to the overturned box. He flicked the container away, his eyes landing on a delicate watch-like device. He reached for it.

John’s foot came down hard, stomping on his web shooter and crushing it beneath his foot. Peter choked back a frustrated scream, having another weapon fall short of his grasp.

“John, please! I’ll do anything you want! Just please don’t do this!”

John lifted his foot and slowly brought the sole down onto Peter’s wrist. He cried out, grimacing at the crushing pressure of the grown man standing on his forearm.

“You know what else I call ‘em?” John said, ogling Peter as if to gloat. It was a victorious stance. He was like a giant about to crush an insect. A bloody half-smile hung on his chiseled face as he waited for Peter to make eye contact. When he finally did, John provided an answer.

“Sir.”

A crease formed between Peter’s brows as he gazed up at John, panting with shallow breaths. His face paled with realization.

“Yeah,” the blonde crooned with an evil smile. “That’s right.” A horrifying picture emerged from Walker’s self-satisfied expression. "Arrogant little prick. Did you think that you could beat the Kingpin?”

John crouched down low, leering over Peter like a vulture about to peck on its prey while it was still living.

“Did you think changing your name and hiding underground would stop him from wiping you off the face of the Earth if he really wanted to?” Walker sneered in disgust. “You’re only still alive because he allows it!”

Honey sobbed with tears streaming down her face as John revealed his hand to them. Beside her, Rollins chuckled darkly, relishing in his boss’ despair.

“You have the audacity to run your mouth all over town,” John hissed, pouring putrid waste into Peter’s ear, “like you’re gonna walk him right up to the Pearly Gates! Like you’re judge, jury, and executioner! The monster at the end of his book!”

Peter pressed his lips into a thin line, rage boiling beneath his battered flesh. John reached down, gripping him by his thick tuft of hair and wrenching it back. The action forced Peter to gaze up at him; his neck bent backward and vulnerable. The way Walker glared at him, he half-expected the man to grow fangs and bury them in his throat.

“Well, I got news for ya, Peter Parker,” John spat out each word mockingly as he narrowed his eyes. “Mr. Fisk doesn’t give a shit what you call yourself.” He fixed Peter with a beaming grin made up of pure, sadistic evil. “He doesn’t even know who you are.”

He let the words hang in the air as if they were going to carve themselves into Peter’s headstone. For his part, despite his physical agony, Peter held himself steady. Kept his eyes fixed on John’s. Kept his jaw set firm. Anger pooled beneath his chest, cleansing him as it spread through his body.

“Guess you’ll have to explain it to ‘em next time you see ‘em,” Peter muttered, his lip curled into a snarl. “Might be curious to know who it was that killed him.”

The smile dropped from John’s eyes as a fresh wave of fury overtook him. He glared down at Peter, who fixed him with an insolent smirk.

“And for the record,” the beaten man glowered in defiance, his gaze glittering with spite, “I’m not walkin’ him to the Pearly Gates—I’m takin’ him straight to hell. So you be sure to save him a seat... you pathetic... wife-beating sack of shit!”

John growled and pulled his arm back. Drawing on the power of the entity inside him, he envisioned putting his fist through Peter’s skull and not stopping until he hit the concrete beneath their feet.

“I won’t fight you.”

The men froze at the tiny whimper, the voice carrying it shattered and frail.

John glanced over to see his ex-wife hanging limply in the hold of the two guards. Her eyes were empty, her face colorless and ashen. The woman swayed like a bedsheet in the wind.

“You can do whatever you want with me,” she spoke meekly, her spirit detached from her body. “I won’t fight back. I won’t run away.”

Hopelessness marked her features as nausea threatened to choke her. She wished that it would. Drowning in her own bile was a better fate than witnessing the grin form on John’s face.

“Please,” she mewled desperately, eyes red and glossy. “You’ve already won. He doesn’t matter anymore. Let Fisk finish him off.” Her voice trembled, quivering in her throat. “You can have me. However you want me.”

The silence that followed was deafening. John leered, foaming at the corners of his mouth. Lecherous eyes appraised her from head to toe. His chest heaved with short pants, like a rabid animal in heat.

“Atta girl,” he murmured with satisfaction before tossing Peter aside like a rag doll.

Peter coughed raggedly, choking on his red-tinged saliva, and rolled to one side. Gripping his wrist and using his foot for leverage, he wrenched his shoulder back in place with a sickening pop. An agonized whimper squeaked out, despite his best efforts.

John crossed the room in a few strides and gripped the woman by the throat. “No,” Peter gasped through bloody lips, exhausted and breathless from fear. “No...nono...please—”

“Where the fuck are you goin’, Boss?” Malick barked as Peter struggled to stand. The guard stalked forward, gun trained on him.

Ward joined him, grabbing Peter by his wounded shoulder and kicking his shin out from under him. Their boss was on his knees again, held steady at gunpoint, with Ward pushing the barrel of his weapon into Peter’s temple.

When Peter looked up, John was dragging Honey by the back of her neck, scruffed at the nape like an animal. She stumbled as he forced her behind Peter’s desk, kicking the chair away. He shoved her forward. The veneer stung her cheek when she collided with it, and she let out a whimper.

“Let her go!” Peter writhed desperately. Ward whacked him over the back of the head, driving him forward. He put his foot on Peter’s spine while Malick twisted his wounded arm behind his back. With his chin scraping the floor, he peered up through the fringe of his lashes. “Don’t fuckin’ touch her! You hear me?”

“Get ‘em up,” John ordered coldly. “He’s gonna wanna see this.”

With a hand on his hair and his arms locked in place, Peter’s men yanked him to his feet. He pulled himself forward, only to have Ward dig his fingers into the bullet hole, tearing at his flesh. They pulled him back down on his knees, driving a foot into his calf. Helplessly, Peter writhed, thrashing against their hold a few mere yards away from the terrified girl.

John sauntered up behind Honey, a smug grin plastered on his face. The woman lay motionless like a possum, bent over the edge of the desk. She stared at the mess of objects on Peter’s desk, shards of the battle. They shifted in and out of focus as her glossy eyes welled with tears. She let her mind take flight, drifting off to a cabin in the mountains.

“No!” Peter felt his voice crack and a scream lodge in his throat. “I’ll fuckin’ kill you, Walker! Ya, hear me? Look at me, you sonuvabitch! I’ll rip ya apart, sweartogod—”

John glanced at Rollins who kept careful watch over his boss. “If he makes a move, put a bullet in his back. That way he can still watch me snap her neck like a toothpick.”

Panic surged through Peter at the order, his amber eyes bright with terror. “I’m the one you want, yeah?” he pleaded, chest heaving. “Fight me like a man, you fuckin’ coward!”

John ignored him. He pressed his hips up against the seat of Honey’s joggers. He gripped the collar of her zip-up hoodie, tearing it down her shoulders.

She was elsewhere. Watching Peter’s fingers dance across the ivory keys of a piano. She liked being wherever she was. It was always easier for her to go there. Always easier for her to run away.

John ran his greedy hands down her spine and back up again beneath the filthy camisole she wore. His touch felt like a centipede crawling across her skin. A shudder racked through her as vomit climbed up her throat.

“Somebody’s excited,” John chuckled sadistically.

She breathed out a silent sob. She climbed the limbs of the maple tree in her backyard. Picturing the home she would make there one day.

John leaned down, pressing a rough kiss to the back of her shoulder. “Just like old times. Ain't that right, Peach?”

It was like being shocked by electricity. Letting her fingertips brush against the metal of a wall plug while still in the outlet. Every muscle in her body tensed. Her eyes darkened. Pupils blown wide.

“I don’t like that.”

John paused as his hands reached the waistband of her sweats. He glanced up at her, still amused, eyeing the back of her head. “What’d you say?”

She blinked. Her vision sharpened. “That’s not my name.”

His brow furrowed, his agitation spiking. “You’re gonna have to speak up.”

“I said ‘that’s not my name.’” Her volume grew louder, every syllable coming out sharper and more jagged. Her teeth ground together as she fixed her gaze forward, focusing on the grain of the wood.

“My name isn’t Peach,” she hissed. Molten-hot fury filled her while her tone hardened like rapidly cooling lava. “I’m not your Peach. I’m not your Kitten.”

Each word punctuated with a twitch in her eye and a tremor in her voice.

“I’m not your Doll Face. Or your Whore. Or your Pawn.”

Acid rolled off her tongue as she trembled with anger. Her rage was so thick she nearly choked on it, barely able to form words. Slowly, she pushed herself up off the desk, her spine turning to steel even as he towered over her.

“And I’m not your fucking wife,” she gritted her teeth, eyes black with hatred. “Not anymore.”

She turned her head to glance back at John, leveling him with a vengeful look.

“My name is Maricella Jimenez,” she hissed, sounding out each syllable carefully. “And you will remember it.”

The hand positioned on the desk sprang forward at his face so fast that John could barely see it. His head whipped back and all he could register was white-hot, piercing pain shooting through his skull.

John roared, reaching up with one hand to cover his face while the other hand dragged her off the desk to the ground. The guards jumped with shock, mouths agape, trying to discern what just occurred.

“Aggghhh!” John cried out with an agonized scream. Enraged, he clawed at his face, growling like a mildly-wounded grizzly bear. His thirst for blood compounded.

“Fucking bitch!” he roared, the creature inside of him twisting his vocal cords. When he straightened, half his face was covered in blood. His fingers shook as he struggled to see the damage she had done.

His men gazed at him with dumbfounded stares. Which he could only half see.

With a four-inch shard of broken glass from the console table lodged in his left eye socket, he’d never see anything out of that eye again.

“You fucking bitch!” he sneered, practically drooling with outrage. “I’ll fuckin’ kill you, you fuckin’ bitch!”

The sight of John’s face was nausea-inducing. Not only had the glass pierced his eye, but it sliced clean through, with half of his eyeball dangling from the nerve ending on his cheek.

“Holy shit!” Ward gasped at the ghastly sight.

Rollins hissed at other men, their jaws still gaping wide. “Don’t just stand there! Do something, goddamnit!”

“You screwed up now, you slut!” John raged with ragged breath. “You know what you did? You assaulted a Federal Agent!” He wheeled around to spot her cowering on the floor behind the desk. He stomped toward her, murder in each footfall. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done? Do you have any idea who I am???”

John grabbed her by the forearm, wrenching her up. She faced him with fire in her eyes. In her free hand, her finger curled around the trigger of Peter’s gun.

“Who gives a fuck?” she sneered.

Looking John in the eyes, she pulled the trigger, watching as his forehead imploded. The bullet ripped through his brain, tearing it apart and exploding out the back of his skull. From there, his brain matter splattered like a microwaved tomato, spraying across the room.

“Oh shit!” The guards cried out in horror, swallowing back sickness as fragments of John’s skull rained down on them.

Rollins lunged forward, his weapon still drawn. He took three steps to the edge of the desk.

“No!” Peter howled.

Another shot rang out. Honey held the gun firmly in her grip, shooting at the first human form that approached her. Rollins grunted, eyes wide with panic, as the bullet tore through his throat. He clutched his neck as hot liquid spilled out of his severed carotid artery. His look of agony was only matched by his look of astonishment.

Peter knocked Ward’s gun away from his temple, grabbing his wrist and directing the barrel at Malick. With Ward still clutching the gun, Peter pulled the trigger and shot Malick in the side.

Malick doubled over, releasing his hold on Peter’s wounded shoulder. Ward strained to regain control of his weapon. They struggled briefly before Peter reached behind Ward’s suit jacket and yanked a combat knife out of its sheath. He buried the blade into Ward’s ribs, before ripping it out and plunging it in again and again. With a few quick jabs, the traitor’s torso was carved up into wet spaghetti.

Malick stumbled, struggling to recover from the bullet wound. Peter’s brain buzzed as Malick attempted to shoot him. He pivoted out of the way, using Ward’s body to block the shot.

Honey fired the gun in her hand again, the bullet hitting the ceiling, but it was enough to distract Malick away from his target.

In a few blinks, Peter was on his feet and gripping Malick by the arm. Before the treacherous guard could fire his weapon, Peter skewered him with the hunting knife, driving it into the soft flesh behind the man’s chin.

Malick’s eyes went wide as the blade impaled his mouth, piercing his tongue. Peter snatched the back of the man’s head with a steel grip, even as his hands trembled with rage. He glared into Gideon’s eyes with bloodlust, pushing the knife up further—slowly—watching Malick squirm until the blade was buried to the hilt.

The man went limp in his hold. Once Peter watched the light fade from his eyes, he released him, finally sated.

The sirens in his head quit blaring as soon as the threat was eliminated. The intense pressure dissipated as if a boulder had been lifted off Peter’s skull.

He let out a long, ragged breath, his body broken and yet still pulsating with adrenaline. His eyes darted to the desk. He spotted the traumatized woman that held his heart standing behind it. His face softened. Took a step towards her.

She pivoted, still clutching the gun. Aimed it at him.

Peter went still. Fawn-hued eyes went wide. He glanced down the barrel, then back up at her.

She was astral. Her soul was only tethered to her body by a thin wire. She was a kite, tossed about the atmosphere, observing the scene outside the plane of time.

She stared at him. Barely able to breathe. Her hand shook from the weight of the gun.

“Whoa...” he whispered, his voice soft. He lifted his hands outward in a placating gesture.

Her eyes were glazed over. Staring right through him.

He watched, heart pounding, as she turned her gaze downwards to the river of blood that leaked from Rollins’ corpse. Heart going cold, all that was left of his life leaked out of him like a broken faucet. No more damaging than a spilled glass of wine.

Lips sealed tight, her eyes darted over to the body closest to her.

John’s body.

Her monster lay slain at her feet. His jaw hung open in a disturbing grimace, a permanent final expression. The top of his head was now a concave shell. The image of him imprinted on her, burrowing in her memories.

She had never seen so much blood in her life. It was everywhere. Beneath her fingernails. In the tiny valleys of her skin. Dripping from her hair. It stained everything.

“Honey...” She looked only vaguely aware of Peter as he cooed gently at her, growing more apprehensive the longer her silence stretched on. “...Honey...?” he repeated slowly, his tongue going dry.

This time, she brought her attention back to the front, her eyes finally finding his. Peter looked sick with worry, terrified of the irony that this was the exact same position they were in less than 48 hours before.

Honey held her arm outstretched, fingers tremoring around the handle of the pistol, as she fixed Peter with an unreadable expression. He felt his heart thumping up into his throat. His growing alarm threatened to strangle him.

Her legs were rigid even as she trembled like a tightrope walker stranded between skyscrapers. She gazed at him with a look of dread, shock seizing her body.

Peter mumbled her name desperately, chanting it like a prayer. “Honey, Honey, Honey, look at me. Look at me. Okay? Look—”

He took a step forward and she responded with a step backward, positioning him at the end of the barrel. He blinked, going still once again. His eyes misted over as he gazed at her with empathy.

“S’okay,” he softly said, closer to a plea. “Everything’s gonna be okay. You’re safe—”

“Stop telling me that.” She was firm, her eyes cold.

Peter felt silent, eyes darting back and forth between her and the gun. Her breaths were short, nostrils flaring. His shoulders curved into a slump. Carefully, he lowered his hands. “I meant what I said before,” he delicately replied. “No more cages.” Her eyebrows furrowed sharply. “I made you a promise. You’re free.”

She blinked wide eyes, motionless in every other way. Warily, he glanced down at the gun. “You don’t hafta do anything—”

“Shut up!” she hissed, voice shaking. He shut his mouth immediately. Her gaze wandered, her mind spiraling out of control. She flicked her sights on the four corpses stretched out around them. Her tongue tasted like metal. The gunshot was still ringing in her ears.

“Get on your knees,” she commanded. Unlike the last time she said it, there was no sense of control in her tone. No sense of pleasure to be gained. Instead, she sounded desperate.

Peter closed his eyes, heart sinking in his chest. “Okay.” Reluctantly, he slowly sank down until both knees were on the ground.

Her eyes flashed wildly as she glared, holding the pistol tighter in her hand.

“S’okay,” Peter whispered out a lament. “S’okay, Honey. You’re gonna be okay.” With every repeated phrase, he relinquished more of his hope. Her eyes may have been unreadable, but her position was not.

They were on opposite sides of the room. A continent apart. He was exiled to the unfortunate end of the barrel, along with the other men who used her as a means to an end. This was where he belonged.

A lump formed in his throat as he gazed up at her with wet eyes. “Everything is going to be okay now,” he said with a bittersweet curve of his mouth. “You have all the power, remember? Always did.” His eyes landed on the gun, then back up to hers. “No one’s gonna hurt you again.”

He watched as a tear rolled down her cheek. Fear weighed heavily on her, dragging her down into its depth. Her eyes shined like glass. The glisten in his gaze was a mirror reflection of her sorrow and regret.

“Whatever you gotta do,” Peter assured her. But it was more than reassurance. It was a gentle promise made to a frightened girl that the monsters were all gone now. “I’ll do whatever you want me to do.”

He hesitated to speak the true meaning of his implication. Instead, his eyes shined brightly on her like rays of moonlight, as if he could illuminate her path through the dark. A sincere apology sparkled at the bottom of their bourbon glow, but also, he offered forgiveness. He fixed her with a look of compassion before closing his eyes.

He let go.

Let go of his rage. Of his vendetta. Of his grief. Of his fantasies.

He let go of the idea of Honey.

From the depths of his bitter heart, he gave her his unconditional love.

“What I want...”

He stirred at the closeness of her voice, his eyes snapping open to find her standing inches over him. The gun rested at her side until she let it fall from her grasp. She stared into his eyes, her tears cresting over the ridges of her heart-aching smile.

She surged forward in the blink of an eye, crashing her lips into his. Her arms crossed behind his shoulders as she collapsed into his embrace. Her tongue breached his mouth, and with it, he felt like his heart would leap out of his chest. She breathed him in, relishing in the taste of his devotion, responding to it with love letters written on her lips. It was like her whole body was on fire, and only he could control the flame.

His hands wrapped around her lower back as he worshiped each twist of her tongue. Her kiss was better than morphine, numbing his body and heart to every injury he’d ever suffered.

Only when they were both dizzy and out of breath did she break the kiss. She gazed down at him with eyes that could scorch.

“What I want... is for you to touch me.”

Continue to Part 21

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A/N: I want to say thank you for the incredible support you all have shown me in this last break. Part 21 is already finished and will be released this week. Real compassion exists even on the internet and I just can't even deal...

Part 23 will be the end.

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