Hi! I'm Ruth, they/them pronouns, 26, and I enjoy most types of whump! I do art, graphic design and writing.
I try my best to tag, but if I miss a content warning you'd like added, please just shoot me an ask! I won't tag lady whump as a content warning, but anything else I will if you ask.
Whump 2024 advent calendar
Favourite tropes:
RECOVERY WHUMP!!!
Found family
Gagging
Muzzles
Pet whump
Whumper pressing down on whumpee's back to keep them from getting up
Branding
Whipping
Caretaker turned whumpee/whumpee turned caretaker
Hero/villain whump
Tall whumpee/small caretaker (or vice versa)
Tall whumpee/small whumper
G/t whump
Whumpee thinks caretaker is their new whumper
Incompetent/clueless caretaker (they're trying their best but they have no idea they're doing)
General contents: pet whump, dehumanisation, amnesia, PTSD
Sam and Lucan 'verse
In a world where non-humans are enslaved, our characters are just trying to live out their lives in peace. And failing, mostly.
General contents: non-human characters, institutionalised slavery, fantasy racism, dehumanisation, PTSD
A Death in the Family
When his estranged father dies, Tristam, against his better judgement, attends the will reading, and ends up leaving with long-term bloodbag Sunday Afolayan and Eldrida, his father's former employee (and a terribly mistreated one at that, it turns out).
Even with Aileen and Evelyn's expert advice and friendship, it's tricky to bring Sunday back from the depths of his enthrallment, and Eldrida's struggling too. Six years under the cruel fist of Barnabas Sharpe was hard to survive.
It's a difficult recovery for both of them. But surely, things can't get worse now.
Contains: vampire whumper, non-human whumpee (vampire), lady whump, conditioned whumpee, disabled characters (Tristam has ADHD, Eldrida has anophthalmia, and Sunday has joint problems, a badly-healed arm, and an absence epilepsy-like condition), recovery whump, multiple whumpees
Botanist Whumpee
When the rich and powerful Sebastian Beaumont offers Alyssa a place to stay, she doesn’t expect to become his captive for three years. And when Silver rescues her at a party… well, the only thing she’s absolutely sure is better is that they don’t have a basement. They don’t have much of anything, actually. And she doesn’t know whether she can trust them or not, but she stays anyway. With no-one left to care about her, and Beaumont using all his money and connections to search for the pair of them, where else is she supposed to go?
Contains: recovery whump, captivity, lady whump, somewhat defiant whumpee, found family, intimate whumper
Cian and Row
In a world where superpowers are real, heroes and villains exist, and there's a large black market in powered people, Rowan's been enslaved for as long as they can remember. They're befriended when they're three by Cian Sinclair, a local empathic five year old, and at the age of eleven is rescued and adopted by the Sinclairs. Years later they become a supervillain, disappear for five years and reappear to reunite with their family, and attract another enemy, one far more powerful than their previous captors and obsessed with their healing powers.
Contains: slavery, PTSD, minor whump, past minor whump, immortal whumpee, discrimination, villain whump
Immortal Cannon Fodder
Masterlist part 2 - character profiles, character asks
Phoenix, an immortal hero, joins a team that hurts them and uses them as cannon fodder. But their teammates are only doing what's necessary to help them all survive. Phoenix's regular sacrifices are necessary. And it's not like they've got anywhere else to go anyway.
It takes the arrival of Kai, a wolf-shifter and telekinetic, to help them see what's going on. But a friendship and a promised eventual transfer can't fix everything.
Contains: hero whump, abuse, past abuse, immortal whumpee
MD-264N
When MD-264N, the government's best weapon, runs to avoid being decommissioned and collapses on the doorstep of a small ragtag team of rebels, it's a surprise to everyone. But despite resistance, the weapon, now known as Morgan, starts to find their place, and the rebels soon find that they'll do anything to keep them free.
Contains: living weapon, found family, dehumanisation/self dehumanisation, team dynamics, reluctant caretaker (not the main caretaker), recovery whump, caretaker whump, disabled caretaker (forearm amputee)
Operation Badger
In the year 2037, Earth is invaded by the Stex. 14 years later, superpowers start appearing in teenagers, and are apparently humanity's best defence against the aliens. What is Earth Security to do but train these people up as weapons?
Contains: sci-fi, living weapons, team whump, multiple whumpees, minor whump, aliens, disabled character
Out of the Frying Pan
Five years ago Elis, former bodyguard and weapon of Lord Wulfric, was rescued from a fiery death by Col and Sæwin. He now lives in relative peace with them in Sorestan, a peace that's abruptly disrupted after an unwelcome visitor brings his past colliding with the present.
Contains: medieval whump, fantasy elements, living weapon
Out of the Water
Túathal, a merman, is captured and kept prisoner by pirates for his valuable scales. While Robyn, the youngest of the crew and not very popular, takes care of him, the others only bother with his scales (and anything that makes their extraction easier). Especially James. And once the rest of the pirates discover that Robyn and Túathal have become fond of each other, things only get worse.
Whumpee is captured by a Whumper who wants to teach them survival skills. Painfully.
Contains: survival skills whump, sadistic whumper
The Greatest Show on Earth
Damon and Pythias are an unwilling two-person sideshow act in The Greatest Show on Earth, Pythias forced to kill Damon multiple times a day for the entertainment of paying circus patrons. Damon has been in captivity since birth, Pythias not quite so long (although certainly long enough), and they're both ready to get out.
But the outside world is even trickier to navigate than they imagined.
Contains: non-human whumpees, multiple whumpees, immortal whumpee, lady whump, circus whump, public whump, captivity, recovery whump, temporary character death (both implied and shown at times), guilty whumpee, whumpee as caretaker
Other writing:
Non-series whump masterlist
Miscellaneous writing, art and graphics
Fanfic/fanart (AO3)
BBC Merlin, Good Omens, Doctor Who, The Sandman, The Murderbot Diaries
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
For anyone worried because they write the same trope more than once: I love that shit. I will love that first one and I will still be excited for the thirtieth one. Let these idiots do the same thing over and over again. We deserve that.
A few years ago, I had an anon go in my ask box saying along the lines of "Why do you post the same thing over and over? You're clearly not delivering good stuff on the table." Likely over me writing/talking about the used as bait trope.
So. I wrote and talked about it more out of spite >:)
Kestrel found Dami in the service corridor, sitting on the floor beside the locked supply closet, staring at their hands. Their back was against the wall. Their knees were drawn up awkwardly in the narrow space, their six-foot-three frame folded down as small as it could reasonably become.
She sat beside them, shoulder fitting beneath theirs. She leaned against their side, solid and familiar, and took one of their hands between both of hers.
For a while, neither of them spoke.
“She remembered me,” Dami said.
“I know.”
“Remembered her.”
“I know.”
“Broke her wrist.”
Kestrel tightened her grip around their hand.
“Yes.”
Dami’s thumb moved once over her knuckles.
“She was seventeen.”
Kestrel closed her eyes.
They hadn’t said that in the room.
They’d kept it from Tess because telling her they remembered exactly how young she’d been would’ve been another wound.
“Thought bringing her back myself was better," Dami said.
“You were wrong.”
“Yes.”
“You were also being used.”
“Yes.”
“Both things are true.”
Dami stared at the opposite wall.
“Don’t know what to do with that.”
“You live with it.” Kestrel rested her head against their upper arm. “You make different choices now. You respect every boundary she gives you. You don’t ask her to make you feel better.”
“Wouldn’t.”
“I know you wouldn’t.”
Their fingers closed around hers.
Kestrel stayed tucked against their side, quiet enough that Dami didn’t have to perform being all
right.
After several minutes, footsteps sounded at the end of the corridor.
Dami went rigid.
Kestrel didn’t move away.
Lucky appeared around the corner, saw them on the floor, and stopped.
“Tess is with Charity,” he said. “She’s asking questions about the east residence.”
Dami looked up. “Shouldn’t have to think about where I am.”
“She wants to know the boundaries are real.”
“They are.”
“I told her that.”
Dami glanced toward the community room. “Does she want me to leave now?”
“No. She wants the route maps.”
Kestrel lifted her head. “The internal ones?”
Lucky nodded. “Only for this building. She wants to mark the rooms she’ll use and the times she expects to be here.”
Dami began to stand. She caught their wrist.
“You’re not going back in there.”
“Need to see the routes.”
“I’ll bring you a copy.”
“Can adjust my schedule now.”
“You can do it from home.”
Dami looked down at her. She held their gaze.
“This isn’t an emergency,” she said. “You don’t need to solve it before you’re allowed to breathe.”
Dami’s expression flattened.
Lucky folded his arms. “That means she’s right.”
“Understood what she meant.”
“Good. Saves time.”
Kestrel climbed to her feet, using Dami’s forearm for balance. Once she was steady, she offered both hands.
Dami took them.
She hauled uselessly.
Dami rose mostly under their own power. They let her pretend she’d done it.
“You’re going home,” Kestrel said.
“I drove.”
“No, Lucky drove.”
“I can drive his car.”
“You’re not stealing Lucky’s car.”
“I know the access code.”
Lucky’s eyes narrowed. “Why do you know the access code?”
“Entered it in front of me.”
“One time.”
They shrugged. “All I needed.”
Kestrel rubbed a hand over her face. “This household is exhausting.”
“You married Wick twice,” Lucky said. “You made an informed decision.”
Dami looked toward the community room again.
The faint humor disappeared.
“What if she changes her mind?”
“Then we deal with it,” Kestrel said.
“Where would I go?”
Her face hardened.
“Home.”
They stared at her.
“Home,” Kestrel repeated. “With me and Wick.”
Dami hummed. “Might be impractical.”
“I’m not discussing the practicality of whether you’re allowed to live in your own house.”
“Not my house.”
Lucky made a quiet, pained noise.
Kestrel stared up at them. “You have a bedroom. You have keys. You’re on the emergency contact list. You reorganized the pantry and terrorized three separate contractors about the upstairs smoke detectors.”
“They were incorrect.”
“You live there.”
Dami looked away.
Kestrel stepped closer and put one hand at the back of their neck, not forcing their gaze down, simply holding them there.
“You’re my partner,” she said. “That doesn’t stop being true because someone has every right to be afraid of you.”
Dami swallowed.
“Platonic,” Lucky added.
Kestrel looked at him.
“What?” he said. “Wick’s going to ask whether we clarified.”
“You’re thinking about sleeping in an alley so you don’t inconvenience anyone.”
“Doesn’t affect motor function.”
“It affects my willingness to sit beside you at seventy miles an hour.”
Dami considered that.
“All right.”
They left through the rear exit.
Dami sat in the back with Kestrel, though the front passenger seat was empty. Kestrel stayed close enough that their arms touched from shoulder to elbow.
Neither spoke during the drive.
When they reached the house, the downstairs lights were on.
Wick was waiting in the sitting room with a blanket over his legs, his crutches leaned against the side of the sofa. A mug sat untouched on the table beside him.
He took one look at their faces and pushed himself more upright.
“What happened?”
Kestrel closed the door behind them.
“A survivor recognized Dami.”
Wick went still.
Dami remained near the entryway.
“They were sent to retrieve her,” Kestrel continued. “Years ago.”
Wick’s eyes moved to Dami.
He didn’t ask whether it was true.
He didn’t ask what WRU had made them do.
He asked, “What does she need?”
Dami answered from beside the door. “Separate routes. No shared rooms. No information about her schedule. Doesn’t want me near her.”
“All right.”
“Might decide I need to leave.”
Wick’s fingers tightened around the edge of the blanket.
“The building or the organization?”
“Hasn’t decided.”
“And if she asks for the organization?”
“I’ll resign.”
Kestrel took off her coat with sharp, angry movements.
Wick watched Dami carefully. “Did Kestrel tell you that means you’re moving out of our house?”
“No.”
“Did you decide it anyway?”
Dami didn’t answer.
Wick closed his eyes briefly.
“D-Damiel.”
Dami flinched at the use of their full name.
Not because Wick sounded angry.
Because he sounded tired and frightened.
“This is your home,” Wick said. “Not Foundation housing. Not temporary placement. Not a reward for good behavior.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
Dami stood very still.
Wick reached for one of his crutches.
Kestrel crossed the room immediately, but he shook his head.
“I’m coming to them.”
“You’re already in pain.”
“I’m aware.”
Dami moved first.
They crossed the room and crouched in front of the sofa so Wick wouldn’t have to stand. Even kneeling, they were nearly level with him.
Wick set the crutch aside.
For a moment, his hand hovered near Dami’s face.
“May I?”
Dami nodded.
Wick rested his palm on their cheek.
“You hurt someone,” he said.
“Yes.”
“She’s allowed to hate you.”
“Yes.”
“She’s allowed to want nothing from you except distance.”
“Yes.”
“None of that means WRU gets to take the rest of your life too.”
Dami’s eyes lowered.
Wick’s thumb moved once against their skin.
“You came home,” he said. “That was the right choice.”
“Kestrel made me.”
“I assisted,” Kestrel said.
“She threatened to involve Lucky.”
“That’s not a threat. That’s logistics.”
Wick almost smiled, but it didn’t hold.
“What did you do to her?” he asked quietly.
Kestrel looked at him.
Dami answered before she could intervene.
“Tracked her to a motel. She tried to escape through the bathroom window. I restrained her. I broke her wrist and returned her to the facility.”
Wick’s face went pale.
Dami watched him absorb it.
“Told her to stop making it worse,” they added. “Believed I was keeping her from getting hurt more.”
“Were you?”
“No.”
Wick looked down at his hand where it rested against Dami’s neck.
“No,” he repeated.
Dami waited for him to pull away.
He didn’t.
His expression was stricken, but his hand stayed exactly where it was.
“I don’t know what to say,” Wick admitted.
“Don’t have to say anything.”
“I want to.”
Kestrel came around the sofa and sat beside him. One hand settled over Wick’s wrist. The other reached down and rested between Dami’s shoulders.
The three of them stayed connected in the quiet room.
Wick took a careful breath.
“I believe her,” he said.
“So do I.”
“I’m horrified by what happened to her.”
“Yes.”
“And I love you.”
Dami looked up sharply.
Wick’s mouth trembled.
“Not in the same way I love Kestrel,” he said. “Before you make that face.”
“Didn’t make a face.”
“You did.”
“It was minimal.”
Kestrel’s hand pressed more firmly between Dami’s shoulders. “He means you’re family.”
“Know what he means.”
“Do you?”
Dami hesitated.
“No.”
Wick nodded as though that was the answer he’d expected.
“It means you don’t have to be innocent to come home,” he said. “None of us are.”
“Not comparable.”
“No. It isn’t.” Wick’s stutter caught briefly as his voice tightened. “I’m not comparing it. I’m telling you that this house isn’t a courtroom. You don’t lose your bedroom because your history becomes difficult for us to look at.”
Dami’s eyes flicked toward the stairs.
Their bedroom was on the second floor. The same room they’d chosen because it had two windows, a clear line to the landing, and morning light at seven thirty. Their mug was in the kitchen. Their clothes were in the dryer because Wick had complained that Dami couldn’t keep wearing the same four shirts while living with people who owned a pharmaceutical company. Their shoes were beside Kestrel’s by the back door. There were three toothbrushes in the upstairs bathroom. The house had adapted around them so gradually they’d never been able to identify the moment staying had become living.
“Might need to stop working at the center,” Dami said.
“Maybe,” Kestrel said.
“Should give my job to someone else.”
“Maybe.”
“Could be recognized again.”
“Yes.”
Dami looked at her.
Kestrel didn’t soften the truth.
“We’ll need a protocol,” she said. “A real one. Not one that assumes your past stays abstract because it’s convenient for us.”
Dami nodded.
“No surprise contact,” Wick said. “Staff should know how to remove you from the space without treating you like an active threat.”
“Survivors should be told about retrievers working with the Foundation,” Dami said.
Kestrel considered it. “Without identifying you unless necessary.”
“They should know.”
“They should have enough information to make choices,” she agreed. “But WRU doesn’t get a public list of every former product working here.”
Dami’s jaw tightened.
She was right. That didn’t mean they liked it.
Wick leaned back against the sofa, fatigue creeping into his face.
“Tomorrow,” he said. “We’ll make the protocol tomorrow.”
“Should be done tonight.”
“No,” Kestrel and Wick said together.
Dami looked between them.
Wick pulled the blanket aside.
“Come up here.”
“Not enough room.”
“There could be. Kes needs to stop taking up two-thirds of the sofa.”
“I’m 5’2.”
“You occupy space with intent.”
Kestrel shifted closer to Wick, leaving a narrow section on her other side.
Dami stared at it.
“Butt is bigger than that.”
“Sit on the floor, then,” Kestrel said. “But you’re not going upstairs alone to inventory every bad thing you’ve ever done.”
Dami sat on the rug between their knees.
Kestrel’s hand immediately returned to the back of their neck. Wick rested his bare foot against Dami’s thigh beneath the edge of the blanket.
Ordinary contact.
No ceremony.
No absolution.
Just the physical language the three of them had built together: I’m here. You’re here. Nobody is leaving tonight.
After a while, Wick asked, “Did she hit you?”
“Yes.”
Kestrel glanced at him. “How did you know?”
“There’s a mark.”
Dami touched their cheek, then stopped when they remembered there was no useful sensation to check.
“Hit me twice.”
Wick’s expression tightened.
“She was scared,” Dami said.
“I know.”
“Had a right to be angry.”
“I know that too.”
Wick’s hand found Dami’s shoulder.
“Knowing why someone hurt you doesn’t mean I enjoy seeing the mark.”
Dami didn’t respond.
Kestrel’s fingers moved through the short hair at the base of their skull, separating a small tangle.
“Tess said she doesn’t want WRU deciding Dami is a monster,” she told Wick.
Dami turned their head slightly. “Said she wasn’t giving me anything.”
“She wasn’t.”
Wick nodded. “That belongs to her.”
“Yes.”
“But you heard it.”
Dami looked toward the dark window.
“Yes.”
“Good.”
They sat there until Wick’s foot grew cold against Dami’s leg and Kestrel’s hand became heavy with sleep.
Dami stayed awake longer than both of them.
They listened to Wick’s uneven breathing settle. They felt Kestrel’s fingers loosely curled against the back of their neck. Then, carefully, Dami rested one hand over Wick’s ankle and the other over Kestrel’s wrist.
Dami had been carrying a box of donated coats when the survivor saw them.
Nothing dramatic happened at first.
The box didn’t fall.
No one screamed.
The survivor simply stopped breathing.
They stood just inside the community room with Charity beside them, one hand still curled around the strap of a canvas bag. They’d arrived twenty minutes ago under a name nobody had verified and nobody intended to. Their hair was badly cut, as if they’d taken scissors to it in a bathroom mirror. Their coat was too large. Their eyes had tracked every door since they came inside.
Then they landed on Dami.
Six foot three. Broad shoulders. Dark clothing. The same controlled walk they’d had in the facility, every footstep placed deliberately, their body quiet enough to disappear despite its size.
Dami stopped.
The box remained braced against their chest.
The survivor’s face emptied.
“No,” they whispered.
Charity looked between them. “Tess?”
Dami’s grip tightened on the cardboard.
The survivor backed into the wall.
“No. No, you said this place was safe.”
“It is,” Charity said carefully.
“You said they couldn’t come here.”
Dami lowered the box to the floor without taking their eyes off the survivor. Their movements were slow now, exaggeratedly visible.
“Tess,” Charity said, “nobody’s going to touch you.”
“They already did.”
The words came out shredded.
Across the room, Kestrel looked up from the folder she’d been reading.
Lucky rose from his chair.
Neither of them moved closer.
Dami stood with their hands empty at their sides.
The survivor stared at them.
“You,” they said.
Dami didn’t deny it.
The survivor’s breath hitched so hard it hurt to hear.
“You came to the motel.”
Dami’s expression changed by less than most people would’ve noticed. Their jaw went rigid. Their eyes sharpened, not with threat, but memory.
“Yes,” they said.
Charity’s attention snapped to them. “Dami.”
“They asked me a direct question.”
“I didn’t ask you a question!” Tess shouted. “I know it was you.”
Dami went still.
The whole room seemed to arrange itself around that stillness.
Tess pressed harder against the wall as though she could force herself through it.
“You were wearing a gray jacket,” she said. “There was blood on the sleeve.”
Dami glanced down at their left arm.
An old reflex.
“Yes.”
“You knocked twice.”
“Yes.”
“You said you were from the front desk.”
“Yes.”
Lucky shifted nearer to the hallway, quietly clearing the path to the exit. Kestrel set the folder aside. She moved only as far as the edge of the table, keeping her body low and her hands visible.
Tess wasn’t looking at anyone but Dami.
“I knew you were lying,” she said. “I climbed out the bathroom window.”
Dami swallowed.
“You landed badly.”
Tess made a sound like she’d been struck.
Charity turned on Dami. “Stop.”
“I’m sorry,” Dami said immediately.
The words were for Tess, not Charity.
Tess’s whole body shook. “You remember.”
“Yes.”
“How many people did you drag back?”
Dami’s mouth opened.
Closed.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“No.”
The honesty was terrible.
Tess laughed once, breathless and ugly. “Of course you don’t.”
Kestrel’s gaze moved to Dami, a silent warning against explanation. Against reaching for conditioning as a shield. Against trying to make the damage smaller because they hadn’t chosen the hands that made them do it.
Dami understood.
They always understood Kestrel fastest when she said nothing.
Tess touched the side of her neck.
There was no collar there now, but her fingers found the place one had been.
“You caught me behind the ice machine,” she said. “I hit you with a pipe.”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t even react.”
“I couldn’t feel it.”
“I hit you again.”
“Yes.”
“And you kept coming.”
Dami’s breathing had changed. Measured in. Measured out. Too deliberate to be calm.
Tess stared at them with tears running down her face.
“You looked at me like I was nothing.”
Dami’s voice came quieter. “I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I remember your room number. I remember the broken window latch. I remember you’d shoved the dresser against the door, but the carpet caught under the left leg, so it didn’t hold.” Their fingers curled against their palms. “I remember you had no shoes. I remember there was glass in your foot.”
“Dami,” Lucky said softly.
They stopped.
Tess looked sick.
Dami took one step backward.
Then another.
“You remember all of that,” Tess whispered, “but you don’t remember how many of us there were?”
“No.”
“Why?”
Dami’s face had gone blank in the way it did when blankness was the only thing holding everything else in.
“Because they didn’t let me keep names.”
Tess flinched.
Dami did too.
Not from pain. From the sight of it.
“They gave me photographs,” Dami said. “Routes. Likely shelters. Medical risks. Whether you were expected to fight.”
“You broke my wrist.”
“Yes.”
The word landed without defense.
“You put your knee on my back.”
“Yes.”
“I couldn’t breathe.”
Dami’s voice nearly failed. “I know.”
“You told me to stop making it worse.”
Dami closed their eyes.
There it was.
The sentence.
Not a command WRU had programmed into them. Not a script handed over by a handler. Something Dami had said with their own mouth because Tess had been fighting and Dami had needed her still.
When they opened their eyes again, Tess was waiting.
“I said that,” Dami said.
“You said it like you were helping me.”
“Thought I was.”
Tess stared at them.
Dami’s voice thinned.
“They told me the retrieval team coming after me would use restraints that damaged shoulders. Said you had a heart condition. Said if I brought you in quietly, you wouldn’t be punished.” Their gaze dropped to the floor between them. “Believed them.”
“And did they punish me?”
Dami didn’t answer.
Tess’s face twisted. “Did they?”
“Yes.”
Dami said it so softly the room almost lost it.
Tess crossed the space before anyone realized she’d moved.
Lucky tensed.
Kestrel lifted one hand, stopping him without touching either of them.
Tess slapped Dami across the face.
The crack echoed off the walls.
Dami’s head turned with the force of it but they didn’t raise their hands. They couldn’t feel the sting. They could only hear it, calculate the angle, register the heat blooming in Tess’s palm and the horror on Charity’s face.
Tess hit them again.
They stood there.
The third time, Kestrel moved. She caught Tess’s wrist gently before the strike landed and released it the moment Tess stopped pulling.
“You don’t have to protect them,” Tess said.
“I’m not.” Kestrel’s voice was calm enough to cut. “I’m protecting you from having to wonder later whether you became someone you didn’t want to be.”
Tess yanked her hand back.
Dami’s cheek was reddening.
They didn’t touch it.
Kestrel looked at them. “Leave the room.”
Tess gave a broken laugh. “That’s it?”
“No.” Kestrel didn’t look away from Dami. “It’s the first thing.”
Dami nodded.
They bent to pick up the box.
“Leave it,” Charity said.
They straightened again.
For one second, they looked uncertain where to put their hands. Then they held them loosely in front of their body, visible and empty.
“Won’t come into this wing while you’re here,” they said quietly Tess. “Lucky can tell me the routes. Won’t see me unless you ask to.”
“I’m never going to ask.”
They nodded. Their lips pressed together.
Tess’s breathing was ragged. “I spent six years thinking you were coming through every door.”
Dami looked at the doorway behind her, then deliberately shifted farther from it so they weren’t blocking the exit.
“Won’t come through this one again.”
Something in Tess’s expression cracked.
Not forgiveness.
Nothing close.
Just the shock of being believed without argument.
They turned.
“Wait.”
Their body halted before thought.
Every muscle locked.
Tess saw it.
So did Kestrel.
The command response was small, almost invisible, but survivors knew the language of bodies trained to obey.
Tess’s anger faltered.
Dami stayed facing the hallway.
“You were one of them,” she said.
“Yes.”
“But you were wearing a collar too.”
The room went silent.
Dami’s hand rose halfway to their neck before they stopped it.
“Yes.”
“I thought it was tactical gear.”
“Was made to look like it.”
Tess wiped her face with the heel of her hand. “Did they send someone after you when you ran?”
“Yes.”
“Did they catch you?”
Dami looked toward Kestrel. She held their gaze, steady and close. She didn’t answer for them.
“Yes,” Dami said.
Tess stood very still.
“What happened?”
“That isn’t something they owe you,” Charity said.
Dami’s gaze remained on Tess. “I was returned.”
The phrasing was clinical. WRU language. Safer than saying what return had meant.
Tess understood anyway.
“And then they sent you back out.”
“Yes.”
“To do it to somebody else.”
“Yes.”
Tess’s mouth trembled.
Dami waited.
There was no version of this where they asked her to see the collar before the hands. No version where their captivity erased hers. They’d learned that guilt could become another demand if placed in the wrong person’s lap.
So they stood quietly and carried it themselves.
Tess looked at Kestrel. “You knew?”
“I knew what they were trained for,” Kestrel said. “I didn’t know they’d been sent for you.”
“And you let them work here?”
“They don’t do retrievals.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“No.” Kestrel’s voice stayed level. “It isn’t.”
She came around the edge of the table, stopping several feet away.
“Dami doesn’t live here,” she said. “They live with me and Wick. But they work here. They’re part of the Foundation, and we don’t ask anyone they harmed to forgive them, trust them, speak to them, or share space with them.”
Tess’s eyes flashed. “And if I say I want them gone?”
Dami’s shoulders lowered slightly.
They’d already accepted the answer.
Kestrel noticed.
Of course she did.
“This is your first day,” Kestrel said. “You don’t have to make permanent decisions while your body thinks you’re back in that motel. Tonight, Dami goes home with me. You stay here. They won’t return to this wing, use this entrance, or access your schedule.”
“And tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow you still don’t have to decide.”
Tess looked at Dami again.
“You’d go?”
Dami turned slowly enough to face her without startling her.
“Yes.”
“Just because I said so?”
“Don't want it to be unsafe for you.”
Kestrel’s jaw tightened. Her hand flexed once at her side, wanting to reach for Dami and refusing to make Tess watch her comfort them.
Tess saw that too.
“Then what?”
“I’d go home.”
“Where’s home?”
“With Kestrel and Wick.”
The answer was quiet but immediate.
Kestrel’s shoulders eased by a fraction.
Tess looked between them.
“You love them,” she said.
Kestrel answered without hesitation. “Yes.”
Tess flinched.
Kestrel let her.
“They’re my partner,” she continued. “Platonic. They’re family to me and to Wick.”
Dami’s eyes dropped.
“And I believe you,” Kestrel said. “I believe what they did to you. Loving Dami doesn’t require me to lie about that.”
Tess sank into the nearest chair as if her knees had stopped working.
Charity moved closer but didn’t touch her.
After a moment, Tess said, “I don’t want them gone.”
Dami looked up.
“I don’t want to see them,” she added fiercely. “I don’t want them near my room. I don’t want them knowing my schedule. I don’t want them asking about me.”
“They won’t,” Lucky said.
Tess stared down at her hands.
“But I don’t want WRU deciding they’re a monster and that being the end of it.” Her voice shook. “They did that to all of us.”
Dami’s face folded for half a second.
A tiny, involuntary fracture.
Then it was gone.
Tess shot them a look.
Despite everything, a strange sound escaped Lucky. Not laughter. Nearly.
Tess rubbed her palm, the one she’d struck Dami with.
“You really can’t feel that?”
“No.”
“That doesn’t make me feel better.”
“Shouldn’t.”
Tess nodded once. Then she looked away.
It was dismissal, and Dami recognized it.
They left without picking up the box.
Kestrel stayed with Tess until Charity had settled beside her and Lucky had brought over a printed floor plan.
Dami had been carrying a box of donated coats when the survivor saw them.
Nothing dramatic happened at first.
The box didn’t fall.
No one screamed.
The survivor simply stopped breathing.
They stood just inside the community room with Charity beside them, one hand still curled around the strap of a canvas bag. They’d arrived twenty minutes ago under a name nobody had verified and nobody intended to. Their hair was badly cut, as if they’d taken scissors to it in a bathroom mirror. Their coat was too large. Their eyes had tracked every door since they came inside.
Then they landed on Dami.
Six foot three. Broad shoulders. Dark clothing. The same controlled walk they’d had in the facility, every footstep placed deliberately, their body quiet enough to disappear despite its size.
Dami stopped.
The box remained braced against their chest.
The survivor’s face emptied.
“No,” they whispered.
Charity looked between them. “Tess?”
Dami’s grip tightened on the cardboard.
The survivor backed into the wall.
“No. No, you said this place was safe.”
“It is,” Charity said carefully.
“You said they couldn’t come here.”
Dami lowered the box to the floor without taking their eyes off the survivor. Their movements were slow now, exaggeratedly visible.
“Tess,” Charity said, “nobody’s going to touch you.”
“They already did.”
The words came out shredded.
Across the room, Kestrel looked up from the folder she’d been reading.
Lucky rose from his chair.
Neither of them moved closer.
Dami stood with their hands empty at their sides.
The survivor stared at them.
“You,” they said.
Dami didn’t deny it.
The survivor’s breath hitched so hard it hurt to hear.
“You came to the motel.”
Dami’s expression changed by less than most people would’ve noticed. Their jaw went rigid. Their eyes sharpened, not with threat, but memory.
“Yes,” they said.
Charity’s attention snapped to them. “Dami.”
“They asked me a direct question.”
“I didn’t ask you a question!” Tess shouted. “I know it was you.”
Dami went still.
The whole room seemed to arrange itself around that stillness.
Tess pressed harder against the wall as though she could force herself through it.
“You were wearing a gray jacket,” she said. “There was blood on the sleeve.”
Dami glanced down at their left arm.
An old reflex.
“Yes.”
“You knocked twice.”
“Yes.”
“You said you were from the front desk.”
“Yes.”
Lucky shifted nearer to the hallway, quietly clearing the path to the exit. Kestrel set the folder aside. She moved only as far as the edge of the table, keeping her body low and her hands visible.
Tess wasn’t looking at anyone but Dami.
“I knew you were lying,” she said. “I climbed out the bathroom window.”
Dami swallowed.
“You landed badly.”
Tess made a sound like she’d been struck.
Charity turned on Dami. “Stop.”
“I’m sorry,” Dami said immediately.
The words were for Tess, not Charity.
Tess’s whole body shook. “You remember.”
“Yes.”
“How many people did you drag back?”
Dami’s mouth opened.
Closed.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“No.”
The honesty was terrible.
Tess laughed once, breathless and ugly. “Of course you don’t.”
Kestrel’s gaze moved to Dami, a silent warning against explanation. Against reaching for conditioning as a shield. Against trying to make the damage smaller because they hadn’t chosen the hands that made them do it.
Dami understood.
They always understood Kestrel fastest when she said nothing.
Tess touched the side of her neck.
There was no collar there now, but her fingers found the place one had been.
“You caught me behind the ice machine,” she said. “I hit you with a pipe.”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t even react.”
“I couldn’t feel it.”
“I hit you again.”
“Yes.”
“And you kept coming.”
Dami’s breathing had changed. Measured in. Measured out. Too deliberate to be calm.
Tess stared at them with tears running down her face.
“You looked at me like I was nothing.”
Dami’s voice came quieter. “I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I remember your room number. I remember the broken window latch. I remember you’d shoved the dresser against the door, but the carpet caught under the left leg, so it didn’t hold.” Their fingers curled against their palms. “I remember you had no shoes. I remember there was glass in your foot.”
“Dami,” Lucky said softly.
They stopped.
Tess looked sick.
Dami took one step backward.
Then another.
“You remember all of that,” Tess whispered, “but you don’t remember how many of us there were?”
“No.”
“Why?”
Dami’s face had gone blank in the way it did when blankness was the only thing holding everything else in.
“Because they didn’t let me keep names.”
Tess flinched.
Dami did too.
Not from pain. From the sight of it.
“They gave me photographs,” Dami said. “Routes. Likely shelters. Medical risks. Whether you were expected to fight.”
“You broke my wrist.”
“Yes.”
The word landed without defense.
“You put your knee on my back.”
“Yes.”
“I couldn’t breathe.”
Dami’s voice nearly failed. “I know.”
“You told me to stop making it worse.”
Dami closed their eyes.
There it was.
The sentence.
Not a command WRU had programmed into them. Not a script handed over by a handler. Something Dami had said with their own mouth because Tess had been fighting and Dami had needed her still.
When they opened their eyes again, Tess was waiting.
“I said that,” Dami said.
“You said it like you were helping me.”
“Thought I was.”
Tess stared at them.
Dami’s voice thinned.
“They told me the retrieval team coming after me would use restraints that damaged shoulders. Said you had a heart condition. Said if I brought you in quietly, you wouldn’t be punished.” Their gaze dropped to the floor between them. “Believed them.”
“And did they punish me?”
Dami didn’t answer.
Tess’s face twisted. “Did they?”
“Yes.”
Dami said it so softly the room almost lost it.
Tess crossed the space before anyone realized she’d moved.
Lucky tensed.
Kestrel lifted one hand, stopping him without touching either of them.
Tess slapped Dami across the face.
The crack echoed off the walls.
Dami’s head turned with the force of it but they didn’t raise their hands. They couldn’t feel the sting. They could only hear it, calculate the angle, register the heat blooming in Tess’s palm and the horror on Charity’s face.
Tess hit them again.
They stood there.
The third time, Kestrel moved. She caught Tess’s wrist gently before the strike landed and released it the moment Tess stopped pulling.
“You don’t have to protect them,” Tess said.
“I’m not.” Kestrel’s voice was calm enough to cut. “I’m protecting you from having to wonder later whether you became someone you didn’t want to be.”
Tess yanked her hand back.
Dami’s cheek was reddening.
They didn’t touch it.
Kestrel looked at them. “Leave the room.”
Tess gave a broken laugh. “That’s it?”
“No.” Kestrel didn’t look away from Dami. “It’s the first thing.”
Dami nodded.
They bent to pick up the box.
“Leave it,” Charity said.
They straightened again.
For one second, they looked uncertain where to put their hands. Then they held them loosely in front of their body, visible and empty.
“Won’t come into this wing while you’re here,” they said quietly Tess. “Lucky can tell me the routes. Won’t see me unless you ask to.”
“I’m never going to ask.”
They nodded. Their lips pressed together.
Tess’s breathing was ragged. “I spent six years thinking you were coming through every door.”
Dami looked at the doorway behind her, then deliberately shifted farther from it so they weren’t blocking the exit.
“Won’t come through this one again.”
Something in Tess’s expression cracked.
Not forgiveness.
Nothing close.
Just the shock of being believed without argument.
They turned.
“Wait.”
Their body halted before thought.
Every muscle locked.
Tess saw it.
So did Kestrel.
The command response was small, almost invisible, but survivors knew the language of bodies trained to obey.
Tess’s anger faltered.
Dami stayed facing the hallway.
“You were one of them,” she said.
“Yes.”
“But you were wearing a collar too.”
The room went silent.
Dami’s hand rose halfway to their neck before they stopped it.
“Yes.”
“I thought it was tactical gear.”
“Was made to look like it.”
Tess wiped her face with the heel of her hand. “Did they send someone after you when you ran?”
“Yes.”
“Did they catch you?”
Dami looked toward Kestrel. She held their gaze, steady and close. She didn’t answer for them.
“Yes,” Dami said.
Tess stood very still.
“What happened?”
“That isn’t something they owe you,” Charity said.
Dami’s gaze remained on Tess. “I was returned.”
The phrasing was clinical. WRU language. Safer than saying what return had meant.
Tess understood anyway.
“And then they sent you back out.”
“Yes.”
“To do it to somebody else.”
“Yes.”
Tess’s mouth trembled.
Dami waited.
There was no version of this where they asked her to see the collar before the hands. No version where their captivity erased hers. They’d learned that guilt could become another demand if placed in the wrong person’s lap.
So they stood quietly and carried it themselves.
Tess looked at Kestrel. “You knew?”
“I knew what they were trained for,” Kestrel said. “I didn’t know they’d been sent for you.”
“And you let them work here?”
“They don’t do retrievals.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“No.” Kestrel’s voice stayed level. “It isn’t.”
She came around the edge of the table, stopping several feet away.
“Dami doesn’t live here,” she said. “They live with me and Wick. But they work here. They’re part of the Foundation, and we don’t ask anyone they harmed to forgive them, trust them, speak to them, or share space with them.”
Tess’s eyes flashed. “And if I say I want them gone?”
Dami’s shoulders lowered slightly.
They’d already accepted the answer.
Kestrel noticed.
Of course she did.
“This is your first day,” Kestrel said. “You don’t have to make permanent decisions while your body thinks you’re back in that motel. Tonight, Dami goes home with me. You stay here. They won’t return to this wing, use this entrance, or access your schedule.”
“And tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow you still don’t have to decide.”
Tess looked at Dami again.
“You’d go?”
Dami turned slowly enough to face her without startling her.
“Yes.”
“Just because I said so?”
“Don't want it to be unsafe for you.”
Kestrel’s jaw tightened. Her hand flexed once at her side, wanting to reach for Dami and refusing to make Tess watch her comfort them.
Tess saw that too.
“Then what?”
“I’d go home.”
“Where’s home?”
“With Kestrel and Wick.”
The answer was quiet but immediate.
Kestrel’s shoulders eased by a fraction.
Tess looked between them.
“You love them,” she said.
Kestrel answered without hesitation. “Yes.”
Tess flinched.
Kestrel let her.
“They’re my partner,” she continued. “Platonic. They’re family to me and to Wick.”
Dami’s eyes dropped.
“And I believe you,” Kestrel said. “I believe what they did to you. Loving Dami doesn’t require me to lie about that.”
Tess sank into the nearest chair as if her knees had stopped working.
Charity moved closer but didn’t touch her.
After a moment, Tess said, “I don’t want them gone.”
Dami looked up.
“I don’t want to see them,” she added fiercely. “I don’t want them near my room. I don’t want them knowing my schedule. I don’t want them asking about me.”
“They won’t,” Lucky said.
Tess stared down at her hands.
“But I don’t want WRU deciding they’re a monster and that being the end of it.” Her voice shook. “They did that to all of us.”
Dami’s face folded for half a second.
A tiny, involuntary fracture.
Then it was gone.
Tess shot them a look.
Despite everything, a strange sound escaped Lucky. Not laughter. Nearly.
Tess rubbed her palm, the one she’d struck Dami with.
“You really can’t feel that?”
“No.”
“That doesn’t make me feel better.”
“Shouldn’t.”
Tess nodded once. Then she looked away.
It was dismissal, and Dami recognized it.
They left without picking up the box.
Kestrel stayed with Tess until Charity had settled beside her and Lucky had brought over a printed floor plan.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
They found Jonah sitting on the floor beneath the window.
Charity had lowered the blinds, but light still bled through the edges in thin white strips. Jonah sat between the bed and the wall with his knees drawn up, both hands clamped over the back of his neck.
He was whispering something.
Kestrel heard it as she approached.
“Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.”
Charity looked up from where she sat several feet away. She didn’t move closer to him.
“He saw his profile,” she said. “One of the volunteers had the segment playing at the front desk.”
“Which volunteer?”
“I already handled it.”
Kestrel nodded.
Jonah looked up. His face had emptied itself.
“They said I’m sick.”
“No,” Kestrel said.
“They said I can’t decide.”
“I heard them.”
“My papers say it.”
Kestrel lowered herself carefully to the floor. Her knees protested, but she didn’t let it change her face. She stayed outside his reach.Dami remained by the door, broad body blocking the hall without blocking Jonah’s exit. Their hands were visible. Their posture stayed loose.
Jonah looked at them.
“They’ll send Retrievers.”
“They might,” Dami said.
Charity glanced toward them. Dami didn’t soften the answer. Kestrel didn’t ask them to.
Jonah’s breathing hitched.
“They’ll take me back.”
“Not from this room,” Kestrel said.
“You don’t know that.”
“No.”
He stared at her.
Kestrel rested her hands on her own knees.
“I know nobody in this room is going to tell you that you belong to someone else.”
His mouth twisted.
“They said I was happy.”
Kestrel thought of the photograph beside the Christmas tree. Hands folded. Eyes on the camera. A smile held in place by something nobody watching breakfast television had been taught to recognize.
“Were you?”
Jonah looked down. It took him a long time to answer.
“Sometimes.”
Charity’s face tightened.
Kestrel only nodded.
“That doesn’t mean you have to go back.”
“They bought me a dog.”
“You can miss the dog.”
“I had my own room.”
“You can miss the room.”
“She used to make soup when I got sick.”
“You can remember that.”
Jonah’s hands slipped from the back of his neck. His fingers were trembling.
“What if they weren’t bad all the time?”
Kestrel leaned forward slightly.
“They didn’t have to be.”
He looked at her then. Really looked. She held his gaze.
“You’re allowed to leave a place that hurt you,” she said. “Even if it also fed you. Even if someone there loved you. Even if you loved them.”
Jonah’s face folded.
Charity moved only when he reached for her. She crossed the space slowly and let him collapse against her shoulder.
Dami looked away to give him privacy. Kestrel stayed on the floor. Her knees hurt badly now.
Dami’s hand appeared in front of her and she took it. They lifted her carefully, one arm circling her waist when her right knee failed to cooperate. Kestrel allowed herself to rest against them for a moment, cheek against the center of their chest.
“You’re overheating,” Dami murmured.
“I’m angry.”
“Also raises body temperature.”
“Thank you, doctor.”
“Not a doctor.”
“You’ve mentioned.”
Their hand moved once over her back.
In the hallway, Lucky was waiting.
“So far,” he said quietly, “twelve people have asked to leave our housing programs.”
Kestrel pulled away from Dami just enough to look at him.
“Because they want to go back?”
“Because they’re afraid staying will get everyone arrested.”
Dami’s expression sharpened.
“That’s the campaign.”
Lucky nodded.
“They’re not trying to persuade the public first. They’re trying to frighten runaways into returning voluntarily.”
“Then the public campaign gives WRU cover,” Kestrel said. “Every person who goes back becomes proof that the activists manipulated them.”
“Closed structure,” Dami murmured. “Outcome confirms the accusation.”
Wick was waiting when they returned upstairs. Counsel had arrived. So had the Foundation’s communications director, two board members, and a woman from security who looked as though she’d like to personally dismantle the nearest news van.
The television was back on.This time, there were six owners arranged in a studio audience.
A man was talking about his wife.
“They told her she didn’t need me,” he said. “They made her afraid of me. Now these people won’t even tell me whether she’s alive.”
The host looked horrified.
The chyron beneath him read:
HUSBAND PLEADS FOR RETURN OF DISABLED WIFE
Kestrel stopped in the doorway.
The man’s wife had arrived at one of their partner clinics with a fractured jaw. No one in the room said it. They didn’t have to.
The communications director turned.
“We need a statement within the hour.”
“We don’t respond to individual cases,” counsel said.
“Then they’ll say we’re hiding behind confidentiality.”
“We are hiding behind confidentiality,” Kestrel said.
Everyone looked at her.
She moved to Wick’s side. He caught her hand and pressed it between both of his.
Dami took the chair on Kestrel’s other side, their knee against hers beneath the table.
The board member nearest the window cleared his throat.
“There may be value in acknowledging that some families are genuinely distressed.”
“Owners,” Lucky said.
The man frowned.
“Excuse me?”
“Some owners are distressed.”
“We cannot use that word publicly.”
Lucky leaned back in his chair.
“I wasn’t suggesting we use it publicly.”
The communications director opened her laptop.
“We need to decide on language. Compassionate. Non-confrontational. Something that doesn’t make us look defensive.”
“They’ve accused us of kidnapping people,” Charity said.
“Yes, which is why sounding defensive will hurt us.”
Wick stared at the television.
The man onscreen had begun to cry.
Wick’s thumb moved over Kestrel’s knuckles, back and forth.
“They’ve rehearsed them,” he said.
Dami nodded.
“Some more than others.”
“How can you tell?” one of the board members asked.
“Pauses,” Dami said. “Told to wait before saying someone’s name. Makes it seem difficult. Emotionally.”
The room went quiet.
Onscreen, the man waited precisely two seconds before whispering his wife’s name.
The security woman swore under her breath.
Wick’s stutter sharpened when he spoke again.
“They’re using f-f-family because nobody wants to be seen standing against families.”
Kestrel watched another photograph appear.
A smiling woman at a picnic table. A hand rested on the back of her neck.
Possessiveness presented as tenderness.
“What do you want to say?” the communications director asked.
Kestrel didn’t answer immediately. She thought of Jonah apologizing. She thought of the twelve people packing because they believed their existence had become dangerous to everyone around them. She thought of owners learning to cry on cue. She thought of Malcolm telling Wick that punishment was care. She thought about Charlotte calling obedience devotion.
Eventually every system learned to use prettier words.
She leaned forward.
“Write this down.” The communications director placed her hands on the keyboard. Kestrel spoke slowly. “The Wickham Foundation supports the right of every adult to make decisions about their own residence, relationships, medical care, and personal safety.”
The keyboard clicked.
“We do not facilitate forced contact between adults and estranged family members.”
Counsel lifted one finger.
“Good.”
“We do not confirm or deny whether any individual has received services through our programs.”
“That’ll become the headline,” the communications director warned.
“Let it.”
She continued. “Privacy is not evidence of coercion. Leaving is not proof of incapacity. Distress does not create entitlement to another person’s location.”
The typing slowed.
One of the board members shifted.
“That last sentence is aggressive.”
“Yes,” Kestrel said.
Wick’s mouth smiled despite himself. Dami’s knee pressed more firmly against hers.
Counsel looked down at his notes.
“We should include something about lawful guardianship orders.”
“No,” Kestrel said.
“We can’t appear to be advising people to violate court orders.”
“We’re not.”
“Then perhaps: the Foundation complies with all applicable—”
“No.”
The lawyer looked up.
Kestrel’s voice remained calm.
Frighteningly calm.
“We don’t advertise our compliance for WRU to clip into a commercial.”
The room fell silent.
Wick brought her hand to his mouth and kissed her knuckles.
“Add one more line,” he said.
The communications director waited.
Wick looked at the television, where another owner was begging a missing pet to come home.
His face was pale. His voice wasn’t steady.
It was still clear.
“Love doesn’t require surveillance,” he said. “And it doesn’t need a recovery team.”
No one spoke for a moment.
Then the communications director typed it.
By noon, the Foundation’s statement was everywhere.
By twelve fifteen, WRU called it heartless.
By twelve twenty, three cable hosts were asking what the Foundation had to hide.
By one, donors had begun sending concerned emails.
At two, a brick came through the front window of the Queens community center.
At three, someone painted KIDNAPPERS across the loading entrance at Falwell Memorial.
At four, the campaign released a second video.
Children this time.
Young adults and teenagers seated in softly lit rooms, asking their missing mothers, fathers, siblings, and caregivers to come back.
Kestrel watched thirty seconds before turning it off.
The office had emptied around them. Wick was exhausted, his head resting against the back of his chair. Dami sat on the carpet beside him, long legs stretched beneath the table.
Kestrel stood at the window. There were cameras across the street. A reporter was speaking into a microphone beneath the awning of the building opposite theirs.
Dami came up behind her.They rested their chin lightly against the top of her head. Wick reached out from his chair until his fingers found the back of her hand. Kestrel turned her palm and linked their fingers.
“They’re going to make this worse,” Wick said.
“Yes.”
“They’re going to find people who go back.”
“Yes.”
“They’ll put them on television.”
Dami’s arms settled around Kestrel’s waist.
“Successful reunification,” they said.
Kestrel watched the cameras.
A chant had started on the pavement below.
Bring them home.
Bring them home.
Bring them home.
The words rose through the glass.
Wick’s hand tightened around hers. Kestrel leaned back into Dami’s chest.
“We don’t answer the campaign,” she said.
Wick looked up at her.
“What do we do?”
Kestrel watched a reporter turn toward the Foundation’s front doors, waiting for someone frightened enough to come outside and give them a better story.
“We make sure nobody has to face it alone.”
Below them, the crowd kept chanting.
Inside the Foundation, locks were checked.
Curtains were drawn.
Phones were distributed to anyone who didn’t have one.
Counsel began filing emergency motions under names WRU hadn’t found yet.
Clinic staff moved medication away from public-facing locations.
Lucky changed every transport route.
Charity sat with the people who’d begun packing and told them they didn’t owe the Foundation bravery.
Nobody used the word rescue.
Nobody claimed to be hiding anyone.
And when evening came, not one person was returned.
Mock execution that stops just a little later than you'd think it would.
Whumpee made to dig their own grave. They're driven out, they dig the whole thing, they're made to lay down in it, but Whumper doesn't get them up. Whumper starts shoveling the dirt in on top of them, to the point that their head is covered, and only uncovers them once they're sure that Whumpee has actually begun to suffocate.
Or a Whumpee who's taken out back. Made to kneel, gun to their head. They beg and plead, but the gun actually fires. Maybe it just fires into the ground beside them, or maybe it fires into Whumpee, just not in a fatal place. Still- Whumpee wasn't expecting them to actually fire it.
Maybe it's not the first time a mock execution has happened. Maybe Whumpee goes through the motions thinking it's another intimidation tactic. But then Whumper starts taking that extra step- and that's when Whumpee starts to panic and beg, but at that point it's already "too late".
whumpee who is so used to being hurt that their mind wanders whenever it happens. not dissociation just- thinking about the chores they still have to do. prioritising.
listing the tasks they won't be able to do once whumper is done with them. the ones they can't afford not to do. thinking about the cleanup - they'll have to stay a bit, to cry and whimper and be pathetic for a while ecause that's what whumper expects, but also, that carpet is dead - and them with it - if whumpee doesn't get started NOW.
planning their route: straight to the bathroom to get the products, the sheets into the washing machine and then straight to scrubbing.
fine as long as whumper doesn't decide to stomp on their hand. or to ruin their ankle again.
The campaign launched at 8:03 on a Tuesday morning. There was no press release and no statement from WRU.
There was a mother crying on television.
Kestrel was halfway through buttoning the cuff of Wick’s shirt when the television in the Foundation’s executive conference room cut from the weather to a photograph of a smiling young man standing beside a Christmas tree.
The photograph was several years old. His hair was longer than Kestrel remembered. His smile was wide and fixed, his hands folded neatly in front of him.
Positioned.
Dami stopped beside the coffee machine and Wick felt Kestrel’s fingers go still against his wrist.
Onscreen, the host leaned toward the woman seated opposite her. She looked to be about sixty with silver-blond hair. She was dressed in a cream blouse. A tasteful gold cross at her throat. She held a crumpled tissue in one hand and a framed photograph in the other.
“Tell us about your son,” the host said gently.
The woman’s mouth trembled.
“Eli is vulnerable,” she said. “He’s always been vulnerable. He needs structure. He needs medication. He needs people who understand his condition.”
Behind her, the screen changed to a photograph of Eli washing dishes. Then another of him kneeling beside a garden bed. Then another of him seated on the floor at the woman’s feet, his head resting against her knee. Every photograph showed him looking at the camera. Every photograph showed his collar.
The host’s expression softened.
“And you believe he was taken from your home?”
“I know he was.” The woman pressed the tissue to the corner of one eye. “These people targeted him. They filled his head with things. They told him he was being abused. They convinced him that the family who loved him was his enemy.”
Dami set their mug down carefully. Kestrel didn’t look at them. She didn’t need to. She knew the rhythm of that stillness.
Onscreen, the woman drew a shaking breath.
“He didn’t understand what he was signing. He can’t make those decisions by himself. He was happy. We were happy.”
A banner appeared across the bottom of the television.
FAMILIES LEFT BEHIND: THE HUMAN COST OF EXTREMIST ACTIVISM
Underneath it, in smaller letters:
#BringThemHome
Wick’s hand closed around Kestrel’s wrist.
“Turn it up,” he said.
Dami did.
The segment shifted to an immaculate man in a navy suit standing outside a WRU-branded family support center.
“We’ve seen a disturbing increase in vulnerable adults being removed from stable homes by unregulated activist networks,” he said. “These groups operate without transparency, without clinical oversight, and without regard for existing guardianship arrangements.”
The footage behind him showed the exterior of a community center.
One of theirs.
The sign had been blurred, but not well enough. Kestrel knew the brickwork. She knew the cracked concrete planter by the front steps. She knew which basement door wasn’t visible from that angle
“They filmed that yesterday,” Lucky said from the doorway. No one had heard him enter. His phone was already in his hand.
“I’ve got three staff reporting news vans outside their sites. Two centers have had calls asking whether they’re holding missing persons.”
“Are they?” Wick asked.
Lucky’s expression didn’t change.
“No.”
The answer came too quickly to be mistaken for anything but policy.
Wick nodded once.
On television, the WRU representative continued.
“These aren’t criminals fleeing justice. These are sons, daughters, spouses, and dependents being isolated from the people who know and love them best.”
Dami watched the footage without blinking. They hummed.
“Changed the vocabulary,” they said.
Kestrel finally looked at them. Dami stood behind her now, close enough that the front of their shirt brushed her shoulder. One of their hands settled at the back of her neck, thumb resting just below her hairline, checking in with her.
She leaned back into it for half a second.
“From what?” she asked.
“Ownership to guardianship. Recovery to reunification. Runaway to vulnerable adults.” Dami’s voice was flat. “Forced return sounds like elder care.”
The woman on television was crying harder now. The host reached across the space between them and took her hand.
“What would you say to Eli, if he’s watching?”
The woman turned toward the camera. Her grief vanished so quickly Kestrel almost missed it. Her mouth stayed soft but her eyes didn’t.
“You know where you belong,” she said. “You know who you are without them confusing you. Come home before you make this worse.”
Kestrel felt Wick’s fingers tighten around her wrist.
The woman smiled.
“We forgive you.”
The television went dark.
Lucky held the remote.
For several seconds, nobody spoke.
The silence was broken by the conference room phone.
Then Wick’s phone.
Then Lucky’s.
Then the tablet on the table began chiming with incoming messages.
All at once, the room filled with sound.
Dami crossed to the wall controls and silenced the conference phone. Lucky muted his mobile but kept reading. Wick ignored his entirely.
Kestrel looked at the black television screen and saw her own reflection.
Small. Straight-backed. Wick seated beside her, one hand around her wrist. Dami towering behind them, their palm still warm against her neck.
A family portrait, if you didn’t know better.
“What else?” she asked.
Lucky’s thumb moved across his screen.
“WRU’s launched a site. Missing-person profiles. Owner testimonials. Anonymous reporting line. They’ve partnered with three guardianship advocacy groups and something called the Coalition for Ethical Family Restoration.”
“Real organization?” Wick asked.
“Registered six weeks ago.”
“Funded by?”
“Not listed.”
“WRU,” Dami said.
“Yes.”
Another message came through.
Lucky read it and stopped.
Kestrel saw the change before he spoke. Lucky rarely showed fear. He was calculating.
“What?”
“One of the profiles is Jonah.”
Kestrel took her wrist gently from Wick’s hand and stood.
“Where is he?”
“Fourth floor quiet room. Charity’s with him.”
“Did he see it?”
“Yes.”
Kestrel was already moving. Dami followed without being asked. Wick planted both hands on the arms of his chair.
“K-Kestrel.”
She turned. His face had gone pale beneath the anger.
“You can’t go down there and tell him they won’t find him.”
“I know.”
“You can’t promise—”
“I know.”
His jaw worked. Kestrel crossed back to him. She bent, cupped the back of his head, and pressed her forehead to his.
His breath caught.
“We don’t promise safety,” she said quietly. “We build it.”
Wick’s eyes closed. His hand found her waist. Dami stepped closer, their palm settling between Wick’s shoulder blades. For one brief moment, all three of them held on.
Kestrel straightened.
“Lucky, get counsel in here. Freeze all public comments until they arrive. Nobody says stolen. Nobody says trafficked. Nobody says we’ve seen any of the people in those profiles.”
Kestrel took the folded note from her pocket and set it beside the packet.
“I delivered a copy to their attorney. Their original stays with us.”
Rho stared. “You did what?”
Kestrel’s voice remained calm.
“I informed counsel that the Foundation is in possession of a dependent abandoned in a medical clinic with a signed note, ownership documents, and evidence of attempted unlawful disposal after WRU refusal. I also informed them that if any member of the Whitcomb family comes within five hundred feet of this clinic, Gray, or any Foundation facility, we will give the press exactly one sentence.”
“Daniel Whitcomb’s children pinned a note to their dead father’s Romantic and left him in a clinic waiting room.”
The room went silent.
Wick slowly exhaled.
“Oh, that’s vicious.”
“Yes.”
“Effective.”
“Yes.”
“Dangerous.”
“Yes.”
Rho put both hands over her face. “I love you and I’m horrified by you.”
“That seems fair.”
Dami tilted their head. “Did they respond?”
“Yes.”
Everyone waited.
Kestrel removed her gloves, finger by finger.
“They want this handled quietly.”
Lucky laughed once, short and sharp.
“They shouldn’t have used a safety pin.”
Kestrel’s face didn't change.
“No,” she said. “They shouldn’t have.”
Wick looked at her cuff again.
“What’s on your sleeve?”
“Mud.”
“Kestrel.”
“Mud,” she repeated.
Lucky’s gaze flicked toward Dami. Dami stared at Kestrel’s sleeve. Wick made a faint pained sound.
Kestrel turned toward the hallway. Charity stepped into her path.
“Before you go in,” Charity said quietly, “he thinks he’s being punished.”
She stopped. “Why?”
“Because the family left him here instead of sending him to disposal. He thinks this is a prolonged corrective placement.”
For the first time since she’d returned, Kestrel’s face changed.
“Does he want to see me?”
Charity looked toward exam room two.
“I don’t think he knows what wanting is doing right now.”
“Ask if I can come in.”
Charity nodded and went back inside.
Kestrel waited in the hall. No one spoke. After a moment, Wick came beside her. Slow on the crutches. Careful. He didn’t touch her.
“The note,” he said.
Kestrel looked straight ahead.
“Yes.”
“You read it once.”
“Yes.”
“What did it say?”
She was quiet for long enough that he almost withdrew the question.
“It said he had no known medical conditions except occasional hysteria and poor appetite when ignored.”
Wick’s face went cold.
“It said he responds best to firm affection and routine.”
Behind them, Rho made a sound like she’d been stabbed. Lucky looked at the floor. Dami’s jaw tightened. Wick closed his eyes.
“I see,” he said.
Kestrel’s hand went to her pocket. The note was no longer there. It sat on the desk now, folded beside evidence of abandonment. But her hand still went to where she had carried it for two hours, like something toxic that needed to remain contained against her own body until she could decide where to put it.
Wick noticed.
Of course he did.
“Did carrying it help?” he asked.
“No.”
He nodded. “Did leaving help?”
“No.”
Another nod. “Did what you did help?”
Kestrel’s eyes shifted toward him.
“Yes.”
“Good.”
She looked at him. He held her gaze.
“I’m angry,” he said softly. “Not lecturing.”
Her shoulders lowered by a fraction.
Charity stepped back into the hall.
“He says yes.”
Kestrel entered exam room two.
Gray sat on the table with the coat folded beside him now instead of on his lap. That was new. His hands hovered near it, not touching. His eyes went immediately to Kestrel’s face, then down to her shoes.
“I’m sorry I caused trouble,” he said.
Kestrel stood near the door.
“You didn’t.”
“My family—” He stopped. Corrected himself with visible pain. “His family. They said you help difficult cases.”
“We do.”
His mouth trembled.
“I can be easier.”
“No.”
He flinched.
Kestrel let the word settle, then continued.
“You don't have to become easier before we decide what to do.”
Gray stared at her.
“What will you do?”
“That depends on what you want, what’s medically necessary, and what counsel advises.”
His expression hollowed.
“I don’t have counsel.”
“You will.”
“I don’t have money.”
“The Foundation does.”
He blinked at her.
Something like fear crossed his face.
“What will I owe?”
“Nothing.”
No belief.
Not even close.
Kestrel hadn't expected any.
She stepped farther into the room, staying visible, staying away from the door.
“The Whitcomb family’s attorney has been notified that you are alive, medically evaluated, represented by pending counsel, and not available for private retrieval.”
Gray’s face went slack.
“They know I’m here?”
“They know you reached a Foundation clinic. They don't know where you’ll be next.”
His breathing sped up.
“They’ll be angry.”
“Yes.”
He wrapped his arms around himself.
“They don’t want me.”
“No.”
He looked up sharply, eyes filling.
Charity glanced at Kestrel. Kestrel didn't soften the truth.
“They don’t want me,” he repeated.
“No.”
“Then why does it hurt?”
Kestrel’s hands folded in front of her.
“Because being unwanted by cruel people can still hurt.”
Gray made a sound that went nowhere.
Kestrel continued, “Because being discarded is not the same as being freed, even if the door opens.”
He stared at her. His mouth twisted.
“They left a note.”
“Yes.”
“Did you read it?”
“Yes.”
His face flushed with shame.
“I didn’t write it.”
“I know.”
“They pinned it.”
“I know.”
“Everyone saw.”
“No,” Kestrel said.
He looked up.
“I saw it. Lucky saw it. Rho saw it. Dami saw it. Then I removed it.”
Gray’s fingers curled against his sleeves.
“Was it bad?”
“Yes.”
He closed his eyes.
Kestrel waited.
After a moment, he whispered, “Can I know what it said?”
Charity’s eyes moved to Kestrel.
“Not today,” she said softly.
Gray opened his eyes.
“Why?”
“Because today you would believe it.”
His face crumpled. His shoulders bent. He covered his mouth with one hand and made himself small, trying to hide the sound of crying from people who had already seen the note pinned to his coat.
Kestrel didn't move closer.
Charity did.
Gray cried harder because no one stopped him. After a while, he looked up at Kestrel through tears.
“Am I abandoned?”
The word gutted the room.
Kestrel’s expression stayed calm by force.
“Yes,” she said.
Gray’s breath caught.
“And found.”
He stared at her. She held his gaze.
“Both are true today,” she said. “We can work with found.”
Gray’s mouth trembled. A laugh came out.
Terrible. Wet. Not happy.
Alive.
“That sounds stupid.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t feel found.”
“I know.”
“I feel left.”
“You were.”
He wiped at his face. No one told him not to. No one handed him a prettier version.
“You were left. We are here. The next part takes longer.”
Gray looked down at the coat.
“Do I have to keep that?”
“No.”
“Do I have to throw it away?”
“No.”
His fingers hovered above the wool.
“What if I want it?”
“Then it stays.”
“What if I hate it?”
“Then it goes.”
“What if both?”
“Then we put it in a bag and decide later.”
He breathed in.
Out.
“Bag,” he whispered.
Charity nodded. “I’ll get one.”
Gray watched her go, then looked back at Kestrel.
“Where did you go?”
Kestrel didn't answer immediately. The truth was ugly and incomplete. She'd gone to the Whitcomb attorney’s office. She hadn't entered. She'd waited outside under the awning until a junior associate stepped out with coffee and a phone and a badge that opened too many doors. She'd made two calls. She'd let Wickham money, Asryn pressure, Foundation counsel, and one terrified paralegal with a conscience do what force would have done less cleanly.
She'd stood in the rain for twenty minutes because she didn't trust herself to come back while the note was still the only language inside her head.
“I made sure they couldn’t quietly change the story.”
Gray absorbed that.
“For me?”
“Yes.”
He looked baffled. Almost offended.
“I’m no one.”
Kestrel tilted her head.
“No one arrives with that much paperwork.”
Gray stared at her. He laughed again. It was still awful but a little less broken.
Charity returned with a clear belongings bag. She held it open without reaching for the coat.
Gray looked at it.Then at the coat. Slowly, he picked up the dead man’s coat and put it in the bag himself. His hands shook the whole time but he did it.
Charity sealed the bag only after he nodded.
Kestrel watched.
Transfer complete. It wasn't freedom or healing yet but the coat was no longer on his lap. The note was no longer pinned to his body. The family that had abandoned him had been made afraid of being named. It was a start .
When Kestrel left exam room two, everyone in the hallway pretended not to have been listening.
Badly.
Rho wiped her eyes.
“There’s soup for him,” she said. Then, after a beat, “And you.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“I didn’t ask.”
Dami looked at Kestrel. “You should wash your sleeve.”
“It’s mud.”
“Mostly.”
Wick leaned on his crutches beside the wall, watching her with a face full of things he would not say in a clinic hallway.
Kestrel looked back.
“I’m fine.”
“No,” Wick said quietly. “But you’re back.”
She looked toward exam room two.
Gray was speaking softly to Charity now. It wasn't much. It was enough.
“Yes,” Kestrel said. “I’m back.”
No one asked where she had been after that. It wasn't because they didn’t want to know. It was because sometimes a person disappeared for two hours with a note in their pocket and came back carrying enough rage to build a wall. And sometimes the kindest thing was to let the wall stand until the person behind it was ready to open a door.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
i agree so much about making your blorbos pathetic but i do fear that many take this to mean 'make them more traditionally feminine/submissive' which genuinely hurts my soul. make your blorbos pathetic in interesting character-oriented ways. understand their neuroses and turn the dials up to eleven. juxtapose the parts of life they handle extremely well with the parts of their lives that make them eat shit. make them angry. make them cold. make them pave their own way to hell while building walls preventing them from seeing any other way. please i'm begging you no more pathetic as an euphemism for bottoming im gonna mclose it.
They weren't far from home when the sun began to set, and his quiet tension about the dark and what came with it was temporarily pushed away when he saw the scene spread out for him. Gaps in the clouds let rare blue grace the sky, and the sun made the most of its brief appearance. Everything was burnished gold, suddenly. He could see everything that was frosted over because bright reflections flashed brilliant white as they drove by. Whole lakes turned to ice.
─ "Slow".
fanart for @whumpawaydarling based on "slow"; this is a part of their whump series, amor vincit omnia <3 please give it a read it is just absolutely wonderful
worked on this with @cepheusgalaxy over the past few days and it was so so so much fun. beautiful drawing of a beautiful moment for a beautiful person!!! happy birthday chaos :) i hope you like itttt
oh. my god oh my god HI 😭 jaw dropped. you guys are insane i can't believe you did this.... >_< im actually speechless i don't even know what to say thank you so much ???!!?! this is so beautiful im just. in awe.
For the first ten minutes, everyone pretended she was making a call. For the next twenty, everyone pretended she was speaking with counsel. By forty-five minutes, Rho stopped pretending.
“She took the note,” Rho said.
Lucky stood near exam room two with his arms folded, watching the door where the man had been taken. “Yes.”
“Why did she take the note?”
“Because if one more person looked at it, she might have had to become unreasonable.”
Dami, near the hallway, said, “She’s already unreasonable.”
Lucky glanced at them.
Their face didn't change. “I mean more.”
Wick sat behind the intake desk, one crutch propped against the wall, phone in his hand, doing nothing with it.
That worried everyone more. He knew where Kestrel was. Or he could find out.
He hadn't.
Rho turned on him. “You’re not tracking her?”
Wick looked up. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Because she left.”
Rho’s mouth tightened. She looked away because that was exactly the kind of answer Kestrel would have wanted, and all of them hated it.
In exam room two, the man sat on the paper-covered table with his coat still in his lap.
He hadn't let go of it.
Lucky stood by the counter. Charity had arrived fifteen minutes after Kestrel left and now moved through the room with the kind of careful practicality that kept people from shattering out of politeness.
“I’m going to ask about injuries,” Charity said. “You can answer, refuse, or say you don’t know.”
The man nodded.
“Any pain right now?”
He smiled. “I can tolerate discomfort.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
The smile faltered. Charity waited.
The man looked at the floor. “The pin scratched me.”
Charity’s face did something fast and terrible, then settled.
“Thank you for telling me. Anywhere else?”
His fingers tightened on the coat. “My chest hurts.”
“Sharp, dull, tight, burning?”
“I don’t know.”
“Okay. Does it feel like fear?”
He looked up. This time, the smile didn't come.
“Yes,” he whispered.
Charity nodded. “That still counts.”
His eyes filled.
“I wasn’t bad.”
“No,” Charity said.
“I was quiet.”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t ask to stay.”
Lucky closed his eyes.
Charity kept her voice steady. “No.”
“I didn’t ask to go.”
“No.”
His mouth trembled. “They said he loved me too much to leave me to the lawyers.”
Lucky’s jaw tightened. Charity’s hands stilled on the chart.
The man looked between them.
“He died,” he whispered. “My owner died, and everyone cried, and I didn’t know what to do because he told me I’d go with him, but then there was a funeral and then paperwork and then they put me in the car.”
He looked down at the coat in his lap.
“I thought they were taking me home.”
The room held around that.
Carefully.
No one rushed to fill it.
After a while, Charity said, “Do you want the coat on your lap?”
The man looked confused.
“It’s his,” he said.
“Your owner’s?”
A flinch.
“Yes.”
“Do you want it on your lap?”
He looked down. His hands had locked around the wool so tightly his knuckles had gone pale.
“I don’t know.”
“Okay.”
Lucky said, “You don’t have to know today.”
The man looked at him.
The words didn't comfort him.
Not yet.
At one hour and twelve minutes, Wick finally made a call to Maddie Singh.
“I need a probate search on Daniel Whitcomb,” he said. “Household trust, dependents, registered pets, transfer records, estate filings, and next of kin. Yes, Whitcomb. No, not tomorrow.”
He listened.
Then his eyes moved toward exam room two.
“No,” he said. “They abandoned him in our waiting room with a note. I’m feeling impatient.”
A pause.
“That was the polite version.”
Wick looked at the side door.
“She’ll come back,” he said after he ended the call. No one had asked. Everyone needed to hear it.
Dami looked at him. “You don’t know that.”
Wick’s mouth curved without humor.
“Yes, I do.”
“Because you know where she went?”
“No.”
“Then why?”
“Because she folded the note.”
Lucky, emerging from exam room two, stopped.
Rho frowned. “What?”
Wick’s voice was quiet. “If she meant to disappear for longer, she would have kept it open.”
No one knew what to do with that.
It sounded absurd. It also sounded exactly like him and Kestrel.
At one hour and forty-nine minutes, the man in exam room two chose a temporary name.
Not Adrian. Not the owner’s name for him. Not yet anything permanent.
“Gray,” he said, staring at the coat.
Charity looked up from the chart. “You want us to call you Gray?”
His face tightened. “Just for the file.”
“Okay.”
He watched her write it.
Temporary name: Gray.
He cried when he saw it. Silently. Carefully. Like crying was something he had learned to do without disrupting anyone’s afternoon.
Lucky handed him a tissue box and then looked away.
At two hours and three minutes, the side door opened.
Kestrel came back in.
Her hair was wet from the rain. Her coat was buttoned. Her shoes were muddy. There was a smear of something dark on one cuff that might have been dirt and might not have been.
She carried nothing.
The waiting room went silent.
Wick stood too quickly and had to catch himself on the desk.
Kestrel’s eyes flicked to him. He stopped.
Dami looked her over. “Are you injured?”
“No.”
Lucky’s eyes narrowed. Kestrel looked at him.
“No,” she repeated.
Rho crossed her arms. “Did you do something illegal?”
Kestrel paused. Wick closed his eyes.
Lucky muttered, “That’s not a no.”
Kestrel unbuttoned her coat.
“Where is he?”
“Exam two,” Charity said from the hall. “Temporary name Gray. No acute medical emergency. Panic symptoms. Minor scratch from the pin. Malnutrition likely. We haven’t searched the documents yet.”
“I have.”
Everyone turned. Kestrel reached into her coat pocket for a folded packet of papers. Wick stared at her as she set the packet on the desk.
“Kestrel,” he said.
She ignored him.
“Daniel Whitcomb’s estate transferred all household property to his children. They declined the registered transfer of his Romantic dependent because they didn’t want ongoing liability, maintenance, or public association with ownership. They tried to surrender him to WRU first. WRU refused because the original contract was private resale and the warranty period expired.”
Rho’s face went white with rage. Dami’s expression emptied.
Lucky said, “Where did you get those?”
Kestrel looked at him. No one asked again.
Wick pinched the bridge of his nose. “Please tell me you didn’t break into a law office.”
“I didn’t break into a law office.”
A pause.
Wick opened one eye. “Did you enter a law office?”
“No.”
“Did someone else enter a law office?”
Kestrel looked toward exam room two. “Does it matter?”
“Yes,” Wick and Lucky said at the same time.
Kestrel ignored both of them.
“They left him here because they thought we’d quietly absorb the liability. If we reported abandonment, they could claim compassionate surrender. If we returned him, they could refuse possession. If WRU collected him, they’d deny arranging it. The note was designed to make him our problem without making him their responsibility.”
Oh god, new bucket list scene concept: interrogation training.
I'm so sorry, but if they catch you these are the things you're going to experience. You have to be ready. You can't break. Do you understand?
This next one hurts a lot, I apologize in advance. I'll let you bite the belt the first couple of times, but we have to make sure you're not going to spit out sensitive information.
Oh, oh no. Okay, if this was a real interrogation, I'd have everything I needed and you'd be dead now. I really need you to keep quiet. If I don't think you can keep quiet, I can't send you on this mission. You want to go on this mission, right? You want to save them, don't you?
Let's take it one more time, from the top, okay? I know you can do this. If I didn't believe in you you would never have gotten this assignment.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
need That character absolutely delirious with fear. recoiling from everything. unable to parse what's happening around them, their mind stuck in fight or flight. shaking and hyperventilating. completely unconsolable even as they're wrapped in a crushing hug.
At first, no one noticed him as an emergency and that was the point.
They found him in the clinic waiting room between the lunch rush and the afternoon wound-care block. He’d been placed carefully in the blue chair by the radiator. A coat lay folded over his lap. His hands rested on top of it. His hair was comb. His shoes were tied. His posture was perfect enough for him to disappear in the busy room. He sat with his knees together and his shoulders relaxed in a way that wasn't relaxation at all. His face was empty and plenty if no one looked too closely.
Romantic training did that sometimes. It made suffering pretty.
There was a note pinned to his coat. A silver safety pin through wool, paper, and the edge of his sweater beneath, because whoever left him had not bothered to check whether they were pinning fabric or skin.
Lucky saw that first and his face went blank.
“Rho.”
Rho looked up from the intake desk. “What?”
He nodded toward the blue chair. When the man didn't move, Rho’s expression changed.
The waiting room went quiet in the strange ripple-pattern of places that knew how to recognize danger late. A mother pulled her child closer. A volunteer stopped stacking cups. Someone near the coffee station whispered, “Was he there before?”
“Yes,” Dami said from the hallway.
Everyone looked at them.
Dami’s voice was flat. “Came in with a family. Four people. Left without him eleven minutes ago.”
Rho’s hands curled around the clipboard. “And you didn’t stop them?”
They shrugged lightly. “Looked like donors.”
That wasn't’t an excuse. It was an indictment.
Lucky crossed the waiting room slowly, stopping several feet from the man in the blue chair.
“Hello,” Lucky said. “My name’s Lucky. You’re at the Bartlett clinic.”
The man blinked. He didn't look up.
Lucky glanced at the note, then back at him.
“Can I remove the paper from your coat?”
The man smiled immediately, beautiful and wrong.
“If it pleases you,” he said lightly, low and breathless in the way every Romantic had been trained.
Rho swore under her breath and Dami stilled.
Lucky’s mouth tightened. “It doesn’t please me. I’m asking if you want it removed.”
The man’s smile trembled. He blinked. The script had failed.
“I don’t understand.”
“Okay,” Lucky said. “Then I won’t.”
The clinic door opened.
“No,” Kestrel said into the phone. “No public comment until counsel sees the draft. If they use the word recovery, send it back.”
She stopped. Her eyes moved once across the room.
Lucky.
Rho.
Dami.
The man in the blue chair.
The note.
She ended the call without saying goodbye.
No one spoke. The man noticed the silence before he noticed her. His posture sharpened, adjusting itself for attention. His chin lowered. His mouth softened. His hands stilled.
Kestrel crossed the room slowly. Hurrying would have made him responsible for her urgency. She stopped in front of him but to the side, not blocking his view of the door.
“What name do you want used?” she asked.
His eyes flicked to her shoes. Then her hands. Then the floor.
“Whatever you prefer.”
“No.”
His lips parted.
Kestrel’s voice stayed level. “That wasn’t a command. It was an answer. We don’t choose that for you.”
Something moved beneath his face. A tiny, trapped thing.
“I don’t know,” he whispered.
“Okay.”
Kestrel looked at the note. The safety pin had gone through the sweater. Not skin, thank God. The paper was folded once, his name written on the outside in neat blue ink.
Not his name.
A name.
Adrian.
“May I remove the note?” she asked.
The man’s hands flexed.
“I was told to keep it visible.”
“By the people who left?”
He swallowed. “Yes.”
“They’re gone.”
His eyes closed for half a second. Pain crossed his face so quickly it almost looked like relief.
“May I remove it?” Kestrel asked again.
He nodded.
She unfastened the safety pin with hands steady enough to make the whole room colder. She removed the paper from his coat. Then she folded the pin closed and set it on the side table instead of keeping it.
Small things mattered. Sharp things mattered. Ownership hid in small, sharp things.
The man watched the safety pin like it might be returned to him as punishment.
Kestrel unfolded the note. Rho stepped closer. Lucky did not. Dami looked at her face.
The note was short. That made it worse.
To whom it may concern,
This is Adrian. He belonged to our father, Daniel Whitcomb, who passed last month. Adrian is trained Romantic and light Domestic. He is well behaved but emotionally dependent and no longer appropriate for our household. We understand your Foundation works with displaced persons and difficult cases.
Please do not contact us regarding return. We are not interested in reclaiming him. His documents are in the envelope in his coat pocket. He has no known medical conditions except occasional hysteria and poor appetite when ignored.
He responds best to firm affection and routine.
Thank you for your understanding.
Kestrel read it once.
Only once.
Her face did not change.
Rho’s eyes filled with furious tears. Lucky looked away toward the clinic windows, jaw tight. Dami’s hands closed at their sides.
The man in the chair smiled up at Kestrel like he was waiting for her to decide whether the note had lowered his value beyond use.
Kestrel folded the paper along its original crease. Then folded it again. Then put it in her coat pocket.
“Lucky,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Medical intake. Not in this room.”
Lucky nodded. “Adrian, can you stand?”
The man’s eyes moved to her.
“You can answer him.”
He swallowed. “Yes.”
“Do you want to?”
That question broke something. His hands lost their perfect stillness
“I don’t know what happens if I don’t.”
Lucky’s voice stayed even. “Then you sit in the chair until you decide, unless there’s a medical emergency.”
The man stared at him.
“I’m getting tea,” Rho said. “I’m going to make tea available. He doesn’t have to drink it.”
The man’s gaze moved between them, terrified by every ordinary adjustment made around his will.
Dami stepped closer to Kestrel. “Where are you going?”
Kestrel did not look at them.
“Out.”
“Kes.”
She turned. Dami stopped. Whatever they saw in her face made them step back.
Wick chose that moment to arrive from the hall, moving carefully on his crutches because the clinic’s elevator was down again and he’d made bad decisions about stairs. He took in the room the way Kestrel had.
The man in the blue chair.
Lucky beside him.
Rho at the counter, shaking with anger.
Dami silent.
Kestrel with nothing in her hands and a note in her pocket.
His face changed.
“Kestrel,” he said softly.
She didn't look at him for long. It was long enough. Not long.
She walked past him and out the side door.
No one stopped her.
(mostly) whump @pigeonwhumps - Tumblr Blog | Tumlook
