Dec 20, 2025
Pluribus (2025—) Carol/Helen & Carol/Zosia
"Our feelings for you haven't changed, Carol, but after everything that's happened, we just need a little space."
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seen from United States
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seen from China
seen from Austria
seen from United States
seen from Indonesia
seen from Türkiye
seen from Russia
seen from Germany
seen from Canada
seen from Belarus
seen from India
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seen from United States
Pluribus (2025—) Carol/Helen & Carol/Zosia
"Our feelings for you haven't changed, Carol, but after everything that's happened, we just need a little space."
Ophelia
bricked to hell and back about carols “is it making you sad? not giving me what i want?” like wow im easy as hell
Carol trying to get to know Zosia the singular. Carol sharing something with the hive Zoisa that she had never told anyone before. Carol finally writing again, and something she's actually proud of and sharing it with Zosia to great praise and love. Telling Zosia that she'll save the world even if it means she has to be alone again, even if Zosia leaves again so of course she kisses Carol because if leaving wont stop her staying will. I feel SICK
Against the Signal - A Carol x Zosia Fanfic
ch. 3, 4, & 5
ch. 3
Carol decided that if the world had ended, at least it had had the decency to leave coffee behind.
She stood at the counter longer than necessary, staring into her mug like it might eventually explain itself. It did not. The coffee tasted burnt and thin, but she drank it anyway. Normal meant coffee. Normal meant mornings.
Manousos sat at the table with his notebook open, pen resting between his fingers. He had been on the same page for a while now, the margins crowded with small, careful notes.
“You’re going to wear a hole through that paper,” Carol said without looking at him.
“It is good paper,” he replied.
“Everything is good paper when the rest of the world is gone.”
He considered that. “This is true.”
Carol took her mug and stepped out onto the porch.
The bomb sat in the driveway exactly where it always had. Solid. Immovable. Obscene in the daylight. She stared at it like it might eventually justify itself.
She tried to remember what she had been thinking when she asked for it.
She remembered anger. Sharp and consuming. The moment she learned the hive had been using her frozen eggs like inventory, like raw material. She remembered telling Zosia with her voice already breaking, telling her she was done. With them. With all of it.
She did not remember asking for an atomic bomb.
“Still there,” Manousos said from behind her.
Carol did not turn. “I keep hoping it’ll disappear on its own.”
“That would be impressive,” he said. “Even for a bomb.”
She snorted despite herself. “You were the one who said it might be useful.”
“I said it was already useful,” he corrected gently. “I am glad you brought it back.”
Carol finally looked at him. “I was lost. I don’t know why I asked for it.”
“No,” Manousos said. “You were angry.”
“I was furious,” Carol said. “They were using my frozen eggs like I was some kind of resource.” Her jaw tightened. “I told her I was done. With them. With all of it.”
“And she brought you back,” he said.
“With a bomb,” Carol added flatly.
“Yes.”
Carol glanced back at the driveway. The thing still sat there, silent and waiting. “I don’t know what to do with it.”
She shook her head slowly. “I just knew I wanted them to stop.”
Manousos was quiet for a moment. “And they did.”
Carol let out a humorless laugh. “Temporarily.”
He did not disagree. They went back inside without saying anything else.
-----
Zosia had been awake for hours.
She watched Carol’s house from the shelter as the light changed, binoculars steady in her hands. Carol moved through the kitchen with her mug, shoulders slumped, movements automatic. Manousos joined her at the table. Routine. Predictable.
That predictability was a liability.
Zosia lowered the binoculars and checked the monitors. The trail cameras showed exactly what they should. Empty streets. Still houses. The trip wire vibrated once as the wind shifted, then settled.
She dressed carefully, pulling on desert camouflage that broke her outline against the land. She tied her hair back and checked her weapon by touch alone.
The warehouse waited.
She approached it from a different direction this time, altering her route just enough to avoid pattern. The cameras she had installed fed quietly into the monitor strapped inside her pack. Each angle clean. Each blind spot intentional.
The drones passed overhead at their usual intervals.
The hive did not innovate. It optimized.
Zosia knew how it thought because she had felt it think. The way attention narrowed. The way deviation was logged and revisited until it was resolved.
Carol was deviation.
Manousos was complication.
Together, they were unfinished business.
Zosia settled into her vantage point and watched the warehouse through the scope. Nothing obvious changed. That was the point.
By midday, she moved again.
The Target sat at the edge of the city, doors hanging open, the interior eerily intact. Shelves stood in neat rows, stripped clean with methodical care. Food, medicine, anything perishable or essential was gone. What remained were the things the hive had not bothered to value. Plastic bins. Seasonal decorations. Empty hangers.
Zosia moved through it quietly, passing what had once been useful and now had been deliberately left behind. She stopped in electronics.
The Golden Girls DVD set sat half buried beneath a pile of empty cases. She picked it up.
Carol would understand.
That night, she placed it on Carol’s porch just inside the shadow line. Close enough to be found. Far enough to be deliberate.
Carol found it the next morning and sat down hard on the step, fingers tracing the cracked plastic.
She laughed once, breathless and startled.
Zosia watched until Carol carried it inside.
----
The hive moved after dark.
Zosia saw it first in the cameras. A distortion at the edge of frame where nothing should have been. Not static. Not interference. A shape that moved too slowly for a drone and with too much intention to be an animal.
Human.
She was already on her feet when the feed cut out.
The cul de sac lay silent when she reached it. Houses dark. Windows blind and unseeing. The air felt heavy, like it did before a storm that never came. Zosia circled wide, boots placing themselves without thought, every sense stretched thin and sharp.
She saw the figure near the fence line.
They moved with confidence. Not the careful hesitation of someone afraid of being caught. This was someone who expected to be here. Someone who knew the rhythm of the place and the emptiness of it.
Zosia slowed.
She watched the way they stood. Weight balanced. Hands loose at their sides. Purposeful.
She adjusted her angle and closed the distance without sound.
“Don’t,” she said quietly.
The figure froze for half a second.
Then they moved.
Fast. Too fast for surprise alone.
They spun, knocking the barrel aside, momentum carrying them forward into her space. Zosia felt the impact in her shoulder, sharp and immediate. She rolled with it, letting the force glance rather than break, boots skidding across gravel as they grappled.
The hive member fought like someone who did not fear injury.
That was always the tell.
They drove an elbow toward her ribs. Zosia blocked, countered, twisted their wrist hard enough to make something pop. The sound was wet and ugly. The figure hissed but did not cry out.
“Still protecting her,” they snarled, voice low and vicious. “Even now.”
Zosia felt something hot flare in her chest.
She struck again, precise and controlled, aiming for balance, for breath. The hive member staggered but recovered quickly, slamming into her with enough force to knock the air from her lungs.
They were strong. Enhanced. Conditioned.
“You chose her,” they spat, teeth bared in a grin that held no humor. “Over all of us. Over purpose.”
Zosia locked her jaw and shifted her stance, grounding herself. Polish Special Forces training rose to the surface without invitation. Center. Control. End it fast.
“She is inefficient,” the figure continued, circling now, eyes flicking toward Carol’s house. “Fragile. Emotional. She does not belong in the future we are building.”
Zosia moved.
She closed the gap in two steps, caught them off guard with the speed of it. Her knee connected hard with their thigh, then again higher, precise enough to make their leg buckle. She wrenched them down, forced them to the ground, forearm pressed tight against their throat.
“Say her name again,” Zosia said quietly, voice shaking despite her effort to keep it steady, “and I will end this.”
The hive member laughed, breathless and cruel. “You think you can stop it. You think hiding her away makes her safe.”
They struggled beneath her, clawing at her arm, trying to break free. Zosia tightened her hold, muscles burning, anger threatening to tip her into something reckless.
“We know her,” the figure whispered. “We know what she wants. What she fears. What she would give up.”
Zosia slammed their head into the ground.
Once.
Hard.
Silence fell, broken only by the sound of their breathing. The hive member lay still now, dazed, the fight leaking out of them in shallow gasps.
Zosia rose slowly, weapon steady, breath coming fast and controlled.
“Listen to me,” she said. “You do not get to touch her. You do not get to watch her. You do not get to plan around her.”
She leaned closer, close enough that they could see her eyes clearly.
“She is not an option.”
The figure swallowed and nodded once.
Zosia stepped back.
She vanished into the dark before they could gather themselves enough to look for her.
She stayed hidden until dawn.
Carol slept through it.
Zosia counted the bruises forming under her sleeves, the ache in her shoulder, the lingering heat of anger that refused to fade.
She counted Carol still breathing as success.
ch. 4
Carol woke before the alarm and did not immediately know why.
The house was quiet in the way it always was now, but there was something else layered on top of it. A pressure that made her lie still for several seconds, staring at the ceiling and listening to her own breathing.
Rain tapped against the window. Not hard. Not enough to be dramatic. Just steady, persistent, like it had all night.
Monsoon season had settled in without asking.
She rolled onto her side and came up against plastic. The Golden Girls DVD case was tucked against her chest, cold and awkward, the cracked edge pressing into her ribs. She had fallen asleep with it there without remembering when she’d done it.
Carol huffed quietly at herself and tightened her arm around it anyway.
“You’re ridiculous,” she murmured.
The feeling did not leave.
She sat up slowly, scanning the room. Nothing was wrong. Nothing had moved. Still, the sense that she was no longer alone pressed in on her ribs like a held breath.
Carol swung her legs out of bed and padded down the hallway, the DVD case still in her hand.
Manousos was already awake when she reached the kitchen, coffee brewed and poured like he had never slept at all. He looked up when she came in, eyes flicking briefly to what she was holding.
He had a habit of letting himself into Carol’s house. Into her kitchen. He knocked less often than he used to. What was the point of locking the door anymore.
Carol snorted. “She left me emotional support grandmas.”
Manousos smiled faintly and slid a mug toward her. “Effective.”
She wrapped her hands around it but did not drink. Her eyes drifted toward the back door, then the front window.
“Do you ever get the feeling,” Carol started, then stopped. She shook her head. “Never mind.”
Manousos waited.
“Do you ever feel like someone’s watching you,” she said. “And I don’t mean the hive in general. I mean… closer.”
He tilted his head. “They are always watching us.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Carol said. “This feels different.”
“How.”
She frowned, searching for the right word. “Heavier. Like the air’s pressing in.”
Manousos glanced toward the window. “It is monsoon season.”
She shot him a look. “You’re not funny.”
“I was not joking.”
Carol took a sip of coffee and grimaced. “This tastes like regret.”
“It is the same as yesterday.”
“Then I regret yesterday too.”
She set the mug down harder than necessary.
“I woke up feeling like the house wasn’t empty anymore,” she said. “Like I missed something.”
Manousos’s expression softened. “You have been under a lot of stress.”
“That’s not comforting.”
“We could set a watch schedule,” he offered. “Just to ease your mind.”
Carol blinked. “You want to take shifts staring at nothing.”
“Yes.”
She snorted. “Very romantic.”
“We could also install cameras at the entrance to the cul de sac,” he added. “Not intrusive. Just observational.”
Carol hesitated. The idea made her skin prickle.
“They’re already watching,” she said. “Isn’t that the whole problem.”
Manousos met her gaze. “Knowledge goes both ways.”
She sighed. “Fine. But if I start narrating my own life like a nature documentary, this is on you.”
“I accept this risk.”
The rain let up briefly in the afternoon, leaving the world washed-out and quiet. Carol took the opportunity to step outside, drawn by a restlessness she could not shake.
Helen’s stone sat where it always had, the ground around it darkened by rain. Carol crouched and brushed water from the surface with the sleeve of her jacket.
“Hey,” she said softly.
The word disappeared into the air.
“They took you from me,” Carol said. “And now I lost her too.”
She swallowed, embarrassed by the thickness in her throat.
“I don’t even know who I’m supposed to be mad at anymore,” she added. “Them. Me. The universe.”
The clouds hung low overhead, heavy and unmoving.
Carol sat back on her heels and hugged the DVD case to her chest, rain soaking through the knees of her jeans.
“I just want it to stop,” she whispered.
That night, the rain returned in earnest, drumming against the roof and windows until the house felt sealed off from the world. Carol lay awake longer than she meant to, staring at the ceiling, listening to the rhythm of it.
The doors stayed unlocked.
She turned onto her side, pressing the DVD case closer, and tried to sleep.
---- Zosia did not sleep.
She lay on her side in the shelter until the light shifted from black to gray, cataloguing pain the way she had been trained to. Shoulder first. Deep bruise, swollen muscle. No fracture. Ribs next. One cracked, maybe two. Breathing shallow helped. She would deal with it later.
Her knuckles ached. Her jaw too.
She rolled onto her back and stared at the low ceiling, letting the anger drain down into something usable. Getting emotional got people killed. She had learned that early. She had relearned it last night.
Still, the hive member had been stronger than she liked.
That bothered her.
She sat up slowly and hissed despite herself. The sound irritated her more than the pain. She pressed her palm into the dirt floor until it passed, then reached for the binoculars.
Routine first.
Carol’s house was still dark. Curtains drawn. Porch empty. No movement. Zosia exhaled and lowered the binoculars, checking the monitors next.
All cameras active.
Good.
She slung the pack over her shoulder and moved out, making a slow circuit along the fence line. Rain had darkened the earth, softened it just enough to hold footprints if she wasn’t careful. She adjusted automatically, placing her feet where the ground would forget her.
She saw it near the entrance to the cul de sac.
A camera, mounted low on a post. New. Clean. Centered too carefully, like whoever had installed it wanted to be sure it caught everything and hadn’t considered who else might see it.
Zosia crouched and studied the angle.
“Jesus,” she muttered under her breath. “Manousos, Polish Special Forces you are not.”
It wasn’t bad. It just wasn’t hidden. Too earnest. Too honest. The kind of thing meant to reassure, not surveil.
Carol would hate it.
Zosia stood and continued her circuit, already recalculating routes, adjusting her own blind spots to compensate. It wasn’t a liability. Not yet.
But it was a change.
Carol had spoken the unease out loud.
Manousos had listened.
And now the perimeter was shifting.
She felt Carol before she saw her.
Carol stepped outside later that afternoon, moving slowly, like she wasn’t entirely sure why she’d come out here. Zosia froze where she was, half concealed by brush, breath held on instinct.
Carol crossed the yard and knelt at Helen’s stone.
Zosia’s chest tightened.
“They took you from me,” Carol said softly.
Zosia closed her eyes.
“And now I lost her too.”
The words landed harder than any blow. Zosia pressed her fingers into the dirt until the ache in her hand distracted her from the sharper one in her chest.
I’m here, she thought. I’m right here.
Carol brushed rainwater from the stone with the sleeve of her jacket, careful and familiar. She hugged the DVD case to her chest like it was something fragile, something she might drop if she loosened her grip.
“I don’t even know who I’m mad at anymore,” Carol continued. “I just want it to stop.”
Zosia swallowed.
Every instinct screamed at her to move. To step out of the shadows. To kneel beside her and say something that would make it hurt less.
She stayed where she was.
That was the rule. That was the cost.
When Carol finally went back inside, Zosia remained still long after the yard was empty again. She did not trust herself to move yet.
Night fell heavy and wet.
Zosia made her rounds again despite the ache in her ribs deepening into something sharper. Cameras. Sightlines. Distances. Everything accounted for.
Until it wasn’t.
The shelter came into view through the trees, its outline wrong in a way that made her stop instantly. Zosia dropped low, breath shallow, eyes sweeping the ground ahead of her.
Nothing moved.
She took one careful step.
The trip wire caught the faintest glint of light.
Zosia froze.
It hadn’t been there before.
She did not touch it. Did not move closer. She stared at the thin line stretched where it did not belong and let the truth settle into her bones.
They had found her.
Not rushed. Not careless.
Deliberate.
Zosia backed away the way she had come, slow and silent, already running through contingencies she had hoped she wouldn’t need yet.
She did not feel fear.
She felt time narrowing.
And she knew, with absolute certainty, that the next move would not be a warning.
ch. 5
Zosia saw them before they reached the cul de sac.
Three figures emerged from the mist at the far edge of the open desert, spaced just enough to look unremarkable to anyone who didn’t know better. They weren’t armed openly, but their posture gave them away. Purposeful. Coordinated. Moving like they expected resistance and had already planned for it.
They were heading for Carol’s house.
Zosia did not hesitate.
She moved fast, already calculating what she would have to abandon. The shelter. The supplies. Everything she had buried into the ground to make this place defensible. She would deal with that later.
Her boots squelched against wet sand as she cut across the open desert beyond Carol’s fence line, rain-softened ground sucking at each step. There was no cover out here. No shadows to hide in. She didn’t slow down anyway.
She angled hard, intercepting them before they could reach the house.
The first hive member spotted her too late.
Zosia hit them hard, shoulder to chest, driving them into the fence with enough force to rattle the wood. Pain flared through her ribs. She ignored it.
The second came in immediately, fast and sharp. Zosia blocked the strike, felt her bruised shoulder scream in protest, and countered with a knee that folded them halfway before they recovered.
The third watched.
That was the problem.
Zosia saw the calculation happen in real time. The shift of weight. The disengage. While the other two kept her occupied, the third broke away and sprinted for the house.
“No,” Zosia snarled.
She drove an elbow into the second hive member’s throat and shoved them aside, barely avoiding a grab at her jacket. The first lunged again, forcing her to choose.
Carol was asleep.
Carol was alone.
Zosia chose.
She broke contact and ran.
----
Carol woke knowing something was wrong.
Not noise. Not movement. Just the certainty that she was no longer alone.
Her eyes snapped open.
Someone stood in her bedroom.
They were close enough that she could see rain dripping from their jacket onto the floor. Close enough to see the calm, assessing look on their face. Not rushed. Not nervous.
Patient.
“Carol,” the figure said quietly.
Her heart slammed against her ribs. She scrambled backward, sheets tangling around her legs.
“Get out,” she said, because anger was easier than fear.
The figure tilted their head. “You didn’t lock the door.”
Of course she hadn’t.
They stepped closer. “We only want to talk.”
Zosia hit the back door at a run and took the hallway in three strides. She was up the stairs in moments.
The bedroom door burst open.
She slammed into the hive member full force, driving them away from the bed and out onto the balcony hard enough to rattle the glass. Zosia’s forearm pinned them there, against the railing, weapon already up.
Carol screamed.
Zosia struck once. Precise. Brutal.
The hive member toppled over the balcony wall and stayed down.
Zosia turned immediately, scanning the room.
Carol was still on the bed, shaking, staring at her.
Zosia looked wrecked. Rain-soaked. Tactical gear streaked with mud. Her cheek was dark with an ugly bruise, skin split at the corner of her mouth. She looked dangerous in a way Carol had never seen before.
Carol’s brain latched onto the wrong detail first.
God, she thought distantly. She’s hot.
They would absolutely be discussing that later.
Carol swung her legs off the bed, knees weak.
“Zosia,” she said, like saying the name might anchor her.
Zosia crossed the room in two strides and steadied her before she could fall, grip firm but careful.
“You’re shaking,” Zosia said.
Carol laughed once, sharp and disbelieving. “You just threw someone off my balcony.”
“Yes.”
“That’s not comforting.”
Zosia’s mouth twitched, then went serious. She glanced toward the open door, toward the dark beyond it.
“I can’t stay,” she said.
Carol stiffened. “No.”
“They’ll keep coming if I do.”
“You don’t get to show up like this and then disappear again,” Carol said, voice breaking. “You don’t get to decide that alone.”
“I never disappeared,” Zosia said quietly. “I was always there. Watching. Making sure you were safe.”
Carol swallowed hard. “That doesn’t make it better.”
“I know,” Zosia said. “But it’s true.”
She reached up, thumb brushing Carol’s cheek. “They’re not good. They want you to think they are, but they’re not. Stay away from them. Don’t talk to them. Don’t trust them.”
“You should have told me,” Carol whispered.
Zosia nodded once. “Yes.”
Silence stretched between them.
“Please don’t go,” Carol said. “I just got you back.”
Zosia leaned in until their foreheads touched, breathing her in.
“I love you,” she said softly. “And that’s why I can’t stay.”
Carol kissed her.
It was desperate and brief and real. Zosia kissed her back like it hurt, like she was memorizing the shape of her.
When she pulled away, her eyes were fierce and wrecked.
“I was always in there,” Zosia said. “I chose you every time.”
Zosia stepped back.
“Lock the doors,” she added quietly.
Carol huffed wetly. “You’re unbelievable.”
“I know.”
Then she was gone.
Zosia took the stairs two at a time.
The rain had picked up again, heavier now, turning the yard into mud and shadow. She hit the back door at a run and nearly collided with Manousos as he came through it.
He froze.
The machete was already in his hand, eyes wide as he took her in. The gear. The blood. The bruise dark against her cheek.
“You,” he said.
Zosia caught his wrist and guided the blade down without breaking stride.
“She’s safe,” she said. “For now.”
Manousos stared at her like the world had just shifted under his feet. “What did you do.”
Zosia met his gaze for a single second.
“Lock the doors,” she said. “All of them.”
Then she was gone.
She cut across the yard and into the rain, slipping between shadow and water until there was nothing left of her but motion.
Manousos stood there long after, rain soaking into his clothes.
Inside, Carol pressed her fingers to her mouth and tried to breathe.
Outside, the night closed over Zosia and did not give her back.
Do you think when they kissed the rest of the hive just smiled a little bit
https://archiveofourown.org/works/74578326
if anyone gaf about pluribus i finally wrote and published something
