#nightwhip

     she never should have promised dorian this. it’s just all so new: being a staff member, being in charge of not just protecting students, but educating them. the protection is no different from what she’s done for others since she was a child, but the school part is far too new. she agreed to dorian because she didn’t know what else to do. she’s known alaric since before his daughters were born, but it didn’t mean she didn’t have something to prove about belonging there.

based on --  you have a timer that shows you for how long you have to live. this number changes and mostly estimates based on conscious or unconscious decisions a few minutes after making the decision: driving to visit your grandparents might make the number go to just hours but deciding on the road that no, you have enough fuel to not stop at the gas station you usually stop by makes it go to thirty years. you can’t see the number when you are within 10 metres of your soulmate, so your future is always unknown when you’re with them—and so is theirs.

Tick, tick, boom. 

Archer glances at the timer glaring just beneath the epidermis of his forearm, the glow of it causing barely there shadows on the steering wheel of his car. If nothing else, this soulmate shit did wonders for business. The time displayed made it easier for him to decide which jobs to take and which to pass on. 

( Just discussing a triple slaying two months prior had made his timer drop from years to days. )

This job was different, for the first time since he first took up arms for the highest bidder, acceptance had made his timer increase. Just a nudge, but significant enough to notice. He’s already chalking it up to the adrenaline of the game. 

( It’s easier to write things like soulmates off as child’s play when you lived as though you were soulless. )

The most difficult decision Archer had to make that evening was not will I, won’t I but rather how. Guns were convenient, silencer’s a gift from above. He’s been lax at the gym as of late, which made strangulation the should be choice. More physical than the others, it required a little more work. Then there was knives, and the extensive options he brought along. 

Machetes were fun, but beheading was lazy and beneath him. A cleaver and bone were a sacred union, but it was dense and heavy and required more than one swing to be effective. 

Then there was Apollo. His favorite buck knife that was always with him, named after his dearly departed younger brother that he had sent on to the next life prematurely by sticking that very knife into his carotid with a merciful twist. 

( He still thinks about his twitching sibling’s cooling hands as they grabbed at his arms as he held him for the last few moments and how it felt like they were in direct opposition to the soothingly warm spurts of crimson that splotched his face while he kissed his forehead in the dying seconds of his time with him. )

Rarely did he ask questions about his targets beyond the necessary. What they did to deserve a reckoning brought forth by him was here nor there for him. Sympathy and empathy were two words he mixed up often -- he had yet to feel one well enough for their definitions to stick. 

Moving through the apartment like a malevolent present, he’s halted by what looks like a personal photo. Dark haired with a smile that met her eyes, it has more life to it than the one he had been given with a file and instruction. Reaching out to inspect it closer before he renders that pretty face unrecognizable, he’s distracted by a presence -- or lack thereof. 

Missing from just beneath his sleeve is that permanent timer glow, rerouting his attention completely as he changes course to tear his sleeve upward to inspect it. 

          ‘ the worst rhetoric the jedi and sith ever created was that of dark and light. ’ leia sits at the cot’s edge , aware of how vulnerable she is. unarmed , no guards. but she has so little left to fear. raw truth was nearly all that leia had left in this life and if she could share it with those in need -- who was she to keep knowledge secret ? she was no jedi. 

“Minnie, you better fucking n--” 

Before his sentence was completely, she did the exact thing he was warning her to do, dropping all six foot five of his absurd frame into the freshly wet mud of the football field they weren’t even supposed to be on. 

( The shortcut was also her idea. Go fucking figure. )

The whiskey had made him believe what she said about being strong enough to carry him on her back, and the vodka had fooled him into thinking it was a good idea. 

His jacket was all but ruined, the heels of his shoes felt like they had hit quick-sand with how the mud held them and grass tickled the underside of his ear as he laid like he had been laid out and wondered, not for the first time, why the fuck he was still in this friendship. 

“I knew it, you fucking chihuahua. I knew you were going to drop me, but noooooo, you’re like a fucking ox,” His complaints were grumbled as he unstuck himself from his grime-y grave, his hands being shaken out at his side to dispel some dirt before his attention darted to her. An awkward roll and a push and he was back on his feet, his right foot slipping from him and making him flap his arms so he didn’t end up accidentally in the splits. 

( He may no longer have his dignity, but he wasn’t about to lose his scrotum too. )

“If I got to get home looking this, then you do too, fucker,” He warns, before he was off, long legs carrying him as he barreled towards her like they were mid-game and she was the one holding the ball. 

( Mud-erva, rise. )

Turning his head to the side so he can spit blood somewhere that wasn’t Minnie’s shoes, Negan’s expression remains steely despite her unprompted observation. The academy was grueling at the best of times, crushing at the worst. 

He had more successful days than not, and yet the defeats burrowed under his skin and stayed there far longer than his wins ever did. 

“Tomorrow will be.”

Negan all but looked through her when he made his statement, pushing himself off the chair he had seated himself upon before he stepped around her. To be a career tribute was to be the best, and with the pair of them fast approaching the final stretch of when they would be allowed to volunteer -- there was no time for off days or even off matches. 

They were born for this. They were bred for this. The odd bond they had formed in a pressure cooker wasn’t enough to give them any foolish notions of how this would end. 

One would kill the other, but before that moment came, they would cut down the tributes from every other district with no mercy and no hesitation. 

( He would never admit it, but sometimes he thought it nice to have a friend within a pack of flesh hungry wolves. )

“Come on. Let’s spar. Aldar won’t get another opportunity to best me again.”