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theknightmarket · 24 days

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"Deal."

In which three disagreeable deities are forced to agree. TW: cursing Pages: 28 - Words: 11,500

[Requests: OPEN]

You were a cultist. You weren’t about to hide that aspect of your life because it was no mere aspect, not anymore; you devoted your entire being to tracking down the pantheon that would mark the end of all humanity. It wasn’t out of spite or service. You had no cosmic motive behind your catastrophic actions. But it wasn’t a test either. Belief rested in your heart and calm in your mind as you traded away the lives of your friends, your family, strangers who would never know what was coming, and your own, for one little thing.

A kiss.

Everyone thought you were joking. Nobody, not even the dredges of society, would risk it all for a little physical contact. They snorted when you told them your plan, and raised an eyebrow when they thought you were carrying on the bit for too long. Oh, there went the ‘town crazy’, traipsing down to the antique shop to pick up the latest prop for their little jape. We laughed at them, for they carried the weight of the jester for our amusement.

Oh, you’d show them. If they lived long enough to recognize what was happening. If they didn’t, you’d still be better off than them.

You proudly owned up to your title of the local lunatic, although it was first given as a joke. One step into your apartment, and they might’ve realized that you weren’t joking. All the ritual memorabilia scattered along the walls, all the unholy ingredients stored in the cupboards, all the little things that contributed to the utter collapse of humanity. Well, as long as the person working the antique store wasn’t a liar.

And, chances were, he was.

But it didn’t hurt to try. And try. And try. And try. One of these days it would work. Eventually, you’d hit the nail on the head and get exactly what you wanted.

The slam of the book on the wooden alter reverberated around the apartment, swallowed by the artifacts you’d collected. You didn’t know when that day would come, if it would ever come, but you were definitely trying. A manic grin split your face in two as you flipped through the yellowed pages. Awful corruption for a god, but you were going to use it anyway. You could always rewrite it if all you needed was the instructions. They were deities, after all, they deserved better than some dusty, half-broken tome.

You hummed to yourself while you worked. Normally, your speakers would be up and running during the hours you studied old texts, blasting the playlist you’d accumulated over the years. Sorting things was never your forté, so they were all in one place. A bit jarring, but you got used to it, and you didn’t have the time to rearrange anything right now. There was work to be done.

The circle you’d engraved in your wooden flooring – which you notably did not tell your landlord about – was surrounded by candles to make the points of a star. Classic. Reliable. Any source of light was diminished, including the overhead lights that you never turned on and the curtains that you never opened. There wasn’t anything to see anyway, and you preferred your side lamp, though you also switched that off when you had everything in place.

Finally, you rushed to the book and read through the specific instructions for the one you were going to summon first. Try to, at least. The preparations before were all commonplace, every ritual used them, but this was where it changed. You might have been drawing a different symbol or equipping a unique relic. In this case, you were to light the candles pink and inscribe all manner of curls and swirls on the floor with a similar shade of ink.

The packet of lithium was in your hand before you knew what you were doing, but you didn’t resist sprinkling it into the wax divots near the wicks. Your high school chemistry lessons finally paid off, as long as you ignored that your first thought was food dye; working with a pantheon of deities outside of your understanding of the world was undoubtably taking a toll on your mental state.

But that didn’t matter right now. The only thing that was important was the paintbrush in your hand that pooled thick lines of neon pink in the exact shape of the symbol in the book. It had to be exact. Perfect. They deserved it.

You connected the last line to the rest of the shape and sat back on your knees to marvel at your work for the brief moment of life you had left. You wouldn’t get the chance once the end of times was ushered in. It didn’t matter to you if it was a sin to be proud of the product of your years of labor. It was probably more of a sin to cause the deaths of eight billion people. What was one more drop in the bucket?

Wiping your paint-splattered face with your sleeve, you rose from the ground and hastily stumbled towards the alter again. The only thing left to do was chant.

Adrenaline rushed you as though you were being judged, chased, stalked. And you likely were. You felt the stares of a hundred gods and monsters on you, from all directions, right into your eyes. They were eager to witness the introduction of apocalypse. They followed where your pupils went. Holding sparks of anticipation, they flitted across the page to work out the pronunciations, wild birds in their cages pleading to be free from the confines of flesh. Your grip on the alter tightened, knuckles paling as all blood rushed away. Any tighter, and you’d rip splinters from it.

You knew you opened your mouth, and you knew you spoke. The chant flowed like thick oil from your throat and poured itself over the paper. You felt it – gods, did you feel the words cling to the life you gave them – but you didn’t hear it. But it was working. It was working, so you didn’t care. You didn’t matter. The ritual did.

So, it didn’t worry you when a flash of pink light, brighter than an atomic bomb, sprung from the centre of the circle at the dip of one of the paint’s arcs and blinded you. Sight and hearing gone, you relied on touch to ground you, and even that was fleeting. The alter was knocked to the floor and you followed it, landing roughly on your palms in accidental prayer. You assumed you were still looking in the vague direction of the flash. The pink had turned to white in the space of your fall. Whatever was with you now, you had no choice but to worship it. The host of the apocalypse, the bringer of the end of times, the catalyst for the collapse of humanity.

The thing that smelled sweet and clasped your hands gently. You still couldn’t see. Did you do it right? Did you summon the right one? Did you knock over a candle and accidentally burn the apartment down and this was heaven? How did you get into heaven?

Your vision was clearing up while you spiraled. Gradually, the spots of light were pulled apart by a softer tone. It wasn’t the shadow you would have expected after removing all sources of light save the candles, but it wasn’t the flashbang from before, and you would take it. You’d hate for your efforts to be for something but unable to experience it to its fullest.

Shakily, you breathed out, exhaling something akin to dust from the lining of your lungs. A few particles remained in your mouth. Sweetness, again. As though you had dipped your tongue in sugar.

“My- my God?” you mumbled. You could hear your voice this time. Words you knew and recognized. Familiar. Safe.

Yet you still felt safe with the hands of a stranger wrapped around yours. They were warm and soft, and, blinking with the sensation of stepping into the sun for the first time, normal looking. Slowly, you turned them over, so the palms were facing up to you. They were human.

But the thing kneeling mere inches away from you was not.

“Please,” they spoke, with a smile you swore you once saw carved into marble, “call me Wilford.”

He looked kind. When the last vestiges of bright light faded, you were greeted by the pleasant sight of a handsome, if not confusing, man. Really, the pink moustache and hair, the same color as the paint and candles, was the only sign of him not being the average person on the street, besides the fact that he appeared in your ritual circle like the second coming.

When your eyes met, his grin widened. You couldn’t guess what was going through his head, you wouldn’t dare, but you had questions as to why he was guiding you to stand so tenderly. “Now, whatever did you summon me here for?”

“I-I... well, I meant to- uh, dammit, I—”

Your poor excuse for a sentence was cut off before you could make more of a fool of yourself by hushing. Of course, you quieted down, thankful for the excuse to focus on breathing instead of talking. A haze of some unknown emotion clouded your mind and heart, but whatever you were experiencing must have been obvious to the deity you stood before. He took you by the crook of your arm and coaxed you towards the couch a few steps away. Doing this ritual thing in the middle of the living room was a blessing and a curse, though the latter would only come into play if it failed. You hated rearranging furniture.

He laid you down onto the plush pillows, cooing at you softly. Was this the relationship between gods and humans? Pets to play with as they saw fit. It made sense, as much sense as infinite immortals could make. There was no argument to be on an equal playing field, but you had imagined it to be more…

Violent, maybe subservient. You didn’t expect to be pampered with a hand patting your hair and assurances muttered until you were able to function again.

“I summoned you,” you shakily spoke. It was a statement, but you couldn’t stop the uncertainty seeping into your words.

“I should hope so—” Wilford’s laugh was the same as his voice, incredibly sweet and lighthearted, despite having enough power to stop your heart with just a glance, “—I am here, after all.”

Hesitantly, you nodded. Alright. He was actually there. You had summoned him. It actually worked this time.

“Do you remember why you summoned me?” came his own question.

You definitely did, and your subconscious seized your mouth again to avoid having to say it aloud. To the people in your town, the ones you entertained with your plots and stories, it was easy to tell what your end goal was. With the actual deity face to face, it was much harder. You should have planned for this. Maybe you could buy some time to get your confidence back.

You latched onto the odd choice of words that confused you in the first place. “Do… do I remember?”

“Sometimes I forget myself, and if an eldritch god does, I’m sure humans do, too.”

Your own breathing filled the silence left behind at the admission. Wilford’s chest didn’t rise or fall, why would it, and he seemed preoccupied with carding a hand over your head anyway. His moustache twitched every time that he brushed against your actual skin, and his smile grew an unnoticeable millimeter wider. It left you frozen and staring at him, which he didn’t appear to mind.

You could do this. There was no going back now.

“Well, Wilford,” you began, barely managing to escape his touch long enough to sit up straight, “I do remember.”

“Good! How can I satiate your heart’s deepest, darkest desire?”

“I want to kiss you.”

The reaction you received was not one you expected from a god, of any shape or form. He hummed pleasantly. Nothing else, he just hummed, the sound reverberating in the small room but never seeming to fade. It died out in a flash, instead, as he placed an elbow onto the couch cushion and balanced his head in the hand of it. In the fifteen seconds that you were both completely immobile afterwards, he didn’t blink, and his smile stayed plastered where it was.

“You want to kiss me,” he repeated, tone as peppy as before you revealed yourself.

No matter how hard your heart beating against your ribcage, you didn’t dare back down. You were in it now, whether you liked it or not. So, slowly, you nodded, becoming more and more sure of yourself in the process.

Wilford stayed perfectly quiet and perfectly still for another moment. You wondered if you’d done something wrong, something so taboo that you’d broken a god – but a kiss was much easier on the mind than the murder of billions of innocents; you should have been the one to freeze, and yet there you were, waiting with bated breath for him to say anything else. But he didn’t.

Not before he lunged forward, springing to lean over you in an inclined plank and barricade his arms around you. Even without the cover of blinking, his eyes seemed to mimic the stars – flashes of planets and sparks of supernovas jumped around in his pupils and radiated light to the whites. You could barely move your head enough to make eye contact with how close his face was, pressed almost directly underneath your chin, enough that you felt his mustache ticked at the skin as his grin grew impossibly wider.

“Oh-ho, now that’s an unusual request!” he commented, “I don’t think I’ve ever heard that one before.”

The position you were trapped in gave you no leeway. When you spoke, your breath shifted the curls of his hair. “You haven’t?”

There was silence in which Wilford tried to remember, but he came up empty; so many years and requests and people, anyone would have trouble keeping track of them all. His own established issues didn’t help him any, but that didn’t matter. After all, that was the past, or the future, or a different present that he needn’t care about. You were the one in front of him, looking awfully scared for such a simple want, and you were the one he was tending to. The strange human who just wanted a simple smooch in return for possibly giving him the entire world. It was almost unfair.

“But it is intriguing.” His head cocked to the side. “The average summoner would ask for something bigger. Riches, power, time—” Then a thought occurred to him that made his smile collapse into a sharp grimace, broken only by him spitting out, “—fame.”

You supposed it had crossed your mind once or twice that you should do something more substantial with your boundless wish, but nothing else seemed worth it, to you at least. Why would you care about being a billionaire when you wouldn’t live long enough to use the money? Power was a moot point because you didn’t care enough about any entity to want to control it, and time?

“Isn’t the world going to end anyway?”

A few stray chuckles floated up from Wilford’s mouth. “Oh, no, of course not!”

Any fear that remained from his bout of silence was traded out for doubt, surprise, and a great deal of confusion. When he brought his head back to eye level with you, there was no sign of a lie, just dim amusement as your misconception. You might have been offended had you not been preoccupied by the questions that ran through your head.

He peeled back far enough that there were a few inches between you. “What point would there be in destroying the very thing that gives you power? The cults of eldritch gods support them, in every place and time at once, and to willingly minimize your area of effect would be plain silly. We can’t just destroy dimensions willy-nilly; we have to be selective. So,” he practically purred, closing up that gap slowly, “you’ll be completely safe. The people around you, however…”

Although he trailed off, you didn’t need any more explanation. A world-ending catastrophe wasn’t your aim, anyway, what was currently happening was. The space between you was getting smaller and smaller at a leisurely pace. You couldn’t complain, physically or figuratively. Puffs of air danced across your lips, like fog rolling in from the sea, and the couch dipped as Wilford’s knee came to stabilize him at the edge. You risked prematurely closing the gap entirely when you whispered, “That’s fine.”

“Good,” his whisper came out as the final bat of a wave against the shore, “you don’t exactly have a choice anymore.”

Not that you would protest as his lips skimmed yours so lightly that you weren’t certain it was happening at all. If you were to lean less than a centimeter forward, you would connect, and the deal would be done. Internally, you were a blank canvas, mind in a haze of expectation and adrenaline. Whether this was just you or the effect an eldritch god had on you, you didn’t know, and you didn’t care. You had devoted years of your life to this pursuit, you couldn’t waste the golden opportunity on minor worries.

But it wasn’t your fault that you were interrupted.

Another flashbang blinded you with white light. Ringing in your ears that stopped you from hearing anything except the high pitch, even when you felt your mouth open. This time, instead of the complete blankness of your senses, you were overwhelmed with pain, as if you had been dunked in the river Styx. Not just the brightness of an atomic bomb, but the agony of one, too. A migraine flexed and stilled in your mind, focusing all the thoughts on the damage it must have been causing you. What this was or why it was happening were secondary to silent prayers for it all to stop.

And then, just like that, your prayers were answered. In the flap of a butterfly’s wings, you were left reeling on the couch, pushed back into the cushions and fighting against your swimming vision. It was hard to distinguish direction for a moment, even the memories of the apartment you’d lived in for years struggled to help you, but it soon cleared up. In front of you, from the couch to the wall, was the same as it always had been, and you had to wonder whether Wilford had just made a dramatic exit before anything could actually happen.

Voices from behind you made you realise not only did Wilford not leave, but someone new was in the room with you, and it wasn’t a friendly neighbor checking in about the noise.

“The least you could have done was wait until I was finished.” That one was the voice you recognised, but the tone was much more acidic than the softness you were already used to.

And then, came the one you weren’t familiar with. “What would be the point of showing up after you’d sealed the deal?”

Against the bell chime of Wilford’s voice, this one was sleeker, as if it had been artificially smoothed down to slide from the throat to the mouth and out into the air. It lacked a sweetness but made up for it in baritone words like the soft pounding of a heart in your ears. It matched your own that had dropped into your stomach as your thoughts clouded with the newcomer.

“From what I remember, you’re not one to act with much sense,” Wilford replied, a spite overtaking any of the enthusiasm he had shown you. Whoever this was, he didn’t like them.

The stranger’s sarcastic laugh punctured the air of your apartment. “Oh, that’s rich coming from you.”

“And anyways, I was here first, and, unlike you, I was actually summoned.”

“Wilford?” You were surprised by the shake of your voice – you weren’t a meek person by nature, but you supposed being in the presence of two gods would do that to anyone. You understood that you should have been groveling at their feet, thanking them and begging for forgiveness, and yet you simply rose from the couch to finally catch a glimpse of the deity he was on the cusp of arguing with.

“Yes, darling?”

His response was thrown to the wayside as your eyes met with the unfamiliar face in your living room. Your first thought was to wonder how the second god you’d ever seen was just as gorgeous as the first. The second was that your eyes blew so wide with fear with that you were sure they were going to fall out. They were draped head to toe in a crimson that burned in the candlelight, which, now that you actually looked, was no longer the pink you had lit it to be. It was much darker, eerily the same color as the blood that flowed through your veins, but it caressed the edges of their body and face like a lover’s hand.

You swallowed before you asked, “What- what’s happening?”

Your question flipped a switch in the two’s minds. On one hand, Wilford broke out into a snarl unbecoming of the man you’d seen him to be as he groaned, “We’ve been party-crashed.”

On the other hand, the one in red started to step – glide – toward you, the robe swaying across the floorboards and creating patterns in the still wet paint that they strode across. A smirk pulled at the corner of their mouth when you were within arm’s reach.

“What Wil here failed to explain is that I am the King in Red, Heir to Carcosa.” Neither of those titles you recognised but you felt your heart drop regardless, especially as he stopped barely a few inches away from you. The sliver of Wilford that you could see did not look pleased, but he stayed where he was anyway.

“Another eldritch god,” you clarified.

His touch on your hand felt like someone had lit a flame in your palm, the veins used as routes for a wildfire to grow. Your impulse to snatch your hand back was overtaken by the need to close around the warmth. The decision was made for you as he brought your hand towards himself. “Guilty as charged.”

The kiss was better, worse, different to the flame of his contact. It was so hot that it fully circled temperature and fell into a blazing coldness against the back of your hand. You were half sure he had melted away your skin, despite the strange lack of pain, and taken your breath along with it. You didn’t speak, couldn’t find it in you to, when Mark came out of his bow and stood straight enough to meet your eyes again.

“Considering Wilford here told you his, my name is Mark.”

You didn’t know how to feel; all the awe and terror and confusion and fatigue was catching up to you, convincing you with a gentle hand to lie down and forget that there were two gods in your living room, who you now knew the names of, that you were going to play host to. Everything was crumbling around you.

Putting up your scraps of confidence, you asked desperately, “Why are you here? I didn’t, I mean, I already—”

But mortals’ crises were nothing but spilled milk to eldritch deities. Flippantly, Mark waved his hand, the sleeve of his robe peeling back, before he spoke, “Yes, yes, I know I’m not technically the one you summoned, but I couldn’t help but overhear what you were trading for the lives of your friends and family.”

“Something that doesn’t involve you, that’s for sure.” Whether you were grateful for Wilford’s intrusion or appalled by the obvious disrespect didn’t matter. Mark’s smirk sharpened, expelling all the smooth charisma.

“If you’re going to make snarky comments,” he snapped, “I suggest you find another of your cultists and make some other exchange. I know you have hundreds.” Wilford gasped indignantly, not that you knew which suggestion he took the most offence to.

“And leave you alone with one of my followers?” His scoff cut into a growl.

In your preparation for summoning a god, you hadn’t done much research into who you’d actually be summoning. The specifics of the character weren’t anything you cared for, considering you would use whatever you could get your hands on – pink paint and lithium were the easiest combination of materials, and some of the other rituals asked for either very difficult or very uncomfortable things to get your hands on. As such, the relationships between those deities were unknown to you. Whatever this was, an ancient rivalry or a mere spat, you hadn’t prepared for it.

Nor were you prepared to be the person they were fighting to convince.

“Darling,” Wilford started moving closer, intentionally giving Mark a wide berth, “I know I said you’re safe, and you still are, but being around him for a long period of time has proven to be deadly.”

Sarcasm bubbled up within you. You hadn’t expected it to be a safe endeavor, after all. Still, you kept your mouth shut, more out of respect than the fear.

Mark had no such qualms about backtalking, however.

“Because becoming a ditzy canvas with no memories at all is so much better than what I can offer?”

Wait, what?

“Quite frankly, yes! A lot of people would take it over becoming a husk for you to puppet on stage.”

What?

One second, you were damning the world to apocalypse. The next, you weren’t, and everybody could live their happy endings. And then the next, you were sacrificing the people in the town but saving your own skin. And then the next, you were either losing your memories and your mind or you were renting out your body as an actor.

You really wanted someone to give you the story straight, without all the fluffy words and fighting. But the fear must have showed on your face, because Mark was gesturing in your direction with a manicured hand.

“Come now, you’re scaring the poor thing. I think we can come to a better agreement, don’t you?”

You didn’t like the tone of his voice in the last half. You didn’t like it one bit. He was suddenly less like a sneaky door-to-door salesman and more like the snake in the garden of Eden.

“I mean—” Your words sounded choked out, even to yourself, “—I don’t really think I want anything else.”

“There’s no need to pretend with me, dearest, that’s my job. You must have a larger goal – and with me, you won’t be sacrificing the people around you. They get to live, and you get what you want. Isn’t that better?”

You saw what the problem was. You supposed that after so many years of humanity milling about, there’d be conflicting impressions of them, especially for gods who didn’t see things on the same level as you. The world wars and the protests and the charities muddied the waters of what humans were really like.

Mark was making the – albeit completely understandable – mistake of assuming that both you and the townsfolk were good people.

“I think you overestimate how much I care about the people in this town.”

You couldn’t help the swell of pride in your chest when you noticed the shock on his face. Hell, his back straightened, and he blinked as if he just weren’t seeing you right.

“But your family. Surely, you don’t want to be the cause of their deaths?”

And he was assuming that your family was still alive.

“No, I- uh, don’t have a family.”

His face dropped as if you’d spoiled the ending of a show. Unimpressed, bored, and vaguely disappointed. Maybe he wasn’t used to this kind of resistance, maybe he wasn’t used to getting it wrong. Presumably, that wasn’t a habit the gods made, but it happened regardless. It was happening, and Mark was having a hard time getting back onto his feet.

After a moment’s hesitation, he stilled and frowned. “You’re making this a lot harder than it has to be,” he complained, and yet he spoke with such confidence, as if the outcome couldn’t be anything but him getting what he wanted, that you almost believed it, too.

Wilford stepped around Mark, very obviously and probably meant to tease him, in order to pull you back down to the couch cushions with him. You flopped against the back of it, only secured by his arms around you, cradled like a toy that a parent threatened to take away from their child. Just as stubbornly, he spat, “It was all going smoothly before you showed up.”

“And if everyone played along, we’d be done by now.” You could hear Wilford rolling his eyes better than you could see it in response to Mark’s groaning. You weren’t doing it on purpose, or, at least, you didn’t think you were. Why would you? The man beside you definitely was, trying to get under his skin and poking and prodding, but you were just answering the questions. Were you supposed to play alongor were you supposed to tell the truth?

Wilford interrupted before you could come to a conclusion, “In this day and age, I don’t understand why you’re here.”

Mark looked you up and down. Judging. He smiled, not unpleasantly but vastly less wholesome than Wilford’s grins. It reminded you of a rose, not just the petals but the thorns as well. He wasn’t lying about the danger he brought, he just wasn’t mentioning it, in the same way that you might not recognize a rose for the pain it would cause but for the beauty it was known for. Nobody talked about the spikes, just the satiny crimson of the prettier parts. Distantly, you wondered whether that smile meant you passed inspection or something different.

“I’m just interested.”

“Go be interested in someone else.” He waved his hand, a shooing motion that lit a flame in Mark’s face, his cheeks becoming just as red as his robe. You didn’t particularly want two gods getting into a petty fight in the middle of your apartment – hell, you hadn’t planned for there to be two gods in the first place – but you still wound up the mediator.

At least, you tried. “Can’t I make a deal with both of you?”

But your proposition was shot down immediately, a combined, “No!” bouncing off the walls and down the hallway. It sounded like the thunder and the rain of a storm, like it was down the street and right next to your ear simultaneously. Their yell, their one agreement so far, could have shaken the earth in the way you had expected their arrival to, instead of the flashbang you had been met with.

You shrunk back into the embrace of the couch, pressed into it in the way that got pennies and wallets and keys lost. You couldn’t tell whether it was out of fear, worry, or the want to get disappear like those common trinkets. The feeling of regret flexed in you, growing and shrinking and growing and shrinking. This whole ordeal was more than you had bargained for. You’d expected a one-and-done kind of thing. Now, you had childish rivals tossing insults.

Speaking of.

Mark bent down to take your hand into his again, but he didn’t lean to kiss it. Instead, he drew his other hand over it, fingers dancing along the skin and prompting sparks around your knuckles. “Dearest,” his teeth were gritted together so that the words struggled out from behind the bars, “I would rather die than share a follower with him. We both know how well it worked out last time.”

A tut from your side before it merged into a laugh. “You’re still hung up on that?”

“What reason do you have?” came the venomous response, disbelieving and mocking.

“I just don’t like you.” Wilford’s smile was bright even as he insulted Mark to his face. If you were to reach out, you were half sure your hand would catch on the tension between them, and you were surprised when you were able to get up from the couch and drag yourself through the air without being stopped.

When you were a few steps away from the pair, out of the blast radius, you sighed, “It’s obvious that this isn’t working. Is there a way to end the whole summoning thing?” You weren’t keen to have to redo all your hard work, but you were even less interested in losing your apartment to a minefield. As the saying went, there were plenty of fish in the sea, and finding another god couldn’t be that difficult. You hoped.

Your eyes latched onto the sudden fear in Wilford’s eyes. It was small, but it was there. Despite that, his grin never faltered, and his voice was steady as he answered, “No—”

“Yes, there is!” Mark announced with more excitement than you had heard in your entire experience with him, and, possibly, it was the most genuine, too. His head whirled to frantically search around the room until his gaze landed on the alter.

Wilford jumped to his feet. “It’s extremely complicated and you probably don’t have the materials and it takes time—”

“They have the book, don’t they?”

What ensued was by far the most insane part about this situation; you stood next to the wall, watching with concern, while Mark dashed for the summoning book. He was barely a few inches away from grabbing it before his face met the floor, snuffing out the candles that he landed on and knocking several others onto the floor. Wilford grunted in the new position as Mark’s elbow connected with his stomach – he recovered surprisingly quickly from the tackle to the ground – and he tossed the other god onto his back. A bundle of flames licked up at them on your wooden boards, but the threat was diminished with their combined rolling away.

Before you met them, you would’ve been scared out of your wits by the thought of two eldritch beings grappling in the middle of your apartment, especially because you would have made certain assumptions – that they had demonic powers, that they could kill you accidentally with the snap of their fingers, and maybe they still could. It was only now that you realized they not much more than schoolboys fighting in the field at lunch break. You couldn’t be intimidated by that.

So, walking forward to stamp out the fire that had been growing into a few smoldering patches of ash, you grabbed the book that they had seemingly forgotten about and proceeded towards your front door. Not schoolboys. Toddlers. Thinking of them like that gave you only one course of action; wait for their tantrums to end and then pick up the pieces.

They didn’t react to the creak of the door, Wilford too preoccupied by bending Mark’s arm back and Mark too preoccupied by not getting his arm bent back, so you slipped out into the night with ease. Immediately, you felt the change in the air. There was no tension out there, covered by the coolness of late hours. They offered a comfort you would never be able to match. Never had you been so glad to be human. Sure, other people were a nightmare and getting out of that town was a dream you aspired to, but you enjoyed this little bit of the world. You wondered if ants felt the same when they looked down off a hill. In the presence of ‘dangerous’ deities, it was nice to sit back and appreciate what you did understand. At that time, you would normally have been able to see the stars twinkling distantly against the black void of the sky, but they must have been hidden by the clouds because you couldn’t see them.

Or the railing.

Or the balcony hallway itself, or, as you whirled around to run back inside, the wall of your apartment. The door stood out like an unfinished painting, bordered by the same darkness that was all around you. You felt caged. It was closing in and spreading apart at the same time, and you could only think to return to the living room. At least you knew what was in there. Out here? Glares burned into your skin from all directions and the shiver of a frigid gust of wind was more physical than your own body. You lunged for the handle to escape it and threw yourself in.

More darkness greeted you.

“Wilford?” you called out, “Mark? Is anyone there?”

You had spoken to the void, but you didn’t expect the void to speak back.

“So, you’re the one causing all of this trouble?”

Those eyes seemed to narrow. The only thing you were certain of was the rapid thud of your heart in your chest, and even then, it was inconsistent. A scream clawed at your throat, but you choked on the sound.

You managed to struggle past the blockage to ask, “Hello?”

The words reverberated around wherever you were, but it wasn’t your voice. Some of the echoes were deeper, some higher, some altogether unintelligible, as if spoken in another language. It hurt when they came back to you.

“Darling, dearest—” Something writhed in the pitch, “I’d ask how they got so attached so fast, but we both know who we’re talking about.”

“And who am I talking to?”

“You’ve been messing around with that book; I should hope you know.”

You almost jumped to your own defense before you remembered what position you were in. On one hand, you had only meant to summon Wilford, not Mark, but, on the other, it probably didn’t matter in the eyes of whoever – whatever – you were talking to.

“I don’t mean to be rude,” you started as you searched for the confidence you had started the day with, “but which one are you?”

“I have man names, many faces… you won’t be around much longer, so you may refer to me as Dark.”

Well, it was certainly fitting. As if to confirm your thoughts, a patch of the void appeared to constrict and tear through itself. Each particle fought for space, sparking with red and blue light, and collected into smaller masses. You were stuck to where you were standing while the voice continued in the background.

“Those two are tenacious.” More flecks of light joined the fray. “Neither will stop until they get what they want.” They warped the area around them in the vague shape of a person. “That just so happens to put you in a tight spot.” The color seeped out of the portrait, but it was still distinguishable from the void. “Wilford will slowly erase your memories, even though he doesn’t mean to nor is he aware of it.” A body began to coalesce where you assumed the floor of the void to be. “And Mark will take your physical form as soon as you pledge yourself to him to use in one of his plays.” It travelled up from dress shoes to black pants to the edges of a white shirt. “And you were about to choose both.” A neck appeared above the collar and those particles caressed the line of a jaw. “That…”

A face emerged.

“That is fascinating.”

Before you stood the fully formed god you now knew as Dark, and you had mixed feelings about that. For one, you had actually watched him appear. He didn’t arrive in a blaze of light, he did quite the opposite. That in and of itself dug a pit in your stomach, and his earlier comment that you wouldn’t be around much longer wasn’t helping your nerves. You felt like you were on the edge of spiraling out of control, but you also felt strangely calm, like there was a voice whispering in your ear that there was no need to get worried. Your breathing stayed steady while you looked at him. A formal black suit and ashen skin were the only notable features he sported. There was no taste in your mouth, no pain in your body, just confusion and a hint of fear.

He opened his mouth to speak, and you braced for impact, but his voice sounded normal. “What’s so important to you that you’d give up your mind and body?”

The answer was coaxed out of your mouth before you could think to say it. “A kiss.”

You had managed to shock not one, not two, but three eldritch deities. You were three for three, and you were damn proud of yourself! When you were back in your room later that night, you were going to celebrate. With what, you didn’t know yet, but you were already stewing in the feeling. It didn’t take long for Dark to recuperate, though, and you were brought back to the present by his gravelly laugh.

“Mortals,” he tutted. “You can never seem to decide whether you’re so significant that you’re the centre of the universe, or you’re so irrelevant that nothing you do matters. You’d give up yourself and the people around you for a show of affection, no doubt ingenuine?”

“Is it so hard to understand that I don’t care about the people here?”

“And your own soul?”

“I went into this thinking the entire world was going to end, so this is a preferrable outcome.”

He thought for a moment, tilting his head and narrowing his eyes. You felt like you were being inspected, and maybe you were, but you must’ve passed his scrutiny because a grin crept across his face. Not sugary like Wilford’s, or sly like Mark’s, but understanding, as if you’d given him the last piece of the puzzle that he had also known from the beginning. You confirmed something in him, and he was going to use it to his full advantage.

“That settles it,” he said, bringing a hand up to snap his fingers. That sound reverberated, not unlike your original words, but without the pain. Instead of granting to a headache, it swept away the darkness like a curtain to reveal your apartment. You were standing exactly where you would have been after coming back inside, a few steps away from the centre of the ritual circle, only Dark was situated opposite you. Just to the side were Wilford and Mark, still tousling as though you had never left.

As Wilford reared back a fist to sock Mark in the jaw, he finally noticed your return, to which he shot a smile at you. A stark bruise had found a place above his eye, but that didn’t stop him from winking at you while he drew his fist further away from his target.

And then he paused, hummed, and jumped up from the floor to greet Dark with a hug and a call of his name.

Mark, meanwhile, stumbled to his feet. He didn’t look worse than Wilford, but he certainly wasn’t better; a cut dripped blood around his mouth, which he wiped away with his thumb. His expression didn’t brighten when he saw Dark, and, instead, he took the grace period to trot over to you and swing an arm around your waist.

“Couldn’t handle me on your own?” he boasted when you were well situated, “You had to call in backup.”

At the insinuation, Wilford whirled on his heel and spat back, “I’ll have you know I am perfectly capable of—”

“Can we be civil?”

Whatever relationship the three of them had, Dark seemed to be the most – if not liked – respected. The two men stopped talking immediately and looked towards the one who had spoken, whose voice somehow sounded like it brought the walls of the room closer even if the volume didn’t change. He was powerful, that much was certain, and he proved it more than Wilford or Mark had, so far.

Another demonstration was when he reached into a slightly shaded corner of your apartment and retrieved something from the inky black. For a moment, it was nothing more than vapor, like dry ice, but then he pulled it further towards him.

Even though it now had a physical form, it helped you none with what it actually was. All you saw was a piece of yellow, tarnished paper that made Dark grimace, before he shook it and the color seeped out of it. You could have assumed it was a trick of the light had that not also healed the rips and tears.

“I’m sure the little cultist didn’t summon anyone here to see a petty squabble,” he said as he reached back into the shadow to get something that made more sense to you, a pen. Not that you knew what to do with it when he stepped closer and held both items out to you.

You looked him up and down in confusion.

Dark didn’t look offended while he explained, “If you agree to these terms, you can proceed with your original plan.”

Wilford popped up over his shoulder to take a peek at the writing. His lips pursed and his eyebrows furrowed but he only stated, “Dark loves a good contract.” Mark, meanwhile, tightened his grip.

Now that you were able to see the front of the paper, you could understand the words and be surprised it was in English.

To sum it up, after your eyes had skimmed over the terms, you would get what you wanted. You were ready to stop then and there, but common sense told you to keep going. Something about survival instincts or whatever boring thing your mind felt the need to involve.

The extra lines told you what would happen for the deities beside you. Wilford would get to take the memories of the entire town over the course of a couple days at a time – a similar situation to what you’d heard happened in Insmouth – but would use your apartment as a home base of sorts instead of an eroded group of rocks. You’d be there for the upkeep and taxes and, strangely, companionship. For two days after that, you would go with Mark to actively participate in his plays. At your side, he seemed to brighten when he read it. You guessed that unconscious husks weren’t the most entertaining when it came to improv. The final line stated that you would return to your apartment, alone, for the weekend, which worked for you.

But you weren’t the one it would be difficult to convince, and, what surprised you, nor was it Mark.

“Unfortunately, we have been over why a custody agreement won’t work,” Wilford piped up, leaning an arm over Dark’s shoulder. “Someone holds a very old and very useless grudge and is also the last person I would ever want to associate myself with.”

The impulse to point out that he had spent the last hour or so associating with Mark reared its head. You subtly patted it down, only noting that your confidence was coming back after the whole eldritch gods acting like petty toddler situation.

Dark spoke as though he were used to this, though, “You won’t have to make contact with the King in Red if you don’t want to. A day’s interim for handover has already been specified.”

Wilford couldn’t help but groan back, “You’re taking the fun out of this whole thing. They’re not a time-share, or a car being traded between dealers.” He went to cross his arms but was interrupted by his own gesture to the man who still had a grip on you. “And besides, Mark would never agree to it.”

“Oh, I’m fine with this arrangement.”

You blinked. Maybe you had preemptively gone insane because that void sounded like it was Mark’s but, even from your limited experience with him, he wouldn’t give up that easy. It unnerved you how casual he sounded, as it did the other two; Wilford’s eyebrows shot up, to be expected, but Dark also slightly reared back, like he had the chance of seeing the truth if he looked from another angle.

“Really?” you asked, turning your head to make eye contact.

“I’m given two days, and it’ll only take one to convert you fully to my side.” His hand left your waist and moved to pull your jaw towards him. “Contracts can be amended, can’t they?”

Damn. He was smooth. You tried to ignore the blush that flourished on your cheeks, and how your thoughts reminded you how little space there was between you and him. An inch, maybe less. It wouldn’t need much energy to move closer – in fact, it made more sense to just remove the gap altogether, right?

Until Wilford slapped his hand from your chin and stood steadfastly between you, the ideas falling out of your mind like a bucket with a hole punctured in the bottom. You hadn’t seen him move in the first place, but nobody looked shocked.

“We haven’t started yet,” he spat, and you were almost distracted by his pout.

They made faces at each other while you reread the contract. It all seemed very cut and dry. There was no point in a fine print if you were selling your soul for some kisses, because there was nothing to hide. No devils in the details for you.

Well, except…

“What’s the weekend for?” you asked. Dark didn’t seem the type to give you ‘time off’ just like that.

And you were right, in both aspects. He didn’t try to cover it up before he started explaining, “If I’m going to notarize this contract, I’m going to get something out of it.”

That got the other’s attention. Their heads snapped to look at Dark, both as confused as you were.

“Your follower here planned to trade reality as they know it for a single kiss, not even the three that we’re offering.” What? “Just imagine what else they could give for trifles like that.” What?

It took you a second to process what he said. He wasn’t looking for a one-up on another god, or entertainment, or companionship. He was looking for a gateway into the human world, and he found that gateway in you. What else you could give him. Access. Apparently, ancient beings who were witnesses to the dawn of time were also subjects to legalities. They couldn’t go invading the world whenever they wanted, they were like vampires, they had to be let in.

As Dark said, you would be the one to let him in, so that he could wreak whatever havoc that you could, or couldn’t, imagine.

That might have put other people off from making the deal. But, then again, you weren’t other people. You were you, and you had no qualms about breaking that dam and letting the flood destroy the town. You’d get what you wanted, that was all you really cared about, and it was the first line of the contract.

“Alright.” All three of the men around you looked towards you. “Deal.”

You took the pen that Dark was holding out to you, ignored the smirk that pulled at his lips, and signed your name on the dotted line.

The paper disappeared in the same puff of smoke it had appeared in. Dark’s hand was left empty, and so was yours as the pen took its own exit, but he quickly crossed his arms behind his back and took a step away from you. More than one, in fact, until he turned and started to walk towards the front door. He didn’t have to see your confused expression to understand.

“Privacy,” was all he offered before snapping his fingers and pointing at Mark.

It must have been insulting to be beckoned like a dog; he frowned and groaned and sighed and stomped all the way to where Dark stood, and then, with an upturned nose, he passed him and stalked into the exposed hallway. It only took a shared nod between Wilford and Dark for him to leave as well, following into the darkness that still stained the world outside your apartment.

You and Wilford were left alone. Right back to the start.

“Well,” he started, taking both of your hands into his, “I’m sorry about that, darling!”

“That normally doesn’t happen, right?” The warnings you’d found scratched into the first pages of books, the cryptic words from sellers, all of them foreshadowed the danger of summoning an eldritch god. None of them told you how ending up with three would turn out, so either it was a rare event, or nobody had lived to give their own advice on it.

Wilford simply nodded and answered, “Quite right.” His eyes drifted to the door that only just clicked closed. “Though, it was the actor and I last time, too, so maybe we’re exceptions to the rule.”

“Rule?”

“In theory, the followers who choose us have such different aims that we never cross paths. I have the mind, he has the body,” a laugh jumped out of his throat, “nobody’s going to Mark to forget their wife’s death. But nothing ever goes how it does on paper. We get muddled up, and then we both make deals, and then our follower’s caught between a rock and a hard place, and then—well, you’ve seen what happens.” He gestured dramatically to the apartment, that now seemed so much smaller than it did before. “You are what happens.”

But you were alive. You survived. No matter what happened from that point on, you had gotten through such an ordeal that would surely make anything else pale in comparison. You could do it.

“This is the first time Dark’s taken part,” Wilford offhandedly commented, before his spine straightened as though he was struck by lightning. You swore you could feel the leftover sparks when his hand returned to yours. “Oh, but no more about them. Party-crashers, really, are the worst of the lot. Just criminal. And not even the fun kind of criminal.” His eyes finally met yours again. “But we got there in the end.”

It was in that moment that his voice dipped from those jovial, sugar-coated words into something deeper. Not that his tone had particularly changed, there was just another layer to it, like a tree stripped back to the core of it. It befitted the god you imagined prior to summoning him. Now that you had met him, it made your heart flutter in your chest and your breathing pick up to match it. Much like how it was what seemed like years ago, except there was going to be no one popping in with a flash of light to interrupt you.

“Now, where were we?”

Standing up straight was an odd choice, but you were in an odd situation and by far more distracted by Wilford pushing forward through the thin air between you and connecting his lips with yours. The second that you were fully touching, you tasted the sugar that seemed a permanent coat for every part of him. It was incredibly soft, gentle, like he thought you’d shatter if he applied any pressure, and he did. Humans were such fragile creatures, bound by the laws you’d created for yourselves, both physically and socially. A pinprick, a papercut, a prod to the wrong part of you, and you could die, just like that. Wilford was determined that you wouldn’t go that way, but it made him far lighter than he would have liked to be.

But if this was him holding back, you couldn’t help but wonder what full force would be, because you couldn’t tell whether it was the sweetness or the man himself that was making you want for more. You forgot to breath as you focused entirely on the movement of his lips against yours. Your mind swam with thoughts, all centered on him, to the point that the last hour wiped out of your mind, and you returned to the beginning. It was addicting, to sum it up, and Wilford had to guide you apart when you started to go far too limp in his hold.

You must have looked some kind of way, maybe a certain dazed fog in your eyes, because he laughed – a sound that was so much lighter than before, if you could remember what it was like before – and tapped your nose with one of his fingers. Your barely caught Wilford’s wink in the hazy mind field you tried to pick your way through.

And then the pressure was gone, just like that, as if he’d never existed in the first place. For a moment, the impulse to agree with that flitted across your mind – it all seemed ludicrous, anyway, that was undeniable – but then the door behind you crashed against your wall, bounced back, and was eventually shut when a pair of shoes were fully inside.

You didn’t turn around, because you neither had the reason nor the time to do so. It was obvious whose hands were on your waist in a matter of milliseconds, each finger pressing into your clothes in time with the corresponding one on the other side.

“Finally,” Mark mumbled as his head came to rest in the crook of your neck. Out of the corner of your eye, you could see his fluffy hair bat against your skin, one stray lock managing to knock against your earlobe. “I thought he’d never leave. He never knows when the party’s over. Never remembers.”

If you hadn’t seen the outcome of their little sparing match or the squabble, you could have been easily convinced he was in love with the other god, going off how much he talked about him. Many of your fellow students in high school pretended to hate who they were secretly attracted to, though they didn’t have the power to smite you if you were to suggest it to them. The man currently wrapped around you proved to be a deadlier risk.

“But that doesn’t matter anymore. He’s gone and we can finally make good on our deal.”

You were shocked out of your joking assumptions by the graze of Mark’s teeth where his head was planted. A nip, and you were wondering if you were starting already, but he stopped long enough to mutter some more muffled words.

“Oh, I have so many ideas.” You barely registered one of his hands coming up to guide your jaw into looking towards him. “If we’re doing it differently,” his whispers danced across your skin before drifting up as he gently pecked up your neck, “I can’t have you doing the same old King in Red script.

From what you’d heard, that was the pseudo-ritual to take your soul, and, as per your contract, you were supposed to be fully conscious when you were performing. You were glad he’d picked up on that, it would be annoying to go through all that hassle just to be exorcised from your own body at the last hurdle. You were sure that you would have completed it had he not brought it up, thankful that at least one of you wasn’t distracted by the current events.

“I would offer Othello,” he continued, and you shivered at the new puff of breath, “but the bard seems too tame for your first experience. Musicals are especially rough on the vocal cords if you’re not used to it.”

Damn, Mark was a tease. Your oh-so-dutiful-cult-follower exterior was cracking the longer he dragged this on. He wasn’t doing this on purpose, he was too excited about the prospect of plays to be disingenuous about the subject, but you had half a mind to jumpstart this thing.

“Your heist movies have always interested me—” Maybe two thirds a mind, “—what’re your thoughts on space?”

In fact, a whole mind.

“Shut up and kiss me.”

That felt sacrilegious, and your immediate thought was that you were indeed going to die for your transgressions.

The next thought was how good Mark’s lips felt against yours. The sugar-coated texture was wiped off and replaced by a satin ribbon. Fear of your blasphemy was thrown out the window as you cherished the push and pull, barely noticing the ache of your neck until it disappeared with a switch of position; you were twirled around by the hand that remained on your waist and the other shifted to the back of your neck. You appreciated the stability but found you couldn’t voice it as Mark dove deeper, gripped tighter, sighed against your mouth. The kiss on the back of your hand was nothing in comparison to this. Anywhere Mark touched was completely numb. No fire, no chill, just a blanketed safety from pain when he settled into a gentle caress of your skin. And then it started to tingle. Pins and needles danced on the surface. Capsaicin.

You shivered.

“It’s unfair,” he separated far enough to whisper, “that we don’t have more time.”

Everything moved at a different pace for deities. Decades could go by in the blink of an eye, entire empires rising and falling with less effort than the waves. Most of the time, they were forced to take a back seat, if only because it all would move too fast for them to have any sort of effect. Eldritch gods found their homes in the stars, where things went more at their speed, where things felt more welcoming than the place that valued every second of the minute more than life itself.

But that begged the question; why were you, a human, so comfortable? Why did it feel right to have you in his arms? You aged and you changed, but you made the weight of time so much lighter. Somehow. In a way that such a powerful being couldn’t understand.

You might have nodded at his words. You weren’t actually aware of your actions, but you vaguely felt your head bob up and down, even if it was slight. Your eyes were still closed – you weren’t sure when you closed them – but you felt Mark bow his head to slot between your neck and shoulder again. That was where it felt like flames licking at your skin, but you didn’t back away. Why would you?

You felt him speak before you heard his words, “But have no fear. It won’t take long for the day to roll around, dearest.”

Your heart stilled in your chest.

“We just have to be patient.”

The flames were doused and feeling returned to your lips in the space of a few milliseconds. Fog lifted from your mind, and you blinked slowly to regain your sense of self.

And then there were two.

Dark didn’t enter with a show of dramaticism like Mark had, nor did he go to find some physical contact like Wilford. Instead, he simply opened and shut the front door and let you adjust to an actual room with him alone. There was an inkling of fear in the back of your mind, the ancient part from the years of hunting buffalo and being scared of the night that yelled at you to run. You pushed down the fight or flight reflex that begged to be triggered. It hushed without challenge, leaving you strangely calm in the face of the most powerful being you had ever met.

You found that you liked his smile. It was surprisingly pleasant, and presumably rare, considering the most you had gotten out of him since Mark and Wilford were involved was a smirk when you signed the contract. This was less sly, and, instead, had the corners of your mouth perking up, too. It only felt right.

What was weirder, though, was the fact that you felt equal to him. You, a mortal with zero self-preservation skills and 206 definitely breakable bones, felt equal to a god who could snap his fingers and kill you. There were no more witnesses, and there was only so much the police could do to track down a being of myth and legend. And yet, your mind assured itself there was no need to fear because you were on an equal playing field. You were both part of that contract, neither offering more or less than they could handle.

Dark, somehow, managed to voice your thoughts before you could. “So, you state your terms, I’ll state mine, and then we’ll have a deal,” he stated.

“What kind of terms are we talking about?”

He stepped forward once, and then twice, until he was close enough to take one of your hands and pull you towards him. Middle ground.

“Let’s start with this one, alright, dove?”

Your stomach flipping, you were the one to cross no-man’s land. Being so confident in the presence of a deity was unnatural, but, then again, everything about this was – except the feeling of lips against yours was beginning to become more and more familiar. The pressure, the texture, the—

The kiss ended as quick as it began. Dark drew back an inch with an exhale of cold breath while you stayed frozen. Your eyes didn’t have the time to close in the first place, so you easily noticed the plain shock on his face. Eyes wide and shoulders down, you could only imagine that you had done something wrong.

You were sorely mistaken.

You registered being dipped when Dark’s hands came to rest at the small of your back and your neck, and then your lips connecting so harshly that you thought they might have bruised. They were definitely already swollen from the combined efforts of the last two experiences, but now? You forgot the ability to breathe and simply submitted to the tug of his teeth against your skin.

Apart from the lapse at the beginning, you had no way of knowing this was Dark’s first encounter with anyone, let alone a human. For all his suaveness and elegance, social skills weren’t something he practiced often. That left them lacking, outside of business deals, to the point that every conversation with someone turned into a trade. Information, ideas, physical assets, it didn’t matter – but this scenario, with such a nice warmth contrasting his coldness, he forgot that this was an official exchange. It almost had him wanting to disregard the terms altogether and figure something out for just the two of you.

But Dark was nothing if not formal. No matter how much he felt the impulse to go further, he had to calm himself down, and that meant he had to take a step back.

He only managed a gap worth a sheet of paper at first.

“Mortals.”

You drew back the rest of the distance, so that both of you could speak comfortably and without temptation.

“You really are fascinating creatures.”

With those closing remarks, Dark trailed the hand from your neck to your jaw to your chin. A finger pushed at your bottom lip.

“I look forward to finding out more.”

He disappeared as quiet as Wilford and Mark, while you struggled to stay upright with your knees as firm as jelly and your heart threatening to give out.

So much had happened in the space of those two hours, at most, in your apartment. For one, this was no longer your apartment, really. You shared it with three eldritch gods, only one of which you had signed up to interact with, and even that was something you originally thought would end in the massacre of your species. Complete extinction. But there you stood, alive and well, in the middle of the living room. Nobody was dead yet, and nobody who you cared about would die.

You didn’t fight the laugh that bubbled up in your chest – it spilled out like an overflowing bathtub, you felt like you were drowning, you were drowning, but you were alive. You were alive! You’d done it! You got that kiss you wanted, and two more on top of that. A hand, probably yours, jumped to your mouth to cover the cackles that escaped you, but it did no good. It was all just so hilarious.

The laughter only died down when you bit into the palm of your hand. With your teeth lodged into flesh, you had physically tied your mouth shut like a bear trap. This way, you could think.

First, you had to find something pink to wear. Second, you had to brush up on your improvisation. And third? Well, you didn’t exactly know what Dark was going to do, but by all the eldritch gods in that book on your alter, you were excited to find out.

[Yep, I definitely went insane. My mind crumbled and this was in the rubble. I normally struggle with the kiss at the end of these kinds of things, so I kinda shot myself in the foot by giving myself three in one, but it's done now, so enjoy while I sit here and collect the pieces of my brain <3]

#theknightmarket #fanfiction #writing #markiplier egos #markiplier egos x reader #markiplier #one shots #x reader #actor mark #darkiplier #wildlife #markiplier wilford #darkiplier x reader #actor mark x reader #wilford warfstache #asshole mark #sucker for love

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theknightmarket · 29 days

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So, how was booping, huh, guys??

Especially, those two people who contributed to the 60 boops I woke up this morning to, which thank you so much! You’re completely welcome to submit an ask if you want to-

And everyone else who booped me :D, I also thank you for your boopage.

(There is a chance that you randomly got booped by a completely random account because I forgot how this worked so….)

#theknightmarket #thank you!#booping #boop #boop o meter #april fools #april fool's day

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theknightmarket · 1 month

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I still think about Chase Me a lot and it.

Hmgh. 🙏

Not a lot of Murdock content that goes into his potential motives.

"You're a special case."

In which Murdock's cat and mouse chase comes to an end. TW: cursing, mention of murder Pages: 16 - Words: 6,500

[Requests: OPEN]

They got him.

They’d trapped him in a corner and wrapped the cuffs around his wrists. He was sitting in a cell, chained to the desk, waiting to be interrogated.

If they hadn’t called you, you would have forced your way into the police department anyway, regulations be damned. But they were smart, or maybe they just remembered the last time you were kept from the end of your case – either way, you had been writing up a very particular, very private report when your phone began to ring. You nearly didn’t answer it, too determined to finish off the last paragraph of the page before someone could interrupt, but it buzzed once, twice, thrice, and then you grabbed the thing and pressed the call button. Your mouth hung open at the half-way point of a cursing out when the officer who called you spurted out the very words that kept ringing through your head like a church bell.

They got him.

They had captured the Serotonin Serial Killer, and he was waiting in interrogation room C to be questioned by a detective. You made the forty-five-minute drive into twenty, flashed your badge at the receptionist, and didn’t say a word to anyone as you dashed through the hallways of the bustling building. Officers pressed themselves against the wall to avoid being barreled into, knowing you were on the warpath just from the look on your face. Though, it was no secret where you were headed. Your little stint with the man of the hour was kept between the two of you, but people had picked up on your sudden determination to solve the cases. When you worked sixteen-hour shifts, whispers took your place in leaving your office building and returning to your apartment. Rumors spread, some nice, some rude, all patents of the news agency; apparently one of his victims was your sister or uncle or second cousin thrice removed, because it gave you a motive and you were obviously the most important in the case to grant one. Never mind the guy slitting the public’s throats, the detective who was doing their job had to have a personal reason.

But your gripes with the press and other detectives were nothing you were focused on; distantly, you heard the taps of your shoes against the clean tiles towards the room, the times new-roman C blazing against the white wallpaper outside of a locked door.

You opened it without a second thought.

“It’s you.”

“You sound surprised, sweetheart.”

Murdock sat there, as you expected, chained, as you expected, grinning from ear to ear, as you expected. You imagined he was the first to be smiling so wide in the cold steel of a police chair, bound to the table in front of him. He was still adorned in his usual outfit, a red turtleneck and black trench coat, with blood splatters barely noticeable even in the scrutinous glaring of energy-efficient lights. The only thing that put you ill at ease was the crack in his sunglasses. It brewed a pit in the bottom of your stomach as your thoughts fled to assumptions that only helped to deepen it.

But you didn’t verbalize your suspicions that someone had put a hand on the man before you, the only indication that it crossed your mind being the heightening of your shoulders and an overtaking scowl. Instead, you simply locked the door behind you and dropped into the chair across from him. “You got caught,” you stated bluntly, his eyes following your descent, and it felt wrong to be able to see part of his iris.

“I did,” Murdock admitted. “Well done, you cuffed me.”

“No, I didn’t.”

You couldn’t keep the venom out of your tone, but you didn’t entirely want to. What you wanted to do was find the officer who caught him, ask them how they did it, and then find out exactly how his glasses got shattered so you could repay the favor. You assumed the plan came from your innate distaste of the police force and the rest of the detectives – you relied on the idea so that the thought could pass your mind without worry for the real sentiment behind it. And it almost did.

Murdock, helpfully, brought it back. “Jealous that you’re not the only detective in my life?”

“And if I am?”

“I’d appreciate it.” Damn his charming smile. He leaned forward in his seat, balancing his head on one of his hands, and flashed his grin at you like some kind of reward. It made you tense up, aided by the chill of the metal chair but by no means outweighed by it. You didn’t like this. The uncertainty of your emotions. In your last encounter, you were so certain of your anger towards him and his constant evading of capture, and yet there you were, with the man himself in front of you and definitely captured, fighting a losing battle against your own mind to convince yourself you weren’t swayed by him.

“Good thing I’m not, then.” You ignored the spark in Murdock’s eyes that hinted at his doubt. “How’d you get caught?”

“I killed somebody.” You almost laughed. It wasn’t as though he would be in the same room as you for shoplifting given his track record, but you let him continue without interruption, “Jemimah Pims. Fraud. I got spotted going into her office by a receptionist.”

You knew the name. Pims was big in public service chains that weren’t fast-food; she’d always hated the things, so she pulled a complete 180 and threw herself into high-class wine bars and five-star restaurants. Go figure, she didn’t start those businesses with legal money in her pocket, and that was where Murdock came in. The issue was that you didn’t believe that was his place. You’d seen him take revenge for affairs, prejudiced, miscarriages of justice – not money laundering. And getting a witness?

He must have misinterpreted your skeptical expression, because he followed himself up with, “She’s perfectly fine. Probably clearing up a couple of meetings that are going to go unattended.”

That didn’t help quell your suspicions. Of course, the receptionist was indeed alive, she had been the one to report him, after all, but that wasn’t the part you doubted.

“Let me rephrase that; why’d you get caught?”

You hit the nail on the head. The missing shard of his glasses was enough for you to see his iris, and that was enough for you to see his true feelings. That must have been why he kept them on so much, but they weren’t helping him now. Any excuse he might have made was wiped off the drawing board, and he knew that, too.

Almost reluctantly, he answered, “You’ve been awfully busy lately.”

“You can’t just kill someone because you want attention.” You interrupted a useless continuation that he didn’t even get to start. Of course, you had been busy in recent weeks, but that meant you had enough on your plate already without him piling it sky high.

A few days after your interaction on the roof of the theater, you were handed a case file from the higher-ups. Manila folder, top secret stamp, the whole cliché that made you want to bash your head into your desk. Your actual desk, mind you, the one that had been slightly bloodied by James Pratt. Everything was cleared up relatively fast, the funeral was scheduled for two months’ time, and you were back to work like it had never happened, like there was never a body of a friend draining into the floorboards. That folder, though, pushed it further back into the recesses of your mind; it was a political assassination attempt that you were shocked it landed on your task list. However, it was definitely there, and it was definitely high up on the list, so much so that you barely had time for yourself, let alone the serial killer watching you from another office building’s fourth floor. You supposed that Murdock reached his boiling point quicker than you.

One of your hands leapt to the bridge of your nose while the other ran through your hair. This job was pure stress without a serial killer giving you bodies because he wanted you to look at him.

“It worked, didn’t it?”

He stretched out his hands in an attempt at a shrug, but the cuffs limited how far his dramatics could go. To compensate, he brought his ankles up to cross them over the table. You could already feel the headache brewing, and the incompetence of the cops around you was certainly not helping. Hadn’t they read a single guidebook or, hell, watched a crime movie? It didn’t have to be one of the good ones, either, for them to figure it out that the criminal needed to be chained by the arms and legs to the table. You were so, so close to wringing someone’s neck – whether that was Murdock or the incompetent police. Really, anyone within a twenty-foot radius was at risk.

But you couldn’t, no matter how much your hands itched at the thought. Instead, you took a long, deep breath, in and out and in and out. A pitiful chuckle bubbled up in your throat. “Jealous that you’re not the only serial killer in my life?” you asked, somewhere between sarcastic and genuine.

“Yes.”

Too bad.

“So, what now?” you asked, to which you only got a raised eyebrow in response. “You’re in a police station, Serotonin.” His pout became more noticeable. “How do you plan to get out of this one?”

“Who says I plan to get out of it?”

“You wouldn’t sacrifice your entire career to get some one-on-one time with me. You’re not stupid.”

There was a glint of pride peeking out from the edge of the sunglasses. The rest reflected back onto him, but it was enough for you to see, notice, and feel the rush of blood to your cheeks and ears. Your moral compass told you it was wrong, behind wrong, to be happy with his silent praise, but that thing was long since broken. You wouldn’t trust it to tell you the ethics of kicking a child into the road to stop a wayward fruit cart.

“Hmm, well, as much as I’d like to, you’re right; I can’t just abandon it all for one person, no matter how gorgeous they are.” You had half a mind to find an ice bucket to dunk yourself in. If only to yourself, you would admit you didn’t get complimented often – on your work or otherwise. It wasn’t for a lack of anything, but the general verdict wherever you went was to never initiate conversation unless someone didn’t like the look of their head on their shoulders. It happened often in the detective department, and that was where you spent the majority of your time – the rest was in your apartment, alone and whiling away hours until you got back to work.

But you weren’t allowed to dwell on that depressing thought for much long, before Murdock started talking again, leaning as far back into his chair as the cuffs let him go. “There are moles in the police, sweetheart,” he teased, “you said it yourself. Not one person here can’t be bought or blackmailed. The boys standing outside this two-way mirror, for example.” He turned to smile in the direction of that very mirror. You couldn’t see the officers outside, obviously, but you could imagine them sweating through their blue jackets, not only because they were caught but because Murdock had that look. The one that told whoever he was staring at that this would be their last day, like making eye contact with the grim reaper. Except instead of a bleached skull and hollow pits, he was a beautiful masterpiece come to coax you into the ‘sweet embrace of death’, as the saying went.

“I can taste the corruption from here. It didn’t take long to find out about the affairs and gambling.”

“I thought your whole thing was indiscriminatory vigilante justice. Moles don’t count?”

Vividly, the body of Pratt sprang to your mind. Still warm on the floor of your office. Head turned so that his check was mashed into against the grain. Eyes glassy like a frosted window.

Even though his gaze returned to you, you felt his words pierce the air as knives thrown to the mirror. “Oh, they do. I’ll kill them when I’m done here.”

Murdock was happy with himself. Proud of his work that rewarded him with this scene – two police officers paling from behind a wall, a detective sitting across him wearing a blush and a scowl, and himself haphazardly chained to the table. He wouldn’t have traded it for anything else. He sometimes, on the days when things were, the days when he was positioning old bodies or stalking new ones, when he had time to himself, he wondered what it the outcome would have been had it not been you assigned to his case. He couldn’t imagine the boredom; he didn’t give a damn about the press or the public, whether they were scared of him or in awe. When he first started this whole thing, he hadn’t even cared about the people chasing him, and, mostly, he still didn’t. But then there was you. A grizzled detective with a chip on their shoulder and enough experience with the law to sate thirty juniors. Murdock loved his job, but you made it that little bit more interesting.

Only, he could have done without your next question.

“Do I count?”

His head shifted to stare directly at you, his shattered focus pulled into one place, your expression of curiosity, doubt, a tinge of daring.

You continued, that tell-me-I’m-wrong look overtaking the rest of the emotions, “I let you get away with de Gaille and Lochlin. Doesn’t that make me a killer by association?”

Technically, he supposed it did. After all, he’d killed people for less. However, that wasn’t meant to be your ending. You weren’t supposed to be a pig on a hook in the butcher’s backroom.

“You’re a special case, love.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re going to help me get out.”

Your immediate thought was to resist. Mouth open to tell him a stern no and legs ready to storm from the room, you were sure Murdock saw, but he didn’t act. He just watched as your shoulders heightened and your grimace deepened. He just watched as you stayed seated, though the discomfort showed.

“Your boys can’t do that?” you asked.

He shook his head. “They’re at the window because two officers have to be. They won’t go near me with a ten-foot pole, or without a foot of concrete between us.” A light chuckle bled into his words, accompanied by the flash of an eye and the corner of his lip perking up. “You, though, have been much, much closer. And you have nothing for me to play on, except for a little bit of affection.”

“Affection, is that what it is?” the scoff escaped you before you processed his words, and it was just as well. You didn’t want a serial killer to know he was – on the most basic level and not even that much and only if you wanted to actually define it and you certainly didn’t – correct. You did feel something for the man sitting before you, leaning casually back in the steel chair of the interrogation room, but you wouldn’t admit it aloud.

“Romantic, sexual, aesthetic, whatever your attraction is. It stops you from letting me fry, as you like to put it.”

“It stops me from letting you die, but that’s where it ends. Locking you up, I’m fine with that.” You were getting faster, pitifully desperate to prove to him, to yourself, to the two officers standing outside that you were not tied to him in any way. You had no reservations about keeping him behind bars. Despite that, it wasn’t the thought at the forefront of your mind – pride and place belonged to the reassurance that it wasn’t that simple. For one second, you assumed that you did enjoy his company and looking at him and his charismatic whisperings that set something aflame in your heart. You still couldn’t abandon everything to run after this maniac. You couldn’t. You couldn’t.

“Are you?”

Were you?

A horrible feeling of dread washed over you, thrown to-and-fro in the rush of the river Styx, your lungs filled with water, and you struggled to keep afloat. It wasn’t that simple. It couldn’t be. There were so many other factors at play. Your life, his life, his job, shit, your job. You were a detective sent to wrap the handcuffs around Murdock’s wrists.

As if he sensed your crumbling façade of calm, he pushed, “You’ll have to pick a side, of course.” You hated to admit it, but the choice would be easy, if you could convince yourself to acknowledge that you did have a choice. Left or right. You didn’t have to consider the nuance of it all, no matter how much you wanted to. The answer your heart made for you blazed in your mind, but trails of fog tried to cover it with questions and consequences.

“Sitting on the fence isn’t an option.” His tone was strangely gentle, like coaxing an injured animal from their hiding place. “If you let me out or if you lug me to a cell yourself, I’ll know where you stand. Hell, I’ll even give you a week to change your mind. But you can’t just leave and wash your hands of it all.”

Responsibility. That was the thing at the crux of his decisions. Who lived and who died all depended on responsibility. The corrupt decided their own sentences when they played both sides off against each other. Police and aristocracy, politicians and the church. The hypocrites were the ones with their necks on the block, and Murdock wielded the axe. He hoped that you would see that, and maybe, if you wanted to, find a handle for yourself.

The distance between the two of you seemed to close. The desk turned to mist. The walls around you felt as though they’d constricted without you noticing.

“Think about it, love.” You didn’t need to think, that was the worst part. “You can go back to your boring job where you aren’t respected or cared about, and you can file reports about a teenager’s accidental arson while the bigger cases are picked off by fat cats who just want the reputation and money.” You didn’t need to be convinced. “Or you can come with me and use justice how it should be used. How you want to use it.”

Heart thundering in your chest so loud you thought it might burst – but then you wouldn’t have to make a decision so maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad – the rest of your body stayed paralyzed with fear. Not of Murdock, of course not, but of the fact that you wanted to go with him. In a split second, you’d made your choice, and you didn’t need his fancy words to encourage it. You weren’t some injured animal, you were a detective who had lost faith in the system, leaving only a struggle with your morals and upbringing to contest with, two things that were fading fast from your mind.

Meanwhile, Murdock struggled with the twitch of his hand that compelled him to comfort you. He had never been a sympathetic person – most murderers weren’t – but he didn’t like this look on you. At least, he liked it much less than the vivid rage you so often sported, particularly when it was for him. This was a distressed look that he didn’t mean to cause. Give him the fireworks and the explosions and the sparks, not the earthquakes that rocked the very place he stood and threatened to knock him off his feet entirely. Deep in his chest, he wanted to exchange that expression for anything else, but he found him options vastly limited by the cuffs. His mouth dropped open, seconds away from offering kind words, but they had done enough.

Luckily, that enough was in the direction that he wanted.

You didn’t speak as you got up from your chair and walked to the door. You lifted your hand but switched courses quickly, aiming not for the handle but for the ring of keys hanging on the wall next to it. One of them would unlock the handcuffs. One of them would set Murdock free and damn you to a life of crime in one movement. You had witnesses, after all, and your own conscience wouldn’t let you be a traitor to either side.

When you were close enough, he reached out to you. A hand caressed down your arm as far as the metal would let him go. His contact sparked against your skin while the clang of the cuffs hitting the table rang out in the room like a church bell. When he was free, he did the most unexpected thing you would ever believe he chose to do.

Murdock wrapped an arm around your waist and shifted the hand that was on your arm around your shoulder. He was surprisingly cozy, like a warm-blooded animal, in the din of the interrogation room. As you stood frozen, half from his action and half from the reality of your own setting in, he tightened his grip and dipped his head into the crook of your neck.

“Thank you, sweetheart,” he mumbled, words muted by his closeness to you, but you didn’t mind. You didn’t mind one bit. In fact, slowly, you drew your arms around him, too.

“When we get home, we’re talking about this.”

He pulled back at that, barely enough for you to properly hear his question of, “Home?”

It went unanswered, but he had already gotten a sentence out of you, and that was much more than he could had ever expected. You propped your hands against his chest to subtly move him further from you, eyes cast down and expression downcast.

“Stay here.”

He followed your order easily, considering it was just him standing in the room while you left into the hallway. Both of you knew it would take just one turn of the key to lock him inside, a couple of steps to tell someone that he needed to be locked up as soon as possible, a quick course of action that would relieve you of all your guilt. Murdock wouldn’t hold you to it, because you still chose a side. It just wouldn’t be the one he wanted.

When you returned with a hat and jacket – and, unbeknownst to him, the image of those two officers paralyzed with fear seared into your mind’s eye – he felt his shoulders relax and a pleasant smile take over his lips. Pleasant wasn’t a word often used to describe anything to do with Murdock, but you had a strange way of breaking the norms, and he didn’t mind it one bit. He even let you manipulate his arms like a doll into the flimsy material before you dropped the cap onto his head. It dipped over his forehead slightly, so you adjusted it until you could just see his eyes out of the shadow.

“You don’t say a word until we’re out of this building and into my car,” you ordered, and Murdock thought it best to acquiesce. It was the least he could do after this whole situation that he put you in.

Briefly, he nodded. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

He had.

But the next course of action was simple; you left the keys on the hook as you opened the door, unceremoniously shoved Murdock by the shoulder into the hallway, and lead him into the entrance. You had never been more appreciative of the other officers’ reactions to you. Seeing them jump out of your direct path like they’d been set on fire was good for you, if not practically – given you were escorting a serial killer out of the precinct – then emotionally. Nobody tried to look at the man in step by your side, mostly because they were too afraid to cast their gaze anywhere near you. Before, you might have felt disappointed at the reaction, but, if Murdock was right, they were no better than you.

You really hoped he was right.

You made it to your car promptly, and he was soon to round the hood to get into the passenger seat while you swung the driver’s door open. You almost drove off without looking in your back seat, your hand still on the keys in your ignition when you noticed the pile of equipment in the middle of the bench. Duct-tape, zip-ties and lo-and-behold, your original gun. It was as clean as the day Murdock had taken it from you.

Speaking of – you turned to look at the man next to you, who wore the most sheepish expression you would have imagined fit on him.

“Seriously?” you asked.

“I wanted to be prepared in case you put up a fight.”

“You were going to kidnap me?”

“Only for a day or two.” Your eyes narrowed, and he took that as a sign to rush to his own defense. “Just long enough for you to come around. I would never kill you.”

How comforting. It was weird that the thought was half-genuine; you were indeed glad that he had never planned on ending your life.

Sarcastic or not, you muttered a, “thanks,” as you pulled out from your parking space and started the journey home.

Murdock was a surprisingly quiet travelling companion. You expected him to be chatting your ear off about his latest kills, their crimes, their lives, their deaths, etcetera, etcetera. The only thing noise he made, though, was his humming along to the radio’s soft rock. Some instrumental had him tapping his fingers along the window’s edge in its rhythm. If you hadn’t been driving away from a police interrogation, it might have been sweet. And even if you were…

But the magic didn’t last forever. You pulled into your apartment’s parking lot, the three scuffed paint lines amongst those alleyway dumpsters and loose beer cans constituting for one, and you turned off the engine. You didn’t live in a nice part of town, you knew that, and you weren’t ashamed. Sure, you spent most of your time in your office, but that wasn’t because you were embarrassed to live in the building. It was just easier for you, to the point that your apartment was more of a second home, like the grandparents’ that you used to spend every second Wednesday at.

You locked your car door when you were out, then made your way to Murdock’s side.

“This is your place?” he asked, shutting his own door behind him.

“What, you’ve never seen it before?”

“I steered clear of your intimate life.”

The image of the equipment that was still in your backseat had you raising an eyebrow. “Oh, that’s where you draw the line?”

“I didn’t want to rush it.” You didn’t stop yourself from rolling your eyes, nor did you stop yourself from grabbing Murdock’s hand and tugging him towards the front of the building. From the outside, it looked like your standard run-down-rat-dream, but you’d taken the liberty of sprucing up your own rooms. It lessened the fear in your heart about showing your new partner – in crime.

Said man shot a look down to your hands. “No, I much prefer you doing this out of your own volition.”

The lobby of your building served its purpose. It had a reception table, a door to the breaker box and other things up-keep, and a staircase that led to the rest of the floors. There was only one other door on this level, which was for the owner’s place, but he was either hardly ever there or rotting on his couch, based on how little you saw of him. Another plus was that there were no cameras, but that was only a positive for right now. You would certainly be more worried about smuggling in a murderer had there been sufficient security measures.

So, with the ease of this mission, you took Murdock up to your apartment relatively easily. The other occupants of the building stayed put in their rooms as you went up the steps, before you stopped on the fifth floor. It took a second for you to fish your keys out of your pocket, but, when you had and you’d twisted them into the lock, Murdock let out a little whistle.

You were proud of the work you’d done to fix the place up. When you had first bought it, it was more of a trash dump than a living space – you hadn’t made it three steps without tripping on a bunch of tied up newspapers, which got you into the immediate mindset for clearing it up. The cleaning was over by the first day, the repairs by the third, and the refurbishment by the end of the week. All on your dime, mind you, but you were fine with that. It just meant that if and when you moved out, you would take everything with you.

Now, it was made into an actual home with crimson wallpaper, a plush couch, a bookcase in the corner and, the thing that Murdock took most notice of, an empty fish tank.

You closed the door behind Murdock as he sashayed to the centre of your front room.

“I didn’t see you as a fish owner,” he commented.

“I’m not.” You hung your jacket on the rack beside you. “Never spent enough time here to look after them.”

It was a sad tale you never liked to tell. Three betta fish and two weeks at the office was the most you let slip when people asked.

But, instead of asking, Murdock flopped back onto the cushions behind him and tucked his hands underneath his head. “Cozy.”

You were able to see his closed eyes when you sat on the coffee table. He looked peaceful, if you could ever call him peaceful. For a moment, you thought he might have checked out early and fell asleep.

His voice nearly startled you, but it only made you squint your eyes and cross your arms on your knees. “You wanted to talk,” he prompted.

“What’s the arrangement now?”

“I assume this is a one-bedroom and I don’t like sleeping on the couch.” He opened his eyes only to wink with the one you could see between the cracks of the glass.

You admonished him firmly. “Murdock.” For you, this was a turning point in your entire life. You didn’t believe in that second chance after death – not that you imagined you would get a good one after this – so you needed to make this count.

“There we go,” he whispered, a smug tone made by you finally saying his real name aloud.

As much as you’d like to continue his banter, easier now that you could actually talk to him in the privacy of your own home, you needed to be secure in your thought process. “Am I quitting my job?”

“Yes.” Blunt, but effective. That was better for you. “But you still have a week to mull it over. Not that I think you’ve made the wrong choice—” His hand jumped back to where it had once been in yours, “—You can do more work out here than you ever could as a detective.”

Whether that was true or not, you both believed it. Murdock had since his first kill, and you were steadily getting further and further from the fence.

“So, I’m joining you.”

“If you feel so inclined.”

“What am I supposed to do?”

“Whatever you like.”

“You’re being vague.”

“Sweetheart, this is your life.” As if to punctuate his point, he brought you closer by your hand. Your heart thudded in your chest while the memories from your first one-on-one flooded back. “You can come out stalking with me or go off on your own.”

Deep breath in, deep breath out. He was right. You assured yourself that, yes, this was your life. And you’d chosen to spend it taking the law into your own hands.

Now, your questions were for the simple act of asking questions. You needed time to process it, and listening to Murdock talk was surprisingly helpful. “Then why pull me off the force?”

“I saw what they were doing with you. You told me. I certainly won’t take credit for your work, and you’re not restrained by paperwork or legalities. I just wanted to open you up to more effective opportunities.” He leaned closer, almost out of his seat. “And, as much as I’ve loved our game of cat and mouse, it’s hard to carry on a relationship when you run the risk of shooting me anytime we meet. Although, I do love the danger. Complicated, isn’t it?”

“Not really.”

When you’d first become a detective, you would have never imagined that your career would end like this. Shot in the line of duty, punched a higher up, retired at a nice, old age to a farm in the countryside. Those were the scenarios you’d thought up all those years ago. And yet, you liked this outcome. It filled you with some kind of excitement when you thought about finally dealing with the other detectives you’d seen. And Murdock, oh, Murdock, he was your favorite part.

That was why you didn’t need any encouragement to dive forward and connect your lips with his. He was immediately receptive to the kiss, using his hand to pull you towards him. All the stress of joining a murderer melted away with the contact. Sparks danced along your skin where he drew his other hand from your arm to your shoulder to your neck. Undoubtably, you were touch-starved, you’d known that for a while, and that made the fire grow quicker than you thought it would. The dance you’d been doing with each other for months was nothing in comparison to the dance of your lips. It was less infuriating for you, and more prideful for Murdock. The little sounds that escaped your mouth as you shifted to get more comfortable gave him a boost to his ego that he really didn’t need. Still, he smiled while you pushed deeper.

This was his prize. You would never admit it, but Murdock knew that you knew that he won. He wasn’t sitting pretty in a cell, he was sitting pretty on your couch, with a view, not of iron bars, but of a gorgeous detective who had practically pledged their life to him. He leaned back just an inch to breath, letting you do the same, in order to get a good look at you.

The breath was worth nothing when you knocked it out of him, anyway. Disheveled was a good look on you.

“I’ve made my choice,” you muttered, “and I don’t intend on going back on it now.” That statement made his heart quicken, more than fleeing any crime scene could ever cause.

His curiosity was piqued when you straightened your back and looked towards the bookcase.

You got to your feet as you said, “Oh, that means I can show you something.”

Murdock watched you rush to where you were looking. You grazed a hand across the dusty surface, eyes skipping through the spines to find the thing you were searching for. When you turned around again, Murdock saw not a book, as he would have guessed, but a manilla folder.

After your rooftop meeting, you had done some research. You used to tell yourself it was to keep tabs on the other detectives, so that you could possibly guess who Murdock would go after first. Now, you admitted that it was just to dig up some dirt.

You fell back next to Murdock on the couch, bringing a foot onto the coffee table. The folder was tossed open in your hands by the weight of the papers inside, and there were a lot of them, each separated with a tab. One name, one last name, was written per tab.

It didn’t take long for him to figure out what this was.

“Oh, I love you,” he sighed as he flipped through some of the documents. It was a dream come true for him. The background check was the most boring part of the process, he much preferred the chase. With you, he had gotten all of his information from talking to you, and he only stayed entertained because it was you. In your hands was the golden ticket to avoid all of that messy business.

Murdock was so happy that you chased him.

“I love you, too,” you replied, bringing a hand up to grab at his jawline. If it were any other moment, he might have teased you, but he was too busy falling in love with you, as if the cat and mouse schtick hadn’t been enough for him already. He was looking forward to getting your claws back.

“So,” he whispered into the minimal gap between you, “Pierce or Vanderbilt first?”

You dropped your head, hitting his lips with a light laugh. It was the first time that you wondered what your life had become in a grateful sense.

[I don't actually think that this was a request, but I also think of Murdock way too much to only have one fic about him. Hence... you get this. I hope you enjoyed <3!]

#theknightmarket #fanfiction #markiplier egos #writing #markiplier egos x reader #markiplier #one shots #x reader #murdock x reader #murdock #iswm #iswm murdock #also guess who just remembered they have an inbox #detective x criminal

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theknightmarket · 1 month

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There were so many cute moments that I cut from the Engineer one-shot that I could probably make another fic out of them… and maybe this time it will genuinely be cute instead of preparation for angst.

#theknightmarket #fanfiction #markiplier egos #writing #markiplier egos x reader #markiplier #one shots #x reader #ISWM #in space with markiplier #head engineer mark #engineer mark x reader

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theknightmarket · 1 month

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"We've made it this far."

In which the Engineer and the captain are released from the effects of the wormhole, as they've always wanted. TW: cursing, angst, slight reference to gore Pages: 26 - Words: 9,500

[Requests: OPEN]

“Please, just hold on.”

After dying so many times, it was weird to be on the edge of it. You’d tossed yourself off the cliff enough to memorize the feeling of falling, of becoming weightless and letting everything go – like a kind of acceptance, even if you were going not of your own volition. It had always been okay, though, because you’d come back seconds later, spat back up from a raging ocean with salt and spray into the arms of that cryo-pod.

“I can get you out of here, don’t worry, I can do it.”

But this time, you were looking down, your feet on the ground and the water seeming so far away. You had to make the choice now, of staying on that crumbling cliff, battled by the wind, and forced to stare straight at the fate you were faced with, or letting your feet shift and lose traction.

“Come on, please, I know you can do it.”

In theory, it was an easy decision, but you didn’t want to have to work for it anymore. You had done the hard part, the surviving at the peak, and now, you knew that this would be the last time. It wasn’t as though you could take a step back; you would always be watching the tips of the waves snap at you. You didn’t want to watch anymore.

You croaked out a simple, “Mark…”

Your faithful engineer, kneeled at your side, likely for the last time. He wasn’t going to fall. He couldn’t.

“No, no, please, don’t do that, just a little longer,” his pleads reached your ears well, but you forced yourself to ignore them, “our medics will be here, just wait.”

“Mark, I can’t.”

“No, you can, you have to!” Guilt tapped at the edge of your mind, you didn’t let it in, and it stayed right where it was. “Please.”

“I’m sorry,” you sighed. You were. You really were.

“Come on, the- the colony haven’t said goodbye, the crew…” His thought went unfinished, but you understood him. You always did, even when he didn’t understand himself. You were half sure he didn’t know what he was saying, the panic and dread overwhelming him in a fight for majority.

You assured him, “They’ll be fine.”

“Not without you.”

“Mark, look,” a cough wracked your upper body like an earthquake, “look at it all, we’ve made it this far, haven’t we?”

You were so damn proud of him, of the whole ship, of everything. You never told him directly, so you could only hope he knew. It would make this whole thing easier if he knew that you were proud of him, that you trusted him. He’d be easier on himself.

“Not far enough! We still have more to do, we- we can’t do it without you. You’re our captain.” A distant memory from just a few days before floated to the forefront of your mind. It was hazy, corrupted by the pain, but it was there. “You’re my captain.”

A deep breath in, as far as the pressure would allow you, before you whispered, “You built the ship, you hired the crew, you fixed the warp-core.”

And suddenly you wished that you hadn’t been able to take that breath – that you had stayed silent and let the moment envelop you. The spark of realisation that you cherished in Mark’s eyes dug a pit in your stomach.

“No,” was all you could say with what little energy you had left.

“But—”

“Uh-uh. Not this time.”

You couldn’t, he couldn’t, neither of you would be able to handle another round of what you went through together. That quality of stubbornness you both possessed would surely fail you, abandoning you to the madness of eternity, worse if you failed.

“Why not!? I know how to do it, and we know how to fix it.”

“We got off on chance, you’re not trying that again, Mark, I can’t—”

Shit. That little energy was becoming smaller and smaller, but neither did you have it in you to let Mark create another wormhole. You couldn’t live with yourself if he gave you a second chance.

“I’m not losing you,” you muttered, “and, yeah, I know how ironic that is.”

You wanted to laugh, but all that burning the candle at both ends was catching up to you. The numbness that had crept up on your legs hours ago was lurching onto your torso. It wouldn’t be long before it was biting through your arms and neck, and you wouldn’t be aware of it when it reached your temple.

“So, hey, just… just give me this. Please?”

The look in his eyes washed away. Leaving Mark like this was not your plan, but when had the universe ever listened to you? You could be thankful that you hadn’t gone insane in a place lightyears from your home, that Mark was not leaving you. You admitted that it was a selfish thought, but you didn’t think you could keep going if you lost him. You’d fought hard, but now you were done fighting. You knew he could do it for you.

And so did he. It was a cold admittance that he wouldn’t be the one to save you, this time. It felt all too much like giving up on the person who had sacrificed themself time and time again for him. Although it left a poor taste in his mouth – bitter, unwelcome, downright painful – you had proven to be steadfast in your decisions. There was going to be no convincing you.

“I love you.” If Mark was given a do-over, no strings attached, that would not be the first time he was saying it to you, aloud, just the two of you, and it wouldn’t be the last.

And maybe he would have gotten to hear it from you just once.

Your final breath cascaded against his knees, a waterfall that seemed eons from growing dry but dripped slowly into the grave it dug for itself. There was no sound, no last rites read, except for the heartbroken sob that broke free from Mark’s chest, echoing around the cavern walls.

Seeing the sun after so long in space was strange. Of course, you could look out of one of the many windows that Mark had installed and see a sun, but to stand in the rays of light from the sun of this galaxy? It made you want to brush off your duties, it made you want to throw your jacket off and run into the forest, it…

It made you miss Earth.

After exploring space for so long, you were always surprised that, wherever you landed, you felt homesick in the bottom of your stomach. The feeling slept when you were in transit and reared its head when you started to set up a colony, but it never truly disappeared after that. Hell, not even the visits back to your birth planet fixed the issue. The best thing you came up with was bringing little pieces along for the ride.

But you didn’t have the time to reminisce. Just as you’d mentioned earlier, you had a colony to establish, and it was well on its way already. A dozen sectors sketched out, concrete paths linking each one to the other. There were still a majority of people left in their cryo-chambers, those that weren’t necessary for building or planning, who were being looked after by Celci. Gunther was on observation for threats – a duty he often groaned about – and Bert was waxing poetic while the rudimentary power generators were being built. So far, everything was looking good. As in, nothing was going to blow up immediately and force you back on that ship.

No, instead, there you were. Standing in front of your growing colony, the sun glinting off the metal of the parked ship, your feet on the ground of a healthy, new planet. How could you not let a prideful smile work its way onto your face underneath the helmet you had yet to take off? You had made it, and, if you squinted, you could practically see the bustling city this place would become. Stores on one end of the street, restaurants on the other, further down would be a sector of houses with a public park and a fountain. Young families would walk to their parents’ house, the group of teenagers would have no problem just talking to each other during dark nights, old lovers would duck from the rain into shaded alleyways to share one last kiss before heading home for a warm bath.

You caught the eye of your head engineer leaning against the head of the ship.

And not that you knew it, you had also caught his eye, only that was a gross underestimation. Mark had been with you every step of the way on the ship, he’d seen what you could do, what you had done to save the crew and colonists. You’d long ago seized his admiration, and, soon after that, his affection, leading to where he stood in that moment; watching you as you ordered everything that needed to be done to be done, waiting for his own set of instructions that he would carry out perfectly.

Until you made eye contact with him, smiled, and then began to walk away. Mark’s feet were moving before he could process what was happening, and if he started to jog after a few steps, that was between him and the ship wall that he pushed off from. He slid to a stop when he was close enough to you, an unsure half-grin on his face.

“Hey, Captain,” he said as he fell into step beside you.

“Is everything alright, Mark?” was the only reply he got, though that was likely because of his expression more than any doubt you held.

To ease your concern, he tried not to make it too obvious that he was nervous.

“Yeah!” The barely hidden voice crack did not help, but he continued anyway, “Yeah, it is, I mean- is there anything you want me to do?”

Requesting work was difficult for him. Not because he naturally took things easy, but because he had been on his feet for the last he-didn’t-know-how-long. Hours, days, he hoped not weeks. It didn’t feel right to not do anything.

“Why don’t you take the day off?”

Panic struck him like a physical force. He didn’t remember doing anything wrong, you could have still been angry about the whole incident, but he thought everything had been cleared up on the ship’s bridge. Had you already given him a job and he hadn’t been paying attention? Well, could you blame him if he wasn’t?

It was in this train of thought that he realized you were waiting for a response. So, you weren’t mad. That was good.

“Is now the best time?” he asked, “It’s your decision, of course, I just think—”

You stopped short of the next sector, some grid for farming, “Look, you’ve been to hell and back—” and hell and back and hell and back and hell and back, as you were both well aware, “—I think you deserve some time to yourself.”

‘Time to yourself’. He didn’t want time to himself, he wanted… well, he wanted a lot of things and, to put it bluntly, he wanted some time with you, but you weren’t about to take a rest anytime soon, so neither was he.

“And while I appreciate the offer, Captain, there’s a lot to be done that I think is more important than having a break.”

You watched his face for a second, looked up and down as he started to sweat underneath the layers of his uniform. “Repeat that for me.”

“And while I appreciate the offer, Cap...”

His trailing off made clear the realization he came to. You sent him a knowing look, as he groaned like a kid told he couldn’t have another cookie. Of course, it made you smile, too. His dramatics were the highlight of your day when it wasn’t his stubbornness and jokes.

Today, he was vastly leaning into the former. “Only five minutes!” he demanded, scrolling through his arm-piece to set a timer.

“Ten.”

He scrolled slightly further. “Seven.”

“Fifteen.”

And slightly further. “Twelve.”

Your bout of laughter echoed through the trees around you. “You aren’t getting this, are you?” Mark’s arm was tugged away from him as you swiped through the timer yourself. He might have argued about it more if he weren’t so preoccupied with being close enough to kiss you right now if he had the gall to lean that slight bit towards you.

And, you were his captain, obviously, who was he to challenge your authority?

“Take the day off, Mark, and that’s an order from your captain.” You left him with a pat to his shoulder, luckily not noticing the vibrant blush spreading on his face that was too strong to blame the sun for.

He muttered to himself when you were a few steps away, “Pulling rank isn’t fair.” And he was certain that it wasn’t. It was a trump card, some ex-machina that you had no right to use on him.

But he had his own little trick up his sleeve, or, rather, on his belt. You insisted on using some of the old-world commodities, even by Earth standards. The communicator on his hip with the antennae and grating would be his ace in the whole for your dumb day off punishment—

“And no using your walkie!”

“Damn it.”

You were tired. Really tired. You’d slept a day and a half after the whole wormhole incident, and yet here you were, looking at every slightly level surface with literal bedroom eyes. You constantly had to remind yourself to pay attention, but that just made you think about paying attention and not listen to the person you were talking to – who, in this case, was Celci. As such, you were half sure it was important to the whole colony, relying on her reputation, mostly, because again, you weren’t paying attention, and you were actually imagining lying down on that rock you’d seen half an hour ago with the moss and grooves.

You weren’t listening, again.

“Or I could send you the report for you to look over later?”

When you snapped back to reality, you were none the wiser as to what that report was about, but it gave you time to figure it out. “Oh, yeah, that’d be great, Celci, thanks.”

She gave you one look and then asked, “Captain, is everything alright?”

The half grin took most of your energy, so you promptly dropped it when you remembered that she couldn’t see your face. “Am I that obvious?”

“If you need a break, I can go and check the excavation site and one of the techs can do the propane levels. I’m sure I could get Mark—”

You immediately rushed to cut her off, “No, no, I’m fine. I appreciate the thought but I-I’m fine, really.” Jostling your body and comically widening your eyes, you made yourself as presentable as you could with a quarter of your fuel in the tank. You dusted off your suit and cleared the screen of your helmet, extremely thankful for the metal that made it a one-way mirror. “See?”

Celci hummed at you. Not a good sign. She was arguably the most responsible on the ship, and if she thought you were putting yourself through the ringer, she would do everything in her power to get you to relax. The only problem she faced was ranking, and it was the only thing protecting you from being forced into a nap. You had to get away before she could figure out how to circumvent your title.

“C’mon, Celci, don’t you think I know my limits?”

Disapproving silence. Even starting to walk away from her, you knew how little she believed you.

“We only have to get through another three hours of work, and then everyone’ll be able to finish up; myself included.”

“Well, Captain…” And there was the crack you needed. Hesitation.

“Besides, if we get the thermos running, we’ll be able to house some of the colonists and you can focus your efforts on the desert habitation.” That was her little pet project. When you’d scanned the surface, you found two nearby biomes that would barely receive any rain but stayed in the negative fifties for your entire surveillance period. It was backhanded to bait her with the idea, you knew that, but if it got you out of a glorified grounding, you were willing to do it.

Especially since it seemed to work, if Celci’s sigh and hands on her hips were anything to go by.

“Alright, Captain, as long as you finish as soon as the day ends.”

You exchanged a nod with varying degrees of satisfaction with that encounter, before going your separate ways. In fact, you did get a little jolt of energy out of it, as you waltzed along the concrete path. Any thoughts of taking a break were washed out of your mind by the torrent of work you still had left to do; all the sites to check out, all the staff to organize, all the paperwork to send back to the headquarters. The latter was always the worst part, but it was the price you paid for independence on the planet. Free reign was only yours if you played by your boss’ rules.

“Captain!”

Speaking of boss’ rules, as if on cue, Mark jogged to your side from wherever he was before, falling into step quickly next to you. You wouldn’t deny that seeing him gave you another boost of energy, which you immediately used to pat him on the back.

“How’s your break going?”

“I’d rather be doing actual work, but it’s fine. I appreciate it.”

“Good.”

And it was. You were glad he was taking it slow today. He was important to you, and the colony, and you didn’t need your head engineer passing out in the middle of an important task. Or passing out in general. Or doing anything else bad for his health that you could readily prevent.

He appeared alright, for now, although that wasn’t going to get him back on a job just yet. “Actually, I was wondering if—” he started to say, but a crew member cut him off with the crunch of their boots as they rushed towards you from out the surrounding woods.

Their report was normal enough, a few more pieces of information about the excavation site. They’d found another source of aluminum in the caves, which you noted down in case your supplies ran low. Mark waited at your side while you spoke to the person, half-way between listening and grumbling to himself. You couldn’t help but laugh quietly as you dismissed the crew member.

“Sorry, go on,” you said. The pair of you continued to walk, heading nowhere in particular aside from in the vague direction of the housing project.

He did as you prompted, getting out, “Well, I wanted to know—” before someone else called for your attention. Given you were nearing the first constructions of houses, it made sense that a builder caught up to you – despite that, you noticed Mark’s pout as he averted his eyes from the conversation you’d been drawn into. Just a material substitution you needed to sign off on, it was nothing to get worried about, but it was obvious that wasn’t what he was annoyed by.

You gestured with a grin for Mark to continue. Mouth only somewhat open, he paused and looked around, then rounded to your other side to cut you off from the majority of the workers. It was a futile effort, given that you were fast approaching the mass of houses, but it amused you either way. A combination of that drama and humor you were so fond of.

“I think, considering what we went through—” There was barely a crack of a twig in your ten-foot radius when Mark grabbed you by the hand and ran off the path. He didn’t know where he was going, and you definitely didn’t, but you were going regardless. His boots carved a line from the housing district all the way back to the ship. Hardly anyone was there anymore, only a few cryo-techs were loitering around to survey the colonists, so it was his best bet to get you alone, however creepy that made him sound.

You weren’t given time to question him when you eventually skidded to a stop in a quiet area behind the ship itself. Mark was talking even before you caught your breath.

“I think that you should take some time off too because you went through the same things that I did, and, yes, I know you’re the captain, but having some time to recover from it all would be just as good as me taking some time, even better, because you made all the decisions back there, so you should just relax and I have some suggestions for how you can do that.”

By the end of his little speech, neither of you were breathing at a steady rate. You both sucked in as much air as you could handle and then let it go again, minds catching up with the situation. For you, it was processing his words and what he wanted from you – for Mark, it was realizing just what he’d spouted and how utterly unconvincing he was.

It was another challenge to understand that you accepted. “I’m listening,” you said, simply, as if you couldn’t say anything else.

Mark spluttered, not thinking he’d get so far but being so far that he had to continue.

“I say we should take some food packs from storage, find an empty room, and have a proper lunch. We won’t talk about work or duties to be done, or anything else, and we’ll lock the door so nobody will interrupt us.” That last bit came from the depths of his soul, Mark grimacing as he spoke. “The colony will be there when we get back. And, if you think about it, getting some rest will help you make better decisions in the long run.”

“Okay.”

Okay. You’d said okay. You’d okayed it. You were going with his plan. Pride overwhelmed him against his mind’s efforts to keep up with his heart and stomach’s backflips. His body froze in response, giving you the concerning impression that you’d broken him with a single word. Lucky for you, he rebooted himself in a few seconds, though he was still unable to curb his enthusiasm.

“Yes. Yes! Alright, let’s go.”

Mark went to reach for your hand but quickly noticed that he was still holding it from when he’d dragged you with him. Instead, sheepishly, he smiled at you and started to walk towards the ship’s entrance, you chuckling to yourself in tow.

If you were going to take a break, you might as well be taking it with your favorite person. What did you have to lose?

“I’m hoping for cool fish.”

“Nope.”

Within half an hour, the both of you were settled on beanbags, eating soup out of Styrofoam bowls, and drinking the champagne you had left over from the salute at the start of the trip. To you, it was the height of luxury, especially now that you were out of your stuffy uniforms and into more casual clothes. The only ones you owned were your workout gear and nightwear, but you opted for the less sweaty version of a tank top and shorts. You didn’t think it was so bad, but Mark had spent the first ten minutes of the lunch break looking anywhere but you. It didn’t help when you went to get your helmet and jacket because he immediately jumped to push you back down into your seat. Not that you – or, though you were unaware, Mark – was complaining.

Still, you kept the outer layers of your uniform close by in case of an emergency, the chances of you being notified as minimal as they were with both your walkie-talkies having been switched off. It was you who pushed for them to be present, but the compromise made them pretty much useless.

Yet not even the potential of a natural disaster pulled you out of the relaxed state you had entered. Slipped down halfway into the beanbag, spread out as far as you could get, you felt calmer than you’d ever been before. Mark would say the same, had he not been seeing your face for the first time.

By the sun, moon, and stars, you were… downright gorgeous. He never liked relying on rumors, so he had taken the stories of you being handsome and/or beautiful to be one weird game of telephone. Now, though? He was regretting not asking to see your face sooner, but you were still in front of him, and he was going to relish the view for as long as he could, emergency be damned.

“First chance I get, I’m throwing you in an ocean,” you promised, taking a sip from your champagne flute.

“I’m taking you with me.”

“I want to see it. Maybe we’ll find a fifty-foot-long eel with three sets of teeth and mandibles on its face.”

“You’ll find some cool rocks and suffocate before you could even see the thing.”

Dammit. Just like that, with one sentence, Mark smothered the banter you had going. His jaw clenched, your shoulders heightened, the mood was thrown out the window – poor choice of words, again. He had meant it to be playful, but certain recent events tainted the very concept of losing oxygen, of holding your breath for longer than a minute. Gallows humor had yet to set in, and, based on the glazed-over look in your eyes, he couldn’t help but think it never would.

But you were the one to break the silence. “So, what now?” you asked as you placed the flute gently on the floor, glass clinking even as it stood straight.

“Cap,” was the only mumbled answer you received, though it didn’t deter you.

“I know, it’s just…” you sighed, “we can’t not talk about it?”

“Why not?”

Your gaze shot to meet Mark’s eyes, ready and raring to argue, to question how he can deny it. The flame died the second you saw the look. The watery film that threatened tears dumped dirt over your fury. It made sense that he would want to leave it behind. You had the colony to think of now, instead of the death after death after death you’d both faced in the wormhole. You understood that want to ignore it all, but you couldn’t fall into the trap. You couldn’t face another night with it hanging over your head. The bags underneath those wet eyes of his told you he couldn’t either.

Shakily, you whispered, careful not to set him off, “Because it happened. And it was a serious moment in our lives that we can’t ignore. And- and what if it all goes wrong again and we need to prepare to deal with it?”

“Then we’ll do what we did last time.”

“Get stuck?”

“Get through it.” Distantly, you wondered why you were the one to make that first speech. You were the captain, sure, but Mark made you believe him with just one incomplete sentence. He made you trust him in three words, no matter how much your mind fought to tell you otherwise, your heart did indeed trust him. “I mean, we’ve come this far, how hard can it be?” A weak chuckle. “I’d wager getting Gunther to not shoot the first thing he saw when he got off the ship was a lot harder than what we did.”

You didn’t feel like laughing. Instead, talking about the crew, it made you feel… something else. An intangible well of guilt and shame. You could get through another wormhole, but everyone else? What if they got caught? What if they started to remember all the death and fire and pain? You wouldn’t be able to help them, not like last time. If they remembered, they’d be at the edge with you, staring over the side. How many of them could take it? The crew or the colonists themselves? You would have failed them all. You might not have killed them, but they’d be casualties, nonetheless.

“Hey.” Your head snapped up to see Mark at eye level with you, leaning over to bring a hand to your upper arm. “We’d get through it. I know we would.”

But you still looked forward, unblinking, and it only took a second for Mark to realise he was wrong. If he wanted to be scientific about it, he would have just called it trauma bonding – if he wanted to be emotional about it, which he didn’t but he was going to be, he would have thought that all your time together brought you closer, not only because of the danger you experienced, but the comradery. Seeing you in action, seeing you take care of everyone, seeing you be the captain you were meant to be; Mark was sure he understood you. That meant he could see that guilt and shame as clear as day in your eyes.

He let himself fall forward to flop down next to you in your beanbag. Even though he was slightly uncomfortable, pressed against the strangely stiff surface, he stayed right where he was. Nestled against your side. He couldn’t think of a better place to be.

“I don’t understand why you do this.”

“It’s one of my charming quirks.”

You still didn’t feel like laughing, not even at your own poor joke, so you dropped your gaze to Mark. “What are you talking about?” you asked.

“You pretend like you aren’t the captain.”

“Do I?” Plead the fifth or whatever it was people said, and you didn’t care about the irony of you being the one to deny now.

He narrowed his eyes, barely shifting closer but shifting closer regardless. You felt your breath catch in your throat. “Yeah, you do,” he pushed as the hand that was on your arm circled around to the other shoulder. You resisted the voice in your mind that told you to bury your head in his neck, whether that was to avoid hearing him or to relish in his closeness that you never had the chance for.

You didn’t though, head remaining held high, so you were forced to listen when he continued, “You tried to get a smaller crew, you go in on the explorations yourself, you ignore the medics who try to help you.”

Another voice in the back of your mind perked up to rebuke it all, but you silenced it. What would be the point of lying? Mark knew you, you knew he knew you, there was no reason to fight it.

You sighed. “Well, I don’t know.” Your voice was small, smaller than you or Mark had ever heard it, but the admittance felt like it was enough to send a shockwave through the cabin. The jacket that showcased your title to everyone on the planet seemed to blaze in your mind. “Am I really their captain yet?”

“’Yet’?” Mark parroted you, and that was the go-ahead you needed to spill your thoughts.

“I missed the construction of the ship and the selection of the crew. The hour that I got onto the thing, everything went to shit, so many things went wrong. I- I don’t know if I deserve this, being the captain, when I didn’t spend any time with the people running the ship. Hell, even without the whole wormhole thing, we were going to be in cryo-sleep for the entire journey. I wasn’t needed.” The flood of words tumbled out with reckless abandon and then stopped like crashing into a wall like a bike going eighty. You didn’t think you would go through with it otherwise. Inner voices or a sense of decorum threatened to overtake you.

And yet, even though you got to the end of your rant, red-faced and breathless, you were knocked more off-balance by Mark’s question. “How many times did you die?”

“What?”

His eyes were trained on you. “How many times did you die?”

“I don’t remember, maybe thirty?”

“So, you died thirty times for yourself?”

Indignation sparked within your heart. “No, I did it for the ship,” you stated bluntly, “the crew and the colonists.” You weren’t certain what his point was, but if you had to use your authority-voice on him, you were going to.

“Repeat that for me.”

“I did it for…”

That was his point, then. Your shoulders relaxed, though you didn’t notice that you’d raised them, and your eyebrows unfurrowed. In return, Mark’s smile brightened, like he’d caught the canary. Caught you, more like.

You stared deadpan down at him but brought a hand up to card through his hair. Without his beret, it was looser, more befitting of him as a person instead of the head engineer. The corners of his mouth perked up even more. “See, I don’t like it when you use my own tactics on me.”

His laugh reverberated through your own bones, especially when he dropped his head to your collarbone. It wasn’t awkward, in fact, you were soon chuckling along with him at his happiness more than your joke – it felt natural, but you were still aware that this was the closest you had ever been. Relaxed into the beanbag the two of you now shared, trying to avoid knocking over your flutes of champagne, practically cradling each other in your arms. If the wormhole had been like this, maybe you would have appreciated it more.

“Someone who doesn’t deserve to be captain would have left the ship to explode and taken an emergency pod back to the nearest planet.” His speech, like his trailing off giggles, shook your muscles as sparks of electricity. “They wouldn’t have died for them, and you did. You are their captain.”

Hesitation. You saw it as bright at the sun of your new home in the sky. You saw it rise in Mark’s eyes, you saw it crescendo, and you saw it dip into the horizon.

“You’re my captain.”

Whatever thought ran through his mind, it was gone by the time he pushed through the final inch between you, leaving barely a breath in the interim. You could feel the puffs of hot air bat against your jaw, nose and lips. The role he gave you meant more than the legislation, the rule, the empty title. Now, it was trust. Him in you, and you in him.

For a moment, you thought he might bridge the gap, but his mouth opened before anything could progress. That didn’t mean either of your minds had strayed from the idea. He whispered under his breath, as if it would escape the room had he spoken any louder, “Do you want to have dinner tomorrow night?”

“As in a date?”

“Yeah. A date.”

Mark could feel his heart beating faster. He could have denied it and represented it something like the scenario you were in now. There was a part of him that thought he should have; it shied away from the very possibility of rejection and cowered in the clasp of regulations and human resources. But he had already taken the leap, the words hovering in the air. It would be a proper date – with candles and music and something better to eat than soup in a Styrofoam bowl. You’d talk about whatever came to mind, plans for the future instead of the past, and you’d share a bottle of wine as you spoke. The flicker of flame would highlight you from below and he would see exactly what he was describing in your eyes. His future. If the night went well, you’d clear the table together, strangely domestic against the memories of the journey over, and then, with the candlelight still dancing on the table before the fire was snuffed out, he hoped to share a kiss together. He could almost feel it already.

While his imagination was a thing to behold, it could not take credit for that sensation, but while Mark was so lost in his prospects, he failed to notice that the future was coming to pass. Or some of it, anyway.

You weren’t sitting at a table, a glass of wine and wax dripping onto the table; you were closer than before, with your lips pressed against his and your eyes closed.

Mark was knocked breathless. The sensation was nothing he could have predicted; the pressure was soft, gentle, like a silk ribbon, but the texture exposed how you would bite the same places when you were worried. Worried? What reason did you have to be worried? You were the greatest captain he had ever heard of, let alone known. He wanted to tell you just that, but he was preoccupied, for obvious reasons, with pushing you down against the hill of the beanbag. Maybe he was bias – your groan reverberated through his skin – but he didn’t really have a choice – your fingertips skimmed across his hair – and he was sure that you were objectively the best anyway – your teeth grazed over his lips – so it didn’t really matter. He brought one of his own hands to hover over your jaw, barely making contact until a particular hum had him brushing his thumb across your cheek. You leaned into it, as if it were a military ration, and he supposed it must have felt like that. Roles like yours didn’t tend to come with company.

Inwardly, he pledged that he would never let you feel alone again.

Outwardly, in an ill-fated scuffle to reposition himself, a dull thunk and something spilling onto the floor caused the two of you to slowly, begrudgingly, part. A few puffs of air settled between you as you turned to see Mark’s semi-full glass that had fallen over.

With a laugh, you settled your head against Mark’s shoulder, both to stabilize yourself and spare him the embarrassment of a steadily reddening face.

“So, that date tomorrow?” Despite the last five minutes, Mark couldn’t help but be shaky in asking. Either that, or it was aftereffects of his heart going 210 instead of the normal 60 beats per minute.

“As long as,” you whispered before grabbing your own champagne for another sip, “we get to find a large body of water tomorrow.”

“That sounds a lot like an ocean, Cap.”

“Well, if you insist, we can find an ocean.”

With your final poke at his expense, enough to wave away the remaining fog of tension no matter the nature, you downed the last of your champagne and settled further into your beanbag. For once, you didn’t regret taking a break, and you were sure you would need another breather after the excavation the following day.

“It’s my project, it has my name signed on the documents.”

So far, the day had proven successful. Three more biomes were scouted out, one of them being a potentially perfect site for farming, and the first real town had been built. At the beginning, it had looked like one of those places built to test nuclear weapons – but then, just two hours ago, they had moved the first colonists into their houses. You had been there to greet them, shake their hands and pass them the keys, but you had to leave before they could get fully settled. Besides, that was Celci’s job. The whole transfer from cryo operation was under her jurisdiction.

However, now that the residents were all making beds and organizing cupboards, Mark had to deal with her. And by deal with her, he meant argue, because there wasn’t another way the situation could ever turn out.

Presently, the pair were standing outside a section of the colony, Mark’s section, with blueprints in hands and scowls on faces. A slap against the paper was followed by Celci’s gesture towards the energy source.

“That means you were the one who started to involve cryo-tech, and that means I need to have some input.”

Mark scoffed, even though he knew full well that she was, technically, just barely, if you looked at it a certain way, correct. Just the word cold was her full job description, but he assumed he would get away with it if she were busy with other things. How wrong he was. Ever the eye for detail, Celci had searched through all the project applications, filtering for anything below 30 degrees, and then promptly set up meetings with all the leads. She wasn’t aware that it was Mark heading this one until she walked up the concrete path. Mark wasn’t aware that it was Celci he was meeting with until he heard her groan.

Go figure, they had made no progress.

“You know, I would love to prove you wrong on this,” Mark hissed, “but, unlike you, I can’t spend all day arguing about this.”

Was it backhanded to boast about your date and use it to get away from an argument, which he totally wasn’t losing, in one sentence? Probably. Was he doing it anyway? Yes.

However, Celci wasn’t one to give up that easily. Mark barely got two steps backwards before she took one toward him in return. “No, you know I’m right, so you’re running away.”

“Actually, I have a date tonight.” The pride and amazement took over the scowl on his face. For a moment, he forgot he was talking to someone and that he wasn’t just staring into his mirror, trying to convince himself it wasn’t a dream while he picked out an outfit.

“Who with? Your Roomba?”

In any other situation, he would have leaned into the mockery, tried harder to think of a better comeback, but the truth worked well enough. With a grin, Mark corrected, “The Captain.”

A flurry of emotions danced over Celci’s face that Mark was so glad he was able to see. He didn’t think he’d ever seen her confused before, much less shocked, though there were plenty of times she looked at him with endless doubt. They rolled over and over like a broken projector before she finally landed on a stranger expression – bemusement.

“Finally.”

It was his turn to look confused.

She tutted and looked him dead in the eye. “You can’t think that nobody’s seen the love-sick puppy look you give them when they’re nearby.”

The splutter was hard to contain, despite it being very obviously undignified, but it was harder to get back on his feet. So many questions swirled around his mind, most of them trying to preserve whatever image he thought he presented, but he came up blank. It was, annoyingly, likely that she was once again right. But it wasn’t his fault, not when you were, well, you. Of course, he wouldn’t call it love-sick, though that didn’t stop it from being accurate.

Mark’s lack of response was enough for Celci to know she’d caught him red-handed. Just typical. With the upper hand, she continued, “But I happen to know that your dinner isn’t until seven, so that gives us five hours for you to see reason.” He tried to protest, opening his mouth to ask how she actually found that information out, before she held up a hand. “Or, what, does it take that long to get your hair like that?”

Inwardly, Mark cursed her. He lost his way out of the conversation, and, in doing so, was welcomed by the colony’s rumor mill. What a prize. At least things weren’t spun out of proportion, but he would have preferred the date to be private at first. He could only hope that the crew had enough sense to leave them alone for the night.

Right now, however, he still had to prove to Celci that he didn’t need her supervision.

“I just don’t understand why you want to get involved with this!” he groaned.

“Because it’s a safety issue if I don’t.”

“It’s not gonna explode.”

“You’ll find a way.”

“I’m not doing anything outside of regulations, it—”

A crackle. Something like a fire burning. His heart rate piped up. Celci started to spin, but Mark was quick to grab at his belt. The walkie-talkie was stirring from its sleep in one of the pouches. He preferred the tech they’d designed for the mission, but he wouldn’t deny you your pieces of Earth. Plus, the stickers were always a bonus.

He drew Celci’s attention as he pressed the button down. Silently, he waved away her own smug grin – the one that told him he looked exactly like a love-sick puppy.

“Hey, Cap, everything alright?”

You never stuck with the whole over and out thing. It was the compromise given they had replaced it with a light to show when the other side’s button was pressed down. To Mark, it made more sense and improved efficiency. What was concerning, though, was that the light was on, red and blazing, but you weren’t talking.

He pressed it closer to his ear.

Just breathing.

“Cap? Captain, are you okay?”

He was struggling to keep his smile.

Especially when your voice whispered through the machine, gravelly and choked, as if there were hands wrapped around your neck.

“Hey, Mark.”

“Captain.”

“I’m, uh—” You were broken apart by a cough, “—prob’ly gonna be late to dinner—” Another cough, “—tonight.”

It sounded like your lungs were being ripped at the tubes and emptied. Mark’s heart felt like it was shattering.

“Where are you?”

Radio silence. The shards cracked further and refracted the light into searing flames through his veins. Just as sharp, he brought his gaze up to Celci.

“Where is the Captain right now?”

“Didn’t make a copy of their schedule?”

It was meant to be banter, a little poke at their relationship, something to get a deadpan look and an eye roll.

Mark looked more scared than she had ever seen him.

“Third excavation site. North.”

And, at the final word, he was gone, sprinting down the concrete path. The wind carried him in subtle support while some of the crew watched the storm rush past them. They had no clue what was happening, but neither did Mark. He only knew that he had to get to you, no matter what. He had to be there for you.

The walkie felt like it was burning in his grip. An omen and a promise at the same time. He pulled it to his mouth, as though just hearing his voice clearer would let him understand everything. “Cap, Cap, come on, what happened?”

Nothing. Silence outside of his body, which itself sounded like a zoo set loose. It was the eeriness of a broken submarine. He could hear the crunching of the water against the sides as it threatened to ball the metal up with the ease of a wad of paper, but there was still a dismal quiet in the meantime.

“Captain!”

And he couldn’t do a damn thing to help.

Some of the pressure released when he heard your whisper, “Cave in.” It was decorated with crackles and pops, but he heard it crystal clear, every single one of your words its own speech. “Do-don’t come, Mark, don’t.”

His footsteps picked up impossibly faster to match his heart rate.

“I swear, I will,” you choked for a second before you were saved with a cough, “I will pull rank on you.”

“You can do that later. When you’re not crushed under rocks. You can do it at dinner.”

“Mark, I’m not…”

“Yes, you are!”

He swept round a corner. The danger signs for the excavation site came into view. Just a little longer. He didn’t know if you had a little longer. Your breathing was already ragged when you called, and it was getting worse. He knew he should have been pouring all of his energy into getting to you – for once, he admitted it would be better for him to shut up and focus – but he couldn’t handle the silence.

“Okay, okay, pull rank on me,” he pleaded, “just keep talking. Please.” You yielded to his request with a smile that he couldn’t see. “You named the colony yet?” His job. Technically, it was supposed to be the captain who named the colony, but you had given that duty to him. You’d argued that he was the one to choose the planet, so he should have been the one to name it. Just the thought of it made him sick to his stomach. It was too early for delegation, you didn’t need to do it yet, and there would be no reason to later because you would be alive and well. You’d do your job and he’d do his. There would be no exchange because a role couldn’t be filled.

But the declaration was fueled by doubt even in his own mind.

“No, I was waiting for you,” Mark answered.

“You should name it.”

“I’m waiting for you.”

Another cough, as if your own body was working to supply your point. “Can’t wait forever.”

“I won’t be.”

The lack of response stirred something horrible in his gut when he slid into the entrance to the rock site. He pushed past the gates and tape, snagged protective gear from its place hanging off the fence, and immediately rushed to the directors. They were shambling about with checklists in hand and smiles on faces. Mark wanted to laugh, cry, freeze still in his boots. Everything looked so optimistic. This was advancement for a colony of a size like this.

Days later, when the clock would strike midnight and Mark would lay in his bed with the sheets askew and pillows scattered, he wouldn’t remember what he said to the workers he spoke to. Whether he interacted with them, or they interacted with him, it didn’t matter. His words were lost to him in the haze of overwhelming urgency and underwhelming panic. Medics arrived and excavators were called over. He only knew that because a few of them went in with him to the mouth of the cave – if some kind of legal body was contacted, he wasn’t aware of it because they never showed in front of him, and they weren’t helping him find you.

One detail he did recognize though was the tug at the walkie from one of the directors that caused Mark to pull back like a feral cat. They seemingly decided not to risk it, and simply slipped another walkie in his belt. Of course, you’d given the rest of the crew those things, instead of the highly modernized tech that would have stopped this entire thing from happening in the first place – but he couldn’t be mad at you. It wouldn’t have been you otherwise.

They backed off quickly when they were done, and he held the original close to his chest until he was well within the tomb- not tomb, cave. A normal cave.

He had to find you.

The team he entered with was small. You always liked close-knit things, he supposed that was why you went in by yourself. Something about comradery. You were too old-fashioned for your own good.

He would tell you that at dinner, give you a light smack on the wrist and a kiss on the cheek.

“Mark, are you still there?” Your voice through the walkie reminded him of where he was. Where you were. You sounded terrible, considerably worse than last you spoke, but that was to be expected.

Focus.

“Of course. I’m not leaving.”

“Thank you."

His heart would have melted had he not been so hyped up on the rush of adrenaline and intangible fear.

“Can you describe what you can see?”

“Lotta rocks.” Your laugh turned into a gravelly groan. “I see a light.”

“Don’t go towards it.”

“I don’t have much choice.” Mark was blissfully unaware of your joke because he was also blissfully unaware that your legs had been mangled by rocks splitting apart your bones and muscles, pulverized like the aftermath of an old blender fed with sticks and banana. You were glad he was.

He was able to, instead, drop down off a ledge deeper into the cave, which was very quickly becoming more of a cavern. It had the distinct feeling of being trapped in an ant hill, with some spaces widening and then others trailing off into sharp points. Wherever you were, getting out would be a problem, too, but seeing a light meant that you were either incredibly deep or just by the surface. He was hoping for the latter.

The next drop down was not promising.

Neither was the walkie startling to life again with your voice. “You know,” you croaked, “when we were in the wormhole, I didn’t think it would end like this.”

“It’s not ending like this.”

You let the words sink into metal grating of the machine before you spoke again, “I thought I’d be shot in that noir place or stay frozen in a cryo-chamber for centuries, I didn’t think I’d just be, uh, crushed.”

The way you phrased it was so inelegant that Mark nearly snorted. However, the reality didn’t let it breach neo-daedism territory.

“Seems a bit boring, in comparison.” He couldn’t tell whether you were mumbling for comedic effect, or your lungs were giving up on you. Uncertainty impaled him like a spear through the chest.

Swallowing, he sighed. “But at least it’s not in the wormhole.”

“At least it’s not in the wormhole.”

It felt too much like a goodbye. A final salute to the ship that sailed off into the distance. Firing the arrow onto the raft. It shouldn’t have given him hope.

But it did; the cavern was bathed with the sunshine from a hole in the ceiling, and the light on the walkie was off.

It didn’t take long to spot you, upper half sticking out from the rubble of a dozen large boulders and even more smaller rocks dusting your back. Frantically, he rushed to your side, barely dodging standing on the discarded walkie a few feet in front of you. You held another to your cheek. Mark wished he had more time to tease you about keeping a whole communicator just for him, then you’d tease him about his own, and then you’d win the argument when he decided to just look at you all alive and active and not steadily dying in a cave. He did not have more time.

He hooked the walkie for the director out of his belt and called for assistance, giving a description of the route he took and then turning it off to pay attention to you.

Your grin was bright but shaky. “You come here often?”

“Captain…”

“Sorry, bad timing.”

“No, perfect timing.” The chuckle that dripped out from his mouth was tainted by tears brimming in his eyes. He took your hand and tried to ignore how cold it already was. If he had come sooner, would you have more of a chance? Would you have survived? Oh, but you were going to survive anyway, you had to. You were the captain. You were his captain.

“Mark, don’t- don’t get yourself worked up.”

“Or what?”

“Oh, you know.”

He wanted to beg for you to continue the joke. His grip tightened as he brought your hand to his lips. He held it there, waiting, not breathing a single puff of air. The fear of disturbing the scene and being the little bit of wind that a rock needed to jut further into your back was buried deep in his bones.

“Please, just hold on.”

“Mark…”

No.

“Mark, I can’t.”

No, no, no, no.

“I’m sorry.”

Was he saying words?

“They’ll be fine.”

Just a little longer.

“Mark, look… look around, we’ve made it this far, haven’t we?”

His mouth was moving, he was sure of it, but the crackle of the walkie filled his ears in place of his own words.

“You built the ship, you hired the crew, you fixed the warp-core.”

The warp-core. He had done it once before. What’s to say he couldn’t do it again?

“No.”

All that pain, all those deaths, he would do it again.

“Uh-uh. Not this time.”

He would do it for you.

“We got off on chance, you’re not trying that again, Mark, I can’t—”

If you would just let him, he could get you back. He didn’t understand why you were resisting. It would be so easy. You would get to live and lead the colony and be the captain that you always wanted to be.

But he couldn’t deny that it was a lot of woulds. And he couldn’t go through with it without your support. The tears in your eyes were not from pain but from fear, and not even for yourself. You were scared for him. Your head engineer.

“I’m not losing you—” Mark snapped back to the present, “—And, yeah, I know how ironic that is.”

It was ironic, wasn’t it? Not only this situation, but that the two of you, as a pair, had gone through so much together, only to get separated when things had finally calmed down. It was as though you had grown so used to danger that you couldn’t survive without it. Domesticity was not for you, nor was it for Mark. In this lifetime, you would never get a break. And that was one of the two certainties he found.

“So, hey, just- just give me this. Please?”

The other certainty?

“I love you.”

Mark kneeled on the dusty ground of the cave with your hand in his. It was just as cold as the air around you, your breath visible as you sighed a single, “I-…” that trailed off before you could get anything out. The words died in your lungs as your eyes dropped shut.

Mark’s sobs echoed throughout your tomb.

[Did you know this started out as straight fluff? Also, I will forever be scared of the leviathan from Subnautica]

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theknightmarket · 2 months

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Something something Actor being the King in Yellow and Wilford being Ln’eta and Dark being Nyanlathotep from that Sucker for Love game.

My mind is crumbling.

#theknightmarket #fanfiction #markiplier egos #markiplier egos x reader #writing #markiplier #one shots #x reader #actor mark #darkiplier #wilford warfstache #sucker for love #that Cthulhu game

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theknightmarket · 2 months

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I didn’t even realise this, but What Do You Get Out of This has reached over 150 notes, so??? Thank you so much??? I’m so surprised that it’s surpassed my first Damien fic, but I’m even more surprised that people are still looking at it! Again, I’m so glad people have enjoyed it, so thanks, everyone, for reading <3

#theknightmarket #rambling #fanfiction #markiplier egos #writing #darkiplier #why is he so popular #I feel bad for Damien

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theknightmarket · 2 months

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"I've got your back."

In which an apocalypse survivor gets more than first-hand experience. TW: cursing, violence, gore Pages: 19 - Words: 7,500

[Requests: OPEN]

The issue with Monster Gulch was that it was never the same. The coffeehouse might have been infested with cannibalistic goblins but the bank down the street played greenhouse to venomous plants. You couldn’t go three steps forward without falling down a sink hole but take three steps back and you’d be launched miles into the air like you’d triggered a springboard. If it weren’t for lives being at stake, it might have made the entire experience the closest to fun you could get in an apocalypse – but, there were lives at stake, so it only made learning how to survive harder. Especially if you were on a short time scale.

Like, for example, two minutes until you were mauled by the werewolf hot on your heels and used as a toothpick after your flesh got caught in its teeth.

Mark lamented how accurate that example was.

Everything about his situation, he lamented. Their lack of food, their broken shelter, the fact that he had become friends with a sparkly vampire. He lamented that last one the most, even if it didn’t matter when he was being chased along a river. He should’ve stayed in the forest, more chance for him to lose the beast, but the place the group had pitched up at was unfamiliar to him, so following running water was his best bet at finding them again, especially at night.

Why they didn’t just stay at that murderer’s cabin, Mark had no clue – oh, but wait, he did. That sparkly vampire. His biggest problem was his maintained moral compass that told him it was wrong to kill the guy, but it was totally fine to raid his home for supplies and then set off into the distance. And then where did he lead them?! Only to a werewolf’s ‘summer home’ that took the entire day to make it to, so who should greet them at the door but that exact goddamn werewolf. Snarling, drooling, just waiting to pounce, and pounce he did, right onto the sparkly vampire. And because he was such a hero, and Dodger forced him to, he got the werewolf’s attention and drew it away from the others.

The only thought that kept Mark pushing his legs forward was the reminder that Enis owed him, and he had to be alive to collect his debt.

Fright was draining out of him, allowing for a more logical sense to return. The huffing of the monster was gradually fading from his mind, granting him a little peace that he had to refuse for the moment. Dodger had yelled about a tall tree before Mark got too far from her, and that was where he was heading. Whether they made it or not, he wasn’t certain, but it was the only place he could think of that had a chance of keeping him safe, and out of the jaws of a werewolf.

A splash of his boots in water. A rustle of leaves in the wind. A panting of his own breath. A yowl—

What?

Mark slid to a stop in some mud. Not smart, but his confusion overrode his survival instincts. And that noise had been far away, further than he thought the werewolf should have been. Had it lagged behind? He didn’t think he was that fast, but adrenaline did crazy things sometimes. He twisted on his heel though made sure to take trepidatious steps backwards still.

Another yowl. Now out of the haze of a sprint, he could pinpoint the reason.

The thing was in pain.

Along the path of boot marks from where he had come, Mark saw, distantly, a heaving clump of a creature, hunched over something nestled in between twigs and leaves.

His steps flipped direction.

A voice in his brain yelled at him to stop, begged for him to go back and just forget all about the werewolf. He’d done it to that maniac in the cabin, he’d nearly done it to Enis. But it wasn’t sympathy that forced his feet forward. It was pure, dumb, human curiosity. That monster had been huge, at one point, it had been seconds away from tearing him in half with claws sharpened to a knife’s edge. Nothing small could stop its chase. So, what was it? And, more importantly, was it a danger to him?

He made sure to go slowly, having to reel in his interest when he started to pick up speed, but he made it within six feet to get a good look.

The teeth of a bear trap were sunk into the werewolf’s leg, another hung off its shoulder, and a third, more damaged, was thrown to a tree with half of its tail in its jaw. Blood pooled into the dirt and the flash of bone made it obvious it wouldn’t survive the night, if not from shock, then from a bigger fish finding it.

Mark took a step closer.

It wasn’t moving – not that it appeared able to with the trap nearly splitting its leg at the knee – but its eyes spiraled in the sockets. A timid growl echoed from the cave of its throat, and from the difference between this one and its first, he was sure its bark was bigger than its bite.

“Huh.”

They certainly weren’t traps for game. Anything that big would be mutated or deadly to eat anyway. No, these were supposed to catch and kill the monsters that lurked around every corner. Take them down quick, easy, and without forcing the owner to get their own hands dirty. They were defensive. That begged the question, then, what was it defending?

“Throw out your weapons and put your hands behind your back.”

Mark wished that he came to conclusions quicker. It wasn’t a talent he’d honed recently, and it was taking a toll on his survival, it seemed.

Slowly, he removed the machete from his belt, not risking turning around to see who had a knife against his throat. Nothing else mattered besides that aspect of their character because it decided how this encounter would turn out, and in whose favor. Even swallowing with his rising heart race was turning the tide against him.

When he had his weapon out of the sheath and chucked to the ground, he felt his attacker sigh against the nape of his neck. Relief, annoyance, exhaustion? He couldn’t tell.

“That all you got?”

“Yep.”

“Good.”

The chill of the sharp edge was removed from his throat, the hand going with it, and Mark thought he could breathe freely until a grip tightened around both of his wrists. Great, a kidnapping. Just what he needed. Enis’ debt was growing by the second.

“We could play cops and robbers, and I could pretend to read you your rights, but how ‘bout we just skip that part and jump straight to—” a rope strangled his blood flow through to his hands, “—what the hell are you doing in my neck of the woods?”

Still facing the dying werewolf, Mark barely noticed the hand that snatched his machete from where it laid but notice it, he did. Cutting the ropes was a no-go, then, though getting that knife was still an option, albeit incredibly dangerous and stupid.

“I’m just trying to get home,” he answered, trying to keep his voice as neutral as possible.

“Hmm, and where’s home?”

He wracked his brain for what Dodger had said. It had been hazy before but, under the threat of a stranger with a weapon-advantage, he was coming up blank.

Poor move on his part.

His feet were kicked out from under him, he fell forward, headed straight for the still-breathing, still-deadly werewolf’s maw. Those glistening teeth got closer and closer, the thing’s paw twitched, one of its last breaths came out as an eager growl. Milliseconds passed and he was inches away from its reach.

Two hands held him like a machine gun, one restraining him at the back of his jacket and the other at his ropes. Eye to eye with the werewolf, he could see the desperation for him to get just that much closer, so it could bite some part of him in revenge.

“An answer,” the voice demanded behind him.

Mark spluttered, feeling the same effect in his heart, but he managed to choke out, “Tree- a tall tree, I don’t know!”

He waited for a reaction. Such a vague response was sure to set you off if only his silence had warranted a threat. It was just a matter of how he was going to be offed – let him drop and the werewolf take a bite out of his face, or use that knife, or even his own machete, to slice his throat.

But you did neither. He was back on his feet after a moment of silent deliberation, his ropes not gone but relaxed somewhat, and his heart rate gradually coming to a healthier pace.

“I know what you’re talking about.”

“You do?”

Mark didn’t know what he was talking about, so he was glad someone did, but that still begged the question of how.

“A lot of people use it as a checkpoint. You won’t wanna stay too long there, gangs tend to gather at dawn.”

A tug at his ropes and he was walking away from the werewolf. A limp gaze followed him as he moved, but the rise and fall of its chest stopped by the time he was a few feet away.

It was dead. And he was alive. Thanks to the person who was now, presumably, kidnapping him.

He didn’t know how to feel about this scenario. On one hand, he was completely defenseless, worse than defenseless, he was bound by his hands and forced to walk backwards into an unfamiliar wilderness by a stranger. On the other hand, he was not werewolf food, and he’d take being a prisoner over dying any day.

So, a plan; he had no clue whose prisoner he was, that was the first item on his list. First, figure out who was dragging him in such an awkward position – second, get out of the rope binding his wrists – third, get to that tall tree.

None of those sounded any easier than the rest.

You would admit that you didn’t exactly know what you were doing. Not out loud, of course, lest your prisoner get any doubts about how dangerous you could be, but you would admit it to yourself. Finding this guy had been a stroke of, well, something. Luck or misfortune, you didn’t know, but it was chance. You hadn’t seen a living person in months, and, if you needed evidence that your social skills had massively deteriorated, your attacking and then disarming of the first person you came across would be a good example.

What were you supposed to do in this situation? You knew where you were taking him, but could you talk to him, or did you have to stay a silent antagonist? You were a survivor. You knew how to start a fire, dress a wound, poach a boar. You didn’t know how to interact with people. It was making your heartbeat faster than being chased by a carnivorous plant.

“Hey,” you started, immediately regretting your choice to pipe up but forcing yourself to continue, “what happened with that werewolf?”

You couldn’t see the guy’s face, but you felt his hands stiffen. Weird sensation but it gave you an idea of what went down.

“It, uh, it jumped my friends and I, and I distracted it to buy them time. Chased me all the way to that trap, hell, through it. I had to go back to see why it stopped, but I’m damn glad it did.”

“Friends?”

The tension in his body rose to match that of the rope within seconds. “Yeah,” was the tepid response you received.

“Did they survive?”

He slowed, ever so slightly, before he caught back up again. He hadn’t thought about that.

“I hope so,” he admitted, then sighed, “I mean, one of them I couldn’t care less about, but I wouldn’t want to have run all this way just to have to dig a grave when I get back.”

You knew it to be tiring work, so you understood the sentiment, nodding slight enough that you weren’t sure he noticed. The conversation waned with your silence, the rustle of leaves filling the gap it left behind. There weren’t many birds left, if there were birds at all, and you missed the song that you used to try and learn when you were bored. You had gotten so close, too, but something was missing, something you never found.

At least you had cicadas. They made some noise, made sure you didn’t go crazy, and helped to warn you of danger when they stopped.

The wind rushing through the trees was louder in their absence.

“Shit,” you whispered. Normally, that would have been to yourself, but now you had another body with you. Another body that you needed to think about. Your eyes followed the path from your hand to his, along the rope that tied his arms behind his back. Your ears clocked the distant rumble along the trail you had been taking, like the warning of an active volcano.

“Shit.”

You couldn’t risk him running into the danger. It would draw attention to you, and you’d lose a rope – but you couldn’t just tell him not to move. You’d bound the guy; you didn’t present yourself as particularly trustworthy.

With a lack of options and the pebbles on the ground bouncing up and down, you pulled the machete from your belt loop and slit the rope in half before shoving him into the brush. You jumped in after him just as the gray fur of deer rounded the corner.

One thing about your new companion was that he knew when to shut up and stay still. All the better for you. You could focus on counting the pairs of hooves you saw go by your little patch of shrubbery to get over the pulsing of your heart and brain.

Four. Eight. Twelve, sixteen. Twenty.

They swept right past you. Five of them gone.

“What—” You slapped a hand over his mouth. You would have applauded your aim, especially under the shadow of shrubbery in the light of a barely rising sun, had you not been preoccupied with not dying, either from the heartache or the slower of the pack that was newly sprinting along the path.

Twenty-four, twenty-eight… thirty-two.

Cautiously, you retracted your hands and placed it on your knife’s handle. Eight deer was a normal count, but stragglers weren’t unheard of. So, you waited. And waited. Sticks and stones dug into your knees, the bend of your toes made the ends go numb. You waited a few more seconds.

It was when the cicadas picked up again, humming in the high pitch of an alarmed sensor, that you stood from your position.

“Think that’s all of them.”

Brushing your hands off on your legs, you turned to pull up the guy who’d almost got you both killed, only to find him already on his feet, rubbing at his wrists and staring at you.

There wasn’t a deer behind you, was there?

A quick glance over your shoulder revealed just the wilderness, the same as the ones you’d dove into. If he had any reservations about it, you were sure he’d have already been dead long before you forced him in.

“Do you want to keep going, or…?” you asked, almost huffing at his quietness. You’d already admitted you weren’t great at the whole socializing thing anymore, but you were above staring at somebody after they spoke to you.

You almost pulled at the rope to get him moving, but it appeared you’d used all of your perception on that stampede. Both his and your own hands were free. You glanced down just to make sure, and the confirmation made you swallow. The good news was that he didn’t have a weapon, but the bad news was that you’d killed plenty of things with your bare hands, and he didn’t look like such a pacifist himself.

Like a manual cart on the tracks, your chests moved in and out in unison, and, when your eyes caught, neither of you risked looking away. You offered the next move to him, and vice versa, which put you in a rough position.

You didn’t know this man. A stranger stood in front of you, heaving and painfully aware of the situation, whose hands were completely free from your rope.

You wished he were a wild animal, rabid and immoral and insentient. Looking into his eyes and seeing humanity made it harder for you to decide what to do. The skills you’d honed through years of trial and error were thrown fifty feet away when you were against something you couldn’t convince yourself didn’t feel. You wouldn’t be putting it out of its misery – him out of his misery. You’d be in the wrong for killing an innocent person as innocent as possible in an apocalypse.

The side that you had to take was obvious. You couldn’t bet on what way he would lean in this moral crisis, and the root of fear, for once, wrapped around your heart and squeezed.

The hum of the cicadas crescendoed.

He nodded, you nodded, and you pulled the both of you back onto the path, the dirt trodden down like a game of whack-a-mole.

Mark felt like he was going to throw up or pass out or both. What was he doing? What stupid spirit of empathy possessed him to follow along with the person who kidnapped him? And all because they said that they knew what he was talking about. A checkpoint. Sure. How was he supposed to know you weren’t just leading him on a wild goose chase while you thought up the best ways to cook him? Oh, but it would be his fault, because he didn’t take the shot when he should have.

His mind stilled, as if he’d thrown a bridge over the flow of his thoughts.

‘The shot’. He didn’t know if he meant running or the worse option – he didn’t know if he was capable of killing you point blank after you’d saved him from a stampede of infected deer. He glanced at you out of the corner of his eye, now walking by your side instead of towed behind. You looked competent. You’d made it this far, of course, you had to be. But it was weird. Something was off.

You lacked… the thing, that a lot of the other survivors had. Dodger, that hellhound guy, himself, they had all dropping something into the pit of Monster Gulch that they never got back. It was the norm, at this point, to have the hallowed look of veterans in the eye of a scavenger. Even after they had been carved out of the skull of some unfortunate soul, that gleam was seared onto the retina, like a vile brand.

It wasn’t that the signs weren’t there. You’d have to have been trapped in a tower for the last thirty years to be completely free of it. Instead, as Mark tilted his head to get a better look, he saw that it was a scar that had healed over. The flesh had hardened into a streak, but it wasn’t some weeping wound anymore. Whatever happened to you, you were free of it.

“Is there a reason why you’re staring at me?”

Mark snapped to attention, military in his stance for just a second as he realized he was caught, before he reverted to his original stance, minus the apparent gawking.

“No- no, I was just…” he struggled to spit out an excuse. He couldn’t say that he was trying to figure out what, or wasn’t, wrong with you; you might have just changed your mind about the whole killing him thing. In the end, he swallowed and asked the first thing that came to his mind. “Do you have a group?”

You raised an eyebrow, seeming well-aware that it wasn’t the main thing on his mind, but you answered anyway, “Nope.”

That surprised Mark in turn. “Really?”

Shrugging, you kept your eyes on the path forward. “I’ve been with people before but going out alone has been better in the long run.”

“What’s that thing people used to say,” he paused and then snapped his fingers, “’hell is other people’, right?”

Your light chuckle spread throughout the forest, bouncing off the leaves and dirt and wood, reflecting back onto your pair. Mark found that, despite the threat it posed, he didn’t mind. There was probably some psychology behind the way that it made the sides of his own lips quirk up, something about pack mentality, and not just that he preferred your laughter to the cold command you’d sported a mere hour before. In the back of his mind, he was only glad that he remembered a professor’s lecture on Jean-Paul Sartre.

When your chuckles died down, beckoning in the sounds of the forest once more, you hummed in amusement. “I don’t know,” you muttered, “it’s not that I hated working in a group. I think… I think it’s effective if you trust the people who you’re with, you’re not just with them out of necessity, because, if you are, then nothing’s stopping them from just turning on you for their own gain.”

He supposed that made sense. Mark had been with Dodger for a couple years now, and Enis, well, he wouldn’t admit aloud that he was growing on him. He didn’t really have a use, so it couldn’t have been out of necessity, at least. But your comment brought him more questions than answers, and also swapped out that cheery mood for a more somber tone. He didn’t want to add to it, no matter how much he wanted to delve into your backstory, so he kept his mouth shut and continued the steady march forward.

Or, he’d planned to, until you said, “You can ask, if you want to.”

And that was all the go-ahead he needed. Mark had spent so much time hyped up on adrenaline, the need to survive, that just having the ability to slow down let loose a flood of thoughts – all of them questions that he needed answers to.

“Who were you with before?”

“A larger group. Sixteen, seventeen people, maybe? I didn’t know a lot of them personally, but they preferred it that way. You know how businesses used to say they’re like a family when they really just want them to not press charges? It was like that.” As you spoke, Mark noticed your hand shifting to your belt and running over the hilt of your knife. “Except three of them were my actual family. My parents and a cousin, we all ended up in Monster Gulch together, trying to survive on our own, before we found that group. My father jumped at an opportunity to be a part of a community. Said it would take a weight off our shoulders—” a laugh strangled your story, “—so we threw our lot in with them. And it was good, for a couple months. Made a few acquaintances, learned some new skills. One of them taught me how to fish.”

Your speech was slowing down, breaks becoming more frequent and occupied by the sound of the forest. Mark could tell where this was heading, if not from your downcast expression taking hold, then because it was the way it always headed.

Casting a shallow look down the next path, you continued, “My cousin caught something. It wasn’t even anything serious, it was just the flu. But that was enough to put them out of commission, and that was enough to get them kicked out of the group altogether. They said they weren’t gonna help someone who didn’t contribute, so they could find their own food.”

Your grip on your knife tightened.

“My family went with my cousin, of course, we did. Food was scarce enough; they’d get nowhere coughing and wheezing around the animals. We couldn’t leave them. We would stay by their side until they got better, and we’d tough it out.”

But that didn’t happen. Mark knew that didn’t happen. Your grip was so tight he thought you might pull it out and stab the closest thing out of anger. He was surprised you hadn’t done so already, but even with that thought, he couldn’t and didn’t fight the urge to lay a reassuring hand on your shoulder. Squeezing, he hoped you’d get the message.

The slight grin you shot back at him was worth the risk, and more so when you kept speaking.

“A week went by, and they got worse. Pneumonia, I would bet. But they didn’t…” you sighed and ran a hand through your hair, “they didn’t die from that. They kept fighting because they were a fighter, and a spiteful bastard, and they refused to go down that easy. We were all so proud of them, that we took them out into the forest to forage, tried to find berries for a celebration.”

You took a deep breath.

“Hellhounds ripped them to shreds. All of them.”

Tears pricked at the corners of your eyes, and minds of their own, they trailed down your cheeks. Mark didn’t think you were aware of it, but he didn’t think you were aware of everything. You stared blankly at the air before you, ignoring the path you walked or the trees you were heading for. He had never been in this position for – distant memories of sentimentality were long chased away by adrenaline flushing his system – so he decided to simply let you talk. You’d been doing a good job of it so far, and he was more than ready to be extra attentive to the surroundings. If it let you get all of it out, he would walk backwards again to cover your backs.

“Those traps you ran into—” You seemed to take a hard left in conversation, but Mark didn’t interrupt you, “—I only had a few, so I spread them around the burial site. I didn’t want anything getting in to dig them up. I was just coming back from checking on them when you ran by, followed by that mangy mutt.”

The little joke you ended on flopped, understandably. The only sound in the in-between was the forest ambience. Maybe it was the effect of the apocalypse, but it felt better that way than pleasantries for the sake of pleasantries. The final squeeze of Mark’s hand was something more comforting than ‘I’m sorry for your loss’, if your slight smile was anything to go by. For a moment, he took his arm back, but he didn’t waste any time in slinging it over your shoulder in a half-hug. A look of faint disappointment was washed away as quick as it came, and he was sure that he much preferred you trying to hide a grin, anyway.

It wasn’t long after that when the tree you’d been looking for came into view passed a section of river. Debris floated down in droves, more bits of wood and plastic than there was water, but that would just make it easier to cross.

“Looking forward to seeing your friends again?” you muttered, focusing on trying to find a better path than just walking straight and hoping.

A grunt and a dull, “if they’re even there,” was your response. You’d asked about his group before, and he’d used the same tone, but now you recognised the affection buried in it. He might’ve been refusing to acknowledge it, but it was there, and it made you laugh to yourself quietly.

“They’re not gonna be dead, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Nope, I’m thinking of something much simpler.” You sent a confused look towards him, one raised eyebrow and a small pout, to which he simply gestured to the river.

Dropping to one knee, you started to roll up the bottoms of your pants. “What, they can’t swim?”

With the scuffle of him following suit, you almost missed his amused scoff. “Worse,” he replied, yanking the fabric to his knee, “he’s afraid of water.”

You laughed. It was cruel, but you laughed, to the point that you almost choked on air and had to beat it out of your chest. “How did he get this far?”

“He stayed holed up in his mansion, that’s how. Scared out of his mind at the first stream we came by.”

“What is he, a vampire?” you joked as you switched to the other pant leg. You expected him to laugh along with you, tell you that he might as well have been, maybe tell you another fear of his.

You didn’t expect him to look at you, caught red-handed, eyes wide and an unstable smile on his lips.

You got up from the ground, slowly.

“He’s not bad, he just – and I can’t believe I’m defending him like this – doesn’t understand how it all works,” he rushed to explain, also standing as though to catch you in case you ran. “First time we met, he got us reading from this dumb book that was supposed to cure a friend of a—” He swallowed, “—wound, but- but it didn’t work, and we did it twice over, the second time backwards, and then we had to leave the place, and he brought a damn kazoo with him!”

Quite frankly, he sounded desperate. The haste to get his words out and the subject matter itself was a combination that made him come off frantic and worried. Like he was begging you to understand. Even in the light glow of a sunrise, you saw the flash of useless hope in his eyes.

But a vampire? A bloodsucker who could attack you at any point for the chance at a drink?

Then again, the man in front of you wasn’t untrustworthy. There was no getting around that you believed him when he said his friend wasn’t bad. And if he’d gotten this far without getting punctured like a balloon, there was no reason why it wouldn’t continue like that.

The only thing you didn’t like about this situation was the fact that you came to this conclusion quicker than you ever had before. You would trust him.

Disappointed in yourself, you sighed. “You care about him.”

His eyes blew even wider than before, before relaxing into some kind of sarcastic offense. “Pfft, yeah, I care about getting back what he owes me for saving his ass from the werewolf.”

You dropped back to one knee momentarily to make sure your pants were stable. Walking around with moist calves was one of your least favorite sensations. “Keep telling yourself that,” came your muttering.

“Maybe I will.”

That made you smile. A little spite was helpful, if not amusing. Boosted morale and showed that he had no reservations about you after your lapse. The thought made you smile even more.

“How’d you get past that river anyway?” The thing about bodies of water was that you couldn’t exactly go around them.

You heard a snort before a trailed off chuckle started getting closer. “Want me to show you?”

Breath hit your neck, cooler than the early morning air, as you were finally satisfied with your pants. You never had to go through rivers anymore, not since you’d built ramshackle bridges over the ones near your camp that were really just logs of wood you’d hacked to a plank. Adventuring like this was sort of exciting, you had to admit. And the company wasn’t half bad either. “You didn’t throw him, did y—”

You took it back. Immediately, you retracted your statement and every other positive thought you’d had about the monster, the heathen, the worst of the worst that you were travelling with. You should have just left him to be eaten by the deer or that werewolf, because then your legs wouldn’t have been swept out from under you, and you wouldn’t have been caught in the arms of a savage madman who was only put on the earth to annoy you.

One of his arms went underneath your knees and the other at your back, lifting you against his chest. You cursed him, your cursed yourself, and you cursed that this didn’t happen earlier, when your vicious blush could be disguised by the darkness. You scrambled to get a hold of something, which ended up being his shoulders, and it bolstered the redness like adding logs to a wildfire.

“I swear to whoever is watching, if you don’t put me down right now—!”

“You asked how he got over, I’m showing you!” His laugh had the heart in your chest thundering wildly against your ribcage, out of anger or something else.

“I would’ve been perfectly fine if you just told me,” you hissed.

“Yeah, but that’s not as fun as this.”

Your grip tightened around his shoulder blades, enough to cause bruising later on. “So, so fun.” Plots to get revenge swept through your mind, but they kept being pushed aside by the feeling of his hands around you.

“I’m glad you agree with me.”

You didn’t register that you were across the river until you noticed the sound of rushing water getting more and more distant. The heartbeat in your ears was gradually dying down, edging towards the pace of the footsteps beneath you. The footsteps that were definitely not yours.

With your mouth open to protest, you paused.

Was… was this really so bad? If he was willing to carry you, then was there really a point to turning it down? You’d need your energy to protect him later. You would be able to return the favor tenfold, in a better situation. Of course, it would be safer, in the long run, obviously. There was definitely a genuine reason to your hesitation to be put down, and it wasn’t just because you enjoyed having his arms around you, because you missed being cared for, because you actually hated being on your own all the time and these past hours with a man, who you basically kidnapped, were the best you’d had in months.

And looking up at him, eyes shining brighter than the backdrop of the orange and reds of the sunrise, the ones that had rivalled the stars you’d travelled by, wasn’t the most beautiful sight you’d ever seen.

And you weren’t fighting the urge to lean in and kiss him.

“And that’s how I got him over the river.” You were only aware that you snapped out of it when you were back on the ground, dirt caving around your boots. Trying to bury the slight feeling of disappointment, you started walking forward, estimating in your mind how far away from the tree you were. Less than a mile, it wouldn’t take too long. You could be there in ten minutes if you hoofed it.

There was a pressure around your hand. When you’d been put upright, his hand trailed up from your back, across to your shoulder, and then down to your own. He didn’t let go.

“Smooth,” you mumbled to yourself, not trying to shake him off.

His chest puffed out in pride. “I know.”

No matter how much your cheeks burned before, you were sure the flame upon being caught was nothing compared to it.

And yet you continued like that, walking away from the river and towards the tree poking out of the canopy in the distance. You wondered what would happen when you got there; you’d probably deliver him to his friends, maybe get some food as a reward, and then go on your merry way.

Alone, again.

The pressure tightened around your hand. Even after a couple hours together, he seemed to be able to read your mind.

“If,” he started, immediately taking a breath, “you wanted to, when- when we actually get to my group, you could – if you wanted to, of course, there’s no pressure – maybe come with us, just for a bit.” He caught you watching him as he rushed through his offer. “For a trial run, y’know, a test to see if you’d want to join us, permanently- not permanently, you could leave anytime you want, I just think it’d be better. For you, obviously, I don’t care either way! Well, I do but, y’know.”

He was out of breath when he came to a hasty stop, eyes flitting across your face for any sign of a sliver of a reaction. You cocked your head and met his eyes. He held still at that, breathing deeply and waiting.

“Sure.”

“Good. I’m glad you agree.”

The crunch of twigs and dirt underneath your feet was the only sound for the entire rest of the journey. Hand in hand, you passed toppled trees and abandoned shacks, keeping your eyes and ears open for suggestions of danger. You were so, so close. You couldn’t risk letting your guard down yet. When you were safely in front of the tree, with the open fields around you, you could relax. For now, though, being awake and aware was top priority.

You supposed that was why you noticed the sound of fighting so easily. And not just fighting but yelling and clashing and… something else that sounded an awful lot like a kazoo. No matter what it was, it was coming from the checkpoint, and that spelt danger.

Danger that, with your hands clasped together, a slight nod to the other, you sprinted towards.

Adrenaline built up in your veins. All the walking and waiting was overthrown by the need to fight. When you broke through the tree line, it spiked. There was no time for talking, and yet, as you pulled out your knife and your partner drew his machete, you heard a statement that made you grin ear to ear.

“I’ve got your back.”

He was looking at you with what you could only guess was pride. In return, you nodded.

“I’ve got yours.”

And, with that, you threw yourself into the fray quicker than your mind could prompt you to.

You stabbed the first thing you saw in the head, puncturing through to the eye and popping it out on the end of the blade. Not monsters. Humans. You should have thought about what you were doing, but your own warning echoed in your mind. Gangs tended to gather at dawn. Judging by the sun hovering above the world’s edge through the leaves, you got there right at the wrong moment.

The second thing you caught sight of was dispatched with a slice to the throat. The third, fourth, fifth, all in a similar way that left them empty husks at your feet. Blood splattered across your chest and leaked down to your exposed calves. The vivid squelch as you stepped closer to your next target directed more attention to you, but you didn’t care. You took the brief moment between melee to look around the battlefield that had been created. In only a second, you clocked two more people fighting against the group at the base of the tree, some attackers aiming from the tree line, and, dammit, where was he?

Something flopped to the ground at your heels. Your glanced over your shoulder. There he was. Quick on his feet, hacking at the gang’s arms and chests like chopping down a tree. Dark liquid dripped from the edge of his machete and onto his hands, a manic grin cutting up his face. He looked insane as he drove his fist forward, impaling someone through the vest they wore and then kicking their legs out beneath them.

If it weren’t the apocalypse, you might not have found that incredibly attractive.

Practically absentmindedly, you spun your own knife into the heart of another attacker heading toward you. Twenty more to go.

And go they did. You played around with a couple, mashing their hands when you’d knocked them down. It was cruel, that was obvious to you, but it’d been so long since you’d fought actual people, and you swore you could see familiar faces until they were blocked by the dirt or blood. Probably an adrenaline-induced illusion, but you could dream. Not now, of course, you had to get closer to the tree and those two people, who you assumed were the friends you had been looking for.

A couple of times you were nicked by a blade or an arrow from the sidelines. The ones close enough received a stab to the throat for their efforts, while you stole from the dead to chuck towards the people at the tree line. You were so proud of your aim sometimes.

There was only once that someone got a genuine wound on you. Someone you had just missed the heart of pulled you down to the floor with them, held a knife to your throat and started the motion. Your heart was beating louder and louder in your chest as the single second they took played like slow-motion. Whether the blade would take you first or an early heart attack was your question – but it was swiftly answered. Neither. A machete halved their skull before you had the chance to try and fight back.

As they flopped, dead, onto you, one of your hands came up to shove them off, while the other gripped onto the one extended to you. You were level with the beautiful brown eyes that had saved your life, and you wished desperately that you weren’t fighting because there were so many things you wanted to do in that moment. It only spurred you on to get rid of the stragglers.

The battle itself only lasted ten minutes, but it felt an eternity longer. Nobody was undamaged – you sported a few gashes, your partner, who you joined the second the last gang member hit the ground, was bleeding into his shirt by his shoulder – but that was really the best you could hope for. But you still felt high from the energy flowing through you. You were more adrenaline than thought in the open space in front of that tree.

And when you made eye contact with him again, the remaining consciousness went out of the window. Despite where you were, surrounded by corpses, bones shattered beneath your feet, vultures swirling overhead already, you had an impulse that, a couple hours ago, would have sounded insane. You would have considered the thought itself downright stupid, let alone acting on it. But there was a small voice in the forefront of your mind that, against logic that seemed to dwindle every second that you looked at him, encouraged it.

Oh, fuck it, you could die at any moment.

You twisted your fist into his shirt and pulled. He barely had the chance to stumble forward before your lips collided, all of the adrenaline you’d been fueled by for the past ten minutes creating a spark that travelled along the surface of your skin. It felt like electricity as you tugged him even closer. The primal instincts of a fight batted away any awkwardness of worry you might have otherwise held; right now, you were entirely focused on tasting every inch of him that you could reach. Not that any fears wouldn’t have been banished when you coaxed a low groan out of him, one you swallowed with a smirk. With one of your hands trapped between you, the other was left to grip his hip. You couldn’t account for where his hands went, but you weren’t protesting when they found purchase along your waist and neck, and you certainly had not complaints when he followed through with a dip. Dramatic, maybe, but neither of you cared. It let you get a better angle, after all, and being held again was amazing.

You barely parted long enough to exchange panted breaths.

“I haven’t done that,” you whispered, “in a long time.”

“You’re good at it.”

“Could say the same about you.”

His eyes flickered back down to your lips. “Hmm, think I need some more practice. It makes perfect after all.”

Had you the time, you would have gone in without a second thought, or a first, but a voice broke the, well, certain kind of tension between the two of you.

“So, are you gonna introduce us or…?”

You both turned your heads to see two people, the ones you’d been fighting to get closer to. You were propped back upright as they came closer, one of them politely stepping over the mulch while the other let the bones crunch under their boots. You assumed that those were his friends, his group.

But he didn’t answer.

Instead, an expression of concentration overwhelmed the remaining blush on his face. He looked to be struggling for something, something that took a few seconds for you to realise.

And then he looked at you, the person who he’d travelled over hill and over dale, who he’d risked his life for, who he’d kissed with reckless abandon just seconds ago, who he did not know the name of. And you looked back at him, similar thoughts running through your mind to the man who you did not know the name of, either.

“I think introductions are in order.”

[This doesn't actually have anything to do with the apocalypse AU, I just got really excited that I could make Monster Gulch fics, and ended up going insane for a week to make both this and a whole apocalypse AU. Thanks for reading!]

#theknightmarket #fanfiction #markiplier egos #writing #markiplier egos x reader #one shots #markiplier #x reader #monster gulch #apocalypse #apocalypticfiction #survivor!mark x reader #I'm going insane

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theknightmarket · 2 months

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"Who wouldn't be angry?"

In which Wilford's return has less fanfare than what he hoped for. TW: cursing, slight sexual references Pages: 13 - Words: 5,000

[Requests: OPEN]

Closing up the bar was the best part of the night. After everyone had gone home, either willingly or under attack from your broom, and the only sound left was the quiet tap, tap, tap of a faucet someone forgot to turn off – that was when you felt perfectly at peace. The adrenaline of work was fun, of course, but reaping the rewards of a 20-dollar tip and pair of earphones made the 2 o’clock chime all the more satisfying.

You unwrapped the apron from your waist and tossed it over your bag. A wayward sex on the beach meant it would need washing before you could wear it again, not that you minded it too much. It was, after all, where that tip came from, and the man who spilt it was almost too apologetic. You’d had worse.

Dimly, as you wiped down the tables for the last time, you lamented the loss of your winter-holiday themed apron.

You preferred the Halloween one anyway, so it wasn’t a weight on your conscience that drew you to breaking into your bar late at night. The work kept you busy enough that you didn’t, and couldn’t, despair over small things. The taxes, the patrons, the staff – they were all great, but sometimes you did wish you had time for yourself. A Sunday off, once a month, that would be enough. But, as you said, no time to despair. There was still work to do.

That night, the work entailed taking the cash out of the register and tip jar, counting it, and stuffing it into the safe, locking all the interior doors and windows, and, finally, flicking the light switch. The neon pink sign blinked once, twice, and died out at its third breath, while you brought out your keys to officially lock the front door. The little hole-in-the-wall that the bar was, it didn’t run the risk of getting broken into too strongly, but there was no reason not to take precautions. You’d heard your neighbors tell you that it was so much a safe town that you needn’t bother locking everything. You told them that you quite liked having money, thank you very much, and there was no way in hell that you were going to pay any more for insurance.

The night’s air nipped at your face, reminding you that you were still standing outside. Your brain, meanwhile, reminded you that you weren’t on your couch, wrapped in a blanket, and watching random nature documentaries. It might have also said something about paying your rent, but you decided to ignore that part.

So, your frigid breath fading away in front of you, you waltzed down the four blocks between you and your apartment, watching the few other folk out and about make their own ways home. A group of teens scuttled across the road, technically jay walking but you weren’t going to say anything, while a ruffled office worker took off in a hurry in the other direction. Probably wanting to get into a safe place with the baggy of drugs stuffed into his suit pocket.

The town you lived in wasn’t a well-off one. It was two steps up from rock bottom, and only because the local deli hadn’t been closed down due to health hazards yet. You liked to think your bar made it better, but there were going to be people who didn’t agree. Those teens, for instance, who always threw crude remarks when you denied them a beer. You didn’t hold it against them. How could you, when you had done the same thing once or twice when you were a kid. It didn’t bother you anymore, so why not wait until they reached 21, or found good enough fake IDs.

You fished your keys out of your bag when you were at the stairs inside your apartment building. The little, pink bear was the only thing that distinguished it from any others, and you ran your fingers over the dimples and nicks as your legs moved for you. Fourth floor, second door on the left. Whistling the few beats of a song you could still remember from the radio, you spun the plastic toy around in the air, caught it with your other hand, and pushed it into your door.

The entry was cold. That wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, but you were always reminded of the difference between the welcoming warmth of your bar and your home’s casual wave of air. Bringing a jacket with you was a moot point since you only needed it when you were actually inside. No, you just had to put up with it until you could get out of your work clothes and surround yourself with the fluffiest blankets you could find. You had this down to a fine art at that point, there was no reason why you couldn’t do it from muscle memory alone.

Your keys clattered to the wooden floorboards.

No anticipated reason. None at all. You should have been moving into your bedroom by now. You should have been leaving the line of sight of your kitchen and heading to your dresser. You should have been doing anything except staring right at the man who had settled himself against your countertop with a bowl and spoon in his hands.

You weren’t certain if you’d have preferred a complete stranger, maybe someone with a mallet ready to bash in your head. Something told you it would have been better that the mallet he had poised to bash in your heart with.

Your mouth dropped open and you forgot about the keys on the ground. Eyes scanning his figure, you begged to find any reason that this wasn’t him, but, if there was, you were too shocked to see it. First, came the slow, creeping sensation of confusion, then a dismal sadness washed through your veins, followed within the second by a tidal wave of anger.

In a single movement, you’d scooped up your keys, singled the sharpest one out, and lunged for Wilford.

The fucker was lucky he had those teleporting, magic, screw-the-laws-of-physics powers that let him appear behind you before you cut through his arm. That didn’t stop you from whirling around and trying to get at his shoulder, though, but you missed again. And again. And again.

“Stop moving!” you yelled, skidding into the fridge. It was a poorly choreographed dance that involved the two of you going around in circles, neither graceful nor calculated. The most math Wilford was doing was making sure he didn’t end up on your stove-top, and you were barely thinking, regardless of how many times the counter drove itself into your stomach.

His response of a stern, “No!” went ignored while you flung yourself towards him for a sixth time. You were considering just chucking the keychain at him and hoping you struck gold, but luck always seemed to be on his side – if not for his evading of your attacks, then for the fact that his bowl hadn’t spiled whatever was inside it. Although, just as you cursed him for it and a bunch of other irrelevant things, he placed it near the sink and watched you fumble with the keys. Your hands were sweaty against the frigidness of the apartment, the exercise was wearing you out quickly, but you didn’t let up. He’d always liked that about you, but he was getting tired, more of the repetitiveness of the situation than the exertion.

So, what else could he do but twist your arm behind your back, hold your other hand down onto the countertop, and ignore the suggestive position it put you both in to disarm you? You didn’t stop struggling, to which he tutted and wrenched your shoulder back further. Nothing to hurt you, too much, he just needed you to calm down. If there was one thing he’d learned in your past encounters, it was that you didn’t react well to simply being verbally ordered around.

“Now, why are you so angry?” Wilford asked.

For a second, you stilled. He couldn’t be serious, but, then again, when was he ever? This was the norm for him. Both the prudent ignorance and the method of disarmament. After jostling for moment more, you let out a breath that gave you more wiggle room against the countertop.

“Who wouldn’t be angry? You ate all my cereal and faked your death for three years.”

Wilford apparently deemed you pacified enough to let you go, and you fell forward slightly. God, your arms hurt. You turned to face him as you rolled the shoulder that he had pulled behind you. Military man. You hated when he actually used what he was taught.

“I didn’t fake my death,” he scoffed.

“Oh, I’m sorry, you ate all my cereal and abandoned me for three years. That better?”

“I didn’t abandon you.”

You finally met his eyes. Six feet between you, far out of arm’s reach, you hated that they didn’t betray any lies. More often than not, his emotions were masked by a haze of insanity, but the genuineness was crystal clear, like the spark of lighting across a night sky. It was the kind of purity that meant he fully believed he hadn’t abandoned you, but that just made it worse.

You forced yourself to look away.

“You still ate all my cereal.”

“For that, I am sorry.”

You believed him there, and you hated that you did. But that was the same Wilford who left all those nights ago, wasn’t it? No reason to anything, not leaving, not coming back, not a single thing.

Huffing, you gave up. It wasn’t worth arguing about, and you now had one more chore to do before you could settle down for the night. “What do you want?” you asked as you dumped the remainder of the cereal from Wil’s bowl.

“Can’t a man check in on an old friend out of the kindness of his heart?”

You levelled him with a blank stare. His grin cracked for just a second, but it was enough for you to spot, not that you changed your expression any.

“I- well, I thought we could catch up. What have you been up to for the last… what did you say, three years?”

You took a moment to try and figure him out again. Even if it would get you nowhere in the long run, you weren’t going to entertain him if he was there out of boredom. The little voice in the back of your mind reminded you that you didn’t have to play along with him, it reminded you that you had a job and a home and a life outside of whatever Wilford was swept up in. You didn’t have to jingle around the room like a court jester playing it up for laughs.

But you still sighed, ran a hand down your face, and vaguely gestured to the kitchen counter. “Go on, then.”

Wilford waltzed over to one of the stools as though that was just what he expected you to say, and, ashamed as you were, it likely was; it was some kind of routine you used to have, albeit without the giant gap in between. When you got home from working the bar, he would be there at the stove, cooking whatever it was caught his fancy in the books lately. You’d talk about your day and ask him about his, pouring both of you a drink. You couldn’t drink on the job, but your shift ended the minute you stepped through the apartment door.

Then, of course, after solid months of strange domesticity, Wilford up and vanished in the blink of an eye. Magic.

And, what, he appeared in just the same manner, and you fell into the habit, just like that? God, you really were weak.

“So, how’s the family?” was Wilford’s first question. You didn’t answer until you got the bottles out of the fridge and laid them on the countertop in front of him.

“Fine. Youngest brother graduated; parents adopted another dog.”

You turned away from grabbing the glasses only to see your guest wedging the top off the bottle of gin with his teeth. The cork pressed to the side of his mouth a clear danger, you swiped it from him, tossed it to your other hand and grabbed a corkscrew from the drawer in one swift motion.

“You’ll crack a tooth,” you muttered, knowing damn-well he wouldn’t heed your warning as you watched him shrug and remove the cap of the vermouth as well.

You didn’t bother to be surprised when the martini glass you’d seen on a shelf disappeared and reappeared in Wilford’s hand. That little voice, whispering again, reminded you that the magic trick was old hat to you now. You didn’t have to be shocked at the casual manipulation of time and space.

“I didn’t think Danny-boy was still in schooling. What’s he going to be, eh?”

Ignoring the sudden pressure in your chest, you replied, “A pilot.”

“Oh, a ladies’ man, then!” His laugh was more suited to a world war general than the pink-moustached maniac sipping straight from the vermouth in front of you. “I wish him the best of luck.” To which he raised the bottle, and, with a final wink, chugged the thing until half of it remained.

You almost didn’t want to risk finishing the martini you were making for him. You were well aware of how high Wilford’s alcohol tolerance was, but that didn’t make it any healthier. Still, when you had taken back the vermouth and poured it into the glass, you slid it over to him, warily eyeing the rest of the bottles to see if they’d been opened in the meantime. The sight of them all the same as before didn’t bring you much comfort regardless.

“And how’s the bar doing?”

You nodded slightly, your brow still furrowed and avoiding looking directly at him. “It’s doing well. We got a new bartender, she’s… she’s good.”

“Maybe you’ll finally take some time off, then,” he thought for a moment and then snapped his fingers, “there’s a new roller rink opening up on Alto Street. We could go there on your next day off!”

That pressure tightened into a vice grip. “We?”

“Yes, we. I wouldn’t recommend it if I didn’t think it’s good.”

“But you want to go together.”

“Is that a problem?”

Avoiding looking at him didn’t help, but making eye contact wasn’t any good, either. You only got an expression of confusion. Nothing betrayed an ulterior motive. You squinted but found only that. Surprise, maybe. You tilted your head one way and then the other, as though an angle would let you see something you couldn’t before. It was all the same.

“What are you doing, Wilford?”

Only more surprise. He laid down the martini glass, a mere sliver of alcohol left in the bottom, before placing his head in his hand. “What do you mean?”

“What is this? What- what do you want?”

A tut broke the tension for a second until it rose again tenfold.

“You’ve already asked that one.”

“Yeah, and we’ve caught up. You can leave now.”

“Well, you haven’t asked me what I’ve been up to.”

“Oh, yeah? What have you been up to, then?”

Wilford opened his mouth, paused, and closed it again with a hum. Go figure, he couldn’t tell you. Whether it was because he was bound by some contract, or couldn’t remember, or just plain hadn’t done a thing, you didn’t know, and you never had.

“Look, it was nice catching up with you, but I have to work in the morning—”

“Hold on, hold on!” Your moving away from the counter was blocked by Wilford rushing to stand and securing his hands on your shoulders. He held you in place, a new emotion appearing on his face. Desperation. The smallest amount, but it was there, and it had you changing your mind about shoving him away.

“How do I make it up to you?”

“I don’t think you can.”

You weren’t about to beat around the bush with this, even if it made you the bad guy – the kicked puppy look certainly made you think you were, but you stayed your course; you couldn’t give in so easily.

“I just… how do I know you aren’t going to disappear again?”

“I won’t!”

“How do I know, though? You don’t have the best track record.”

When he moved his hands from your shoulders, you thought he was going to leave, walk straight out the door into the night. It took only a second longer for you to realise he was grabbing your own hands. “This time I promise I’m telling the truth.”

Damn it. Damn it, damn it, damn it. Damn him and damn yourself and damn it all. You were weak, of course, but you were weak for the man in front of you with the stars in his eyes and sugar on his lips. And if that man was asking for a second chance – for a third time – who were you to deny him?

“Fine. Okay. Sure,” you spoke slowly, coming to grips with everything that had happened in the last half an hour.

You felt Wilford’s grip tighten at your hands and then release, and that was all that you expected, but you were talking about the time-travelling maniac in front of you. His arms were wrapped around you before you knew it, warmth and his moustache tapping at your skin. You supposed this was some kind of thanks, which you still appreciated. Gently, you lifted your hands to pat his back, causing him to squeeze slightly more, until he pulled away a few seconds later.

“Alright,” you mumbled, barely getting the word out in time for a yawn to overtake you, “I’m heading to bed.”

“Goodnight! Sleep well.”

You returned the pleasantry with obvious tiredness in both your tone and your body. Dragging your feet, you made your way to your room while Wilford cleared up, the clinking of glasses and bottles only making you slightly worried about how much you’d have left come morning. It wasn’t enough to stop you from conking out the very instance that you touched your comforter, ready and poised to forget the last half hour’s shenanigans.

You woke up in the morning. Not surprising. It happened a lot. What didn’t happen a lot, though, was the smell of pancakes stirring you from your sleep instead of the blinding sun through your windows. You cracked your eyes open, only to see complete darkness. Immediately, you jumped from your bed and scrambled to stand up straight. Nothing. You couldn’t see anything. A creeping sense of dread curled in your stomach, wrapped around you heart, and pulled. Where was Wilford? Did he do something, was he okay, why did it still smell like pancakes—

You hand made contact with something covering your eyes. Oh. Pulling it off, you were slowly greeted with the light of the day, as you expected, and an unfamiliar piece of fabric in your palm. It was silky when you ran your thumb over it, something you didn’t think you’d ever touched, let alone owned.

You left the sleeping mask on your chaotic mess of sheets. Overwhelmed by the haze of adrenaline and sleep, you stumbled to get ready – which, given that you still had to figure out that smell, consisted of swapping out the uniform that you’d passed out in for a tank top and shorts. You weren’t fully awake when you got to the door, but you had nothing else to do but get to the kitchen and hope it was nothing you’d have to call emergency services about.

All three of your panic-questions were answered when you stopped at the archway between the mini hallway and the kitchen. The scene of Wilford at the stove, his back to you but clearly flipping something in a pan, quickly greeted you. Sizzling filled the air and disguised your footfalls on the wooden floorboards. They were nearly silent anyway, and yet you were caught as you got close to the countertop’s stools.

“Good morning, sleepy head,” Wilford sang, turning to wink at you so that you could see the ‘kiss-the-cook’ apron he now sported. Something panged in your chest, like a string cut loose; you’d bought that for him years ago, back when he was cooking dinner for the two of you. The face of the cashier stuck in your mind, somewhere between amused and sickened, but you didn’t care. The only time he hadn’t worn it when cooking was after you’d wrestled it away from him to wash. And then, obviously, after he disappeared, it was stashed in the back of the drawer, piled onto by old cloths and semi-broken utensils. You wondered how he found it again.

“Did you put a sleeping mask on me?” You collapsed onto a seat and rested your arms on the laminate surface.

“I did, yes.” He went back to peeling the sides of a pancake off the edge and said nothing else on the matter.

“…why?”

Wilford flipped the pancake once, twice, a third time, then pressed it down in a ritual you had seen many times before. The crack of batter shocked the air around it. “Given how tired you were last night – too tired to change out of your clothes, at least – I didn’t want the sun to wake you up too early.”

“And the curtains weren’t enough?”

“Oh, no, of course not,” he tutted, “I’ve seen how much gets through those flimsy things. It’s a wonder how the stars themselves don’t keep you awake.”

He wasn’t wrong. It happened often that you would wake up in the middle of the night, drowsy and blinking, only to realise that it was ten hours earlier than when you needed to be out of bed by. It happened now, and it happened three years ago. You just never put in the effort to fix it.

So, you just sighed, giving up the debate as fast as you’d started it, and dragged your hands down your face. According to the clock on the wall opposite you, there was still six more hours until the bar opened – you didn’t like encouraging day-drinking and four o’clock was the lowest you would go – and, frankly, you didn’t know how to spend them. A routine of stupid conspiracy theories and paperwork was offset with Wilford’s presence, leaving you with the shambles of a normal morning.

You blinked back to life when he set out two plates of pancakes on the countertop, one of them in front of you and the other just to your right at the next stool over. As he rounded the jutted-out edge, he brushed the small of your back with his hand, still warm from being near the stove. You couldn’t help but tense up, entirely focused on that point of contact like you’d been called to attention by a drill sergeant.

Wilford dropped into the seat and handed you a pair of cutlery. You didn’t notice the toppings spread along the edge until you blinked some more times to rid the blur of your vision. Half of them had been pushed to the very back of the cupboard while the other half you weren’t certain you had ever bought in the first place.

Something stopped you from reaching for any of them. Something stopped you from doing anything.

It was a shared feeling between the pit of your stomach and your throat. Like you wanted to scream and cry and laugh at the same time. Manic, you guessed was the best word for it, but even that felt wrong. Your heart thundered in your chest and raged against your ribcage, as though it were the only thing stopping it from telling you just what was wrong with you. Maybe this was just what happened what Wilford was around you, or maybe this was just what happened when he left. You didn’t think you were sure of anything anymore.

“Is this it?”

“What do you mean?”

The words struggled against the rush of blood in your veins. You weren’t angry. You understood that you should have been, but you weren’t, and you weren’t bitter, and you weren’t resentful. It was another feeling on the tip of your tongue. But you held onto that feeling because it was undeniably there. You would have bashed your head against the counter if you weren’t paralyzed with…

You were scared. That was it. You were downright terrified.

“Are you,” you swallowed thickly, “are you here now?”

“Honey, whatever are you talking about?” Wilford asked, facing you with that sugar-coated grin you’d always gotten so hung up over. “I’ve been here since last night.”

Just those words made you break into an internal panic. The only way that it shone through was in the frantic movements of your pupils, darting back and forth, searching desperately for the truth in his own. Meeker than he had ever heard you before, you asked, “Are you staying?”

And, just like that, he realized what you were asking, what you were going through. The eyes were the windows to the soul, after all, and, as he secured his hands on your shoulders, he saw your soul shattered into pieces. He had left, and the memory of stepping out of that front door was seared into his mind. He couldn’t forget, not even under the cover of discos and murder-mysteries, the way that the click of the lock echoed down the hallway and the stairwell, chasing after him when he was out of the building and seeping into the cracks of the pavement. It was karmic justice that the thought of you prevented him from entering any bar from that day onward. He didn’t want to risk it, and, well, he’d already forgotten so much. The few sane memories that remained were ones he didn’t want to taint with similar experiences and get them muddled up in his mind.

Now that he was back, Wilford couldn’t imagine leaving again, not when you were staring at him, panicked and desperate for a response.

Slowly, gently, he brought you closer until your chest was pressed against his. The embrace was tight but comfortable. Supportive. A promise he couldn’t yet put into words. He shushed you as you tucked your head into the crook of his neck, your own arms tugging him even closer than that, as if you expected him to disappear at any moment – not that it was unjustified. His grip on your shoulder blades tensed alongside yours.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

You didn’t respond. You didn’t need to. On your part, you were too preoccupied with holding back the floods of tears that threatened to spill over at any second. A few had already escaped and dampened his dress shirt. On Wilford’s, he understood already.

The pair of you sat there for five minutes more. It felt like longer, but the clock was barely passing half ten. The most concrete thought that dragged through your head was that the hug was nice. You hadn’t been held like that since the last time Wilford was there. Sure, you’d been close to other people, but the complete relaxation of your body was a sensation you could see yourself chasing like an addict’s high.

It was practically painful to pull away, though you kept your hands secured around his waist.

“Shit,” you laughed quietly, voice clogged with tears, “I-I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to spring that on you.”

“Pish posh! I think we both needed that, and I’m more than welcome for another in the future. For now,” he rose from his seat and gathered your plates, “I’m going to make some more pancakes.”

As Wilford passed behind you, he leaned around and pecked your cheek with his lips. It must have been an unconscious decision because his eyebrows raised, and he sounded apologetic as he spoke.

“Was that too much?”

Truth be told, you weren’t expecting it, but that didn’t make it any less appreciated. You had gone from trying to stab his with your keys to crying in his embrace in less than a day, you imagined you could handle a little kiss. And, as it happened, a larger one, too.

Wilford watched as you got up from your own stool and took a step closer to him. He was almost worried you would shove him out of the door, but you did something different. Very different.

In one swift motion, you grabbed the collar of his shirt and pulled him forward. For a second, he was focused on keeping the plates steady in his hands, before he felt the oh-so-familiar warmth of your lips on his, and, had he forgotten, this was a pleasant reminder. He sighed into your mouth as his shoulders fell from their tensed position and he tilted his head for a better angle. A lopsided grin spread over his lips, only somewhat messing up the kiss, but you continued.

You lifted a hand up to cup his jawline, smoothing a thumb over the texture of his skin; the other you used to card through his tousled hair. Your reward? A light groan so quiet that you nearly missed it. Luckily, you didn’t, even as he tried to twist it into a hum. He’d missed this, and so had you. And besides, who were you to ignore the order on his apron?

Eventually, you had to separate. Time-travelers and bartenders both had to breath, after all.

“Oh, honey,” Wilford muttered, slowly but not subtly moving closer again.

You accepted another kiss, and then another when you parted, and then another after that. Each of them was slow and sweet, only half like him in that regard.

“Still making those pancakes, are you?” you managed to get out in the interim.

His chuckle was just as carefree as his other sounds, but he did step back to put the plates by the sink. You moved to start cleaning them as he prepared the next pancakes. The splash of water against the sizzle of batter warmed your chest, and the glimpse of Wilford standing next to you had you grinning ear to ear.

This was good. Making breakfast in a tiny apartment, not yet dressed for the day but content to stay like this for the rest of it – you were happy with this life.

You were certain of it.

[It's weird that this blog has been open for over a year and yet this is the first Wilford one-shot I've done. Side note: this was inspired by @valentivy-makes so you should go and check out their amazing art of Wilford, because, um, you should. Thanks for reading <3]

#theknightmarket #fanfiction #writing #markiplier egos #markiplier #markiplier egos x reader #one shots #x reader #wilfordmotherlovingwarfstache #markiplier wilford #wkm wilford #wilford warfstache #Wilford x reader #bartender reader #angst/comfort #somewhat similar to the Dark one I did

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theknightmarket · 2 months

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Somebody find that ‘how was the catharsis. was the catharsis nice’ post because I think that’s the summary of my writing right now.

#catharsis #theknightmarket #fanfiction #markiplier egos #writing #one shots #markiplier egos x reader #x reader

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theknightmarket · 3 months

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"Who wants to go first?"

There's a problem with pledging to live only for a year, especially when you don't specify that only. Prologue - AO3

You were just a year old when you learned to walk. Completely average as babies went, and it was only from the living room couch to the kitchen, but you were walking. Your parents picked you up immediately and tossed you around like a living potato sack, and you giggled and gurgled because you were, again, a baby. You couldn’t do much else but that was good enough; the brightest smile that played chicken with the sun supplied the evidence to show that you were proud of yourself.

Most kids might have used that extraordinary talent for the 50-metre dash or cross-country ‘championships’ that were really just an excuse to take a group of rambunctious ferals into the woods for a couple hours. You never expected to use it to sprint away from a pack of dazed corpses shambling along behind you.

You suppose that you’re lucky. Other people, not as blessed as you, fell quickly to the dead. You joke about it, even though you know, had you been any slower, you would have long since joined them.

Now is not the time to dwell on it. Dwelling is a risk you can’t afford to take, not when you’re in the middle of a shopping centre, surrounded by bodies that are just waiting for the smallest sound to latch onto. That’s another perk of your speed – you’re able to be quiet about it. The dead are blind, after all, leaving them their hearing, touch, smell, and taste. Although, by the time they get to that last one, it’s already a done deal. Smell’s a loss because everything is coated with a fine layer of muck, and half the dead’s hands are rotted off, anyway. Making a noise is the biggest killer and so the thing you are dead set on avoiding.

Ah, you’re hilarious, aren’t you?

You lug the bag of trinkets over your shoulder, each muffled by the padding of leaves and stuffing. Some tins of food you’d picked up in your scavenging, a broken chair that you were sure someone would find a use in, and the leftovers of an air-conditioning unit. That will definitely come in handy, as will the other tokens you took.

Turning slowly, now out of the hearing range of the dead pack you’d escaped from, you mark each and every corpse you can see. Nine are gathered by the entrance you’d taken and five more are on their way there. A dozen actually dead bodies are laid out in front of what used to be a Forever 21, and you have half the mind to make another joke. The other half tells you that it’s a stupid idea and that you have places to be. The first half puts the idea on hold for now.

In total, there are seventeen dead on this floor, and another nine on the floor above, from what you can see perched on the side of a dried-up fountain. It’s no surprise that there isn’t any water left, considering the best way to get it now is waiting for rain. Just like the good old days.

You drop down into the second level of the fountain, one boot perched on the one closest to the ground. A straight dart to a hole in the windows seems like your quickest course, but you can’t bet on your ability to jump the shattered glass and clearing it out of the way is not an option, sound-wise. That’s a no-go. Behind you is right where you just came from, where there are now eight dead gathered. Double no-go.

The only choice you have now is a somewhat risky one. You can scale the wall to the second floor and then further through the broken ceiling to get onto the roof. The dead aren’t exactly the best climbers, so you won’t be chased when you get there. But the problem? You have to go through the dead to do it, because a good four have decided to marvel at the eroded brick that they can’t even see while their friends mill about up top.

Your eyes narrow. Deep breath in, deep breath out. Go when none are in the way.

You drop to the floor, reminding yourself to breath as you make a mad dash to the wall. Roots have broken through the tiles, so you make sure to avoid them as best you can. The rubble scattered around doesn’t deter you – not even the mannequin that lays toppled is a problem. You jump and dodge and move as swift as a bat out of hell. What were you worried about? A couple dead bodies that can spell your doom you with just one touch? Child’s play.

That’s your last thought before a vine catches your boot and sends you toppling face first into the ground. A sharp clang and a duller thump ring out like dinner bells. The seventeen pairs of blind eyes all turn to you, as if they’re waiting for a laugh track. All you hear is a single thought in your head.

You’re going to die.

In the three seconds it takes for you to scramble to your feet, a slobbery growl gets close to you, spit propelling onto your skin. You duck out of the way of a hand with fingernails long and jagged. The pieces of bark swipe down where you once stood but send the corpse stumbling forward with its momentum. A trail of black bile pours out of the thing’s jaw and onto the tile as you back away slowly. Running right now, when everything is on high alert, would be a death sentence in and of itself, especially considering you can’t move left or right without hitting another dead. They convene on that spot, wasps with their stingers out, and dogpile for the chance of food. One passes you, another two on your left, and six more as its own pack from the opposite side. The thunder of your heart mimics their stampede, while the chorus above sing your death sentence.

A splat and crack sound off as one flings itself over the banister from the second level. Although its neck is bent at an impossible angle, it collects itself and limps in your direction – but your attention is stolen by two more crawling from behind debris.

This isn’t good.

Your choice to back up slightly causes you to bump into a sale sign.

It teeters on the metal stand.

And then crashes to the floor.

You are totally and undeniably fucked.

This is where you die. Trapped in a shopping centre. No last words, no funeral rites. Nobody’s around to bare witness to your death, the glazed over eyes of the dead act like the statues you see around graveyards, though the moss and rain is exchanged for rotten flesh that drip down from the sockets. At least you can be grateful no one’s about to see the massacre the things will make of your body. Your boys will just have to make do with an empty grave.

An arrow lodges itself through one of the dead’s eyes. Another one clatters against the tiled floor a few feet away from you, drawing the pack’s attention. Just like before, most of them jump towards the new sound, while the ones that are still trained on you are met with more arrows to the soft parts of the skull.

You take the perfect opportunity to get the hell out of dodge, sliding past the crowd of dead that formed mere steps to your right and holding your bag as still as you could. In the commotion of flailing limbs and whizzing arrows, you slipped by unnoticed by the dead, but not by the people you were heading straight for. Good for you, because there’s a half chance that they would shoot you if they don’t recognize you, and you definitely recognized them.

Because not even a glance towards the exit you had been planning to take let you know exactly who your saviors were.

Your boys.

Bow in one hand and another on the rope he was using to drop down, Illinois comes to your rescue with another arrow fired at one corpse that’s spitting bile on your heels. Above him, holding that rope, was Yancy, who only loosens his grip to wave at you, to which Illinois slightly slips down before he pulls it up again.

You barely have time to return the wave before a machete clatters to the floor beside you. Good news, you have a weapon now! Bad news, that sound was much more interesting to the dead on your floor than the nothingness you’d left behind.

Yancy’s grimace and mouthed ‘sorry’ is all you need to get you scrambling up the wall. Each foot in one divot of the brick, you scurry faster than Illinois comes down, ending up on the same floor a few seconds before him. The horde of dead stare blankly up at you, some snapping at the crumbling bricks but the vast, more important, majority leave you be. Your earlier mistake means that many of the things are now on the bottom floor, so you’re left with only two or three meandering about. Had they figured out how to use elevators, or stairs for that matter, you’d be doomed, but, thankfully, they’re dumb as doornails and dead as disco.

You lightly jog to Illinois’ side, making sure to avoid the rubble scattered around. Wasting arrows is not ideal and close combat is unnecessary right now, so the rest of the bodies get to stay shambling around, although it’s not like you’ll be coming back here, unless you need a mannequin or a broken fountain.

With a nod from your friend, you hoist yourself onto the rope and start the slow ascent to the roof. Past burns on your hands make it easier, giving you more traction against gravity and helping you to make it to the top, where Yancy waits with a sheepish smile. You throw your arms up first and then your legs just in time for the rope to be weighed down with Illinois instead. Yancy’s strong, but two people is a lot for even him, and you quickly turn around to bring the rope up, too. Illinois is on the roof before you know it, and, as Yancy coils up the line, you brush yourselves off.

“Sorry ‘bout that, bud,” Yancy mutters, more wary of the dead still roaming around than nervous.

Instead of holding a completely pointless grudge, you just reply, “Don’t worry about it, I should have taken it with me anyway.”

The last time that you visited this shopping centre was sometime around a year ago – according to the dead roaming the place, that you distinctly remembered putting down before, it was slightly more than a year. Had you come a month or so earlier, you might have made it in time to avoid the rising. But you didn’t, so you marched into enemy territory without a weapon or backup, looking for anything you had left behind on your last excursion. Obviously, that wasn’t supposed to include the dead bodies biting at your heels.

You get to your feet on the roof, Yancy and Illinois following your lead once everything is safely stored in one of your bags. The slight curve of the glass below you makes it slightly difficult to walk, but it’s nothing worse than the blood you might find in a street, which you’ve grown used to by now. Being out of hearing range of the dead is a trade-off you’re in favor of.

“Needed some help, did you?” Illinois teases as he practically struts along at your side.

“Yes, I did—” you swing your arm around Yancy’s shoulder, “—thanks, hun.”

Yancy’s bright smile only adds to the indignant scoffs you hear, playful, as always, with a hint of melodrama. To placate him, and because brushes with death tend to make you really touchy-feely, you hook your other arm around his neck, too, and pull him in closer.

“C’mon,” you drawl, “I haven’t told you what I found yet.”

That piques their attention. Both of your boys lean in all the more close, to the point that they’re practically in front of you. You still have a good ten feet of the roof to go before you can drop down, so you take your arms away to swing your backpack off your shoulder. Holding it open, you present it like a lucky dip, which, really, it is.

Yancy immediately dives in and retrieves a group of three mugs that you’d tied the handles of together. Technically, you don’t need them, but you’d thought the place was empty when you found them, and what harm would a few extra trinkets do? The look on his face is enough to make it worth it, as he runs a finger over some of the designs that stick out from the surface.

You then watch Illinois take out his prize. Go figure, he finds the map before anything else. Ever since the rise and fall of technology, knowing exactly where you are has become harder and harder, especially when everything is either covered by a fine layer of vines and leaves or levelled to the ground. The former is more common than dust, but that just makes it harder to look at when something is entirely destroyed.

Case in point, the three of you overlook the town you once lived in at the edge of the shopping center’s roof.

The only things moving amongst the dismembered cars and metal carts are the dead littered around. They weave in and out of bushes if they have legs, and crawl over rubble if they don’t, all of them spilling liquid as dark as oil onto the tarmac. Nowhere is the same as it was before, if only from the lack of life. The place used to be so crammed that you couldn’t get in unless you came at the dead of night. Now, breaching midday, you’re the only ones here.

You grew up playing in those roads and dodging angry drivers, you wiled away your teenage years scraping doughnuts into the parking lot with your friends when too many of you piled into the back. You were barely old enough to drive yourself at the time, and you only got one good shopping trip before everything went to hell.

Pressure on both of your shoulders brings you back to the present. Yancy has a hand clasped on your right, while Illinois leans on you at your left, both sporting grins that rivalled your youth’s. They’re infectious – even if the joke is in poor taste – and you don’t resist letting it spread to your own lips. The sun is still high in the sky, the dead milling about don’t seem to recognize you, and you have to get back home with your new supplies.

“Right, then,” you say, peering over the edge to find the closest surface, “who wants to go first?”

Happy Valentine's Day, I guess? Not exactly the fluffy-fic you might have expected, but, hey, mine never really are. Besides, this is the pseudo-prologue to a new AU, and that little teaser up top might just give the game away as to what its really about. Either way, I hope that you enjoyed the beginning - hopefully the chapters will get longer - and that you decide to stick around ;)

#theknightmarket #fanfiction #markiplier egos #writing #markiplier #markiplier egos x reader #x reader #iswm yancy #yancy #illinois x reader #illinois #yancy x reader #apocalypse #au #zombies #blood

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theknightmarket · 3 months

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"I'm glad it was you."

In which Dark and the district attorney finally unite, for good. Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - AO3 TW: cursing Pages: 20 - Words: 8,000

[Requests: OPEN]

Your return to the manor was not marked with fireworks or cheering or parades. Nobody met you at the door and welcomed you in with fruit baskets and wine. The place was just as drab and cold as it always had been, but that was fine by you. You radiated your own heat now, with a living, physical body that you could walk with, talk with, control to your beating heart’s content. The grin stretched across your face was your own slice of heaven. You hadn’t been able to keep your hands still since you left Mark’s house – the bastard that you beat, so you weren’t afraid to say his name anymore. Your fingers brushed against the curve of your cheek and danced along your sides.

Even the rotting wooden handle of the manor’s front door was welcoming. A rough texture to remind you it was there as you pushed the creaking thing open. The empty foyer failed to dissuade you while you strutted in.

You were confident. You were excited. You were so goddamn happy to be alive.

“Dark!” you called, hearing the sound of your very own voice echo. It echoed! You could barely believe it. All of this felt like a dream, but you refused to accept that. You deserved this after so long, you wouldn’t let a little doubt creep in to spoil your fun.

The air flexed around you alongside the arrival of someone new in the room. He peered round the corner of the kitchen archway at first, but within seconds he was in front of you. The ribbons of red and blue danced around his figure, the same you had seen through the barrier of a screen for weeks before and was now standing in front of you.

Dark spoke simply, “Hello.”

And you replied, “Hello.”

You tried to hold back; you really did. The records would show that you restrained yourself for a full five seconds before you lunged forward and wrapped your arms around his waist. You savored the smoothness of fabric beneath your fingertips, but you cherished the squeeze of Dark’s own arms around your shoulders more. There were no tears, not this time, because you reminded yourself that you weren’t going to lose this. Should he let you, you would gladly spend another century in this position.

But you were sure there were other important matters to tend to. It didn’t make you pull away, but you were aware.

“You’re very cold.” Words muffled by the jacket collar against your mouth, you gladly forfeited the joke for the comforting pressure he provided.

“Does that bother you?”

“Nope.”

His laughter was music to your ears. Deep, genuine, dare you say, dark. You were slightly mad that you weren’t strong enough to swing him around, but you settled for a comical squeeze.

“You are warm,” he muttered, a coat of confusion on his statement, as though he expected you to be as cold as he was. Unbeknownst to you, he did.

“Does that bother you?”

“Of course not.”

You stayed like that for another ten seconds without shifting. This was good. You liked this. You pushed the idea of moving away back like it was an incessant dog. The normality of your old life was long lost to you, but it reminded you of knowing you had to get to work but wanting to stay under the blankets for that much longer. The height of winter, the sun not yet risen.

You sighed, “My legs are getting tired.” And, while they were, the dull pressure rising from your knees, neither of you made any attempt to cut the contact. This wasn’t how it had gone when you first escaped the mirror. You were springy and enthusiastic back then, so this ache was likely psychosomatic, a possibility you relied on in order to stay right where you were.

“Are you,” Dark started, then he stopped to swallow. Being this close didn’t make you a mind reader, but his nervousness was obvious either way. “Do you feel like you can talk about what happened, because I have many questions.”

Did you? You supposed after effectively beating the hell out of Mark, you had calmed down enough to go through some of it. It was the best you would get from him; you weren’t about to get a written and signed apology.

Gently, you pulled yourself away from Dark, but you thought it best to keep your hands on his shoulders when you saw a spark of guilt in his eyes.

“Yeah, I think so. I mean, I have a lot of questions, too, but I’ll answer what I can.”

Dark nodded.

A second passed.

And then another.

Dark cleared his throat.

“Oh, you mean now.” He nodded again. “Sorry, I forgot what we were doing.”

The chuckle you drew from him was worth the slight embarrassment.

“That’s perfectly alright. I expected nothing else.”

When you had left the manor, you had been in a haze of bloodlust. You were prepared to burn the house down with Mark in it. Now, with your mind clear, you noticed that the few things had changed since your disappearance. The foyer that you walked through, towards the staircase, was full of more rubble than furniture. The most obvious was the pile of wood that had presumably fallen down from the landing above, but you were well aware of the splintering support beams and steps that you took to the second floor. It was almost disappointing to see the damage the place had sustained. From your perspective in the mirror, despite only being able to see a small portion of the rooms, you never saw any real effects of time. It was as though it was frozen, just as you had been, but everything caught up to it at once, leaving you to see a ruined temple instead of a magnificent manor.

When you reached the last step, you glanced along the hallway. “Is Wilford around?”

Dark hummed. Not even he could keep track of that man. “Possibly,” he answered, similarly vague as the topic was. “You’re back, that’s something interesting to lure him in, but then again, it is Wilford that we’re talking about.”

The one consistent thing about Wilford was his inconsistency, no rhyme or reason to his appearances. You thought about asking after Benjamin for a second, but spite had gotten you this far, so both the comments about your outfit were ones you decided to carry with you.

Beside the peeling wallpaper and the shattered console tables, the door to Dark’s study looked completely untouched. You couldn’t say that you weren’t surprised. It had seemed a focal point in the recent events, sweeping in and out, pushing and pulling the handle, and yet it was as good as new. Time barely touched it.

Dark sidled up next to you and opened the door to the room. Just as it was before. The sight of it alone, outlined by sunrays streaking through, instilled a tiredness in you, though the added relaxation made it feel like getting into a warm bed instead of forewarned fatigue. You felt comfortable before you set foot across the doorway.

There was already one chair parked by the window you were facing, so Dark moved the one from his desk into place next to it. A simple gesture towards the pair made you lightly comment, “How gentlemanly.”

“I do try.”

You enjoyed seeing him like this. When you were in the mirror, it was rare for you to see him smiling, and even rarer for it to be in your direction. You’d seen the perk of the corner of his lips when he reached whatever paragraph of the book that he enjoyed – you were always tempted to tell him to just laugh, it was obvious he was holding back the smallest chuckles. You never found out why, but, now, he was being unabashed with his happiness.

While you were enjoying the moment yourself, a worry gnawed at your heart. You weren’t here to stare at Dark, you were here to answer questions, and hopefully, get some answers to your own. Still, you felt guilty, knowing that the peace had to be broken, and the hammer rested between the two of you.

Dark was the first to pick it up.

“Ah, well, to business,” he spoke calmly, a guise he was proud of. In truth, he was just as disappointed as you were to move on. You were smiling, too, though he wasn’t sure if you knew it. It was all the better for him because there wasn’t a barrier between you, glass or distance or memory; he could see the way your smile bent into your cheeks as clear as day. He could reach out and cup your face if he wanted to.

To business.

“I have to ask,” he began, settling back in his chair, “how did Mark get you out of the mirror?”

Your reaction was immediate and volatile. That smile turned into a grimace at the mere mention of that man, so Dark was quick to continue.

“I know the circumstances on your end, but I had only just found a way to take down the mirror’s barrier, let alone get you out, and that was with Celine’s help.”

You sighed. It felt good to breath, as weird as it was to say, in a confined space. You drew as much comfort from that as you could.

“I’ll be honest, I don’t know specifically how he got me out, but, when he did, he just snapped his fingers—” You copied this action, and the click reverberated against the walls and molded with the small rings of light emanating from Dark, “—and I was gone.”

That was what he had feared. Mark hadn’t needed a book; he hadn’t needed anything but the experience of the void in order to bend it to his will. He could do anything, and had done something, on a whim. Having been a part of the void was not the same as practice, it seemed. That thought scared him.

“Do you know why Mark did this?”

Your simple answer was, “Bragging rights.”

Dark knew that. When Mark had appeared in his office, he told him. Flaunting, he had called it, and teased him with the fact that taking you didn’t matter to him while it meant everything to Dark. Despite all the proof, there was still something inside him that hoped it wasn’t true. He didn’t want you to just be a pawn on the chessboard, caught in the middle and then captured because it was convenient – because that meant that if he had not talked to you on that fateful night, you wouldn’t have gone through any of that.

The undertone of pleading was hidden by a groan. “Anything else?”

“Why would there be.”

You sat in silence for the rest of that moment, thoughts overcoming you in a way that got on your nerves. Against your will, they latched to the image of Mark beaten to the ground. What was he doing now? Was he planning? Was he recovering? Or was he doing what you largely suspected; getting ready for his next scene in a makeup chair to cover up the cuts and bruises, not a goddamn care in the world. Because the villains always lost and the heroes always won, and it wasn’t a mystery which role he saw himself in. He would find solace in thinking – knowing – it would turn out right for him in the end.

You felt a pressure on your hand. The one that lay on the arm of the chair was now covered by a gray one. Just yesterday, that might have seemed unnatural, but, this time, it reminded you to take a deep breath and look at Dark. He was calm, so you should have been, too. In and out.

You nodded with a small, tired smile for him to continue.

“You’re warm.”

“Yeah, we’ve established that.”

“No,” he laughed lightly, “as in you’re not cold.” His fingers curled around yours, as though having more contact would help him to figure out this confusing aspect. “Whose body is that?”

You hadn’t considered that. Getting you out of the mirror was one thing, but your old body was, well,occupied. But, after a second of thought, you were pretty sure you had an answer. You brought your legs up and your hands to your eyes, not enough force to drive the balls of your thumbs into your sockets, but enough that you could ground yourself.

“Well, it’s not mine, that’s for sure. Someone Mark deemed unimportant, which, in his eyes, could be anyone.” You felt Dark coaxing your hands away. You let him, until they were in your lap again, and he was holding them tighter than before. “But he wasn’t caught, so it can’t have been anyone socially important, either. I-I don’t know.”

His thumb brushed yours. You put one foot on the ground and tucked the other under your knee.

“And you have needs?”

That hit you like a freight train.

“I’m sorry?”

Dark didn’t look phased. He had the slightest tilt to his head and his hands stayed right where they were. Given his thought process, it made sense.

“You need to eat, drink, sleep?”

“Oh!” You weren’t given enough time to fluster, taken from one to one hundred and back to one, so you wasted no time in confirming, “Yeah, yeah, I do, and so does Mark.”

This was the most perplexing part of you to Dark. The whole pseudo-dying and resurrection, he understood that, he had gone through it himself. However, you were much more human than he was. The taste of food in his mouth was lost to time for him, and yet you needed exactly what anybody on the street needed. You fit in well enough with them, while he was confined to the manor. The entity that made him who he was kept back everything else. His humanity. Earlier in his life, he would have appreciated it.

The patter of rain drew his attention to the window. A gloomy day to suit the topic of conversation and the moods you had both been moved into. It was difficult to confront it all, but you had to, and you knew that. You had to move forward with everything, but the concept was warred over in your mind.

“It’s a pity Celine doesn’t have any books on necromancy,” Dark said, “I wish I could be of more help to you.”

Whether it was the time spent in the modern world or the century since you’d used your manners, you found yourself barely stifling a laugh and eyeroll. “Are you serious?” A glance towards him told you he was. “I’m the one who was missing a batch of their memories, you can’t be the one to forget our conversation.”

He didn’t respond in the pause you gave him, so you sat forward further to look him directly in the eye.

“The self-loathing, Dark, it’s not good for you. You’re also just wrong.”

You held your clasped hands higher between you. “Without you, this wouldn’t be happening. I’d be locked behind glass or trailing after Mark like a puppy. As far as I’m concerned, you’re the one who got me out, even if you don’t believe it.”

All it took was lifting his hands slightly for you to lean down and kiss them. On your end, it was an appreciative gesture that occurred to you from somewhere unknown. On Dark’s end, he froze, meaning you were the only force to lower his hands to where they originally were. His eyes flitted around your face, like a bee searching for a flower. He never found the confusion or regret that he assumed he was going to find, only honesty, and he didn’t know how he should react. It was no secret that he wasn’t the best with social cues, and neither were you and neither were any of the others in the manor. The only thing that he felt right doing was letting slip the little smile that danced at the corners of his mouth. So, he did.

The emotion behind it changed when you asked, “But, uh, do… do you think Mark’s able to put me back?”

You were scared, and that smile softened to a comfort, as best as he could.

“After the state you left him in, I don’t think he’ll be able to put himself back.”

That image flashed in your mind again, your eyes losing focus and your jaw clenching.

Dark rushed to continue, “It doesn’t matter. He’s not going to get the chance. Now when you’re here.”

Albeit unspoken, he hoped you understood; not when you were with him.

“You’re right, it doesn’t matter. Look, this is my first real day of being out, and I think I’d rather do anything than keep talking about Mark, so could we…?”

“Whatever you want.” He hadn’t expected to get even this far with his questioning, and there wasn’t much else he thought you would know. At least, nothing worth drudging up the experience again. “Though I can’t promise a sunny stroll through the gardens.”

The raindrops were pelting the glass even faster now, a group of storm clouds swept in with it. Weather like this didn’t worry you, but you wanted to spend some time with Dark, and he wasn’t about to go dancing in the rain with you for himself. So, you sat and thought for a few seconds, and then an idea struck you.

“I know what we can do.”

Despite you keeping the plan to yourself, Dark got up when you did and followed you into the hallway again. It didn’t take long for you to wind up at the door to the library, and his hesitance catching up with him was just as quick. You had already seen the carnage he left behind in there – why you would want to get close to the room, he didn’t know, but you gladly strutted in regardless with your arms spready out wide.

Did you think things would be different? No. You knew fully well that it was going to be as bad as it was when you had searched for some memories. Dark’s frown made it obvious he wasn’t going to repair anything, and the thing about being dead was that you couldn’t touch anything, so that ruled out Benjamin. Wilford wasn’t around enough to devote any time to a project, if he was able to stay focused long enough, anyway. And who did that leave?

You spun around, back against the wall and hands settled on your hips, and announced, “Cleanup duty.”

Grabbing one of the more intact books that was within your reach, you stepped forward and threw it to Dark. He caught it without a second thought, though not yet done processing the situation.

“Can’t make a new start without fixing the old one, right?” you said as you moved towards the first bookshelf that needed de-toppling.

Your companion watched you, hands clutching the book. The leather binding was bent away from the pages, and some of those were shedding from the glue. The knicks and gouges were a feature of every book that he saw, but this one had three sizeable dents in the sides, and, when he opened it, the first paper was labelled at the twenty-seventh.

And yet, he couldn’t help but concede, “If this is what you want to do.”

Your bright smile was all the push he needed to place that book to the side and help you to reset the room.

It was an endeavor, to say the least. The shelves and cases were heavy, but it was harder to avoid stepping on the remains of encyclopedias and journals. Paper was strewn on every inch of the floorboards, and you were not proud to say that you almost slipped over once or twice. A side-table had to be made right, and, underneath, you found the missing pages of the book you had thrown to Dark. With them all in one place, you safely moved the copy to the salvageable pile. Somewhere along the way, roughly half an hour in, you had developed a system. The utterly destroyed books were packed in one corner, ready for an unknown future. Dark felt the rush of guilt whenever he added to the steadily growing mound.

Then, there was the stacks of the aforementioned salvageables. The only important thing was that they had most of their pages together; the covers could be remade, but the contents were what mattered. They were in the first corner you had cleared, as though a protective ring were summoned around them. And that was another positive of the inhuman inhabitants of the manor! There was no dust for you to clean up beneath the papers.

Nevertheless, it was only right that the survivors, the very few books that might have sustained a scratch or tear, were placed in the hallway on a console table. Only the ones that had been stashed far into the bookshelves were of that nature, but you still felt prideful when you fished one out.

Your merry pair of cleaners was an hour in by the time that Dark picked up a book that was very literally hanging by a thread. He shifted it carefully in his arms to avoid agitating the binding, barely moving in a centimeter, but it didn’t work. The connection snapped and the bound pages drifted to the floor in a heap, like feathers after a bird was shot. Dark kneeled next to the remains and, with a gentler hand, he picked one of them up.

“Unfortunate, really,” he spoke, noticing you begin to crouch at his side, “I rather liked that one.”

It was true. In all of his years in the manor, he had the option of doing two things; either he could follow the trail after Mark that was undoubtably going to run cold, or he could read. When things got too much, or Wilford forced him out of his office, he would end up scouring the shelves of the library. His library, technically, because Celine was the only one to ever use it. All her early occult guides were on one side, while the other held the recreational books. Non-fiction, mystery, horror… The Lady in the Lake had come from one of those shelves, and so had the one that Dark looked down at.

He was only drawn out of his regret by your shifting. You glanced at the first few lines, then to the mess of papers that joined the rest of the graveyard, and finally to the door. Dark looked at you when you got up and left, barely processing what you were doing without an idea of what you were going to do.

Luckily, he only worried for a minute at most, before you were back in the library with a picture frame in your hands, and his worry melted to confusion. It had lay in the hallway, empty now, as it had once held a distasteful photo of Mark and Celine. Dark sat tight while you popped out the back and handed him the glass and wood.

He blinked.

You nodded.

Restraining whatever strength might have torn the page more, he placed it facing into the frame and reattached the back, slotting the clasps into place. Your hands moved it out of his own grip as you got to your feet. Dark followed suit so that he could see you setting it onto one of the upright shelves in the neater corner.

And, just like that, you went back to inspecting more books and readjusting the furniture.

Dark didn’t know what to do. That seemed to be happening a lot today, but he was getting no more use to it. Maybe it was because the last century hadn’t been action-packed, but he was being surprised and confused and simply flustered recently, all by the same source.

You were a variable in his life that he hadn’t planned to plan for. Getting you back was the goal, and, when he passed that goal, it was done. End of the story. Except it obviously wasn’t because there you were, fixing the mess he’d made of the library, surprising him with every movement you made and every emotion you made him feel, even when it wasn’t an emotion he could name. The warmth you exuded, body and soul, he had never felt it before. Normally, he would immediately distance himself from any kind of uncertainty, but he couldn’t. He just couldn’t. Leaving you again, when you spooked away ennui like a nightlight in blackness, was impossible for him. He wasn’t going to deny that he needed you – though, it might have been harder for him to accept that he wanted you. This situation was one fate had plotted since you had first stepped across the threshold of the manor.

“I don’t suppose you know what’s happened while I’ve been gone?”

Dark snapped his head towards you.

“How do you mean?”

Your back was turned to him, eyes focused on stabilizing the wooden plank in front of you. “People aren’t wearing suits and smoking everywhere anymore. How have times changed?”

Dark huffed a slight laugh as he rearranged the paper of another book. “To be quite fair, I’m not all that up to date either,” he forewarns, separating one of his favorite pages from the rest of the brutalized chapters. “From what Wilford has told me, a lot is different. I was… unaware of the earlier years—” You didn’t need to know the explicit, dehumanizing, jarringly goopy details of his first ten years, when he was barely holding himself together as a creature instead of a person, “—but there were more wars, some hot, some cold. We got to the brink of annihilation at one point, but Wilford glossed over that fact. He was more focused on the disco in the 70s and 80s, he still is.” You shared a breathier chuckle with him. “If I may ask, what have you seen in the last month?”

This was where he had you caught. You had asked what was different solely to get a grasp on where you were. Wilford’s time travel talk was going to need to be backdropped with the current events, after all. However, in your time with Mark, you had seen some things, and being asked about them pushed your preparation to the back of your mind.

“Hollywood got big,” you stated immediately, “I saw a lot of movies, for obvious reasons, and every single one was,” you took in a breath, spending it on another giddy laugh, “they were beautiful. They had these special effects and computer-generated imagery and, Dark, they could take people’s voices and replay them over and over again, and they’d never run out. They put normal people in space or in Ancient Greece.” You abandoned your current task to bounce towards your friend. “They even put people in the 1920s, and you could see the color of their clothes! Everything was bright and expressive; I’d love to show you.”

Dark hadn’t seen many, or any, movies. You would expect that to just be during his time in the manor, but that did include all of his time as him. He had vague memories from Damien and Celine’s theatre experiences, but all of them were clouded over with time and fatigue. The way you described these new ones, though, had him joining your smile regardless, and helpfully disregarding how your proximity to him and your hands on his upper arm made his breath labor.

“I’d love to be shown.”

And ignore that, when your smile spread further, his did, too, and his eyes darted around your face from your sparkling eyes to your grinning lips to your cheeks flushed with excitement.

Meanwhile you fully accepted the rapid beating of your heart with open arms, not only because you now had a heart to beat. Dark cared, no matter how much he tried to hide it, he cared. He did things with you that he wouldn’t do alone in a million years. He paid attention to you when nobody else did and he made up for the time that he didn’t, twice-over. He saved you because he cared. How could you not love him?

Was that the right word for it? You hadn’t felt like this in so long, you never had to put a name to the foreign feeling. But when you looked at Dark, saw him smiling back at you, face to face with nothing but the smallest gap of air between you, you couldn’t think of anything else to call it.

In total, repairing and cleaning the library had taken three hours. The shelves were straightened, the curtains were replaced, and the books were sorted. All you needed to do now was wait for the next day to get out into town, so that you could go on your hunt for supplies and a manual on how to actually fix the books.

While you stood next to Dark in front of the door, staring at your project so close to its finish, your heart ached at the thought of waiting. The hands on your hips clenched and you inwardly groaned. In your humble opinion, you had done enough waiting for multiple lifetimes.

You spun on your heel to face Dark, who looked pretty happy with himself. Good.

“What else needs fixing up?”

He glanced at you like he hadn’t expected you to say anything. “My dear, I do think you should take a break.”

“You’re one to talk.”

As hypocritical as he may have been, even Dark could see what state you were in. Your breathing was fast, blood rushed to your face, you jumped from one task to another.

“I’m not the one who has needs.”

“Y’know, I’d love for you to not call them that.”

“You have to eat,” he stressed, not letting you deflect another time.

You took a step towards him and reassured, “And I will.” You appreciated the concern but the idea of slowing down at all make your stomach churn. “I don’t want to waste all this energy.”

“You won’t lose it, I can assure you.”

Thinking of a last resort, you huffed, opened your mouth to retort, and then stopped. Had you not just said this was why you loved him? Because he cared? And who were you to ignore him, a man whom you trusted with your very life? Being out of that mirror was bringing you back into some bad habits, it seemed.

In the end, you nodded and pulled open the library’s door.

“Fine,” you groaned with no real annoyance, “but I am coming straight back.”

“Where are you going?”

“No offence, but anything that’s been left in the kitchen is going to be well past its expiration date, if they even have them. I’ll drive down to a fast-food place, pick something up and be back by eight.”

Your promise was exchanged for Dark’s confused expression, making you chuckle to yourself as you moved halfway out. That confusion shifting to blunt worry stopped you.

He didn’t know what two of those things you mentioned were, but he knew that it meant you were leaving the manor. An hour at most, but leaving, nonetheless, into the outside world, where he could not go.

“I don’t have to go, I could—”

“No, no, you should,” Dark cut you off, steeling his emotions for however long it would take to convince you and himself. “Go, just stay safe.”

A smile and a squeeze of his hand.

“Straight back,” you reminded softly.

And he repeated, impossibly more so, “Straight back.”

He watched you leave into the hallway and then walk down the staircase in his line of sight. This was okay. He watched you make it to the foyer and open the door. This was fine. He watched you shoot him one last look before closing the creaking wood behind you.

He lasted all of thirty seconds until fear seeped in through the floorboards and window cracks. The pacing started at the forty-five mark, as though his legs had decided that, if he couldn’t go with you in person, he would in spirit. But you said that you would be straight back, and he had to trust you. It wouldn’t do to start this relationship off with assuming the worst. You were able to take care of yourself. The best he could do was patiently wait for you to get back, safe and sound, like you’d promised.

That thought did little in of itself to get him to calm down. Regretfully, Dark was never good at convincing himself of the bright side, and, yes, he understood the joke. What helped him was catching a glimpse of that frame again, all of the backboard now plastered with pages from the best of the collection. He trotted up to the shelf until it was within arm’s reach, but he didn’t take it off just yet. He simply looked at it.

Was this too much? Did this domesticity suit him? It felt good to slow down for once and take a breath. Mark was on the backfoot, you were safe in the manor, there wasn’t anything else to do. Dark had forced you out because you were so keen to keep working, but there he was, clenching and unclenching his jaw. It felt good, but that itself felt wrong. He wasn’t built for this. He hadn’t been brought into the world as an innocent child, he was the amalgamation of three different beings that shambled around in the rough approximation of a man in order to carry out the singular shared goal of vengeance.

The wooden frame was smooth against his fingers.

It didn’t matter if he was destined for this peace, he was choosing to enjoy it. The slow moments, with you, were better than the volatile decades of constant hypervigilance.

If he had to guess, he would think that the affinity was coming from Damien’s side of the family, but he also liked to think that this was just himself.

The frame in hand, Dark walked from the library down to his office, the lack of surfaces giving him few options – the desk or the windowsill, really – but that was obvious enough to give him only one. He secured it next to the lamp on the left side, the light igniting the ink with a white sheen.

He left the room within the next minute, barely a glance over his shoulder. He didn’t need to; he knew it was right, and he would be seeing it every time he sat down to work. He would be reminded of when he read those books, and of who gave those books back to him, and of why he couldn’t wait to find more copies so he could share them with you.

That went further than he thought it would.

Benjamin wasn’t in the kitchen when Dark entered. He’d made himself quite scarce since you got out of the mirror, but the comments you had exchanged with each other didn’t leave you on the best of terms, so perhaps it was the wisest move. Nevertheless, the smell of baked goods helped relax him to the point that he didn’t look any different from your departure when the front door opened again.

Sitting at the island gave Dark a good view of your approach, a white, plastic bag of presumably food in one hand and twirling your keys with the other. A few questions popped into his mind – what a fast-food place actually was and whether you really had a valid driver’s license – but he brushed them aside when you waltzed through the kitchen’s archway.

“I made it through that lawless wasteland,” you joked. He thought you would go straight to grabbing a plate, but, after placing the bag on the counter, you casually ducked down and kissed Dark on the cheek. That was the first surprise, though not unappreciated, while the second was you finding two plates. “And I know you don’t eat, but I picked something up for you, just in case.”

You were smooth, apparently. One hundred years in a mirror didn’t disadvantage you any. He was immeasurably grateful that your back was turned so that you didn’t see the warbling of the red and blue lines. They stretched and thinned like waves in the ocean, breaking upon the counter and only normalizing when he redirected his attention to the bag. You said you’d gotten him something. That was more important than the completely unexplainable and extremely unnatural effect your simple actions had on him.

You dished out what you bought, two identical meals, onto those plates before pushing one towards Dark. You sat side by side on the stools by the island, thinking less about how much of a change from the status quo of the 1920s this was and more about how hungry you were.

“Thank you. I appreciate it,” you heard Dark reply, sounding surprisingly dazed, not that you paid attention to it when you were eating food and conscious of it for the first time in decades.

You missed this. You readily admitted that this kind of scene was something you had imagined many times while you were in the mirror. The food, the freedom… the only addition – which surfaced during the latter days – was the man who sat beside you. You were always alone in your fantasies. Call you a love-struck idiot, but you were so happy with this outcome, even if it took kidnapping and near-murder. This was good. You were good. Dark was good.

The patter of rain developed into a downpour as you made your way through your food. Dark was lagging behind, if only because he had trouble figuring out how to eat at the beginning. The first bite he swallowed entirely whole and somehow avoided choking, but he got the hang of it in time. You were finished when he was halfway through, giving you time to watch the patio doors. It was completely dark outside, illuminated by the few rays of moonlight that dodged the tree line. They hit the surface in specific places, one bouncing off the water feature, another the stone walkway, and a third breaking into the manor itself. All of them were interspersed with the pelt of rain, as if someone had flicked a paint brush onto a gray canvas.

A wistful sigh bullied its way out of your throat.

“Go on.”

Your gaze flashed to Dark, who stared right at you. Surely, he didn’t mean what you thought he meant. If not for the water damage the old house would sustain, he definitely wouldn’t want to risk getting it all over his suit.

But he saw the way you looked outside. He wasn’t about to stop you from fulfilling a whim, especially after so long. Briefly, he wondered how many times you thought about the weather. Such an unimportant thing, a problem in some cases, but he knew you relished it.

So, Dark nodded again. “I don’t control what you do.”

Like firing a bullet from a gun, you were off, shoving back from the island, almost foregoing remembering to open the door, and slipping out on the stones. Immediately, you were drenched. Your clothes stuck to your skin and made everything flash in the light of the moon. You looked like something he would find in the pagan books Celine had. A nymph or fae. Given that he had eaten your food, he supposed he was never allowed to leave. What a poor, unfortunate, regretful fate for him.

Regardless of the dramatics, he didn’t think he was against that thought, as long as you stayed with him, of course. He imagined he could do anything at your side, and he would do anything to stay at your side. He wasn’t going to fool himself. He wouldn’t be able to handle losing you again. He had only just gotten you back; your return pulled him out of the pit of misery, and, were you to leave for good, he was sure he would fall again, further than he had before, than he had thought possible.

Dark dropped his head into his hands, elbows rested on the island.

He wished he had someone to ask. He usually kept his own council, both figuratively and literally, and reaching out was a skill he’d long since abandoned. It would be so much easier to find an answer to this feeling if he had someone else, who could explain why his breath quickened, his waves flickered, his smile widen like he had received the best news he could ever hope to hear. Nothing made sense, and yet everything did. The logic was thrown out of the window and replaced by emotions that he never relied on, but it felt right, and he didn’t know why, and nobody was telling him what to do or what was going on. A being that couldn’t feel was feeling. He had never made a plan for this kind of situation, leaving him high and dry. Benjamin was less social than he was at this point, he had seen how Wilford’s situation had turned out, and obviously you weren’t an option, because you were the person Dark loved!

Oh.

Well, that certainly solved that dilemma.

There was really only one choice he could make here.

Dark got up from his seat and made his way to the linen closet, where he pulled out the softest towel he could find. None had been used, so it didn’t take long to get back down to the kitchen with it in his hands. Slow and steady. He split his attention between walking forwards, keeping his aura in check, and the growing headache at the back of his mind. He knew exactly what that was, he was just electing to ignore it, despite that very specific third of him trying to veto his decision. Slow. And. Steady.

You, meanwhile, were trying not to trip on the wet cobblestone. The grooves and divots of the stone made perfect targets for your feet as you danced around. The rain was a great thing, wasn’t it? Droplets ricocheted off your clothes when you spun and slid down your skin when you stilled. Your impromptu performance was a mix of graceful twirls and jagged strikes of your body. Not a care in the world for the inevitable squish of the fabric when you stopped, you embraced the adrenaline and continued to go about your business until the patio door slid open in the corner of your eye.

The infectious smile you sported as you dashed to the cover where Dark now stood spread to him. You slid to a stop in front of him, dripping head to toe.

The towel he wrapped around your shoulders had you grinning even more.

“We don’t want you to catch a cold, now, do we?”

That little joke – which wasn’t really a joke – was the end of it, leaving you both to watch the rain fall. It lightened and strengthened at a gust of the wind. You leaned against a wooden support beam, face barely peaking below the edge of the cover, and Dark stood next to you with his arms behind his back.

“I don’t remember it raining before,” you muttered. In the weeks you’d spent with Mark, every day was blasted by sun.

“It has been quite a while.”

The silence enveloped you again. It was comfortable, knowing that you could move around without limit, that Dark was right next to you.

His quiet admittance broke the quiet. “I don’t think you’ve stopped smiling this entire night.”

“Why would I?” You shifted to look at him, softness breaching your eyes and his when they met. “Look,” you gestured to the gardens of the manor, “look at all of this.” You hand made contact with the wooden beam; one side was wet from the spray of rain. “And this, this, I can— look.”

Your other hand darted forward without your thinking and grabbed Dark’s before raising it between you, much like how you had done earlier. He briefly thought you might kiss it again, and you the same, but then you stopped and swallowed the words you had meant to say. Something about how it felt, surely, but then another train of thought came to mind.

“I didn’t think I was going to get the chance to do this, ever,” you whispered, “I thought that I was going to stay in the void, watching the world go on without me until somebody broke every mirror in the manor.” What a purgatory that would be. You hated that you could easily imagine it. “But I was wrong. I’ve never been happier, and you know how much I hate being wrong.”

You clasped your other hand around Dark’s remaining one. Earlier that day, when you had pledged to admit your feelings, you didn’t think it would be this difficult. You had been running on adrenaline and fumes. Now, your mind was catching up to you and made you fear the consequences if all of this went wrong.

But you could ignore it all for a moment longer. You had to, or you would never get this out.

“And if anybody was going to talk to me in those weeks,” you continued, a shake in your voice that you tried to breathe through, “I’m glad it was you. I don’t think I could take time-travelling talk or another insult to my outfit.”

Dark was still smiling, that was good. Nothing to stop you now. You had to take the plunge.

“And I meant to say this earlier, but—” no going back now, “—I love you.”

Dark froze. You felt him freeze. He stopped like you’d knocked the life out of him.

So, you rushed to speak, words flooding out of you to rival the onslaught of rain that battered the ground.

“I understand if you don’t love me, or have any feelings for me, I just had to say it or else I’d lose my mind about it, and I did not like it when I was close before, so—”

Your rambling stopped. Not only because you physically couldn’t speak, but because your fears were abandoned in a second. Even as Dark had stepped closer, even as his lips melded against yours, you were both smiling. His coldness and your warmth meshed together, like steam rising from dousing a fire, calming the initial thunder of your heart that made up for Dark’s lack. Despite that, you felt the waves of red and blue clash against your skin, absorbing at some points and bouncing at others. You sighed into the kiss as your hold on his hands severed, only to let you grip at his waist. It was significantly dryer than yours, half the reason why you felt the pressure of Dark’s hands at your jaw and cheek. The other half was so that he could lean further in without pushing into the rain. The touch grounded you in reality, as much as it the entire situation made you believe you were dreaming, and so you kept your position, although your lips parted.

Barely an inch from your, Dark whispered, “I reciprocate your feelings.” It took a moment for him to recognize the hoops he was jumping through, and he amended, “I love you, just the same, if not more.”

“I’ve seen this before; we’re not doing that.” The whole I-love-you-more-no-I-love-you-more was overplayed and tiresome. You were happy with your shared confession.

The inch was covered, and your lips met again, moving in tandem like waves breaking on a sandy beach. A rhythm took over as you stood at the back of the manor. Everything that had happened, stretching back to that century, seemed worth it. You were certain in that fact.

You separated again, not for the last time, for Dark to ask, “What are we doing, then?” “Well, as you keep saying, I have needs.”

The alarmed expression on Dark’s face was all the entertainment you needed, though, inwardly, he was certainly not opposed to any suggestions you might have had. He felt your breath on his lips as you reprimanded quietly, “I’m talking about sleeping, Dark.”

Your spark hadn’t been lost, that was for sure. He doubted that were possible. Your amused laughter chimed in his head, chasing out any possible worries about you, about himself, about the future you would share together.

One hand in his, you tugged him forward and captured him in another kiss, the rain returned to a comforting song in the background.

[And there we go! The final part to what was originally a single chapter! Thank you, everyone, for reading, and I hope you enjoyed the ride. Of course, this was meant to just be a fluffy chapter, but, this is me, so I had to put some angst in it, and that final joke was a literal flip of the coin of whether I should include it. Nevertheless, again, I hope you've enjoyed reading <3 ]

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theknightmarket · 4 months

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I think scripting at half 2 in the morning is my favourite hobby because your brain really just goes, ‘what is the worst situation I could put these people in’ and it magically ends up on the screen in front of me! It’s magic.

#theknightmarket #fanfiction #writing #one shots #x reader #writing memes #writing fanfiction #angst #like I’m sorry levels of angst #markiplier egos #one-shot #markiplier egos x reader #this is engineer #so you can imagine the angst I can put into this

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theknightmarket · 4 months

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HAPPY NEW YEAR, LADS! Here’s some incorrect quotes to celebrate that were meant to be for the anniversary, but I forgot about them. Spoilers for fics that I’m toying with or am in the process of writing!

Dark: If you could guess, how many brain cells do you have? Wilford: Dorito’s cool ranch. Dark: Dark: I'm just gonna assume zero for now. Wilford: I love that song.

Illinois: You know you can die from that, right? Bond!Reader: *smoking a cigarette* That’s the point. Google: *drinking alcohol* We’re trying to speed this up. Bing: *Eating raw cookie dough and nodding*

Dark: I'm going to ask you to be respectful. Mark, after kidnapping the DA: I will politely decline.

Detective!Reader: You’re alive. Murdock: No need to sound so disappointed.

Engineer!Reader, with a headache: Advil me up, daddy. Google: I will short out the language centre of your brain if you say anything like that ever again.

Yancy: If there’s one thing I learned from Bing, it’s to set people’s expectations real low, so you end up surprising them by practically doing nothing at all.

Heist!Reader: Dammit, Mark, you ruined everything! Heist: You’re welcome.

Dark: Fine! I don't give a shit! DA!Reader, watching him keep coming back from the mirror: You seem to give a lot of shit for someone who claims not to give a shit.

Bing: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, that’s fucked up. Like c'mon, you know I’m dumb as hell!

(Engineer!Reader is on a business trip) Google: Ew. What kind of tea is this? Bing: I boiled gatorade.

Heist: Please, picking locks is my specialty. Heist: *throws a brick through the window* Heist: Okay, let’s go.

*Everyone is standing around the broken coffee maker* Ghosts!Reader: So. Who broke it? I'm not mad, I just wanna know.

Everyone: Engineer: ...I did. I broke it. Reader: No. No, you didn't. Wilford? Wilford: Don't look at me. Look at Mark. Mark: What?! I didn't break it. Wilford: Huh, that's weird. How'd you even know it was broken? Mark: Because it's sitting right in front of us and it's broken. Wilford: Suspicious. Mark: No, it's not! Damien: If it matters, probably not, but Noir was the last one to use it. Noir: Liar! I don't even drink that crap! Damien: Oh really? Then what were you doing by the coffee cart earlier? Noir: I use the wooden stirrers to push back my cuticles. Everyone knows that, Damien! Engineer: Okay let's not fight. I broke it. Let me pay for it, cap. Reader: No! Who broke it!? Everyone: Yancy: Hey, bud… Illinois' been awfully quiet. Illinois: rEALLY?! *Everyone starts arguing* Reader, talking to Host: I broke it. It burned my hand so I punched it. Reader: I predict 10 minutes from now they'll be at each other's throats with warpaint on their faces and a pig head on a stick. Reader: Reader: Good. It was getting a little chummy around here.

Murdock: So you like cats? Detective!Reader: Yeah. Murdock: *tries to impress them by slowly pushing a glass off the table*

Police!Reader: We are gathered here today because someone- *glares at Mark’s coffin* -couldn’t stay alive!

Engineer!Reader: Why are you two always out during rainstorms? Google: It’s so peaceful and refreshing. I love the smell of rain. Bing: Google bet me I couldn’t get struck by lighting, but he’s WRONG.

The police chief, pointing to Murdock’s empty cell: YOU LET HIM ESCAPE?!? Detective!Reader: I WAS ON BREAK.

Detective!Reader: I’m going to take you out. Murdock: Great, it’s a date! Detective!Reader: I meant that as a threat. Murdock: See you at five!

Actor!Reader, struggling to keep upright in their 1 inch heels: Yeah, I-I don’t really think heels are for me. Actor, pointing at them and walking flawlessly in sparkly golden 6 inch heels: WEAK.

Bing: I'm incredibly fast at math. Engineer!Reader: Alright, what's 30 x 17? Bing: 47. Engineer!Reader: That's not even close. Bing: But it was fast.

Police!Reader: Go to Hell. Actor: I wish I could.

Dark: In light of what you did for me, you can hug me for four to five seconds. DA!Reader: FORTY-FIVE SECONDS?!? Dark: No! Four to five seconds! DA!Reader: Too late!!!

*Damien and College!Reader skipping stones on lake* Damien: It’s such a beautiful evening. College!Reader, whispering: Take that you fucking lake.

Actor: So that’s my plan. Police!Reader: Are you alright with constructive criticism? I don’t want to sound mean. Actor: No, go ahead, I want to hear it. Detective!Reader: It fucking sucks. Actor: That’s not constructive criticism.

Bartender!Reader: Can you please be serious for five minutes? Wilford: My record is four, but I think I can do it.

Actor!Reader: How petty can you get? Actor: I once edited a Wikipedia article to win an argument I was wrong about.

Illinois: Yancy and I were crossing the street, and this dude drove by and honked at us. Criminal!Reader: *Sighing* What did Yancy do? Illinois: He chased him to the next red light, then reached into his window and... Yancy: Who wants a steering wheel?

Dark: Why. why did you give the DA a KNIFE?! Wilford: I’m sorry. They said they felt unsafe. Dark: Now I feel unsafe! Wilford: I’m sorry. Wilford: ... would you like a knife?

*DA!Reader and Wilford sitting in jail together* DA!Reader: So who should we call? Wilford: I’d call Dark, but I feel safer in jail.

Engineer: Gunther, can I talk to you for a second? Gunther: Yeah, what’s up? Lemme guess. You and Cap are having problems and you want me to teach you how to kiss? Engineer: What? No, stop that. I know how to kiss. I’ve read books.

Ghosts!Reader: Who the fuck added me to a fucking group chat? Engineer: >:O language. Bing: Yeah watch your fucking language. Yancy: OKAY WHO TAUGHT BING THE FUCK WORD? Google: 'The fuck word'. Noir: Are you stupid? You all use the f word all the time. Wilford: Oh my god he censored it. Illinois: Say fuck, Noir. Mark: Do it, Noir. Say fuck.

Host: If you bite it and you die, it’s poisonous. If it bites you and you die, it’s venomous. Mark: What if it bites me and it dies!? Dark: Then you’re poisonous. Jesus Christ, Mark, learn to listen. Yancy: What if it bites itself and I die? Noir: That’s voodoo. Bing: What if it bites me and someone else dies? Google: That’s correlation, not causation. Illinois: What if we bite each other, and neither of us die? Wilford: That’s kinky. Ghosts!Reader: I hate this house.

Sheriff!Reader: Died and came back as a cowboy, I call that reintarnation.

Mark, setting down a card: Ace of spades. Dodger, pulling out an Uno card: +4. Enis, pulling out a Pokémon card: Jolteon, I choose you! Survivor!Reader, trembling: What are we playing?

Actor: You lying, cheating, piece of shit! Actor!Reader: Oh yeah? You’re the idiot who thinks you can get away with everything you do. WELCOME TO THE REAL WORLD! Actor: I’m leaving you, and I’M TAKING JULIET WITH ME. Toby, picking up the monopoly board: I think we’re gonna stop playing now.

#theknightmarket #markiplier egos #fanfiction #writing #markiplier #markiplier egos x reader #one shots #happy new years #spoilers #I misspelt spoilers the first time #x reader #incorrect quotes

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theknightmarket · 4 months

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"Choke on it."

In which Dark finally helps the person he wronged. Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - AO3 TW: cursing, possibly abusive relationship, heavy violence, destruction of property Pages: 29 - Words: 11,500

[Requests: OPEN]

It was nearing midnight when your heartbeat finally calmed down. Not even setting foot into Mark’s apartment had been a relief, not when you were so close to toppling over the cliff of a heart attack. Your friend had yet to say a word since you got him out of the manor, and the distant expression on his face was little comfort. At least he still had a face. You didn’t want to know what that maniac would have done to him if you hadn’t come out of that bathroom in time.

Questions of that man swirled around in the forefront of your mind while your body acted on autopilot – Mark would have to settle for the sixteen-hours-on-set-in-summer protocol, which started with you laying him on the couch and getting two glasses of water. It was a good thing that you were used to this, too, because your focus was split between him, yourself, and the stranger.

You hated that. You hated that he distracted you from helping the person you cared about. You hated that the dozens of questions that plagued you like locusts refused to leave even as you retrieved the med-kit from a bathroom cabinet. Staring back into the mirror, you tried to fight them back, or redirect your attention to the present. The last hour didn’t matter, stopping your panic did.

Were you panicking? You couldn’t tell. When you tried to inspect yourself for injury, your eyes blurred your skin so much that you couldn’t differentiate between a shadow or a possible bruise. Didn’t matter. You knew that Mark was hurt. You could check yourself out afterwards.

He was exactly where you’d left him; lying on his back, spread longways on the couch in the living room. He didn’t look any more coherent than he did before. You didn’t expect that to change anytime soon.

The inside of the med-kit was rammed full of miscellaneous equipment. There was a pack of unlabeled pills, some Advil, three rolls of gauze but no band-aids, a cloth, and a couple of bottles. The edges of the box were surprisingly battered, as if it had been thrown around in the moving truck. One of the latches was nearly falling off. Was it ironic to have a broken med-kit, or just stupid? Not that it really mattered all that much. It was still a container if the lid wasn’t on it all the way. Nobody was breaking in to get at your random assortment of drugs. Or maybe they were.

Eight minutes you had spent staring into the med-kit.

You struggled between trying to tether your mind to the present – the feeling of the microfiber smothered in disinfectant – and it escaping back into the wilderness of questions. It got lost in the bushes as you brought your hand to Mark’s head. You had propped him up at some point, or maybe he’d pushed himself to a sitting position, but that dazed look was still present.

That daze was broken when the chemicals leached into his cuts. There were multiple in the same place, as well as the bruises from that psycho’s fist, so it made sense to tend to those first. The hiss that shocked the air was an understandable response, and you were glad that it was that to take him out of the haziness.

“Hush,” you muttered, almost inaudible, “we don’t need this swelling and making your head any bigger than it already is.”

Starting bits wasn’t part of your protocol, but you couldn’t stop one from pushing past your lips. It only made you feel slightly guilty when Mark didn’t laugh, or even respond in any sense of the word. That hiss was the most brought out from him.

“That was a joke.”

The lack of band-aids meant you had to fetch some scissors from the kitchen and cut out a sizable square of the gauze, with a slightly bigger one of medical tape to go on top of it. Apparently, there wasmedical tape in the box, too. You shifted your attention to his jaw.

“That didn’t go to plan.”

You leaned back at Mark’s words. That much was obvious.

“No, I didn’t think it did. Can’t exactly base a ghost show off a living man beating the hell out of you.”

The spit of, “Living…” did not fly over your head, but you assumed it was just natural spite. He didn’t like his pride damaged, and being battered, even if it wasn’t life-threatening, wasn’t exactly a badge on his boy-scout sash.

You continued to pepper the disinfectant around the most important areas, pausing for Mark to take one of the known pills, and then resuming your care. This being Los Angeles, you weren’t a stranger to helping out with injuries, especially when shoots wrapped up late. This one, though, confused you more than a random alley mugging.

“What was that guy’s problem?” you asked as you cut up another gauze and tape.

“I’m sure he has plenty of them.”

“Was that place even abandoned?”

“Not exactly.”

You blinked. While you hadn’t been asking questions for no good reason, you didn’t expect an answer, especially not one that put you on guard. Not exactly. That wasn’t a promising response from the very person who had told you it was safe not four hours prior.

Your eyes narrowed. “Mark.”

He didn’t take a breath before he rushed to his own defense. “The studio said we were going to use it, so I took it upon myself to check it out. If we hadn’t, we might’ve encountered that man halfway through filming.”

That eased your suspicions somewhat, enough for you to wrap the last injury and pack up the med-kit. The look in his eyes was somewhere between pleading and self-justifying, so you let it go. It wouldn’t do you any good to pick a fight when the dinginess of the encounter was wearing off finally – you quite liked being able to think, thank you, and if that meant backing off from Mark for the day, you were fine with that.

So, sighing, you grabbed the kit and rose from the couch. His eyes trailed after you as you made your way back to the bathroom. “I guess so,” you said, rounding the coffee table, “just don’t make it a habit, yeah?” The light chuckle you heard calmed your heart some more. He seemed to be in good spirits after the whole ordeal, and you weren’t about to go breaking that. He’d get an earful from the makeup department the following day, so that took the lecturing off your plate, and you wanted time to think about everything before you launched into an argument. You wanted answers, something to back everything up if he got on the attack; getting the full picture normally disproved a lot of Mark’s points.

Your feet brought you to the edge of the hallway. You didn’t like planning for a fight, but, with Mark, they happened too often to let yourself be willingly vulnerable. It would have a better outcome for you if you weren’t in the dark.

Though, there were things that you still missed. For instance, Mark’s whispered words of a forewarning promise that slipped by you. “Trust me, pet.” He made himself more comfortable on the velvet cushions. “I already got exactly what I wanted.” Ever the dramatist, he knew nobody would hear him, but being able to say those words aloud, and for them to be true, was one of the most satisfying feelings in the world.

The clock in the kitchen read quarter past one when you were readying a meal for yourself. The last thing you ate before arriving at the manor had been a slice of pizza you’d scavenged from the tech room, and that gave you the smallest boost of energy you needed to get back to the apartment. Now that you were out of danger and had missed dinner, you were starving. Mark had gone to his room before you asked if he was hungry, so, while you had the oh-so-generous thought of waking him up to eat, you ignored it in favor of the oh-so-appealing thought of just throwing down whatever you wanted and then collapsing on your bed for the next eight hours.

You rifled through the cabinets and fridge until you came up with the basic ingredients needed for a sandwich. Simple, quick, and good enough that it would get you through the night. It required no cooking and barely any clean up!

Brushing your commercial thoughts away, you settled down on one of the stools and took a bite. You’d suspected it for a long time, but, in that moment, you made concrete the revelation that things always tasted better after the worst possible day, at the worst possible time, with the worst possible thoughts in your head. You almost bit your fingers clean in two with the distractions floating about – the questions flitting around your mind like a plague of locusts that refused to leave – but a solid taste brought you back to some modicum of awareness.

However, only those first few bites were satisfactory. What you had was an addict’s high, as stupid as it sounded in comparison to eating food, because as you filled your stomach, the thoughts strengthened. They poked and prodded and pulled, demanded that you pay attention to them, the one thing you steadfastly refused to do. You squeezed your eyes shut, no help, you opened them, and took the lesser of two evils by forcing them closed again.

The sink was directly in front of you.

Goddamnit.

The manor was fine to think about, right? It wouldn’t hurt any to reflect on the day. It was just a building. An old building, which housed a violent mania— it was just a building. As far as you could remember, you didn’t like reflecting on things. Being in the moment, as people called it, wasn’t how you liked to spend your time. You could be out doing things that mattered, and the past had already happened, so why bother devoting a second more to it? Despite that reasoning, you’d found yourself reflecting more and more recently.

Like a bad habit.

You weren’t hungry anymore.

You wrapped the sandwich in plastic, placed it in the fridge, and wandered off to the living room. Something to distract you, that was what you needed. A bad show or reruns of a movie that was seared into your memory from how many times you’d seen it already. Anything but the stillness and quietness and void that pulled you into thinking.

A laugh bubbled up from your throat when you let yourself fall onto the couch Mark had occupied before. Most people liked thinking. The pillows were still disheveled, more so after you launched them into the air. One landed on the floor next to your foot, but you didn’t pick it up, choosing instead to search for the remote between the seat cushions. It didn’t take long to find it, drudging up a couple coins, some string, and a whole leather wallet alongside the thing.

You brought a hand up to your face, and, with the other, clicked on the TV. Whatever was on already was fine, you were too tired to change it, or even listen to it. Making that sandwich really sapped your energy, it seemed, teasing you into an early food coma. What was the lightweight version for food? Was there one? Could you make one? You rubbed your eyes until they stung, and your mind fogged up with the pressure. Everything was falling in on you, all at once. A headache knocked at the edge of your brain, stirred on by your own merciless hand and a swarming static in your ears.

You groaned. Great. Amazing. Now the TV was breaking. You glared at it from the corner of your eye, but it didn’t right itself; the silvery sparks danced across the screen, repeating and reemerging from every corner. You saw them as you looked away and as you looked back. Just what you needed, more problems to add to your pile of issues you weren’t ready to fix. A yawn stretched your jaws open. Screw it, you’d deal with it in the morning. You had time. For the moment, you could just switch it off and ignore it all. Or, apparently, with your thumb jamming into the button, you couldn’t.

The universe hated you. The damn thing wouldn’t turn off, and the static was overwhelming you, and you were tired, and you couldn’t sleep with that thing next to you, and you figured you might as well wait out your demise on your comfortable bed. Huffing loud enough that you wondered if Mark had woken up, you tugged your body off the couch and pulled your legs to the edge of the room. You had to get out quickly or the fixing chore would soon be a replacing chore.

You resisted sprinting down the corridor away from the living room, but you compromised by glaring at everything that passed. The windows, the lights, the paintings. You flipped one of them off out of spite. You knew you were being petty, but did you care? Not really. No one was there to see you, you could make as many obscene and nonsensical gestures as you wanted, as long as they didn’t wake Mark, and you had gotten pretty good at keeping quiet.

As you trudged around a corner, you noticed how many paintings Mark had. You’d once spent an entire day off counting them, but he must have gotten more in the meantime – one, because he was Mark and everything did was over the top, and, two, because there were some you didn’t recognize.

You ran your hand along the frame of a winter wonderland, then crossed to a split-screen of a brilliant disco and a monochromatic office. The third one felt more homely; a painting of a Victorian living room so detailed it might as well have been a photograph. You stopped at the last one. In the row of four, this was the one that gave you pause, knocked you off your rhythm, made you feel ill. It was… nothing. Just a black canvas. Completely empty, like someone had made a mistake and dumped a bucket of the darkest paint they could find on top of it.

When you moved your head, you saw the light reflect off it, bringing your attention back to nothingness. You moved again. You missed it again. Whatever it was, it was giving you a headache, not that you would be free of one given that you could still hear the static from the television.

What were you doing?

Right.

Bed.

You’d have to avoid this hallway when you woke up. There were enough rooms that it was possible, and you were going to take full advantage of that. You were well aware that you could cut off an entire section of the house by going in a different direction – you had found that out when you avoided Mark for a day and got on just fine. It did take some watching through a crack in your door for when he'd leave his bedroom, which was helpfully stationed opposite yours, but it worked, and you were proud of it.

Speaking of your room, as you rounded another corner, you spotted your door. Relief washed over you at the thought of your comfy sheets and no more static. If you heard it inside, you might have just thrown yourself out the window and called it a day.

Fingers on the handle. Still there. Pushing the door open. Still there. One step forward taken. Still there. Another step. Still there. The door drifted closed behind you.

Thank fuck.

If you silently pumped your fist in the air, nobody knew. You trapped the static right outside, you were the goddamn winner, you deserved an award, you were really tired. Stumbling over to the foot of your bed, you gripped the edge of your shirt and fully debated just sleeping in your clothes, and you probably would have, had you not been distracted by the figure appearing in a swirl of smoke in your full-length mirror across from you.

Your body sprang into action, fists pulled up, legs steeled in the stance you’d seen in movies before. You could question why the maniac from the manor was in your mirror when you knocked his lights out, and you could wonder if that was possible after you tried.

He held his hands up placatingly. “Easy, easy!” he said, “I’m not here to fight.”

That didn’t stop you from moving closer, eyes narrowed at him. “Yeah? What are you here for then?”

“You.”

He spoke as if it were simple. As if you were supposed to know that already. And, somewhere in your gut, you thought that you did.

“I just want to explain.”

“Go on. Explain.”

His eyes flickered, leaving trails of red and blue in the sockets. For a moment, you were worried he was bleeding, but you didn’t care. Why would you care? Maybe you didn’t want a dead body in your mirror.

You frowned.

“I can’t do it here.”

Your frown deepened.

“Why not?”

“He’s nearby.” Considering it was only Mark and yourself in the entire house, you could guess who he was talking about. “Anything I say, he’ll use against me, and you, too. We can do this on a level playing field.” He stopped. Last time you had spoken, albeit less speaking and more yelling, he had seemed desperate. Angry, but desperate. He had pleaded with you, for something that he didn’t receive, and then he conceded. Earlier that day, you were able to leave the old manor with nary a glance over your shoulder or a thought to the man until you arrived home. Now, he was different. You didn’t know whether it was because there was a screen of glass protecting him, or because Mark was asleep, but he was collected. His words came out confident and calculated. You weren’t about to admit that you preferred it.

After nodding to himself, he tugged at the edge of his jacket. “The manor is still open; you can meet me there.”

“And that’s a level playing field, is it? Your home turf?”

“Going anywhere else would be much more complicated on my end, and I need to get this done as fast as possible. It’s urgent.”

It was urgent? It was urgent. Something stirred in you that whispered to bite back, to send a petty remark, but not one that was fit for the person who assaulted your friend. More as though he had taken the last donut at the studio, apologized, and then left. You didn’t need to be angry, it told you, you just had to joke back to break the tension.

“Please. We need to talk.”

Another pang. It was almost hurting now. You didn’t like it. It was all wrong. You didn’t know how, but it was wrong, and, in order to make it right, you had to accept.

Begrudgingly. Of course.

“Fine—” because he was dangerous, “—tomorrow morning—” and he was untrustworthy, “—the manor—” and he would definitely use you against Mark, “—we’ll talk.”

So, aware of all that, why did you almost copy his smile when it spread along his face. He was relieved. Normally, you weren’t a fan of being out of the loop, but you felt no reason to ask. What you did want to ask, however, was something much simpler.

“In return,” you said, “you could give me your name?”

“Ah, yes, I always forget that part.” He shifted on his feet, both hands springing to his jacket. “Dark. You can call me Dark.”

Although you wanted to tell him that his name was actually an adjective, you held back and just nodded. You could bully him in person tomorrow. More fun that way, and you could think about that instead of the fact that you were putting yourself in the path of a metaphorical rolling boulder.

Or the light chuckle that you let out when Dark said a quiet, “Thank you.”

Your new acquaintance disappeared in a puff of smoke, the kind you’d see in TV shows, but it didn’t seem that odd to you. You got over the strangeness of the whole ordeal quickly, which you supposed was a good thing – though, whether you got over it or were ignoring it was up to debate.

After pulling off your shirt and reaching for the nightwear thrown over the bed frame, you paused with the fabric in your hands. Did you have to tell Mark? You knew that you should, it was only right for him to know. You wouldn’t not go if he told you to, but he should have been aware of it. Shouldn’t he?

You vaguely registered sitting down before you were overwhelmed by indecision. On one hand, Mark was your friend. You trusted him, and going behind his back to, what, meet with his assaulter was unfair. On the other hand…

You just didn’t want to tell him. It was so simple that it made you feel sick. You had to keep this from him. He wouldn’t want you to go anyway, and, if nothing came of this little event, then it didn’t matter if you told him or not.

For once, in the life that you could remember, you decided that it would be better for Mark to not know, and you carried on your routine without a second thought to it.

It was cold outside the manor, but it was infinitely better than standing inside. Preparing with deep breaths and calming thoughts was going to be no use when you were standing in the maw. Better to do it on the gravel, where you could turn tail and run if you couldn’t do it. But – deep breath in, deep breath out – you knew you could do this.

The door swung open before your fist could come within an inch of the wood. It revealed the foyer, the staircase, the rubble, a room devoid of life. A glance around didn’t help its case. Whatever had caused the door to open didn’t stop you from stepping tentatively onto the floorboards, but the twin shivers racing up and down your back stopped you from moving any further. Paralyzed, you settled on calling out to the ancient manor’s walls.

“Hello?”

Your voice echoed. Not a creak or a crack to reply. You were somewhat surprised the little word hadn’t caused the place to collapse around you, but weirder things were happening to pay attention to it. Your gaze zoned in on the mirror at your side, like a moth drawn to a flame.

It was difficult to blink as you looked at yourself through it, harder to take your eyes off it than inspect every inch of the glass and frame. The wood had intricate designs that coiled up and over, disappearing behind the dusty reflection of the rest of the room. Instinctively, you brought a hand up to your cheek. It felt the same as it ever did, but that didn’t stop you from brushing a thumb over every pore and rough patch.

When you pulled yourself away, like removing your body from fly paper, you didn’t try to suppress another shiver. You could convince yourself it was from the cold of the manor, but that was undeniably a lie.

“Who’s pretentious enough to own a manor?” you muttered, stepping back into the middle of the foyer.

“You’d be surprised.”

“Oh, shit—” You managed to not trip over your feet, but you whirled around far too quick to appear stable, “—don’t do that.”

Behind you, or now in front of you, stood none other than the man who had invited you here. Dark was still in the same outfit as when he’d shown up in your mirror; the black suit and white dress shirt, both uncreased and unwrinkled, even when he shifted his arms behind his back. The more you stared, the more you noticed, though you stopped at the faint red and blue lines that curled away from him. Weird.

Dark opened his mouth to speak, closed it, then opened it again. “I apologize,” he said. “I… it’s nice to see you, under better circumstances than yesterday.”

“Attacking my friend isn’t a good start.”

He recoiled at your words, but which aspect was most appalling was lost on you. “That is what we need to talk about.”

“Well, you can start by apologizing again for hitting Mark in the jaw. It’s his best redeeming quality.”

“That I cannot do.”

“An even worse start.”

How was this supposed to work, then, if he refused to apologize for the simplest wrongdoing? And what even was this, anyway? Dark had managed to be both blunt and vague at the same time, leaving you gasping for breath in a sea of confusion. You didn’t know whether taking this seriously would help you, because Dark’s way of speaking to you didn’t give you anything to go off of that would let the few meaningful words have any weight.

“By the end of today, if all goes well, you’ll understand why I won’t.”

Ah, so you were here to forgive him. Great. Okay. And what did that achieve? You hated being in the dark more than you hated knowing painful truths, so you wanted to speed this along. He must’ve seen your restlessness, because he hastily ushered you towards the archway that connected the foyer to that kitchen. You tried not to look at the sink, but you still found yourself seated in the same stool as last time with Dark in the one next to you. A pair of teacups still steaming on the marble had you questioning how much he had planned this morning out.

“You’re gonna have to start explaining, I have no idea what any of… this is about.”

Dark cleared his throat while one hand reached to tug on his jacket. Your first thought was that he had a weapon, but it just appeared like a nervous habit. You paused as he thought through his words. It wasn’t natural for him. The way his hand moved to the side ever so slightly before it lunged for the fabric made you think it was a replacement, and not a good one.

An artificially calm tone brought you back, Dark asking, “Can you promise to believe me, if only for the duration of this talk?”

That was counter intuitive. If you agreed, then what was the point of being told at all? Blindly believing someone was never a good idea, you would know, and an insane stranger was not a good candidate for it – why would you know – really, this entire situation screamed trap, and his request made it clear that whatever he was going to tell you was too outlandish to be taken seriously.

You nodded, ignoring the sense of reason that you shoved further back in your mind by taking a sip of the tea.

The story that followed sounded exactly that; a story, crafted with rough hands that produced cracks and faults the kind that made it impossible to hold itself together. A shoddy job, which definitely made you regret promising to believe Dark, even before you were halfway through. Everything was convoluted and paradoxical. Not a single word of it made sense.

So, why were you nodding along with the sections, filling in the blanks yourself, and acting less surprised than if you heard the lady down the street had lost her fifth cat? Why did it make sense that you were, apparently, somehow, the shadowy leftovers of a 1920s district attorney, shot in the chest by a colonel – who was still around there, somewhere –, and left for dead by your current best friend, who was really a century old actor? Oh, but don’t forget that the man sitting in front of you was three spirits, two of which were your childhood friends of a seer and the goddamn mayor, inhabiting your body after they trapped you in the mirror that you had seen when walking in.

You wanted to not believe it, so badly.

Dark watched you placed the cup back on the countertop. You weren’t angry, that was good news, but you hadn’t said anything since he’d began to talk. He was familiar with the old adage that ‘no news was good news’, but the silence made his throat dry, and his breath escape him shakily. Back to square one, looking at you as he hoped you would say anything, please.

You cleared your throat, and then said, “Except I can’t remember any of this. How does that fit?”

Dark’s shoulders lowered. Your tone wasn’t condescending, and it genuinely sounded like a question. Only, it was one he couldn’t satisfyingly answer.

“I don’t know,” he admitted, “I was hoping you would be able to fill me in on that.”

“Do you have any physical proof that this happened?”

“Not as such.”

“Any witnesses?”

“None who would make it any more believable.”

“Right, then.”

With that, you rose from your seat, pushing the teacup away from the edge, and moved your gaze from his. Panic crossed out any other thought in Dark’s brain. You couldn’t leave now. You’d be going back to Mark, and he’d never have a chance of helping you again. You’d be stuck, and he’d have failed, and everything would continue to be wrong.

“Come on.”

What?

Your shoes unmoving on the tiles of the kitchen, you looked down at Dark. The movement of your head indicated you wanted him to follow. But weren’t you leaving?

He brushed himself off as he got to his own feet. “Where are we going?”

You spoke as you began to lead him back to the foyer, though you stayed well away from the front door. “If what you’re saying is correct,” you started, “and my friend has been lying to me for three months, and I’m really the—” you found it difficult to keep the laugh out of your voice, “—what, ghost, reincarnation, of a district attorney who died one hundred years ago… then we’re gonna see if we can’t recover some memories through good ol’ exposure therapy.”

You didn’t remember the layout of the manor, but the way you moved, hurled yourself around the banister, walked backwards up the first few steps of the staircase, certainly made it seem like you did. Like this was all natural to you. Dark hoped it was, even if it were just muscle memory, because that gave you a chance. It gave him a chance.

Hope was a hard thing for him. Frustratingly intangible and always disappearing at the last moment. However, as Dark inspected your face for deceit, he thought that, maybe, hope was something he could hold onto, if only for the rest of the day. There was something familiar in your eyes. It wasn’t the same as the 1920s, but neither was Dark, and he would find no comfort in something from the time he hadn’t participated in. That would be for Damien, or Celine, or the extra entity. The risky flame in the color that flirted with the paper white around it was just for him.

He placed his hand next to yours on the end of the banister and followed you up to the first floor.

This was proving more difficult than he had thought. For the past three hours, Dark had taken you around the manor – a tour through the most valuable places that might contribute to your memories. The office that housed Abe’s suspect board was a bust, but that was never going to be of any help to anyone. The room you had slept in on the night of the party yielded no results, save for your tripping over a loose floorboard that Dark had to right you from. Both the master and the other normal bedrooms were useless. Peeling out of the last room, he was gradually losing confidence in this not being another wasted venture.

That meant he had to think of the consequences. You couldn’t keep living with Mark but getting you to understand the danger you were putting yourself in was the only way of convincing you. It wasn’t as though anyone else in the manor was going to help. Benjamin was still annoyed about his kitchen and Wilford was—

Coming down the hallway.

His hopes dampened further.

“Oh, hello! Fancy seeing you here!”

The newcomer was a sight, to sum it up. Dressed entirely in pink and yellow, practically candy-coated, and oozing a manic aura that made you take a step back. He didn’t seem to take offence, too caught up in seeing you, apparently, again.

“Hello?” you spoke carefully.

The stranger moved closer, past Dark and past the door you had just come from, to walk around you, as though you were a zoo animal to gawk at.

“In the flesh, too.” His whistle was punctuated by a poke in between your ribs. You didn’t try to keep still, and, instead, slapped at his hand and crossed another over your stomach to protect as much surface area as you could. “I thought it’d take more to get you back, but I should have had more faith in our friend here, eh?”

Our friend? Well, whoever this was, he was involved in the events that you’d forgotten, but further judgement made it clear he was going to be just as vague as Dark in giving you information, if not more with a flair for the dramatic. A fluorescent pink moustache wasn’t the style of a straight-lace guy.

He came to a stop from his shark-esque circling next to Dark. “Though, really, I did not expect to see you with Mark.”

“And why would that be?”

He huffed and the hairs of his mustache shifted slightly. “From our last chat, between the two of us, I’d say I was the more sympathetic to him. Don’t tell me your flame’s gone out.”

The issue with having moved from where you had been standing before was that you were now trapped between the end of the hallway and the wall. It gave you no space to get away from the man who was now leaning in closer. The melodramatic attitude sapped away, exchanged for something more threatening.

And then he was gone. Not disappeared but planted further down the corridor than he could have moved in the second you took to notice. Creepy, but you preferred it to his invasion of personal space.

“Ah, no matter,” he announced, hands on hips, looking quite sure of himself, “it won’t take much to stoke that fire. You’ll be right as rain in no time, as long as Dark does his job right—” the wink he tossed was met with furrowed eyebrows, “—and I trust that he will.”

He patted Dark on the shoulder once, firmly, decisively, before spinning on his heel and marching back down where he had come from. That left just you and Dark, yourself staring at the retreating haze of color, and the latter looking anywhere but.

“That’s one of the witnesses?” you guessed.

“Correct.”

You barely took a breath before you replied, “Yeah, that makes sense.”

While you processed the new not-stranger, Dark carded a hand through his hair. He knew he looked disheveled but what else was new? He hadn’t been anything else since you had been taken, and now that you had returned, he was even more unstable than before. This effort to restore your lost memories was taking a larger toll on him than he would admit, especially when he had already reached the last resort.

The last resort, which he had conveniently forgotten was completely destroyed.

You whistled as you set foot through the library’s door, Dark’s face dropping behind you into a grimace that you missed when you walked forward. The toppled shelves and collapsed desk were all pushed to the side, as if to make way for the whirlpool of pages and books and bindings. Seeing the mess that he’d made sent another pang of regret through him to his core, but you were not deterred, likely because you didn’t know it was the man behind you who had created it.

You stepped carefully over a pile of the healthiest books and proceeded into the centre of the ring. From what you could glean of the covers, a lot of them were faux journals, framed as entries into some magical cyclopedia, while others were playscripts. You stumbled over a collection of Shakespeare’s tragedies but landed with a curse on spirit interaction guide. In a situation like this, you had no clue where to start, so you just dropped to the ground in a crouch and started rifling through the legible documents. At one wall of the library, Dark followed suit, scanning the higher up books for a hint of something to help you.

Ten minutes passed. Nothing. Thirty passed. Nothing. An hour passed. Nothing. Two hours passed. Nothing.

Dark prided himself on his ability to plan. He would map out every possibility and consequence of those possibilities in his mind and react accordingly. It helped in keeping people away from the manor and, although it had slipped in recent months, keep an eye on Mark.

Yet, certainly because of you, those plans were thrown out of the window and into a smoldering pit where they burned to a crisp. It was something about you that threw him off but let Mark keep afloat. His plan to recover your memories, foiled by either Mark or you or even himself. Nothing was working how it should, like it used to, and the only different component was you.

You lodged a spanner in the works and tore down the front Dark had managed to painstakingly construct of power and order.

Now, he was just some fool, searching through empty bookshelves for optimism and forcing the stress and the anger to the forefront to avoid thinking about why you had such an effect on him. Coming up empty after another half hour of skimming page after page only added fuel to the fire.

And all of that wasted time had no effect on you. You had returned to your spot in the middle of the library after searching in an arc for nothing in particular. He’d watched you out of the corner of his eye as you waved a hand over the viable covers or browsed the exposed pages for a line to give you any strong emotion. You’d even picked one up and laughed to yourself about a recipe’s annotation. How you were getting enjoyment out of this was beyond Dark. Hell, how you were still going with that slight grin on your face had him questioning whether you were taking this seriously.

He could only hope you were. For both your sakes. If he lost to Mark again, he didn’t know what he would do.

But he couldn’t let himself worry. Worrying would damage the dam he had set up to keep the emotional side of him away. He could worry after you were safe. For now, he would have to be stressed if he wanted to get anywhere. Dark forced himself to keep moving.

You were surprised to see Dark stepping away from the shelf – he hadn’t moved an inch in the last twenty minutes – and that surprise strengthened when you realized he was moving towards the door. Quite quickly, in fact. You narrowly missed tripping on one of the books in your effort to chase after him.

“Why isn’t anything working?” he muttered to himself, rushing in the direction of the staircase. You caught up with him as he rounded onto the first step, skidding to a stop against the dusty carpet. Dark was at the bottom before you could think to descend, and then he was turning the corner just as you reached the last step.

You were halfway to winded when you wound up next to him. Back in the foyer, back near the front door, back near the mirror, which he was staring very intently at, like the answer to his problems should have been written on his forehead. You didn’t stop the light chuckle at the thought from escaping you, going so far into the bit as to follow his line of sight.

Your throat dried up and your breathing froze inside. Every inch of your skin went numb to the outside, but you felt the blood course against the surface and your organs churn. Heart batting a dozen against the cage of your ribs. Mind focusing every conscious and unconscious thought onto the image inside the mirror. It wasn’t you. It wasn’t Dark. It was something else. You wanted to throw up. You wanted to look away. Neither of those you followed through with.

Against the backdrop of a void laid a body as clear as daylight, but, god, did you want it to be shrouded in darkness. The flesh was pouring off the bone, melting eyeballs staring right at you, taunting you, and the smirk of chipped lips from a face turned almost 180 degrees. A red robe molded itself into the divots and dips that the caved in skin left, making it difficult to discern between the crimson fabric or blood. The stuff pooled around his head to create a sick halo.

“Anything?”

You couldn’t talk. All of the breath was knocked out of you, stolen by the exotic corpse. Its smile grew wider.

“This was a horrible idea.” You barely registered Dark’s sigh. “Can you give me anything at all?”

You snapped your head to face him and immediately shivered. Stiffly, you replied, “Don’t get mad at me. I didn’t invite myself here.”

After taking a breath in and letting it out, you risked a glance back. Gone. Gone? The body was gone.

“You say that like you don’t care.”

A voice whispered to you that this was, indeed, a horrible idea. You shouldn’t have come at all. You should have brushed Dark’s appearance in your mirror off as the product of an adrenaline high, or simply a dream. It would have been better than this.

Dark took your silence for resignation, to which he took offence. “If I’m correct,” he practically spat, “you are living with a murderer.”

“And that’s a very heavy if. Mark’s my friend.”

“He’s not your friend.”

“Because I can trust the person who I watched try to kill him.”

Stop. Slow down. Don’t do this. It was happening again. You were getting into an argument when more important things were at stake.

“Look at me,” Dark spoke, trying to be as calm as he could manage, “tell me I look like some maniac who would attack someone with no reason.”

And look you did. Up and down, you inspected him. While he was right, he didn’t look like he’d assault someone for kicks, you couldn’t admit it. Because then you would have to admit that Mark was not who he said he was, and that you had to take this seriously.

All you could muster up was a faint, “People do things for so many reasons.”

Dark could tell you didn’t believe that. Your sentiment didn’t meet your eyes, and he’d spent long enough looking into them that he knew when you were genuine. “Then give me my motive,” he offered. “If not for revenge, why did I harm him.”

“Oh, who knows!” The hiss came out stronger than you thought it would. “It’s not as though you’ve been trying to convince me I’m a dead attorney for the last four hours. Give me some leeway here.”

“We don’t have time for a casual stroll down memory lane, you could be in danger.” In fact, he knew you were. You just needed to see that.

“It’s Los Angeles, it’s impossible to be safe.”

“Stop making light of this.” The command was stern and offered no alternatives, but he knew that had never stopped you before. “He murdered our friends, he left you for dead, he trapped you in a void—”

“He got me out!”

Who did Dark think he was? Barging into your life and taking away those happy moments that were the only things keeping you going, ruining the treasured feeling of sun on your skin and wind in your hair and the ability to walk ten paces to the left without seeing a dead body in your peripheral! He thought that it would be such a good idea to drag you back to the darkness. And you almost let him. You agreed to go along with it and go on a wild goose chase for something you doubted would even matter, because you couldn’t have this life without Mark. Being free meant being with Mark, and you knew it wasn’t true freedom, but the alternative was going back to that mirror.

Although you had only said four words, you were knocked breathless. Dark was similarly surprised, mimicking the shock on your face before it broke apart, half eager, half pained.

“I said you acted like a child, that you were being selfish.”

“You stole my body.” You wanted time to think about this, you tried to stop the response from shooting out, but you couldn’t.

“I minimized your suffering to explain my actions.”

“I was stuck in complete darkness.” The taste of metal spread in your mouth.

“I stayed away for three days after that.”

“I kept seeing Mark’s corpse.” You didn’t understand what you were saying, like the thoughts were coming from someone else and you were just acting as a conduit. But they felt right. They made sense, even if they didn’t to you.

Dark’s breath became labored at his final admission. “And I never got you out.”

“You left me for one hundred years.”

You both came to a stop. Cars going too fast that crashed into the same wall. Flames danced in your eyes, and wreckage collapsed in Dark’s. Tears trailed onto your chin, carving out the shape of a snarl, but you paid it no mind. You were caught, face to face, with this stranger. According to your statements, you should’ve despised him, if they were all true, but, now that you’d slowed down, there was something else. The accusations told you Dark was cruel, and yet the emotions behind them whispered otherwise. You cared for the monster, somehow, you cared for the man who had abandoned you. Mark might had left you to die, but Dark left you in your death. You didn’t know what to do about that, because your muscles spasmed against your brain that held them back from reaching out for him.

You didn’t know everything yet. Some of the most important memories were still trapped, and Dark knew how to unlock them.

He was running towards his office before either side could win you over.

“Oh, you are not leaving again!” Your yell echoed after him, following your shadow on the ruined wallpaper up to the first floor. Wherever he was going, you were going, too.

Although, he didn’t go far. You caught the edge of the door before it could close behind him and stalked into the office. Everything was so pristine compared to Dark, who was bathed in the streaks of bright light from the window. He looked almost ethereal. You knew he was no human, but it was undeniable now.

You stopped moving when you were a few steps away from Dark. He wouldn’t be able to get back out the door, but he clearly had no plans. Instead, he had pulled open one of the draws of his desk and was keenly searching it, with more vigor than in the library.

A book was pushed into your grip within seconds. Your skin burned against the cover, though Dark’s hands on the other end prevented you from dropping it. You couldn’t help the fearful look you shot him, your own hands shaking and words crumbling in your throat. You only managed a meek, “What?”

A gentle smile and the book cupped in your hands were all you were offered, but you still took a breath. It was just a book. Why did it hold so much weight?

“Go on.”

Damn it. Damn it. The soft look in Dark’s eyes, his encouraging smile, damn it. You had called him a monster, but he had gone so far to help you, and now, after you insulted him over and over, he was being kind to you. You didn’t know whether to laugh or sob.

You settled for opening the book to the first page.

Immediately, you were greeted by a sight you were all too familiar with. No memories from months ago were needed to recognize the signature on the white paper, you’d seen the thing just a few days ago when Mark had signed off on a year-long contract. A dramatic, emboldening crimson was the only difference. The flourish at the end like a blood splatter made your stomach churn.

The cold didn’t seem to affect you as much anymore. You were still aware of it, of course, but you got better at accepting that it was there. A long time ago, you had tried to exercise to generate your own heat, but this was better. Everything was better. You both hated and loved that it was. On one hand, it had taken a century to get to this point. The loneliness and fear had no reason to it anymore. But, on the other hand, it was over, even if its happening didn’t matter. You knew why it was better, too.

Dark’s arrival was a miracle. Behind the teasing and the pettiness, you were truly grateful to him for showing up – you could have done without the wait, but better late than never. You would admit that there was a tipping point when you stood on the cliff and looked over the edge into that ‘never’. You had been so close to taking the leap and letting go of everything. Lucky for you, the years of waiting strangled your perception of time, meaning the days you took to decide weren’t the seconds it could have been. And, even luckier, it was during those days that Dark chose to talk to you.

You didn’t get to the bottom of what he wanted, but you didn’t care anymore. The warmth that flooded you was enough that the need to know didn’t bite at you like it normally would.

You were happy. What a weird thing to say. You liked it.

With your nine o’clock soirees becoming habit, you were able to handle the void better. The aforementioned cold, the darkness, the body. Hell, you even risked a look in your peripheral just to show it that you could get better, and that you had and—

No. No, no, no, no, please, no.

“Hello, darling.”

The body was standing, but it wasn’t just a body anymore, because it wasn’t that same body. Frozen exactly how you were, you were able to see the corpse on the ground, splayed out just as it was before, but it was rotting. The more pristine duplicate was not wearing the robe, and it wasn’t snapped at an odd angle. No, this one was decorated like an alter to a forgotten god, sporting a red jacket, black tap shoes and a damnable smirk that made you want to throw up.

The Devil wore a suit and tie, after all.

You stumbled back in a blind panic, back to the mirror that you had been staring out of. “No, no, you do not get to do this, not now!”

Mark laughed. “If I knew I was going to get this reaction, I would have come a lot earlier.”

Your order unheard, you resorted to the only thing that you could trust in the void, though you had to get closer first. You braved every step you forced your body to take and swung at his jaw. Miss. The spot you would have landed on was empty, and, next to you, a puff of smoke revealed him again.

“Now, now, none of that.” You moved to get as far away from as possible while he teased. “Fisticuffs aren’t my forté. I came here to bargain.”

“Yeah? And what could you give me that’ll stop me giving you another broken neck.” Make him match the shell he left behind.

His command of the void got under your skin and made your blood boil. Celine may have worked in the dark arts, but at least she knew when to stop. Meanwhile, Mark took all the power he could get, and then some more. He disappeared and then reappeared again behind you in whirls of shadow.

His breath fluttered against your neck, as he whispered, “Freedom.”

You spun around to see him further than he was supposed to be.

“That got your attention.”

Bartering with this demon was a terrible idea. It was the worst-case scenario, the bottom of the barrel, but there you were, standing before him and asking, “What do you want for it?”

“Oh, just a small thing. You’d barely notice it’s gone.”

“You’re a dramatic bitch, Mark, just spit it out.”

“Okay, here’s the deal—” you hated that he was so prepared for your attitude, “—I will let you out of this mirror, if you promise to come with me and stay with me, willingly.”

Sneaky bastard. It was like dealing with the fae; you needed to know every term and phrasing of a contract to agree with it, or you’d be giving up more than you thought.

“You’re avoiding the question,” you spoke. “What do you get out of this?”

His hand leaped to his chest, and he recoiled. You, meanwhile, didn’t try to keep your eyes still. “You don’t believe I can do this out of the kindness of my heart?"

“I don’t believe you have a heart.” He still didn’t look actually offended, although it played it up as such. Redirecting your gaze, you sighed, “You said a bargain.”

“I’ll get the smallest bit of revenge. That’s all.”

A man like Mark had to be in tune with everything around him to get where he was. Every action and every emotion were things he had to be able to sense, in order to use them to his advantage. Playing on your hesitation was child’s play.

“You can feel the sun on your skin, the wind in your hair. You can talk to people with no connection to your death.” That word sent knives through your chest and needles through your brain, as though your body was trying to reject the notion that it shouldn’t be functioning anymore. Still in the denial phase, after one hundred years.

You were on the edge of accepting. Mark could see it in your body language. Your attempt to broaden your shoulders and make yourself look intimidating was hindered by your worry – and when you tried to make eye-contact with him, you missed. So, he surmised, you just needed a little push.

A step and he was close to you. That shark’s grin widened when you didn’t move away. “You can live.”

“I just have to do that in your presence.”

“Is that so much to ask?”

It was. It was so much to ask because, and you reminded yourself as you stared at his outstretched hand, Mark was the one that prompted your death in the first place. Without him, you would have died of old age or in a boating accident or robbery gone bad or something other than this horrid immortality. You would have had an actual life.

And you wouldn’t have to sacrifice the one you are being offered.

“Do we have a deal?”

The Devil wore a suit and tie, indeed.

You would do it, take the new life and use it wisely. As soon as he finished doing whatever meant you could leave, you would take revenge on him, instead, for yourself, for Dark, for all the victims of this bloodied monster. And once he was dead, you would return to the manor, find Dark and… you weren’t quite sure what you would do then, but it was an appealing enough fantasy that you suffered through Mark’s frigid touch to take his hand.

Up, down. The deal was done. Nothing had changed, but a burst of confidence washed over you, allowing you to pull Mark forward and grab at his jacket’s collar. “The moment I am out of this mirror, I am going to cave your face in.”

Your snarl met a smirk. “I can’t wait.”

Slowly, he leaned down and brought your clasped hand to his lips. If you had more time, you might’ve killed him right there and then, but the explosion of smoke and ash whisked you away before you could. The cage, for once, was missing its prisoner, and the warden stood inside. He was proud of himself for tricking you – you had been a force to reckon with back in your prime. He’d seen you argue a case with just a few loopholes to go off of in court. However, your skills had waned in the years of disuse; you hadn’t even caught the cold terms of the agreement. It made him sigh a breath of relief that you hadn’t asked what you’d be missing, and the little thing that you wouldn’t notice was gone were your memories. He didn’t lie, after all, not that you would remember the trick he had pulled.

Good. The first step in his plan was an undeniable success. With the other hand to the one you had held, Mark withdrew a calligraphy pen from his jacket and turned towards the mirror screen, underneath which laid a single, old book.

You were sobbing when you came to. Clutching the dampened pages of the book, your book, ‘The Lady in the Lake’, your heart thundered against your ribs harder than it had before. The restriction in your throat compelled more tears, to the point that the ink on the paper disappeared into mush. You ruined it. You’d ruined everything. It was all your fault.

“You’re okay,” someone whispered in your ear. You registered the pressure on your shoulders before you met Dark’s eyes. You cried harder. Regret, shame, a terrifying horror filled you; you had hurt him, emotionally and physically, and sided with Mark to do it. Could he ever forgive you? You assumed he hadn’t considered anything yet, given how he spoke to you in such a soft tone. “It’s all okay.”

“Dark, I—” The words choked themselves in your throat. How could you explain yourself, you couldn’t just say you had a plan. It was a foolish plan, anyway, it didn’t deserve the strain it would take to convey it.

But Dark didn’t care. His hands tightened on your shoulders, eyes fluttering around your face like he couldn’t believe you were you again. “I know, I know, I know. You’re safe now.”

You believed him. You believed him more than you believed yourself right now. You should have trusted him from the very beginning, but you hadn’t, and now you were here, collapsed on the floor of his office and lunging to do the thing you had wanted to before you were taken.

Dark was a lot firmer than you had imagined him to be. You half expected him to disappear into smoke underneath your touch, but he stayed put, letting you wrap your arms around him and just hug him. The fabric of his suit was a comfort, but his neck against yours as you buried your head into his shoulder made you want to never let go. You had yet to bask in the ability to touch, too caught up with fully being conscious with Dark for the first time in months. You shifted, barely, when you felt his own hands come up to grip at your shoulder blades, the most comfortable position so that you could continue for as long as you wanted without losing feeling in any of your limbs.

If you were to ask him after the fact, after the two of you had separated and looked each other in the eyes again, Dark would deny the tears that formed at the bottom of his eyes, but he would gladly confirm the way you made him feel. Loved. Simple as that.

“I’m sorry, Dark, I’m so sorry,” you muttered, using one hand to try and fix his hair, “I thought, I thought I could… I’m so sorry.” Trying to explain it would only cause you to choke up again, so you were grateful for Dark’s ability to just nod, mutter that he understood, and attempt to correct your collar.

A wet laugh bubbled up. You could have really used a mirror.

You didn’t think you could look at another mirror ever again. After being trapped for so long, you’d take your chances looking like the corpse you were supposed to be.

But speaking of corpses…

Gingerly, you got up from the ground and put a hand out for Dark. He gladly took it, hoisting himself to his feet, and following your example of brushing yourself off. You were tired, after all this, but a good sleep was third on your list. First of all was the mission of finding and dealing with Mark.

You took Dark’s hand again after his go-ahead, grinning as though you had just won the lottery.

“Let’s go make good on my promise.”

If you had it your way, you would have picked up some gasoline and matches on the way back to Mark’s house, but an agreement with Dark meant that you were going to face him immediately. You supposed this was better. You hadn’t thought through the implications of brutalizing a popular actor, who, in the eyes of his coworkers, was self-centered but not evil. It put a damper on your mood to know that you couldn’t outright kill him, but it worked to stabilize you enough to come up with a plan. You could go in, beat Mark with your bare hands, stage a home invasion, leave a little of your blood, and then leave with your pride and dignity intact.

Mark being the only witness would be helpful, and he couldn’t rightly tell the truth about the situation. No, he’d have to come up with something new, and that would give you the time you needed to come up with more plans. You knew just the person who would be eager to help with that.

That was exactly why, not half an hour after you’d left the manor, you were again greeted by Dark in the entrance hallway’s mirror of Mark’s home. This time, you were able to appreciate the irony of seeing him behind a screen of glass, but you weren’t overjoyed to see it, like how you imagined you would be months prior. Instead, you shot him a smile and a wave and moved towards Mark’s bedroom.

Kicking down the door was fun, you had to admit. Seeing Mark’s shocked face was better.

“Where’ve you been?” he asked, “I was worried when you weren’t in your room, I thought—”

“Shut up.”

God, that felt good! And Mark looked dismayed to hear you say it before his expression melted into fear at your approach. He stumbled up from his seat at his vanity. Helpful. It was easier to swing your first into his jaw, landing directly onto the spot Dark had hit before, to which he released a pained yelp and curse. You didn’t give him the chance to take a breath, shoving him into the wall and taking a mirror down with him. Deserved him right for owning so many.

“W-woah, pet,” your fists ached to hit him again, “think about what you’re doing.”

For a brief moment, as you lifted Mark by his collar, you felt bad. Not for Mark, no, but because it was so similar to what you had done to Dark. When you hadn’t realized who he was, when you had fought on Mark’s behalf. The monster you were risking touching earned everything you were going to do to him.

“Oh, I’ve thought about it, and I have never been more confident in my decision.” A manic grin split the bottom of your face in two. “I said I was going to cave your face in, Mark. Took a bit longer than I’d have liked but, y’know, we work with what we have.”

He tried to smile, but the shock of pain from his jaw stopped him, leaving him to cough out a laugh. “You’ve got this all wrong.”

“Hmm, go ahead, then.”

His silence was the best noise you’d heard.

“Turns out explaining isn’t your forté, either.”

Unblemished skin bruised like a peach every time you landed a hit. No blood, only blooming violets telling you what had happened. You lost ten minutes to that haze. Repeated punches and kicks where you could fit them in, the temptation of using a weapon the only thing you were aware of when you had to brush it off. It was when you knocked Mark into leaning against his vanity that you slowed down. Huffing and puffing, you reeled back your fist, then stopped.

He looked awful. He deserved to look awful. That wasn’t what had you pausing and lowering your clenched hand.

It was the sight of Dark in the fitted mirror. He was watching you; you had known that since you started, but he didn’t look happy. Conflict, if you had to label it, a war waged between a two parts of him. One that encouraged the fire, the flame, the inferno of bloodthirst propelling you forward in this unfair fight – and another that just wanted it all to be over, so that you could return home and you could start to live without Mark. On the outside, Dark looked cold. You liked that less than the soft, caring side you’d been shown before.

You gaze trailed downwards, to the monster that you’d been using your anger against. There wasn’t a spot you hadn’t damaged, nor a bone you hadn’t knocked. You were sure you had broken one of his ribs sometime in that fog. He was breathing at the same rate you were, forcing you to steady yourself and get back to a better rate.

Rubbing a hand on your shirt, you glanced around the room. It was destroyed enough, you only needed to shatter a window to sell the story of an invasion, done so in quick fashion with your shoe.

A look back to the vanity, you saw a beaten Mark, and Dark behind him, looking pleasantly surprised.

You walked slowly towards the door, crushing mirror shards underneath your feet.

“We had a deal.”

The choked reminder of a dying god.

“Choke on it.”

And you, a happy heretic, gathered the few sentimentals you had gained during your time there and collected them in a rucksack.

“Could you come back to the manor now?” Dark asked from the void of the mirror in your room. “We have matters to discuss.”

“We sure do.”

Your smile wasn’t as manic as it had been before. It settled more comfortably on your face; it suited you better. You were sure you would keep it for years to come if you stayed by Dark’s side, and, as you set off to return to the manor, you were reminded of the second point on your list.

You were going to admit every feeling you’d ever had for Dark.

[I was hoping to post this yesterday, but better late than never, eh? In all seriousness, thank you for reading, thank you for supporting, and I hope to see you guys in the next - and, hopefully, final - part that will be major fluff. Of course, there's going to be some angst, because I'm writing this, but it will be as wholesome as I can physically make it!]

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