#maybeeeee

Like, sort of zombie mostly just. Immortal.

Stan accidently kills a guy/ witnesses a dude dying and gets caught up in it (whether trying to help or just is unfortunately in the direct area). Hes all, "oh no, this guy is dead. I am holding this dead guy, maybe even moving him so i can hide the body--" when BAM! Dead guy is not dead, and is wiggling around in his arms while stan screams.

Dont know how he gets infected, maybe the guy bites him in a fit of freshly revived nonclarity, maybe their blood mixes, maybe the guy is pissed at being killed and curses/"blesses" stan for either killing/attempting to help him. Idk.

Point is, stan cant die! Well, he can, but he comes back.

This goes surprisingly unnoticed by the people around him. The environments stan finds himself in dont breed a lot of concern for those dropping dead, enough so that people dont even notice his corpse long enough for him to revive, his body is actively hidden and left behind so it doesnt have attention brought to it, he is alone the whole time, or any witnesses get written off as drug addicts or insane.

This provides a few issues with his internal worth as a person, but overall, convienant to avoid being dissected in a lab or repeat murderers!

However.... you can only die so many times before it gets noticed.

NOW! i have two ways this could go.

Option one: it actually takes a while to revive, working from the inside out. Waking up and breathing is the step right before healing external injuries. This makes it hard to tell the dead guy is alive until hes wiggling around on your morgue slab. That, and maybe it takes a little longer after every death (seriously stanley, you die, like, a lot) to come back.

So, stan is FINALLY found as a john doe and brought to a hospital and then to a morgue. He stays dead long enough for fords number to be found on him and then called and then ford to come to identify him. Long enough for ford to come back at midnight with plans to steal a body. Long enough for ford to start sliding the body off the table, but NOT long enough to make it to the door.

Stan wakes up, starts wiggling and gargling in post- unmortemdem, and ford starts screaming and dropping him and looking for a weapon because ohhhhh my god thats a zombie, stan is a zombie, holy crap.

For funsies maybe ford stabs him to death in a panic and then immediately regrets it because damn, stan is dead again. Starts to steal him again and hopefully find an anti zombie charm at some point, the whole thing happens again on the drive home and stan manages to explain before being killed again.

Option 2: stan goes up to meet ford, postcard in hand, and-- youll never guess-- fords crossbow introduction ends with a bolt sticking through someplace vital in stans anatomy.

Ford starts screaming, apologizing, trying to stop the bleeding. Ford tries putting pressure on the wound, he tries to stem the bloodflow, he tries cpr for the life of him. He has a full breakdown, he tries so hard but stan chokes and gasps and bleeds and dies.

Its useless.

He sits in the snow, starting to have a full mental break as he starts crying to his brothers corpse all the things he needs to and would never say, its all very tragic and sad, and we know how it goes by now.

Stan wakes up mid soliloquy and scares the shit out of ford, yelling about the injustice of being murdered literally right when they see each other for the first time in a decade, while ford starts wailing all over again from relief.

Either way, frankenstan is rudely interrupted by stan just solving the issue himself. By being undead.

I do agree that Huxley and Damien are a velcro couple in the sense that Huxley always has some form of physical contact with Damien and Damien always reciprocates, but LASKO AND DEAR WILL NOT GET OFF OF EACH OTHER.

And he got used to it. There are worse things than not being attractive, or desirable, or lacking in whatever quality made others flock to you. Did it suck? Yeah, but he’s been through worse. He has his platonic relationships who love him, who he loves in return, and it’s enough.

celestia is so high up and beyond the false sky that it's a wonder in itself how phanes even discovered you. you're simply a humble villager living in the underground nation of khaenri'ah and the times you came up to the surface can be counted on one hand. you visited liyue for lantern rite, and mondstadt for their windblume festival, yet you always come back to the land you were born in. you're content to live here in khaenri'ah, even with your own tyrant ruler, king irmin, making it difficult to do so.

maybe you meet someone in the outskirts of liyue's bamboo forest on your walk back to khaenri'ah. a mysterious naked figure who, no matter how hard they try to masquerade, does not act and look like a proper human should. it's as if they've been born today, limbs sprouting awkwardly, and the wings on their back twitching and flapping for no reason. are they in pain?

phanes meets you during an incredibly humiliating moment in their existence. having de-sized themself on a whim to pass off as a human, they hadn't expected the learning curve of being on the smaller side. nor did they expect that an actual human would see them here. they were prepared to wipe your life off the surface of this planet, ensuring not a single soul knows of this, but all thoughts of destruction halt for a bit when you brazenly put a hand on their forearm.

"a-are you hurt?"

they keep you at the back of their mind after that encounter. it's such a small action, so embarrassing for them to even be hung up over, but they are. they find themselves looking down from celestia, seeing the small dots that are humans, and subsconsciouly thinks of where you might be. they know you're underground in khaenri'ah, your star-pupils made that known, but where exactly?

they find themselves lurking around down on teyvat more often than they'd like to admit, the archons working for them often offer their nation's hospitality, yet out of all nations, phanes gravitates toward the archon-less nation khaenri'ah, if only to get a glimpse of you.

Logan: Is something wrong, Roman?

Roman: SOMEBODY took my favourite blanket and won’t give it back—