The curse of being a writer is not knowing when to fucking stop
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The alley tilted. Not a metaphor—the stones under his hands actually shifted, grinding like mill wheels against his palms. He tried to push himself up and his left arm folded. Something wet had soaked through the velvet doublet, through the linen beneath, and now his hand slid in it, fingers skidding through a puddle that was too warm to be rainwater.
Get up. Get up, you idiot.
He made it to his knees. The world narrowed to a grey tunnel. There was a ringing in his ears that sounded like the chapel bells at coronation, except these bells were screaming, and the screaming was him.
His right side was wrong. He pressed his hand there and felt cloth stuck to meat, and when he pulled his fingers away they were black in the dimness. Not black. Red. Just too dark to look red.
Footsteps behind him. Boots. Heavy, regimented—no. Those were the palace. These were lighter. Quicker. The slums had its own cadence.
He crawled. His knee hit something sharp—a broken bottle, a rusted nail, he didn’t care. The pain was distant, wrapped in wool. Shock, some part of him thought, the word floating up from tutor’s lectures on battlefield triage. Shock will kill you before the blood loss does. Stay warm. Stay conscious.
He was neither.
The alley dead-ended at a stack of crates that smelled like rotting fish and piss. He collapsed against them and felt his own breath hitch, shallow and glassy, like air being drawn through a cracked flute. Every inhale hitched. Every exhale bubbled.
Voices.
“—the hell is that?”
“Dunno. Fancy clothes.”
“Is he dead?”
“Dunno. Check his pockets.”
Small hands. Quick hands. They rolled him onto his back and the world went white. He tried to scream and produced only a wet click. His throat was full of copper.
“Shit,” a voice said. Young. Male. Trying to sound older than it was. “Shit, shit, shit—”
“Don’t touch him, you’ll get it on you!”
“Too late, it’s already—look at my hands—”
“Wipe it off! Wipe it off, if the guards see blood on us they’ll hang us for murder, you know they will, they don’t need a reason—”
The prince tried to speak. His tongue felt thick, alien. He summoned the only language he knew when terrified: command.
“Fetch…the palace guard,” he rasped. “I am…you will be rewarded. Gold. I demand…”
Silence.
Then laughter, sharp and ugly.
“Hear that?” the oldest voice said. Close to his ear now, breath smelling of stale bread. “He demands.”
Another voice, higher. A girl. “He’s delirious. My ma used to get like this before she—”
“Shut up about your ma.”
The prince tried to lift his head. Tried to fix them with the look that had made dukes stammer. His head lolled. His vision doubled. Two dirty faces swam above him, then four, then none.
“Listen here, fancy man,” the oldest voice said, and then a hand shoved his shoulder, hard enough to jostle the wound in his side. He made a sound like a dog being kicked. “I don’t care if you’re the bloody King of the Midden Heap. No one here takes orders from a bleeding sack of silk.”
He wanted to explain. Wanted to tell them about the throne room, the coup, the knives in the dark that had been meant for his throat. Wanted to tell them that the blood on their hands was royal blood, that there were men in city guard uniforms who were not city guards combing the streets right now. Wanted to tell them to run.
His mouth opened. Nothing came out but a thin line of red.
“Oh gods,” a new voice whispered. Younger. Terrified. “Oh gods, he’s dying. He’s dying right now, Kael, he’s dying on my shoes—”
“He’s not dying. He’s just…leaking.”
“He’s dying, you can see his—look at his side, that’s his insides—”
“Don’t look at it!”
“Someone has to look at it!”
The prince felt his own heart stuttering, a rabbit kicking in a snare. His fingers twitched. He tried to raise a hand to ward them off, to shield himself, but his arm was made of lead. Hands were on him again. Not stealing now. Poking. Prodding. One touched his face, sticky with alley grime, and he flinched internally, screamed internally, but his body only shivered.
“He’s cold,” the girl said. “Kael, he’s so cold.”
“Course he’s cold, he’s missing half his—okay. Okay. We need cloth. Something clean. Or clean-ish.”
“Are we keeping him?”
A pause. The prince heard breathing—ragged, panicked, several sets.
“If we leave him and someone finds him dead, and they find our prints or our blood near him, we’re hanged,” the oldest voice—Kael—said, but the words came too fast, rehearsed. “If we help him and he lives, maybe he’s got money. Maybe he knows someone. He said he could help us.”
“He’s a liar. They’re all liars.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not letting another dead body ruin my week, so—”
Something pressed against his side. Hard.
The prince arched, or tried to. His back barely left the stones. The pressure was immense, burning, a fist of white-hot iron shoved into the wound. He made a sound, a terrible wounded-animal whine that he couldn’t control, couldn’t stop.
“Hold him down!”
“I am holding him down!”
“He’s moving—”
“He can’t move, look at him, he’s—shit, shit, there’s more blood—”
The pressure increased. Someone was crying. Not him. He didn’t have the water left for tears. It was the youngest voice, the one that had whispered about gods, now hiccupping against his leg.
“Don’t cry on him, you’ll drown him,” Kael snarled, but his voice cracked. “Press here. Like this. Harder. I don’t care if he screams, you press—”
The prince felt the scream building in his chest, a pressure behind his sternum that had nowhere to go. His lungs burned. His vision tunneled further, the dirty faces vanishing into a haze of grey and black.
They don’t know, he thought, the idea drifting through the pain like a leaf on a flood. They don’t know who I am. They don’t know what I saw. They think I’m just a man in nice clothes.
A hand touched his forehead. Gentle. Accidentally gentle.
“It’s okay,” the girl lied, her voice shaking. “It’s okay, we’re helping, we’re trying, just…just stay still…”
He couldn’t do anything else.
The ringing in his ears swelled. The voices frayed into static. The pressure on his side became distant, a rumor of pain from someone else’s body. He felt himself sinking into the cold stone, into the filth, into the dark where there were no crowns, no coups, no blood—
⚠️ POTENTIAL SHATTERED SPOILERS AHEAD - READ AT OWN RISK ⚠️
This is WAY off in our current timeline! And is NOT a finished WIP, it still needs more work❤️ (BTW the whole scene I have is lowkey, one of my favourites)
For a lil context: Declan, Lucas and August are attending a black-tie annual charity fundraiser to support August in his work. It takes place at a grand historic estate, for a foundation called 'The Asclepius Trust' - named after the Greek god of medicine.
***********
The charity gala glittered with opulence - crystal chandeliers spilling warm light over the marble floors, the buzz of champagne-fueled chatter hanging in the air like perfume.
Music lilted from a string quartet in the corner. Declan kept his gaze fixed on August, using him as a North Star to navigate the overwhelming room.
Declan stayed close to the wall where he could, shoulders slightly hunched beneath the stiff collar of his borrowed suit. His eyes tracked the exits without meaning to. August stood beside him, effortlessly poised, a picture of cool elegance in a midnight-blue coat, but his hand remained on the small of Declan’s back - always anchoring, always ready.
Then came a voice.
“Do my eyes deceive me…?”
Those words hit Declan like a physical blow to the stomach. That voice…that frequency his body was tuned into for six torturous years.
He felt the familiar hollow open up inside of him once again. The "nothingness" he’d lived in for so long - the state where he wasn't Declan, but a plaything. Food. A mindless zombie that moved and breathed only because it was commanded.
His lungs seized. His skin went cold, a phantom chill that reached back to the years spent locked in the basement. He remembered the feeling of his own mind being scrubbed away, layer by layer, until there was nothing left but the urge to obey. He remembered the pain that had eventually stopped feeling like pain and started feeling like the only proof he existed.
The hand on his back - August’s hand - suddenly felt tens of thousands miles away. In his head, he was already crumpled back on his bruised knees, fangs sinking into his neck.
He knew that if he turned around, the last few years of freedom would evaporate. He’d see the monster who had broken him, and the Declan he had tried so hard to rebuild would simply cease to be.
Just one word from his lips would be all it takes and Declan would lose himself all over again. He would be an empty vessel.
He didn't want to look. Couldn't bear to look. Every instinct he had left told him to run, to scream, to vanish into thin air.
But the voice had asked a question, and the thing he used to be knew better than to keep master waiting.
Over the past few months, i've been a little tired, but progress is going well. The story is being outlined, but the characters and concepts are being finalized. Puppet, or hopefully now better known as: The Red String
Will likely be coming to tumblr (and maybe ao3) sometime sooon! I would really appreciate it if you would spread the word or show this to Moots who you think would be interested in it! I would love interaction and making friends if anyone would like to say hello or to know more. (This is my first time making a web series, go easy on me ;3)
Genres: Modern Hurt/Comfort
Themes: Love, Perserverance, Freedom, Family, Personal Worth, Jesus
POV: Third (Limited)
Plot Structure: Hero's Journey
Status: OUT! IT'S OUT NOW! RAHHHHHH GO READ IT PLEASE! IT'S JUST STARTING!!!
Knives and targets, blood and tears. A Shadow, a chameleon in the crowds of the nobles, a hundred identities, a hundred faces. But he knows only one name as his own, Puppet. That’s what she calls him. The woman who owns his every thought. Lady Eilene Hallon. Her wish is his movement, her life is his breath. Not a person, but a possession. 026. The Northwing Facility’s newest weapon. And as long as 026 can remember, that’s all he’s ever been. A life lived in a ditch, the constant taste of blood and lingering agony of Eilene's rage. Pulling himself back to his feet, alone.
Raised since childhood for the scope of a gun, 026 should know better than to feel remorse for his prey. After all, that's all they are. Prey. But the blood on the walls and the screams for mercy haunt him, his only semblance of freedom found in high nights and Dreary mornings. Everything slowly goes from bad, to worse as 026 begins to lose his grip on everything that kept him sane. Until he fails. His target leaves alive. And Eilene is furious.
Tortured for half the evening and left to die, 026 accepted that he would, ready to meet the darkness with one last sigh, anything would be better than this. Until he wakes up, temporarily blind with a couple dozen broken bones in a place he doesn't recognize and people he doesn't trust.
Eve, the farmer's daughter who fished him out of the alleyway and hauled him home. Cole, the easily-excitable little boy with a lot of questions and an empty space in his life for a protector. Iris, the matriarch and the watcher who waits for 026 to prove himself to her. Lucian, the friendly church book-keeper and retired Therapist. And the Watchful eyes of a God 026 never believed in, whispering that his life has a purpose, and it's not his time to die just yet.
Characters
#026 - Puppet - Male - 26 yrs old - Mixed Ethnicity/Biracial - ISTP
A Young man raised for as long as he can remember to believe he was a weapon, taught to supress himself for his job, but bits of his spite and grief still poke through. Defiant and angry with a wild streak. This causes him to often lose control of his emotions and abuse any substance he can get his hands on to cope with his situation.
Dislikes: Being called out, Sudden loud noises, Specifically red dice, Grease, Mud & Dirt, Complete silence
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Lady Eilene Hallon - Whumper - Female - 41 yrs old - Greek - ESTJ
A charismatic Noblewoman with a penitent for blood and violence, she has high-expectations and little patience for mistakes. Her favorite toy is of course, #026, who conveniently gets rid of all of her problems for her
Likes: Things being quick and easy, Rich flavors, red wine, The colors Red and Blue, Night, Stars, Silence
Dislikes: Slow processes, Failure, The color orange, Fish, Birds, Most flowers, Loud noises, Swearing
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Evelyn (Eve) Sparrow - Caretaker - Female - 24 years old - Caucasian - ESFP
A Sweet young woman who recently moved back into town from college to help her aging mother on the farm and care for her siblings. She's generally a very happy girl with a heart of gold who tries her best but sometimes misjudges the situation.
This week was mostly spent writing A New Birthday Tradition, but the previous week I dabbled in a few of the WIPs that scored highly on the WIP poll that I did. This is a little bit from the whump oneshot I've been playing around with. Very out of my comfort zone (again), but I've been enjoying it!
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“Why did it have to be you?”
Crown Prince Wilhelm looked up into the dark eyes of Simon Eriksson from where he was slumped against the wall, his breath coming out shallow and pained.
“Because the world thinks our lives are a joke,” Simon said shortly, bending around Wilhelm’s body and flinching back when his hand made contact with Wilhelm's side. Not, Wilhelm realised, because he hadn’t wanted to touch him. But because Simon’s hand came back covered in blood. “Fuck,” he muttered.
“That bad?” Wilhelm chuckled then winced. Even without the horrified look on Simon’s face. Wilhelm could have figured out that, yes, it was that bad. Oddly, it didn’t feel that bad. It felt… fuzzy. Everything felt fuzzy. Simon looked fuzzy. The light from behind him was casting a glow onto his hair. He looked like an angel. Maybe Wille was actually dying. Maybe Simon Eriksson wasn’t here to murder him as Wilhelm had originally expected. Or to check his wound as it currently appeared. Maybe this was a hallucination as Wilhelm’s life slowly slipped away from him. He couldn’t even conjure up the energy to hold onto it. There was nothing in his mind except the vague thought that he didn’t really want to die.
“No. It’s fine. You’ll be fine.” Simon’s voice brought Wille back to reality slightly. The halo had gone as Simon searched around, a deep creasing lining his forehead. What he was looking for, Wilhelm couldn’t tell, nor did he particularly care. Simon’s eyes were so dark. Fathomless pools that darted around as he continued to scour the ground. Perhaps Wille was drowning in those eyes. Maybe that was why it was difficult to breathe.
“Sorry you didn’t get to do it,” Wilhelm said. It had meant to come out as a joke, but his voice sounded weak even to his own ears.
“Do what?” Simon was only half paying attention, still scrabbling around on the dark ground for something. Wilhelm wanted Simon to look at him again. Maybe dying wouldn’t feel so bad if those eyes were on him.
Wes took a long drag of his cigarette, squinting at the two of them. Their eyes—their fingers seemed to linger together on the glass for just a moment too long. Wes frowned for a moment, but then the corners of Wes’ lips curled upward, and he was back to looking smug as ever.
“Servant. Get over here,” he ordered, and Seven felt ice run down his back. Had he noticed? Wes’ voice was stern yet casual, but he spoke with that signature hint of amusement that always made Seven nervous. The way his eyes narrowed—the way one edge of his lips curved upward just slightly.
“Y-yes, Sir?” Seven said, leaving the tray on the table and approaching where Wes sat stretched out on the chase lounge, leaning his weight on one elbow. Clad only in a pair of dark swim trunks, Wes’ tanned torso was on full display. Typical—Wes was never one to resist a chance to show off. Seven wouldn’t admit it, but Wes did look really good like this—objectively speaking of course. If only his smug expression didn’t make the hair on the back of Seven’s neck stand on end.
Wes sat up and leaned forward, cigarette held between his fingers, elbows resting on his knees. His free hand rose and snapped loudly. Seven immediately jolted. The snap was always meant to get his attention, though usually there was an order attached.
Please just let this be another drink order.
He wasn’t so lucky. Wes’ flicked his wrist and pointed sternly to the ground beneath the lounge chair. Seven dropped instantly, obediently folding his hands behind his back the way Wes liked. The motion was practiced and automatic—he’d only done it a hundred thousand times.
“Stick out your tongue,” came the order, and Seven whined at the way Wes smiled down at him, his free hand reaching to grip his chin between his tanned fingers. Seven could feel the dozen or so pairs of eyes around the terrace boring into him, but with no other option, he obediently let his tongue slip out from between his lips and hang out of his mouth. He didn’t want to breathe at all or Wes might accuse him of panting like a dog—or even worse, he might let out some other pathetically terrified noise. Fuck—this was so humiliating—fuck Wes for this. Fuck him.
Seven wanted to hide under the table, to scurry inside and bury himself beneath the covers until everyone was gone. He didn’t know where to look. He didn’t want to look at Wes. As if reading his mind, Wes’ fingers snapped again, and Seven’s eyes blinked up to his immediately. That got a delighted coo from Brie and some other girl. Of course it did.
“Oh Wes, he’s so well trained!” Brie exclaimed from her seat, leaning in closer now to watch whatever was about to happen with rapt attention.
Wes' lips curled into a slanted smile, as his free hand dipped to grip Seven’s chin between two of his fingers. Seven’s eyes widened in horror when Wes’ other hand slowly began to bring the burning cigarette towards his face. Seven gasped and tried to jerk his head away, but Wes gave him a fierce slap across the cheek, and gripped his jaw tightly.
“Tongue. Out,” Wes hissed, low and seething, and Seven hadn’t even realized he’d closed his mouth to grimace. Seven pleaded with Wes with his eyes—he didn’t want to beg in front of everyone like this, but there was nothing else he could do—Wes was really about to——
“Out. Or I’ll put it out in your eye.” Seven’s stomach twisted in terror, and he knew he was caught in a trap between two inevitable and harrowing fates. Like a squirming fly wrapped in a spider’s silk. Seven had started panicking hard, running through his limited options. He couldn’t move his hands without permission—couldn’t stand without permission—he couldn’t do anything like this. It was this, or his eye. There was no choice.
He reluctantly parted his lips and forced his tongue back out, letting it hang there as he shook in Wes' grip. He felt tears prick at his eyes as he could do nothing but watch in horror as Wes brought the cigarette closer and closer to his tongue, until—
There was a searing burn in his mouth—like he’d just licked a hot pan, like Wes had pressed a burning iron to the surface of his tongue—and he let out a blood curdling shriek. Seven twisted and writhed against the tight grip around his face. His hands flew up to claw desperately at Wes’ hands. Wes pressed the cigarette down firmly, twisting it back and forth a bit, grinding the tip down on his servant’s tongue to put it out completely.
Seven was shaking horribly. He couldn’t breathe—the smoke was suffocating him. He felt like he was going to throw up. He was dying. Surely this was what dying felt like. Seven screamed his throat raw.
When the embers had finally been extinguished to dry ash, Wes pulled the cigarette butt away and released Seven’s face, and Seven collapsed instantly, curling in on himself in the kneel, sobbing with his hands covering his face. Drawing his tongue back into his mouth only filled it with ash, and he breathed it in and coughed furiously between sobs that wracked his whole body. The cigarette had been pulled away, but the heat still burned savagely on his tongue as though the flakes of burnt ash were still smoldering orange embers.
He couldn’t see through the tears when his eyes blearily flicked back open. He was still kneeling at Wes’ feet. There was a swirling of excitement around him that he couldn’t make out over his own sobbing. Excited voices and laughter echoed from the group that surrounded him. He vaguely felt Wes' fingers smugly patting his head like he were some obedient dog. Seven didn’t believe in heaven or hell, but a part of him wished that hell was real, just so Wes would wind up there one day.
He started crying again when he thought of Marquez, who probably still stood among them, though Seven had only been looking at Wes. Marquez, who had said nothing. Seven felt stupid thinking it, but a part of him wanted to hope Marquez might do something to help him, like he had before. Back at that party, Marquez had almost seemed to… care.
But then again, where would that have gotten him? Kicked out and sent down the elevator, never to return. And then Wes would probably punish Seven worse just for being pissed off that some asshole dared to question him. Marquez would never be invited back if he had stepped in. Seven knew that much. No, it wasn’t Marquez’ fault, Seven told himself, trying to stop crying. Seven blinked up blearily, scanning the group for Marquez’ face, hoping to catch his eye. Even a sympathetic expression would mean everything to him right now—but there was no sign of him.
Where had Marquez gone? Had he seen what had just happened? Had he heard Seven’s screams?
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Don't worry—this one actually does have some comfort at the end! But as always, its comfort thats also more whump, because I dont do the pure uncomplicated sweet stuff. hahahahhaa...
a/n; hello again I’m sorry I have the posting schedule of the creature from jeepers creepers 😔 back to our regularly scheduled story progression
this is actually 2 parts put together so kindaaaaa long & rambling but I took so long to get here that I figured some actual real progression was in order
(I think this is a Really Fun One but I also have a bit of a thing™️ for silas being sad and severely unwell 😀)
word count: 6.2k
tw/cw; human weapon whumpee, self harm, traumatic brain injuries, amnesia, lobotomies, captivity, rape/noncon, psychological torture, skinning, gun violence, sexual violence, misgendering, gore, military whump, mentions of bodily fluids
Seven is haunted by somebody he doesn’t remember.
Often in various states of undress.
It’s hard to explain how deeply uncomfortable it makes him. He thinks they have to be memories, dredges from his past life, at least something close. His conscience, maybe. He thinks he must’ve done something horrible to this person. He thinks he’s figured it all out.
For a long time, he’s been alone in this grey room, only his nightmares and vivid hallucinations to keep him company. He has a grey mattress, pushed up against a grey wall, wrapped in grey sheets he’d since sweat and bled through and that hadn’t been changed, not ever, not once. He pisses in the corner.
He hadn’t been able to figure out why he’s here — he doesn’t fuckin’ remember anything useful. He’d had a field test, a practice in slaughter, but he had failed to kill somebody he hadn’t recognized, somebody that remembered him from before.
Mercilessly, Seven is being punished for that. He’d been stripped and caned afterward for his failure, for failing to clear the enemy, but then he was closed in this grey room, this cell, and left by himself. For a long time, the flurry of doctors and surgeons coming and going to poke and prod and hurt him had been relentless. Seven has now been alone longer than he’d ever had people around him.
He thinks. Can’t really know for certain. The lights turn on and off, night and day, but the time between seems erratic, irregular, but even that’s hard to say. Time passes differently when he’s alone.
It had seemed like a stark overreaction to not kill one guy one time. He’d killed everybody else he’d ever been ordered to. In the short time he remembers, he’d killed a lot. He killed obediently. He didn’t kill Hat or whatever his name was, and that’s it? Discarded?
Then the nightmares had started. The hallucinations next. Now, Seven thinks he’s figured it out.
For a long time, it was just colours — splashes of blood, the inside of an opened abdominal cavity. He’s only ever been haunted by a single person, and he doesn’t know who he is. Sometimes, he sees him in grey, but it’s always Seven’s grey, Seven’s sweatshirts, too small for him because everything is too small for Seven but too big for whoever he’s imagining. It’s never made sense to him; when was somebody ever with him? Somebody without greys of their own? Somebody that small?
He didn’t belong here, whoever he was. He looked out of place before the backdrop of Seven’s grey room, even wearing his greys. He’s beautiful in a way that makes Seven squint when he looks at him. He’s beautiful in a way Seven finds strangely, deeply unsettling.
Except it has nothing to do with his beauty at all, it’s some other kind of instinct, a part of Seven that must’ve remembered what he’d done. Because he doesn’t see him in grey much anymore, he’s usually mostly naked, short skirts and stockings sometimes, and he’s always bleeding and he begs for help. Sometimes, for days at a time, he begs for help.
Slowly, it started to make more sense. Seven kinda started to put the pieces together. They don’t know he thinks, but he does, and he’s getting better at it the more that he tries. It makes sense. The way the nurses, the doctors, the soldiers always looked at him, watched him, flinched when he moved too quick or got too close. Why he’d been locked away in the first place, trained for slaughter. Why he’s locked up so tightly now.
He thinks, before, he was one of them. A soldier, probably, because that soldier from the field test had remembered him. Called him by name, but Seven can’t remember anymore what it had been. He thinks, during his time as a soldier, he did something horrible, something he doesn’t want to think about, something that’s coming back to haunt him now that he’s alone and has nothing else to do but think. They’d tried to wipe him clean after, make him some sort of monster, keep him of use to them somehow. Then he’d failed that test.
At this point, he isn’t sure why they haven’t put him down yet. That’s obviously where this is tilting. He’s a danger to the people around him, and he isn’t of use to anyone else. What else could they do with him?
He spends a lot of time beating his head into the grey concrete wall, trying to quell the thinking. It doesn’t work. Behind him, whoever he is, waves of white hair and big, sad eyes, cries out to him for help, and Seven doesn’t know how to help him. He doesn’t want to remember what he did.
The hallucinations don’t always touch him, but sometimes they do. Sometimes, he grabs at Seven’s ankles, his joggers, clinging to him, pleading with him. Once, he’d put a small hand at Seven’s back and said softly, “what are you doing?”, rocking up on his toes to try to reach up and put his hand between Seven’s head and the wall. For some reason, obediently, Seven had leaned into his touch. His gentle hand on Seven’s face had made him throw up all over himself. Later, he’d discarded his shirt in the piss corner. Since, the ghostly touch on the bare skin of Seven’s back has made him sick every time. He should’ve kept his shirt on, filthy or not.
He’s filthy either way. The room is filthy. He still thinks of it as being grey, but he can’t say there aren’t splashes of colour now, grime and filth and Seven’s different bodily fluids. It’s probably beyond help. Maybe Seven is, too.
Maybe that’s why they left him here. Maybe they don’t have the heart to kill him — maybe they’re too afraid. Maybe they’ve left him to rot.
Standing guard outside the armoured door, since Seven had reached through the meds slot with a shaking hand to gouge out the eyes of whoever was closest, is a pair of soldiers that Seven doesn’t recognize, but that knew him from before. He knows they did, they must have. They taunt him with a sort of familiarity, they reference things that Seven doesn’t know. They call him the dog — what the fuck is a dog?
They loiter outside Seven’s room day in and day out. Sometimes, they pull open that slot between them just to taunt him. They’re braver than a lot of the other soldiers have been — cocky. Being braver, though, doesn’t necessarily make brave, and they still won’t look him in the eye. They lock that slot as soon as Seven gets too close. They’re afraid of him, too, but they have a dislike for him in almost the same quantity, a dislike that extends far beyond the reaches of what Seven can remember. Did they know the blonde, maybe? The one that haunts Seven? Have they never been able to forgive him for what he did?
Not that they would tell him either way, but he wishes he could ask. For some reason, he can talk to the man that haunts him and nobody else. He suspects it’s because it’s not real, that he’s hallucinating it like he is everything else. Sometimes, in the rare moments he’s by himself, when the room is empty of ghosts, he’ll thump himself on the chest with his fist and try to force words out. It never works. It’s probably, Seven suspects, because the problem isn’t in his chest, it’s in his brain, or whatever fistful of meat he has trying its best between his ears. It doesn’t fire right, whatever it is, it doesn’t work like it’s supposed to. A part of it was left behind in a time Seven doesn’t remember, and he’s getting fucked as it comes back to him now.
He cracks his head into the wall again. Behind him, the ghost sobs. He has a cry that makes the inside of Seven’s chest feel cold. But then he takes a deep breath, and he says, “I’m sorry,” in the smallest, saddest voice Silas had ever heard. “I’m so sorry.”
And that’s weird. Who is he talking to?
Slowly, Seven peels the split, thin skin of his forehead off the wall.
However reluctantly, he turns. Immediately wishes he hadn’t.
Across the room, Seven is sitting on the floor, slumped back against the far wall. Except Seven is standing right here, so that doesn’t make any sense. He can’t remember if he’s ever hallucinated himself from the outside before, but it’s heavier, for some reason, it makes him sick in a different, claustrophobic sort of way. His skin crawls.
He’s sitting, slumped against the far wall, head tilted back and chest hitching as he drowns in his own blood. The ghost has both his hands over Seven’s opened throat, trying to quell the bleeding that’s seeping out from between his thin fingers like ink. A wasted effort, anyway, because Seven can see his intestine spilling out from the hole that had been ripped in his sweatshirt. The ghost is covered in blood — Seven’s?
Did Seven die? What the hell?
It doesn’t make any sense. What happened to him? He looks a lot the same as he does right now, in real time, still a freak. Does that mean he was a monster, too, before all of this? They hadn’t changed him because whatever he’d done?
What had he done? What the hell is he?
The ghost is trying to stop the bleeding and Seven is watching himself die. His hands are shaking — blood loss? Or had he carried that with him from before, too?
What happened to him?
What is he?
He watches, across a whole other lifetime and just a couple of feet, as he lifts a trembling hand, huge as it touches the cheek of his ghost. Then he does something weird with his hand, crosses the tip of his thumb and his index finger, and the ghost makes a sound that raises the hair on the back of Seven’s neck. Turning away, he looks back at the wall and a pain he doesn’t recognize throbs in his chest as the ghost cries for him at his back. The world, as he had been building it up, crumbles around him.
Seven’s always been a freak and he died once in the arms of a ghost that now haunts him. How could he be the ghost when Seven’s the one that died? Why is he being tormented by somebody that had mourned him with his blood on their hands?
What happened to him?
He beats his head back into the wall. The pain of the impact distracts from the pain behind his eyes as he tries so hard to remember. How can he not remember? What did they do to him?
Except he must remember, at least a little bit. It’s trapped in there somewhere and it’s coming back to haunt him, fighting tooth and nail to get free. It doesn’t want him to forget.
Why not? What does it fuckin’ matter? Why does Seven need to watch himself bleed to death? What does it mean?
Why is he here?
A small hand touches his back and the warmth of it is so real. Too suddenly, he whirls around to face it. Across the room, his gutted corpse and the ghost grieving him are both gone. Instead, the ghost is standing close at Seven’s side. His hand had been warm on Seven’s bare skin. He’s cleaned of Seven’s gore, dressed, instead, in a set of his hospital greys, rolled up at the wrists and the ankles. His hair is loose around his back and his shoulders, a sheet around him so white it sort of makes him glow.
He’s so beautiful. Whatever he is, whatever Seven had done to him in his past life, he’s stricken in this one by just how beautiful he is. He’s never doubted that his ghost is real, a memory from a part of his brain that’s trying to remember, because there’s so way Seven could ever have imagined, on his own, somebody that looks like this. He’s so beautiful Seven can’t make sense of him. And, sleepy, he smiles up at Seven, keeping one of his bare hands on his skin.
“Come back to bed,” he says softly.
He’s so beautiful that Seven can’t understand why looking at him makes his head throb behind his eye. He doesn’t remember him so he can’t understand why his gentle touch makes Seven’s skin crawl and his stomach turn. What else could it be if it isn’t guilt? What could Seven have done to him?
“Come on,” his ghost says softly. With one of his small hands he takes one of Seven’s and Seven swallows so thickly something clicks in his throat. “Come to bed with me.”
This can’t be a memory. He can’t have shared his bed with Seven. Why would he have? Something so beautiful and so human. How could he have trusted Seven like that? How could Seven have hurt somebody that trusted him like that?
Blood trickles, warm, down the side of Seven’s face. “What did I do to you?” He asks, thick around the lump in his throat. He doesn’t think he really wants to know but he asks anyway.
The ghost squeezes his fingers and his touch feels too real. He smiles up at him and Seven has to look away. “I’m fine,” he promises softly. “Come back to bed, Seven.”
Seven’s ghost has a strange, syrupy sort of accent. It’s unlike anything Seven had ever heard, just as surreally beautiful as his eyes and the lines of his collarbones and the shape of his fingers. Seven’s been certain he couldn’t have imagined it because he couldn’t have thought it up, had never heard anybody else speak in the same way his ghost speaks.
Except when he says Seven. It makes Seven lift his head again. He sounds different, wrong, and for a moment, Seven doesn’t know why.
He looks into the wide, dark eyes of his ghost and cold prickles at the back of his neck as he realizes he’d said it without his accent. Seven. He’d said it without any of the sugar or syrup.
Seven has his first real memory. The first one he’s really confident about.
“You never called me Seven.” He couldn’t hear how his name sounded in the ghost’s accent because he’d never heard it before. He never called him Seven. He didn’t know Seven.
The ghost smiles up at him again. His eyebrows pull together in the middle, pretty and confused. “Why would I call you Seven?”
Across the room, his ghost whispers, “leave me alone, Seven.”
Except he says it wrong, because it wasn’t Seven. It was —
He lifts his head and the warmth of his touch vanishes from Seven’s hand because the ghost is slumped against the far wall, head tipped back against it. He’s wearing a skirt that’s too short, fingers twisted into the hem, knees splayed so Seven can see the trails of blood tracked down the insides of his thighs. He tries to close his knees as Seven looks down at him and it looks like it causes him a lot of pain.
“I’ll be fine,” he says, but his voice is so small.
Is this a memory? Is any of this? “What happened to you?”
The ghost sniffles, wiping his bleeding nose with the back of his hand. “I’m fine,” he repeats. “Leave me alone.”
Clearly, he’s not fine. In the short time Seven’s spent looking across the room at him, blood has started to pool on the concrete between his legs. “Did I do this to you?” He rasps, even if he doesn’t really want to know.
“What?” He says. Tears spill over his cheeks as he looks up at Seven, eyelashes clumping together, and he doesn’t look real. This can’t be a memory because this can’t be real. How could Seven have done this?
Of course, Seven knows how he could’ve done this. With ease Seven could’ve done this. All he does is hurt people. Maybe that hadn’t been any different in his last life.
Then why did they bring him back? What more could they want from him? Why are there so many parts of him that want so desperately to remember? “Did I hurt you?” He asks, and his voice is so rough he doesn’t recognize it.
The ghost sniffles, trying to wipe his eyes again with the hem of his buttoned shirt. It almost looks like he’s wearing a uniform. His skirt is short, indecently, but it’s the same black material the soldiers' uniforms are all made from. His shirt is the same black buttoned shirt as their formals, except his is pulled open, tangled around his upper arms like somebody had tried to pull it off of him. Had Seven tried to pull it off of him?
But the ghost says, “what are you talking about?”, and his pale eyebrows scrunch together in the middle. “You wouldn’t hurt me.” He wipes his bloody nose again with his sleeve. “You know that.”
Does he?
Seven feels himself sway on his feet as the room spins quickly around him again. The world is pulled out from under him for a second time. He didn’t hurt him? Then why is he haunting him?
While Seven’s pulse beats in his ears, the ghost says, from his right, “Seven?”
Seven can barely hear him. He’s too aware of his own heartbeat and he doesn’t know why finding out he hadn’t hurt him felt the same in his chest as being hunted. He turns his head slowly, feeling so much of something that it’s too much and he’s almost numb. What’s going on? Why won’t it stop?
From the edge of his bed, the ghost looks up at him. His hair is pulled into two, neat braids and his dress is short and ruffled, demeaning. White socks pulled up over his knees, he sits on the edge of Seven’s bed with his ankles crossed and looks up at him with wide, shining eyes. He looks towards the door around Seven’s arm before looking back up into his face, a flush starting to bloom across the bridge of his nose.
“What are you doing here?” He asks.
It’s a hard question to answer. He doesn’t even really know.
Before he can even try to guess, his ghost tells him urgently, “you have to go.”
“What?” Seven says.
“He’ll kill you if he finds you here,” he breathes.
Seven turns quickly towards the door. “Who?”
The door is closed, of course. Armored and bolted. Seven, really, is alone in his cell, losing his mind in the dark, filthy and probably dying. Instead, he sees his ghost again, curled on the floor like he had collapsed just inside the door.
He’s naked but his skin is hardly bare, pale flesh gone black and red and purple with bruises and welts and bite marks. His head is down, his hair flowing around him, matted and turned pink with blood. His hands are tied behind his back, his shoulders pulled at an angle that looks painful and hitching irregularly as he sobs.
Seven staggers back and collides with the wall, closer than he had expected. If he didn’t do this, why does he have to keep seeing this? What is this?
Who is this?
Standing over him is a soldier Seven doesn’t recognize. He’s a big guy, tall and broad shouldered, bearded and dark haired, his uniform decorated with a large number of pins and patches and badges. He looks between Seven and his ghost and as he does, his lip curls in a snarl. Quiet and lethal, he realizes, “you’re fucking the dog.”
He laughs as he looks at Seven again, but it isn’t a humorous laugh. There’s something a little deranged to it. “Bad girl,” he scolds, clicking his tongue, and as Seven watches he tilts his face down and spits onto the ghost’s back. “I thought you were better than this. The fucking dog,” and he spits on him again before he looks at Seven.
Instantly, it makes Seven’s skin start to prickle. Something in his stare starts to reopen old scars, eating away at raised flesh like acid. What does it mean?
“And you,” he says to Seven, his voice like ice. “You ugly fucking mutt. Your girlfriend’s a whore.”
What the fuck is this?
Seven looks at his ghost, shivering at the soldier’s feet. There’s a bruise at his rib cage that looks like a handprint.
The soldier says, “now you get to watch how well she takes my cock.”
Seven hits his head against the wall. Puts his weight into it.
Pain throbs behind his eye but the hallucinations don’t slow down. A soldier is standing in front of him.
It’s a different soldier, that one from the training exercise. The one that Seven had hesitated to kill.
He smiles up at him, wavy brown hair and crinkles by his eyes that imply he isn’t a stranger to smiling. He isn’t wearing the uniform Seven remembers him in but his own set of prison greys.
What was his name? He said it to Seven. He recognized him.
He doesn’t look up at Seven with even a hint of fear — if he were even a little afraid, Seven would be able to smell it on him. He isn’t a stranger to people being afraid of him. That’s been his entire life, as far back as he can remember. Even the soldiers, always putting on brave faces, hands steady as they point their guns at Seven, stink of fear when they get too close.
Not this guy. He smiles up at Seven like he smiles all the time, like it comes naturally to him. He says, enthusiastic, “nicely done, big guy!”
Seven looks down slowly, at the intricately folded paper cradled delicately in one of his calloused palms. He has no idea what it’s supposed to be. Couldn’t even begin to guess.
“Aww,” the soldier says. “He’s gonna love it, dude.”
“What is it?” Seven asks, looking down at the crinkled folds of paper and back up at the soldier.
His eyes twinkle as he says, “tell him you made him a paper wren.”
Seven sees white. A flash of light behind his eyelids not unlike being shot in the face, but he doesn’t know why or where it comes from and staggers back, just a step, before that white heat bursts in his gut, too, and he vomits.
When he lifts his head, the soldier is gone and he’s looking at himself again, another version of himself he doesn’t recognize. His hair is knotted at the nape of his neck and there are lines carved out of his cheeks by his mouth as he smiles, embarrassed, at his ghost.
“A wren,” he says.
The little ghost gasps quietly, cradling that folded paper in his hands like it was something precious. “A wren,” he breathes, and Seven’s stomach turns violently. “You made this?”
“For you,” Seven says.
The ghost looks up at him, still so carefully cradling the paper bird, and the look he gives him makes Seven, from the outside, feel like he’s watching something that he’s not supposed to. That he’s intruding on something private.
Quickly, he looks away. Too quickly, he looks away, and the room turns with him, knocking him off balance. His back hits the ground with enough force to knock the wind out of him and when he blinks dazed light out of his eye and looks up he’s looking into the barrel of a gun.
It’s that same soldier that hurt him and his ghost. His hand is steady and his finger is poised on the trigger.
“You,” he says, “have been a very bad dog.” He keeps the gun pointed into the eye socket that Seven has always known to be empty. As far back as he can remember, he’s only ever had one eye. Is this how he lost it? Is this a memory?
Who the fuck is this guy?
Crouching at Seven’s side, he tells him, “for your disobedience,” soft and private, “I am going to put you down. Then,” and he smiles, an unnatural smile, one that doesn’t reach his eyes, “I’m going to make your whore girlfriend suck your blood off my fingers as I spread her open and fuck her over your ugly corpse. And I will not be gentle with her,” he tells him, just as soft but severe, a promise. “She will be begging me to stop.”
Not quite a memory, but an instinct, that same one that was making his skin prickle before, an anger he must have carried with him from his last life even if he never quite realized he was still holding it. Seven doesn’t remember this guy but he remembers how much he fuckin’ hates him. He remembers this for certain.
He reaches for him.
He gets shot in the face.
For a second, the pain is unbearable, indescribable, and just as quickly it’s gone. After being shot at point blank range, Seven feels the pressure in his face and tastes the gunpowder in his throat and then his concrete prison comes back into focus and he’s sitting with his back against the wall.
His hair is sticking to the sides of his throat and he doesn’t know if it’s with blood or with sweat. Both, likely. His chest is heaving and his hands are shaking, but his hands are always shaking and he twists them into the filthy material of his joggers in frustration. Uneasy and unpleasant, his heartbeat thunders in his chest and the side of his throat. To try and slow it, he throws his head back into the concrete wall as hard as he can.
He wants it to stop. How can he make it stop?
He doesn’t want to know. Not anymore. Not if it feels like this.
He hits his head again with a force that makes his teeth rattle. Even in the short span of lifetime he remembers, all he’s known is violence. Violence, and this lonely grey room. He’d maimed and mutilated, dismembered and decapitated, crushed and carved. He’d been shot, stabbed, skinned. He’d bled and been beaten to death. He’d died.
It’s never felt like this. Every time Seven has died it’s been bloody and brutal and miserable, but it never felt like this. Never. Something he doesn’t recognize expands in his chest, pressing so hard against the inside of his ribcage it feels like it might push it right through his flesh. Restless, it thrums beneath his skin.
Seven lives and breathes carnage. Whatever happened to him in his past life, whatever he might’ve done, whatever it is that he doesn’t remember, does it matter? In this life, in the one that Seven knows, he sits alone in the dark and pisses in the corner until it’s time for him to hunt. Seven is good at killing, but that’s all he’s good for. Whatever he might’ve been is gone. Whoever that soldier had seen, the one he hadn’t been able to kill, that isn’t who Seven is, not really. He doesn’t even have a fuckin’ name.
He isn’t smart. There’s a part of his brain that remembers something, that is trying so hard to tell him something, but Seven is too goddamn stupid to figure out what it is. Seven is so goddamn stupid that it hurts the more that he tries, not just the useless meat that passes as his brain but in his chest, in his heart and his lungs. The more he tries to think the deeper the pain settles, an infection that’s spreading, that’s making him weak. The only thing Seven has is slaughter and trying to remember is taking that from him, too. He wasn’t even shot, not really, he’s losing his mind alone, but his throat still sticks as he swallows like he’s scared. Fuckin’ scared.
He wants it to stop. How can he make it stop?
He hits head again. He can feel his scalp split against the concrete.
In his past life, the door to his cell is opened.
That same soldier enters, the one that had shot him. Seven’s reaction to him is visceral.
It’s that same instinct, the one that might be a memory, the same one that made Seven reach for his throat. It isn’t fear. That horrible, helpless feeling is quelled as soon as the door grinds open, washed away by the fury that rises in him like a fever. He might not remember this guy, but his hatred for him transcends what Seven remembers. He hates him so completely it isn’t in his brain but carried with him in the marrow of his bones, interwoven into his altered DNA.
Slowly, Seven tips his head back against the wall, lip pulling away from his teeth.
From just inside the door, from safely outside reaching distance, the soldier regards him with a cold sort of disgust. Then, too quick, it’s gone, replaced with a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes, that’s stretched too wide for his mouth. The way it pulls at his face makes Seven’s skin crawl with disgust. “I have a surprise for you.”
Silently, Seven raises his eyebrows. The concrete had scrubbed most of the skin from his forehead and brow bone and a fresh rush of blood leaks down his face, pooling, hot, between ridges of scar tissue.
The soldier’s smile tilts, a sneer, and it looks a lot more natural on his face. Just as quickly, he pulls it back into a creepy imitation of a grin, and he turns. In Seven’s memory, he watches as the soldier swipes his key card and leaves. It’s a really anticlimactic surprise and a really useless memory. Why would he need to remember this?
Seven has just a time to think that maybe none of these are memories at all. How would he know any different? He’d been trusting they must be some kind of memory, that they had to be, because they were all things he didn’t know or people he didn’t remember. How could he have come up with those things on his own? But Seven lives in isolation and the dark. Seven is a freak and a monster. Seven lives in a cage in his own filth and is released only for slaughter. That’s all there is to his life and he doesn’t know anything more than that. How does he know he didn’t come up with all these things on his own? Maybe it’s all just nonsense. Why is he choosing to believe somebody he knows doesn’t fuckin’ know anything?
Except the door opens again. The soldier returns. This time, behind him, he’s dragging the limp body of Seven’s ghost.
Whatever it is that was expanding in Seven’s chest starts to crack his ribs from underneath. The infection spreads to his blood stream. He can’t take a full breath in. His hands shake a little worse with the cold that’s seeping under his skin, into the tissue and the marrow of his bones.
Fear. It isn’t dying that scares Seven. It’s not the soldiers. Head tipped back against the wall, Seven watches his ghost get dragged against the concrete, and he’s scared. This scares him.
Why does this scare him? What is this?
The soldier has one of his gloves hands twisted into the ghost’s long, bloody hair. He’s breathing, but he’s limp, eyes closed and bruised and swollen, wrists and ankles knotted so slightly the skin around the binds had split open. He’s naked, bruised skin rubbed raw against the concrete.
“Surprise,” the soldier says. “You get to watch me impregnate your whore.”
That thing in Seven’s chest had started to leak acid and it tastes like bile at the back of his throat. “Get your fuckin’ hands off him,” he spits, and surprises even himself with the bass of his voice.
The soldier, however, only grins. “Off her?” He says, eyebrows raised in good humour. “Just wait till you see the parts of me that are going to be inside her.”
It’s instinct more than anything else that makes Seven try to get up. He doesn’t even think about it. Where the soldier’s hand is twisted into the ghost’s hair, it’s thinned so much Seven can see the scalp beneath, crusted with scabs, and it’s a tug in his chest that tries to pull him away from the wall.
The curved meat hooks sunk deep into his flesh pull him back into place.
With a snarl, Seven looks down at himself, and he’s fucked. He’s fucked. What could he ever have done to deserve this? His throat and his hands are both shackled to different spots on the floor. His back, chest, sides, and shoulders are secured to the walls and the ceiling with meat hooks poking out from deep within his tissue and muscle. He tries to push himself off the wall and the sound is wet as a strip of flesh is pulled audibly off his back. He snarls again. This is fucked. This seems more like a memory he would really have.
The soldier watches him with one of his wide, fucked up smiles, untangling his fingers from the ghost’s bloody hair. Limp, he falls to the concrete face down, and the soldier is quick to kick his legs apart, not taking his eyes off of Seven.
“No,” he snarls, and tries to pull away from the wall again, tearing a chunk of muscle out of his shoulder. “Get the fuck away from him,” he spits.
The soldier smiles a little wider. “You won’t like the things you see me do to her,” he tells him. “I promise.”
With a roar, Seven lunges, but this time, he slides away from the wall so easily he almost stumbles. Standing straight, he rolls out his shoulders and looks down at his ghost, clean and dressed in a set of Seven’s prison greys. He’s alone and unbruised, his hair pulled into a neat braid over one shoulder. He’s standing just close enough that it makes Seven uneasy.
“You must be the weapon,” he says.
He’s even more beautiful up close and the feeling it gives Seven is eerily reminiscent of fear. He tries to swallow around the feeling but he can’t speak. He nods.
“Robin told me about you,” he says, and he smiles up at Seven, who has no idea who Robin might be. But —
But could Robin be a real person? Is Seven remembering?
He feels like he’s been hit really hard in the head.
His ghost smiles, the single most beautiful thing Seven has ever seen. The brightest, too, after a life underground, and he squints as he looks down at him.
He says, “I’m Wren,” in his strange, syrupy accent.
Seven sees a flash of white before the ground is pulled out from under him.
He sat, slumped in the shower, head against the tile, hair sticking to his chest. Water beat against the exposed meat of his flesh, stripped of most of his skin. Chunks of tissue clogged the drain.
It was hard for him to keep holding his head up. He’d lost so much blood.
His ghost sat with him, kneeling in the water in a set of Seven’s hospital greys. His tears were washed down the drain with the blood and the water. He was clinging to one of Seven’s hands. It was definitely broken but he didn’t tell the ghost it hurt. He didn’t want him to stop touching him. “I don’t want you to keep dying for me,” he whispered. “I don’t want to watch you die anymore.”
“My Wren,” Seven said, lifting his other, trembling hand to cradle Wren’s cheek, so soft against his palm. “I’m gonna die for you as many times as I need to.”
Looking up at Seven from one of the mismatched couches in the common room, Wren had smiled so brightly it had knocked the wind out of him. Sitting at the ground at his feet, his back against the bottom of the couch, he’d been winded again when Wren had reached out to tuck a stray hair behind his ear and say, “your hair looks really handsome like that.”
“Little Wren,” Seven said honestly, “you’re so beautiful it makes you really weird looking. Kinda creeps me out sometimes.”
Wren laughed loudly and it was the most beautiful sound Seven had ever heard. How could he have ever forgotten it? “Thank you,” he said. “That’s very sweet.”
He’d been wedged into a bed not big enough for the bulk of him, Wren tucked safely under his arm. His head pillowed on Seven’s chest, one of his small hands twisted tightly into the material of his sweatshirt as he cried, fiercely stubborn.
“My Wren,” he said against his hair, rubbing his back slowly. “You should want better for yourself than me.”
“Stop it, Silas,” Wren said into his crewneck, firm despite the tears Seven could feel starting to soak through the material. “I want you. I don’t want anything but you.”
Silas?
Standing alone in the centre of his room, Seven vomits all over himself.
A story set in an alternative universe's Earth, where people have developed singularities — abilities that go against what is considered "possible" (a.k.a. superpowers)— and the systems in place due to this. Mainly, the Hero System, a way for people with singularities to use those to help their community... or, at least, that is the main idea. Whether it's effective, well, that's something the story takes the time to dissect.
The hero wip is also about the concept of redemption and rebuilding, what it means to be good and to do good, and how a system and a community can both help and harm people — and what some of those people might do about it. It's an exploration of humanity and what happens when you find yourself at the margin of it, about what "moving forward" means, about change and restoration and progress.
Also obligatory "all heroes are in the autism spectrum". Unless I say someone is allistic, they aren't.
There are no official living weapons, technically, but if you like living weapons then there are many, many themes adjacent to that.
It's a political piece of fiction set in Argentina. There is torture. Of course there is torture.
Powers-going-wrong: overuse injuries, the analogue to magic-induced mania, etc.
Sibling whump! Family whump in general! Even more sibling whump! You truly cannot imagine how much sibling whump is in this wip! I didn't even mean to put so much of it here!
Do I have to say "hero and villain whump". These hands are rated E for everyone.
But actually the story itself is rated M, because there are several disturbing topics that are pretty crucial to the main wip. No in-depth real-life bigotry discussions, but plenty of fictional bigotry to go around. Noncon and noncon-adjacent* topics, too. A healthy dose of body horror.
You can find everything I've said about this wip here!
More info under the cut.
where does the story happen?
That Earth's version of Greater Buenos Aires (yes this redirects to wikipedia), Argentina, for the most part. A majority of the events occur in a fictionalized version of the autonomous city of Buenos Aires (this also does), though neither of those settings are 100% accurate to life. If you need a quicker description: barely futuristic urban setting.
ok but who is it about?
While not quite a character, there is a very important organization that's at the center of the story: The Redemption Project, a nonprofit which only aims towards reaching out to villains and those involved with them. The main goal is to get as many people out of the cycle of violence and crime as possible, without resorting to simply punishing them. As it stands now, it has people working in small centers throughout Argentina and some surrounding countries, though getting support is a struggle, despite it having plenty of proof to show its methods work. The last few years, however, have been some of the most important, after the full story on how a child meant to be a weapon grew up into a hero, thanks to the intervention of the Project, was published.
But let's go back to characters. Despite the name: the characters are not exclusively heroes! The protagonists of the "original"/main storyline are, though.
The main trio are:
Andrés, a new-ish hero in his mid/late twenties, whose singularity allows him to shape water. Morally anxious, has a deep desire to do good for the world and a hard time realizing that it's not as simple as "follow your idols and do what you always thought was best", nor is it that easy to realize when someone is good or bad. Love to make him squirm via impossible choices. Did not expect to get this involved with the Redemption Project, much less to work with a few of the most important people in it, but would not have it any other way, at this point.
Lucero, hero with more experience and a lot less anxiety thanks to being, essentially, a failed living weapon — and having a very, very strong sense of morality to deal with the results, direct and indirect, of defying that fate. The vanguard of the Redemption Project. Their singularity gives them the ability to shoot out lightning. Canonically disabled. Nonbinary. Can and will fuck you up and then get you a support system and therapy.
Clemente, the... Y'know how the ugly duckling ended up as a swan, but swans are very violent when there is a need to be? This was going to be a serious description, but that is the best I got for him. Canonically transgender. He's stumbled along the path of being a hero, but after a serious tragedy and having to rebuild every aspect of his life, he's probably the most certain of the trio... Despite the fact that he's still haunted by the people he couldn't save. His singularity gives him a creepy fast reaction speed.
Notice how I said main trio of the main storyline? Yeah, we're having a lightning round of other characters. Supporting and otherwise.
Helena, Clemente's younger sister, journalism student and, as of the start of the main storyline, very very dead after finding out too much. Haunting the narrative queen.
Joana, local journalist/radio host (both and also neither) and self-appointed social media manager of the worst hero to ever make it big. Learned nothing from working with Helena, can and will sneak into a crime scene as the crime is happening to get all the info.
The unnamed (as of writing this post) worst hero to ever make it big, with the singularity to completely stop a conflict from happening just by being heard by the people involved. Only character with mind-control adjacent abilities. His family thinks he's in Buenos Aires because he's studying to be a doctor.
Daniel, friend to the main trio and once a hero loved by his local community, now mostly just tired of holding things together. Kept his wit, not quite his hope, but God does he sometimes wish it was the other way around.
Boss, the only way the leader of one of the groups of villains running around by the time the story happens is called. Not much is known about him, other than the fact that he's been untouchable for a while now, and that even people on his side fear him.
Ezequiel, one of said group of villains. Has a very, very complicated story with two thirds of the main trio, and a very strong set of ideals for how the world should work... and why Boss is not doing enough for that ideal to happen.
Bishop, Boss's right-hand. Woman of very few words. Her singularity makes her into the perfect poisoner, and her behavior and efficiency only help. The kind of person who always looks like she's ready to bolt out of the door and never be seen again, and lately, it's starting to sound like a good choice.
Ignacio and Angela, the other two high-ranking villains under Boss. You do not want to be anywhere with both of them, Bishop says, and you should probably listen to her.
Aaand here is where I'd put links to shit I've written about it, if only there were any finished chapters or anything. Alas, it hasn't happened yet.
