Nevermore

Relationship: The Cat King & Monty

Rating: T

Word Count: 2.3k

Monty has never imagined he could be anything but an extension of Esther's will. Her familiar. Her pet. Her tool. Someone else has something to say about that in the depths of a forest as Monty walks towards his second death.

Relationship: Edwin Paine | Edwin Payne & Charles Rowland (DCU)

Rating: G

Word Count: 3.2k

As a rule ghosts couldn’t feel most things. Until they could.

No no, the infuriating bit? The stalking.

Listen, this is a family of freaks and weirdos. They work so well together because none of them were normal to start with and then they ended up traumatized. It's practically common practice in that family to accept that nothing is what it seems at face value and that all of your siblings are attempting to pry into your private life and cases at any given moment. I think for them it's honestly weirder if you take what they say at face value. They speak a language holy separate from any normally socialized person and it is a language of lies and half-truths that relies on the assumption that all parties are aware of that.

They're the most infuriating bitches around.

They'll tell someone something and appear to do the opposite and when confronted will have the most convoluted but sound reasoning of why they actually did exactly as they promised too.

They regularly pick people's pockets and hack into personal information because for them? That's practically a love language. They're obnoxious and they aren't even aware of it. Someone asks them to just tell the truth and they react like they've been shot. They're probably offended when they realize that someone hasn't been at least attempting to dig into them back, like come on man. I thought we were friends but you didn't even Google how long Nightwings been around? We've already put the bar on the floor for you guys? My siblings already have a full dossier ready on you because they caught us on camera in your home city that during that 2 minute conversation we had 3 months ago. They send it to me a few hours later. I think they got Oracle to help cause usually it takes them at least 12 hours.

You think they're being nice and friendly and then you realize that they have a nice little file compiled of everything you've done in the last five years, where you went to school and every not your teachers ever made about your behavior a decade ago when you were still a high schooler and fairly normal. If asked they'd probably be willing to bring out the family tree they built for you. They know what you did last summer better than you know what you did last summer. They have pictures, pictures that should be impossible because there's no way they were stalking you then and those sure don't look like security camera footage.

The Morning Comes

Relationship: Kelly Severide/Matthew Casey

Rating: T

Word Count: 3.5k

It had started mildly enough. A sore throat, and a fever of less than 100 degrees. Barely even noticeable in the middle of a rough Chicago winter where every other day included a sore throat or a cough at the least. Inconsequential enough that he’d rolled out of bed and stumbled his way into the kitchen for a glass of water and promptly forgotten about it. 

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I think I know how atlas felt

Relationship: Kelly Severide/Matthew Casey

Rating: T

Word Count: 8.5k

Truck 81, Squad 3, Ambulance 61 Structural Collapse It's just as they’re reaching the center of the building that their luck runs out. or Severide and a feat of endurance to save Casey's life.

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Not that it would have mattered, no matter how close they were because CT-9904 was too distracted by the never ending ache tearing apart his skull, leaving him broken at the seams. CT-9904 would miss because his hands never stopped shaking, because he couldn’t aim when he could barely lift his rifle.

His finger jerked on the trigger, a bolt of light snapping towards the traitors back as pain swelled and someone screamed, a shriek of pain as he crumbled. 

There was one truth the batch knew.

Crosshair never missed. 

Besides, the rumors can be useful. Especially for those sent to deal with the Senates woes, smiling just a little too wide in a negotiation they would rather ruin. Listening as the one’s who “requested” their aid take and take and take while they grit their teeth and hide their fangs. It lets them get away with things it lets them bend the rules when they leave a target breathing and hope they’ll make it. When little things go wrong, parts disconnecting, a weapon jammed at just the wrong time.

When shipments of living beings are lost and no one can quite figure out how. After all, the Senate will outlaw slavery, that doesn’t mean they intend to enforce it. Shadows twist and they strike when no one’s looking. Who will think of the Senate’s dogs when the strikes are so vicious in their effectiveness?

It is better to be considered defanged warriors. Better for the people of the galaxy to think them hopeless pacifists than to see them for what they are. They know what happens when people know after all. The Senate likes to play at kindness. Likes to tell them they are appreciated, they are members of the Republic. They are more than the hunting hounds the Senate says with wide smiles.

It would work if they couldn’t taste the lie in the air.

-

The young do not go to the Rotunda. It is dangerous after all, to send them to a place they must hold their tongue and their form. To hope that they won’t speak and snarl and strike. After all, younglings have a tendency towards the rather more direct tactics. And Padawans are rarely allowed after them. Only when their master thinks them ready and only when their master will be present.

Above them the General flitted through the water, eyes sweeping across the walls. Monnk simply signaling for the men to draw closer as they waited for the General signal. Monnk eyed the two stone pillars that jutted up a few meters before the true entrance to the canyon, stone embedded with the odd native coral that was scattered throughout the canyons here.

(Hunting, his eyes just a touch wrong. The water around him too still as he swept through above them. Ready to sink claw and fang into his enemy. Stilling, searching.)

look and see (the void between stars)

It’s three battles into the war before Ponds starts to realize that the vode are missing something. Its a realization that hits in the middle of a battle when the general’s head snaps to the side and he could swear he saw his eyes shift, iris and pupil overtaken by something closer to the void of the stars, his lips quirking and fangs barely visible and suddenly it isn’t the general in front of him but something else.

He’d have been allowed out and about for like a week before he runs into Nicky and Joe and automatically greets them since they know each other and his momma raised a polite young man thank you very much, the two just awkwardly nod along and try to run away as discreetly as possible before Steve has the time to think about is he fact that logically they should be old men by now.