"Nothing Beside Remains" (final title still pending) has been updated on AO3. Read the tags, no minors, excerpt below. cw: sexual references, canon typical violence reference
“What happened?”
“…nothing,” Jack uttered in dismissal.
“It doesn’t seem like nothing.”
“Just a headache,” he grunted back. “Probably from being shot in the chin.”
Much to his surprise, Rhys exhibited some shame, turning his gaze away. It was short-lived, but evident enough, something Jack slipped in his back pocket for the time being.
Wouldn’t hurt to nudge, though. “Awww. Were you worried about me, Rhysie?”
He exhaled sharply. “Absolutely not.”
“I don’t know. That sounded like genuine concern.”
“In your dreams, Jack.”
“Not mine, no,” he winked. “Yours are more likely.”
His face flooded red. “There is no reality in which I would have perverse thoughts about you, Handsome Jack.”
“Says the guy who came from my voice alone.”
“It—” he balked. “It was only like, half of a—”
“Still counts.”
“And it wasn’t just your voice, asshole,” Rhys seethed. “It was the nipple, and the neck, and the—what?”
Jack went quiet. His smile extended, and the blush in Rhys’ cheeks deepened.
“‘Wasn’t just.’”
Clarity crossed Rhys’ features. He huffed irritation, turning on his heel.
“But you could skin a buck?” he pressed. “Know how?”
Rook chewed his cheek, looked back and frowned. It had been years, but him being rusty with a knife wasn’t the source of his hesitation. “Sure.”
Somewhat appeased, he gave him a nod back. Abandoned him there to return to the flock, who had been watching from the pistol range with burning gazes. They looked away again when he rejoined them, and Rook loaded another magazine as Pratt ambled up.
“Hell,” he breathed nice and low. “I guess you finally met Jacob Seed. What’d he say?”
“Not much,” Rook murmured back, keeping his disinterest apparent on his face. “Seemed like he was sizing me up a bit.”
“As the new dep, or someone to convert?”
Rook returned to his coffee and hovered over it. “You know, I’m not sure of either.”
Last week I was given one of the greatest gifts I've ever received.
My Rhack fic, "These Accursed Stars", hand made and painted by @squickymuse.
I still struggle to find the words for the extent of my appreciation. This was a huge surprise and it has meant so incredibly much to me. Being able to hold this fic that took two years of my life to create was an absolute dream.
Thank you for this beautiful creation. Look how loooong it is!
Read the fic here (after you read the tags) | See Solte's process here
CW/tags: torture, blood, injuries, angst, fc5, Jacob Seed x Staci Pratt
There was blood in his mouth. Thick around his gums and oozing from his lips, igniting in the lacerations that split them into ribbons of flesh. A hole throbbed where one of his molars was missing, and his incisor trembled with each ragged exhale. Saliva dribbled from the corner of his mouth, itchy where it ran down to his bruised chin.
His head pounded, so dulled by the throbbing headache that he couldn’t lift his neck. His vision doubled and tripled, danced and flickered. Flashed with light and dark and red, but always that dim room. The depths of the bunker, where he was made to wait, to rot.
His body rippled with pain. Bruise upon bruise. Scratches, cuts, puncture wounds. Burns marks and crushing bindings. A couple of ribs had to be broken, rubbing at his lungs in his mind’s eye, each breath rattling. The rest was numb, cold, shivering.
Didn’t matter. Because he wasn’t fuckin’ weak anymore. He would prove it. He would.
“...it’s time.”
It was murmured, quiet resignation. Anticipation, perhaps. He stood at the monitors, back to him, haloed in the light of all those screens. Was smilin’ when he turned, all calm, eerily so, even for him. The shift in his demeanour was subtle, unnoticeable by any else, maybe, but it was all Staci could see. Jacob Seed, the soldier, his gaze hard set. His mission nearing its end. He’d sent Rook after Eli, and all that was left was to put him down.
When he crouched at his feet, Staci didn’t move. He wouldn’t flinch, wouldn’t blink, cuz’ that was weakness, and even now — even now! — he wanted to serve, to bow his head. Jacob chuckled at him anyway. Touched him, like he did sometimes, all soft, reassuring. Set fingers on his jawline in a way he remembered too well. Staci almost leaned into it, part of him conditioned, part of him comforted.
“And what will you do?” Jacob breathed. Rested a hand on his knee to stroke and squeeze. Staci’s eyes hung on it, miserable for that fluttering in his abdomen.
The hand on his jaw slid forward, coaxing. Agony crackled through every laceration and Staci remained silent, his lips parting for Jacob’s rough fingers. Something was placed onto his tongue, pressed down hard.
“Now you hold that there,” he murmured. “Until I get back.”
Staci hummed — I promise — the muscles in his neck screaming away. Then Jacob left, and he almost cried.
Did, a little. Too dehydrated for much, considering it was all goin’ to his mouth. It was hard not to choke on the metallic tang that bled into his tongue. His jaw began to weaken, too soon, so he pressed harder, a whimper loosed when he almost spat it out, bile torching his throat. Touched the tip of his tongue against it and felt letters — that misspelling he used to stroke under his thumb. The numbers he’d memorized as he watched Jacob’s chest rise and fall as he slept. He could taste him, taste Jacob, and steel, and blood.
Time began to blur. What could’ve been only minutes stretched into hours, days. Staci could focus only on the task he’d been given, keeping his lips together, keeping that strip of metal pinned to the roof of his mouth. Any time his eyelids fell and his shoulders slumped, he forced himself awake, tipping his head back and almost swallowing the fucking thing. He stared at the monitors and slipped away, vision blurring.
He would survive this. He would survive like he had the helicopter crash, the abduction, the conditioning. The weeks of torment and wolves and teeth. When Jacob’s eyes began to linger and the nature of his touch changed while the whispers of praise stayed the same. He was strong now. He would survive.
And when Jacob returned from killing his partner, Staci would open his mouth for him to take it back. For him to see — he was good. He wasn’t weak, wasn’t a traitor. Rook had to go. It was better this way. Better he wasn’t a distraction, wasn’t that obsession. Staci would be for Jacob what Rook couldn’t be. He would be strong, loyal, and Jacob would—
“Pratt?”
When Staci lifted his head, his insides went cold. His mind, silent. He stared back, listless, as Rook stepped into the room.
“Hell,” Rook cursed, his gaze pitying, or guilty. He set his gun on the floor and reached for him. “I've got you.”
No. Staci kicked back, a motion that took Rook by surprise. No, no, no.
He had enough left in him to cry, after all. Felt the heat of it on his raw skin, cheeks burning. He dropped his head, squeezing his eyes shut, screaming through his teeth, his lips. Steel rattled in his mouth and he screamed around it, saliva trailing onto his thighs.
“C’mon, Pratt, hey, look at me—”
Staci shivered. Lifted his head, guided by Rook’s touch.
“He’s dead,” Rook breathed. “It’s all over.”
His tongue twitched. Brushed Jakob.
“You’re gonna be okay. I promise.”
…no.
He succumbed to that agony in his neck. Dropped his head, letting his jaw fall. The dog tag tumbled down his lap. Hit the ground with a soft ting, ting! Rook looked at it with a frown, and Staci only wept.
This came to mind this morning and came spewing out in an emotional mess so please bear with any errors. And I'm sure this scene has been done to death in fic but it's one of those things I just had to get out, so here it is. Also to note - this is not related to the longfic I'm plugging away at.
Warning tags: Jacob Seed x Male Deputy, Major Character Death, canon-typical violence, FC5 spoilers, heavy angst, blood
---
Chaos abounds but it’s not the sort that Rook thrives on, not that which has compelled him these last few weeks and injected adrenaline into his veins and made him shake with delight. The woods are on fire and there are men everywhere, bullets whizzing by and cross-marked wolves slipping out of shadow to go for his throat. Rook can’t love it, not anymore, not with Eli dead in the bunker and blood on his hands, The Platters crooning in his skull and Jacob out there, somewhere, waiting for this moment that has been closing in on them that they’ve both been ignoring for so long.
Rook is struggling to breathe despite the work his hiking up and down mountainsides has done in improving his cardio. He’s huffing, unable to even draw an inhale and hold it to sight a mark, pull a trigger, making him all shaky. He’s still putting them down, picking one off after another, but he’s not himself. Gets distracted and takes teeth to the thigh, screams ire before he takes out his pistol and puts an entire magazine into the wolf’s head, probably overkill but Rook is blind to it.
read on below the fold~
Little by little he remembers himself. Manages to be methodical, working his way across the terrain to take down those blaring speakers putting his head the wrong way. It shouldn’t really be possible, not with the way his rage is choking him, all too much, too painful, almost like the world really is ending because it might as well fucking be. The Whitetails are on fire, Eli is dead by his hands, and Jacob—
When he snuffs out the music, and the crimson tint of the world bleeds away, he crouches to shuffle his gun.
“It’s not too late,” he lies into his radio, aware of what is coming.
Jacob chuckles back. “Hell, even if that were true, I’m not sure you and I can come back from this.”
There’s a slant on ‘you and I’ that only means something to them, something he might’ve winced at on public waves before but it only makes his heart clench now. Rook’s finger puts a sharp crackle of reply over dead air, as he hesitates then snarls. Pushes the radio away because he knows Jacob’s right and he fucking hates it, curses Joseph fucking Seed.
The hill is a much harder climb. Has to be, considering Jacob chose it. There are hunters above him, their arrows and bullets raining hard. It gives him enough to steady himself, focus on them, not Jacob, even if he can see Him in the distance. These are the last of Jacob’s inner circle, the Chosen, looking down on the Sinner with righteous disgust, ignorant to the real disgrace that was this fight. That they were only ever Jacob’s pawns, and Rook was, well…
When he puts down the last of them, he focuses too hard on replacing his magazine. His hands are shaking. He ducks behind a rock to do it, hearing the crack of Jacob’s gun, the unfair tempo of this exchange of shots. His rifle is heavy when he lifts it, the scope blurring from what is definitely sweat in his eye and nothing else. His finger can’t find the trigger right away, then tenses and weakens until he catches a bead and remembers the way Eli fell, the look of surprise, of hurt, in his face.
Crack.
The silence that he garners hollows him out. Gutted, he rests his forehead on stone, waiting, listening, repaid with that endless, tortuous quiet. He knows he doesn’t have the time to dwell, however, so he forces his legs up and begins the climb.
He finds Jacob resting on a boulder. He looks much himself, his gaze measured, his mouth hooked with that strange grin. Menacing even on the brink, and Rook has to smother the yearning that promises to strangle him.
“Hey, there, honeybee,” Jacob coughs, and it’s wet under a hoarse crackle of words. The sound of it makes Rook slow, look elsewhere, wincing at the agony in his eyes. “Beautiful shot as usual. There a reason you didn’t take my head?”
Sure. He was trained for centre-mass even knowing it would hurt more, especially with the calibre he favoured. The devastating truth was, however, that Rook hadn’t even aimed for centre-mass, he’d aimed to disarm, and he fudged the shot in a panic tinged rush. That there was anything left of Jacob’s lungs at all was a miracle on its own. Nothing about it was justified, Rook trying to leave him alive, trying to buy that extra second just to climb the hill and see him up close. He looks away again and it fucking crushes his chest to stand there with Jacob breathing in his own blood and smiling back at him all gentle-like.
“Don’t you get soft on me now,” Jacob warns, his tone a hint darker, and Rook meets his pale gaze. “Not now.”
“Jake,” Rook tries, falters. His hands burn but it’s not his place anymore, not after what he’s done. Even if this is more Jacob’s fault than his, for putting those images in his head, forcing rot and meat and cull the herd into every crevice of his brain into which he once whispered softly. Lovers didn’t do shit like this, and Rook hates him for it, hates the potential he had seen in him and how it had fucking worked, and maybe if he’d just have fucking asked—
“You wouldn’t have joined us,” Jacob answers, reading his thinking, or maybe Rook said it aloud and didn’t realize, his mind still fractured and untrustworthy. The concern goes discarded, pointless under a shift in Jacob’s reply, a distinct slur to his voice. His words merge together in a slurry and Rook knows he doesn’t have long.
“...no,” he concedes. “But you could’ve done anyway.”
Jacob’s features soften and he shakes his head. “Nah. Not the way I know you, Dep. I couldn’t have, and you know it too.”
Rook sets his gun down on the ground. Wants to throw it, but he needs it for what comes next. Faith’s already fertilizing her Bliss and John he put down like the rabid dog he was, days back. That leaves Joseph, the piece of shit responsible for it all, the one who whispered into their broken shells and turned them into weapons.
Turned Jacob into something else, too, something Rook shouldn’t have wanted but did, does, and before it’s too late Rook gets on his knees and goes to him.
Jacob takes him in, arms around his shoulders, and holds him close. His jacket is damp with his blood and it sticks to Rook’s face as he burrows into him and screws his eyes shut tight. In the aftermath they cling to one another even if it looks fucking weak, because it doesn’t really matter anymore, does it?
“Do me a favour,” Jacob whispers into his hair. “Look after Joseph for me.”
Rook whimper-scoffs into his chest. “Oh, I will.”
“You will,” Jacob growls, forcing that narrative change, an insistence that riles Rook anew.
“Why the fuck would I do that?” Rook sneers. “He’s killed you.”
“Nah, Rook,” Jacob laughs again, buckling with it. “I’m pretty sure that was you.”
Us, he wants to grumble. That they shared in this together. That this only could have ended one way, knowing Jacob as he does, Jacob knowing him. Not worth saying, however, not with the way Jacob is starting to go quiet and nod off. So Rook tells him he’ll try, and that’s all Jacob seems to need.
Nothing left to do, then. Rook holds Jacob around his bleeding chest and wants to kiss him but they just lean on one another like they used to. His arms are hooked around him but not too high because he doesn’t want to feel the exit wound where his inhales become exhales.
“I’ve got you, Jacob,” he gives, and feels Jacob nod.
“Yeah, you do,” he murmurs, all slow, slower, then at last he says: “...you’re perfect.”
He slumps, and Rook takes his weight, holds him, shakes. Can’t support him, so he lowers him awkwardly to the ground, hugs him there. The hills are still aflame and the Whitetails need to know that it’s over, that it’s all about to be over. But Rook just holds him.
Hums those fucking stupid, haunting lyrics, bares his goddamn weakness, and cries into Jacob Seed’s neck.
I write fanfiction for adults as jacksrighthand over on AO3. Current fandoms: Borderlands (mainly Rhack), tLoZ, and Far Cry 5 (Deputy x Seeds).
My work features heavy angst and dark themes. Always read the tags, and no minors allowed. Some work shown below:
These Accursed Stars
Borderlands, Completed, 253,400 words, Rhack
In a universe where one’s soulmate is found through touch, all Timothy wants is to find his missing piece. But when you look like someone else, finding your true love is more than a little complicated.
Jack never cared about finding his soulmate — he has loved and lost, and moved on. Soulmates were for people who don’t choose their destiny, but have it handed to them.
And Rhys… Rhys just wants to do his goddamn job. And maybe get laid on the side.
Nothing Beside Remains
Borderlands, WIP, Rhack
After years of work, Handsome Jack’s plan to take revenge on those who dared to betray him is ready, until everything is upended by the arrival of a sass-mouthed salaryman who knows far more than he should.
Lend 'im a Hand
Borderlands, Completed, 139,377 words, Rhack vs Rhysothy
Rhys Strongfork sits alone in his office, anxiously awaiting Zane’s return from his latest adventure with a new friend in tow. Disturbed by a glimpse of a ghost from his past, Rhys soon remembers something he had hidden away, something he had done his best to ignore for the last seven years.
Or: A story of three idiots trying to overcome their past mistakes.
He Spoke of Solace
Far Cry 5, WIP, Rook x the Seed brothers
Rook has always struggled to define his purpose in life. How nice of the Seeds to have found one for him.
A Hero Lost to Time
tLoZ, Completed, 173,823 words, Ganlink, Sidlink, Link x OC
The Hero of Time wakes to a strange, but somehow familiar land. He knows the faces, but not where he stands among them. In a world where he cannot trust even himself, can he survive long enough to find his way back home?
Apocrypha of Time
Sequel to AHLtT, Completed, 80,805 words, Ganlink, Sidlink, Link x OC, Link x m Sheik
Just as the Hero of Time was starting to feel like he could belong in the Champion's world, he was visited by a nightmare from his past.
Now, those he once called his enemies must rally together to save him -- and themselves -- from the shadow's ever expanding reach.
"He Spoke of Solace" has been updated. Snippet below, read the tags, no minors, very nsfw, etc.
Snippet warnings: suggestive content, threats of violence.
“I’m made of spite, John. Not sure which sin that involves—”
“Envy?”
“But I thought somebody ought to remind you of the virtues you’ve neglected,” he grinned. “Made the most sense to begin with humility.”
“‘Humility.’”
John set the screwdriver aside and drew out a pair of needle nose pliers. He tapped them against his palm and strode across to where Rook sat, head tilted to survey. Rook steeled himself, ready for pain, until John rested one hand on his shoulder, braced, then maneuvered into place to straddle Rook’s legs. He settled in his lap, too close, the blood draining from Rook’s face when the pliers neared his face.
“I am going to ‘humbly’ extract your sins from you,” he breathed, tapping the tool on his cheek. They were lowered past his navel, used to grip his belt buckle. “I will ‘graciously’ mark them on your skin.” The belt clicked open, and metal slipped between his shirt and pants, cold against his navel. “And I will ‘modestly’ strip them from you.”
Rook shifted his pelvis to alleviate a troubling swell of interest, and the pliers dug hard lines down toward his groin. John leaned back, smirking at the prongs that peeked out from his stomach.
“Or not so modestly.”
A nervous laugh escaped Rook. “What happened to us doing ‘beautiful things together’?”
John slid a finger down the pliers, giving them a wiggle.
"He Spoke of Solace" has been updated on AO3. Read the tags, not for minors. Excerpt below.
“Where’s your head at, Deputy?”
He laughed, sharp and hard. “Nowhere good.”
As if to elucidate, he ran his restrained arms across the water, watching the sparkling haze rise and dazzle in the air between them. He followed it with some quiet awe, but John only stared back, calculating.
“I see…” he mused. “You are particularly… vulnerable to the Bliss.”
“I’ve tried to avoid recreational use,” Rook joked.
“Let us proceed, then.”
His hand moved to the back of Rook’s neck, cradling skin. Rook shivered, assessing him with a frown but not particularly avoidant of his touch.
“You will be cleansed,” John reiterated. “Then we will work on your sins together.”
“Fine,” Rook murmured back, limp against his weight and slowly moving past the far reaches of his mind. “But will you share your sins with me, too?”
He set his fingers to John’s clavicle, sliding them downward. Felt SLOTH, the sharp rise of John’s chest. John scanned him again, paused, then pivoted hard and shoved him under.
