Welcome to my blog!!! I'm Maisie. As you might be able to tell, I write and draw whump. I’m on AO3, Pillowfort, Bluesky, and Wafrn under the same username. All my content will have any applicable warnings at the top or in the tags. You're always welcome to send me asks and requests ❤️
You can see art under #my art, writing under #my writing, and miscellaneous posts under #toyybox general. Asks can be found under #asks.
⭐️ Note - I'll be less active for a few months & might respond late to messages
· • —– ٠ ✤ ٠ —– •
My writing:
🕷 Spiderwebs
Masterlist [main story completed]
Jackie Rockwell is immortal, and he discovers this in the worst way possible. When Heather Rodriguez tries to kill him and realizes that she cannot, she starts to get other ideas, and begins conducting illegal scientific studies on her newfound captive. Everything quickly gets out of hand, however, and her precious lab rat doesn’t give up so easily.
· • —– ٠ ✤ ٠ —– •
Other blogs:
@vesper-999 (general art)
@toollbox (assorted)
Favourite tropes:
lab whump
crack whump <3
captivity
immortal characters
whumpers as caretakers
robots/androids/cyborgs
vampires & merfolk
lady whumpers/whumpees
Dislikes (will not write/draw/interact):
explicit nsfwhump
psychiatric wards
sometimes g/t (it depends)
(I have no hate towards anyone who likes these tropes, it's just not my cup of tea)
Misc.
If you want to be tagged in any of my posts or removed from a taglist, let me know via asks/DMs/comments/tags and I'll be happy to do so.
You can also ask me to add content warnings for certain things via the methods above.
I’m totally okay with fan art!! I don’t mind if it’s not 100% accurate, but feel free to ask questions if you’re unsure about anything.
Do not interact if you’re homophobic, transphobic, or use generative AI for writing or art
It's important to have at least two blorbos that fit into specific roles in your life
The blorbo you can look to in hard times, and ask yourself what they would do in a situation, and draw motivation from them on how to be better and stronger!
The blorbo you can look to in hard times, and remind yourself that no matter what happens, you probably aren't going to fuck your shit up as much as they did even if you actively tried
content: pet whump (bbu/institutionalized slavery), new master, aftermath of seizure, flashbacks, minor hallucinations
~~~~~~
He woke to a metallic taste all the way in the back of his throat, an unusual slickness coating his tongue. It brought with it the phantom and distinct sensation of gnashing teeth through flesh. His heart skipped— why did he feel he was about to be punished?
Maybe he already had been. His muscles screamed. His throat ached. His tongue stung sharply, and then he realized: he had bitten it, a telltale sign he must have seized at some point in the night.
Port pressed a feeble hand to his forehead, the back of his skull throbbing fiercely. A headache in the aftermath, he thought, then remembered he was laying on the floor, no pillow to support his neck. He had probably cracked his head against it over and over in his thrashing. Couldn’t remember it, of course— he was never inside his body when it happened.
With a grimace and a twist of his stiff neck, he pressed his cheek against the carpet, feeling the stretch of muscle and tendon. He wondered, as he scrubbed at the dried spit on his chin, where Sonny was. He usually had some commentary when Port woke up— It was a quick one, he would say, or It felt like forever or You stopped breathing or I’m worried about you.
But Sonny was nowhere to be seen. Not sleeping beside him, not kneeling over him… in fact, something was off, and he couldn’t quite place his finger on it. Squinting at dust bunnies beneath the bed, it struck him as odd that there was furniture in here at all.
It would come to him soon, probably. Sometimes it even took him a few minutes to remember his own name. Thoughts tended not to stick.
He never even knew he was hazing seizures until Sonny told him so. Once he did, a lot of things suddenly made a whole lot of sense. Those foggy, walled-off memories of waking up in the night, confused, in pain, before drifting back off to sleep and feeling like he’d been tortured come morning. In his less lucid moments he was convinced that a real, actual ghost had come back to haunt him, in a more physical way than simply lurking in the corner of his mind or his eye, always just out of sight.
Did something blink at him from underneath the bed? He closed his eyes, heart pounding. His chest shuttered. The very air around him was almost too thick to enter his lungs. When inhaled, it was heavy, weighing him down from the inside.
Ginny was sitting on his chest, suffocating him. Her sharp nails dug divots into his cheeks. Her unforgiving grip hurt his jaw. She was putting something in his mouth— a finger? No… she poured some burning drink over his lips, electrifying. It mingled with the blood.
Port’s eyes snapped open, and the specter disappeared, though he could swear he still felt the foul liquid creeping down his throat and dribbling out the corners of his mouth. He hated these strange flashes, so fleeting and disjointed and tangled he could not be entirely sure he did not simply dream them up. Loose threads pulled from the patchwork.
He righted his head, gazing up at the ceiling fan. It was a great effort to raise his eyelids. The fan was still, air stagnant. He knew if he were to run a finger along the blade, it would come away clean. No dust. Soft light of dawn seeped through the split in the curtains.
When he closed his eyes again, someone else crawled on top of him, straddled him, jabbed a playful finger into his shoulder. The limb twinged and spasmed, knocking against the floor. The tension ran up his collarbone like plucking a taut cable. Her soft hair tickled his face, scent of strawberry shampoo artificial and cloying. It snuck up his nose and got stuck on his tongue. It masked the smoke, which clung to her hair and fingers no matter how hard she tried to wash it away. And it clung to Ginny’s breath, and her teeth, and her clothes and her hair and her fingers which ran over the wheel of her lighter which clicked and clicked and burned and burned and burned—
Enough.
Enough. Into his ear, someone whispered: Wake up.
~~~
For a moment he thought he had locked eyes with a ghost again, just for a single split second, before his sense caught up to his instinct. Port wondered how long it would take him to get used to this boy wearing a warped version of his master’s face— how long it would take for it not to set off the hair-raising, urgent reaction: You’re supposed to be dead.
Talha was looking at him weirdly. “You okay?” His head was poking out over the back of the sofa, an episode of Looney Tunes playing on the TV perched on the console against the wall.
“Yes, sir,” Port said automatically.
Based on his expression, Tal was dubious, but he accepted this answer. “How’s Son-Dawg?” he asked.
When Port last checked on him, Sonny was out cold. Port had found himself suddenly paranoid that Sonny had died in the middle of the night and hovered the back of his hand over Sonny’s mouth, just to feel the faint draft of his breath and make sure he was still alive. “Sleeping,” Port said. “No school today, sir?”
Tal’s mouth quirked like he wanted to make fun of him. “It’s Saturday.”
“Oh. Right.” He had lost track of what day of the week it was… well, days ago.
Tal swung his sharp elbow over the back of the sofa and rested his chin on his hand, beholding Port with round eyes. “Rida picked up a shift, so unless SunnyD wakes up, it’s just you and me today.” His impish smile made Port kind of scared to move. “Do you know algebra?”
“Um… no.”
Tal frowned. “Dammit. I was gonna try to get you to do my homework for me.”
Port couldn’t help the gut-sick feeling at his master’s disapproval. “Sonny could probably help you,” he said, wanting to mitigate the damage. “Once he’s feeling better.”
Tal’s eyes brightened. “Is he good at math?”
Better than me, at least. “I think so.”
Tal leaped off the sofa and made some wild movement with his body, throwing his arm up— dunking an imaginary basketball? “Let’s go!” he exclaimed. Then a thunk— something had fallen off the couch and hit the floor. Tal looked to his feet. “Oh, fuck! My Froot Loops!” His lips pulled away from his teeth as he cringed, exposing his braces.
Port rounded the sofa (not overlooking the way Tal took a few steps back as he approached) and laid eyes on the grey puddle of milk soaking into the Persian carpet, right next to the overturned bowl.
“Oopsie...” Tal said, eyes flicking over to him. “Don’t tell Rida."
Another lab. Bodies strung up, the luckiest among them unconscious. Measures taken to make sure they do not, cannot run. Kali did shadow puppets on the walls to distract the ones that can still see. Delta went through the files, one by one, person after person.
nodiving: codename aradia, taken at age 22, server support. lost most of her extremities from loss of circulation. all the blood was redirected towards her brain, led to swelling and memory loss.
nodiving: codename roselyn, 54, permanent brain damage from repeated trauma. lacerations on torso and back show evidence of torture.
Apollo treated each of them. He was getting to be very good at it, somehow immune to the desolation of the facilities. His resolve only strengthened over time. It took Delta too long to realize just how strong he was; how wholly relentless. In the darker part of the night, Delta wanted to cling to his cloth, to pray. There were so many debts that could never be repaid, and it was never for lack of trying. For now, he settled with sitting with him. For now, it had to be enough.
Apollo went over his notes by candlelight.
“I admit,” he said. “I don’t see the point of you leaving Galatea at all, if Levon lets you keep up the same projects.”
Two bright lights returned the fire.
“…It’s my project,” Delta said from across the table. His arms were folded, and he rested his chin against them. “Levon couldn’t have kept me from it if he wanted to.”
~
exiterratum: why are you sending me these?
exiterratum: i don’t get what point you’re trying to make. you know i never wanted this.
exiterratum: never in a million years would i have ever let this happen to you
nodiving: i wasnt trying to make a point
exiterratum: i don’t want to see gore all the time it makes me uncomfortable
nodiving: sorry
nodiving: i wasnt trying to upset you i just wanted you to see it
nodiving: this is like my whole life right now and you said you wanted to come back into it so i thought it made sense to tell you what im doing
nodiving: there are not many people i can talk to about this
~
Graves were dug uniformly, far away from the labs. Some poor intern went through the trouble of contacting the families, of trying to find some record of the victims’ wills even after they’d been so thoroughly violated. Hundreds of funerals went by, sometimes twice in one day.
Delta cried. He hardly felt shame about it anymore. There came a thin undercurrent of fear instead, but even that faded with practice. Nobody ever hit him anymore. Nobody scolded him. Apollo ran his hands through his hair, and pulled him in tight to his chest. The grief was larger than entire worlds. There were no words for what had been lost. The dead alone brought the reckoning, and the dead were the lucky. At least, he’d thought so once.
Out by the beach, Delta sat motionless for hours at a time. The air tasted like salt. He watched the waves break up against the sand, endless. Forever, the tide would come in. Forever.
~
nodiving: hey
exiterratum: hey !!
nodiving: sorry did i wake you up
exiterratum: uh, yeah, kinda. but it’s fine. what’s up? did you need something?
nodiving: yes i needed to ask you something
nodiving: did you have access to my file or anything that would have any clues about where i might have come from
nodiving: i was just wondering mostly cause you kinda implied my parents gave me up
nodiving: like. did they
exiterratum: fuck oh my god
exiterratum: no im sorry that was just me being horrible
exiterratum: im sorry
exiterratum: i don’t know what happened to your parents, the files never said anything about it, but i can’t imagine they gave you up willingly. just based off the time period i’d guess you were separated during the war? or taken deliberately as part of the imperial project.
nodiving: oh
nodiving: okay
nodiving: what war
exiterratum: like any of the efforts to colonize the aquatic sphere, i think probably Celadon? i don’t know for sure but i think that’s where the population was most heavily concentrated and where most of the fighting took place
nodiving: wait
nodiving: do you know what species i am
exiterratum: you’re a naiad
nodiving: a what
~
Delta rolls the word around between his teeth.
“Naiad. Did you know?” He looked to Kali. Little sparks ran through the circuit of his veins. He felt giddy, almost. There was a rare and precious pride. Delta studied the curve of his own claws. He paid careful attention to the webbing of his fingers. He counted to see how long he could hold his breath.
“…That’s quite a broad term, isn’t it?” Kali said gently. She’d been wearing a swimsuit beneath her clothes lately. Everyone he was brave enough to confide in had turned out to be very indulgent.
Naiad for water-spirit, for the forgotten war. It was the closest thing he had. Kali had a point: It didn’t narrow it down very much.
~
nodiving: do you know what happened to simon
exiterratum: lol fuck that guy
exiterratum: sorry i genuinely could not stand that wishy-washy motherfucker he pissed me off so bad
exiterratum: no i don’t know what happened to him, i swear to god i was only on the ship like another week after you disappeared and i spent most of that locked in my room
exiterratum: but i would guess he just retired? he was always threatening to and i guess after you left he didnt have anything else to pretend to be principled about
exiterratum: good fucking riddance honestly like why would you want to waste any more fucking energy on that guy
nodiving: he was nice to me
exiterratum: …
exiterratum: lemme ask around
nodiving: thank you
~
Delta’s skin was cold, and it tasted of salt. That was according to Kali, who had laid with him through the endless interplanetary nights. The bedroom was kept dark, illuminated only by the scattered stars outside — and by the ambient light that their bodies would produce when either was excited enough. The poor thing had been glowing unsteadily all night, and little pained mews escaped him even when unconscious.
“Baby,” Kali said, dreamlike intonation, a meditation: “You’re in the throes of fever. That’s all. Wake up if you can. It’s just the dream and the dark.”
When Delta cracked his eyes open in the sweltering hypnagogia, the blue light traced eerie waveforms against the glass panes.
“…It’s not a dream,” he answered, a little sleepily, a little sullen.
“Hm?”
“It’s not a dream. It really happened,” he murmured. “It seems too horrible to be real, but it all really happened.”
“Whaddya see?” Kali’s eye’s widened a little in the dark too. She cradled his body closer, craned her neck to look for signs of somniloquy. It was impossible to know. She felt as though she might be trespassing, that this was more than he’d ever say while awake. He could be so quiet.
“Beds. Bodies. They buried them out in the yard. They beat me when I cried.”
But she knew that, didn’t she? Kali could have guessed. The psychic pain she felt in that instance was sharp and stinging, enough to kill if she was not careful with it. But it felt dangerous to dampen all the same. A strange energy came over her as she attuned to it.
“What else?”
“Piano lessons. I killed a cat. I think I’m horrible, Kali. I can’t come back.”
“Don’t speculate. No judgement. Just what it was, what you saw.”
“…The rooms were clean, and it felt nice to sit by the open windows.“ Delta flinched in his sleep. Saltwater. “I miss my mom.”
~
She was right that it was easier in daylight, when the shadow receded. Apollo brought an easy warmth to any room he entered and was already so naturally attuned to any instance of suffering. Delta did not want to worry him, but he said such worrying things.
There were a lot of files to sift through. Apollo did so out of necessity, going through with a highlighter for each proper noun, for every unexpected word. He’d gotten quite good at parsing the information by now. What had once been such an incomprehensible nightmare was now sedated by the sciences, by routine and by understanding.
Apollo could probably rig one of these himself by now.
Delta got a sort of unpleasant titillation in his stomach at the thought of it.
Delta, who had no interest in — and was frankly a little wary of — medicine, did not need to review the files with half as much rigor. For him, it was mostly morbid curiosity, looking for something he couldn’t name. Maybe something to hurt himself. Apollo seemed reluctant to hand over the worst of it.
It took Delta a long while to become aware of what his eyes were scanning for on each page. Not until he already had a mental catalogue of names and addresses.
~
Delta was ready to end it all over again. It always had to be like this. That first detachment had really made his mark on him, led him to believe the only way to ever exit was by blowing a hole through the ceiling.
The heartbreak of that came for him long before he was able to even give voice to the rebellion. He’d been preparing for a fight. But in the end, he plead his case to only one person, and left nearly everyone else in the dark.
Kali’s eyes glistened without tears, captivated rather by some internal guiding light. He waited for her to bite him.
“…I think you should do it,” she said instead.
Delta faltered. These days, he expected more opposition than he ever got. It made his fortifications feel childish — if not excessive, then at least misaligned. He never knew what to protect himself from anymore.
“You mean it?” He tilted his head, felt a painful pressure travel up his brain stem. Too much tension. Too many nightmares.
Kali nodded, and she did not smile. She said: “You think that you have to, and I think so too.”
CW: Referenced minor whump, conditioning, referenced torture, human experimentation, death mention
── ⟡ ˙.
Atlas doesn't really know what he's doing, sneaking through the halls after lights out.
He should be back in his dorm, preparing himself for the training and tests he'll have to endure tomorrow morning. They’ve only picked up, growing more intense and strenuous as Evaluation day inches nearer and nearer. It should be his top priority right now, above all else. He knows if Cato heard he was still out — that he was breaking the strict curfew that’s set for everyone inside the base, disobeying so many of their different, vital rules — she’d be deeply disappointed in him.
“Letting yourself be distracted with such trivial things, Atlas,” she’d say. “Is the first step towards failure.”
But those recordings have been all he’s been able to think about these past few days. With what he’s witnessed, the horrors that he cannot erase, no matter how hard he attempts to, he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to forget about it. Not until he gets proper answers.
He knows it’s bad. Knows it’s horribly, terribly wrong. But there’s a part of him, a small, impossibly rotten part of him…. That really wants to see that spy again.
He can’t keep them out of his thoughts. Their words replay inside his mind at a near constant rate, distracting him from conversations and leaving his head spinning, questions spurring up in a way they never have before. He’s never met someone like them, someone so assertive and brash — so hellbent on reaching their goal. They don’t care about rules or regulations, about following orders. Atlas thought everyone followed orders. But this kid… they don’t seem to work for anybody but themself. He didn’t think that was even an option. There’s something about them, with all their loudmouthed disobedience, that seems too irresistible to forget, drawing him in with every new interaction they have.
Before them, he thought he knew his place, knew exactly where he belonged. But now, he’s not so sure. With all the things he’s seen, the sickening images he’s discovered….
It’s that thought that lingers on his mind as he creeps down the darkened halls, following the same pathway as that night, so many days prior. And it is just his luck that only feet away, the same spy from before turns the corner, boots clattering together as they briskly stomp down the corridor.
Atlas picks up his pace, sticking to the shadows as he follows along. Guilt brews in his chest, eating away at his insides. Cato put her trust in him, and he’s breaking it, doing this. Fraternizing with the enemy. But he forces the unwanted emotions down, taking a breath to steady himself. He needs to find out more. He needs to… He needs to prove them wrong.
The spy waltzes along the hallway, not checking to see if they’re being followed, before finally coming to a stop in the research wing, in front of the steel-panelled room from last time. It is a little fumbling inside their pockets that follows before suddenly they produce a small green card — one unlike any of the others Atlas has seen before. Stolen, no doubt. He doesn’t take his eyes off of them as they slip inside, the doors coming apart with a little hiss. He quickly steps in behind him, all his movements near-silent. Not even the scuff of his boot against the cement can be heard.
He stands near the back of the room, unmoving, his figure clouded by the shadows, as the spy makes a beeline for the desk in the far corner. They don’t waste any time, hastily ripping apart the drawers and retrieving another singular black hard drive. It doesn’t look like anything special, no different than the one he saw a few days ago. There isn’t even a number code to differentiate it from the others.
They plop down in the chair, immediately plugging the hard drive into the computer without a second thought. The computer is quick to boot up, dull blue light flashing from the screen, illuminating the plain gray of their surroundings. Unlike the other computer, all the folders inside this one are separated differently, labeled by decades instead. Atlas peers closer as the spy clicks at the mouse, pulling up a file, this one with a more recent date.
He’s sure that nothing bad will be in this file. Surely someone would have put a stop to these experiments by now. Maybe… the previous videos had been taken a long time ago, from way before Cato had even become head director. From before their leader had come into power. Maybe—
You’re lying to yourself, a voice at the back of his head unhelpfully supplies. You saw the dates.
He quickly shakes that thought off, eyes narrowing as a large wall of text pops up on screen. He draws closer, beginning to read.
“Jesus.” The spy mutters, a frown etched upon their lips.
There is a column, in darker text than the rest, listing the current Elites accepted into the new year. The column beside it is smaller, recording how many were left alive by the end of the year. The most recently recorded was twenty-one at the beginning of the year.
Six are left at the end.
“Hey, you,” the clipped voice of the spy cuts through the tension, teeth gritted. “Come look at this.”
Atlas flinches at the sudden sound, hesitating for a second. Did they know he was here the entire time? He’d been so careful as to not alert them of his presence.
But this was what he had been hoping for all along, wasn’t it? Running into them again, talking to them about the files…
He pauses for a moment, before very reluctantly stepping forwards to lean down next to the stranger, staring at whatever has caught their attention.
They turn to eye him for a second, dark eyes flicking over his face, before they scoot to the side, pushing the mouse towards him. “Look at how few people survive. Every year, the number of Elites that make it out is lower than they started with. And these are just the deaths from experimentation. Not even including field deaths.”
Atlas stares at the screen, unsure of what to even make of it. “They weren’t properly prepared.” He murmurs weakly, still desperately trying to cling onto the Eden that he knew, before they showed up and ruined everything.
Being an Elite was what he had always wanted… wasn’t it? Was he really going to let this stranger dissuade him against it? After all he had done to reach his goal? This is why he trained so hard. Being an Elite was never meant to be easy. You were supposed to be the best of the best. So what if there were casualties? It came with the territory. In a war like this, you couldn’t avoid it. That’s why Cato was so hard on him, why Evaluation day had so much importance. So that you were prepared.
The spy arches a skeptical brow and huffs. “Weren’t ready for the experiments performed on them? The torture they were put through? Can you really say this is anyone’s fault but Eden’s?” They narrow their eyes, their words hissed and exasperated. “Look at the dates. The same pattern goes back years and years. They knew what they were doing. They knew what the results would be.”
Atlas falls quiet, for once not with a rebuttal. He stares at the dates on the screen, a sort of hollow emptiness working its way through him, sapping the little fight he had left. Cato wouldn’t have lied to him…
Would she?
“Look, like it or not,” the spy sighs, eyes darting back and forth from the computer screen to Atlas. “This is bad. There’s no excuse for it. It’s evil.”
Atlas doesn’t take his eyes off of the screen, even though he can feel their eyes on him. He rereads the information over and over again, his eyes burning from the intensity of his stare. It is almost as if he reads it hard enough, if he burns the words into his skull, memorizes and dissects them, then maybe something here will make sense. Somewhere within these lines there has to be something that explains why they could be possibly doing this. Why the Eden he’s learned about all his life, the Eden he’s lived in, could do something so… so cruel. So inhumane. There is a desperation thrumming inside him, this need deep in his bones, that he just can’t ignore. He needs this. He needs to be right.
He needs to belong.
The spy lets out a long, exasperated puff of air, leaning back lazily in their chair. Their gaze is still focused directly on his face as they speak again, a sort of resignation in their voice. “Is this really something you want to be a part of, now that you know about it? You could come with me, you know? Get the hell away from here.”
Atlas jerks away from them in an instant, the colour draining from his face at their words. “No.” He gasps, the very notion of abandoning his post one that he will not, under any circumstances, even consider. There’s not a time where it could ever be a possibility. What would that make him, if he just got up and ran from his duties, as soon as things got hard? What kind of soldier did such a thing? “No. I’m not leaving.”
Only a coward would run.
The spy lets out a grunt of frustration, their nose scrunching, brows furrowed. “Why not? What’s keeping you now that you know the truth?”
“How should I trust you?” Atlas steps back, panic rising at their insistence. He isn’t supposed to think these things. He isn’t supposed to question these things. He isn’t even supposed to be out.
“Maybe… maybe you just planted this here. To try and trick soldiers into leaving.” He hisses, his thoughts erratic and nonsensical as he fumbles for excuses, his voice growing hoarse. “Maybe you just— just orchestrated this whole thing. I’ve never heard anything like this in all my time here, and I’ve been inside this warehouse for years. Why are there suddenly all these files and pieces of ‘evidence’ just popping up out of nowhere? It doesn’t seem likely.”
Deep down he knows he sounds illogical, but admitting the truth in front of them would be one hundred times worse.
The spy throws their head back with a groan. “How could I plant this? How could I orchestrate footage like that? Files like this?” They spit back, defiant. “Those scientists work here, they walk this building every day. You’re just now finding out about it because it’s been covered up. I uncovered the truth. I’m an outsider. No one here could have known enough to gossip about it.”
“I’m not…” Atlas furrows his eyebrows, dread settling inside his stomach. When he speaks again his voice is not more than a mere whisper, the exact opposite of the loud and commanding tone it held when he first cornered them. “I’m not leaving my home.”
“What’s going to happen to you if you stay here?” The spy counters, leaning towards him with squinted eyes. They don’t seem angry anymore, moreso confused. Just as confused as Atlas currently feels right now, his head a jumbled mess. “Can you really call it home if they plan to destroy you?”
“They won’t…” He murmurs. “They’ll keep me safe.”
“Safe?” The spy scoffs and shakes their head before jabbing a finger at the computer screen. “I bet that’s what they thought too. They probably thought they were safe. They probably thought they were being rewarded.”
“You don’t know anything about me.” He spits.
Still, he isn’t sure he believes what he’s saying. Not anymore.
“I don’t need to. I can see it. You think you’re special. You think it’ll be different with you, that you’re the one out of hundreds that will actually be rewarded.” The spy laughs, their voice dry.
“I will be.”
The spy crosses their arms and raises a defiant brow. “Are you sure?”
The death toll looms in front of him. It seems to be written in pure blood, inked with the regrets of hundreds before him.
Will that be his name on the list, his pale frame on that silver table?
Stop it. He chides himself. This is what he wants. This is what he’s always wanted. He’s been hoping for his Evaluation since he was seven years old, anxiously awaiting the day he would shine, victorious, above the rest. It’s why he trains, why he lives. It’s all he’s ever known. It’s what he’s supposed to do. What does one measly little rebel really know, in the grand scheme of things? Is he really going to listen to them, and their idiocy?
“Y-yes.”
The hesitation only seems like a confirmation to the spy. “No you’re not. You’re trying to convince yourself.” They stand with a huff, reaching forward and snatching the hard drive from out of the computer, tucking it away inside their vest. They level their stare, shouldering past Atlas with a harsh shove. “But who am I to stop you.”
They pause at the door, turning back with one final glare. “I gave you an out. It’ll be your fault for not taking it.
The door shuts behind them with a resounding click, leaving Atlas alone with the darkness. He blinks blankly at the empty computer screen before him, not daring to move.
You reblogged my Absolute Wonder Woman post and summoned me with your tags. Absolute Wonder Woman is one of the best ongoing comics at the moment, but despite starring a character raised in Hell, it is not particularly whumpy. She is simply too good at magic, fighting, and finding allies, to suffer. Issue 20, with the capture and electrocution and all that, is the first time Wonder Woman properly gets whumped. I recommend the comic, but whump alone is not a reason to read it. Better reasons to try it are the writing, creative magic, and downright groundbreaking panel design.
The other comics from DC’s Absolute Universe are heavier on the whump. Absolute Batman has an entire arc of lab whump and body horror, and it might be easier to list what doesn’t happen to Absolute Superman in his comic.
Sincerely,
@faultsandfractures
good to know!! all the absolute DC comics seem pretty interesting, and I especially like the art :> I've also been getting really into comics and graphic novels in general lately so it would be a fun read
