Trapped and forced to work for the Dragon Witch, a ‘successful businesswoman’ and ‘universe-renowned scientist and philanthropist,’ Virgil must learn how to survive and find a way to put a stop to her ‘experiments.’
General warnings: The fic is dark sci-fi and has a lot of angst. It has a lot of dehumanization/depersonalisation of alien and human characters, forced medical treatment, forced employment, and body horror and violence)
In Which Thomas Sanders Becomes the First Intergalactic Meme
An alien comes to earth ‘impersonating’ Thomas Sanders, whaddyado?
Ao3 One-shot
Anything
Janus is a cyborg who works for the Dragon Witch, a criminal mastermind who runs a company that designs cybernetics. He meets Remus, a self-taught biomedical engineer, and a variety of other robotic and alien characters, all of whom are trying to convince him that he is more than just a cybernetic puppet.
But who is “Dee” if not an empty husk created only to be controlled?
General warnings: Psychological horror, body horror, cybernetics, missing limbs, artificial limbs, Non-consensual forced medical treatment, physical abuse, blood, violence, guns, mind control, permanent amnesia, manipulation, emotional abuse, gaslighting, nightmares, streams of consciousness, unreliable narration. Content that resembles depersonalization, derealization, or dissociation
Hi I might return to this au one day but I was listening to aurora and remembered this. I thought id at least posted the very old art story boards but I didnt. I figured id share what I got done.
[ID: Janus Sanders in his skirt look, sitting with his hands clasped and looking away from the camera. White text in a thin loopy script at the top of the image reads, “Dukeceit Week 2022.” Further down, more white text reads, “August 14-20 @dukeceitweek.” /end ID]
Remus
The prompt list is coming soon—keep your eyes peeled!
Join the discord server here!
Reblog to spread the word, and be sure to follow + turn on post notifications to stay up to date on all the latest Dukeceit Week news! :)
This fic has been a long time coming, in the sense that it’s the first thing I post for this AU since late 2020. I am not sure if it’s anything my followers recall and I think the taglist I made for it has faded into obscurity. I will tag the people on the taglist that still have their URL from back then, and they are all welcome to tell me to remove them from the taglist, in case there will be any new installments again in the near future.
The AU in question is “A victorian steampunk fantasy scientists and robots AU” (click that link for the previous fic written for it)
This will serve as a prequel of sorts! It can potentially work on its own for that reason, but I do recommend my previous one. I’m still kind of proud of it and it has a lot of loceit banter.
Thank you so much to @rainbowbutterfrosting for beta-reading and for adding to the ending!
Read on AO3
Characters: Patton, Roman, and some original human characters
It was January 15th of 1887, when Patton was created. When he heard the voice of a human for the first time and clung onto it like nothing else. He learned how to function properly, and how to stay aware of his shortcomings. Yet something is amiss at the facility, and a robot much like him is malfunctioning in strange ways.
A prequel to “How two exasperated doctors adopted three robots” detailing Patton’s creation and early existence.
Word count: 4019
It was January 15th of 1887, when Patton was created. It was that day he first recognized a human voice. Nothing else but that voice mattered, he decided, because he wasn’t sure what the rest of the passing lines of code and words within him meant. The human voice made sense, so he listened carefully, even if he couldn’t quite understand it all.
“Is it on?” a voice asked.
“Hm, its eyes don’t seem to be working,” another one said.
“Can it speak?” the first voice asked, “Patton. Speak.”
Something within Patton started circulating because it appeared to realize that he was ‘it’ and ‘it’ was ‘Patton’. “Hello.”
“It has to be capable of saying more than that,” the second voice noted.
“Patton. Introduce yourself.”
“Hello. I am Patton. What can I do for you?” he responded mechanically.
“Better. Go fix the wiring for the eyes, will you?”
Senecio is a large genus in a large family - the Asteraceae, or Daisy Family. All members of the family have small flowers grouped in a cup-like structure called a capitulum, and often the outside ring of flowers have one stretched-out side, giving them the “daisy” look seen in such familiar flowers as marguerites or black-eyed susans or coneflowers. In the case of Senecio rowleyanus, there is no such outside ring, so we see only a cup of tiny flowers - but it is still in the Daisy Family. The plant itself lives up to its common name “string of pearls” on account of it small spherical leaves arrayed like beads on a necklace along the string-like stems. Native to dry parts of western South Africa and neighboring southern Namibia. Recently, this species and its relatives have been moved into the new genus Curio, but this has not yet gained wide acceptance.
6: What makes this fic special or different from all your other fics?
7: Where did the title come from?
8: Did any real people or events inspire any part of it?
9: Were there any alternate versions of this fic?
10: Why did you choose this pairing for this particular story?
11: What do you like best about this fic?
12: What do you like least about this fic?
13: What music did you listen to, if any, to get in the mood for writing this story? Or if you didn’t listen to anything, what do you think readers should listen to to accompany us while reading?
14: Is there anything you wanted readers to learn from reading this fic?
He could have been anything. When he looked inside his own mind, he dug through darkness. Memories like ashes, the particles filling his lungs were all that were familiar to him—and those only felt like nothing. No fragments, just a fine powder.
Janus is a cyborg who works for the Dragon Witch, a criminal mastermind who runs a company that designs cybernetics.
He meets Remus, a self-taught biomedical engineer, and a variety of other robotic and alien characters, all of whom are trying to convince him that he is more than just a cybernetic puppet.
But who is “Dee” if not an empty husk created only to be controlled?
General warnings
Psychological horror, body horror, cybernetics, missing limbs, artificial limbs, Non-consensual forced medical treatment, physical abuse, blood, violence, guns, mind control, permanent amnesia, manipulation, emotional abuse, gaslighting, nightmares, streams of consciousness, unreliable narration. Content that resembles depersonalization, derealization, or dissociation
This is my story for the 2021 Storytime! Big Bang! @ts-storytime Thank you to @ben-phantomhive-trash, who is the artist I was partnered with for the event! They created this fantastic art!!!! I love it so much I can't even.
Thank you to PunkRock for helping me figure out the shorts characters and other plot things. Also thank you to AryaSkywalker, Thembo, and Carrotflowerking17 and the Big Bang 2021 discord for additional help!!!!
This fic is an alternative entry point to my (In Other Worlds) Series. This fic happens at the same time roughly as Millennia, a companion novel. You can read this fic and then check out the rest of the series, or check out the series and then read this.
Also, I don't use Janus's actual name throughout the fic for thematic and narrative reasons. You'll see. I hope that does not put you off too much. Consider it part of the angst.
Clarification of general warnings and pairings, minor spoilers
I added the tag unreliable narrator, but I will clarify that the narrator is not actively lying to the audience. This tag relates to Janus's memory issues and the uncertainty resulting from that. tbh I would not worry too much about the events being untrue, and more be concerned about these being Janus's imperfect recollection of events.
I think this fic is a bit more violent than Millennia at times, hence I added the archive warning for violence. I still feel like a teen would be fine reading this, so I am keeping the rating Teen and Up. This fic focuses the most on what I dub psychological horror (angst, mind control, memory issues, consciousness, nightmares, etc.). I also tagged this story with disassociation, and content in this fic may resemble derealization and depersonalization.
If you think I should warn/rate this fic differently, I am happy to hear feedback and reconsider.
I tagged this as Remus/Janus, but like, ya gotta squint. Mostly banter and being soft. I love romance, but I have a hard time writing it. Could be seen as platonic too.
HINT 1: KEY.
HINT 2: "kind of" not "kinda"
CHAPTER START
NAME
J. D. Dedrick
ID
25:35--25:44 / 51:09
ALIENRACE
Dūcesnaca
OCCUPATION
Robotics Researcher
Chapter Warnings
cybernetics, missing/artificial limbs (eye, legs), forced medical treatment/experimentation, amnesia, depersonalization/derealization/dissociation, unreliable narration, psychological horror, swearing
Chapter Characters
Janus, the Dragon Witch, Virgil (not by name)
He could have been anything. When he looked inside his own mind, he dug through darkness. Memories like ashes, the particles filling his lungs were all that were familiar to him—and those only felt like nothing. No fragments, just a fine powder.
He woke up to yellow in his eyes, stinging and unfocused. Lights beyond the veil flickered. He saw a figure move; he looked small. After a brief glance into the world, he began to drown. He threw everything into the yellow encasement, and after an agonizing struggle, the rush of acceleration threw him to the ground.
When the air touched his face, black fireworks exploded in his hazy vision, and the first memory he had was gone.
He woke up again, like a corpse left in the stale air for vultures: beaks plucking out his skin piece by piece. His vision blurry and halved, he stared up at the birds breaking his body into bits.
Reports say he was involved in a huge space crash. DRACANA has generously sponsored his artificiality.
That sounded like a lie. That sort of blatant untruth where there was no connection to reality tied to it. Everything his senses told him felt unreal, everything except the pain that grounded him like a shot duck.
Whispers like gossip broke into his mind between droughts of consciousness. His senses were pieced together and broken apart, like pieces of clay in a kiln shattering. Memories of vultures and lab coats glued together by agony floated through space until eventually he was awake.
Probably just one of her business rivals
Dei’dra—he knew her name—loomed over him, to his right. He could see nothing to his left. The light stung, he squinted and blinked his eye. He could feel nothing on the left side of his face. Dei’dra smiled at him.
“Wake up, dollface. Didn’t think you’d make it, but you pulled through.”
He did not know where he was. He did not know who he was. All he knew was that this woman was Dei’dra, the Dragon Witch, and he hated her.
“Well, he seems to be doing well. Might as well put him under and move onto the next stage.”
He lived out his days creating sand sculptures in his mind. He saw himself running in place, downloading skills and targets and concepts. The sand would blow away each day, leaving him with nothing to remember them by.
Between bouts of black unconsciousness, he saw grey, and white, and pale pink, brown, and blue. Abstract shapes morphing into creatures that prodded at him. Cold metal seething, machines twisting his body together like crochet. He gave nonsense names for some, not even names consisting of words, just pure thoughts.
Slowly, he lost sight of the sand in his brain, yet the grains still dripped from his ears when he shook his head. He became a part of reality. Or perhaps he became part of a hellish dream.
Darkness huddled in the damp sides of his eyes, danger snapping at his bruised joints and soles. Deep inside his chest, his heart damned, words mixed with intuitive instincts, daring his body to live beyond the yellow veil.
Stage One of Project $DEE has been completed.
$DEE was not his name. It was what he was called. One of the words that would echo in his brain. Dee. Dee. Dee. Like a rhythm, like the beeping machines. Like the ringing of the heart monitor. It was embedded in his ears. Baby words jumping around, forming pictures, babbling him into nothing.
Dee, his brain still a desert, started to make better sense of this reality he lived in. He could control his body sometimes. He could move his arms. Or what was left of his limbs. Or what they had lent him.
The second picture in his brain, the one after the yellow veil: it was the artificial lights on Lab C’s ceiling. Grey illuminated by white, he stared up at the square tiles and textured glass, like undulating waves of melted sand.
With how long he was locked in place staring up at this picture, he memorized it. He could close his eyes at any moment and picture it in its exact detail again.
“Time to get up, Doll-face. It’s time for your first mission.”
He saw Dei’dra’s face again. He felt his restraints loosen and break away.
His first mission was not all that glorious. He was lanky, unused to moving in his body. He was a wall of meat. Disposable. He followed a trail like a zombie. He barely spoke to the team he was placed in. He remembered their orders regarding him.
“He’s still pretty out of it. Give him some good experience, but we’d like to keep working on him so bring him back in one piece.”
Dee felt like a puppet, simply put. Some machine inside him aimed his cannons and lasers. He stood in place, shooting at targets. He was guided by an invisible leash by the team he was assigned to. He saw sepia shapes. Blurs of bodies. All he could feel was the emotions in his gut telling him, repeatedly:
He was kept suspended in place while his body completed the mission. And then he was back in Lab C, mind clearer.
He was thinking in sentences now. He could monologue, like any great villain. That is what he had become, hadn’t he? Why a villain? Where had he learned that word? The more he sifted through the sand, the more words he could find he no longer remembered learning. They were just there, connected to nothing. No memory. No past life.
He kept thinking these words. And then he decided that since his jaw was not glued shut, he would give speaking a try. Garbled and slurred at first, he kept talking as much as they let him.
They made him run between ceilings of grey. They made him speak between illuminated square tiles. He practiced lines of a script. Subterfuge settled in his brain like a mirage in the distance between the settled sand.
He could walk on the unsteady ground once again. He could see. He could hear. He could experience the world around him. He gazed up at the ceiling but was interrupted by a splotch of dark violet.
Another blot. Another vulture. He stood there out of the corner of his artificial eye.
“What are you waiting for? Get on with the tests.” His voice sharp, cutting through his tongue.
This was an unusual time of day for tests. To say it was a time of day was generous. It was more like he would be experimented on for hours upon hours and then suddenly they would stop. Nothing to do but bask in the nothingness it brought.
At this point, Dee thought that he was done with most of the tests. He had his limbs. He had an eye, which he opened wider to get a better look at the violet blotch. Something about the blotch was connected to something else in his brain, but he could not quite place it.
“Well, whatever it is, get on with it, it certainly could not have waited until morning.”
It shuffled closer to him. Less of a blotch now. He could make out shapes. He could recognize his face now if he saw him again.
Air escaped his lungs, and then he said again, asking, “Whatever might you need from me today, doctor?”
The blotch was shaking. “If you are just here to sight-see, I am going back to sleep.” His eyes weighed heavily on his face, eyelids falling through his willpower.
“Are you… okay?”
No, I am not ‘okay’. I am ‘$DEE.’
“Do I LOOK okay? Yeah sure, I am right as rain, having a grand old time—feeling peachy, even.” At this point, the words just spiraled off his tongue and through his teeth. The blotch made a sound, and Dee’s frustration grew, the pain of today’s tests ricocheting in his body.
“If you aren’t here to run another one of your little tests, then just get out. Go tell your superior, or better yet, go tell Dei’dra to go fuck herself and leave me alone.”
And he left him alone. He wondered vaguely what that was all about. He then fell asleep.
I had the pleasure to work with the fantastic @dramaticsnakes for @ts-storytime 's Big Bang! They wrote an incredible fic about faes and mysteries, so please do yourself a favor and go read it here!
also bonus because I especially loved these two's dynamic
HOLY FUCK HOLY FUCK HOLY FUCK EVERYONE LOOK AT THIS!!
Doune has been a pleasure to work with for this event and this art is absolutely incredible in every way. I’ll ramble under the cut so I don’t clutter anyone’s dash.
First of all I can’t believe you made individual drawings for all the characters?? And every single one of them has references to the story and just have an incredibly aesthetically pleasing design.
Remus with the messy forest and the illussions he creates all around him. They look so wonderfully creepy, and I also just really really love his outfit. AND THE CASTLE IN THE BACKGROUND!! I love how both Remus’ and Roman’s backgrounds have a castle that shows they’re fae royalty it’s so cool.
Janus who is keeping his cloak close to him with fucking pitchforks in the bottom of the frame oh my God. That’s such cool imagery and shows what he ran from in a really powerful visual way. AND THE FACT THAT REMUS AND JANUS ARE LOOKING AT EACH OTHER FONDLY!! Don’t think I didn’t notice that. Their expressions are so warm, and I love the way they’re sort of seeking towards each other and away from their past and more unpleasant lives.
Then there’s Logan who is trapped inside of the cage wearing his scientist uniform. He looks so sad. And I LOVE the fact that the background is a forest that’s been destroyed that’s really clever. He looks so sad and mistrusting, I love it so much.
And Virgil who is standing in the shadows with a skull in his hands. It almost feels like the branches are taunting or threatening him which suits the scene where he runs in there incredibly well, not to mention the plants capturing his feet and legs, it’s so fucking COOL!
Roman who is sitting among beautiful flowers, leaning back and looking as beautiful as he knows he is. It’s so warm and royal to look at, as he holds his head high, and the fact that the windows are read makes it sort of threatening as well if that makes sense? It’s awesome!!!
And lastly there’s Patton who is standing by the blue flowers with a little bowl. I really adore his outfit as well. I adore all the outfits! His shirt belt and cloak all suit each other really well, and I love the light blue swirling around it gives him such a nice and homely feel. Along with the way he smiles at Roman!! They’re also smiling so fondly at each other in slightly different ways but in a way that still shows them sort of communicating through it. It makes me so soft.
NOT TO MENTION the piece of Remus and Janus together. The COLORS!!! I love the way Remus’ wings almost shimmer, and the way he grins as Janus looks at him with this passive fondness. They’re sitting by the lake and it looks so peaceful and it’s so clear that they care about each other. I adore the lighting as well!!! Oh my GOD!!
I think that’s all I have to say but just know that I am absolutely obsessed with this and I will likely keep coming back to it to just stare at it for a while.
@ts-storytime Oh damn it’s time. Welcome to my entry for The Sanders Sides Big Bang challenge of 2021!
I’ve been working on this since February and it’s been quite a journey. I’m incredibly proud to have planned and completed a project of this size with a deadline. I had no idea I’d be able to do something like that.
Please check out this incredible art by @doydoune.
Thank you to my beta-reader @rainbowbutterfrosting, to @a-vintage-snake, as well as my queerplatonic partner @anxiously-creating. A longer author’s note can be found by the actual fic on ao3.
Cw: past child abuse, past psychological and physical abuse, ableism, death/murder mentions, slight hints at suicidal thoughts but nothing explicit, body horror/animal body horror illusions, dead animal illusions, things that move when they shouldn’t, basically Remus makes creepy illusions, isolation, being trapped, threats, manipulation, unsympathetic side-characters, spider mentions, organ mentions, blood mentions, innuendos, food
Fic summary: Janus seeks an escape after being locked away by his parents his entire life, rushing through the dark and magical forest that separates his town from the rest of the world, hoping they won’t find him. Tales of the fae and other terrifying creatures in the forest make him on guard, and he expects either death or an escape. What he doesn’t expect is to encounter a faerie, who is not at all what he imagined one to be, and who is in many senses of the word, just as stuck as he is.
When Patton learns of Janus’ escape, he rushes after him, fearing the worst has happened. What Patton finds in the forest however, is both startlingly similar, and exceptionally different to what Janus found there.
Meanwhile, there are whispers among the townspeople, and new attempts at scientific discoveries, that seem to bring increased attention upon the otherwise solitary forest.
He could have been anything. When he looked inside his own mind, he dug through darkness. Memories like ashes, the particles filling his lungs were all that were familiar to him—and those only felt like nothing. No fragments, just a fine powder.
Janus is a cyborg who works for the Dragon Witch, a criminal mastermind who runs a company that designs cybernetics.
He meets Remus, a self-taught biomedical engineer, and a variety of other robotic and alien characters, all of whom are trying to convince him that he is more than just a cybernetic puppet.
But who is “Dee” if not an empty husk created only to be controlled?
General warnings
Psychological horror, body horror, cybernetics, missing limbs, artificial limbs, Non-consensual forced medical treatment, physical abuse, blood, violence, guns, mind control, permanent amnesia, manipulation, emotional abuse, gaslighting, nightmares, streams of consciousness, unreliable narration. Content that resembles depersonalization, derealization, or dissociation
This is my story for the 2021 Storytime! Big Bang! @ts-storytime Thank you to @ben-phantomhive-trash, who is the artist I was partnered with for the event! They created this fantastic art!!!! I love it so much I can't even.
Thank you to PunkRock for helping me figure out the shorts characters and other plot things. Also thank you to AryaSkywalker, Thembo, and Carrotflowerking17 and the Big Bang 2021 discord for additional help!!!!
This fic is an alternative entry point to my (In Other Worlds) Series. This fic happens at the same time roughly as Millennia, a companion novel. You can read this fic and then check out the rest of the series, or check out the series and then read this.
Also, I don't use Janus's actual name throughout the fic for thematic and narrative reasons. You'll see. I hope that does not put you off too much. Consider it part of the angst.
Clarification of general warnings and pairings, minor spoilers
I added the tag unreliable narrator, but I will clarify that the narrator is not actively lying to the audience. This tag relates to Janus's memory issues and the uncertainty resulting from that. tbh I would not worry too much about the events being untrue, and more be concerned about these being Janus's imperfect recollection of events.
I think this fic is a bit more violent than Millennia at times, hence I added the archive warning for violence. I still feel like a teen would be fine reading this, so I am keeping the rating Teen and Up. This fic focuses the most on what I dub psychological horror (angst, mind control, memory issues, consciousness, nightmares, etc.). I also tagged this story with disassociation, and content in this fic may resemble derealization and depersonalization.
If you think I should warn/rate this fic differently, I am happy to hear feedback and reconsider.
I tagged this as Remus/Janus, but like, ya gotta squint. Mostly banter and being soft. I love romance, but I have a hard time writing it. Could be seen as platonic too.
HINT 1: KEY.
HINT 2: "kind of" not "kinda"
CHAPTER START
NAME
J. D. Dedrick
ID
25:35--25:44 / 51:09
ALIENRACE
Dūcesnaca
OCCUPATION
Robotics Researcher
Chapter Warnings
cybernetics, missing/artificial limbs (eye, legs), forced medical treatment/experimentation, amnesia, depersonalization/derealization/dissociation, unreliable narration, psychological horror, swearing
Chapter Characters
Janus, the Dragon Witch, Virgil (not by name)
He could have been anything. When he looked inside his own mind, he dug through darkness. Memories like ashes, the particles filling his lungs were all that were familiar to him—and those only felt like nothing. No fragments, just a fine powder.
He woke up to yellow in his eyes, stinging and unfocused. Lights beyond the veil flickered. He saw a figure move; he looked small. After a brief glance into the world, he began to drown. He threw everything into the yellow encasement, and after an agonizing struggle, the rush of acceleration threw him to the ground.
When the air touched his face, black fireworks exploded in his hazy vision, and the first memory he had was gone.
He woke up again, like a corpse left in the stale air for vultures: beaks plucking out his skin piece by piece. His vision blurry and halved, he stared up at the birds breaking his body into bits.
Reports say he was involved in a huge space crash. DRACANA has generously sponsored his artificiality.
That sounded like a lie. That sort of blatant untruth where there was no connection to reality tied to it. Everything his senses told him felt unreal, everything except the pain that grounded him like a shot duck.
Whispers like gossip broke into his mind between droughts of consciousness. His senses were pieced together and broken apart, like pieces of clay in a kiln shattering. Memories of vultures and lab coats glued together by agony floated through space until eventually he was awake.
Probably just one of her business rivals
Dei’dra—he knew her name—loomed over him, to his right. He could see nothing to his left. The light stung, he squinted and blinked his eye. He could feel nothing on the left side of his face. Dei’dra smiled at him.
“Wake up, dollface. Didn’t think you’d make it, but you pulled through.”
He did not know where he was. He did not know who he was. All he knew was that this woman was Dei’dra, the Dragon Witch, and he hated her.
“Well, he seems to be doing well. Might as well put him under and move onto the next stage.”
He lived out his days creating sand sculptures in his mind. He saw himself running in place, downloading skills and targets and concepts. The sand would blow away each day, leaving him with nothing to remember them by.
Between bouts of black unconsciousness, he saw grey, and white, and pale pink, brown, and blue. Abstract shapes morphing into creatures that prodded at him. Cold metal seething, machines twisting his body together like crochet. He gave nonsense names for some, not even names consisting of words, just pure thoughts.
Slowly, he lost sight of the sand in his brain, yet the grains still dripped from his ears when he shook his head. He became a part of reality. Or perhaps he became part of a hellish dream.
Darkness huddled in the damp sides of his eyes, danger snapping at his bruised joints and soles. Deep inside his chest, his heart damned, words mixed with intuitive instincts, daring his body to live beyond the yellow veil.
Stage One of Project $DEE has been completed.
$DEE was not his name. It was what he was called. One of the words that would echo in his brain. Dee. Dee. Dee. Like a rhythm, like the beeping machines. Like the ringing of the heart monitor. It was embedded in his ears. Baby words jumping around, forming pictures, babbling him into nothing.
Dee, his brain still a desert, started to make better sense of this reality he lived in. He could control his body sometimes. He could move his arms. Or what was left of his limbs. Or what they had lent him.
The second picture in his brain, the one after the yellow veil: it was the artificial lights on Lab C’s ceiling. Grey illuminated by white, he stared up at the square tiles and textured glass, like undulating waves of melted sand.
With how long he was locked in place staring up at this picture, he memorized it. He could close his eyes at any moment and picture it in its exact detail again.
“Time to get up, Doll-face. It’s time for your first mission.”
He saw Dei’dra’s face again. He felt his restraints loosen and break away.
His first mission was not all that glorious. He was lanky, unused to moving in his body. He was a wall of meat. Disposable. He followed a trail like a zombie. He barely spoke to the team he was placed in. He remembered their orders regarding him.
“He’s still pretty out of it. Give him some good experience, but we’d like to keep working on him so bring him back in one piece.”
Dee felt like a puppet, simply put. Some machine inside him aimed his cannons and lasers. He stood in place, shooting at targets. He was guided by an invisible leash by the team he was assigned to. He saw sepia shapes. Blurs of bodies. All he could feel was the emotions in his gut telling him, repeatedly:
He was kept suspended in place while his body completed the mission. And then he was back in Lab C, mind clearer.
He was thinking in sentences now. He could monologue, like any great villain. That is what he had become, hadn’t he? Why a villain? Where had he learned that word? The more he sifted through the sand, the more words he could find he no longer remembered learning. They were just there, connected to nothing. No memory. No past life.
He kept thinking these words. And then he decided that since his jaw was not glued shut, he would give speaking a try. Garbled and slurred at first, he kept talking as much as they let him.
They made him run between ceilings of grey. They made him speak between illuminated square tiles. He practiced lines of a script. Subterfuge settled in his brain like a mirage in the distance between the settled sand.
He could walk on the unsteady ground once again. He could see. He could hear. He could experience the world around him. He gazed up at the ceiling but was interrupted by a splotch of dark violet.
Another blot. Another vulture. He stood there out of the corner of his artificial eye.
“What are you waiting for? Get on with the tests.” His voice sharp, cutting through his tongue.
This was an unusual time of day for tests. To say it was a time of day was generous. It was more like he would be experimented on for hours upon hours and then suddenly they would stop. Nothing to do but bask in the nothingness it brought.
At this point, Dee thought that he was done with most of the tests. He had his limbs. He had an eye, which he opened wider to get a better look at the violet blotch. Something about the blotch was connected to something else in his brain, but he could not quite place it.
“Well, whatever it is, get on with it, it certainly could not have waited until morning.”
It shuffled closer to him. Less of a blotch now. He could make out shapes. He could recognize his face now if he saw him again.
Air escaped his lungs, and then he said again, asking, “Whatever might you need from me today, doctor?”
The blotch was shaking. “If you are just here to sight-see, I am going back to sleep.” His eyes weighed heavily on his face, eyelids falling through his willpower.
“Are you… okay?”
No, I am not ‘okay’. I am ‘$DEE.’
“Do I LOOK okay? Yeah sure, I am right as rain, having a grand old time—feeling peachy, even.” At this point, the words just spiraled off his tongue and through his teeth. The blotch made a sound, and Dee’s frustration grew, the pain of today’s tests ricocheting in his body.
“If you aren’t here to run another one of your little tests, then just get out. Go tell your superior, or better yet, go tell Dei’dra to go fuck herself and leave me alone.”
And he left him alone. He wondered vaguely what that was all about. He then fell asleep.
warning, lots of caps, because I cannot control myself lmao
OH MY GOODNESS, THIS IS SO GOOD. Like, let me like, wax poetic about this for a second, because I cannot believe how amazing this all is.
Like, that first picture with Janus, REALLY CAPTURES THE ANGST, AND THE LIGHTING, AND THE MISMATCHED, HALF BROKEN OFF FACE, I CANNOT EVEN!!! AND THE PLACEMENT OF THE COLORS, LIKE, THE YELLOW AND BLUE BEING IN FRONT, THE RED AND PURPLE BEING BEHIND HIM, AH!!!!
And I just, have seen the pictures of Janus, Remus, Dei'dra, and Virgil before, but I just, gotta look at these for several hours. I will admit, Remus and Dei'dra are my favorite. Like, Remus's art, is such a delight. I love it so much. Like, I am soft. Amazing. And his dirty socks. the detail. oh my goodness. Just, all four of these are amazing.
And Dei'dra's portrait!!!!!!!!! OH MY GOODNESS!!!!! THOSE EYES ARE SO MURDEROUS!!!!!! LIKE THAT LOOK, AMAZING. I COULD LOOK AT THOSE EYES AND EYE LASHES ALL DAY, AMAZING.
AND THE SHORTS CHARACTERS OOOOOOH MYYYY GOODNESS I DON'T THINK YOU SHOWED ME THOSE YET AND OH MY GOODNESS I AM SO HAPPY OH MY GOODNESS OH MY GOODNESS. Like, Eira is perfect. Like, his description was so rough and you drew him perfectly. his face. (•✧•) I'm dying. Piccard is beautiful. Amazing. I love his colors. I also love Seth's art because, yes, he is so dramatic, I love it. Like, spot on interpretation. And Mike!!!! Amazing!!!!!!! I love her!!!!!!! Electric Stapler is amazing lmao, like, he gives me the same vibes as the pixar lamp. And last but not least, Steve Stow!!!!!! Amazing!!!!!!! I love his eyes and coloring. AND LOOK HE'S GOT AN APRON YESSSS!!!! He looks like an old fashion stove, which is cool.
lmao it is nearly 3am my time I need to go to bed oh no what have I done to myself
He could have been anything. When he looked inside his own mind, he dug through darkness. Memories like ashes, the particles filling his lungs were all that were familiar to him—and those only felt like nothing. No fragments, just a fine powder.
Janus is a cyborg who works for the Dragon Witch, a criminal mastermind who runs a company that designs cybernetics.
He meets Remus, a self-taught biomedical engineer, and a variety of other robotic and alien characters, all of whom are trying to convince him that he is more than just a cybernetic puppet.
But who is “Dee” if not an empty husk created only to be controlled?
General warnings
Psychological horror, body horror, cybernetics, missing limbs, artificial limbs, Non-consensual forced medical treatment, physical abuse, blood, violence, guns, mind control, permanent amnesia, manipulation, emotional abuse, gaslighting, nightmares, streams of consciousness, unreliable narration. Content that resembles depersonalization, derealization, or dissociation
This is my story for the 2021 Storytime! Big Bang! @ts-storytime Thank you to @ben-phantomhive-trash, who is the artist I was partnered with for the event! They created this fantastic art!!!! I love it so much I can't even.
Thank you to PunkRock for helping me figure out the shorts characters and other plot things. Also thank you to AryaSkywalker, Thembo, and Carrotflowerking17 and the Big Bang 2021 discord for additional help!!!!
This fic is an alternative entry point to my (In Other Worlds) Series. This fic happens at the same time roughly as Millennia, a companion novel. You can read this fic and then check out the rest of the series, or check out the series and then read this.
Also, I don't use Janus's actual name throughout the fic for thematic and narrative reasons. You'll see. I hope that does not put you off too much. Consider it part of the angst.
Clarification of general warnings and pairings, minor spoilers
I added the tag unreliable narrator, but I will clarify that the narrator is not actively lying to the audience. This tag relates to Janus's memory issues and the uncertainty resulting from that. tbh I would not worry too much about the events being untrue, and more be concerned about these being Janus's imperfect recollection of events.
I think this fic is a bit more violent than Millennia at times, hence I added the archive warning for violence. I still feel like a teen would be fine reading this, so I am keeping the rating Teen and Up. This fic focuses the most on what I dub psychological horror (angst, mind control, memory issues, consciousness, nightmares, etc.). I also tagged this story with disassociation, and content in this fic may resemble derealization and depersonalization.
If you think I should warn/rate this fic differently, I am happy to hear feedback and reconsider.
I tagged this as Remus/Janus, but like, ya gotta squint. Mostly banter and being soft. I love romance, but I have a hard time writing it. Could be seen as platonic too.
HINT 1: KEY.
HINT 2: "kind of" not "kinda"
CHAPTER START
NAME
J. D. Dedrick
ID
25:35--25:44 / 51:09
ALIENRACE
Dūcesnaca
OCCUPATION
Robotics Researcher
Chapter Warnings
cybernetics, missing/artificial limbs (eye, legs), forced medical treatment/experimentation, amnesia, depersonalization/derealization/dissociation, unreliable narration, psychological horror, swearing
Chapter Characters
Janus, the Dragon Witch, Virgil (not by name)
He could have been anything. When he looked inside his own mind, he dug through darkness. Memories like ashes, the particles filling his lungs were all that were familiar to him—and those only felt like nothing. No fragments, just a fine powder.
He woke up to yellow in his eyes, stinging and unfocused. Lights beyond the veil flickered. He saw a figure move; he looked small. After a brief glance into the world, he began to drown. He threw everything into the yellow encasement, and after an agonizing struggle, the rush of acceleration threw him to the ground.
When the air touched his face, black fireworks exploded in his hazy vision, and the first memory he had was gone.
He woke up again, like a corpse left in the stale air for vultures: beaks plucking out his skin piece by piece. His vision blurry and halved, he stared up at the birds breaking his body into bits.
Reports say he was involved in a huge space crash. DRACANA has generously sponsored his artificiality.
That sounded like a lie. That sort of blatant untruth where there was no connection to reality tied to it. Everything his senses told him felt unreal, everything except the pain that grounded him like a shot duck.
Whispers like gossip broke into his mind between droughts of consciousness. His senses were pieced together and broken apart, like pieces of clay in a kiln shattering. Memories of vultures and lab coats glued together by agony floated through space until eventually he was awake.
Probably just one of her business rivals
Dei’dra—he knew her name—loomed over him, to his right. He could see nothing to his left. The light stung, he squinted and blinked his eye. He could feel nothing on the left side of his face. Dei’dra smiled at him.
“Wake up, dollface. Didn’t think you’d make it, but you pulled through.”
He did not know where he was. He did not know who he was. All he knew was that this woman was Dei’dra, the Dragon Witch, and he hated her.
“Well, he seems to be doing well. Might as well put him under and move onto the next stage.”
He lived out his days creating sand sculptures in his mind. He saw himself running in place, downloading skills and targets and concepts. The sand would blow away each day, leaving him with nothing to remember them by.
Between bouts of black unconsciousness, he saw grey, and white, and pale pink, brown, and blue. Abstract shapes morphing into creatures that prodded at him. Cold metal seething, machines twisting his body together like crochet. He gave nonsense names for some, not even names consisting of words, just pure thoughts.
Slowly, he lost sight of the sand in his brain, yet the grains still dripped from his ears when he shook his head. He became a part of reality. Or perhaps he became part of a hellish dream.
Darkness huddled in the damp sides of his eyes, danger snapping at his bruised joints and soles. Deep inside his chest, his heart damned, words mixed with intuitive instincts, daring his body to live beyond the yellow veil.
Stage One of Project $DEE has been completed.
$DEE was not his name. It was what he was called. One of the words that would echo in his brain. Dee. Dee. Dee. Like a rhythm, like the beeping machines. Like the ringing of the heart monitor. It was embedded in his ears. Baby words jumping around, forming pictures, babbling him into nothing.
Dee, his brain still a desert, started to make better sense of this reality he lived in. He could control his body sometimes. He could move his arms. Or what was left of his limbs. Or what they had lent him.
The second picture in his brain, the one after the yellow veil: it was the artificial lights on Lab C’s ceiling. Grey illuminated by white, he stared up at the square tiles and textured glass, like undulating waves of melted sand.
With how long he was locked in place staring up at this picture, he memorized it. He could close his eyes at any moment and picture it in its exact detail again.
“Time to get up, Doll-face. It’s time for your first mission.”
He saw Dei’dra’s face again. He felt his restraints loosen and break away.
His first mission was not all that glorious. He was lanky, unused to moving in his body. He was a wall of meat. Disposable. He followed a trail like a zombie. He barely spoke to the team he was placed in. He remembered their orders regarding him.
“He’s still pretty out of it. Give him some good experience, but we’d like to keep working on him so bring him back in one piece.”
Dee felt like a puppet, simply put. Some machine inside him aimed his cannons and lasers. He stood in place, shooting at targets. He was guided by an invisible leash by the team he was assigned to. He saw sepia shapes. Blurs of bodies. All he could feel was the emotions in his gut telling him, repeatedly:
He was kept suspended in place while his body completed the mission. And then he was back in Lab C, mind clearer.
He was thinking in sentences now. He could monologue, like any great villain. That is what he had become, hadn’t he? Why a villain? Where had he learned that word? The more he sifted through the sand, the more words he could find he no longer remembered learning. They were just there, connected to nothing. No memory. No past life.
He kept thinking these words. And then he decided that since his jaw was not glued shut, he would give speaking a try. Garbled and slurred at first, he kept talking as much as they let him.
They made him run between ceilings of grey. They made him speak between illuminated square tiles. He practiced lines of a script. Subterfuge settled in his brain like a mirage in the distance between the settled sand.
He could walk on the unsteady ground once again. He could see. He could hear. He could experience the world around him. He gazed up at the ceiling but was interrupted by a splotch of dark violet.
Another blot. Another vulture. He stood there out of the corner of his artificial eye.
“What are you waiting for? Get on with the tests.” His voice sharp, cutting through his tongue.
This was an unusual time of day for tests. To say it was a time of day was generous. It was more like he would be experimented on for hours upon hours and then suddenly they would stop. Nothing to do but bask in the nothingness it brought.
At this point, Dee thought that he was done with most of the tests. He had his limbs. He had an eye, which he opened wider to get a better look at the violet blotch. Something about the blotch was connected to something else in his brain, but he could not quite place it.
“Well, whatever it is, get on with it, it certainly could not have waited until morning.”
It shuffled closer to him. Less of a blotch now. He could make out shapes. He could recognize his face now if he saw him again.
Air escaped his lungs, and then he said again, asking, “Whatever might you need from me today, doctor?”
The blotch was shaking. “If you are just here to sight-see, I am going back to sleep.” His eyes weighed heavily on his face, eyelids falling through his willpower.
“Are you… okay?”
No, I am not ‘okay’. I am ‘$DEE.’
“Do I LOOK okay? Yeah sure, I am right as rain, having a grand old time—feeling peachy, even.” At this point, the words just spiraled off his tongue and through his teeth. The blotch made a sound, and Dee’s frustration grew, the pain of today’s tests ricocheting in his body.
“If you aren’t here to run another one of your little tests, then just get out. Go tell your superior, or better yet, go tell Dei’dra to go fuck herself and leave me alone.”
And he left him alone. He wondered vaguely what that was all about. He then fell asleep.
