Posting this one is really personal for me, but i wanted to share anyway. This fic is for everyone who's been through traumatic shit and just need a Cardi hug.
900 words.
CW car crash
The moment Copia saw your name pop up on caller ID, he felt in his gut something was wrong. A call, this time of night? The moment he heard your shaky, scared voice on the line, he was already stuffing his feet in his shoes and running out the door. He didn’t even have a destination yet. Wherever you were though, he would find you.
Heavy storm clouds cast the already darkened night sky into pitch black. Rain beat like a drum on his windshield, but it didn’t slow him down. Copia’s foot was like lead on the gas pedal of his classic ‘68 Buick LaSabre. Ordinarially, he would be pretending the sky brightening every second with stark bolts of lightning didn’t scare him, but at that moment, he hardly gave a damn.
The details had been difficult to parse.
Knocked out of his light sleep, with drowsiness still haunting the vestiges of his consciousness, Copia could hardly make heads or tails of what you had mumbled off. A kind bystander had taken the phone from you.
Safe. Accident. Totaled.
Safe.
That was the only part Copia truly cared about. That word had him rocketing out of bed, and now rocketing down the interstate.
Horror had his gut tying itself into knots when the blue and red lights came into view. The more and more emergency vehicles he counted made him feel colder and colder with dread. He flew to a sharp stop on the shoulder of the road, and was out the door before the engine had even started cooling.
Leftrightleftrightleftright―
Copia sprinted up to the scene―one more step, one more step―and froze when he saw the car in the middle of the intersection. Or what was left of it. He almost threw up as he took in the horrific scene. The front half of your car―his beloved’s car― was gone. Completely destroyed. Pieces of shrapnel, engine, radiator, valves, glass, metal, anything and everything, dozens if not hundreds of pieces were scattered across the intersection like the grisly cutting room floor of a slaughterhouse. What was left of the hood accordioned in on itself, exposing the remains of the undercarriage in a view that felt utterly wrong to see.
So much debris. Copia’s breath shuddered. But no blood. No bodies. He hardly took notice of the second vehicle in the ditch nearby. At that moment, he recognized the small crowd of police gathered by the open drivers’ door of your car and his feet took off again.
He cried out your name. The police dispersed immediately, sensing your partner’s urgency. When Copia saw you, he almost began to weep. You were shaken, face blank, hollow-eyed. He immediately spotted the bloody gash on your leg. Yet... you were okay. Sitting. Sort of talking. Intact.
Safe.
When you heard his voice crack on your name as he ran up, tears sprung to your eyes for the first time. He hardly hesitated a second to take you in, so quickly had Copia swept you into a deep, tight hug. He fell to his knees. You clutched to him as if he was falling sand, like he would slip away into nothingness if you didn’t hold on for dear life.
“Amore,” Copia whispered. Your face was buried into his neck; one of his bare hands cradled your head like you were precious. “Oh, amore mio, I was so worried, I was so scared.”
You shook in his arms. As each new tear came, the next became harder to suppress. A sob ripped out of you, and that was it. For the first time―since the van T-boned you going 60, since you spun and spun, and screamed until your voice was raw, since that kind stranger held your hand while you waited for the responders―there in the middle of the intersection, cradling the pieces of your life, you let yourself break. You grip the back of his sweater so tightly, it should have ripped. Copia whispered sweet nothings in your ear. He never let you go. You cried until you couldn’t cry anymore. You sobbed until you ran out of voice, muffled into the sensory-friendly cotton of his hoodie.
Even when the police approached again, to coax you into the ambulance, Copia resolutely stayed by your side. Only Copia was able to convince you to get checked out at the local hospital, so stubborn and shaken you were. I want to go home, you had begged him. His heart had shattered into pieces, but he wouldn’t budge. Within minutes, your gash had already bled through the gauze placed on it. He wouldn’t let anything else happen to you. You needed to be checked out.
Hours later, the two of you bundled together back into the front seat of LaSabre, to begin the long drive back to town. Copia asked no questions, demanded no answers. That could come later. He noticed every flinch of yours as they passed other cars, how your head stayed downturned, eyes tight shut. You made yourself as small as possible in the passenger seat.
Copia’s heart broke for the hundredth time that night. His eyes never left the road, but his hand found your knee. You made a sound, involuntary and small. Desperation. A plea, almost. For what, was unknowable.
“Almost home, baby,” he murmured. Your fingers knitted with his. Your tight posture loosened infinitesimally.
He squeezed you like a lifeline. No matter what, he’d help you back from this. Together.
I talked about how I find it daunting but I actually continued on a little with my V fic, so this is an excerpt of the beginning. Please know that I am super terrified of even posting this so if it sucks please don't tell me <3
➽ V/Perpetua x f!reader/non-decripts oc, 1.1k words, third person, this is not sane at all, he is obsessive but still sort of a sweet guy? idk really, mild tw for grief/loss
He’s leaning against the back of a headstone, scribbling in his journal with some enthusiasm, only held back by the speed of his mind. He feels on the verge of a revelation, teetering on the edge of thoughts slowly connecting. The quiet around him allows for such rumination, the presence of the dead muffling the rest of the world that is usually so loud inside of V’s head.
In the cool grass, beside him, two books. Annotated philosophical works, musings on theology, on life and death. He’s sucking the thoughts out of them, rewriting them with his own lines, some vaguely poetic renditions of what he thinks is the essence of it all. It has always bothered him, the lack of pathos in such theories, the gap between reason and emotion. Introspection that brackets out the core of human nature, a head without the heart.
Fog has gathered on this morning, the cemetery shrouded in its grey billows with the sun not quite rising yet. It is entirely too early for visitors and yet his gaze snaps up as he notices the steps close by. He would ignore them, mildly irritated, were they not followed by the most heart-breaking, choked little sobs.
V crawls past the overgrown mausoleum that blocks his view, groping his way along the mossy stone walls as he follows with his ears alone. He finds her behind the structure, two rows down, a habited figure that is unfamiliar to him just like everyone else. A somewhat fresh grave has been dug, a few weeks prior, judging by the depression of the soil. She’s kneeling in front of it, crying, evidently, as she feels unobserved.
He cannot discern much from the distance, not in the fog, but her plain habit indicates that she is a regular Sister of Sin. V crawls a little further down, comes to rest behind a large headstone that sits crooked, weathered, his leather gloves leaving a scraping sound on the rough stone.
And then he sees her face.
The revelation he’s been grazing with his fingertips, it stands before him now in flesh and bone, finally within reach. A single heavy tear rolls down the curve of her cheek, gathering at the corner of her beautiful mouth, and he subconsciously inches forward as if to reach for it. She sniffles, wipes her cheek dry with her sleeve, and he feels some regret that he did not catch her tears with his thumb to taste them. Life and death, so closely intertwined.
The Sister stands, brushing the dirt off her knees where her habit clings to them, wet and stained from the grass. V takes a step back, obscuring himself further, hesitating for a second too long. She leaves in the opposite direction and whatever he had been reaching for is gone.
⛧ ✦ ⛧
Later, V approaches the grave. A wooden upside down cross serves as a placeholder for the tombstone until the stonemason delivers it. Sister Clara, 1960– 2025. On top of the soil, a bouquet of white lilies, roses and carnations, tied together with black ribbon. He does not know her but then he doesn’t really know anyone here, except his brother and the Psaltarians. Was she a beloved mentor? A family member? Her lover, perhaps?
As dawn breaks, V makes his way inside the abbey. The sharp stone arch he passes casts a shadow over the group of Siblings ambushing him, falling upon him like vultures. He gives his practiced cordial greetings, the hand kisses, speaks a short unblessing, nodding along to their reassurances until he can eventually shake them off. Everyone wants a piece of their new Papa, Marika had called it, and his brother had scoffed at that. V isn’t sure how many pieces he has left.
Mass is a whole ordeal. The chapel has been overflowing ever since he came here and so far interest has not died down enough to allow him to leave in a timely manner, not without spending another few hours or so, listening to everyone’s stories.
It’s not that he’s antisocial, per se, nor that he doesn’t care. It’s that the scope of this sudden rise in interest in him is beyond his level of comfort and most days he is sucked dry by the time lunch rolls around. The face of the Sister haunts him all day and yet he does not find her again, not in any of the knots of people.
He can eat somewhat in peace but only because they’ve granted him the luxury of having the meal delivered to his office. Sister Clara does not seem to have any obvious familial associations and since she had been with the church for most of her life she seemed to have had her hand in everything. According to the specific date in the system she died just before V arrived.
If only he knew her name.
He dreams of kissing a tear from the apple of her cheek, tasting the warmth of her grief on his tongue. He’s drifting in and out of sleep like that, hearing the bats moving past the window of his old stone cottage by the cemetery, some of which have made their home in the old wooden beams above his ceiling. They told him a gardener used to live here, back when the abbey was still in the hands of the church, that it lay abandoned until they prepared it for him. The tombstones by the entrance are right side up, the names long since faded, and he thinks their ghosts are visiting him at night.
The next morning, she reappears.
She crouches to light a candle when he finds her, hiding behind a higher tombstone with better view of the grave. Again she is crying, quiet tears gathering at her lashes, and he can’t tear his gaze away from them. Wet, her eyes sparkle in the near dark, two guiding lights in the fog. She is so blissfully unaware of him, wrapped up in the memories of Sister Clara and the pain that comes with the evidence of her loss. It is when he sees her praying that he decides to leave her. It feels vulgar, to intrude on this moment, when she seeks the solitary comfort of the Old One.
V reassumes his usual pondering, leaning against the ever same headstone that seems to carry his shape, so easily does it welcome him. His thoughts are less aligned this morning, straying into multiple directions that all seem to gather into the shape of her teary-eyed face. Grief is no stranger to V, nor is the loneliness that comes with it. Does she know that her love lives on in every tear she sheds for this woman? That the pain she feels must not stop her from seeing the world on either side?
A cool wind carries the fog like fingers between the rows of graves that stretch out on either side of him. It feels like a gentle caress from their Lord below, a hand in theirs at all times, one he hopes she can feel as well, wherever she is now.
annaxmalina
dailybridgerton
turnnoffyourmind
gummygunk
theartofmadeline
kaledo-art
germansingergirl
