john, pacing around the motel room (wondering if sam is gay, and what this means for his Hunting Career): Do you and sam ever talk about girls?
15 y old dean (thinks john is homophobic) (thinks sam is gay): um. sometimes
john: i mean, you do think he Likes Girls, right?
dean: (red alert) (this is bad) (dad thinks sam is gay) (sam is gay) (this is bad) Of course... why would you even say that... he talks about girls all the time..... just because he does theatre?
john (did not know sam has signed up for theatre) (now thoroughly distracted): SAM DOES THEATRE?
dean (thinks dad is being homophobic): you know, there's really nothing that gay about theatre-
john (just wants sam to focus on hunting and prioritise their family for ONCE in his life, goddamnit) (has totally forgotten he was worrying about his gay son): he didn't tell me he'd started doing- theatre- what is he doing? doesn't he realise there are more important things at stake here? *starts muttering to self about RESPONSIBILITIES and REVENGE and other, non starting with R words*
dean (now thinks he's saved the day by diverting dad onto a different, more trodden path of anger-at-sam): yeah... youd have to ask sammy..... at least he's shut up about missing soccer practices for a bit, right?
john (now suddenly back on the gay sam? path) (genuinely just posing questions and has no ill will) : is it just me or do you think soccer's kind of a girly sport?
dean, sweating (dad is going to hate crime my gay little brother): Not Really
btw this whole time sam is like 11 years old and cares more about like. pokemon cards. than anything else
For your consideration, The Case of the Sweater Curse.
I already headcanon that part of Edwin learning how to knit had to do with Charles actually feeling cold. Of course he started with the basics like scarves, hats, and fingerless gloves. Charles loves them all and tends to wear them nonstop for at least two weeks after he gets them. As Edwin’s skills improve, he builds up the courage to attempt a sweater. There is a lot of cursing involved, and of course he couldn’t make an easy pattern for his first sweater.
Several months later he has a sweater! As always, Charles is impressed even if he doesn’t understand all the technical details Edwin’s explaining. He’s proper chuffed, and he wears it right away, saying that it feels like a warm hug. Edwin dismisses this out of hand. They’ve already established that Charles feeling cold at all, and then feeling warm when he wears the knit items Edwin makes him is more mind over matter.
Edwin goes to the yarn store a week later in his disguise, to buy more yarn for his next project. Charles seems to like his sweater so much, Edwin supposes he could be bothered to make another one, cursing, struggle and all. He even tells the teller that all this yarn is for his plans to make a sweater for his partner. The shop clerk laughs, and tells him to wish his relationship goodbye.
What? Why?
Well obviously the sweater curse. As soon as you make a sweater for a partner, that relationship is doomed to end shortly after.
Now because Edwin lives in a world of actual magic and curses, he doesn’t even consider for a moment this might be superstition. He just runs home. He has to fix this! He didn’t intend to curse Charles! And he certainly wouldn’t want to lose his best friend, just because he didn’t know about this Sweater Curse!
Of course Charles can’t make things easy. When Edwin tries to get Charles to take the sweater off, Charles doesn’t want to. It’s his comfy sweater now. He’s gotten used to Edwin’s perfectionism at this point, and has found the best way to fight it is to insist that whatever Edwin made is perfect, and that he loves it. Otherwise Edwin will keep fiddling with whatever tiny perceived flaw to death. Charles still doesn’t know what Edwin did with his favourite hat when he told Charles he “just had to fix one thing”.
Edwin can only assume that Charles latching onto the sweater is part of the curse, so he dives into research. Everything he finds is unhelpfully vague, but consistent. If you make a sweater for someone, that relationship will end. Edwin can’t lose Charles. He just can’t.
Luckily it’s taken out of both their hands a month or so later when Charles gets swiped by a river monster. The poor thing gets shredded AND soaked. There’s no salvaging the poor thing and Charles is SO upset about ruining the sweater Edwin worked so hard on. Edwin tells him it’s not a bother while secretly breathing a sigh of relief, and promises to make him something else from the remains.
Bringing back my precanon sketches & some memes to heal further from this nightmare of a game ❤️🩹 (bc I know we all need it)
I just love to imagine the original Unholy Trinity™ being best friends off screen and Knoth being the most confusing manipulative bastard.
Knoth and Val are fun to draw because they were ironically the closest. I'm sure Val was intended to be Knoth's successor and that's why he was raised as a secret keeper.
Knoth doesn't hide his favoritism, and I headcanon that caused a rift between his key supporters. Like Marta and Val ending up estranged bc there was competition between them. (Like Val's unused death scene dialogue implies in the most disturbing way)
It's all definitely twisted in hindsight, which shows you don't always know who a monster is until they're exposed. But maybe at some point the love was real, and that's the real fuel behind this idea ❤️🩹
Higgs lays a plan to apprehend the thief and killer of his squad mates, meanwhile, his target is carrying out her day to day routine, until she hears of a nearby porter making a trip with cargo she very much desires.
∘₊✧──────✧₊∘
Pairing: Higgs/afab!oc Rating: E-M
Content warnings: General violence, light drug usage mention, smut (eventually, it's a slowburn guys), enemies to lovers, light mentions of past violence.
“Raindrops keep falling on my head,
But that doesn’t mean my eyes will soon
Be turning red, crying’s not for——”
The song stopped suddenly as a thin pale hand snaked out of a pile of sheets and blankets and lightly tapped the screen of the smart device to silence it. A moment passed before the covers rustled again and began to slowly slide off their owner.
“Good morning, Hollow,” chimed the device in its usual cheery vernacular.
“Thank you, Uriel.” The device beeped twice, signifying it understood and went into standby mode, the screen brightness slowly fading in and out, waiting for input. Thankfully, Uriel was not a person and could wait as long as it took for Hollow to finally crawl out of bed. The rest of the covers were finally thrown off to reveal a still exhausted young woman, splayed out spread eagle on top of even more blankets covering an old (but clean) mattress.
Hollow, as she called herself now, shivered as she sat up and rested on the edge of her mattress, face pressed into her hands. She took a moment to try and will the sleep out of her eyes. She groaned, rubbing her temples, shoulder-blade length oil-slick black hair falling around her tired, pale face. Hollow sighed and stood up, adjusting the cloth of her sleeping shorts as she made her way around the bed to her makeshift nightstand. It was still littered with last night’s injection supplies, a now empty auto-injector; what she used to administer morphine, used sterile pads and the broken open container she had previously acquired the morphine from. She stared at it for a moment, remembering the look in the porter’s eyes when she shot him in the face with her crossbow. Hollow bit her lip, feeling a slight pang of guilt at the memory.
She shook the image out of her head and began cleaning up the nightstand, tossing the pads and putting the auto injector back in its case that made its home on one of the shelves she managed to put together in her little stolen bunker. She’d found the place four months ago, the family was still inside, dead for a long time, as their bodies were mostly mummified. She had buried them above ground when she settled into the place and began to clean it. The bunker had the basic amenities a single woman can ask for; a working toilet behind an actual door that slid open and closed when she approached it. There was also a small refrigerator unit in the main room of the bunker and of course, Uriel, her auto assistant…her only friend. She had found ‘him’ among the belongings of the previous family. He was out of order but with a little technical work and some fine electrical tuning she managed to reset Uriel, renaming him and using him as a sort of monitor when she injected morphine. Speaking of…
She wobbled over to the bathroom, her legs a bit heavy and unsteady; typical side effects of the drugs she used. The door slid open with a quiet mechanical whine and she stumbled in, gripping the edges of the steel sink as she balanced herself. She looked up at the mirror and stared. Pale green eyes were surrounded by burst red veins in her whites, the redness clinging mostly to the outsides of her irises, causing her to look quite the frightening sight. Hollow frowned as she leaned closer to the mirror, staring at the veins in her eyes. Thankfully, it seemed the last injection got rid of the black chiralium that had started creeping into her arteries again, and her eyes, although extremely bloodshot, were back to normal. She sighed shakily and stared down into the sink. She’ll have to get even more and in higher doses to stave off…Hollow shook this thought out of her head as well.
Her last excursion was a bust, only two men and neither of them carrying anything. AND she had let one of them get away. Stupid and clumsy and lazy. She should have hunted down the other man and ended him too. She hit the side of the sink in frustration with herself. Clearing her throat, she pulled her dark stringy hair up into a messy bun and fastened it in place with one of the hairpins she kept in the bathroom cabinet. Hollow trudged out of the bathroom and back into her bedroom. Quickly she shed her sleeping clothes and threw on a dark blue jumpsuit that had been laid out the previous night.
“Uriel,” Hollow called to the machine.
“Yes, ma’am?” The device lit up as it spoke, display screen glowing a soft pale blue.
“Scan channels would you? I need to know if there are any porters being sent out.”
Uriel beeped and his screen turned red, the red screen signifying comm monitoring, and he immediately went to work, scanning all nearby channels. If a porter was sent out, she’d be notified and would have to act quickly to catch up to them.
After dressing, she made her way down a short hall and into a small room she dedicated as a workspace. Her eyes went to her crossbow hanging up on the wall. It was small and shiny black with glowing blue sights and bow string. She ran a slender finger along its length, a crooked smile playing at the corner of her lips. Next to the crossbow was a set of short silver crossbow bolts, all hand crafted by Hollow. These bolts were still normal, she hadn’t applied the arrowhead coating yet. Hollow scrunched her forehead, she knew she had to make…more…if she was going to go after porters again.
“Uriel, how are my vitals?”
“Your blood pressure is significantly lower than the last time you asked, and your heartbeat remains absent, you should probably get that seen by a medical professional.” He always said that for the heart vital, always. She rolled her eyes and thanked him before approaching the small refrigerator. Inside on the bottom shelf was a steel thermos-like cylinder. She retrieved it and trotted back to her work room.
She gingerly twisted the top open and placed the cap next to it. Inside was pitch black chiralium, glossy and glittering under the overhead lights. Hollow opened a drawer under her crossbow stand and pulled out an old fashioned shaving razor. She flipped it open, finger ever so lightly running along the blade, before she turned it on herself and cut deep into her palm. Wincing, she squeezed her hand and dark, almost black blood began to stream out of the wound and into the cylinder.
The moment her blood touched the chiralium, it began to bubble and swirl. Hollow held her bleeding hand over the container and let herself bleed and bleed into it until the bubbling chiralium settled and eventually went still. She bit her tongue in pain and wiped the rest of the blood on her palm on the leg of her jumpsuit. Her green eyes went to the wound she had created, and she watched as the skin began to knit itself back together, leaving only a thin scar; one among many that already marred her palm. She flexed her fingers a few times before turning to the crossbow bolts on the wall hanger. Hollow retrieved them and laid them out next to the container of black liquid. One by one, she dipped the bolts into the container, covering the tips with the concoction she just created.
“Ma’am” called Uriel.
Hollow jumped up and briskly walked over to Uriel. “You found something?”
“No, ma’am, I am reminding you to eat something. It’s been 16 hours since you last supped.” Hollow pursed her lips and frowned at Uriel.
Hollow pursed her lips and frowned at Uriel.
“I’m not hungry,” she muttered.
“That is inaccurate,” Uriel replied, the soft blue pulse of his screen beating like a calm mechanical heartbeat. “Your cortisol levels suggest that you—”
“Yeah, yeah. Fine.” She waved him off and stepped away, rubbing at the thin, fresh scar on her palm. Hunger wasn’t the problem. Hunger she could ignore. It was the emptiness gnawing at her ribs that she didn’t want to acknowledge — the hollow ache that had earned her the name she’d given herself.
She crossed the bunker toward the fridge again, feeling every uneven weld in the cold floor beneath her bare feet. When she opened the door, a thin fog of cold air billowed out, carrying the sterile smell of packaged ration bars and the faint metallic tang of stored chiralium. She stared at the shelves for a moment, then grabbed a ration bar and tore it open with her teeth.
It tasted like dust and old cardboard with a sad attempt at peanut butter and chocolate, but she chewed anyway. Uriel dimmed his screen as if satisfied, though Hollow suspected it was only following whatever behavioral script it had been built with, and her modification tinkering.
As she ate, she wandered back to the workbench. The bolts lay in a neat line, blackened tips drying to a glassy, mirror-slick sheen. Beautiful. Deadly. Hers to dole out as she saw fit.
She picked one up between two fingers and studied the way her distorted reflection stared back at her from the surface.
“If you find a porter,” she instructed the bolt, “you’ll do better than last time. You won’t miss.”
Her grip tightened. The memory of the man who escaped — the one who used DOOMs to flash out of her line of fire — flickered sharp and hot behind her eyes. No more survivors, she swore.
Never again.
“Ma’am,” Uriel said, more softly than before. “You appear distressed. Would you like me to play a calming track?”
“No music,” she snapped, but her voice cracked halfway through. She set the bolt down and pressed her palms flat against the edge of the bench until her knuckles whitened. “Just… keep scanning.”
“Of course.”
A low hum filled the bunker as Uriel expanded his search radius. Hollow tried to focus on the rhythm of it, steady and even, almost like mechanical breathing. Not like her nonexistent heartbeat — something Uriel never stopped reminding her about.
She lifted her head and looked toward the bunker’s only entrance: the mechanical hatch sealed tight, red safety light blinking faintly in the dimness. Out there, the world was treacherous and wild and full of people who had something she needed — something she could take.
Hollow swallowed the last bite of her ration bar and wiped her fingers on her jumpsuit.
“Just tell me when you hear them,” she said.
“I will.”
The hum continued. The chiralium shimmered. And Hollow, surrounded by metal, machines and silence, waited.
While she waited she quickly made another stop back in her bedroom to pick up a half empty pack of cigarettes from her nightstand, and an old-but-well-loved zippo lighter. She lit one up as she re-entered her workroom, the metal of the lighter clinking and sparking as she raised it to the cigarette held gently between her pale lips. Taking a long, deep drag, she meandered back to her workroom and sat on the edge of the table her now prepared crossbow bolts lay on. Hours passed and Hollow migrated from one spot of her bunker to another, to another. The suspense was thick and heavy, hanging in the air like an over-saturated timefall cloud.
Hollow paced.
She always hated the waiting. It made the bunker feel smaller than it already was, the walls bending inward as if the whole place was holding its breath with her. Her fingers twitched, first at her sides, then drifting to the crossbow mounted on the wall. She couldn’t help herself. She lifted it down and felt its weight settle into her palms like an old friend.
The weapon hummed faintly as it activated — the blue string warming with charge, the tiny status light winking at her in soft pulses. Hollow brushed her thumb over the sighting module and sighed. She was quite proud of it, having recovered it from and UCA soldier she had taken out almost a year prior.
“You’re restless,” Uriel observed.
“Observant today, huh?” she muttered.
“I am observant every day, ma’am.”
She ignored that. Instead she walked a slow circle around the workroom, crossbow dangling one-handed at her side. Occasionally she would stop, check a cable somewhere, adjust a bolt, tap the latch on her quiver. Motion soothed her. Silence didn’t.
Then — a beep. Sharp. Different.
Uriel’s screen snapped from blue to green; it had something.
“Contact,” Uriel announced. “Encrypted channel. Signal strength moderate. Decrypting now…”
Hollow froze mid-step, breath stalled halfway in her throat. Every muscle in her body pulled tight like the string to her bow.
“How far?” she whispered. Uriel was silent for a moment before it spoke again.
“Approximately 5 kilometers northeast. Trajectory suggests they are heading toward Middle Knot City.”
Hollow’s pulse did not speed up because it couldn’t — but something like adrenaline still raced through her anyway, electric and hungry.
Northeast. Not too far if she moved quickly. If she cut through the ravine, she could intersect the porter’s path before they even knew what hit them. Before anyone else could warn them. Before they even realized they were being hunted. The thought excited her.
“Are they solo or in a group” she asked as she moved — already shoving tools aside, already yanking her quiver from the wall and stuffing it with her new bolts.
“Scans suggest only one, ma’am.”
Perfect.
“But they are carrying a high-density cargo case. And their communications indicate—”
“Good enough for me,” Hollow said, tightening the strap of her quiver around her hips and clipping it down around her right thigh. “Just keep tracking.”
She stuffed her feet into her boots, fingers shaking slightly as she pulled the zipper of her jumpsuit up around her throat, covering her entire neck. Her hand brushed the new scar on her palm and a strange thrill tingled up her arm.
She glanced once at the chiralium cylinder on the table. A thin coil of black vapor curled from its surface — reactive, eager. In her haste she had almost forgotten to return her ghoulish payload in the fridge, a mistake she quickly rectified.
“Uriel, put all nonessential power on standby while I’m gone would you?”
“Yes, ma’am,” the device replied. “Should I prepare a return protocol?”
Hollow slung the crossbow over her shoulder and pushed a stray lock of hair back into her bun before pulling the hood of her jumper up over her head and zipping it up to cover all but her eyes.
“That won’t be necessary, no one but me is coming back from this little excursion.” Uriel paused — a rare hesitation, almost human if she didn’t know any better.
Then: “Understood.”
Hollow approached the heavy hatch. She rested her hand on the panel and let it scan her palm. The glass warmed beneath her touch, scanning her damaged fingerprint pattern, a pattern unique to her, before chiming approval.
The locks slid back one by one with a heavy, metallic grinding sound.
Lights flickered as the bunker shifted into low-power mode. The air thinned, colder now, and very damp.
The hatch slid open.
Immediately her ears were assaulted with the sounds of large amounts of water splashing and sloshing about. This bunker was cleverly built behind a waterfall, nestled deep into the mountainside of the central region. Carefully, she hopped across the large stones that acted as a pathway from behind the waterfall and out into the world. Damp, bright green grass stretched out as far as the eye could see, and the river the waterfall fed into coursed like a stampede of wild horses.
Hollow exhaled sharply, her breath still shaky with excitement for what was to come. She stepped out into the early spring air, boots hitting squishy dirt with a squelching thud, her crossbow humming against her back.
Going through the ravine meant possible contact with BTs, but thanks to her…unique condition, they barely noticed her, and when they did, they didn’t care. Thanks to her condition, a lot of things happened that shouldn’t. Not right now Hollow, she thought to herself as she walked. No time to feel sorry for ourselves, only forward, only think about moving forward.
It would take her a few hours to arrive at her planned intercept point. As she walked, she hoped and prayed this porter had something she could use, preferably more morphine as she was running dangerously low and would absolutely need to procure some more and very soon. Pushing the thought out of her mind, she gripped the strap of her crossbow tightly, knuckles turning paper white as she traveled.
The air grew colder and misty as Hollow descended into the valley. A thin sheen of past timefall drifted between the boulders and whistled through the grass, tinging the air with the taste of metal. She pulled her hood closer around her face, her boots sloshing through the mud as she advanced.
Her breathing began to become labored. She wasn’t exactly feeling the greatest to begin with, and the sickening metallic smell in the air wasn’t helping at all. Or maybe it was the shitty ration bar, hard to tell really. Hollow stopped for a moment, taking in her surroundings to get a gauge of her direction. Nothing and no one in sight.
Good. Silence meant she might very well be ahead of her projected schedule. As she walked, she rolled her tense shoulders, adjusting the strap of her crossbow as she did. Soon, the terrain began to shift again, the ravine walls dipped, widening into a basin where an old world highway was still visible, pieces of old pavement painted with faded yellow poking out of the grass like old black scales shed by some gigantic beast. Golden chiral crystals began to appear the further she went, immobilized grasping hands jutting out of the ground. Forever grasping at nothing.
Her breath caught. In the mud beneath her feet were hand prints, fresh ones filled with goopy black chiralium from the recent timefall. The earth around them steaming faintly, reacting to the moisture in the air.
“So there were BTs here,” she muttered. She stopped and looked around again. No sight or sound of them anymore at least, but something was still bugging her. It wasn’t the evidence of recent BT activity. It’s never pleasant being around them for an extended period of time but that wasn’t it. She felt a gnawing sense of being watched. But again, as she completed her second scan of her surroundings, there was no evidence of anyone or anything in her vicinity.
Eventually the chiral crystals and handprints stopped. Hollow quickened her pace; the sky was starting darken and it was never a good idea to be out at night, no matter how armed she was. And, she would never admit out loud, her nerves were beginning to get the better of her. She followed the river further up north until just like that, it was there. Not a porter- whoever the porter was was mysteriously absent.
At her feet was a silver briefcase, taped shut with yellow void tape, and locks firmly clasped in place. Hollow looked around one last time. No porter, but very obviously no evidence of a voidout either, which meant BTs probably hadn’t gotten to them. In her heart of hearts she knew something was wrong with this. It was too easy and too obvious, but she was desperate and on a time limit. So, against her better judgment, she knelt in front of the case and tore the tape. Her hands shook as her fingers pried at the clasps. After a few moments of working the container’s locks, it popped open. Hollow stopped.
Fucking bricks.
Fucking bricks?
Before she could react, a small prick of pain entered her left thigh. She looked down to see a pink tuft sticking out of her leg. Hollow gasped as she stood up and began to run. Two more pricks of pain entered her calf, but she still ran. Her vision was beginning to blur, and she could feel the muscles in her legs become heavy and leaden, but still she ran. One more prick of pain, this time in her shoulder. Her gait slowed to a walk and soon she fell to her hands and knees. Still she tried to move, but she had been shot too many times. Hollow rolled over onto her back, fighting tooth and nail to keep her eyes open. Her arms and legs felt as though they weighed a ton, and her breathing slowed. She blinked once. She blinked again. When she opened her eyes a second time, someone was standing over her, a rifle cocked over his shoulder. He was tall and wore a hooded cape, adorned with golden accents. He also concealed his face with a golden half-mask in the shape of the bottom half of a skull. Despite this attempt at subterfuge, she knew who this was. This was the man who got away the other day; the one she missed.
“You fucking bit c h,” She managed to slur out quietly before her vision went dark completely.
“Hello there, darlin,” Higgs replied. She was out cold. With a satisfied sigh, he knelt next to the unconscious woman, placing the tranquilizer rifle down on the ground beside her. Took four whole shots to get her down, but she was down. His gloved hands went to her hood, yanking it down to reveal her face. She was pretty, in a harsh, striking sort of way.
“So you’re my little murderess thief, huh,” He muttered, pulling a glove off with his teeth. He put two fingers to her throat, checking for a pulse. Four darts could easily kill someone and he needed her alive. Higgs pressed harder against her neck, searching for any sign of a pulse.
Shit, did I kill her?
Higgs checked for a pulse again, but still nothing. Then, he noticed her chest was slowly but steadily rising and falling. How the fuck was that possible? He checked thoroughly for a pulse but found none, and that registered as clinically dead. He leaned back on his heels, brow furrowed beneath the golden mask.
“Well now,” he said softly, cocking his head to the side like a confused dog. This particular little puzzle was starting to grow bigger teeth.
“Ain’t you full of surprises.” He pressed his fingertips to her throat once more, just to make sure he wasn’t going crazy, slower this time, dragging lightly along the line of her carotid, searching for quite literally anything. A flutter, a twitch, warmth. But nothing. Dead as driftwood in a tar pit.
But her chest rose- a slow but deliberate rise, as though her body was breathing out of habit rather than a need to. Higgs exhaled a low, slow whistle.
“Either you’re the toughest bitch I’ve met,” he said, leaning down until the gold of his mask almost brushed her cheek, “Or there is somethin’ very, very wrong with you.”
Just as he finished the sentence, her lashes twitched.
Higgs jumped backward, his hand instinctively reaching for the rifle again. He waited for another sign of movement. Nothing happened, though. The girl’s eyes stayed closed, and her chest continued to rise and fall. Higgs waited for what felt like an eternity. Come on Higgs, snap out of it, he told himself. She's just a girl. Just a girl, there's nothing to be spooked about.
He stood up carefully, after awhile, slinging the rifle across his back and pulling the glove back onto his bare hand.
“Come on now,” He said, leaning down to lift her body into his arms. She was light- too light- her limbs hanging like wet rope and her head lolling against his shoulder. He shifted slightly, balancing her weight evenly as she rested securely in his grip.
“You and me are gonna have ourselves a little chat, once you’re awake enough to appreciate my company.” He began his approach to his parked motor bike.
“And if you ain’t, well… we’ll figure somethin’ out, won’t we?”
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Thank you for reading guys! I've already started chapter 3 and will have it done by next week ♥
