Bones in the Ocean (Original fantasy writing, siren whump, captivity, magical stuff happenin’)
Daniel Michaelson’s Story (contains some shared content with @evermetnotforgotten) pet whump, conditioning, captivity, rescue, recovery, torture
Erase to Control (Kauri) + Misc BBU Content (contains collabs with @the-host-and-colton and more!) Conditioning, pet whump, BBU/box boy, trauma recovery
What We Can’t Make Right: Jake, Chris, etc (contains references to @deluxewhump‘s Z2 writings) neurodivergent whumpee, pet whump, BBU/box boy, trauma recovery
Vampire Chris AU: vampire whumpee, drugging, drug use, pet whump, trauma recovery, blood drinking, creepy whumpers, neurodivergent whumpee
Chris Saves Himself AU: Trauma recovery, neurodivergent whumpee, drug withdrawal, imperfect caretakers
Little More Than a Chance: New Rescues. Pet whump, conditioned trauma, BBU, group whumpees, trauma recovery, torture (if link doesn’t work, click here for backup)
A Little Town Called Hope and Other BBU Stories: Trauma recovery, lab whump (eventually), BBU, box boy universe, environmental whump (Alternate list here if the original does not work)
What Makes a Monster: Killan Josta (@wildfaewhump‘s universe) Dehumanization, monster whump, magical whump, fantasy setting
Signs of the Sea (mer whump, lab whump, medical whump, captivity)
The Motherfucking Gallaghers - collaborative storyline with @comfy-whumpee‘s Jax Gallagher. Intimate/creepy whumper, lady whumper, shock collars, captivity, slavery
My AO3 Account (includes fanfiction for A Darker Shade of Magic / VE Schwab’s ADSOM series, as well as Sarah J Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses, plus original fiction that doesn’t work on Tumblr)
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I have a tendency to just flat out forget to update for weeks at a time. Check the character tags attached to this post and you may find newer pieces I haven’t added in to any of the masterlists just yet.
Listen. I actually have a character named Greg, who only exists in an RP between @whumpiary and I. He is in his twenties, has been held in slavery since birth but would call himself "staff" - if you read the Savvie and Jax story I did with @comfy-whumpee, the villainous person who keeps this "staff" is Savvie's vicious uncle Isaac Marcoset.
Greg is the physical fighter on a three-man team that handles the dirty work involved in Isaac's criminal enterprises. Greg's well trained in martial arts and boxing, he's the guy who throws the punches. Vander, who looks just like the Marcosets and was born with a congenital condition where he is not able to easily feel pain, takes the hits and gets back up, and John Brewster, who gave himself that name and may or may not be an illegimate son of a Marcoset, is the crack shot who can hit any target near or far.
Greg is also happily "married" to Lana, and is somewhat of a father figure to her younger brother Langdon... who is Isaac's illegitimate son.
Every time I get one of these messages, I think you mean THAT Greg and get really puzzled trying to figure out when I told everybody here about him.
Hey, man, c'mere. Listen. Get in real close, this is important.
You're gonna make stuff again. You're gonna make stuff you're proud of. You're gonna make stuff you're excited to share. You're going to feel that overwhelming drive to create, not just the frantic I want to want to you're stuck in now. You're going to have awesome ideas, and you're going to make them into reality. You're going to create again. You're still an artist. You're still a writer. You're still home to the same passion you had before. You'll find it again. It's not gone. It's just resting. Let it rest. You're going to make stuff again. I promise.
& honestly there's no debate to be had the zendaya earrings are orders of magnitude worse than kim kardashian wearing that marilyn dress. yes that piece was a one of a kind unique textile made so specifically for marilyn monroe she had to be sewn into it. at the end of the day it was a ~70 year old usamerican cultural artefact being repurposed by an american for an american cultural event and everyone involved knows exactly where the dress came from + what happened to it + where it went afterwards. zendaya is wearing the looted (or forged) cultural heritage of a people her government is currently bombing & whose lives they have been deliberately making unliveable for decades to a movie premiere that has fuck all to do with iran. we don't know where those discs came from where they were found or by whom & we never will. AND the jeweller appears to have altered them substantially from their original condition. destroying a people's cultural heritage at the same time you destroy their country + their lives so you can look good on a red carpet One Time i want to fucking hurl
The earrings, worn by Zendaya at The Odyssey press tour, are believed to be 2,000-3,000 years old and come at a time when the US is bombing
An archaeologist quoted in the article says "the point of these earrings is not to showcase legitimate ancient artistry, it is to fetishize the past, to be a commodity, stolen from the elite, circulated illegally, and immorally…this is about class signalling."
See I can understand wanting to show a connection to our history by wearing the same kind of earrings, even matching the design. I think the outfit itself looks lovely, earrings included. But what a pointless signifier of class to use actual ancient earrings rather than have replicas made.
Like the British Museum keeping one of the Caryatids.
I am not, sorry anon! Man, that's a whump deep cut. I can't remember which blog was writing those. Anyone who might happen to see this remember what blog that was?
CW: BBU/Box Boy Universe, pet whump sort of, not a ton of outright content warning stuff happening here but it’s very much “the seething horror beneath the surface” stuff, some vaguely implied creepy stuff/noncon stuff
I have no idea what happened here.
-
“We’re here!” Marc Sonders exclaims cheerfully, his eyes flickering to the rearview mirror as he pulls into his parking spot, the number 342 on the sign before him matching the parking tag that he lays on his dash in case the attendant comes by to check.
His little girl claps her hands, seated smack dab in the middle of the backseat in her carseat. It’s probably time to move her up to a booster, but Maliyah has always been small for her age and he’s just not ready. “Hooray! School!”
“Hooray school, indeed,” Marc says, getting out of the car and smoothing his hands over the wrinkles forming in his uniform shirt and pants, the plain solid black that seems to absorb light completely, once he’s actually inside. His nametag is pinned over the pocket on one side of his chest: Marc Sonders #001-342.
It doesn’t escape him that he is identified by six numbers - and so are the products inside the big white building before them.
He takes a second to grab Mallie’s My Little Pony blanket and little fox-shaped nap pillow, plus the Pop-Tart he’s tossed into a plastic ziploc baggie for her breakfast. He used to feel bad about it, after Lucy left, but he figures it’s better than it could be.
Better than the bullshit the pets get to eat, anyway.
Next, he undoes the buckle to Maliyah’s carseat and bundles her into his arms. At four, she’s probably a little too big to be carried all the time, but he can’t quite stop himself. It’s just the two of them these days, since Marc’s ex-wife decided she couldn't handle a husband who worked for WRU - which he totally understood - and didn't want a daughter in the first place - which he definitely doesn't understand, even now - and decided to fuck off and go somewhere else.
Last he heard, she was living with a guy out East, but that was months ago. She’d sent back her wedding ring, at least. Marc closes his eyes at the stab of pain he feels. Whatever. They’ll be okay, just the two of them. The house is happier now.
Plus, he could finally get Mallie a cat. Lucy was allergic, so it wasn’t doable before, but in the aftermath of their lives being upended, bringing Tommy-Cat home had been one of the few things he felt he could do to fill the space Lucy had left behind.
“Wait!” Maliyah cries out, in a sudden distress. “Daddy! My loveys!”
“Oh, right, can’t forget those, now can we?” Marc laughs, putting one hand behind Mallie’s head against the thick dark curly texture of her hair. He leans over, picking up first a red-and-white lovey, a bit of blanket with the head of a small dinosaur sewn to the top, and then a coordinating one that has a bunny rabbit instead. “Here we go, Dino Lovey and Easter Bunny.”
“Yay! I cannot sleep without my loveys.”
“Oh, you can’t, can you?”
“No!” Her little round face is so absurdly solemn and serious, her brown eyes so big and wide. He can’t help the painful, almost agonizing love he feels for her and has felt since the day she was born. It consumes him in a way no other relationship ever has. He would die for her. He will hold her for as long as she needs to be held. “When I do not have loveys I just do not go nap at all.”
“Oh, well, I’m sure your teachers don’t like that.”
“They do not liked it,” Mallie says, and tucks her head under his chin.
Jesus, he’d kill for her.
Mallie cuddles her loveys close as he carries her across the parking lot, headed not for the small side door most of the handlers go through, but towards the official ‘customer-facing’ building façade, where the corporate workers head in. They’re mostly in suits or skirts, some of the marketing team is even wearing dark jeans and t-shirts since they’ll be moving through the Facility doing B-roll for a new commercial and need the flexibility. The handlers all got notice of the shoot yesterday - which is one reason Marc Sonders is wearing his newest uniform, shined his nametag last night, and combed his hair carefully to one side.
Karen Renford watches that B-roll, and if Director Renford catches you looking less than presentable at work, well… nobody wants to get called to her office. Least of all Marc, who can’t exactly be much of a dad if his back hurts like hell from a caning again.
That caning happened two years ago, and so far he’s kept himself entirely out of Renford’s notice ever since. If he’s lucky, the Director has forgotten he exists.
He hands over a small ID with a barcode to a bored security guard, who swipes it through to a resulting soft beep and a green light. Marc steps through, the scanner taking note of everything on him, and he pauses until the security guard grunts and waves him forward, taking a sip of his coffee in a small ceramic mug.
He’s been bringing Mallie here since she was eight weeks old, and he’s never made eye contact with that security guy once. Doesn’t even know his name. The guy has to be getting close to retirement, right? He looks like he could be blown over by a strong wind.
Marc sees other parents with kids in tow, calls out a cheerful good morning. Mallie squirms and wiggles in his arms until he puts her down, watching her go running happily off to greet her ‘best friend forever’, a little girl named Anna. The two of them hug and squeal like it’s been years since they’ve seen each other, and Marc finds himself smiling, softly, watching the sheer delight the children take in each other.
When was the last time he’d ever felt that happy around someone who wasn’t just Mallie herself? Hell, when had he last had a decent friend? Things had been good for a while after college, but then he’d met Lucy, and… something about her meant his friendships just faded away.
He wonders, sometimes, if she’d done that on purpose. Got him away from everyone, so all he had was her, and then left him with nobody at all.
Well, nobody but Mallie.
Lucy claims his friends went away because he took the job with WRU, but had that been it? Shit, it's hard to even remember. He and Lucy had been so obsessed with each other...
Anna’s mom gives Marc a slight, distantly friendly smile as the two girls race ahead, moving with perfect knowledge towards the big double-doors painted bright and cheerful shades of red, blue, and yellow, with WRU EMPLOYEE CHILD DEVELOPMENT CENTER painted in cartoonish letters overhead. The two little girls grunt and work hard together to push just one door open before they vanish inside.
Marc sighs, shaking his head a little, and half-jogs to catch up.
“You’d think they had to sleep in a pet cell at home with how thrilled they are to be here,” Anna’s mom says. She’s a handler, too, although Marc’s fairly certain she works with the Romantic division, whereas his charges are all Platonics designed for old-folks-homes or private home healthcare situations.
She wears a diamond wedding ring with a matching engagement band, and Marc wonders how the fuck anyone can work with the Romantics and still be married. Like, what does her wife think, at home? He knows Anna’s other mom does some kind of personal assistant job for some bigwig documentary producer or something. But what does she think about her wife doing this?
Why did Lucy leave him for training Platonics to listen to talk about the good old days and dispense pills, but there are people here happily married who literally torture crying pets for a living?
He hides his bitterness and gives Anna a smile, opening the door and holding it for her to move on ahead of him. “You’d think, right?”
Inside, it’s a little-kid Wonderland. Everything is color and pattern and play.
Other kids had already arrived ahead of them, and Anna and Mallie are just two little faces in a sea of varying ages, two little voices in a chorus of shouting and laughter. Marc watches her with new warmth in his smile as he carefully places her blanket and nap pillow in her cubby.
“Good morning, Mr. Sonders,” comes a smooth voice just over his shoulder. A brush of fingertips against his back. He blinks and straightens up, turning around to see… to see Beringer.
Beringer has been running the 2s, the 3s, and now the 4s, so he’s been Mallie’s class teacher for three straight years now. Marc sees him every single day, five days a week. Sometimes he cuts in on the weekends when he does overtime just to say hi, catching Beringer in his room behind the daycare center with the other daycare teachers.
Sometimes he stays and drinks coffee with Beringer, and the two of them watch TV together, like they're friends. Like they're anything at all but what they are.
“Morning, Ber,” He says, and his voice is softer than he means it to be. He feels a weird heat to his face, as if he’s embarrassed, but he isn’t sure what there is to be embarrassed about.
Beringer is lean and tall and brown-skinned, with a gentle wide-mouthed smile and soft brown eyes, thick straight black hair falling over his forehead in a slightly messy tumble no matter how he combs it. Marc feels an odd urge, as he often does, to run his fingers through it, tuck a bit back behind one ear. He wears the basic t-shirt and long slacks uniform all the daycare workers wear, with a wide, soft leather collar with his nametag on it just barely brushing the top of his collarbone, glinting in the light.
Beringer. 554897.
Everybody, to WRU, is just six numbers, no matter what they do. Fuck up one too many times, and someone changes your number… and that’s it for you.
He's a handler now, but he could just as easily be wiped clean.
God, the idea of something happening to him and Mallie being left all alone… it keeps him up at night. One reason Marc’s so damn good at his job is to make sure he’ll never, ever fuck up too much. He doesn’t catch anyone’s attention, he’s not memorable, he’s just a good worker, a contented cog in the machine.
Well… maybe not as content as he pretends to be. But Lucy hadn't understood that you can't just quit at WRU, by the time you realize what's going on you're in too deep to just quit, not if you don't want to end up wearing a collar yourself.
“Maliyah seems to be very cheerful today,” Ber says, taking the baggie with the Pop-Tart out of Marc’s suddenly boneless hands. Their fingertips brush, just a little. Marc tries not to think about how the daycare pet makes him feel something he hasn’t felt since he was twenty-four and met Lucy at a bar, then met her again for dinner, and again at his apartment, and…
“She woke up on the right side of the bed, I guess,” He says, shrugging casually. Ber laughs, and Marc wonders what he was before he was a pet. His laugh is... nice, and warm. Everything about him is warm.
He’s not supposed to wonders - handlers mostly don’t care - but Marc always does. He always wonders what got them where they are now, what landed them in this situation in the first place. Wonders if he could’ve ended up one of them, too.
How easy is it to wind up on the wrong side of the table signing your life away?
“Well.” Beringer looks back over his shoulder, watching the crowd of children as they move like a school of fish (or sharks), from this set of toys to that. Anna and Mallie have rediscovered the toolbench and are delightedly banging a plastic hammer into a fake nail. “We should all have such good Mondays.”
“Do you even know what Monday is?” Marc asks, before he can stop himself. He feels a blush flood his cheeks immediately afterward. “Oh, God. I didn’t mean-”
“It’s okay.” Ber’s smile is placid and calm and doesn’t change, not even a little. There’s no flicker of offense or hurt on his face. “I know what Mondays are, Marc.”
The pets are all supposed to call them ‘Handler’, but he doesn’t insist on it. Definitely not with the daycare teachers. Definitely not with Beringer. He should, but…
But sometimes, on the weekends, watching TV with Beringer and hearing his soft voice say Marc is the closest he's felt to okay since Lucy left.
He looks furtively around. None of the other parents are close enough to have overheard.
“I know what Mondays are,” Beringer continues, picking up the sign-in sheet and glancing over the crowd of children, marking them down one by one as being dropped off on time. “Because there are five days where I see you every morning, and two where I maybe don’t.”
He freezes, feeling an odd sort of thrill like ice down his spine. “I’m sorry? You... look for me?"
Beringer laughs again. The pet opens his mouth like he’ll say something more, than frowns and looks away. “Hey! Anna, honey, we don’t hit our friends with hammers, sweetheart-”
“He’s not my friend!” Anna yells, louder than the rest of the herd of children. “He’s rude!”
“Now, Anna, that still doesn't solve problems-” Ber moves away, and Marc stands there like a fucking idiot, watching his back as he goes.
His mouth feels dry.
He wants to ask, do you think about us when we’re not right in front of you?
He wants to ask, do you think about me?
He wants to ask, do you really tell the days by the sight of me?
He wants very fucking much to ask, do you get all nervous when you see me like I do with you? Do you dream about TV and coffee with me?
He used to mark time like that, by when Lucy stayed over and when she would stay over again. By the days he would feel the adoration of her light him up inside and the in-between days when he felt faded, half of himself without her right in front of him. Then it was telling time by the weeks he spent away from her and the weekends they were together.
And then, finally, by how many days she stayed out and away, how long it had been since he’d last seen her hug Mallie, and how many days since she’d said she couldn’t handle their marriage any longer. How many days since he’d last seen her in court. How long since she’d said she was moving to New York City with Trevor.
Now it was telling time by how big Mallie was getting, her new ways of moving through the world, new skills. Telling time by the people he cared for the most and his proximity to them. He’d never really thought about how the pets might do that, too.
But of course they do, they’re human, too-
He swallows the thought before it can get any bigger. They were warned about getting too close to the pets in orientation, how it can make the job harder if you let them get into your head. If you start remembering that they're people.
When Ber turns to look back over at him and gives Marc a little wave, Marc finds himself waving back, before he turns and pushes back through the double doors. In the elevator, heading deep within the ‘below-ground’ floors of the building (WRU built the Facility into a manmade hill, a lot of those below-ground floors wouldn’t exist if it were anywhere else), he thinks about who trained Beringer.
Was his handler nice? Mean? Was the handler cruel, did Beringer suffer as a trainee? He's a Domestic, but that doesn't always mean the handlers don't take advantage of their powerlessness, their helplessness...
He shivers, a flash of a thought on what it might have been like to be Beringer's handler going through his own mind, a guilty, fucked-up little thought that excites him entirely too much. On its heels, shame follows.
Beringer's... nice. He doesn't deserve to be thought about that way. But, someone must have. Someone must have seen him in the world and thought that he should be a pet.
Was he an unassisted walk-in, or someone who had to be strong-armed into making the choice to sign? He could look up Beringer’s records if he wanted to, but… there’d be a trail, there’d be an electronic signature of him accessing the file, recorded dutifully by a program that logged it away in case IT was asked to look it up later.
Besides which… does he really want to know? What if he was brought in off the streets, didn’t want to be here, was made to want to be here? What if he was drugged like some of them are in the beginning? Would it do Marc any good to know his daughter’s teacher was part of the Involuntary Acquisition program?
He leaves the elevator and walks to his training room, taking some time to start his little coffeepot, get the milk and sugar poured into a mug in advance while the room slowly fills with the scent of fresh coffee brewing. Lays out some of the tools he’ll need today - the pillbox marked with the days of the week, the Universal Remote control for the television his charges need to learn to control, a booklet of medical advice. Today’s first trainee is being sent to work with a nursing home when she’s done. There’s a lot to go through, but really, she’s a natural, and-
And what if she didn’t want to do this shit? How would anyone ever know? She can’t say she hates it, she physically cannot, it’s part of the process. They always kind of assume only the Romantics really fucking hate the training, since that’s where most of the screaming seems to happen - but that’s not true. Some of the Domestics, everyone knows they’re really being taught to clean and cook while getting the shit kicked out of them…
Marc groans, pouring coffee into the cup, watching it turn milky-tan, swirling. He stirs with a little stirry-stick that he tosses into the trash, takes a sip, just to burn his tongue and distract himself. It isn’t working, though.
Because he keeps thinking about Beringer’s gentle smile, and how he looks over and brightens when he sees Marc come in the door, some mornings. In a way he maybe doesn’t for the other parents. Marc’s always figured it was because Ber liked Mallie - she’s cute and a spitfire but she adores her teachers, she’s not trouble… but… what if it’s not that?
What if Beringer fucking hates kids, deep down, and he can never, ever show it? What if, like Lucy, this life he’s living was never part of the plan and he just wants to run as far as he can, only Beringer has never left the fucking daycare rooms, not once in his own memory of existence, except for field trips to the Children’s Museum or the zoo?
What if he hates Marc, and he just can't admit it?
Marc sits there, staring, until his coffee starts to go cold. Then he hurriedly gulps the rest, takes a deep breath, and picks up his work phone.
Hey, he texts his supervisor. Can I get OT for Sat? I want to do some extra work with 907865, she’s going to her prospective in two weeks. I want to make sure she’s got the HIPAA shit down.
It only takes a second to get his answer. Sure. Just send me an email so I don’t forget to input it, and don’t take longer than 12 hours Sat-Sun.
Got it. Thx.
Then he sits there a while longer, heart hammering in his chest.
The daycare doesn’t open until 9 am on Saturday and Sunday. Mallie’s grandma is keeping her overnight on Friday… If he comes in at six in the morning, his badge will still unlock and open the door. The daycare pets will probably still be sleeping, in their dorm-style beds in the back room. If a handler shows up and takes Beringer out, they won’t ask questions, and they won’t say a word. They all know better than to question anything a handler does.
And then… maybe he can just… ask Beringer some questions while they watch TV and have coffee together.
That’s all he wants to do, right?
Just ask a couple of questions, drink a cup of coffee... and see those dark eyes on him again, in a place where no one is watching and no one will see what looks he gives in return.
He opens up his WRU-issued laptop and logs in, scrolling through emails mindlessly before writing the reminder his supervisor asked for. Then… he opens up the WRU Trainee Records program, and he searches quickly, almost furtively.
No one but IT ever looks at these stupid logs anyway.
BERINGER.
The little hourglass icon turns upside down as the search runs, popping up a single result. There he is - his eyes are wide and nervous in the intake photo, his hair is much, much shorter, almost a crew cut. He’s skinny, he’s got some bruises, but it’s him.
SUBJECT: 554897
DATE OF ACQUISITION: 07.16.20XX
TIME OF ACQUISITION: 10:35 AM
LOCATION ASSIGNED FOR TRAINING: FACILITY 013, HOUSTON, TEXAS
PREVIOUS ALIAS: Michael Lopez Richardson
CURRENT ALIAS: Beringer
AGE WHEN ACQUIRED: 19
DATE OF BIRTH: 01.15.19XX
HAIR: Black
EYES: Brown
HEIGHT: 5′8″
WEIGHT: 135 lbs
SEXUALITY: Bisexual
DESIGNATION: Platonic
It’s all the usual stuff, nothing he hasn’t seen a million times before. There's a note at the bottom that the trainee had shown aptitude with children and would be assigned to a Facility daycare when an opening became available, another that he’d been assigned to work Facility 001 in Berras, California, the signature of his handler, signed and dated…
He finds what he’s really looking for, though.
METHOD OF ACQUISITION: Assisted Walk-In, Employee Referral.
Marc Sonders knows the code inside and out, he knows that “assisted walk-in” means “abducted” and “Employee Referral” means a handler fucking went out and kidnapped someone, brought them in, and everyone pretended that wasn’t what happened. Everyone.
Marc’s pretended a few times, himself.
Everyone does - if you don’t, you get fired or turned into a pet yourself, you go mysteriously missing. A body gets found years later decayed all to shit. Things, bad things, happen to handlers who don’t go along with the system, and no one can ever prove WRU had anything to do with it.
Marc remembers the handler who showed up in a national park with four shots to the back of the head, ruled suicide. Four shots. To the back. Of the head.
Everyone knew what had happened - that the handler had been caught going to pet lib meetings beforehand. Everyone knew - but no one said a word.
When he pulls out his personal phone and googles Beringer’s original name, he finds a Missing Persons poster, a few news stories about a search with no leads, and finally, a legal declaration of death so the family could find closure and move on.
He’s late to start working with his trainee, but Marc can’t seem to stop himself from looking at the photo of Miguel’s crying mother in the old news article, his stoic father. A little brother and sister.
He doesn’t think about Maliyah, and how absolutely fucking lunatic he would go if his little girl disappeared into the bowels of WRU.
Miguel disappeared outside an army base six months after joining the military, an army base where a lot of people have disappeared over the years. A serial killer is suspected, the news article says, and Marc smiles bitterly.
They always think WRU is some kind of mastermind John Wayne Gacy making pretty young things disappear in the night, when the missing are right out in the open, collars on, not even knowing that anyone misses them.
Miguel was 19 when WRU took him. he's 30 now, give or take. He's been legally dead for two years.
Saturday, he thinks to himself, finally forcing himself to stand and head down the hallway to wake his trainee. She’ll be up already probably, but maybe she’ll have taken the extra time as a mercy and slept as much as she can. Saturday, he’ll go to the daycare, speak to Beringer, try to understand if he loves the life he’s living - or if, like Lucy, he’d do anything to flee from it.
If there's any way Marc could maybe... help him flee from it, without getting caught. Without anyone knowing that's what he's done. It's happened - runaways make it out all the time and not all of them get picked back up again.
What Marc Sonders doesn’t know is that while he tracks down the life that Miguel Richardson had and lost, someone else entirely is tracking him.
As always, Killan’s universe and the details of fae biology + meta belongs to @wildfaewhump - all hail the Vic!
CW: GORE (lots of blood and graphic description of bleeding wounds, cutting, scarring, stitching), death of character, somewhat callous treatment of a corpse, dehumanization, self-loathing, forced self-injury (through a magical compulsion)
Hurtling through the space between stars at speeds the boy could not comprehend, the world felt like a snowball flung by a giant. Lying on his back with his wings spread wide on either side, the uncomfortable pressure of them pressing slowly into the stone table beneath the cave’s open ceiling, he could feel the spin of the planet.
His fingers pressed tightly into the stone in some desperate, terrified attempt to keep himself from being flung into the sky, beyond the blue and to the deeper black he knew lurked behind it. The sun had set, and above him he could see the twinkling stars.
He could hear them, a rushing whispering array of mysteries, growing louder with every drop of life that bled into him.
Talons smacked into the back of his right hand, gouged lightly across, and he jerked, letting out a cry of pain and fear, only to hear Calon Nie’s soft laughter. “Too tight gripping, you. Bleed much.”
The cave reeked of blood, and the boy could smell iron in it, a jarring rusty note in the salt-sweet copper, and had he ever been able to smell the layer of iron in blood before? Had he ever known that blood had layers of scent at all?
When I was training to be a paramedic, we had one student ask the instructor what to do in the event of a marijuana overdose. The instructor said "Tell him to take two twinkies and call you in the morning."
i’m going to be really honest with you guys i think the tendency to read the absolute worst possible intentions into every action you don’t agree with is getting too automatic and it’s eating you from the inside out
Anyway this disability pride month I would like to shoutout disabled folks whose creativity has suffered because of their condition. I’m talking people with hand tremors and pain that stop them from drawing, knitting, and playing instruments. People whose thinking has become so disorganized that nothing they write makes sense to other people. People with chronic pain who can no longer dance. People so over medicated in a fruitless attempt to maintain stability that the wells of their imagination have run dry.
I see you and I love you. You are more than your creative output. You are not a shell of what you used to be. You are a whole, complete person, regardless of what your creativity has been, is now, or will be in the future.
Marcus knows his role on his team: he’s the one who carries the gun, makes the hard calls - and takes the hits. He has no time or patience for anyone or anything else. But when Jake - a brand-new recruit Marcus has been tasked with training - messes up on his first mission and gets them both captured, nothing could prepare Marcus for the way his world quickly spirals out of control.
AO3
Masterlist
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3
Levy: (historical) the act of enlisting someone for military service
Contents: military whump, living weapon whump, death sentence, dehumanization, location tracking, prison visit, discussion of lethal injection (and botched lethal injection), self-sacrifice, betrayal (of a sort)
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Once they got back to Marcus’s barracks, Aisha passed Marcus’s weapons to the armorer. He was too numb to have a shitty remark for that, although a half-hearted thought did bloom – too fucking dangerous to handle my own gun, huh boss? Just before she turned to go, Marcus spoke before he could stop himself:
“When are they going to kill him?”
Aisha swallowed hard as she looked at him. “You mean, consign him?” she said primly.
“No,” Marcus croaked. “I mean, ‘kill.’ I mean, the thing you’ll have them do to me if I ever put a toe out of line.”
“As if you don’t put entire legs out of line on the regular,” River said under their breath. Marcus glared at them.
Aisha sighed. “0500 hours tomorrow, I think,” she said.
Marcus felt his knees folding under him. “That’s… that’s six hours from now.”
Aisha shrugged. “Yeah, I guess.” She checked her watch. “Look, I’m tired. This mission was a shit day on an already shit week. I’m gonna have to spend the rest of this week doing paperwork, now that I have a recruit that’s gotten himself consigned. So, if you don’t mind—”
“He’s not consigned yet,” Marcus breathed. “He’s—”
“Whatever,” Aisha snapped. “I’m hitting the rack. I’ll give you tomorrow morning to rest, but I’ll be by to get you for conditioning at 1000.” She turned to walk away.
“Wait,” Marcus said. “Is he… I’ll go see him, before he… Is he still in sick bay?”
Aisha’s brows pulled together. “No,” she said, like Marcus was fucking stupid. “He’s already in lock-up.” With that, she stalked away, and River followed behind her.
Horror hollowed Marcus out. He trudged to his room, stripped off his bloody tac gear and clothes. He felt absolutely disgusting, but he knew that wasn’t the cause of the sickness creeping through his body. One by one, he removed the camera contacts from his eyes, dunked them in solution. Then, once those were out, he tucked his knife – the one he kept secret from everyone – beneath his thin mattress. He stepped into the shower that scoured his body clean in about a minute flat. Once that was done, he didn’t feel any better. If anything, he felt worse.
He stood naked in the middle of his tiny room, staring at the wall for a long minute. Then, a minute more. The water dried on his skin. There were no mirrors in his room, but he wondered how the cut above his eye looked.
He figured that was a good enough excuse. He quickly dressed himself.
If Aisha checked his chip, it would show him going in the general direction of the sick bay. It was in the same building as lock-up, at least. Besides, if anyone asked, he could always say…
Who the fuck cares. It didn’t matter. He’d make something up. And if that didn’t work, they could always consign him. He couldn’t bring himself to give much of a fuck about that right now.
The walk across the base was uneventful. No one spared him a glance, but then, it wasn’t all that strange to see a Lev wandering around on its own. The weird thing about today had already happened: a Lev standing in a fancy-ass building, risking getting blood all over the brass’s nice tile floors. He pushed open the doors to the sick bay building, and began to make his way to the basement.
As long as Aisha didn’t look too closely at his location, he’d be fine.
His footsteps echoed through the walls as he descended the stairs. He felt the air getting colder. He suppressed the urge to shiver.
When he reached lock-up, he walked straight past the Lev guarding it. They wore no visor; they didn’t need to hide their eyes. No brass would ever be seeing this Lev, that’s for damn sure. Marcus peered into each of the cells as he passed, his heart hammering faster and faster as he found each one empty.
They wouldn’t have… they wouldn’t have done it already…?
When he reached the very last cell, his eyes landed on Jake. The relief that washed over him was as instantaneous as it was inexplicable.
The kid was curled up on the tiny cot, huddled under the gray and threadbare blanket. He faced the wall, shivering, knees pulled in tight to his chest. As Marcus watched, he heaved a broken sob.
Marcus swallowed hard. “Jake,” he whispered.
Jake shot upright, then winced as the bandages rubbed on his fresh cuts. Marcus was relieved to see they’d at least let him keep the bandages on.
“Marcus,” Jake breathed. He staggered out of bed and fell to his knees before the bars, clutching the blanket tight around his shoulders.
Marcus shot a glance down the hall, toward the other Lev. They weren’t looking at him at all. He swallowed and lowered himself down to a squat in front of Jake.
“Hey, kid,” he said softly. “How you holding up?”
Tears formed in Jake’s eyes and streamed down his face. He bowed his head, pressed his forehead against the bars. “They… they’re going to consign me,” he gasped weakly.
Marcus had to swallow again. Then again, because he didn’t trust himself to speak. “Yeah,” he finally managed.
Jake fumbled at the bars with one hand and clutched them tightly. “Marcus,” he whimpered. “Marcus, I… I’m sorry.”
“Fuck me,” Marcus breathed. He covered Jake’s hand with his own. “Don’t be sorry, kid. I saw…”
I saw what you did. I saw… what I mean. What I meant. To you.
I saw what you were willing to do. Not your fault it was a fucking stupid, dumb-ass decision. Not your fault it was the wrong decision. Not your fault you didn’t know better. Not your fault that I didn’t teach you better.
Not your fault that you didn’t just let that motherfucker kill me. You might be walking away from this tomorrow, and I’d be…
Well. It wouldn’t matter, because I’d just be fucking dead.
Jake had raised his head, fixed Marcus with huge, tear-filled eyes. “You… you saw…?”
Marcus’s throat worked. “Hey, kid. It… it doesn’t matter now.”
Jake squeezed his eyes shut, heaved a ragged sob. He fumbled at Marcus’s hand. Marcus let him hold on tight. It was the least he could do.
It was the absolute fucking least.
“Does it… does it hurt?” Jake whispered.
“No,” Marcus said, as honestly as he could. “No. It’s… it’s a few injections, and then it’s lights out. You’re not even awake when you—”
When you start to die. When your body starts to rebel, when your organs start to shut down, when you really start to fight it. You probably aren’t even aware that you’re dying. Probably.
The ones that get a high heart rate, that cry, that seize on the table… that’s probably just… a side effect. Of the meds.
Jake wailed softly, folding against the bars. Marcus’s stomach turned as he caught a flash of red on Jake’s wrist – broken skin, from where he had struggled against the rope.
“I’m sorry,” Marcus said, voice flat. “I’m sorry. I wish… I wish you hadn’t, kid. It would probably be easier.”
Jake’s head snapped up. His face was red, his eyes puffy from crying. “What?” he said.
Marcus’s mouth pursed. “It would be… easier,” he rasped.
“No, you… you wish…?” Jake shook his head. “I don’t,” he whispered. “I don’t… he would have killed you. Did you… you watched the feed? He had his knife to your throat, Marcus. He was about to cut. I don’t wish I hadn’t done it.”
The words wouldn’t compute. “You… don’t?”
“No.”
Marcus blinked. “…but they’re going to kill you over it.”
More tears, but Jake didn’t fold. He set his jaw. “I know.” His voice shook. He kept going. “I don’t regret it, though.”
“What the… fuck?” Marcus breathed. He released Jake’s hand. “You’re dying at 0500 tomorrow. They’re going to kill you over this mistake. Over your mistake. A mistake I wasn’t able to train out of you.”
“It wasn’t a fucking mistake,” Jake said softly.
Marcus stood in one smooth motion. Jake’s eyes followed him.
“I wouldn’t do the same for you,” Marcus whispered.
That made Jake look away. Marcus was relieved, even as a different feeling twisted in his stomach.
Shame, maybe. He hadn’t recognized shame in a long time.
He turned to go.
“Will you be there, tomorrow?” Jake called after him.
Marcus froze. His nails dug into his palms. He stared past the Lev standing guard in the hallway, stared at the blank cement wall on the opposite side of lock-up.
“No,” he croaked. He stalked out without another word.
The way that 5000 Trump supporters and Klan members got drowned out during a really bad storm when they were gonna march in DC... and they had to seek shelter in the- wait for it-
The African American Smithsonian.
The writing hasn't been this good and pro-Black since Charlie got Kirked 🤣 But seriously, like... Imagine! Imagine marching in your hatred and fearmongering, having to seek shelter bc even nature rebuked your presence, AND you had to seek aid in a place where the people you hate... STILL gave you shelter. It couldn't be more obvious.
