the first time they’re in the games together, they hardly pay attention to eachother. bloodhound leads them to their prey, caustic is the one who catches them in clouds of gas, and they wind up winning.
bloodhound catches caustic’s attention by calling out enemies within the gas. caustic was under the impression only he could do it, so he’s quickly impressed.
they quickly settle into a terrifying, deadly combo of tracking enemies and setting up genuine, honest-to-god thought out traps. no one knows how they do it exactly, but between bloodhound’s ability to track people and caustic’s ruthlessness, they become the winners of multiple apex games.
at first, they’re quiet and rarely speak to eachother. eventually, caustic mutters about his experiments and their wins to them when they’re taking a moment to rest and collect themselves, and bloodhound slowly warms up to chatting. slowly.
bloodhound hesitates in telling him much about them. it takes months for them to hint as to where they’re from, it takes even longer for them to mention their name.
their anonimity is important to them both: when bloodhound finally takes off their mask, caustic is silent. he thanks them for their trust, later. he understands.
occasionally, watchers of the apex game notice their tactics are starting to bleed into eachother. bloodhound slips rarely, but when they do, it’s all blood and rage and brutalism. they notice caustic’s footsteps becoming light, his ability to spot enemies slowly improving.
they start to keep in contact between games. bloodhound didn’t ever think they’d do it, but they let him know where he can contact them. they write eachother letters, of all things, but it’s anonymous and safe. their contents range drastically: tactics, experiments, things bloodhound is hunting when they’re not in the apex games, wraith and bangalore and lifeline and what the IMC is up to.
occasionally, when the games are further off than either expected, they find themselves missing it. missing the synchronized chaos they pull off; the screaming, the coughing, the bodies on the ground. how it feels to win after days of traversing king’s canyon, bloody and sweaty and exhausted.
Caustic was a man of science. He considered his desires and goals in life to be simple - only those who couldn’t understand him thought he was complex. It was such a shame the common man was too dull to see this. Oh, what a lonely life it was to live to never have someone grasp the thoughts in his head!
Until, for the first time in his life, he found someone who he couldn’t understand.
Words: 2252 Chapter: 1/1 Language: English
Fandom: Apex Legends
Rating: Teen and Up
Archive Warning: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Category: Other
Characters: Bloodhound/Caustic | Alexander Nox
[I literally forgot that tumblr does not let things show up in the tags if they have links, so don’t mind me making another post that’ll ACTUALLY show up in the tags. Please look in the notes/reblogs to find the links to both my tumblr mirror and the AO3 version of this fic! Reblog whichever post you like, idgaf, I JUST WANT IT TO SHOW UP IN THE TAGSSS]
Caustic was a man of science. He considered his desires and goals in life to be simple - only those who couldn't understand him thought he was complex. It was such a shame the common man was too dull to see this. Oh, what a lonely life it was to live to never have someone grasp the thoughts in his head!
Until, for the first time in his life, he found someone who he couldn't understand.
Words: 2252 Chapter: 1/1 Language: English
Fandom: Apex Legends
Rating: Teen and Up
Archive Warning: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Category: Other
Characters: Bloodhound/Caustic | Alexander Nox
[Link for AO3 listing!!]
Alexander Nox was a simple, simple man. If you asked him what he wanted in the world, well, his answer is simple. He’d say that he wanted to work! He was a man of science! He was a man of innovation! He was a man who saw the world and decided that he could make it better, that he could grab it in his fists and twist and pull it into something with purpose! Something that could make it… Make it so much more. Alexander wanted to tear apart the world brick by brick and relish in the knowledge that he was the only one brave enough - smart enough! - to do that.
Alexander was a simple man with a simple dream.
Many of the people around him didn’t understand this. Certainly, he spent years trying to tell people about the vision he’s had in his head, through press conferences and academic papers, then through cold hard facts - but it didn’t change the fact that his so called ‘peers’ couldn’t understand what he was saying. They couldn’t understand the beauty of breaking apart life at the cellular level and having that control. No, they were afraid of it - what spineless insects - and they cast him out. Frightened by his dedication, they turned from him and he spat on their ‘morals’ and their ‘humanity.’
How could any of these moralistic sycophants ever understand him? None of them were intelligent enough to be on his level, not while they still tittered and fussed over the lives of the ‘innocents’. In all of his years in independent study, Alexander has yet to find an equal.
Until… now.
Caustic was the name he used nowadays. Or, rather, his code name. All these brutes playing their games with their bullets and their arenas had one, so he had to play along. It fit, well enough. Poison gas was caustic after all and what else would he use to fight? His fists? Pshaw! Caustic did its job as a label for the unwashed rodents who he called a ‘team’ to use and it struck fear into the hearts of those he fought against. Except one.
Bloodhound.
Or, Blóðhundur, as they called themselves. Caustic spent a night after their first encounter to look up the language they used and he memorized the Icelandic spelling of their name. What was he, some sort of ingrate? Of course he’d familiarize himself with it! But Blóðhundur…
It was a name that kept him awake until the early hours after a day of killing and dying in the ring. Even now, as he sat in his room with a lukewarm mug of coffee and his pen scratching softly on his journals the hunter wouldn't leave his mind. It wasn't the noise of his competitors yelling in the common rooms down the stairs that kept him up - except, perhaps it would if he heard the familiar clip of a voice cutting through it, light and clear and trilling with praise for their Allfather.
Perhaps that would be preferable if he could hear that. It would break him out of this - this circle of insanity where he could do more than write and write and think! Alas, there was no flesh and blood Blóðhundur there to draw his attention, just the one that he scribbled into his journal. Caustic was a man who kept his notes of the things he wished to figure out and they were his newest study obsession.
Oh, the things Caustic could say about them! The things he's recorded and wrote down! Where does he start? Should he go back to his first entries on the day that they first put a knife into his throat? The very day where he found a lone, injured crow among the dirt and rocks of the arena, crying for help? He meant to help it, of course - it was a bird and if it's wings were snapped, the kindest thing to do was release it from life and use it's death as a study. Caustic never got far on that, no, not before they happened.
He's heard the stories of the sterling Apex champion but he had yet to meet them face to face, so he barely knew what was going on when they attacked. How does one describe it? The way they slipped around him like the gas he controls, like the Grim Reaper themself? How he tried to swing his gun to follow but they slid like a breeze behind him, then there was a gust of wind against his leg as they snatched Caustic by the hair on his head and swung up and then there was metal in his throat and he was staring at sky? How they looked him in the eyes while he lied there, dying, as they crouched over his chest and whispered in his ear, “Only cowards and the honorless kill the helpless. If you wish to end a life, do it with pride as they fight for it. I am ready for my end. Are you?”
I am ready for my end. Are you?
With that line echoing in his head, it turns out Caustic was not. When the electric shudder of the Apex resurrection machine that built him from the cell up faded, the memory of Blóðhundur didn’t.
It didn't stop there. That was just the start of his obsession and if he flipped further through his books, there's plenty more notes. Does he start on the days after that, when they repeated the same Apex rounds over and over for a proper ranking, his spine sizzling with electricity after every resurrection from the Apex machines? Does he talk about the numerous attempts he’s tried to get revenge on this masked ghost of the arena? He was aggravated from their first encounter and he promised himself he'd take them down personally after all. How many times Caustic has placed down a trap and waited for the chance to capture this bloodthirsty creature? Too many, he’d say. Too many that went too south, that cost him entire games because this hunter navigated each of his traps with ease.
They outwitted him. They knew what he was doing before he could even do it. Whenever he tried to take them by surprise, they met him move for move. It took awhile for him to admit it, but eventually, he had to.
Caustic sighed as he tossed his journal on his desk. What a pain. It's been too long since he's had to taste the sting of defeat this often and it bitter on his tongue. But, just like any other issue in his life, he couldn't simply fume at it until it went away, could he? No, he was a smart man, he's figured out how to force the cells of the human body to forcibly tear themselves away from each other! A single clever human in a mask should be much, much more manageable.
Still, Caustic took his secret little moment to breathe before he sat forward in his chair and turned his journal to flip through it yet again to his notes.
Blóðhundur was ruthless. They were vocal and bright about their love of the fight and they were heartless as they stepped off the drop ships. They were a slaughterer and Caustic watched as they once tossed aside a gun and danced through an entire platoon of soldiers spraying blood like an artist across the canvas, like a prodigy of death. They finished with barely a scratch on them and simply turned and bowed to the bodies, no doubt calling a prayer to their ‘Allfather’. A bit… well, primitive, but he could overlook those slight transgressions to instead admire their skills.
They were clever, yes, but that? It was art. Art only one of intellect could do with the utmost confidence in themselves. Blóðhundur was a genius. They were a genius and he would be a fool to call them anything but.
It was… difficult to place when Caustic’s obsession with the masked hunter turned from obsession to adoration. Even now as he looked over his notes he couldn’t see when his writing turned from clinical to passionate. They’ve met many a time on the battlefield but never outside of it. The moment the games were done and the teams were resurrected to filter off to the ranking boards, Blóðhundur was gone. They disappeared like gas in the wind and he was left sitting there, burning with the desire to study, to learn. That was a desire that could only just be controlled by a cup of coffee and his journals where he’d sit and study and plan out his next trap to capture them.
It was after the twenty sixth attempt that he had to admit it. He had to admit that they were smarter than him, cleverer, and they barely even gave Caustic so much as a glance whenever they sidestepped his traps or shot them down with a flick of their wrists. Was that where it started, he wondered as he sipped at his coffee, pen tapping against the journal? Was it the fact that Blóðhundur never so much as saw him as a threat that fanned the flames inside of him? Caustic - no, Alexander - has spent so long scoffing at the ill-mannered dolts that sat below him that the moment that he’s met someone who so thoroughly did not consider him their equal, it sends him spiralling?
He was determined to fix that. Alexander approached Blóðhundur like he would any other biological or chemical problem he’s encountered in his life. He’ll bide his time - he’s patient - and he’ll make his notes. He’ll find their patterns, their habits and their quirks, he’ll find their mistakes and he’ll climb his way back to the top of the food chain over them. If he timed it right, he could hunt them down outside of the Apex games and ambush them. Then he’ll be the one who gloats over them as his gas creeps into their lungs and when it looks like they’ve accepted their death …
Except, that wouldn’t do, would it? The thought of killing them is a sour thought in Caustic’s mind as he considered his options. It’s a foreign thought, to not simply crush his competition out of existence, but why would he? Would he really want to deprive the world of their slaughter? After all, why would one murder perfection when you can simply let them go? And Blóðhundur, well, they were just like their own little raven weren’t they? He can’t cage them up to study either, one had to let them go free to stretch their murderous wings.
But if Caustic didn’t want to kill them, what did he want? It wasn’t just to study, was it? No, if it was, then the dozens of scribbled notes written in the middle of the night or in the heat of the fight would have satisfied this burning desire inside of him. They were barely even a balm! It only numbed the itch inside of him and as he sat there and thought and thought and thought… He realized he wanted an up close and personal study of the mind. Caustic wanted to feel the hunter in his hands, feel the weight of their limbs and the chirp of their voice near his head again as clear as birdsong. He wanted to hold them in his hands for just a moment, to hear them acknowledge him. He wanted to turn the words in their mouth from the derision he first heard on that first day to something sweeter, something filled with admiration. What an exhilarating thought that was! What a delight it would be to have a moment alone with them, to hear his name on their lips and hear the lilt of curiosity - but not fear, because only the ignorant and the lesser men are afraid when faced with an equal!
If Caustic was a lesser man, perhaps he’d be intoxicated on the thought of this fantasy. It was a fantasy filled with the soft sound of Blóðhundur’s hat tapping against a wall as they look up at him as they exchange barbs and witty words in a battle of the minds instead of fists. Could they keep up with him? Caustic’s hopeful, because what a shame would it be if Blóðhundur was just some charlatan who couldn’t tell their ass apart from their mouth. No, they were too clever not to be.
A genius. Perfection. A true equal. Blóðhundur was all of these and Caustic was determined to explore the depths of their intellect and to see how they reacted to his. Blóðhundur was a clever hunter on the Apex fields, but all Caustic needed was one slip up to take advantage of to draw them into his net. He was no fighter compared to them, so he had to rely on his brain that's kept him ahead all these years. If Blóðhundur was clever, then it was time for him to be even more so. How so very convenient it was that he was such a resilient and determined man, wasn’t he?
It was just a matter of time now. All Caustic needed was time and patience and study - of which he had plenty of - to figure out how to catch this little bird of his. And once he did, oh, how he’ll adore hearing them sing for him their song of their people and their mind.
