would you be willing to do an f!reader and an unbound thresh (cinematic one) HCs about a researcher of the Shadow Isles (some sort of kind priestess type) who somehow managed to capture his interest bc her soul is unable to be caged and he's intrigued by her fearlessness...
Thresh with researcher!reader
- From the moment you meet it is the world's most intense game of cat and mouse, except you're both convinced you're the cat
- Studying the effects of the black mist on souls is your life's work–it’s an utterly fascinating and unique form of magic and if it can be understood, maybe it can be cured. That being said, studying it isn't exactly easy. The Isles are dangerous at the best of times and much of it has been ravaged by time–you’ve reached a dead end with simple observational means and were hoping you could learn more about the mist and what caused it by speaking to the shades bound to it. Some of them predate the mist after all–surely one of them has something to point you in the right direction?
- Your first encounter with Thresh is actually before he's unbound. Most souls you encounter are either violently insane, largely incoherent or generally uncooperative, so meeting one that can not only hold a coherent conversation but one so knowledgeable about the mist is like a dream come true! The fact that he has a flaming skull for a head and you're pretty sure his lamp is screaming is a secondary concern, you're getting good info here.
- He's very amused by your enthusiasm and probably indulges your curiosity far more than he normally would–it’s pretty rare he meets anyone who doesn't run screaming (which is fair, he’ll acknowledge that). You're the most entertaining thing he's seen in centuries, and waiting around for the Sentinels to kill Viego has been so terribly boring–so when you start packing up your notes and making to leave…well, he can't very well have that, can he?
- Honestly the worst part about having your soul ripped out of your body by ethereal chains is that it really disrupts your train of thought, and you had a great question about interactions with restoration magic you were about to ask. You have a brief moment of looking at your own body, and then there's a flash of light and you're back to normal, at which point you hurriedly thank him for the interview and hightail it the fuck out of there.
- Thresh meanwhile is stunned. Your soul was brilliant, blindingly radiant in a way he's never seen before. Trying to lash it to his lamp was like trying to hold oil with water–it just couldn't find purchase, and by the time he realised what had happened you were already gone. He gives chase, or course, but you survived this far for a reason and you're soon out of his reach, bound as he is to the Isles
- He's obsessed. He wants nothing more than to take that perfect, beautiful soul of yours and bleed it until it's as black and twisted as his. He stalks the Isles hoping to run into you again, but no such luck–still, he's had plans in motion to free himself from the Isles for a long time, and now he just has to wait. He can be very patient, when he wants to be.
- Meanwhile, you're an ocean away writing a dissertation on the Shadow Isles and the metaphysical properties of the mist, having a great time.
- He finds you in a library after he's unbound by complete coincidence, but he is elated. You don't recognize him, of course–he looks human, and you're too focused on your research to bother with some random stranger. Low-key he tries to charm you at first, but you're just like ‘sir I'm trying to work here’ so he has to reintroduce himself. Immediate fascination from you–how does a soul get free of the mist? Is he actually human now, or is it a shapeshifting thing? And oh, actually, could he finish explaining the properties of the waters of life? Your last conversation kind of got cut short when he tried to stab you. Oh no you're not upset about it, most souls you spoke to tried to stab you at the start of the conversation, he was actually very polite!
- He laughs so hard you get kicked out of the library. You suggest coffee instead. He agrees. He doesn't even need to eat or drink.
- His plan is to feed you tidbits of information about the Isles and the mist to lull you into a false sense of security and eventually tempt you into his clutches–after all, if he can't imprison you by force, he could chip away at you until you went to your demise willingly and unwittingly, and he relishes the challenge.
- Meanwhile you're thinking ‘this is great, I'm learning so much! He's definitely going to try and kill me at some point but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it!’
- Normally the idea of breaking someone's spirit is satisfying to him, but the longer he spends with you the more the idea loses its shine–after all, you're so much more entertaining when you're lively like this, and the thought of your eyes going dull and hopeless like all of his other victims makes him oddly disappointed. But still, human lives are so short, and you've become rather dear to him–the best place for someone as special as you would be his lamp, where he can keep your soul safe and enjoy your company for all eternity~
- There's something fundamentally wrong with this man if you couldn't tell. He's possessive, obsessive, and he thinks morals are an unfortunate condition other people suffer from. He has no delusions about what sort of man he is: in life, he was essentially exiled to guarding the vault in total isolation purely because members of his order found him off-putting–there’s something about him that's just Wrong, and he knows that. There was no hiding it when he was human, much less with this veneer of humanity he now wears–but for whatever reason, you don't flinch away from him. Poor sweet girl that you are, you seem to be under the impression he's a person. But still, if you decide you hate him, you probably won't talk to him anymore and that would be a tragedy. Ergo, he’s trying to be Good so you trust him, but he only abstractly understands what Good is meant to be. Surely if he only targets people who deserve it that counts? He doesn't even kill them! He just, y'know, traps them in his lantern and subjects them to untold horrors for a little bit, but he lets them go after and in his experience that seems to scare people pretty straight. He's doing a public service! He's practically a saint!
- Low-key he's stalking you. Like he just shows up where you happen to be whenever he's not off doing crimes against humanity, but honestly in the grand scheme of things it's pretty low on the list of concerns–after all, he's a thousand year old immortal wraith, and while you're pretty sure he's not planning on murdering you anymore, his disregard for social conventions that aren't immediately useful to him ranks somewhere between ‘maybe we can work on a a version of our relationship where I don't get trapped in your lamp for all eternity?’ and ‘when I put you in the special thanks section of my publication, do I just call you Thresh?’ on the list of conversations you ought to have with him.
- He can be incredibly charismatic when he wants to be, so to you he comes off as very gentlemanly if a bit melodramatic. Overprotective like you would not believe, but he generally cedes to your requests and it's sort of endearing how invested he is in staying in your good graces. Weirdly intense at times, but he's an ancient undead wearing the thin veneer of a man so you figure that's to be expected. Still, he's very polite and considerate, and while he's definitely trying to con you into some kind of supposedly benevolent eternal damnation, he's also helping you proofread your paper, so y'know it's actually a pretty decent deal.
