My story. Caitlyn gets a dog. A doberman. But the dog and Vi don't get a long. That is until Caitlyn is hurt. Then Vi and dog have a bonding experience. Vengeance.
Based on these prompts,
[Part 1], and [Part 2].
@armeenix I think you were interested?
I can't promise it's any good. But I enjoyed I writing it. I suppose that's what it is all about in the end.
A truce between monsters
"What is that?" Asked Vi.
""That", is a dog. His name is Brutus." Replied Caitlyn.
"I knew you were talking about getting a dog, but I thought it'd be something smaller."
"We've always had dobermans. I grew up with them. I got him from the shelter. His previous owners weren't the best. He needs a little TLC."
Caitlyn looked at him.
"Brutus, sit."
He obeyed, sitting immediately.
"Good boy!" She exclaimed, patting him on the head.
"You can pet him Vi. He will be OK."
Vi reached out to touch him. She was hesitant. She had been bitten before by dogs just like him. He growled at her when she got close. She knew that noise. She took her hand away quickly.
"He doesn't like me, Cait."
"Nonsense, he just needs to get used to you."
Vi looked at the dog. We aren't going to be friends, are we, she thought. She couldn't help feeling that the dog thought the same thing.
A few weeks later
Vi was home late. The house was dark. She could hear the dog barking, stuck in a room somewhere. Stupid mutt. Where was Caitlyn?
"Caitlyn? Are you home cupcake?"
She turned a corner on the way to the kitchen. Caitlyn was lying on the floor. There was blood on her face. She may have screamed her name, she couldn't remember.
The doctors took her away. She had a head injury, probably a concussion. They wanted to watch her overnight. The enforcers said it looked like a burglary, but Caitlyn had no shortage of enemies. They would investigate. She wanted to go with Caitlyn, but someone had to watch the dog. She was alone in their big house. Just her and Brutus. In the sitting room, Brutus sat by Caitlyn's chair. His head on the seat.
"You miss her too, huh." Said Vi.
She spent the next day at the hospital. Caitlyn hadn't woken up yet. They said she was stable, but she just needed time to heal. It was like the hexgates again. Waiting for her to recover, feeling helpless. She hated that feeling. She needed to do something.
She went to the enforcers headquarters. They hadn't made any progress yet, but they had made several arrests. Useless. Arresting people was the only thing they knew how to do.
At home, Brutus was waiting for her.
"Are you smart, Brutus?" She said.
The dog looked at Vi when she mentioned his name.
"Caitlyn said you were smart. Just had a temperament problem. Well, I got a problem like that myself."
Vi reached into her bag and pulled out a jacket. It was evidence that the enforcers found at the mansion. It belonged to whoever broke in that night. Some idiot of an enforcer left it out in the open. Easiest thing in the world to swipe it. She put it in front of Brutus. He sniffed it, then growled.
"Yeah, you recognise that, don't you? This is the guy who hurt Caitlyn. Can you find him? If I take you to the undercity, can you sniff him out?"
Is this going to work? The enforcers weren't going to find him. Too busy looking in the wrong places. It was up to her. They hurt Caitlyn. Someone had to pay for that.
Zaun
She got off the tram in the undercity. The conductor would have normally said something about Brutus. But he took one look at them and decided that today he wasn't paid enough for this.
Vi took out the jacket again. She let Brutus take a good long sniff. She remembered the words Caitlyn had used.
"Brutus, hunt." She said.
He sniffed the ground around the tram. There were so many scents, but there, he recognised that one, that way!"
He made off into the crowd, Vi chased after him. He stopped every few yards to sniff the ground, and then he was off again.
They eventually stopped. He circled, sniffing. But didn't move.
"Well? Where is he?" Demanded Vi. "Have you lost him? Stupid dog. I knew this was a dumb idea."
She leaned against a wall, slowly sliding to the ground. Stupid. What did she think would happen? The dog could just find him? Then what?
Brutus walked over to her.
"Get away from me. Stupid dog."
Where the hell was she, anyway? Yeah, I recognise this place. Alleyway, near the vents. The vents. Would they have blown the scent away? If the vent was blowing air out in one direction, and they were heading in another.
"Brutus, come here, come with me."
She lead him away from the alleyway, down a side street.
"Hunt." She said.
He sniffed the ground for a few moments, he raised his head and he was off again.
They finally came to an old warehouse. Brutus stopped and growled.
"This it?" Asked Vi.
It looked old, falling apart in places. Who would come here? Perfect if you wanted to lay low for a while.
Vi twisted her neck from side to side, then stretched her arms. If they were in there, then things were about to get violent.
She looked at Brutus. He just stared at the building.
"Well then, let's see if anyones home."
She gave the door a solid kick, and it caved in under the force.
There were three of them. They sat around a table playing cards. They jumped when the door smashed open. Had the enforcers found them? No, just a girl and a dog.
"Get lost, go and find somewhere else to sleep." One of them said. He looked like the one in charge.
"Not looking for that." Answered Vi. "I'm looking for you."
"Us? We don't owe you anything. Get outta here before you get hurt." He replied.
"Ain't me getting hurt tonight." Replied Vi.
He nodded to the other two. The first one was a big guy, she fought bigger. The second one was smaller, but he had a club. Three on one? Not good odds. But the leader was hanging back, coward. So, two on one. Brutus growled beside her. No, two on two.
"Brutus, sic 'em!"
And as one, they moved. Brutus launched himself at the nearest attacker, grabbing hold of the arm that held the cudgel, his teeth sinking deep.
Vi hit the second one, a right fist to the face. She followed with a left to his stomach, and as he bent over, she grabbed his head and bought her knee up into his face.
When he was down, she turned to the other one.
"Brutus, heel."
He still had hold of the attacker, unwilling to let go.
"Heel!" Vi Shouted.
He let go, returning to Vi's side.
"Look what he did!" Cried the attacker, "I'm bleeding!"
"Could have been worse." Said Vi, "Could have gone for your balls."
The attacker looked at her. Half panicking about could have happened. Vi hit him, a powerful right fist. He was out like a light.
She looked at their leader then. Brutus growled. Vi knew that noise, but it wasn't for her this time.
He looked nervous. He'd just seen his henchman taken down within minutes. He genuinely couldn't say who scared him more, the dog or the girl.
"Look, we can make a deal. I'll cut you in on what we stole, like, er, 10%?"
"I'm not after money. You hurt her. You put her in a hospital bed." Said Vi.
"What? The one from the big house? She shouldn't have made a fuss, the bitch had it coming!"
"Wrong answer." Said Vi.
He turned and started running, Vi gave the command, and Brutus set after him. He grabbed his arm, dragging him to the ground. Vi raced over, she told Brutus to heel, and when he was clear, she pounced on the leader.
She landed a blow and felt his nose break. She hit again and again. Hands that could hit prison cell walls could make short work of a human face. She thought of Caitlyn, finding her unconscious on the floor. Another punch. She remembered seeing her after the hexgates. Blood, so much blood. Another punch. She raised her fist again for another blow when a noise made her pause. Whining. The damn dog was whining. She turned to look at him, ready to tell him to shut the hell up. His ears were low, not perked up as usual. He was afraid. Why was he afraid?
She looked back at the man who had attacked Caitlyn. His face was a bloody mess. She did that. Brutus, he's afraid of me, she thought.
She remembers a frightened little girl, her first night in prison. No one will tell her why she's there. When she asks, they tell her to shut up. That night, she got her first beating from the guards. To stop her whining, they said.
She got up off the leader. Her hands were bloody, but not her blood. Would she have stopped? If it wasn't for Brutus, would she have carried on hitting him? She didn't have an answer. At least not one she liked.
She looked down on him as he lay unconscious at her feet.
"Lucky. You got lucky tonight. You're never gonna know how close you came." Said Vi.
"Brutus, let's go home."
There was an anonymous tip sent to the enforcers. They found the thieves handcuffed outside their hideout. The enforcers found stolen goods from other robberies. They were going to Stillwater for a long time. Their leader, when he woke up, said he couldn't recognise who attacked him. But he remembered, he saw them in his nightmares.
She showered when she got home. She needed to wash the blood away. She fed Brutus, then sat in a chair and let him eat. What do you see when you look at me? Last night, I did something terrible, I beat someone unconscious. But it could have been so much worse. Am I a monster to you? Is that what you see?
"I'd never hurt Caitlyn." She said out loud.
Brutus looked over to her.
"I don't know if you know that. She said you came from a bad home. She never went into details. Did they hit you?"
Brutus sat but continued looking at her.
"I've had my share of being hit. They didn't think I was even a person, undercity trash, no better than a dog like you. I was locked in there for seven years. I've never told Cait, but I don't know how many more beatings I had left in me. Before I finally broke. How many beatings does it take until you turn into the monster they say you are? But Caitlyn got me out. She saved me."
She looked at Brutus.
"Just like you, I guess. Her mom was right. She likes bringing home strays."
She reached out her hand to Brutus. Gently, she stroked his head. He didn't growl at her this time.
A few days later, Vi visited Caitlyn in hospital. She'd woken up, and doctors expected her to make a full recovery.
"How are you feeling today, cupcake?" Asked Vi.
"Much better. The doctors say I can go home tomorrow."
"That's great! Oh, I bought someone to see you."
She whistled, and Brutus came into the hospital room.
"Brutus! Come here, my beautiful boy!" Said Caitlyn.
He went to her side, jumping up onto the bed. His tail wagged with excitement.
"Have you two been getting along?" Asked Caitlyn.
"Yeah, I think we've come to an understanding." Replied Vi.
Vi reached out, gently stroking his head and neck. He looked at her but didn't growl.
A truce between monsters. Not for vengeance, not for fear, not for hate, but for love. For the love of Caitlyn Kiramman, they could live with each other.
Caitlyn smiled. And that smile made it all worth it.
send me a number (1-100) and a character and I’ll (write about) them based off of my spotify top playlist. @keldabekush 💞
READ ON AO3
lieee by tori amos.
"i know you wanna save every little hair on my head, you little arsonist/i know we're dying/there's no sign of a parachute/why can't it be beautiful?/why's there got to be a sacrifice?"
THE BUTCHER
There are roughly seventy-five trillion cells in the human body.
This is a rough estimate, as most things are. There are more cells in a body than living beings on Naboo; even Coruscant has only three trillion people. Padmé likes to keep track of these things- numbers make sense, biology is quantifiable, a census can track a population, a heart monitor can count the beats of a heart. Hers runs too fast right now for her to count. Padmé sees the lava flowing around her, but she does not feel it.
There are seventy-five trillion cells in a human body, she thinks, and in that moment it feels like every single one is being ripped apart.
She was dead a moment ago and now she is alive. This fact alone is already difficult to comprehend, but her strange hyper-awareness of the world around her compounds with her existing bafflement and tips her over the edge into terror.
She laments that she doesn't know how many midichlorians are held in a force-sensitive body. If she knew, maybe Padmé could quantify her pain. That's what this is, isn't it, the Force has resurrected her? It's brought her back to life?
Ahsoka told her once that the same thing had happened to her. She'd been dead, and then alive, though when she whispered into the palm she cupped to Padmé's ear she confided that she had not come back unchanged. How miraculous. To think then that brave, glorious Ahsoka was the Jedi's little sacrificial lamb until they found someone else to execute.
Her throat burns. It's raw from screaming, crying, howling at Anakin. She has Anakin's blood under her nails where she'd clawed at him in desperation. She raises her hand to brush the skin of her neck and finds the imprint of a hand-shaped bruise, there, digging into her trachea.
The one greatest tool of her life- her voice- has been taken from her.
Padmé spits blood and scrapes herself off the ground.
She keeps waiting for the pin to drop, for everyone to leap out from behind a pillar or wall and shout surprise, like it's a party with fanfare and not the death knells of democracy. The genocide around the galaxy isn't real if she doesn't think about it, but it's all she can think about, so everyone is dead.
Except for her. She ought to be, but she's not. Judging by the kick in her belly, neither is her child.
Trudging over the edge of the cliff, Padmé peers down at Mustafar. She's been here before, she thinks, in a dream, a vision, she has waded through these red-hot waters and awoke screaming. She clutches the bannister. Below, two lightsabers swing in a flurry of motion, arcs of light so blinding she cannot see the fighters. They are out for blood, each of them.
So is she.
Padmé cannot run or leap to the surface like a Jedi can, but she is smart, and- she freezes. Her hands tingle fiercely. Though back from the dead, she feels larger than life! Isn't that strange? Unusual? Like some dark petal unfurling within her she feels knowledge and power at her fingertips. More now than ever before.
The toes of her boots touch the very edge of the platform. Below, a rock face is just flat enough that she may find purchase on it to safely cross the bubbling lava.
When she was just a girl, Sabé told her that courage requires only initiative. She inhales, exhales, and takes initiative. Padmé falls. Her braid whips in the air behind her, and she lands flat on her feet, weightless, as though in water.
It seems that gravity is no longer her master.
She cannot take any glee in the realization, not when her world is gasping it's dying breaths, but she can smile through the soot and sweat and tears. This much she allows herself.
Across the fire the men still fight. Obi-Wan leaps to the high ground; Anakin looms below.
Anchored to the spot, she clutches her swollen belly and watches her husband's limbs be severed in two swift motions.
Obi-Wan leaves, in the end. He leaves him there, percolating in the sludge of lava and resentment. She's seen Anakin's rage up close. She has felt it wrapped around her throat. Suffering will not satisfy him, not now, when he is no longer begging for scraps but simply fighting for his Masters praise, uncaring if they swing a hand at him so long as they clap when he mauls his next opponent.
She sobs as she runs, leaping from stone to stone. Pebbles float around her; chunks of lava rock vibrate and burst into the air, spewing chunks that hover and hesitate around her. Her braid snaps in the air as she falls to her knees before him.
He doesn't even see her. He can't. His left eyelid has melted shut, and he does not open the right.
Padmé touches her belly. You could help him, the meek part of her mind says. Our children need a Father, says the meaner one. She reaches down to caress his deformed face. In another world, she loves him, their children love him, he does well. She knows better now.
The Jedi eat their young.
In the air around him, she can now feel the vibration of the force, a scintillating and colorless warble of indescribable power. His hate bends around his love and the core crumbles, and snaps, is reformed again like a bone broken back into place. He lies at her knees, prone.
She has no voice to use. Padmé's throat burns. Her hands now black with his broiled blood, fingertips trembling against his shoulders, she whispers to him through the Force; This will be my final act of mercy.
From her pocket, she withdraws the knife she'd come to kill him with. Anakin's single eye opens, yellowed in the iris and too weak to emote. He says nothing when she rolls him onto his side for a cleaner cut, like a loyal dog presenting his underbelly. In his eye he loves her.
He watches her kill him.
Anakin goes limp. Her knife digs deeper with a sickening crunch, ensuring his spine is cleanly cut from his brain, like she'd seen the butcher do. She is many things, but never imprecise.
There are roughly eighty-six billion cells in the human brain, and she is sure to snuff out every last one. Padmé likes to be sure of these things.
“Violence is always an answer. It may not be the right answer, but it’s still an answer. Who knows? Maybe they’ll give you half credit for being close”
Just pretend I posted this like thirteen hours ago
Memori appreciation week day two– canon-divergence
Finn drops the knife at Murphy’s feet and leaves. So Murphy stands up, and every joint in his body is a fierce ache. His face is wet with blood. His throat still hurts.
That’s that— Charlotte’s body rushing down a cliffside, a knife pressed to Clarke’s throat, fire and rage and fire, that search, the tree, the closingclosing of rope. “We banish him.” And Bellamy, who he trus— that son of a bitch will pay. He will. Won’t they all? And here Murphy is, paying now, always paying, endlessly fucking paying.
(The whole story under the cut)
angel of death
Finn drops the knife at Murphy’s feet and leaves. So Murphy stands up, and every joint in his body is a fierce ache. His face is wet with blood. His throat still hurts.
That’s that— Charlotte’s body rushing down a cliffside, a knife pressed to Clarke’s throat, fire and rage and fire, that search, the tree, the closingclosing of rope. “We banish him.” And Bellamy, who he trus— that son of a bitch will pay. He will. Won’t they all? And here Murphy is, paying now, always paying, endlessly fucking paying.
His throat still hurts.
The thoughts are jumbled, and so it the pain, but he is standing now. Soon he’ll have to walk.
—
The grounder in front of him has a pile of weapons at his feet. Even if Murphy wasn’t tied up, he wouldn’t be able to reach them, but that doesn’t stop him from fantasizing about what the look on the guy’s face would be if he took a knife and slid it right through his cheek. Then he’d have grounder blood on his hands instead of his own.
Sometimes when he’s being tortured, he escapes to a corner of his mind where he’s still at the dropship, doing whatever the hell Bellamy wants. Whenever he visits this place in his mind, he idly kills someone else. Breaks Clarke’s neck. Suffocates Jasper. And Bellamy, oh—he hangs Bellamy. He watches the pain and betrayal flash through Bellamy’s eyes as the life slowly trickles away.
He does try to keep his mouth shut at first. Really. If anyone is going to float half the dropship, he wants it to be him.
They tear another fingernail from its bed and he cries out, and if he could think straight, he’d be surprised that his vocal chords still work. As it is, the words tumble out like vomit.
“Leaders,” he gasps out. “They have two leaders.”
Another nail.
“These bracelet things,” he says, after the scream that rips its way through his throat like a knife. “We’ve been taking them off. It’s how the others track us.”
And another.
“I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know. Others. In space, on the arc.”
That makes the man halt and mutter something to another grounder in their harsh tongue. The second man leaves, and the first continues his work.
Murphy escapes back into his mind. He imagines burning the whole damn camp to the ground. He imagines his old friends dissolving into cinders.
He passes out eventually, and barely sees a dark shape creep through corner of his vision.
—
When he wakes up, he notices the grounder who had been torturing him is flat on his back. There is a large bruise on his forehead and he isn’t breathing. A grounder woman crouches next to him, digging through his pockets with a swift familiarity. Murphy wonders if he should pretend to be dead.
“I know you’re alive,” the woman says, not looking up from her task.
Terrific. “Is he?” Murphy asks, and his voice sounds like a bundle of razor blades. He nods toward his guard’s prone body because his hands are still tied behind his back.
“Probably not,” she says, and turns towards him. “Can you move?”
“No,” he says, wondering what fresh hell is waiting for him now. She walks over to him now, pulling his head back to inspect the bruises on his neck. Some of his blood doubtless gets on her hands, but she doesn’t seem to care. Angel of death, he thinks, looking into her dark eyes. Maybe she’ll kill him, too. Maybe it’ll be quick, and then he can be dead and the pain will go away.
“Did they get your knees?” she says. “Or your feet?” She has long, dark hair and it brushes his shoulder which is, incidentally, also sticky with blood.
He doesn’t answer and she shakes his shoulder and swears in her own language.
“Listen,” she hisses, “that guy’s friend is coming back any minute now. You either come with me and help me out, or I kill you so you don’t tell them about me. Understand? Now, do your legs work?”
He wants to stay silent, to look into her eyes as she kills him for this silence. He’s been killed by worse. There’s an urgency in her face, though, an urgency swimming around with a dark tattoo over a nose and cheek and he fucking hates grounders but for some reason he opens his mouth.
“Yes,” he says.
—
The grounder woman leads him, stumbling, through the woods. His legs do work, but he’s so weak that he has to lean on her half the time. Fortunately, she seems pretty strong. Probably because she hasn’t been tortured for a week.
“Where are we going?” he croaks out.
“Shut up,” she says, a little breathless with his full weight leaning against her. For a brief moment, he is aware of her body pressed against his. She’s so small—at his full strength, he’d probably be able to tackle her, wrap his hands around her neck, squeeze the life out of her.
He’s nauseous, suddenly, and pulls away from the woman to vomit into a dense, prickly bush.
The woman watches, almost analytical. “We’ll stop soon,” she offers, her voice soft and low, almost like a shifting of wind.
—
“Why’d you save me?” he asks later that night. She has them set up in a cave; a fire is crackling its way through a bundle of small twigs, and she has handed him a cloth with some sort of plant goo on it for his cuts.
“I didn’t,” she says. She’s holding a small skewered animal over the fire. “You come from the sky. There’s a market for the things you know how to get.”
“A market?”
She looks up at him and grins darkly. He remembers her looking through the dead grounder’s pockets, and he also notices a bag of weapons she’d dragged through the forest with them. Weapons belonging to his captors.
“Oh. You steal shit.”
“I sell shit,” she corrects him. The swear is almost funny in her slight accent and he grins too, watching the dance of flames and shadows on her face. But—
“Good luck getting into camp,” he says. “They’ll kill you before you can take any of the useless crap they have there.”
“But will they kill you?”
“Probably,” he says honestly. “I’m banished.”
A slight change overtakes her face at that word, banished, and then it is gone.
—
Murphy wakes up when the sun is still cool in the sky. In space, he’d felt like the sun and the planet beneath them were part of a mocking conspiracy. There they were, a mess of miserable bodies stuffed into a tin can, and there was a warm turning star, and a warm turning planet. Now he can’t feel much of anything but he watches the sky grow slowly turn from black to gray.
He shifts his attention to the woman who is sleeping, curled up like a cat. She’s probably coiled like a spring, ready to attack at a moment’s notice. He should have been more prepared at the camp. He should have known that the people he trusted would turn on him.
He doesn’t know why she didn’t tie him back up, but he wonders as he slowly moves to the sack of weapons, biting down the cries of pain that come with the general reality of movement. There. A knife. He turns to her, wondering. Before, he thinks. Before he starts to trust her. He kneels next to her and brushes a lock of hair away from her forehead, unthinking.
“You gonna threaten me with that or what?” she asks, voice cloudy with sleep. Her eyes are half-open as she watches him.
“Shut up,” he says, echoing her words from the day before.
He could do it. He could slip the knife between her ribs and be free to go. She meets his gaze and he wants her to be afraid but she isn’t. It’s maddening, almost.
“I want to kill them,” he says, without realizing he’s talking. “All of them.”
“Your people? There are too many of them,” she says casually, as though he isn’t crouched in front of her with a weapon.
“There are.” He looks down at the knife. His hand is clenched around the handle, and it’s already stained with his blood. She reaches over, peels his fingers off one by one. He tries clumsily to grab it back from her and ends up with her hands gripped around his wrists. One of her hands is awkward, big. It’s wrapped in a battered cloth and he stares down at it, at both of their hands, at where she is touching his wrists with firmness and also gentleness. He wants to cry or kill or—
“I was banished too,” she says firmly, drawing his eyes back to hers. “I understand the need for revenge. For me, survival is my revenge.”
“I don’t understand,” he says and she unwraps her hand and he does understand.
“They kicked you out for that?”
“I was a stain on their bloodline,” she says. The knives are forgotten. He looks in her fierce eyes and drinks her in. He should have killed her five minutes ago, because he’s lost now. He doesn’t understand this feeling and he doesn’t want to trust her, he doesn’t—
“Fuck them,” he says softly. “Let’s keep living.”
She smiles. Lost. You can be alive and lost, can’t you? When you’re lost you never have to go back to where you came from.
“We could do that,” she says.
