Tumgik
#tw: major character injury
puffdragongirl · 1 year
Text
A Knight’s Failing
Apologies for the technical double post, but I wanted to add this to my text fic archives as well! This work is inspired by @insertsomthinawesome‘s lovely and heartwrenching art of Sebek with an injured Malleus, which you can find here. Do yourself a favor and check out this and the rest of their amazing art!
Looking back, Sebek can barely fathom how it happened.
Classes were long settled for the day, and only a handful of students finishing up club activities remained on the main campus of Night Raven College. It was supposed to be like any other evening; a reunion with the Young Master and Master Lilia, a squabble over who would prevent Lilia from cooking dinner that night, and a debriefing of the day’s activities over tea.
As the Equestrian Club was gearing up for an intercollegiate competition next month, Malleus and Lilia’s club activities had ended quite a bit earlier, and they were kind enough to come to the stables to retrieve their underclassmen. But of course, that lazy Silver had fallen asleep while putting away his mount and was now dutifully receiving an exasperated lecture from Riddle on the importance of proper and timely care after a hard ride. Lilia had taken pity on his child, leaving Sebek the honor of guarding the future king while the Vice Housewarden helped to settle the mount to his stable for the evening.
And so, Sebek finds himself on an impromptu, but not unwelcome, tour of the gargoyles of NRC.
[Read the rest on AO3]
14 notes · View notes
untoldsoup · 12 days
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
Worked on this all day to make sure I could get this update out earlier than planned lol. Thanks for all your patience over the past 1.5 months waiting for this update!! Anyway big things coming in part two! Please read the tags for this before reading as some content can bother some people. Comments appreciated i worked so hard on this.
previous: chapter 1 and 2
next: ?
This is a sequel! First comic can be found here.
372 notes · View notes
clangenrising · 18 days
Text
Month 13 - Newleaf
“Ghost!” shouting and the clattering sound of someone scrambling up the loose metal roof of the shed woke Ghost up from his sleep with a start. He groaned, the sudden movement tugging at the stiff scar-flesh on his side. “Ghost! Ghost, are you here?!” 
“Yes!” he shouted back, sounding like a poked bear. Groaning again, he stood and slipped out from his nap spot tucked in between two warm, silver vents and onto the roof proper. He squinted at the ginger shape hauling itself over the edge of the roof, his left eye still mostly swollen shut from the hot and tender scarring on his cheek. Once she stood, he recognized Lizzie from her alert and dutiful posture, although he noted the way her pupils were blown wide and her tail was half bristled. 
“Sorry to wake you, sir!” she said loudly. “I have urgent news!” 
“What is it?” he asked, running his tongue over his chest fur tiredly. He really didn’t want to have more problems to deal with right now and her natural volume wasn’t helping his ever present headache. 
“There are wild cats in the city!” she reported and he immediately looked up. 
“Have they killed anyone?” he asked, heart starting to pound.
“No, sir, rumor has it they’re here to talk to Razor!” 
Ghost sighed in disappointment. “This won’t end well…” he grumbled. “How many of them?” 
“Two, sir, both elderly she-cats,” said Lizzie. 
“What?” His fur bristled.
“Two elderly she-cats, sir,” the girl repeated, her eyes darting up to the places where his ears used to be. Milo had taken extra satisfaction in tearing each of them to shredded stumps. 
Ghost shook his head to get a grip. “Right. What did they look like?” 
“Um,” Lizzie hesitated thoughtfully. “The bigger one was white and grey, the smaller one all grey.” 
“Shit,” Ghost cussed, lurching towards the edge of the roof with a brisk but wobbly walk. “And you said they were going to see Razor?” 
“Yes, sir,” Lizzie said. He could hear the confusion in her voice, the question she held back. Jagg would have asked it, he thought, ‘do they mean something to you?’ He thanked the Folk for Lizzie’s obedient nature. 
“Thank you, Lizzie,” he said, leaping down onto the roof of the shed. It rattled loudly, making him wince, and he quickly bounded from there to the ground. He didn’t wait for her to respond or follow, he just started moving. 
What was she doing here? The description could only be Miss Smoke but he had no idea what business she would have with Razor. Had she come to see him instead and been intercepted? Were the Clans surrendering? Either way, he knew that she was not going to be safe until she left the city. His muscles burned in protest as he darted across roads and under fences, cutting the shortest path he could to Razor’s yard. 
He slowed right before he reached the hedges and peered through the leaves. Razor was lounging on the edge of the slightly raised deck, Gingersnap sitting bolt upright behind him. Tiger sat close by on the grass and ahead of them stood Sardine and Smokyrose, another Clan cat Ghost couldn’t name close behind. 
Smokyrose was speaking. “-conditions for peace. If you have a list of terms, I can bring it back to Goldenstar and we can start moving towards an equitable solution.” She sounded unsure of herself but trying her best. 
“Hmm,” Razor said, regarding her with slit pupils and a tail twitching with interest. “I’d love to speak to Goldenstar myself. Would that be possible?” 
Smokyrose nodded, getting a little bolder. “It’s definitely a possibility. If you give me a time and place I can try and arrange a meeting.” She seemed so naively unaware of Razor’s true intentions. Something inside Ghost kicked in to high gear and he found himself striding out towards the gathered cats. All eyes turned to him, Razor’s narrowing darkly. 
Smokyrose gasped, eyes going wide. “Ghost! Oh, Stars, what happened to you?” She hurried in his direction, ears pressed back, gaze flickering over every bruised and battered inch of him. 
“Uh,” he didn’t know what to say, wasn’t sure what his plan had been, only knew that he couldn’t leave her alone with Razor any longer. He watched the tom’s face, paralyzed, as Smokyrose came to hover around him. Razor smiled. 
“I didn’t realize you two were acquainted,” he said. Ghost heard the dangerous interest in his voice but Smokyrose, bless her soul, didn’t know any better. 
She turned back to him and said, “Oh, yes. Ghost and I are-” she paused, looking back at him, and he saw the uncertainty in her eyes, “we know each other.” Guilt sank its claws into his throat and pulled down until it was tight and painful to swallow. 
“Is that so?” mused Sardine. 
“Yes,” Ghost said carefully. He looked at Smokyrose, her pretty face pinched in a worried pout, and whispered, “Miss Smoke, you really shouldn’t be here, it’s not safe.” 
“Not safe?” she whispered back, louder than he would have liked. “Ghost, what happened to you?” 
“Let me explain,” Razor said, leaping down onto the grass. “Come here, both of you.” He beckoned with a paw as if he were going to tell them a casual secret. Smokyrose hesitated, eyes on Ghost, and Razor insisted with a, “Come onnn, it’s alright.” 
The other Clan cat growled softly, tail starting to lash. Gingersnap looked like a deer in headlights, her tail curled tightly against her body, her eyes wide, ears pressed against her skull. Ghost glanced at her briefly and she shook her head so subtly he almost missed it. Unfortunately, Smokyrose was already on her way over. Ghost followed, trying to stick close to her. 
As they reached Razor, he put his tail around Smokyrose, making eye contact with Ghost as he did. “You see, Ghost and I had a bit of a disagreement because a little birdie told me he was trying to steal my girl. This was our way of settling things, although, I’ll admit, I’m still a bit angry with him.” His tone was light and playful but it sent fear straight through Ghost’s heart. 
Smokyrose recoiled in terror. “Y-you did this to him?” Razor’s paw wrapped around her shoulders and pulled her back into him. Ghost’s jaw tensed possessively. 
“Me and a few friends of mine,” Razor said nonchalantly. “He just doesn’t listen if you ask him nicely.” 
“Razor,” Ghost tried, voice sounding small as it squeezed its way out of his throat. “Again, I’m sorry about all of that. But she has nothing to do with this.” 
“I don’t like your tone,” Razor growled. “But it’s alright. I’ve thought of something that will put the whole dispute to bed.” 
Ghost hesitated. He didn’t know where this was going but he didn’t like it. “What’s that?”
Razor smirked victoriously. “This,” he said. In a blur of movement, his other paw came up to wrap around Smokyrose’s chest. The force of the movement knocked her backwards, onto the ground, and Razor followed her, teeth flashing. Smokyrose screamed.
“Don’t-!” Ghost tried but it was too late.
Razor had his teeth clenched around her neck, one of his canines poking through the soft flesh under her chin, and with a sharp twist of his head there was a nasty snap of bone. Smokyrose choked out a cry of pain, blinking back tears. Razor adjusted his grip and twisted again, her neck giving another disgusting crunch. Her body went limp, the only movement a feeble twitching in her feet. 
Razor dropped the body to the grass and licked his lips. “There,” he said, “now we’re even.” 
Across the yard, the second Clan cat took off in a sprint for the fence. Sardine yowled and lunged after her but she leaped nimbly out of his claws and disappeared through the shrubs. 
“Dammit!” hissed Sardine. He looked back at Razor, a simmering anger slipping through his mask. 
“Well, get after her!” Razor bellowed, “she could be useful!” 
“Of course,” Sardine smiled, tail lashing bitterly, then he took off after her. 
“You too,” Razor snapped at Tiger. The ginger tabby growled but heaved himself to his feet and bounded after them. 
“Razor, how is this even!?” Ghost cried, unable to look at the cooling corpse at his feet. He was furious and queasy and tired and distraught. His mind was searching for something he could have done differently, some way she could have survived. If you hadn’t arrived, it said, he would have sent her home just fine. 
“You went after my girl, I went after yours,” Razor snorted, prodding the body. 
“You killed her!” 
“So?” Razor narrowed his eyes. “She was a savage! She deserved it. Besides, I’m sure you have plenty of other girls who are just fine.” 
Ghost couldn’t muster a retort. 
“Now get rid of this thing,” Razor said curtly. “I don’t want my Folk finding it when they get home.” He turned away and strode back towards the deck, leaving Ghost to stare down at the silent scream etched onto Smokyrose’s features, the unnatural angle of her head. 
Distantly, he heard Razor saying, “I’m sorry you had to see that, dear.” 
“I feel sick,” Gingersnap said softly. “I think I want to go home.” 
“I’ll walk you,” said Razor. 
Ghost looked up just in time to catch Gingersnap looking at him, horrified. She quickly ducked her head and slipped out of the garden at Razor’s side, leaving Ghost alone with the body. He stared numbly for a long time. 
This is what he got for caring, wasn’t it? If he’d shut Smokyrose out of his heart, if he’d stayed away, she wouldn’t have died and they both could have gone on with their miserable lives. His kits were orphans now. Well… they were practically orphans. They’d be better off orphans. It wasn’t like he would have been a good father anyway. 
He scoffed, laughing as he tilted his face to the sky. Who was he kidding? Pretending he was going to step up and be there. He was the same as he ever was, a solitary tom wishing for something he wasn’t brave enough to hold onto. He had been foolish to even think he was capable of changing. 
He bent down and took the body by the scruff, moving roughly to pull it from the garden and into some dark alley or abandoned side street. The Folk would find it and take it away and the rest of his decency with it. Good. He was better off this way.
UPDATES: - Smokyrose is murdered by Razor. - Songdust goes missing.
69 notes · View notes
Text
As It Was
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
Dabi x Reader Angst
Warnings/tags: angst, hurt/no comfort, brief mentions of burns, major character death, pre-established relationship, reader cares for flowers
Synopsis: Dabi returns to you after completing his life's mission, his body now badly burned and damaged. He wonders, will you accept him with open arms? Will you take what is left of him?
Author's note: I've been on a Hozier binge. "As It Was" from Wasteland, Baby! was giving me major Dabi vibes. This is kind of different from the content I usually like to write and read, but I felt so inspired I just had to write it. Word count: 1.1K
He’s now thankful your home is on the outer reaches of the city, tucked in a secluded pocket between the border of the forest and the concrete hell of the city. After what he’s done, there’s not a person in Japan that wouldn’t recognize his face. Had you not lived in the middle of nowhere, he’d already be arrested by some weak police officer or jumped by some rookie hero. 
It’s ironic, the thinks, that his opinion has changed. He hated it, at one point. You lived so far away from his shitty apartment at the time, meaning that every time he wanted to see you, he had to take the agonizingly long train rides. It was like you lived in a fucking retirement community since all the elderly would take the same train, giving him judgemental stares all the while. It pissed him off to no end. And if that wasn’t enough, being in the forest always reminded him of Sekoto. 
But still, he bore it all for you, back before he let his rage consume him. 
Before he devoted himself entirely to revenge. 
Before he started burning himself all over again. 
Before he fucked it all up.
Despite the way he left you, he hopes you’ll be kind enough to him to accept his return, to not instantly slam the door in his face.
If he even makes it to your doorstep, that is.
Each step he takes feels like a battle between life and death. These heavy and labored movements exhaust him, made worse by the state your driveway is in. Of all the days for it to rain, it just had to be today. The torrential downpours make the path harder to traverse. Mud clings to his boots with every trudging step he takes, threatening to suck him into the earth, burying him at his final resting place. 
The puddles of water settling in the tire tracks of your car show him grim reminders of his appearance, showing him glimpses of just how ghastly he’s become.
He’s a burnt husk of what he once was.
Nothing is left of him now that he's achieved his life’s purpose. 
The only thing that remains of him is this homing instinct to return to you.
To go back to the start. 
To give you what’s left of him.
To feel his final sensation of comfort.
To feel loved again.
He’s faced with the reality of how long it’s been when he finally catches sight of your home. In the year he was by your side, he never saw those Foxgloves bloom once, as he met you in the late summer. But now, judging by the towering violet, bell-shaped flowers framing the sides of your window, it’s been three years.
It’s in this moment that his mind replays the memory of the following summer, the one in which he noticed you agonizing over the flowerless plant beds. He remembers it, with surprising clarity amongst the mental fog. 
“Why do you bother taking care of those stupid flowers if they never fucking bloom?” He asked you, critically. 
“They’re foxgloves,” you answered. 
“So?”
“So, they do bloom, just biennially, and their flowering season just passed. You’ll see why I keep ‘em around in another year,” you explained.
The fact you even implied he’d still be in your life a year from then filled him with a sense of security. Whether you meant it or not, he took it as a promise, and kept it tucked in the darker reaches of his heart. 
Three long years have passed since he left you, since he abandoned you without a word. But he has known you have a patient side to you, he’s seen it in the way you always gave him space in his darkest days, how you allowed him the time to come back to you when he was ready, how you never took his frustrating habit of pushing you away to heart, weathering his toxicity with love and carefulness. Maybe, since you’re so patient, you have been waiting for him. If you welcomed those flowers despite their long absence, maybe you’d accept him, too. 
Normally, he’d sneer at the thought of you turning him into such a hopeless romantic, a weaker version of himself, but considering how there’s nothing left of him anyways, he’s fine with the idea. Maybe the positivity you give him would turn him into something beautiful again. 
He finally climbs up to your doorstep and stumbles against the door. When his shaky and weak hands turn the knob, expecting to be met with a locked door, it turns easily without resistance. Your door is unlocked, which in his state of hopeful delusion, he interprets as you waiting for him.
Maybe you knew he would come back.
You had made it easy for him to crawl back into your life.
Or maybe you just forgot to lock it. 
He swings open the door as he leans against the door frame. Any other time, the sound of the groaning hinges would grate at his ears, but right now, the sound feels familiar and comforting. It feels like nothing has changed, everything is as it once was.
He trudges deeper into your home, shambling past your living room and tracking mud all over your floors. There’s a pit of anxiety forming in his stomach the longer he walks through your home without seeing a glimpse of you. But it’s when he approaches the kitchen that he hears you humming, the sound calming his mind. 
His boots thud on your tiled floor, loud, and uneven. He sways as he walks, bumping into one of your dining chairs, the movement scraping the chair against the floor. Your humming abruptly cuts off at the sound and you turn to the source, on high alert, only to see him propping himself up against the walls.
A sharp gasp escapes your lungs. 
All he can see is you as the edges of his vision grey out. Against your better judgment, you rush over to him as his legs start buckling underneath him.  
He starts to collapse on the spot. You close the distance and open your arms around him, catching his fall and attempting to bear the brunt of his weight. 
Despite what he’s done, despite how he left you so suddenly, he can still feel your love for him.
It’s in the way you try to make sure he doesn’t fall, despite tripping being the least concern to him given his injuries.
It’s how your voice sounds frantic as you ask him if he’s okay if he can hear you, if he’s still in there.
It’s how you start to sob at seeing the state he’s in. 
You’re so worried about getting him to lie on the ground safely and checking his pulse that you fail to see him softly smiling at how you fuss over him, what’s left of his burnt face forcing out a peaceful expression. 
The last thing he hears, the last thing he feels, the last thing he thinks about, is you.
301 notes · View notes
Text
Warning: This page contains semi-realistic graphic injuries & discussions of character death
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
[Image Description: A 8 panel colored Legend of Zelda AU comic  “Linked Spirit”. Panel 1: Princess looks at a book, Hope hugging her from behind, looking over her shoulder. "Spirit, look over here," Princess says. Hero points their thumb at their self, "What? Me?" Hope looks at them flatly, "Yeah you Ghosty. Princess found a book about you." Panel 2: "This book has some details about how different spirits are created. Some are separated from their bodies by magic," Princess explains, gesturing at Hope. Hope stands next to her, eyes wide exclaiming "Don't tell them that-" Princess ignores him, "I've seen that before with Link." Panel 3: A dark purple ooze climbs into a purplish armor shoe. Princess continues "Others are lingering spirit s of the dead." Panel 4: A purplish Iorn Knuckle stands in the background, posed like a statue in the background by a window. Hope, in the foreground, is turned away from Princess, arms crossed, pouting. Princess holds the book up for Hero to see, "Unlike ghini you don't seem to be fueled by dark energy, rather... you seem more like these... strong, magically charged spirits who have a lingering role in the world..." Hero lifts a hand to their mouth, brows furrowed. Panel 5: "...I'm not dead..." Hero says, appearance changing to look like Rinku after Link's Awakening, "No. No. I'm- Im the first one. I-" Panel 6: Hope says "Look, my spirit experience was a magic accident. You’ve kinda got a knife in your back. Pretty sure you’re KERK” she gestures a slice along the neck with one hand, leaning against the table. Princess frowns, fist at her sides "LINK Don't say it like that?!" Hero looks on, one hand on their chest, eyes wide. Panel 7: Hero's appearance changes to look like pre-ressurection Breath of the Wild Link, heavily injured, hair cropped short in the back. They gesture at theirself with both hands, shouting, "This isn't what being dead feels like!" Panel 8: Hero's appearance shifts between LA Rinku, BotW and their usual look, looking down, eyes wide and startled, holding their hands loosely together against their chest "...How do I know that?" End ID]
masterpost
First- Previous (27) - 28^ - Next (29)
65 notes · View notes
astraeusasta · 3 months
Text
The Loveless Soldier
Pairing: Levi Ackermann x Dying!Reader TW: Death, Mentions of Death, Mentions of infection and disease, Mentions of doctors, Slight gore. CW: Major Character Death, un-reciprocated feelings.
You are a thirty three year old soldier within the Scout Regiment. You're one of the captains and have your own squad. However, on a mission you were to team up with Levi's squad. But in the midst of battle you were injured and are now on the brink of death.
Tumblr media Tumblr media
The speed of the wind hitting your face as you raced through the air. Swinging your blades around to make the strike onto the Titans nape. Spinning just as you had watched him do. Using up your gas like you could simply gather more of it immediately. But before you could reach the nape of the Titan, you were grabbed. You were grabbed. You didn’t have time to process your current situation before pain coursed through you. You shrieked as your legs were ground between the teeth of the Titan. This was the end. You told yourself as your vision became hazy and faded out. As you faded, you heard a familiar voice. A husky monotonic voice that was filled with worry and concern. “Levi?” You spoke out, your brain fuzzy as you attempted to speak. Slowly, your consciousness left you and your vision faded to black. Your body felt cold, but your mind still seemed to race as memories began to flash back to you. You were dying, you knew that much. Fading in and out of consciousness as your body lumped up and down on the carriage. You began to remember the happiest memories of your life. The thirty three years you had lived, all the happiest times. It made you smile. Even though the pain you were feeling was intense. You couldn’t help it.
You could still hear his voice. The faint sounds of him and a few others. Telling you not to leave. The faint sound of crying. Levi was someone special to you. He never seemed to notice when people took interest in him, or maybe he just never cared for that sort of thing. Despite his stoic and distant exterior, he wasn’t like that at all. Well he was. But his words carried meaning and care. He was honest, not mean. He was strict because he cared. He didn’t want people to die or to leave. Even though he said he wanted to keep things professional, he’d try to make you laugh in the dark times when you grieved over loss. His sweet words of comfort during those nights when you couldn’t sleep. You often had nightmares about the visions of those who had died. He understood the guilt of the survivor, he seemed to carry that weight too. He would never let a comrade shoulder the weight on their own, even if it seemed like he wanted them too.
Slowly, your consciousness began to return. Though still hazy. You felt the pain subsiding, as if it was fading into the background. You wanted to live, truly. Though not for yourself, or your family. For the idea that he might care for you in the same way - that he might want to be with you. It was a foolish thought with how little he seemed to care for those around him. You fought the urge to slip back into your somber sleep, for him. You noticed him beside you, it seemed he’d injured himself also. You chuckled as best you could, though you began coughing. “Don’t laugh. You’ll only injure yourself more. We’re going to get you back and see a doctor. You don’t have your legs but your family will be pleased to see you’ve lived.” He spoke calmly, though from his expression you knew he was far from. You’d lost a lot of blood, you could tell from the weakness in your body. Your voice was hoarse and practically gone from the screaming you had endured. You smiled at him warmly. “Did you take them? My legs?” You tried to joke, though it didn’t seem to make any sense. You noticed he grimaced at you. “Bad timing?” You continued. Levi sighed at you. “As always..”. You laughed a little, coughing once again. “I said don’t laugh.” He was more stern this time. You nodded.
You were struggling to stay conscious as you were rushed into your room by Levi. He had carried you the whole way there and contacted a doctor. He was denying how close you truly were to your death. “Levi…” You spoke out as he tried to leave. He turned back to you, a questioning look on his face. “Is something the matter?” He asked, looking for anything wrong physically. “No. There isn’t.” You replied. Your words sputter. He grimaced again, cringing at the bit of blood that came out of your mouth as you sputtered. “Then what?” He spoke again. Looking at you with concern. “Could you stay for a bit? I’d appreciate the company.” Shock cleansed his expression before he relaxed and his stoic front softened around its edges. He sat down on the chair next to your bed. Crossing one of his legs over the other as he usually did. Looking at you with an expression that you hadn’t seen before.
“You know, Levi. I’m not going to live through this.” Your words took him aback, did you want to die? He looked at you but his eyes seemed to jitter as he looked at you. His brows furrowing, his body becoming stiff and defensive. “Why would you say that? Do you want to die?” Panic hinted in his tone, though mostly anger. You couldn’t help but smile at his words. Though he looked even more frustrated when you smiled. “I don’t want to die..truly. But I’ve lost too much blood. Even if I were to live. I’d have to live my life cautiously. I couldn’t do that. Don’t you think I deserve to live my life to the fullest? I think I’ve achieved my purpose. No?” He was shocked, you were always so positive. So cheerful. To see you in such a state must have been a hit with reality. Have you always thought this way? Why didn’t you tell him? He was a close friend to you, right? His own thoughts seemed to race through his brain as he tried to wrack the appropriate response to your answer.
“I think you’ve still got a lot to live for. Your family, your comrades. You’re an asset to humanity.” He spoke, you looked down at where your legs should be and then back towards him. “Oh Levi…” The soft spoken warm words fell from your mouth like nectar. You sighed lovingly, looking at him with sparks in your eyes. Reaching out a weak arm towards him, holding out your hand. You shook your head. He was confused. He couldn’t understand why you would want people to suffer the pain of your loss, for people to experience sadness when you could live. “Even if I were to live. I wouldn’t be happy.” That's when it hit him, he looked at where your legs should be too. You were amputated at the top of the thigh. You basically had nothing left. You’d be bed bound for the rest of your life. “I understand.” He took your hand now. Firmly gripping it. Not tight enough to hurt. You were weak as of.
Hours passed and you both sat in a lul of silence. It wasn’t awkward. It wasn’t comfortable either. It was just silence. Slowly, the pain began to resurface. Your face scrunching. A low groan escaping your mouth as it began to intensify - the adrenaline wearing off. “The pain has returned, I see?” You nodded in response to him. “You can squeeze my hand if you need.” If only you could. This was the closest you had ever been physically to the man that held your heart. You knew he probably didn’t feel the same. You thought you’d tell him, but in this moment the pain was too much to speak.
More hours passed. The doctors had arrived and gave the diagnosis. You were not to survive longer than a few more hours, maybe a few days if you were lucky. Your legs were infected and there was no way to cure it or get rid of it in time with the equipment they had brought with them. People came in to say their final goodbyes to you. You didn’t cry. You knew this was your fate. Everyone has to die at some point. He stayed with you the entire time. Levi. He was kind enough to anyway. You had told him you wanted company and he didn’t fail to provide it.
Once the final person had said their goodbye, you’d realized how weak your body had gotten. You could feel the heaviness of your eyes in their sockets, the dryness of your skin. He approached the chair and sat down. Sighing as he looked at you. “You were an excellent soldier. You put your life at risk to save others when you didn’t have to. You always cared more for how others felt than your own feelings. You sat with me during nights, even if you had to lie about having nightmares just to keep me company. Your comedic timing is horrible, though I can’t say much. It’s odd to see you in such a vulnerable position without that bright smile on your face. It made me feel sick how cheerful you could be even when you were grieving. It was creepy, you know that?” You chuckled even though it hurt to do so. The sepsis is beginning to kick in. “Even so, you were an asset to humanity. You helped. So even if you don’t feel it yourself. Please remember you were not a burden on us. We’ll remember you forever.” It wasn’t like Levi to cry, you felt you could see a small tear drip down the man's face. Though that might have been the hazy fog that clouded your own vision as tears finally began to stream down your voice.
“Thank you. Levi. It’s only polite for me to say my feelings about you now.” He nodded in understanding, listening contently. His attention is appointed towards you and you only. “Captain Levi. The strongest soldier humanity could ever hope for. Though you act cold and distant towards everyone - rarely ever sharing information about yourself. You spoke the truth and nothing but, putting your life in jeopardy to save others just like I. Selfless is the best word I could use to describe you. With everything we’ve been through, you’ve stuck by me. Regardless of how many shitty jokes I make.” You laughed again, this time coughing as you sputtered up more blood. Concern laced his expression but you continued. “In a way, I admired you. Though not in the way I believe you hope.” Slowly you began to feel nausea take over, dizzy and lightheaded. A black haze began to fog your vision. Your voice wavering and faltering as your breathing became rapid and hoarse. You could hear each breath and the way it scraped across your throat.
“Levi..I love you.” But those would be the final words you ever said. The man who sat by your side now shocked with nothing more than reliving a past experience. You loved him? Maybe this was meant platonic-ally? He thought but given your previous statement of it not being how he’d hoped. This was obviously not the case. Even if you knew your time had come, in your final moments you choose to confess your true feelings to someone. Even if they didn’t feel the same. You were cruel. Levi thought to himself. He didn’t feel that way about you, but now he wished he had as in your final moments he’d be able to say he reciprocated, if the myths are true and your mind is still conscious for a bit after you die. You’d be able to hear him.
“I am sorry, but..I do not reciprocate those feelings.”
40 notes · View notes
hmshermitcraft · 4 months
Note
Scar has permanent hearing and vision loss from when the WIther chased him - most notably in his right side. Everyone who participate din the games for guilty for not helping him.
Mumbo brushes away the hair from his face and kisses him, ensuring him it's all going to be okay, and he'll make some hearing aids for Scar
They tried their best, but in a world where wounds don't heal as they should, they didn't realise this would happen. Grian feels absolutely terrible, despite Scar's insistence that it wasn't his fault. He probably would've been better if he died to it, before the injuries had a chance to stick.
Luckily, he's already an ace at wearing a monocle. Hearing aids won't be that hard to master as well!
(Mumbo knows, right there, Scar is going to forget to charge them all the time. And when he doesn't forget, he'll have lost them. He'll make sure to put a tracker in to ping when they're missing...)
50 notes · View notes
seraphic-elysian · 2 months
Text
@foolondahill17 have my attempt at the prompt you put about Dean sprinting to Cas. It's not perfect and I ended it without a resolution as I wanna write this as a whole ass fic but I really wanted to share this with you since your idea inspired the hell out of me. ~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~ It happens in a moment. A heartbeat trapped between the milliseconds of time. Dean turns in the loose grip of his brother’s hands, green eyes trained on the golden crack of light that splits their world open to another, waiting for the sign of his angel. His heart is racing within his chest, adrenaline keeping him sharp and steady, as he waits with bated breath for his angel to emerge through the light. The image of Castiel stalking toward Lucifer as Sam pulls him to the portal is burned into his eyelids. He knows that it is almost a sickening parallel of the way that he had pulled Sam from his burning apartment all of those years ago but he can only pray that Castiel will not be killed. That he will not have to suffer the same agonizing heartbreak that Sam did when Jessica died.  He refuses to entertain the thought of something happening to the angel, of him dying or being hurt while in the other world. That will not happen. 
It cannot. 
Dean steps close enough to the portal that he can hear the rushing of the wind and smell the heavy scent of gunpowder on the breeze. It pulls at his clothing in a tantalizing lure, a promise of taking him to where his angel is, but he refuses. He will not step back through the portal and waste the safety that Castiel had given him. 
Sam’s voice is nothing but a gurgle of noises behind him but he does not need to hear him to understand what he is saying. Dean knows that he is too close to the portal for his brother to feel confident that he will not go through it to find Castiel. He knows that he becomes irrational and impulsive when his angel is in danger. That he has, in the past, openly let others be hurt and killed if it meant that those he cares about will be safe. Dean also knows that he has a history of suicidal tendencies, of throwing himself in front of others to take a hit or killing himself to trade someone else's life for his own, and that Sam has been witness to him doing that several times. And while he is aware that he would not hesitate to end his life if it meant that the angel would return safe and alive, he does not feel the need to do so. Not right now. 
“Don’t be stupid, Dean! Cas is capable!” Sam nearly screams the words to him, voice only barely heard over the rushing noise in Dean’s ears. 
And of course he is. Dean knows better than anyone what Castiel is capable of and how strong and intelligent the angel is. But even having the knowledge of that will not stop him from worrying about him. It will not stop him from desperately trying to keep the angel by his side where Dean is able to keep him safe. 
After all, how can anyone act normal and as though the world is not on the verge of ending when the living personification of their heart is facing off against an archangel?
The portal flares a brilliant gold that burns his eyes and Dean’s breath leaves his lungs in a shaky exhale as Castiel appears in front of him. There is blood stained along his trench coat, his black curls are covered in dust, and his face is streaked with dirt but Dean has never seen anything more beautiful. Exhausted blue eyes meet his own and something that Castiel sees on his face makes the angel’s brows furrow and him to step closer to Dean. They are close enough that he can feel heat radiating off of the angel and the exhalation of his breath ghosting across his face and, for the first time, Dean does not step back or snap at the angel. No, he only sways forward as he is captured by Castiel’s orbit. He surrenders to the feelings that he has in his chest, this desire to put himself out there and show the other how he feels. 
“D-” 
Castiel cuts himself off as an angel blade pierces through the bottom of his chest with a sickening squelch. The shining metal is clean as it slides through the angel’s body without resistance before it is yanked out violently. Crimson stains his white dress shirt and Castiel’s grace flares brightly through the gaping wound. Dean is moving before he can think, arms gathering the angel against his chest as he sags, and pressing his hand against the bleeding wound on his back. He does not see where Lucifer goes as the angel saunters off but he knows that Sam will watch his back. Something heavy and soft curls over his arms and back, engulfing him in the scent of honeysuckles and wildflowers, but when he looks there is nothing there. The smell of Castiel’s grace slowly begins to turn acrid as his grace begins to burn and Dean collapses to his knees. 
“Get away,” Castiel whines, weak hands pushing against Dean’s chest, “I can’t hold it back anymore. Get away!” 
Dean shakes his head and tightens his grip on the angel, “No!” 
A whine escapes Castiel’s throat as the light flares up brighter and hotter, escaping from his mouth and eyes. The invisible objects that he feels against him heat up rapidly, searing his skin even through his clothing, and the heat and light reaches its apex in a wave of agony before it shatters. A pained howl leaves his lips as fire scorches him, consuming him in a decimating blaze that he cannot escape. His eyes burn even through his closed lids and he turns his face away from the sharp explosion of light. It seems as though it takes forever before it clears, taking the scorching heat with it, and Dean weakly lays Castiel’s body down. He presses his forehead down against the soft cotton of his dress shirt as he processes the hell that he just went through. 
Castiel is dead. There is no denying that, not after what he just experienced. The angel is gone in a shattering of holy light and the smell of scorched feathers. His shaking fingers come up and tangle in the rough wool of the trench coat as he raises his face, desperate to see confirmation that Lucifer has murdered Castiel. He needs to memorize the pattern of his beautiful wings that will be burned into the dirt of this little home. Sliding his eyes open slowly, he sees…nothing. An unending wall of bright white light fills his vision and does not leave no matter how much he blinks or shakes his head. He panics, sucking in a startled breath, body freezing in fear at the implications of what this means. 
Turning his head toward where he remembers his brother standing, he asks, “Sam?” 
“What the hell were you thinking, Dean!” Sam’s voice is rough with anger as he stomps up to where Dean is kneeling, “You know what happens when an angel dies. You’ve fucking seen that happen so many times! So, what the hell were you thinking being right at the center of that? Didn’t you think for a second about what that would do to you?” 
“It’s Cas, Sammy,” his excuse sounds broken as it falls through his lips. He is in agony, arms and back still burning from the blaze that had licked across his skin, “I couldn’t just-” 
“How many times has he died before and you’ve stayed back from it? How many times has he been killed like this and you’ve not put yourself at the center of his grace exploding?” Sam is yelling now, anger making him sound almost terrifyingly like John, and Dean feels far too vulnerable here on the ground, “I don’t even know how we’re going to heal that. Or if we even can. Fuck, Dean, we didn’t need this on top of everything else!”
He takes Sam’s anger without question or complaint. He knows that he messed up and that he injured himself right when they are about to be dealing with Lucifer. He knows that his vision being gone, however temporary this is, will make him a vulnerability and a liability. It is now completely up to Sam to be able to defend not only himself but Dean as well. 
“I should be able to see again in a few days,” he responds once Sam pauses to take a breath, “We just have to lay low inside of the Bunker until then. I know I messed up, Sammy, okay?”
“You can’t see?” Sam is suddenly in his space, calloused hand gripping his chin tightly, and Dean stifles a flinch. His head is tilted back and forth and he feels his brother messing with his eyelids. It is incredibly uncomfortable to not be able to see what Sam is doing but he knows that he is in safe hands, “Is it just blurry or is it fully gone?” 
“I can’t see anything,” he admits as Sam wipes something off of his cheek, “it’s nothing but white.” 
Sam sucks in a startled breath, hands stilling against his face, before he moves and cleans off his other cheek. “Okay, I…I didn’t realize that you were blind.” 
“Then what were you talking about?” 
Sam does not answer right away and Dean huffs in frustration. He hates not being able to see his brother’s face and be able to read him. He has always relied on the fact that Sam is an open book to him, that he rarely hides what he is thinking and feeling, and now having that taken away from him makes him feel as though he is lost at sea without a life raft. 
The trench coat is warm within the grasp of his fingers but he forces himself to release it, to smooth it back into place despite the shake in his hands. His palm presses against the flat expanse of Castiel’s chest and something inside of him burns at the fact that he cannot feel his heart beating or the rise and fall of his chest. That he can feel the heat dissipating from his body, leaving it cold and empty. There is something within the cavern of his chest that feels just as hollow as the body in front of him, something along his soul that screams at the idea of Castiel being gone, but he can do nothing about that. There is no cure or bandage that can heal a broken heart. 
A hand lands on his shoulder and he flinches away from it violently, “What the fuck, Sam?” 
“You know how angel wings are burned into the ground when they die?” Sam asks gently, continuing when Dean nods in confusion, “Dean…Cas’s wings aren’t…they…they’re burned into your skin, dude. From the back of your hands, up your arms, and across your back to either side of your spine.”
“But I’m wearing clothes,” Dean argues weakly, “How could they have burned through that?” 
His brother exhales shakily, “Couldn’t his wings phase through things like that?” 
The fingers of his right hand skirt over to his left, drifting across the back of it, and a pained noise leaves his lips as his skin flares up in red hot pain at the touch. He shakes his head, refusing to accept what Sam is telling him. There is no way that he is carrying the shadow-burn of his angel’s wings on his body. He is not holy enough, not good enough, to carry the image of that burned onto his skin.
Castiel deserves to have something more than Dean Winchester acting as a living tombstone.
"Come on, let's get you cleaned up," Sam's hands grip his elbows and pulls him to his feet, "Once we do that, we can get Cas and Kelly ready to be put to rest."
Dean grabs onto his brother tightly, resisting the guiding hand that is pulling him toward the house. He does not want to leave Castiel lying here, alone, on the dirt. There will need to be a pyre and Castiel's body will need to be prepped for that but he does not think he has the strength to leave him. Not anymore.
"I can't," His voice catches in his throat, "Sam, I can't leave him."
He can see the furrow of Sam's brow in his mind as his brother responds, "Why not?"
"I love him," it falls from his lips like water, easy and free-flowing, "I love him so much I don't know how the hell I'm able to breathe. I can't just..."
"Okay, yeah, I get it," Sam answers, "How long have you...?"
Dean tries to smile but it pulls at his face wrong, lips twisting into more of a grimace. He turns his face toward the ground and welcomes the white void that consumes his vision. It is much easier to be able to be this open with his brother when he is unable to see his facial expressions.
"Years," he exhales heavily, the word nothing more than a whisper on the breeze.
Sam does not answer him but he does help Dean back onto the ground by his angel's body. His hands are warm as they squeeze his elbows once before removing them.
"Let me go get the stuff to prepare his body, okay? You can do it here and I'll handle Kelly."
"What about Jack?"
Sam huffs, "I have no idea what we're going to do."
"We raise him. We give him the childhood we didn't have. He chose Cas as his father and I'm not going to abandon his child just because his sperm donor is Satan himself." Dean tells him, "We educate him, we tell him about the spooky shit and about the stuff that lurks in the dark. We make sure that he's able to handle himself if he ever winds up on a hunt."
"And we tell him about Cas."
He nods, hand reaching out until it lands on Castiel's arm, "Yeah, we tell him about Cas."
Sam leaves him then, footsteps trailing off toward the house. Dean is left in the dirt, surrounded by the sound of waves lapping at the shore of the lake and insects buzzing around him. It feels wrong, to experience this peaceful moment while he kneels at the side of his fallen person. Castiel should be here. He should be the one that teaches Jack about humanity and the world around them. He should be the one to choose what, if any, of the hunting world that Jack learns. He should teach him about bees and flowers and the names of the constellations in the sky.
He should be here, raising the child that he loves, instead of it falling to Dean.
But he is not. He is dead, killed because he ensured that everyone got to safety. And now it is up to Dean to raise Jack.
He spends the next hour gently cleaning Castiel's body with the warm water and cloths that Sam brought him. The dirt and blood is washed from his skin as best that Dean can while his vision is gone before Sam helps him wrap and secure his body in a soft fabric.
Together, they lift his body between them and Sam guides him to the pyre, leaving him to lay Castiel down inside of it alone. The angel is heavy in his arms and makes his wounds radiate agony as they are agitated but he does not care. There will be time for him to heal, for his wounds to be cleaned and bandaged. But not right now. Not when he is resting the love of his life inside of a tomb made of wood, waiting for him to be set ablaze.
The fire is hot on his face as he stares unseeingly in the direction of it. Jack and Sam are on the other side of the pyre, talking quietly to each other, and Dean wishes that he had the strength to go join them. To find comfort in knowing that they are mourning for the angel together. He could go to them, he knows that, but if he moves from this spot he is not sure that he will be able to keep himself from shattering. The reality of Castiel being gone has not fully hit yet and he knows that the moment the fire burns down, the moment that the only thing left of Castiel is the feathers burned into Dean's skin and the ashes on the wind, that he will he consumed by grief. That the only thing he will be able to feel is the hollow void in his chest that signifies that his angel is gone.
"Can I stay here with you?"
Dean flinches at the soft voice that speaks, turning his head in Jack's direction. He does not respond to him, too afraid that he will say something he does not mean or begin to cry if he does, so he nods his agreement. The kid steps closer to him and his hand slips into Dean's. He takes in a deep breath and squeezes that hand gently, leaving them clasped at his side.
"He loved you," Dean tells him hours later when the fire has died down to almost nothing. Sam had stepped away to handle something some time ago so it is only the two of them left by the angel's side, "You should have your parents here to raise you. You shouldn't have to grow up without them."
Jack is silent for a moment before he speaks, "I have you."
"Yeah, kid, you do."
"He loved you, too," Jack tells him, as though those words do not sends spiderweb cracks along the wall holding his emotions back.
He stays quiet, unable to respond even if he desired to, and they stand there together until Jack tells him that the fire is gone.
Today he will kneel in the ashes of his lover's pyre, gathering the remains of him with clumsy hands, as their child holds the glass jar steady for him to put the ashes in. He will seal up that jar and cling to it for the several hour long drive it will take for them to reach the Bunker.
And, when he is led to his room by his brother, letting him sit the jar down upon his nightstand, Dean will finally allow himself to break.
32 notes · View notes
tildeathiwillwrite · 3 months
Text
Merry Whumpmas 2023 Day 28: Scars
Week 4 of this bullshit. Only 3 more days left to go! Enjoy.
This is a direct continuation of Day 6: No Where to Go.
TW: painkillers, anesthesia mention, death mention, surgery, burn scars, mentioned abuse
Hero awoke slowly, their thoughts moving sluggishly through their tired mind. Their eyelids were heavier than bricks, but they forced them open, unease and uncertainty roiling in their stomach. The harsh lights overhead hurt their eyes, and they squinted, trying to filter out the brightness and make out their surroundings.
“Oh, you’re awake now.”
Hero turned their head, finding Villain leaning over them. They realized they were sprawled on a flat, uncomfortable surface. Villain’s head was bowed, their concentration intent upon Hero’s side. Hero tried to see what they were looking at, but they couldn’t raise their head.
“Sorry, I guess I didn’t sedate you enough,” Villain mumbled, reaching for something out of sight. “You were already unconscious, so I had to estimate. I think I gave you enough analgesics though. Does it hurt?”
Hero realized with a sudden jolt of fear that they couldn’t move anything but their eyes and head. Were their arms tied down? They couldn’t feel any restraints… “N… no…” they whispered through numb lips.
Villain nodded, distracted. Their hand returned, now clutching a pair of tweezers with gloved hands. The gloves were splattered with blood. “That’s good. Let me know if that changes. It’s not gonna be fun once they wear off.”
Hero swallowed, eyes darting about the room. The walls were exposed brick, and the only lighting appeared to be the one directly overhead, illuminating Villain’s work. Whatever that work was. Was the blood on their hands Hero’s? The only exit appeared to be a door to Hero’s right, behind Villain.
Metal clicked on metal, and Hero’s eyes darted back as Villain exhaled in relief. “Got the bullet out. Now I just gotta stitch you up and give you some more analgesics and maybe some anesthesia.”
Their words sounded almost foreign to Hero. The only thing they understood through the hazy fog was that Villain… seemed to be helping them? “O… okay….”
Villain worked in silence for a few minutes. Hero still couldn’t see what they were doing, so they gazed at Villain instead. Sometime between when Hero had passed out in that dark alley and when they’d woken up in this room, Villain had removed their mask. Their hair had been hastily pulled back, and Hero could clearly see their profile.
They looked normal enough at first, but as Hero’s eyes adjusted to the harsh lighting, they noticed the long, dark scar snaking down Villain’s face. It was old, blending in with their skin tone, but unmistakably a burn scar.
As if in response, the skin on Hero’s upper back tingled, where one of their allies had grazed them during a training session. They’d been drilling reflexes by launching small fireballs at Hero nonstop until they got hit. Once they did, the ally chastised Hero and ordered them to go to the medical bay. They didn’t even help Hero to their feet.
The incident had been almost a month and a half ago, and the burn still wasn’t fully healed. The affected skin itched constantly, especially when Hero tried to sleep. But Hero’s team leader refused to give them anything besides a small amount of aloe on the grounds of ‘building pain tolerance.'
It was all bullshit, as Hero later learned when they broached the idea of taking a break from the team for a little while. None of their ‘allies’ had responded well.
Hero closed their eyes. They didn’t know how long they were trapped in the team headquarters before escaping and fleeing to Villain’s section of the city. They barely remembered most of it, and they didn’t want to. But thinking of it brought images of Whumper, of them beating and belittling Hero for their weakness.
But Whumper was dead now.
Villain had shot them.
Villain had saved Hero.
As if in response to Hero’s thoughts, Villain spoke. “Alright,” they said softly, “I’m done.”
Hero opened their eyes. Villain massaged the sides of their temples, bloody gloves removed. “You’re one stubborn person, Hero,” they said, mouth cracking into an exhausted grin.
“Uh… tha… thank you….”
A look of concern crossed Villain’s face. “You’ve lost a lot of blood, both from the gunshot and…” they gestured to the various cuts and bruises all over Hero’s body. “Honestly, it’s a miracle you woke up at all. I patched up the worst of it, but you’re gonna be recovering for a while.”
Hero blinked, the memory of their team leader fresh in their mind. “Are… are we… safe… here…?”
Villain glanced over their shoulder to the door. A beat of silence passed before they answered. “Yeah, pretty sure. We’re in one of my safe houses right now, no one saw us come in. And the only one who saw you come to me is now dead in an alley which—” they grimaced— “isn’t going to bode well for me whether or not your former team connects the dots.”
“...I’m… I’m sorry I…”
Villain held up their hands, scowling. “Do not apologize. You needed help, you still need help, and I promise you: I’m not gonna let those assholes lay a finger on you. Understand?”
Hero nodded to the best of their ability. Their movement was still limited, but they had begun to regain sensation in their fingers and toes. They wiggled them experimentally. It was like moving someone else’s hand.
The motion caught Villain’s eye, and they smacked the side of their head. “Right. Analgesics. I’ll be right back, you do not want the painkillers to wear off anytime soon.”
Hero watched them leave. They slowly exhaled, trying to calm their racing nerves.
They were safe.
Villain had promised.
Everything would be okay.
Part 1 | Part 3
34 notes · View notes
Text
Feel You in My Bones
Even when wounds are scarred over, when time has passed and she’s grown older, she still feels them in her bones.
TW Assault, Child Abuse, Major Character Injury, Self Harm, Domestic Abuse, Drowning
/Ao3 Plink/
Tumblr media
Scar Study of Lin by @mgthejerkbender
(commissioned by me for my hc lmao)
22 notes · View notes
half-deadmagicperson · 7 months
Text
Another Animatic
I'm back with another animatic!!!!
This one is a cute one and my longest so far. How ever, there is still major (non graphic) character death so be warned.
Anyways I really enjoyed make this!!! Also, I don't own the characters or the song just my pen and tablet.
Song: Haunt You by X Lovers ft. Chloe Moriono
Show: Danny Phantom
57 notes · View notes
wayward-sherlock · 5 months
Text
Tumblr media
goodbye stranger.
They’d already made it to the end of the world. There was no point in waiting, not anymore — Will was almost certain that if he waited any longer, the words he wanted to say would be his dying ones, melting on his lips with warm blood and his last breath.
Will loved Mike.
And now he was going to kill him.
will's been taken by vecna. he's killed mike hundreds of times, and he has no idea which one is going to be real.
for @bylerween2023 day 4!
38 notes · View notes
Text
Chapter XXVI - The Crow and the Dove
CW: explicit graphic non-con; aftermath of major amputation; major character trauma; majorly injured whumpee; major chronic pain levels in this one; horror; captivity, chains, collar, non-con touching; slavery whump; intimate whumper; sadistic whumper; defiant whumpee; compulsion; conditioning; fucked up thinking patterns; begging; carewhumper; but hey, loads of comfort at the end
This is both among the most horrifying and the most comforting pieces I ever wrote in my life. The duality of woman, I guess.
Previous - next - masterlist
The thing was, brave pronouncement aside, Kai was still exhausted out of his mind. Injured, too, the ripped wings in his back sending waves and waves of pain through his whole body every time he so much as breathed.
He saw no point in trying to break out of his bonds, in trying to get out of his chains, in the state he was in. No point in crawling off that bed - to do what, break the window and disturb the marble chessboard? Ruffle some papers, rip the curtains and throw a chair into the fire?
Pathetic. That would be pathetic, and a waste. Besides, he didn’t doubt the door would be locked - and if not locked, then guarded. And even if it wasn’t, he would still not have been in the state to make his way through floors and floors of the Tower to attempt to get out of the front door either, since he clearly could no longer fly off into the sunset as he so much wanted to. His apartments in the Tower located on the third to last floor of the monster’s lair, just below Kyriel’s rooms above.
No point making trouble, in short.
Kai slept, therefore, and then slept some more. Trying to dispel all worries from his mind, to bring some of that inner peace and determination that he had found inside himself into his dreams. The boy having made peace, however one could in his state, with the condition he was in - knowing that he needed his strength, he needed everything he could muster, to survive what was ahead.
It was going to be a long run, one for which he needed everything he got.
Still, it was like walking into a nightmare when the boy heard the lock of his bedroom door softly turn within the wood. The sound reaching him in his sleep, banging like a crack of lighting in his mind - the familiar claws of trained fear digging into consciousness through his throat.
Kai’s blood froze, cold sweat breaking on his brow. The boy hearing the door softly close behind him where he laid, naked and collared and chained, as his torturer approached.
Steel, drawn behind his back.
A whip, dragging on the floor.
A smile, cruel and horrendous, as he forced himself down his throat-
Kai repressed a whimper, his whole body beginning to shake as he listened, like in a nightmare, to the slow, calm weight of Kyriel’s steps on the rugs. As he heard the brushing of the tips of his wings dragging on the floors, the approaching monster’s feet - the familiar sound of Kyriel’s steps filling Kai’s ears like a roar. The boy’s stomach tightening, his heart lodging in his throat - Kai able to tell, by now, the exact location and moods of his torturer by the sound of his feet alone.
He didn’t sound angry, didn’t sound hurried. His movements calm, if anything, self-assured.
Fingers, fingers on his face. A knife, deadly and sharp and black, sinking deep inside his chest. His power, his magic, clawing from the inside out, exploding out of his flesh - 
Kai flinched, dizzy with terror, as the mattress dipped next to him. His whole body freezing, breath coming little and thin-
His wings, his wings, his wings-
Blood, blood on the stones. Screaming, a hand in his hair, the monster hunched over him as he thrust into him. Knives in his guts, blood as the only lube he’d been allowed-
Soil, piling over him. Heavier and heavier, thud after thud, closing on him. The light narrowing further and further away as he sunk, as he was buried alive in the ground-
It took Kai everything he had to repress the bidding scream of horror inside him. Kyriel slowly raising a hand to brush his hair - the boy flinching, unable to help himself, as his torturer’s fingers touched him.
The monster hummed, the sound reverberating in Kai’s lungs, pleased.
“I see you are awake, sweet.”
Kai’s fingers tightened in the sheets, the boy refusing to move another inch.
It was all he could do without threatening to scream, without beginning to weep. Without snarling, without trying to turn, to claw the monster’s eyes out - knowing that the angel hadn’t asked him a question, and so he could refuse to speak.
Kyriel laughed, low, above him.
Amused. He was amused by it all.
“Look at you, how good you can be for me now,” he praised, only a tinge of mockery in his voice. “How is your back?”
Kai flinched again, hate and fury exploding in his chest - the boy twitching, pain whipping through his whole spine, as the angel brushed the delicate skin in between his shoulder blades.
He whimpered, unable to repress the sound.
“…hurts-“ the boy panted, bit out through gritted teeth. His fingers tightened further in the sheets, hands shaking and sweat breaking all over him. “Magister.”
The monster hummed again, smiling over him. Watching, assessing, as his prisoner trembled in the sheets.
His hand moved lower, to the bottom of his spine. 
Kai flinched, cold horror washing anew over him. He bit the sheets below him, silver eyes opening wide - his breath hitching, body freezing once more.
Kyriel’s hand cupped his rear, dipping under the throws covering him. He squeezed, proprietary and slow - watching him, the voluntary and involuntary reactions both.
Kai only trembled, refusing to make a sound.
He knew, like he had known all along, that this was coming. For what other reason would indeed Kyriel leave him naked in a bed, if not to have him ready for this? He understood, he wasn’t dim. He hadn’t thought, not for a second, that waking up in his childhood bedroom meant that he would be spared from this. He was still collared, was still chained, even when he could barely fucking move - and so this was a test, it was Kyriel checking if Kai had broken, or if there was still fire inside him. To see what he would do, how he would react to his captivity, after months of conditioning in the dungeon. After the angel had buried him alive, after he had taken his wings-
Kai closed his eyes, breathing raggedly through his teeth. He refused to whimper, to let the monster see the shame, hate and despair filling him.
Let him see broken. Let him think him defeated. 
This was a long game, after all. One he meant to survive.
“Good,” the angel murmured, low above him, his hand warm on his skin. “Good, sweet.”
Kai had never felt more like a horse, his master slowly petting him up and down as if he was a skittish, ready to bolt thing. The boy holding himself still by will alone, even when the dragon, his whole being, wanted to lash out and explode.
He was collared and chained, beaten down to the core. He couldn’t afford to let his emotions show.
Kai flinched, unable to stop himself, when Kyriel’s fingers dipped lower to brush the outlines of his hole.
He whimpered, tensing in the sheets. But didn’t move, didn’t try to resist.
The angel’s smile widened, the fucker pushing deeper with a nail in.
“Very good,” he murmured, grinning. “Very good, sweet.”
Then, he climbed onto the bed, pushing the throws back to fully uncover Kai’s maimed, exhausted body. One knee on each side of him, towering over him.
The boy twisted, shivered - tried weakly to protest.
“No.” He meowed. “Wait-“
It only took one hand, the smallest of pushes in between his shoulder blades, to snatch a scream out of his throat. To push him back face down in the sheets - pinned, unable to move.
“Sssht, love.” A belt, unhurriedly undoing behind his back, wings rustling to adjust their weight. The familiar feeling of the monster’s member, hot and hard over his cheeks. Knees, widening his legs - Kyriel mounting him. “Be good. Be my clever, clever boy. You don’t want to go back downstairs, do you? To the altar, or underground?”
Kai’s heart was very much, very firmly, lodged in his throat. The boy’s terror, his horror, palpable in the air.
“No,” he whimpered, and he didn’t know if it was an answer or plead both. “No, but-“
The boy cried out, terrified, as the angel nudged at his hole.
Oh, he’d known this was coming. He’s known it, had he not? He understood what the collar around his throat meant - what being a trophy, a captured thing, entailed. What he would have to endure in this long game of theirs to survive - but he was injured, in so much fucking pain he could barely move-
He was going to die, if the angel fucked him now.
The monster cooed, low, his smile widening at the sound of the boy’s broken voice. His tip rubbing, hot and obscene, against his prisoner’s hole - relishing Kai’s tension, the clinking of the chains around his wrists.
“I will heal you after, what about this?” Kyriel promised, a soft whisper in his ear. “I’ll make the pain go away, if you are good for me now.” And then: “you have been sleeping for three days. I need my fill, sweet.”
It took Kai everything he had to swallow down the bile, not to be sick there and then.
Three days.
And Kyriel - it was Kyriel, the one that was complaining about it all.
The boy cried out, still, when the monster breached him with the tip of his cock. When he spread one cheek with one hand, lining himself behind him, pushing deeper inch by inch - purposely slow, purposely horrifying, waiting to see if Kai would kick or fight back. An arm falling next to the side of his prisoner’s face - the monster heavy, holding himself up on an elbow next to him, caging him.
Kyriel moaned, hot and wet into his ear, as he slowly slipped into him.
“God, you are as tight as the first time I pushed you under me,” he breathed, digging in - cock painfully stretching, burning Kai inch by inch.  “You have healed in the right places, have you not sweet?”
The boy only let out a sob, a broken ragged thing, burying his face in the sheets. He panted through the tears, through the reverberating pain in his spine - gritting his teeth, trying not to whine.
Then, Kyriel started to move.
Kai screamed, the sound broken and hoarse. The pain in his back brilliant and blinding, exploding as Kyriel begun to scrape inside his ass-
“No, no, no, wait,” Kai wailed, fingers clawing desperately at the sheets underneath. “Please, Magister, wait, no, please-“
Kyriel’s fingers wrapped over his mouth, silencing him. The boy crying out, agony flashing bright over his spine, as another violent thrust rocked through his core.
“Ssshhht,” the monster hushed, pulsing deep inside him. “Be good, Kai. Be good for me.”
The boy’s eyes filled with tears. Silver glinting in the light like the diamonds around his wrists, his caged power seeping through as they fell down his cheeks.
The runes on his back flared, the compulsion caging him.
Trapped. He was trapped, pinned like a bug, unable to get away. His body seizing, serving for his torturer’s pleasure - no mercy, no resistance in words or deeds even possible like this-
Kai tried to bite, pushing against the anguish blossoming in his chest. The boy defiant, desperate, trying to sink his teeth the fingers silencing him.
His jaw seized, immediately stopping before he could even attempt it. The runes burning red on his back, activating the order never to harm, never to even attempt to harm the monster thrusting into him-
Kyriel didn’t even seem to notice, thankfully. The fucker resuming to move inside him, each thrust sending blinding, brutal pain down Kai’s spine - his torturer’s cock spearing through him and through his wounds. Kai sobbing, gasping breathless against the monster’s fingers as he drilled into him - first slowly, deep and savouring every inch, then faster and faster until he was grunting, and Kai screaming hoarse under him-
Kyriel panted, staccato breaths in his ears, as he penetrated him as deep as he could reach.
“Oh, yes Kai,” he grunted. “Cry, love. Cry for it.” He pushed forward - wet, squelching, bottoming out inside him, the boy screaming as he kissed the crown of his head. “This is what you are made for, sweet.” He panted. “Made for me.”
Kai’s eyes rolled into his sockets, the pain reaching a blinding peak.
He must have passed out, must have at least blackened at some point, for Kyriel was panting and rutting wetly inside him the next time he came to. Squelching, familiar heat filling him.
The boy made a broken, gurgling sound when his torturer slipped out of him. Feeling like his back, the space where his wings had been, had been split open by fire.
“Good boy,” the fucker panted, spent, looming over him. Russet hair falling over his shoulders and face, brushing Kai’s skin under him. “Good, good boy.”
Kai cried out, jerking weakly in his chains, when Kyriel put a hand in between his shoulder blades again. His legs trapped by the angel’s weight still sitting over him, his hands chained at the sides of his head.
“Shit,” the monster cursed, immediately stepping off him - “sorry,” he murmured, and Kai thought he must be close from passing out, must be hallucinating, for he had never heard Kyriel apologise before. “I did say I would heal you, did I not?”
The boy begun to cry in earnest, ugly broken sobs wracking through him, when the monster hoovered his palm over his back. When the healing magic, that soothing fucking balm, started seeping into his wounds. Kai gasping, twitching as the pain slowly begun to dissipate from his spine - the boy panting, white hair plastered to his head, his whole body shivering and trembling beyond his control. Until the agony subsided, bit by bit - until Kai could breathe, for the first time since waking up in that bed, without wanting to scream.
The wings wouldn’t just heal, wouldn’t just grow back. Not without access to his power, he thought - but it didn’t quite hurt as much anymore.
Kai sobbed, breathless and without control, when it was over. When Kyriel had finished hoovering his palms all over his back and stepped fully off him - as he tucked himself back into his breeches, sighing at his broken, sprawled prisoner on the bed.
“Ah, Kai, always so dramatic.” The angel reached forward, a hand ruffling the boy’s hair. “Do we need to start with pain tolerance in your training, you think? See how long you can hold the screams in?”
Kai flinched, silver eyes wide and unseeing, curling protectively over himself. Tears, a silver river of them, streaming down his cheeks.
Brutal. That had been brutal. Even as Kyriel had been relatively gentle, in the scale of all the things he’d ever done to him - using only his body and no other tool, even gently easing himself in. Even when he hadn’t purposely split him open like he often liked to - Kai rocketed, his insides a mess of sharp, broken shards, with the aftermath of it.
This was going to be his life. The battlefield of this long game of theirs.
“Oh, Kai, Kai.” Kyriel’s voice was almost gentle, almost kind, as the angel reached out to him. Kai flinching, whimpering under his breath - his torturer grabbing his shoulders in his arms. “Let’s put you back together, now, shall we?”
The boy almost shouted, a new vein of pain flaring deep inside his back, as Kyriel pushed him up to sit in an upward position. His hands clawed at the sheets, arms trembling - the angel grabbing a handful of pillows, throwing them against the mahogany headboard. Gently leading the boy to sit against them next, his back lying over them.
Kai’s hands wouldn’t stop shaking, the boy covered in sweat.
“Good, good,” the fucker murmured, tucking him in - Kai watching him behind a veil of pained tears, panting and trying not to be sick. He sat with his back to the headboard, naked and slick with everything that had just happened in between them, gold and diamond chains still glinting and rattling around his wrists. “Let’s put some food into you now, sweet.”
Kai’s stomach flipped at the thought, even though the boy knew with all reason that he was starved, after god knew how long he’d spent in that grave, the three days of unconsciousness in that bed.
God, his body wouldn’t die on its own, wouldn’t it?
The boy flinched, too many rounds in the dungeon spent screaming when Kyriel insomuch as lifted a finger not to, when the angel raised a hand towards his face. The monster smiling, catching that involuntary reaction of his - brushing a strand of hair away, tucking it behind his prisoner’s ear.
The boy let himself be petted like a doll, the collar tight around his throat.
He knew better than to protest, than to try to fight back. Was awfully aware of the frail state of his back, of the tightness of his constraints. Knew all too well that temporary care could turn into more torture, whether it was the type that made him scream or made him want to drown and disappear. 
Kai only watched, silent and pale, as Kyriel smiled and then called for the slaves.
He remembered, for his time when he’d been Kyriel pupil, the outlines of the floor. Knew that they were on of of the highest levels of the Tower, his old childhood quarters being just below Kyriel’s ones. His prince apartments taking over one third of the fourth to last floor of the monster’s lair - his bedroom, living rooms, bathrooms and wardrobes sharing the space with Kyriel’s private library, what had once been a small armoury. Knew where the two tall, white stately doors Kyriel had come from before led to, had recognised the sound of the lock on the door.
Kai watched, tensing naked in the sheets - the boy covered by dark throws and the collar and chains alone - as those same doors opened to two small figures, two shrouded and collared slaves pushing forward a trolley. Barely more than children from their shape, and on their silver trays…
There was so much fucking food. 
Kai flinched, Kyriel turning to dismiss the slaves as soon as they had rolled the thing to the side of the bed. The two figures bowing and retreating on their steps without ever turning to show the angel their backs. The monster humming pleased, turning towards the spread on the silver thing.
The tray was covered in a veritable spread of goodness. Bonbons and sandwiches and patisserie of all sorts and shapes - blinis covered in caviar, crème fraîche and plates of lobster benedict. Tender sausages on freshly baked and buttered bread, scrambled eggs with white truffle slices casually sparkled on it - saffron coloured French toasts, thick slices of brioche pan fried and golden and smelling of heaven. Croissants with crispy bacon and butter on the sides, chocolate spread with silver cutlery to lay it on fat, golden raised pancakes - what looked like gold leaves sparkling in between the most precise, finely cut fruit salad Kai had ever seen in his life, a silver pot with something within that looked like light soup. Accompanied by a massive coffee pot, a diamond-looking French press holding it - and tea, biscuits, panna cotta and scones, bonnets, panettone slices and fruit and chocolate cake to the side.
Kai watched it with disbelief, his stomach reviving itself despite the pain, the horror of the past hour and weeks.
That was more than he’d ever eaten in years. Richer than almost anything he’d ever seen in his whole life - the life of a peasant kid in the northern lands consisting of berries, herbs and fish, and not much else. The rations at the time of war among the nobility being reduced in the human principates as well - not with Kyriel sending plagues to eat the crops and corrupt the soil to sustain their growth. Not when all resources were forced on keeping as many able-bodied men fighting as it was possible to-
Kyriel winked at him, catching his gaze.
“You are out of the dungeon, boy.” He picked up a cup, a porcelain and blue and gold painted thing, pouring him tea. Hot, steaming, smelling like life. “And my people eat well.”
Kai’s eyes filled with tears, a lump in his throat threatening to make him choke.
Yes, Kyriel’s slaves ate well in their lands. Even when they were only that, slaves - forced to bow to an immortal conqueror that would never age, would never change, whose immortals ate human flesh to sustain themselves. For they were at peace, but had to walk on a narrow line - had to fight not to be picked for the yearly tithe, the sending of people to the bottom of the Tower for the Fallens’ feeding. But they were comfortable, that Kai knew - Kyriel a good shepherd of his lands, maintaining fair law and order and fostering opportunities for growth, meaning and enterprise in his people. Supporting private land ownership, small businesses and schooling and universities - even opening shelters for the poor, knowing full well that the majority of the yearly tithe came from those desperate enough to end up there. Those that were supposed to be the shelters from violence, the abandoned children on what had once been churchyards, were now the beginning of the meat grinding machine.
The boy closed his eyes, accepting the tea with trembling hands. He brought it to his lips, again not making a sound - until a small, broken whimper escaped his throat as he tasted the exquisiteness of it. The liquid like ambrosia, rich and light at once, sweet and fruity and smelling like fresh mint and life. Warm and refreshing both - shooting a lighting of energy in his exhausted, traumatised body.
Kai drank it all greedily, silent like a tomb, Kyriel ready to refill his cup once he was done.
The boy watched him with infinite wariness, the angel only smiling placidly at him.
The monster proceeded to spoon-feed him some soup that tasted like borscht next, taking his time with every movement, every care. Dabbing the boy’s lips with a cloth when Kai spilled some of his food, forcing him to go slower from then on, not to throw himself at the meal least he got sick after so many months of deprivation - but allowing him to have a second bowl of soup when he asked it, generously dipping fresh buttered bread in when he’d thought Kai able to stomach it. Letting him drink everything down with more tea, the pot magically refilling no matter how much he poured, how much Kai drank in his bed. The angel closing the meal by offering him some of those heavenly smelling pancakes and scones - Kai almost weeping, the taste and texture the best thing he’d ever sank his teeth in, when he pliantly parted his lips to let Kyriel feed him.
“Good job,” the fucker praised, by the end of it all. The richest, most decadent parts of that meal left untouched - just a promise of more to come, least Kai upset his stomach with them. “You can have more later, when you feel like it. As much as you like.” He put the plates away, on the still overflowing trolley of dishes that now made Kai ache whenever he looked at them. “I have no interest in keeping you starved from now on.”
Kai hated how grateful that made him feel - a traumatised, human part of him always terrified he’d never have enough to eat. 
The boy forced himself to speak, voice as rough as if someone had scraped his vocal cords with sandpaper, over and over again a thousand times.
“Thank you, Magister,” he whispered, knowing full well this care, this comfort, wouldn’t last - and that it would demand payment of some sort.
The monster smiled, for once not an ounce of maliciousness in his gaze, ruffling Kai’s hair with one hand.
“You are very welcome, sweet.” He straightened, still sitting on the bed next to him - Kai shuddering, naked and chained in that mausoleum in which no time seemed to have gone through. “Let’s talk about rules now, shall we?”
Kai flinched, even though he knew he had no business in flinching still. 
“I know my rules, Magister,” he objected, infinitely wary - his shoulders tensing, stomach twisting at the thought. His stupid body readying itself to spring, as if he could get away from that bed, as if he could escape and flee the angel if he turned his rage on him.
Kyriel’s smile widened, all sharp teeth.
“Ah, but there are more rules, sweet.” He took one of the boy’s hands in his, patting the back of it. Kai flinching again, the smallest of things. “Your other rules are, let’s say… Your guiding compass, as my pupil.” His smile widened another inch, watching Kai’s eyes darkening at what he called them. “These other are house rules.” He clicked his tongue. “Rules of coexistence.”
Kai somehow doubted that coexistence implied his survival, if he was ever to break them.
The boy straightened his back, doing his very best to keep his expression neutral, not to let any of the nausea and disgust churning in his stomach show as the angel proceeded to lay down what were, in fact, the rules of his captivity. House rules indeed perhaps, what the fucker expected from him now that he’d decided to grace him with letting him out of the dungeons.
Not all of them were enunciated with power, Kai’s head left reeling and spinning in trying to remember them all. The boy having no doubts, no doubts at all, that failure to obey those that were ordered without the compulsion would be used as an excuse to apply some exciting punishment on him. Kyriel’s eyes glinting, hungry and malicious, as he laid them out for him.
Kai wasn’t to leave the Tower. He couldn’t roam outside of his rooms, either, unless given explicit permission to, and even then he had to take care to ensure his movements were going to be limited to the library, the breakfast room, and Kyriel’s apartments. There was a passage connecting the two together, a set of hidden stair that would bring Kai from his bedroom to his torturer’s, and the angel expected him to be there and kneeling at eleven every night. They were going to see about his battle training later in a few weeks, once he’d recovered, to see if access could be extended to the arena and the weapons within. In the meantime, Kai was to resume his studies. For this purpose and his mental stimulation, he could help himself with any book he may wish to consult, provided he took good care of them and did not attempt any of the spells in it. He was forbidden from teaching said spells, any spell actually, to any other person in the attempt to make them cast the magic for him instead. He might entertain himself with whichever leisure activity he wished to pick up, on condition of asking permission first (which could be denied, and Kai had no doubts his torturer would greatly enjoy doing so) and his health allowing it. These activities were to be confined to the spaces he was allowed in - but he could write, paint, and even sing if he was so inclined. Of course, Kyriel would inspect whatever Kai would produce, although he would spare being his audience in case of singing until Kai felt confident enough to deserve it (it was heavily implied, then, that if Kyriel were not to enjoy the performance, Kai would heavily pay for it). The angel, in his magnificence, would provide the materials and support for whichever hobby of his, even teachers if Kai so wished. They would gruesomely die if he even as much tried to think about using them to escape or communicate to the outside world, of course, but still. Kai was to be healthy, happy however possible, and keep himself well groomed, well washed and dressed all along. Speaking of which, breakfast was to be served at 8 every morning, and Kai was expected to attend. He wasn’t allowed to starve himself, to harm himself in any way or form, and he was to report how often and in which manner he’d thought of escaping at the end of each day. After dinner, ideally - which, by the way, that day was going to be at eight.
The boy watched his torturer with a mixture of hate, disgust and sheer disbelief, the runes on his back tightening their hold on his will. His mouth drying, choking him.
“You want a report,” he spelled out, slowly, “of my thoughts?”
The angel watched him, a small smile on his lips.
“Why,” he drawled, leaning back, “can you deny me?”
Kai flushed, disbelieving, feeling the cage tightening tighter and tighter around him.
The answer, of course, was in his silence alone.
There was nothing he could deny Kyriel. Nothing in the world, the compulsion as tight as it had ever been on his skin - the boy forced to bare his throat for the killing blow if his captor demanded it of him. Even his mind, apparently - Kyriel demanding off him the closest thing to actually owning his thoughts would be. The knowledge of them, so that he could know where to better hit.
And there was no point, really, in fighting it.
“No, Magister,” Kai whispered, hoarse - face twisting in disgust, the boy not quite able to dissimulate the hate in his gaze. “Of course.”
The monster smiled, a cat toying with his meal, at him.
“Good boy.” He reached forward, pinching his prisoner’s cheek. “Glad to have you home, sweet.”
Previous - next - masterlist
Taglist: @suspicious-whumping-egg @forthetaintedsorrow-whump @flowersarefreetherapy @sunshiline-writes @enigmawritesstuff @burnticedlatte
16 notes · View notes
clangenrising · 4 months
Text
Month 10 - Leafbare
“Yarrowshade?” Nightfrost asked softly. Yarrowshade immediately lifted his head from where he had been sleeping, the two of them curled around to rest on each others’ flanks. 
“Yes?” he asked, ready to do whatever she wanted. The snow had prevented anyone from harvesting horsetail. A storm had rolled in again after Sagetooth had returned, delaying Branchbark’s expedition to try and find any. Luckily, today had lots of sun and no new snow, thawing the drifts enough that sometimes grass was visible between them again. Branchbark had left earlier that day to go looking. The others had agreed to handle the border patrols and Goldenstar was taking care of Barleypaw’s training for the time being, which he was grateful for. 
As much as he hated to think about it, everyone seemed to think that Nightfrost wasn’t long for the world and he wanted to spend as much time with her as he could. He wanted to believe she would get better but if she didn’t he couldn’t bear the thought of her being alone. 
Nightfrost smacked her lips a bit, wincing at the taste of her nap, and asked, “Are you also feeling really warm?” Her voice was faint and woozy which worried him. 
“No, I’m not,” he shook his head, “are you feeling really warm?” 
“Yeah,” she mumbled, laying her head back down on his side. 
“Maybe I should get Sagetooth,” he said, shifting to get up and she whimpered. 
“No, don’t,” she moaned. “Please stay.” 
Guilt weighing down his gut, Yarrowshade settled back down. “Okay, I’ll stay.” He sat there for a long moment, watched her shut her eyes and grimace in discomfort, and felt her heartbeat thumping quickly against him. Something was wrong. 
“Sagetooth!” he called, disliking the worry that wobbled in his voice. 
“What is it?” she asked, sounding cranky as ever. She limped around the corner of the burrow from where she had been resting in her nest. Like Nightfrost, her paws had been bound with cobwebs to keep them clean. 
“Nightfrost says she’s feeling very warm,” he said. 
“Fever,” she grunted, expression darkening. Carefully, she made her way over and sniffed at Nightfrost’s paws. She stepped back, nodding solemnly. “Definitely infected.” Nightfrost whimpered and shifted uncomfortably in the nest. Somewhere deeper in the den, Oddstripe coughed. Yarrowshade hated how much the situation reminded him of the time that cats were sick with the Red Gut plague.
“What can we do?” he asked.
“We can cool her down with snow,” Sagetooth shrugged. “I can give her some borage, maybe poppy seeds. Other than that… there’s not much to be done until Branchbark returns with the horsetail.” 
“Okay,” he nodded. “You get her some borage, I’ll grab some snow.” 
“Here,” she said, limping over to the herb stores. “Take a pumpkin leaf and fill it.” Very carefully, he pulled himself out from underneath Nightfrost and she whined again. 
“No, don’t go,” she pleaded. 
“I’ll be right back, my love,” he said, pressing a few licks to her forehead. Stars, she was burning up. He moved to join Sagetooth and take the pumpkin leaf she was offering. As he took it, he whispered, “How long does she have if he doesn’t show?” 
Sagetooth sighed. “Hours. You should prepare to surrender her to StarClan.” 
Yarrowshade’s stomach twisted sickly. He nodded and took the leaf outside to fill it with snow. His mind was far away and his eyes refused to focus. He felt like he was floating out of his body and out of time. 
You should prepare to surrender her to StarClan.
The word surrender made him feel ill. How could she ask that of him? He had only recently been able to call Nightfrost his and now he was being forced to let her go. He had never been one to give up. He had never been one to stop fighting. If there was something worth saving he would always fight for it until he couldn’t physically move. But this was an illness. What was there to do? He had no way to fight. 
He thought back to something he had told Goldenstar when Toadpaw had been taken. I’m just tired of losing cats and being powerless to stop it. 
Feeling that tiredness in a foggy haze around his mind, he bunched the leaf up in his teeth and brought the snow back into the den. Sagetooth showed him how to close the leaf shut with a bit of cobwebs and then handed him the borage and instructed him how to feed them to her. He did so then gently returned to the position they had been in before, curled close so he could feel her heart beating against him. He carefully placed the leaf of snow onto her forehead and she sighed in relief, the most beautiful noise he had ever heard. 
Please, StarClan, he begged wordlessly, let Branchbark return in time.
He let her rest. Words passed through his brain, a thousand different ways to start a conversation with her, but none of them felt important enough to disturb her. They would all be for his benefit and none of them would be as satisfying as he might hope. Eventually the snow melted and he very carefully groomed the water from her fur and tossed the leaf to the side. At one point he hummed a tune for her and she smiled. 
It was hard to tell how much time had passed. He started to doze unintentionally but was woken when she suddenly twisted and whimpered. 
“Nightfrost?” he asked. She was breathing hard and her heart was hammering against her ribs. 
“So cold,” she breathed, trying to pull him closer. He licked her fur the wrong way, trying to warm her up the only way he knew how. 
“It’ll be alright,” he said. “Branchbark should be here soon, just hold on.” 
Nightfrost whined and pressed herself close against his flank. “Yarrowshade?” she asked.
“Yes?” 
“Can you sing again?” 
“Of course, my love,” he said, starting humming the tune from before. He nuzzled close to her, tried to press his weight comfortingly against her. Her breath was shaky now, starting to falter. Her hammering heart beat began to slow. His whole chest tightened in anticipation. She could pull through this, he told himself, she was the strongest of all of them. 
She twitched sharply, eyes opening, and stared blankly at the ceiling. She twitched again. Her heart beat slowed to a crawl and faded. He held his breath, searching for it, for the sound of her breath rasping in her throat. She laid silent and still against his side. 
He choked down a sob. “Nightfrost?” he asked. Silence. He wasn’t brave enough to ask again. Closing his eyes, he pressed his chin against her, held her close. He didn’t cry very often but now the grief shook his whole chest and constricted his throat. Tears rolled down his nose and into her fur. Distantly, he registered Sagetooth peering around the corner of the den and was somewhat relieved when she disappeared again. He grit his teeth and wept. 
Tumblr media
That night, Branchbark returned with the horsetail.
UPDATES: - Nightfrost's frostbite becomes infected. She does not survive.
102 notes · View notes
gaywiththesauce · 5 months
Text
This is It
RenGiyuu, 1.1K
TW: mcd, attempted suicide, depressing thoughts, blood
Tumblr media
Giyuu opened his eyes. It was midnight, a time he knew too well. He was laying on a roof somewhere he couldn’t recognize. He wasn’t alone. Kyojuro was sitting on the roof with him. He looked over at Giyuu with a soft voice, “Hey, good morning. How do you feel?”
Giyuu sat up slowly, “Where are we?”
“Not far,” Kyojuro answered, waving his hand in some direction. He looked at the lights of the small city ahead of them. “You didn’t answer my question, Giyuu.”
Giyuu hummed as a response. If he was to be honest, he felt awful. His head was groggy and he felt tired despite the nap. He shook his head, “I’m alright.”
Kyojuro looked over. His smile was brought down by the sadness in his eyes. “Okay,” he muttered, and Giyuu realized that he was caught in his lie. Neither of them elaborated further.
Kyojuro changed the subject, “I’m glad you’re awake, either way. I was worried that you might not wake up.”
Giyuu met his eyes, trying to see why Kyojuro would be worried about that. He looked over himself, missing the signs of blood or broken bones. Nothing. He was perfectly fine physically. He looked back at Kyojuro again, “What happened?”
“You don’t remember?” Kyojuro looked back at the lights, “Maybe it’s for the best. I’d rather you not remember.”
Giyuu didn’t understand why.
Kyojuro sighed and slid closer to Giyuu, “Can I ask a personal question?”
Giyuu nodded.
Kyojuro looked into the dark blue eyes of his lover, “What’s one thing that you’ve wanted the most in life?”
Giyuu gulped. There was no easy answer. There were so many things he wanted throughout his life. Acceptance, love, care, understanding, compassion, better speaking skills, friends, someone to talk to; all easy examples. Somehow, Kyojuro gave him all of those. He shrugged. “You?”
Kyojuro smiled and chuckled, “You flatter, but I appreciate it. I know it’s not true, however.” Kyojuro looked away, avoiding Giyuu’s concerned gaze. He continued, “You want him back, don’t you?”
Giyuu tried to see who he was talking about. They were the only two on the roof above the dead street. Despite the bright lights that made Tokyo look like daylight, the walkways were barren of any passerbys.
Kyojuro glanced at Giyuu’s hand, “You’re holding him now.”
Giyuu looked at his hand. It held onto Sabito’s side of the haori tightly. He let go. Kyojuro commented, “You miss him. Do you want him back?”
Giyuu nodded while he stared at his blood-stained hand, “Of course.”
Kyojuro put his soft hand against Giyuu’s cheek to guide his avoiding gaze to those burning embers of eyes.
“More than me?”
Giyuu froze. What kind of question was this? It felt like a trick. It felt unfair. Kyojuro was making him choose? Why? It was impossible. He loves Sabito and Kyojuro. They helped him through everything. Giyuu would be no one without them. He couldn’t choose, he couldn’t choose.
Kyojuro hummed. He was disappointed, but he couldn't understand it like Giyuu could. “Why do you keep it?” Kyojuro put his hand on Giyuu’s green and yellow shoulder.
“I don’t know.”
“You do,” Kyojuro squeezed, “You don’t have a grave to mourn at, do you?”
Giyuu didn’t know how Kyojuro knew that. “I don’t.”
“What if you did? Would you stop wearing it?”
“I don’t know.”
“You can mourn at my grave. Will you wear mine?”
“I don’t know.”
Kyojuro sighed again, knowing that he wouldn’t get another answer.
Giyuu held his breath, “I’ll miss you.”
Kyojuro looked at him, “Hm?”
Giyuu avoided his eyes, “If you die.”
Kyojuro glowed like an angel, “When I die, you mean. Death is guaranteed, Giyuu, and I miss you too.”
Giyuu felt tears stab at his eyes, “Will you wait for me?”
Kyojuro smiled out of the corner of Giyuu’s blurry vision, “There is no waiting, Giyuu. This is it.”
Giyuu looked up at him for the last time. Kyojuro’s smile was beautiful, open, and accepting.
It was his whole world.
It was over.
Giyuu blinked.
It wasn’t midnight anymore. He opened his eyes to somewhere different. The first thing he saw was the white that distorted his vision. He blinked away the tears and stared at the white snow on the ground. The ground was cold. Everything was so cold that it was warm.
Something touched him. He shook at the force, but couldn’t move at all.
“Oh, thank- Over here! He’s alive!” a feminine voice called out through his clogged ears. He was touched more. The snow was brushed off him and he was rolled on his back.
Shinobu’s face was in view. For once, she looked concerned. “Tomioka-san! Can you hear me?” She didn’t wait for an answer. She worked on his stomach, doing something just out of his vision.
His vision narrowed, and the darkness bit away at the vision of the white clouds. Shinobu talked about something medical. Something about blood, about cold, and about living. Was Giyuu dying? The pain in his stomach hardly compared to his blue fingertips or his toes.
Giyuu rolled onto his side at the push of burning hands, eventually falling back onto something that wasn’t cold and red. The snow beneath him was bloody. It was his blood. In the corner of his eye, he could see his bed clothes stained with blood. So much blood, so much blood, the amount that’s when something pierces the solar plexus and goes straight through it. Huh. Giyuu didn’t know where that thought came from.
Giyuu’s head was held to view the sky. He saw something else, though. His sword hilt. It was pointing to the sky, held by a dainty hand. The leather of the straps was stained red. Why was it above him? With much more effort than he anticipated, he lifted his head enough to see where the blade was.
It was covered in blood. Everything was covered in blood. It was in his stomach. Seppuku, his mind reminded him.
“Stay down!” Shinobu shouted, pressing her fingers against Giyuu’s forehead as if he wasn’t already falling back. His head lulled to the side when she let up but scolded him further.
Another color caught his attention aside from the bleeding red and the rippling blue. Silver and gray, he could barely make out the symbols carved into the stone.
Here Lies Rengoku Kyojuro
Proud Brother, Dedicated Son
The Greatest Flame Hashira
Oh. 
He remembered what happened now.
It was his turn to save Kyojuro just as he saved him.
“You seem shy! That’s okay, my little brother is the same way! Tomioka-san, do you know anywhere close by where we could eat!”
Kyojuro saved him from loneliness. It was Giyuu’s time to return the favor.
I’m coming to save you.
I’ll save you, Kyojuro.
I’ll save myself.
I’ll save you.
I’ll save you.
Tumblr media
23 notes · View notes
kiyoobi · 2 years
Text
we all are small particles holding very tightly together in a very large universe // k.bakugou  III
Rating: MA
Pairing(s): Tamaki Amajiki x fem!reader, Bakugou Katsuki x fem!reader
Warnings: hurt/comfort, heavy angst, emotional cheating, major character death, smut, body horror/graphic injuries, trauma, ptsd, sinkhole accident, medical trauma, hospital scenes 
wc: 9.7k
Summary: ahaha
a/n: hello this is my third part, ive finally hit my 20k min requirement for @mybigbangacademia yay!!!!!!!!!! enjoy, like, reblog, comment, gimme a lil kudos on ao3 (link in title) and as always...
minors dni
For authorized eyes only, Level Eight Clearance and Above required.
Mission Report: Musutafu Sinkhole Incident, 02/03/2xxx
On March 2nd, 2xxx a sinkhole in the Musutafu district occurred at 17:52. There were fourteen casualties, including Pro-Hero Suneater. Forty-eight other civilians and heroes were rushed to nearby hospitals for injuries ranging from severe to devastating. Twelve had minimal injuries. Twenty-two are still missing. Numbers of victims are rising every day. Rescue efforts are still ongoing, the city blocks have been shut down and quarantined as fire and rescue fight the elements. 
The sinkhole originally had been three blocks wide and three hundred twenty-seven feet deep. The original cause is still unknown, this investigation is ongoing but suspicions are that unstable water and sewages systems and years of poor foundation may be the cause. As soon as this emergency was dispatched, teams of heroes and sidekicks alongside fire and rescue had surrounded the area and began their rescued efforts. Surrounding the sinkhole, medics awaited for any survivors. The main concern was finding pedestrians and securing any unstable sections. Rescue heroes had been struggling with the amount of debris and noise made, making rescue efforts difficult. This raised the emergency level to a code black. Broken electricity lines quickly became a concern once the burst water and sewage pipes made contact. Many injuries that flooded the medic tents ranged from crush injuries, mild concussions, DOA (dead on arrival), or electrocution. Medic tents were busy and over filled for the next few days after the disaster, hospital emergency rooms flooded with drastic injuries.  
Section five of the sinkhole had collapsed at 21:04, engulfing an ambulance truck, a petrol station, several civilian cars, a news station car, and two heroes: Shadow Step and Suneater. The collapsed section had sunken down an estimated one hundred more feet. Flooding, debris, collapsed vehicules and a small building had made rescue efforts all the more difficult. Investigations are ongoing to find the cause of this particular section caving in, however due to instability of the sinkhole, causes are still unknown. 
Pro-hero Suneater and his sidekick Shadow Step had fallen into the collapsed section, with Tamaki Amajiki breaking his sidekick’s fall. Initial findings found that an ambulance had fallen too with them, threatening their safety as it was caught on metal piping. Reports found that the ambulance had slipped from the broken pipes due to the insecure structuring and water flooding, and the heroes were trapped underneath an ambulance for approximately sixty-seven hours. Suneater had heroically saved himself and Shadow Step under an oyster shell he had manifested. However due to his extensive injuries, his protection against the ambulance truck was fragile and weakening. 
Unbeknownst to them, Suneater’s wireless earpiece had not been shattered from their initial fall and impact as he had believed. His last moments alive were recorded, lasting for an approximate four thousand five hundred and sixty minutes. 
A team looking for the hero pair had been listening from a nearby zone in hopes of finding their location and saving them. Overhearing the grave condition Suneater was in, they knew they had a limited time before his quirk would cease working and both heroes would be crushed by the ambulance truck. 
Said team of those heroes, all who are now currently in ongoing trauma therapy for the disaster and loss of their fellow number six hero are:
Number one hero Lemillion
Number two hero Deku
Number three hero Shouto
Number four hero Dynamite
Number five hero Hawks
Number sixteen hero Earphone Jack
The following is an excerpt of Suneater’s autopsy report:
Japanese Male, Twenty-seven years old, 179 centimeters, weighing approximately 87.9 kilograms. Pronounced dead on scene. 
Traumatic cervical spine injuries had led to the extreme possibility of paralysis from these severe injuries. 
Higher falls were associated with hemorrhage as well as rib fractures and various organ injuries. Organ injury patterns did not differ based on work status. The presence of equipment misuse or malfunction were not associated with more deaths upon impact. Suneater was not killed on impact. 
He suffered extensive injuries, a broken arm, a broken leg and fractures of a number of ribs. Evidence of a pneumothorax was found due to a broken rib. A gash in his left thigh confirmed witness reports that a metal drainage pipe had stabbed through the upper rectus femoris muscle and shattered parts of the left femur. 
Cause of death was blunt force trauma from the falling vehicle, with signs of tracheal collapse and the C2 vertebrae crushed.
End excerpt.
Due to Suneater’s broadcast from his receiver, evidence corroborated the accident reports. Shadow Step was to activate their quirk to switch positions with the ambulance that had been threatening to crush them both. After much debate Shadow Step finally agrees to Suneater’s plan, resulting in his death and their recovery. 
Unfortunately, Shadow Step was not found immediately. The depression had been filling with sewage and rushing water from the broken water mains quickly flooding the area. Section Three had concaved and fallen to what experts estimate at least one hundred feet. Mud, collapsed cars, debris, had all made rescue efforts more difficult. Shadow Step was stranded at the bottom of the sinkhole for two more days without food or clean water. Dynamite, part of this rescue team, had been the one to find Shadow Step. 
They were found at the scene emaciated with open cuts and wounds, a concussion, extreme exhaustion, infection in trauma fractures found in the left humerus, dislocated shoulder, broken collarbone, broken arm, broken ribs from impact, and a metal pipe in their upper left leg. Since Suneater’s transmission was the only record found, events that went underway with Shadow Step are unclear, although given the traumatic rescue, assumptions can be made about how critical and dire their situation was. Medical analysis showed they consumed gasoline, presumably from the petrol station that caved in with Section Three, and presumably because they confused it with water in all of the hysterics. Currently they are in an induced medical coma as they recover from surgery. They are not expected to return to work within the next few months. Attempts to find their soulmate are still under way. 
The origins of the sinkhole are still under investigation. Villains are found to not be involved. 
-(-)-
A sea of nothing. Everywhere it is dark. 
You can feel the warm water underneath your back, gently rocking you back to sleep. Everything is quiet. You quite like the quiet. You float aimlessly. To be honest, you think you can live like this for the rest of your life. Are you even alive? Perhaps it’s purgatory. It’s certainly not heaven. Or maybe it is, you wonder. You really don’t care. 
-(-)-
Maybe you do care. Where are you going anyway? Is this really heaven? Are you dead? You feel salt in your throat, burning your trachea and esophagus. There really isn’t anything to do here. What even is here?
You’re sick, but wasn’t there a proverb you read once that said the sick wouldn’t be sick anymore? Whatever, you supposed. You wiggle your toes in the warm water, floating aimlessly still. 
-(-)-
Your mind is empty. Or maybe it’s anesthetized, so you wouldn’t feel the gaping wound it’s become. One day I’ll cry, you tell yourself with a faint smile. One day, I might care that I am dying. 
-(-)-
Am I real?
-(-)-
Everything hurts. Nothing hurts at all. 
You want to look, look and see where you’re going, where you are, but your eyes sting every time you even try to open your swollen lids. Instead, you settle for touch, using your fingertips to feel warm waves lapping around your floating body. You realize one of your arms is bandaged to your chest, the other in a sling. Slowly it comes back to you in flashes:
Falling. 
Screaming
The force of the ground beneath you and Tamaki. 
Tamaki…
You want to cry out but there’s a tube in your throat, choking you. 
You want to move but your muscles won’t listen. 
Bambi. 
The waves under you feel softer, drier. Linen. 
Bambi. 
Your eyes open. 
“She’s fighting the intubation,” a voice says next to you. 
“Welcome back,” another says. “Relax for just a moment, babe, we are going to remove your breathing tube.” You gag as they remove the foreign object, coughing violently as soon as you’re free. 
Bambi. 
You struggle to speak, your voice is gone and every word feels like your vocal chords are grating against each other. 
“Oh honey, shhhh.” The ICU nurse dabs your eyes, you’re crying. Why are you crying?   “It’s okay, it’s okay. You’ve been under for a while, you shouldn’t push yourself to talking just yet. Your doctors will be in soon.” You look at them wildly, not understanding where you are and what’s going on. The lights are too bright, the machines next to you, too loud. You try to flail your arms but one is tied to your chest, the other manages to smack an orderly right on the cheek. 
“Sedate her.” The orderly is quick to strap down your free arm while a team of medical staff moves swiftly around you. “Three milligrams of midazolam-,” Your muscles loosen and it’s harder to keep your eyes open. 
Bambi. 
For the next week you’re in and out of consciousness. No one tells you anything suffice for the TV in your hospital room playing the news, over and over they tell the public the horrid news. You watch Tamaki’s memorial from your bed, veins pumping with sedatives to keep you from breaking down again. You watch his parents cry, unable to yourself. Lemillion gives a beautiful speech, so do others who know your fiancé. Knew. You correct this mentally over and over, but you never seem to get it right. After the news broadcasts, you watch trashy talk show hosts gossip about you. The police told you nothing was released, and yet here they are skepulating on who your mystery soulmate is. They tell all of Japan how you’re such a monster for letting Tamaki die, and your eyes flit to the hordes of cards and flowers sent to your bedroom, the fruit baskets that you cannot stomach to eat. 
You don’t cry. You can’t. You really want a cigarette. You press that little grey button for more morphine instead. 
Nurses and doctors filter in and out, updating you on your recovery. A few more weeks and your collarbone will be all set to go! Your O2 sats are rising! You might be weaned off this drip in a few more days! 
“Why can’t you guys use the doctors with the healing quirks?” Your voice is hoarse, barely used, words slurring. You watch your med team stiffen, not used to hearing you speak. You suppose that’s what happens when you wake up screaming every morning, only shutting up when you’re pumped full of drugs. 
“What?” You snap, “What aren’t you telling me??”
“The infection in your bone is spreading, even with the antibiotics and the surgeries planned for this week… we don’t believe it’ll be the same after. You wouldn’t be able to walk or run on that leg like you did before.”
Before . Before you and your fiancé were trapped. Before he died. Before when you didn’t even have a soulmate. 
“What’re you saying?” You look down to your hand and play with the blanket covering your bottom half.
“With the progression of this infection, and with your career, we believe it’s best to proceed with an above knee amputation.” Your face grows hot and your tongue is numb.
“No, I don’t give you permission.” Your jaw locks. 
The surgeon hesitates, “I’m afraid that isn’t up to you. The law requires that in the current state you’re in, medical decisions aren’t up only up to you; your soulmate must also be involved in the decision.” Soulmate. 
“I don’t-,” You pause, almost delivering the same four words you’ve been telling everyone for years. I don’t have a soulmate. “I don’t understand. That isn’t fair.”
“It’s the law, honey” another doctor says sympathetically. “Your soulmate has to be onboard with this decision and even then, we highly recommend amputation. This infection can spread and all of your major organs could start to fail-.”
She talks and talks. All of it just angers you. 
You feel like screaming. And so you do. 
You scream until your throat burns, until your lungs scream for you to stop. You throw with your one good arm what you can at the idiots, cursing them and letting out the years of anger and frustration that’s been bubbling forth underneath your skin. You hate them. You hate them so much, you hate everything. You activate your quirk, not having done that since Tamaki, throwing chairs and medical equipment at them. Satisfaction is quickly lost when they start to restrain you, giving you a dosage to knock your quirk and yourself out. 
-(-)-
For the first time in a while, you see him. Blonde tufts of hair swaying with the gentle breeze, a pink sky and a calm ocean in front of you both. His hair looks soft, like it’s only gotten the saltwater and ocean air to style it today instead of the expensive ass pomade he probably uses every day. You’ve always wondered how it felt, or maybe you didn’t. You can’t really remember how things were before. Before you had a soulmate. Were you always destined for Katsuki? What changed?  In any case, you wonder how long it usually takes the hero to style himself for his shifts. It used to take you an hour, on good days? Thirty minutes. You’re not gonna have that opportunity for a while now, you suppose. 
When you walk, both of your legs work. You can feel the sand between your toes, sinking under your weight until it finds its way to finally support you. Fuck, you should’ve taken more vacations.  You should’ve taken that time off and felt the salt for real, feel the way the sun baked it all day just for you to dip your feet in the cool seawater. The sound of the waves draws your attention out toward the sea, a warm breeze hugs your arms and wraps around your legs. 
You don’t look at him, the nerves in your belly tightening conflict with the warm excitement in your chest to see him after so long. It’s been so long. You didn’t realize how long you’ve been keeping track. Instead you look down at his hands resting at his sides, relaxed. They look soft… warm. You wonder if they’d feel like the sand beneath your feet. It doesn’t take long before you’re right next to him. Butterflies. They’re squeezing around your gut. You make the mistake of glancing at him, heart skipping to see his eyes have already found you. 
You don’t really know what to say to him.
“What do you put in your hair when you’re on call?” Inwardly you roll your eyes at yourself, it’s a stupid question. But it’s the first time you talk to him in your dreams. Really talk to him. It’s the first time you acknowledge him as your soulmate in a dream. Those nightmares you both had, both of you never acknowledging what they could possibly ever mean, they don’t count. You still can’t decipher the meaning of those monsters, and you’re afraid to know. You’ve never gotten a chance to thank him properly. And he, you. 
Bakugou doesn’t hide his surprise well, his lips part softly in confusion and he furrows his brow. “It’s a hair pomade-” Your sudden burst of laughter cuts him off and he scowls, “ What?!” You continue to belly laugh, shaking your head, unable to stop yourself. He watches you laugh so hard that your belly aches and your smile hurts. He watches when your laughter turns to tears streaming down your cheeks, his soft smile curling downwards with concern. 
Katsuki stands, towering over you. His hands grab your hips and he pulls you in as you cry, sobbing into his chest all the while. You can feel him soothing you, rubbing his hand up and down your back, his nose at the crown of your hair taking in the scent of your conditioner. Your skin smells like the hospital Irish Springs soap. He sways you both, right in his arms. His heart beats right against your ear, a reminder of his love for you. You try not to think of him, but all you can think of is how it was to lay on Tamaki’s chest and feel and hear his heart slowly fading beneath his uniform. 
Tears swell in your eyes. “You haven’t come to see me,” you sob. Your fists ball by his sides and as much as you want to pull away, you lean all your weight into him. He smells like vanilla and cinnamon sugar, like the warm sugary pastry treats you ate in the States during the summer. “Why?”
Katsuki  holds you, swaying and rocking you both gently. The waves lap at your toes, you wonder when the last time you stepped on a real beach was. You think about how it’s too late. 
“I have,” he admits in a low voice. “I’ve been there.”
Out of surprise, you jerk back to look at him. “What? What do you mean?”
“I usually leave when the docs show up; didn’t really think you’d want me there to be honest, Bambi.” 
“Why wouldn’t I?” You pull more away from him, anger flashing now. “Why do you think I would rather be alone in a godforsaken hospital room?”
His jaw tenses and he steps forward into the space you created, his hands surprisingly gentle as they squeeze your hips. “Bambi-”
“Shut up.” Your eyes narrows, “Don’t call me that. You know they’re going to take my leg?” Bakugou’s eyes glances down as you speak. “They won’t even listen to me! They refuse to, all because the fucking law says that my fucking soulmate has to give their permission too. I never have a choice. Everything is decided for me.”
“What’s so wrong about losing your leg, huh?” Katsuki snaps, “There’s nothing wrong with having one less limb. This is about your life, you idiot!” 
“It’s my leg ! I cannot and will not go through with this amputation. You need to tell them that you agree with me!” With each step you move backwards, Katsuki refuses to let you get far. 
“So fucking what!? Who gives a fuck if you lose your leg?”
“You’re kidding me right?” You glare at him, “You think no one would give a fuck? Tell me, Dynamite, would you still love me so fucking much if I weren’t the spectacular Shadow Step? If I weren’t able to train as much and-.” 
“Oh shut the fuck up,” Bakugou groans and rolls his eyes at you. “Shut the fuck up. You think I give a shit?”
“All your life you gave a shit! You always sneered down at people who are weaker than you! Fucking bully, I don’t know why you of all people are my soulmate.” You laugh bitterly, spewing out hateful words you don’t even mean. 
Bakugou doesn’t even flinch, instead he keeps stepping in that space you keep leaving between you both. “Yeah? You know me then, huh?”
“Yes,” you spit out. “Tamaki should not have been the one to have died.” Shut up, shut up, shut up.
Katsuki nods, his jaw clenched tightly as your fists pound against his chest. “And it shouldn’t have been me either. You were the one who convinced me to go back. It should have been you down there.” 
“You don’t,” Katsuki catches your eyes and shakes his head gently. “You don’t know me.” Angry tears, fat and hot tears burn your cheeks now. Every step you pull back from him, you can feel the magnetism of the universe forcing you back in. 
“I don’t want to get to know you,” you spew out. “I don’t want you. I wasn’t supposed to have a soulmate. You ruined that for me!” 
“You can deny me all you want, sweetheart. But we are made from the same stardust, and you can’t get rid of that.” 
“Oh sure, it’s meant to be.” You roll your eyes sarcastically and shove yourself away from him, “But it’s not meant to last.” 
“Fuck you, you can’t tell me what this is. My love is there. It’s there and you can’t take that away from me,” Katsuki points his finger at you, accusatory. “It might not change anything and it’s definitely not gonna save anything, but it’s there.”
“Ignore it!” You swat his hands away when you slip in the sand, “If I can ignore this, so can you.” 
“Bullshit,” he challenges. “You can barely ignore this, how can you ignore the stupid fucking magnetic pull between us??” Katsuki stops chasing after you for a moment, and rubs his face tiredly. 
“I love you,” He says. 
“It’ll pass.”
“Bullshit,” Katsuki glares back at you. “That’s how I know you don’t even know half of how any of this works. Do you know how hard it is, watching for most of my life seeing you with others? Watching you say over and over how you’re not tied to me? Denying me at every chance? Do you know what that’s like?” 
You can’t reply, tears block your airway and your words and you look away towards the ocean instead.
“Ya feel alone? Imagine how I felt for the past twenty something fucking years, then you can tell me how lonely you feel right now. I am next to you, and I still feel lonely. I am next to my soulmate who finally, after seeing me in their dreams for months, is talking back to me. I’m homesick, all the time.” This time his voice cracks, and you feel your own heart doing the same. “I can go anywhere I want, except home.”
Longing for a home that doesn’t exist.
“And you’re still denying me .”
“I wouldn’t be,” you tear your eyes away from the waves and look up at his. “If you haven’t kept leaving the goddamn hospital room.” It’s a weak ass excuse, and you know it. You know the sting of your words is still hurting him, you can’t take them back. 
“Well, you’ve been rejecting me your entire life. Why would you suddenly wanna see me, dummy?” His left hand caresses your cheek and thumbs away at stray tears. It’s too intimate, you don’t deserve it and all you can think about is Tamaki being crushed under that ambulance. You step back. 
“I can’t, I can’t just move on. I still love him,” your voice cracks and more tears begin to spill from your eyes. God, please stop crying. I’m so sick of crying. 
“I know,” he holds onto you tightly. “I’m not asking for you to stop loving him.” I just want to be the reason you choose to keep living each day. 
“But you love me,” you cry into his chest. “I need you to stop loving me.” You know this isn’t how it works, you know because for the first in forever you feel whole as he caresses you tightly. 
“You know I can’t, Bambi. I haven’t been in love with anybody, and never shall ,” he whispers. “ Unless it should be with you.”
“Please,” you start to push your palms against his chest and pull away. “I need time, I can’t just… I don’t know you well, Katsuki. It’s too much, my leg, the accident, you…” 
“I know, I know you need time. I don’t want to push you, Bambi. But I can’t just leave you alone,” His hands caress your tear-stained cheeks, his eyes are soft as his love for you. “Let me take on your pain too, you shouldn’t have to carry it all on your own.”
You don’t wanna talk anymore about your feelings. Not with anyone and certainly not Bakugou right now, it’s too confusing. “You don’t have the compression sleeve.” You take his hand away from your cheek, and childishly you squeeze his fingers as you observe them. There aren’t any calluses on his fingers. His skin is perfectly smooth. No imperfections. 
He doesn’t answer and you look up at him, he knows you’re evading. You know you’re evading. You both were just arguing, but you’re exhausted and you really just wanna stop fighting. 
“Do you not know?” Katsuki asks, stepping back and searching for your expression, his left hand drums their fingers against your arm. Confusion rocks through you. 
“Know what?” Your skin bristles and you feel yourself being pulled now as your consciousness starts to awaken. “Katsuki!” Panic sets in and then fear, you feel it all over again. It’s hot and makes you restless, like any second you might split. “I’m waking up, please don’t- please don’t leave me.”
You both step forward, holding tightly onto each other as you start to wake up. “You sure?” His voice is gruff in your ear. 
No, you’re not. 
“Yes.” 
-(-)-
Your head is pounding and your mouth is dry. It’s probably been a day or two since you flipped your shit out on the medical staff. Mentally you take note to send them a fruit basket as an apology. 
Everything is dim with exception for the machinery lights keeping you steady; your hand squeezes involuntarily and you feel something else. Katsuki . His hand is warm, gruff, weathered by his years in service. He’s still sound asleep, and you stare in awe with the fact the soulmates don’t wake up at the same time. Still tucked in, you don’t have to make much movement to know that the nurses have changed the bandaging on your leg again. Bakugou doesn’t stir when you adjust your hospital bed, and certainly doesn’t make it known if he’s awake when you can’t help but let out soft groans as you sit up for the first time in weeks. 
Healing bruises and cuts score your arms and your ribs still ache. Instead of pressing for more morphine, your other hand tightens its grip on Katsuki’s, and in his sleep he squeezes back. A small smile starts to grow but quickly it fades away. 
Grief still racks deep in your chest. A low moan slips out from deep in your lungs when you think too much about the accident and Tamaki, so you don’t think about it at all. You have to. 
So you think about food instead. Fried dough, grilled meat, roasted vegetables doused in olive oil and salt, sweets that forces you to down a glass of water or milk. Your stomach growls. 
You press your call button and it is a few moments before an older nurse walks in. He’s tall, with dark skin, cropped hair and kind eyes. You silently hold a finger to your lips and pointedly look at the sleeping man by your side. He nods in understanding. 
“Have I missed breakfast?” You whisper. 
“You missed dinner,” He whispers back with a quiet laugh. “I can sneak you some snacks. How are you feeling? An appetite is a good thing. We can remove the feeding tube then in a couple of weeks.” 
“Feeding tube?”
“It’s been placed surgically in your belly. You’ve been out for a while, sweetie. Doctors asked to be reassigned after your last episode,” he smiles again. He’s just joking, you’re sure of it. He has a kind smile. “It’ll also make it harder for you to hit me.”
You don’t understand what he means, but looking at his face in the dim hospital room and you start to see the healing bruise on his jaw. It dawns on you that you did punch him, right around the first time you woke up. “Oh fuck, I’m so sorry!” 
“No need,” he laughs and starts to check your vitals, the scratch of his pen soothing to your ears. “You give a mean left hook, good to know you’re one of Japan’s finest.” Not really , you think. You were a B level hero before that stepped down to be a sidekick to a high ranking hero. 
Who is now, currently, dead. 
“You’re lucky you’re not in psych,” he fiddles with some tubes near your belly button. “Some of the higher ranking surgeons fought for you, asking for some sympathy. Although, you are still on quirk restraints. Can’t win them all.” 
You don’t respond, feeling a low weight of guilt building at your belly. “Can you get him a blanket, please?” you whisper. 
“Sure thing,” the orderly nods as he checks the morphine drip. “We can try to give you some solid foods, but there’s soup and rice left, I can sneak in some orange slices if you’d like.”
“‘T’s fine,” you hear a low voice grumble beside you. “I’ll get ‘er something from the convenience store across the street.” Katsuki stretches, letting out a soft whine that you almost have to strain your ears to hear. 
Your hand squeezes his tightly, and tears spring in your eyes when he squeezes back. “Hi.”
“Hi yourself,” he subtly brings you knuckles to his lips and you feel how soft they are. “I’ll be back, what do you wanna eat?”
“It’s fine you don’t have to leave-” He starts to get up again and you panic. You don’t want to be alone. Please don’t leave me alone. 
“No, it’ll be better than this cold ass hospital shit.” Bakugou pointedly looks at the nurse and scowls. 
Instead of being offended, he laughs. “High cholesterol and artificial sweeteners isn’t all that great either for her.”
Touché. 
“Please,” you whisper to him. “Don’t go.”
You pleasingly stare into his eyes, already feeling yourself pitifully shaking at the mere thought of being alone again. 
In the abyss, it was dark. Hot. No water. No food. No one. No one except for your dead fiancé underneath you and that fucking ambulance. In the abyss, you could barely walk to find help. You couldn’t even see, not even your own hand centimeters from your face. In the dark, you truly believed you might die too. And that Tamaki’s plan was all for nought. All for nothing. You’ve never been so afraid of being alone before. 
He squeezes your hand three times, a promise. 
-(-)-
Bakugou doesn’t allow you to eat the hospital food during your recovery, despite the glowing reviews from other patients who swing by on their walkers and wheelchairs. He cooks big batches of soup, plain and bland at first when you threw up that night you woke up. Katsuki rolls his eyes at you when you critique his skill, boldly telling you that you wouldn’t even be able to handle his best. Bakugou helps clean the vomit out of your hair as the nurses helped you clean up, though. 
After a few days, your palate comes back and your stomach strengthens. You learn he’s an excellent cook, it’s a hobby of his when he’s not out on the streets fighting crime. You think about the frozen dinners and convenience store bento boxes you ate before, only cooking for Tamaki so he can be prepared for the day. You don’t remember the last time someone cooked for you. 
Doctors, every day, tell you they need to operate. You’re stubborn, pretending you don’t feel the infection making you weaker and pretending that the morphine is enough to mask the white hot pain in your leg. You want them to make a plan, a better plan. You want them to do their fucking jobs. 
Every time they leave, you’re angry. Angry they refuse to find the medical technology to save your leg. Angry that you are faced with this choice in the first place. Angry that Tamaki is dead and you have to be burdened with living. Angry. Angry. Angry. 
“You keep scowling like that, your face is gonna get uglier.” Bakugou aggressively rubs the crease out from between your eyebrows with his thumb. 
“Shut up,” you snap your head away from his touch, without any true malice towards him.
He knows this too, and laughs. “My ma used to tell me that all the time.”
“Yeah and you should’ve listened, it’s irreversible now.” 
You’re not used to this side of Katsuki. The lighter part of him. You remember reading a book last summer where the main character said her best friend had two personas, the persona he showed everyone and his naked persona, the one only she saw. You suppose that calling this side of Katsuki the Naked Katsuki is awkward and too suggestive, but it’s true. He makes you smile right after bawling your eyes out. He makes you smile when you really don’t want to, teasing you when the corners of your scowl start to upturn. 
You wonder where Naked Katsuki was during high school and why he had a stick up his ass for so long back then. 
On the fourth day, you feel the weakest. You’re eating, you’ve even begun to drink coffee again. But the pain has gotten worse and you hear the charting nurses start to talk about your blood toxicity levels. 
The doctors leave again, glancing at an unusually quiet Bakugou while you silently fume. Katsuki stays quiet, knowing better than to interrupt your oncoming rant. 
“Why do you do that?” You look towards the man, scowling as he just sits there in that stupid fucking chair. 
“What?” He asks, as if he doesn’t fucking know. Maybe he doesn’t, you really don’t give a shit though. You’re fucking pissed and you’re gonna let him know it. 
“Not say anything,” you roll your eyes. “You know that they need my soulmate’s agreement, I’m the only one fighting for my leg! If you’re not on my side, you’re against me!” Your hands pound at the sides of your thighs and you muster up the energy to glare at him. 
He takes in a deep sigh, “They’re right though. You’re not gonna make it through the night.” Katsuki looks at you plainly, and it’s written all over his face that he thinks you’re being ridiculous. 
This only infuriates you more and you jerk your shoulder out from under his hand. “Don’t touch me, you’re wrong! They can heal me, they don’t want to-”
“And why do you think so, sweetheart? Because after they cut through all the necrotic bone and tissue to save that stupid leg, you think you’ll be able to stand on it? Let alone sleep with that kind of pain every night?”
“The fuck do you know?? I can take it, my leg can recover!”
“When did you get so insufferably egotistical to think that you know more than the medical professionals?” Bakugou replies sarcastically with a dry laugh. “You need to say yes. They’re just going to wait until you slip back into another fucking coma so they can cut the damned thing off anyway.”
“Not if you-”
“Not if I, what? Why do you think I should agree with you? Because you’re my soulmate? Bullshit, you’re being stupid.” Ouch. 
“Me?? Stupid??”
“Yes!” He groans and gets out of the hospital chair he sleeps on at times, “What’s so goddamn awful about not having a leg? Hah?? What makes you think you’re too weak to recover from that?? What makes you think anyone is weaker for choosing amputation than living miserably for the rest of his life?!”
Silence falls between you both and you muster the courage to look at his arm again, the same compression sleeve that’s always there when he’s off duty. Every time you saw it, you felt something was off. It dawns on you slowly. 
“I don’t think anyone is weak for choosing amputation,” you reply quietly. 
He responds with a scoff, “Right.” 
“When?” You ask softly, tears sprout again in your eyes. 
“Can’t fucking believe you never noticed,” he scoffs. “It was after the War. During it actually. Near the final stretch, Shigaraki got me. That’s when I lost my arm.” No emotion in his voice, he’s moved on from this tragedy. It’s just a part of Katsuki now. 
“But… your quirk…”
He sits on the edge of your bed, carefully not to pull on any of your tubes, “Right before it happened, I was able to make all of my sweat turn to nitroglycerin, not just from the palms of my hands. Fucking bad miracle, I guess.” He looks down at his hands now, thinking deeply about what had happened and where he is now. “I have a special team who made my prosthesis so I can keep working. Only a handful people know about this, Deku, old Aizawa, the idiots who make my suits, some other shitty people and now… you.” 
“You hide it?” 
“Management.” It’s enough of an explanation. You’ve seen how dirty and unfair the hero industry is. It breaks your heart to think of the seventeen year old kid who lost his arm and nearly had his career along with life ended. You remember hearing about his death proclamation when you were on the other side of the battlefield, and you remember the sweet relief you felt when you heard you hadn’t lost your shitty classmate after all. It’s a lot on a young man’s shoulder to have his entire world changed, for a society that tells him to not brandish his war wounds with pride. 
You have more questions. More to ask him, more to know. But all of your words fall flat, they die on your tongue and you stay quiet. Shame is all you feel. 
“Your… hero suit is pretty revealing though,” you finally muster up, grimacing at yourself when you hear the heart monitor beeping slightly faster. “How does no one notice?”
He smirks at you, “No more revealing than Shitty Hair. Or Goody Two Shoes, Yaoyorozu.” Bakugou slips off the compression sleeve and scooches in closer to show off his prosthetic. It’s life-like, down to the minute details that no one would bother to notice. 
“So why the sleeve?” You ask, catching yourself still tracing the prosthetic before pulling yourself away. Thoughts of what your own might look if you go through with this surgery race through your mind, and only heightens your anxiety. 
Bakugou is quiet, mulling over his answer. “The short answer is that it helps with the pain.”
“And the long answer?”
“The doctors fucked up my arm trying to give me a second chance, they were worried that my career might end and there was still a war to fight.”
“We were just kids though,” you whisper. You weren’t on the frontlines of the war, you were in with the third wave of heroes and students. You didn’t see what happened firsthand, but you saw the horrific aftermath. They did a good job keeping this intel a secret, you can only imagine what other horrifying injuries they kept hidden from you and the public. 
“Yeah well, they nearly ended me while trying to save me. One of my surgeons finally kicked their asses and got them in line, saved what they could of my shoulder and my stump.” Before you can ask, he steps in closer and helps raise your hospital bed up so you can sit up straight. “I think his protégé is on your team now. Yours won’t look at fucked up as mine, but…”
Katuski removes the prosthetic with a click of a button you can’t see, which must be part of the seamless design from his support team. “The docs can tell you better, and more, but this is called the residual limb. Others call it a stump.” His fingers delicately show off what’s left of his arm as he opens up this new part of him to you. The scarring is an angry red, stained purple closed to the incision points. It looks painful. You tell him so. 
“It ain’t always,” he admits. “It’s worse at night.”
“But the sleeve helps?” You ask. He gently takes hold of your wrist with his other hand, it’s heavy and dwarfing your own, and he holds you against him. His skin is warm, soft. You can almost feel his pain in your own arm. 
“Sometimes. I don’t completely understand the tech. It’s all experimental.” He must be in pain all of the time.
“I’ll be in pain all the time then,” you say this quietly, but it sounds almost like a question. You can feel the aches he does, the sheer amount of pain that burns through muscles and skin he no longer has. 
“I’ve felt your pain all my life,” he steps in closer and embraces you with his one arm. “Every night, I’ve felt it and I need you to know that as your friend, I will always help you with it. Tomorrow will be better.” As your friend. That’s enough to give you peace of mind. It’s enough to release that tension in your chest. 
“And what if it isn’t?” You start to cry, wanting to wiggle your toes in a leg that won’t let you. 
“Then tomorrow,” he kisses your temple. “We will say it again. And again. Until it is. Okay?”
“Okay,” you nod as the tears stream down your face. You hold onto each other tightly, silently bonding your promise as friends. You're going to lose your leg tonight. 
-(-)-
The next two weeks, all you do is sleep. Sometimes Katsuki appears in your dreams, talking about his day and work. Mostly about work. You both find it hard to talk about anything else. When you’re not asleep, you stare out the window. 
Not many people visit. Friends were really friends of Tamaki, and you are just a reminder that he is no longer here. Family doesn’t exist for you anymore, they haven’t for years. Tamaki was your family. 
Workmates didn’t see you either, why should they? Your career in the past five years declined, if they associated with you so would their careers. All you had was Tamaki. So no, you didn’t see much except for your team of surgeons and your hospital assigned therapist that you really can’t stand because you apparently need to cry about shit now. 
When you’re discharged, you weren’t expecting anyone, and yet when you saw that familiar shade of blonde awaiting you, the floodgates opened. 
He takes you back to your apartment, dusty and cold from being empty for so long. You cried and cried. Katsuki, to your surprise, cried with you. It’s truly then, you understand the bond of a soulmate. Your pain is his, his pain is yours. Tears are shared, never are you truly alone. He stays with you that first night, sleeping on the floor of your living room while you sleep on the couch, refusing to be in the bed that you once shared with Tamaki. 
It isn’t until you start to wake up screaming, dreaming about the ambulance crushing you, dreaming about Tamaki’s corpse laying cold underneath you, that you and Katsuki decide to sleep somewhere else. 
He sets you up at Izuku Midoriya’s home, a lovely townhome smack dab in the middle of downtown. Midoriya is more than happy to help, insisting you take his bed. You think about how often he used to blush in high school, and how he didn’t even bat an eye when you mentioned you needed to be close to the bathroom at night or else you’ll piss his bed. 
“All the more reason for you to take my room,” he kindly smiles at you. “The bathroom is right there.”
“Don’t argue, Bambi. It’s useless.” There’s bags under Katsuki’s eyes. He hasn’t slept much lately. Guilt settles in pretty quickly. 
So you take the bed. Each night, you carefully balance your crutches against the mattress and take your opioids. The pain is all you can think about right now. And you hate that you’re so annoyed by this, but Bakugou insists on sleeping on an air mattress right at the foot of your bed. You hate how much you rely on others, you hate how much you need this, you hate that you’re angry. Angry. Angry. Angry. 
He’s patient though. The man you see now, isn’t who you thought he was. Back in your school days, Katsuki was a firecracker who was set off at any small inconvenience. Now, all he does is roll his eyes if you snap at him. Sometimes he doesn’t even react, just patiently checks your bandaging and helps you stretch even when you really want to fucking sleep. He follows your surgeons’ instructions to a tee, memorizing the numbers to call if you have any concerns and memorizing your medicines and dosages when you need a prescription refill. The times that you do elicit a reaction from him are usually because he’s had a long day at work and taking care of a stubborn and bitter soulmate is just a little much for him that day. Which usually means you end up feeling guilty for being such a shitty person. 
You learn a lot about Bakugou in the first six weeks after your amputation. You learn how he dealt with his phantom pain, how he learned how to ask for help, how he had to adjust to being a hero again. Another surprise was how often he called his ma and pa (and that he calls them that to their faces instead of “old man” and “ugly hag”), nearly every night if not every other night, the softness behind his gruff voice as he fights with parents over when he’s going to bring his soulmate over. You learn that he cooks a lot, and really well too, despite the bland soup he gave you initially. Deku, the up and coming number one hero, can barely handle boiling water without burning it, while Katsuki easily flies through the kitchen. 
“You’re a natural,” you muse. He convinced you to eat downstairs, getting you used to moving around again. 
If it were up to you, you’d probably wallow all day in Midoriya’s room and sleep. Or chain smoke shittt cigarettes in his bathroom, exhaling all of the smoke outside his small window. You’ve been caught doing that already when you nearly fell and caused a commotion. Izuku was madly apologizing with a deep blush at seeing you in a towel, even though it was clearly your fault. Katuski was not amused. You haven’t seen that damn pack of cigarettes since. 
Concern furrows your brows and you bite the inside of your cheek. “How did… losing your arm affect your cooking?”
“I was shit at cutting vegetables,” he answers bluntly, smiling softly when you snort. “It took me a while to get back into it. A chef in my support group helped me out, giving me advice and all.” 
“Support group? You actually did that?”
“I still do,” he feeds you another serving. The steam from the food warms your cheeks and makes your mouth water. No one, aside from your parents, has ever cooked for you. 
“Why??”
He raises an eyebrow at you, “Really. You’re asking me why I, after a traumatic event in my life, attended a therapy group with individuals who went through something similar?”
Bakugou laughs when you tell him to shut the fuck up. 
-(-)-
“Why did it take you guys so long to find us?” You ask on the day you get your first prosthetic leg.
Bakugou’s jaw tenses and you watch his hands squeeze his steering wheel. “There was a lot of noise, too much for Earjack. With all of the falling debris, unstable grounding, it was just… a perfect accident.” A bad miracle. “Once we lost Amajiki’s earpiece, there wasn’t any indication of your whereabouts.” You noticed this about Bakugou, the way his voice changes into something serious when work is brought up. A soldier. 
You don’t remember them finding you. In your psych rotations for your final year of school, you heard about how the brain shuts down from trauma and can try to help the person heal by simply forgetting events occurred. This was corroborated by your therapist too, although you need to find a better once because she fucking sucks ass and agrees with Bakugou that you need to quit smoking. 
You weren’t allowed to read the reports though, following the accident. It was a thick file, that’s all that Bakugou tells you. He doesn’t talk about that night he found you. One night you find Deku vulnerable and alone after a shift at work, sifting through paperwork that needed to be filed and faxed over the next morning. He was clearly uncomfortable with speaking on the matter too. Midoriya answers your questions though, telling you how hard it was on Bakugou. He never slept, he worked straight through. The only thing that gave him hope of your survival was that he didn’t feel your soul leaving. 
“You can feel that?” You whispered. Izuku nods, not speaking more on that topic either. 
“Kacchan… he never gave up. He was going to die finding you.” You’re glad he didn’t. But a significant part of you died down there. And you don’t know if you would ever get that back. 
-(-)-
Bakugou takes a leave of absence after he files the soulmate forms, declaring officially and legally that you both are bonded. Of course this really isn’t true. Bonded soulmates requires sexual intercourse. And well… you both are just friends. 
However to legally have you under his medical insurance, he lies for you. Your ID comes in the next week, a holographic heart next to the heart that says you’re an organ donor. Under another shadow, but instead of leaving you cold, you feel relief. Relief from the hot pain of being alone and defenseless. Relief that you can finally breathe. 
He doesn’t say anything about the holographic heart next to his red one either, he doesn’t even talk to you directly when the mail comes in with your new IDs. You’re not sure if it’s embarrassment, pride, sadness, or just plain bitterness. You’re not really sure if you want to know. What you do know is that you’re grateful that he doesn’t make a big deal out of it, and cooks you a hearty pasta meal that night to celebrate your new insurance. 
Six months after the amputation, you’ve been fitted with a prosthetic and you’re walking again. It used to be “walking”, managing only a few feet at a time without wobbling or needing your wheelchair again. But now you can walk. You can walk. 
Some days are good. Some days are really good. Some days aren’t. 
Your first fall, Bakugou stares while you laugh loudly at yourself. You forgot you didn’t have a leg, and put all your weight onto your left side as you turned the corner of the grocery aisle. It’s the first time you see him blush, and for a moment you think he’s embarrassed by the scene you’re making in the middle of this grocery store, until you realize it’s the first time you’ve laughed this loudly in months. He helps you back up again. 
On your worst days, Bakugou lies with you in bed while you grieve. Grieve for your leg, grieve for your dead fiancé, grieve for your losses. 
You become closer, it’s natural when he’s the one who takes you to your appointments with your prosthetist and talks about your scar tissue. It’s natural when he’s the one who coaxes you to sleep, rubbing your back with his lips pressed against your temple. You two become friends. It’s friends who bring you comfort when you feel sick, when you feel like the weight of the world is too much and you and they both know the best thing to do is just lay in bed and watch shitty movies all day. You become friends. You’re friends. Good ones at that. 
When Bakugou finally goes back to work, leaving you alone, you realize how much you both talk. You text all day, updating him of the meaningless things you do. Shitty reality TV shows become a hobby of yours while you practice your core exercises, and despite Bakugou’s claims he doesn’t give a shit, he always listens to you when you talk about them. He comes for lunch every day, even when he’s across the city. Katsuki pretends to not watch your silly little shows while you eat his food.
He tells you that you need to listen to your therapist and get a real fucking hobby (his words not hers), and encourages you by sending you coffee shops and boba tea places to try. Bakugou starts with places nearby, a small ten minute walk for you at most. But as you gain more and more endurance, and the more you get used to walking on your prosthetic, the farther the recommendations go. Soon you find yourself going to the train stations again, sometimes you take a second to enjoy the parks you walk by. You can’t stand that he was right, and now you’re not napping as much anymore. 
You find yourself at the tea shop where Bakugou took you from what seems like a million years ago, resting and trying to massage your leg from the walk there. Bakugou texted you cancelling to meet you there, there was an emergent situation at work and he was called to arrive on scene. This used to bother you, but now it just drives you to get back into work again. You miss it. You miss being useful. It’s here at the tea shop, reading the newspaper, that you see it. The apartment listing. 
The very apartment you had shared and lived in with Tamaki, is back on the market now. It startles you to see it again, in the fucking newspaper too of all places, like it’s still the twentieth fucking century. You wonder if you keep staring at it, if you’ll cry or feel something . Instead you feel empty. 
You’re not really sure what that means. 
At your support groups and in therapy, you admit to thinking about Tamaki every day. All throughout the months, you talk about the nightmares you have surrounding his death. It haunts you, his ghost. You still smell his body wash sometimes, always in passing, always enough to leave you longing and never enough for you to fully remember his scent. Sometimes you swear he’s right next to you as you wake, softly snoring after a long shift. It makes you sad. That’s what you tell your therapist and your support group. In reality, you feel guilt. Guilt that you’re alive and he isn’t. 
Guilty that you’re with your soulmate, like he wanted you to, but in a weird fucking platonic dance as you both struggle to maintain the facade of friendship. 
“Have you been to see him?” Your therapist asks, watching you play with a squeeze toy. 
“What do you mean?” His ashes are with his parents, you really don’t want to make that drive. They haven’t reached out to you since the accident. And to be honest, they really didn’t like you despite what Tamaki said. You really wish you could tell his ass that right now, you’d be so smug about it too and everything. 
“Have you visited his grave?” She clarifies. 
No, you haven’t. And you didn’t want to. Bakugou and you fought that night, not a serious fight but enough to make you mad and not talk to him for the rest of the night. He thinks you should go. You think you need to just move on. 
It’s been almost a year anyway. 
You can walk with a barely noticeable limp. He’s even helped you to train now to get back into hero work. Hero , you don’t want to be a fucking sidekick again. You’ve been working with a new support tech team and a specialist prosthetist for a leg to help you move with your quirk. The fact that you have now leveled up to having more than one prosthetic makes you proud. You’re done walking, now you can run. You don’t cry as much anymore, you don’t cringe walking down the streets of Musutafu anymore. You’ve even stopped reading the articles surrounding the sinkhole accident, knowing that obsessing over “what if’s” will not bring back Tamaki or your leg (at least, you stopped doing this in the middle of the night now. Sometimes you forget your silly little therapy tactics and dive back into the news reports and tabloids to read with your morning coffee). 
You can feel yourself growing stronger. 
You don’t need to do this. 
It’s not gonna solve anything. He will still be dead… 
“Why do you even care?” You ask him the next morning, annoyed that he’s ignoring you and didn’t make you breakfast like usual. You’ve been forced to eat a bowl of cereal like some common roommate. 
“He was your fiancé,” Bakugou scoffs. “You couldn’t attend his funeral, you haven’t seen him since-”
“Since I killed him?” You angrily drop your spoon in your bowl and get up, not feeling that hungry anymore. 
“Yeah, that’s exactly what I was going to say.” Katsuki rolls his eyes at you, knowing better than to follow you to your room to wallow. 
You can’t visit his grave. And this makes you angry. You can’t, because it means having to be faced with the fact that you’re starting to feel something towards Katsuki. Living together has been doing that to you. It’s hard, hard to ignore the magnetic pull between you both and hard to pretend it doesn’t hurt you when he goes on dates like his friends suggest sometimes. On top of that, it’s watching him leave each morning and being so fucking scared that he might not come back. You don’t know how you can manage that. You don’t know if what you feel for Katsuki is love or something far deeper. Whatever it is or isn’t, if this is how you feel now , you cannot imagine the pain of losing him later. Shinju comes to mind, the little girl destined to be with Tamaki forever only to be ripped away from him. You’ve had dreams of losing your family and friends in horrible deaths, and you’ve woken up with absolute dread in your heart. But a soulmate’s death, you never quite understood the depth of. Not until now. And that thought scares the shit out of you. 
The fight is never resolved, and you don’t visit Tamaki’s grave. Instead, you decide to find a new place to live on your own. 
-(-)-
256 notes · View notes