I was commissioned by @kkev09 to do a comic from RoseCrawford's TOH Swap AU on Ao3 (link to the fic here). Thank you for commissioning me and check out the fic!
❝Those who see past the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, nor believed by the masses— the inscribed surrounding the Allegory of the Cave. I deemed his words to be quite.. fitting. Won’t you concur?❞
⟢── .✦ Featured ✦.──⟢
Commisioned Work @Vy Arts on Facebook
She did such a wonderful job in this one, I’m so happy! 😭💜
Noctifer! Nightmare from @paeanofthestars @stellaaerrantis
You were the mange in my fur,
The hunger in my bones,
The cold seeping into my skin.
Long winter with no true rest.
But spring is breaking.
They say "don't feed the bears",
But you went so much farther than that.
You poked,
You prodded,
You made me dance in your circus,
Believing yourself to be
Some invincible Ringmaster,
Whip of barbed comments
And fire-ring of impossible demands
That I had to navigate.
But despite all your
Honeymoon cotton candy
And stale circus peanuts,
You will not rot my teeth.
I can still bite.
Don't poke the bear again-
You won't like what happens next.
- momma bear will take your head in the divorce
(a commission for @eternallyanxiousandstressed - thank you for the comm!)
first chapter of a superhero AU commission im very excited to share! it additionally fills (or will fill in next couple of chapters) the patron prompts: Patton and Remus bonding/or being friends, Remus Janus and Virgil hanging out together, & more Remus-focused content!
He wasn’t really sure where ‘here’ was, either. There were plenty of tall buildings stacked in neat little rows around him, slowly becoming big blocky silhouettes as the sun sank low in the sky.
He’d thought to ask someone, but the streets were surprisingly bare, and every time he called out to any distant figure, they hurried away as though their lives depended on it.
It sort of hurt his feelings, but he was sure they had a good reason for it! Something they knew that he didn’t, probably.
His head throbbed again as he misjudged the distance to a curb and almost tripped right over it. He’d woken up with his left eye swollen-feeling and his eyelashes crusted together with dried blood, so depth perception wasn’t his strong suit at the moment.
Still, he made it over the curb and continued to wander slowly down the street, not entirely sure what he was looking for. Help, maybe? He was bleeding in a lot of places, and he was hurting somehow even more, so maybe it was the hospital he was looking for.
He paused, catching movement in the corner of his eye.
It was himself, familiar soft brown hair and bright blue eyes reflected in the smooth glass of a storefront. He tilted his head back and forth, studying his outfit with little recognition. It was a one piece, all shiny and white, down to the little mask over his eyes, though the prim and proper effect was a bit ruined by all the dirt and blood he’d managed to get on it. He even had a cape tied over his shoulders, like he was cosplaying a superhero or something.
As he stood there, the neon ‘OPEN’ sign in the window blinked out. There was a flurry of panicked movement, and the backroom door slammed shut seconds later. He stepped back, feeling his cheeks flush slightly with embarrassment. His own fault; it wasn’t polite to stare.
“Ooh, looks like Flashlight came out to play!” A loud voice echoed down the street, the words bright and singsong. “I’ve gotta say, your entrance today was subpar, totally boring. You didn’t even blow anything up! Did you contract gonorrhea or— uh.”
The speaker cut off sharply as Patton turned to listen, and he realized abruptly that they were firstly, standing in the center of the road with their hands on their hips and secondly, looking right at him. Had he been mistaken for someone else?
“Oh, um, hello there!” he tried, feeling a little flare of excitement at the sight of someone approaching him, rather than running away. Maybe now he could start clearing up this big misunderstanding!
The stranger stared back, and Patton noticed that he was dolled up in his own fancy outfit, all blacks and radioactive greens, shredded in a purposeful way. He had a mask, too, the bottom of it covered in real teeth and what Patton hoped wasn’t real blood.
“...Huh. What happened to you?” the stranger finally asked, confusion spilling into his manic glee. “Are you seeing other heroes on the side? I never took you for unfaithful, Firefly!”
He did a silly little hip wiggle to accentuate his words, and Patton offered him a confused half-smile.
“Well, y’see, I…,” he paused, hand drifting up to the gash on his forehead. “I’m sorry, I’m not entirely sure. But I’m sure it’ll come to me eventually!”
“You don’t remember who beat you six ways to Sunday?” the stranger raised an eyebrow, whistling lowly. “Must have been a helluva fight. Color me impressed! I didn’t think you had that sort of down-’n-dirty in you!”
Had he been in a fight? Patton’s headache pulsed a little bit harder, as though rejecting his attempt to recall. “I don’t know about all that, but I guess I mudst have gotten dirty somehow!”
His pun must not have been as fun as he’d thought, because the stranger’s grin faded slightly, his eyes narrowing. “You’re awfully friendly today, Glowbug.”
Patton furrowed his eyebrows, confused. Why did the stranger make that sound like a bad thing?
Before he could reply, a short, three-note jingle rang out from a device strapped to the stranger’s belt, prompting him to skip back a step into the radius of a streetlamp. His shadow stretched out behind him, unnaturally long and looming, and then with barely a whisper, a whole person popped right out.
The new addition seemed to float for a moment before gravity kicked back in and dragged them back down to the ground in a precise landing. Patton couldn’t really make much out, between the shadowy wisps that clung to his edges and the back of the oversized hoodie he wore.
“Duke! I thought you said you were going to check in,” he snapped, voice low and gravelly.
The first stranger— Duke?— had gone from lax to tense the moment his friend had appeared, gaze locked on Patton almost challengingly. “I was dealing with something interesting,” he replied, unrepentantly cheerful. “Did you portal across the whole city to come check on little ol’ me?”
“I did if you were engaging Lightshow alone, the way we specifically decided not to!” the other stranger hissed in response, the streetlight overhead flickering along with his words.
“You mean like we’re doing right now?” Duke asked, pointing a finger over his hooded friend’s shoulder at Patton.
Patton glanced behind himself, wondering if maybe someone else had popped out of his shadow, before turning back to see that Hoodie had soundlessly moved several meters back, while still putting himself between Patton and Duke.
“Um… me?” he asked, pointing to himself. The two strangers stared at him with varying levels of incredulity. “I’m Patton!”
“You’re what?” Hoodie spat out, as though Patton’s two word introduction had insulted his whole family tree.
“I told you,” Duke chimed in, “interesting! He’s been like this the whole time, not a single mention of ‘evil’ or ‘purification’ or anything! It’s like whoever beat the snot out of him also knocked the stick out of his ass!”
“What, that wasn’t you?” Hoodie asked, the shadows around him melting and curling as he looked Patton up and down, taking in his multitude of injuries. “Then, who--?”
“Are you two superheroes?” Patton blurted out, bouncing a little on his heels. The motion pulled at his wounds and made his vision swim a little, but he couldn’t help how excited he was! Real superheroes!
There was a pause as the two stared at him with matching expressions of utter blankness.
“...What,” said Hoodie flatly.
Duke threw his head back and cackled like he’d just heard the world’s funniest joke.
“You have superpowers, right? With the shadows, and the popping up outta nowhere?” Patton fumbled on, feeling a little foolish. “Sorry, I’m still sorta out of it…,”
“You’re fucking with us,” Hoodie stated, like he was daring Patton to say otherwise. “Duke, he’s fucking with us, right? He’s not seriously--”
“Oh, joy, my teammates,” a droll voice called from above. Patton glanced up, finding a third stranger-- superhero?-- standing on the edge of a roof, a short black cape flaring around his shoulders. “I do so love when they just run off into dangerous situations without me.”
Hoodie shoved his hands in his pockets, shoulders hunching up as he shrugged. “The Duke did it first. I just panicked.”
“Duckie!” Duke called brightly. “You finally caught up!”
‘Duckie’ shot Duke a look, and then stepped right off the building, casual as anything.
Patton couldn’t help the way he jerked forward a few steps, eye wide with panic, as though he could somehow put himself between Duckie and the fall--
There was no fall. Duckie had stepped out onto thin air as though it was as solid as any floor.
His sudden movement hadn’t gone unnoticed, though. Duckie’s head snapped up to glare a hole right through him with surprising vehemence, and half a heartbeat later, his hand snapped up as well.
Abruptly, there was pressure all around him, like the invisible hands of a crowd all moving at once. Patton cried out as they grabbed at his hair and dragged his head back, locked around his wrists and pulled them above his head, and yanked at his ankles so that he stumbled roughly.
New pains made themselves known as his body was jarred, and Patton caught a flicker of an almost-memory-- calloused hands holding him down, keeping him still for his punishment, he was wrong he’ll do better please please please-- and felt his heart rate ratchet up into the hundreds. What had he done wrong? How bad would it be?
“Uh, Glowbug? This is the part where you start up your little light show,” someone stage-whispered from nearby.
Patton could barely parse the words through his panic. A strained whimper escaped him, and he dropped to his knees, burning tears building in the corners of his eyes. In the next instant, the pressure vanished entirely, leaving him to curl in on himself and brace.
“What’s-- What’s wrong with him?” Hoodie asked, his voice dropped to a near-whisper. “He’s acting like… like he’s never even seen-- Dee, wait!”
A careful touch to his shoulder made his breathing go even shallower, and after a moment, there was the shuffle of clothing as one of the superheroes knelt at his side. Patton caught the edge of some yellow lining-- Duckie, then.
“No touching, I-- I understand. Deep breaths, now,” the hero instructed, voice starting uncertain and then firming into something more soothing. “Can you look at me?”
Patton didn’t want to, but he-- he couldn’t remember why. The sickening feeling in the pit of his stomach wasn’t a good reason to be rude, so he carefully lifted his head bit by shaky bit until he was no longer curled up like a little pillbug of panic.
Duckie was crouched to be level with him, his gloved hands lifted in front of him in a peaceful gesture, his face a mask of calm composure. Both of his teammates stood close at his shoulders, staring down at Patton with their own varying levels of unease and agitation.
“There you go. Much better,” Duckie praised, and Patton realized that he’d begun to match the hero’s breathing, slow and exaggerated. “Are you back with us, Lightshow?”
Patton lifted a hand and scrubbed it over his eyes, the motion clumsy with lingering shakiness from his sudden panic. His embarrassment faded, replaced with a sort of mental fatigue as he turned the question over in his mind. It was as though he was putting together a puzzle with only half the pieces.
“I’m really sorry,” he finally admitted, “but I don’t know who that is.”
