The shadows weren’t monsters. That would’ve been too easy. They were him. One was hunched over. Another was trying to fly. A third was just perfectly still with the glowing, dissociated gaze. Fragments of a mind, scattered across an obsidian floor that went on forever.
CONTENT WARNINGS: Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Dissociation, Body Horror, Liminal Horror, Bureaucratic Horror, Psychological Horror, Institutional Abuse, Childhood Trauma, Medical Trauma, Psychological Distress, Emotional Distress, Trauma Responses, Dissociation, Self-Erasure, Self-Neglect, Identity Crisis, Sensory Issues, Panic, Overwhelm, Existential Dread, Implied Death
@autumnmobile12 sent me this amazing fanart piece for Vieras and I am just floored. 😭 It's so beautiful!!
I'll be embedding this into AO3 shortly.
But, as a little treat, the scene below:
⛔ CW: MCD, Body Horror, Psychological Horror, Eating Disorders, Suicidal Ideation, Self-Harm, Pharmaceuticals, Medication Misuse, J-Horror, Hurt No Comfort
haunted!Hawks
A ritual of denial, grief, and control—he won’t look up, even as the air turns to ash.
A Vieras snippet. (152 words) (read the full fic here)
Kesäyönä kuutamolla / Katselin minä kotia
Puiden rungot maan pajana / Oksat tiellä ohdakkeina
On a summer night, in moonlight / I was looking at my home
Tree trunks all over the ground / Their branches like thistles
📻 ~ Jonne Järvelä, Vieras
The room suddenly felt colder as a sinking feeling began to twist uncomfortably in his gut. Reaching forward, he placed another stick of incense on the offering altar and lit it; his shaking hands were the only thing that betrayed his outward calm. He watched that burnt feather with rapt attention as the light, white smoke began to thicken in the air.
The intensity of the spices—clove in particular—was almost enough to make him crinkle his nose. It wasn’t incense anymore. The smell became something scorched. Sulfuric. Something burned… Someone.
But he refused to leave his spot until he was certain.
After several long beats, the feather did not move.
He wouldn’t acknowledge that voice.
Instead, he just bowed his head and continued his mantra.
“Good.”
“Peace.”
“Mercy.”
“Necessary.”
He heard the incense snap and continued his mantra with growing urgency. Never once flinching. Never looking up. Just the mantra in silence.
“Kas,” Hawks said gently. "Show me your wings.”
Kaskel’s breath hitched. Show me your wings. Four simple words that set the alarms off again in his body. It was better not to let anyone touch them.
“I…” Kaskel’s voice cracked. “I don’t… I can’t…”
“You can,” Hawks said, thumb stroking a slow circle against Kaskel’s temple. “I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to see.”
The tiny, jerky nod he had given wasn’t a calculated decision. His body was betraying him, and it was the inevitable collapse of a dam that had been holding back his starvation for almost a decade. He was so incredibly tired of hiding. He was exhausted from treating his own biology like an original sin.
Kaskel squared against the bar, gripping the edge of the counter with white knuckles. The glossy varnish reflected vague distortions of his own, terrified gaze. Behind him, he could hear Hawks' steady breathing. He could feel the warmth radiating off of him and smell the cologne that would certainly become a triggering olfactory memory of this impossible night.
Slowly, Kaskel’s wings unfurled. First, in small, hesitant arcs with trembling feathers. He couldn’t bring himself to spread them fully, but he opened them enough. The white axillae were exposed, and beneath, the soft, downy underwing that no one had touched.
He heard Hawks inhale sharply. It was quiet and sharp. As if he had seen something sacred, or utterly horrifying.
“Goddamn,” Hawks breathed.
Kaskel’s wings flinched. They tried to fold back in. But Hawk’s voice caught him.
“Don’t,” Hawks said, low and gentle “Don’t close up on me. Let me look.”
CONTENT WARNINGS: Anxiety, Body Shame, Casual Cruelty, Casual Homophobia, Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD), Dissociation, Emotional Invalidation, Emotional Manipulation, Implied Past Abuse, Internalized Homophobia, Internalized Shame, Microaggressions, Mildly Dubious Consent, Moral Conditioning, Panic, Power Imbalance, Predatory Dynamics, Racial Coding/Microaggressions, Sensory Overload, Self-Worth Issues, Social Anxiety, Social Isolation, Toxic Family Dynamics, Toxic Friendships.
"There is no line item for 'death' in the budget! There are deadlines, Keigo! Infrastructure and protection statutes that haven't been audited in three cycles because you were busy pining over someone you knew for five minutes. Did you ever think what would happen to the public, the very people you set out to protect, if you just... stopped?"
CONTENT WARNINGS: Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Dissociation, Body Horror, Liminal Horror, Bureaucratic Horror, Psychological Horror, Institutional Abuse, Childhood Trauma, Medical Trauma, Psychological Distress, Emotional Distress, Trauma Responses, Dissociation, Self-Erasure, Self-Neglect, Identity Crisis, Sensory Issues, Panic, Overwhelm, Existential Dread, Implied Death
“You aren't him. I don't want a perfect version. I want the version that would still be broken, because that's the only world where I'm real. Because I am broken.”
CONTENT WARNINGS: Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Dissociation, Body Horror, Liminal Horror, Bureaucratic Horror, Psychological Horror, Institutional Abuse, Childhood Trauma, Medical Trauma, Psychological Distress, Emotional Distress, Trauma Responses, Dissociation, Self-Erasure, Self-Neglect, Identity Crisis, Sensory Issues, Panic, Overwhelm, Existential Dread, Implied Death
@lura-valentine gifted me this absolutely stunning ref sheet for Kalas. I haven’t had a chance to fill in the details yet (the woes of being Perpetually Busy™️; this time it’s HIPAA statutes). It will definitely go up on his Carrd soon. I just need to build out one more page, and then I can go through and tweak things I want, including fixing some gallery scripts and this upload.
In any case, as always, there's an expanded snippet below from Blackbird, Chapter 1: Heckling.
“So, they kept running their mouths?” Keigo asked, trying (and failing) to suppress a smirk. He took that to mean his son had tried to appeal to authority first, but his fists clenched at the idea of a teacher condoning bullying. “Lemme guess; you kicked their ass?”
Kalas hugged his crow tightly, hurt and regret that he’d thrown his blue jay, beginning to build to a critical mass. He was a deeply sentimental child, and he generally treated that blue jay as if it were the most precious thing in the world. To him, it certainly was, after all.
“They said she was weak,” Kalas choked quietly after a long moment. “Or that the reason she died was because she didn’t love us or care enough to fight it. That… that she deserved it. That we deserved it. So many things…”
Keigo's smirk faded, expression darkening to a cold, hardened glare that hadn’t graced his face since the war. The idea that someone could besmirch his late wife; not just insult, but shred the very memory of her. It set his blood on fire. He took a grounding breath before gathering the blue jay squishmallow and slowly entering his son’s room. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he looked intently at his child’s back and iridescent black wings.
“You know that’s not true, right?” Keigo questioned, voice firm but as gentle as he could manage to at least attempt to console his progeny. “Your mom was a fighter and tried hard to beat it. When she realized she couldn’t fight it anymore, she didn’t want us to see her sick and in pain for years on end. She made peace with it. It wasn’t a matter of her not loving us to stay; she loved us too much to let us watch her slowly waste away.”
“I know,” Kalas pleaded desperately into his crow squish. “I tried to tell them that, and they just told me it’s my fault. My fault that she’s gone. That you’re alone. That she’s not here with you, making you happy. That all of this was my fault.”
Kalas paused momentarily, almost sure he could feel his father’s anger. His feathers fluffed with the effort before he finally let it out, whispering. “I wish I had never been born.”
Keigo's throat closed for a moment. He couldn’t speak; couldn’t breathe. That statement was a feather blade, aimed directly at its target.
“It wasn’t enough! If we aren’t hurting, then we aren’t working. If we aren’t bleeding, then we aren’t real. You want to forgive yourself? You want to wake up and go back to a world where you don’t have to carry the weight of your transgressions? That’s cowardice, Keigo. Pain is the only thing that proves we were ever there.”
CONTENT WARNINGS: Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Dissociation, Body Horror, Liminal Horror, Bureaucratic Horror, Psychological Horror, Institutional Abuse, Childhood Trauma, Medical Trauma, Psychological Distress, Emotional Distress, Trauma Responses, Dissociation, Self-Erasure, Self-Neglect, Identity Crisis, Sensory Issues, Panic, Overwhelm, Existential Dread, Implied Death
