#localdemonz

okay,  well,  OUCH.  you're  used  to  insults,  usually  courtesy  of  your  favourite  skeleton  puppeteer  princess,  but  they  hit  a  little  DIFFERENT  coming  from  the  quite  literal  mad  scientist  who  recently  decided  you're  her  new  favourite  lab  rat.

you  can't  really  blame  @localdemonz,  though.  from  what  you  know  about  moira  o’deorain,  and  what  you've  heard  about  the  time  before  you  woke  up  on  an  operating  table  with  this  science  scarecrow  leaning  over  you,  you're  pretty  much  tailor  made  to  FASCINATE  her.

you  died.  medically,  literally,  officially  DEAD.  moira  brought  you  back  to  life  —  and  has  done  a  lot  more  since.  in  between,  though,  was  a  period  of  months  during  which  your  body  refused  to  decay.  pretty  unusual,  for  a  corpse.  probably  the  reason  moira  chose  you,  over  a  billion  other  cadavers  she  has  at  her  disposal,  for  her  weird,  freaky,  invasive,  experiments.

which  brings  you  to  now.  your  eyes  are  watering,  sure,  but  under  the  circumstances  that's  normal.  not  PATHETIC.

‘we were kids.’ your tone is firm, but truthfully save for a few fleeting moments you haven’t felt like a kid in a long time. zuko, older than you and carrying at least as much baggage, must feel the same. so maybe the decisions he made that were ... less than mature weigh heavier on him, just as they do for you.

he should know by now, though, that he’s more than made up for it. after all, he was the one who supported your misguided quest for revenge, who stoked the dark and hungry rage that was at once intoxicating and terrifying. though you chose a different path in the end---and you’re glad for it---it’s reassuring to know that there’s at least one person who has seen your dark side, and who isn’t afraid of it.

that makes up for a lot of things.

you wrap your fingers around the pendant, hiding it from his view, though now he’s avoiding looking at you at all. you kick his ankle, lightly, to bring his attention back to you. ‘anyway, didn’t you already apologise? i’m way too young to be having this kind of memory problem, zuko.’

‘surprising.’ acid drips from your tone along with more than a heavy dose of sarcasm. ‘i would have thought your reasons were one hundred percent selfish.’ reyna does not strike you as the type to have a single ounce of regret or empathy or compassion, particularly not for you─you are a difficult person to like.

you lift your chin to glare at her, the haughty glare you spent your childhood perfecting. she has at least a foot on you, if not more, and if size & strength were the sole deciders of power, reyna would certainly be many times more powerful than you. thankfully that is not the case: you are in every way reyna’s superior, though she might refuse to admit it.

you have never been woken like this before. woken by confusion, pain, bewildering terror. the pain itself is not so BAD as the realisation that you’re helpless to stop whatever happens next. josh is so much stronger than you. he has the upper hand before you even knew there was a fight coming. a large part of you is screaming to fight back, even if you won’t, can’t, win. a small and worrying part tells you not to bother. a smaller and even more worrying part tells you that you might enjoy it.

but before any of these parts can win your internal battle, josh moves. his mouth presses more gently against your throat, distracting you from the wound on your shoulder. then he pulls away, thank god. you lie there for a moment before remembering how to move.

you sit up, pushing him away, out of your space — you need SPACE. ‘what the fuck, josh?’ you clasp a hand to your shoulder, feeling blood seep between your fingers. ‘of course i’m not okay. you fucking B I T me!’ do you have a first aid kit? of course you fucking don’t! you didn’t think you’d need one — didn’t think your friend would attack you in the middle of the night. ‘no, josh. sit down.’ you point at your desk chair, on the opposite side of the room from your bed. ‘i’ll handle this.’

in the bathroom, miraculously, you find a first aid kit. thank god your roommate has more forethought than you. you bring it back to your room — of course you’re not letting josh out of your sight for long after this — and throw it on the bed. you dig out something to wipe your shoulder with. the antiseptic alcohol stings. josh, sitting in the desk chair, looks the way he always does. he looks like josh. but that means something different now. your blood is on his mouth. you toss an antiseptic wipe at him to clean himself up with.

you try to remind yourself what you know about josh. his sisters were killed. a year later, the monster that did it came back for josh and his friends. it got josh. he is scarred. he is broken. 

but something in you has snapped. you are so TIRED of holding yourself together for the sake of other people. you want to break things. why not start with something that’s already broken?

@localdemonz

funny. you used to think parrish was the boring one. lynch, he’s easy, a single look from you is enough to ruin his day and he’s always more than eager to brawl, on the streets or in the sheets or the aglionby fucking parking lot. 

dick, too, can be goaded into reacting; he doesn’t get physical like ronan does but he’ll talk down to you. you love it when dick puts on that haughty tone and that sly smile. cause if he’s so much better than you, why is he talking to you? there’s only a couple of answers, and each of them works out in your favour.

the other one, the smudgy one, you could never provoke into a fight. he’s too scared of you. but parrish isn’t scared. he doesn’t act like he’s better than you. he doesn’t look at you like you have the answers to his prayers, like you hold the key to the closet where he keeps his nightmares hidden.

parrish doesn’t look at you at all.

you hate it.

so sometimes you’ll try to get a rise out of him. everyone knows he’s the poor one, everyone knows he’s one of the ones with a shitty dad, that he’s one of gansey’s dogs. but he never reacts when it’s coming from you. until—

‘i need you to shut the fuck up before i start thinking of ways to make you.’

finally.

your answering laugh is breathy; girlish; it would take a keen ear to discern the hint of nerves in the sound. there's something darkly intriguing about him. entertaining his suggestion is probably a really bad idea. unfortunately that's your favourite kind. but even you are not stupid—or slutty—enough to let your new boss bend you over a desk after just two weeks on the job. are you?