#timerotted

(Shout out to the people who’ve been sticking around despite me leaving.)

“hullo.” He says, moving one hand in an open fingered, slow wave at the child.  Yoda was the only one of his species that Luke had ever seen before, but it was clear just from the size difference between the little one and the nine-hundred year old grand master that this was, in fact, a child.  And he had to wonder if the child would be just as interested in the foods and snacks in his ration pack as the elder was.  

@jackiebitchart & @cxfray & @byers-willbyers & @timerotted

There was blood streaming down his face from a gash along his scalp and he could barely stand on his own two feet. It was not the worst injury that he had received during his time in Rapture. As much as it hurt, Jack barely had enough time to worry about it for the simple fact that they had to keep moving. He would simply come back via the Vita Chambers if anything really bad happened to him - That was one of the thoughts that he used to keep pushing himself forward despite the signs of danger.

“Oof-”

A soft grunt escaped him and, for a long second, his brain did not seem to be able to process what had happened. He had been poking through one of the offices that they had stumbled into to hide. People in Columbia seemed to have a habit of leaving valuable things lying around and he was happy to take any loose coins of vigors. Booker had not been paying attention to Elizabeth so when she was suddenly pressed against his chest with her arms wrapped around him? It left him reeling for a second. He made another, softer sound as hands hesitantly came up to wrap around her. 

@timerotted​  {

💖 from wraith !!

}       //  ⨳ — SEND 💖 TO HOLD MY MUSE’S HAND;  —  wraith .

he’d known from the start that he was in over his head.  But just how far had he sunken into this terrible mess with Mila and the algorithm? ... with his desperate turn to the black market augmentations in an impulsive, short-sighted effort to escape Syndicate eyes? ... and with his too-elaborate plan to topple the Repulsor Tower and to insert himself into the Games, right under the noses of the very people who want him dead? No, Crypto wasn’t in over his head — he’s practically dug his own grave. 

With every match he survived and with each moment he spent biding his time among the Legends, he could feel it: the beginnings of six feet worth of dirt trickling down on him and piling atop his skull. That same thickheaded skull to which Ms Tik often delivered a firm but gentle whack!, accompanied by rolling eyes and that exasperated sigh of ‘smarty-pants’ she gave whenever he got too cheeky with her.

She had been worried for him when he’d gotten into the Games’ database and when he took down the Tower. She understood his intentions, understood it was necessary if he wanted a chance of ever reclaiming his life and his innocence — but could he handle it? she’d asked him over a letter cleverly disguised across adverts in the Apex Games’ email service. He sensed that maternal distress even in split, discreetly coded messages: her covert plea for him to consider his life above the pursuit of justice.

‘Trust me,’ he’d written back the only time he was able, just before he departed to Talos. ‘This won’t be the last time you hear from me. I’ll be all right — I always am. Mila and I didn’t learn resourcefulness from just anyone, did we? You're not going to lose a son.’

(Not again.)

‘I’ll see you again soon... Family forever.’ He’d signed off then with a simple C, packaging the encoded letter into the innocuous survey response that Mystik had supplied him. (It had been linked in hex code, hidden away within the banner image on the advertised site that she’d set up for their temporary communications... Mystik’s strays had to get their cleverness from someone, indeed.)

He’d survived this long. There was nothing left for him to lose.

And yet, he finds himself wondering more and more if this was a mistake, after all. He’d known, when he first hatched his plan, that he had no chance to wrestle his way into the Apex Games through the qualifying tournaments. Even with fresh tech driven into his skin that would let him see anything in the arena, he’d had no interest in trying his luck against the likes of McCormick and Newcastle. And of course, he thinks to himself bitterly now as he grits his teeth, digging calloused fingers harder into the rock above. How the hell would he have survived qualifiers if it's a piece of loose pavement that's going to send him to a pitiful death?

He thought he’d become good at running, if nothing else. And run he did throughout this entire match, falling further and further behind Wraith and Pathfinder as he ducked into side paths and crammed himself into tight cracks in Lava City’s cave walls. (He nearly suffocated there as he waited with bated breath for Bloodhound to scurry past, hoping to God that his EMP had fried their trackers enough to mask his trail. But at least he’d escaped the fate of being speared on their knife.) His detour took him, once he’d squeezed himself out of the rock wall, next through what’s left of the crumbling Capitol City. In hindsight, he should’ve known better — Capitol is never empty. 

He’d swerved into the ruins of a nearby building to avoid coming under fire and clambered down into what he knew is a still-intact level bridging the west and east of Capitol over the rift that split the city in two, with bullets streaking narrowly past his head...

And he’d tripped over uneven cracked cement and tumbled down a sharp incline, straight down towards the molten pit below. By some luck, in his twisting and his clawing at the ground above, his fingers found purchase amongst the broken rock and metal. He was stupid, so stupid...! Of course sheer luck was the only reason he’s made it this far. It’s the only reason he’s still alive now, hanging on for dear life with bleeding hands as he curses his own idiocy.

Glass digs into his palms and the underside of his fingers, the heat rising from the magma below hot on the soles of his dangling feet. He’s not going to last much longer. Crypto clenches his jaw and screws his eyes shut as his grip, damp with sweat, loosens — and the block of cement gives in to his weight, crumbling away from where it attaches to steady ground.

He falls, screaming.

As it turns out, life isn’t what flashes before your eyes when gravity’s sending you hurtling, at 50 metres per second, down towards the molten rock bubbling thickly below. Unless life was nothing but regret: all the opportunities gained (too few) and all the countless more he’s lost; all the failures (too many) that haunted his restless dreams, those same dreams that blur nebulously into his early waking hours; Mystik’s smile and the warmth of her hand against the back of his neck; his mother’s face...

Something snatches at his hand, wrapping his wrist in a vice grip and wrenching him up against the inevitability of gravity. Crypto gasps, the air fleeing his lungs as his weight protests the impossible counter-force. His shoulder flares hot, threatening to pop his arm out from its socket, and he thinks he hears himself shouting as he swings to a stop in mid-air. There’s a roaring from somewhere above him, one that deafens even the blood that’s rushing through his head. Accompanying it is a strangeness — a potent and insidious energy unlike anything he knows in this world. As he sways dangerously above scalding heat, his mind shrieks with fear, thrashing helplessly against whatever’s opened up above him even more than it protested the fate that waits for him below.

But instinct surges above the blood surging hot in his veins and head. Crypto latches on without another thought, curling fingers tight around the sudden anchor and grasping hard.

As soon as he finds his grip, he’s jerked up towards that terrible potency, and something heavy and dark and cold swallows him whole. His stomach lurches as he’s dragged forward, up and down, thrown about, weighed down and crushed beneath the pressure of the space that’s devoured him, pulled in every direction all at once. He forces his eyes open, through the swelling tears, to flashes of blinding white and blue shimmering through the blackness. The dizzying reality around him swirls uncontrollably, familiar and yet shapeless, without form —

And then he topples face-down into cracked ground, his arm burning and chest heaving for air that won’t come. He pushes himself up with his uninjured arm, forcing himself up onto his back with a gasp as his lungs finally learn how to breathe again. He’s alive. He squints up into the sun, his eyes burning as they rekindle a briefly-lost acquaintance with light and colour.

He thinks he’s dreaming it at first. But as he lifts his head, his blurring vision shifting back into focus, he sees it clearly: a still-lingering void, murky and shimmering between his eyes and the skies. As soon as Crypto catches sight of it, the portal vanishes, leaving nothing but a cloudless afternoon blue above. He lets his head fall back, wincing as his skull hits the ground with a hard thud, and heaves a sigh.

Wraith.

There’s a stinging burn in his torso. Crypto looks down to see the jagged, dark tearing across the front of his shirt and the skin of his chest. He presses a metal-padded fingertip against the wound, wincing as it comes away slick with blood. At least a half a centimetre deep. The steel in the reinforced concrete must have caught onto flesh and sliced him through in his tumble. Teaches you to look where you’re going next time! a voice snickers in his hazy mind, tossing a mane of red hair in its wake as it retreats again to the back of his head.

It takes a minute or two. But the throbbing in his temples and the beat of his thundering heart finally slows as the adrenaline of near-death ebbs out of his system. As the thrill bleeds away, every scrape and ache flares to the forefront of his consciousness. His chest is on fire, his arms like lead and his right shoulder almost certainly dislocated. He tries, experimentally, to flex the fingers of his right hand... and realises he’s still clutching tightly to Wraith, his thumb and fingers encircling her wrist in a tight, still-trembling grip. Crypto’s eyes dart up to hers, mouth falling open as he searches, dumbly, for the words to form some sort of apology. 

Finding none, he glances away, loosening his fingers quickly and making to tug his hand out of her grasp. But, too caught between the fogginess of blood-loss and the agonising throb of his entire body, he doesn’t quite manage to free himself.

“S... sorry,”  he mumbles, turning away to peer dazedly towards the edge of the crevasse he’d narrowly avoided dropping into. He’s not so sure what it is that he’s apologising for. Finding himself separated from the squad when he’d spent too long easing his drone into unexplored territories, searching for some place or something that screamed ‘Syndicate secrets’? Nearly taking the most pathetic exit from the Games possible? Or making her chase him all the way out here to make sure he didn’t take that fall?

Symbol Meme - Affectionate/Nice Edition

Tomorrow was the big day. For the both of them. The day Colm O’Driscoll finally swings. Dutch invited Sadie to join him while takes a nocturnal reconnoitre of the camp. 

❛ Tomorrow is the day. ❜ He starts, averting an intense and knowing stare. ❛ I know how it is, wanting to see that bastard hung up like a chandelier. ❜ He anticipates that she will not take that for him invalidating her pain at all. He had never been married but still. ❛ He killed the woman I loved some time ago. We been at each other’s throats ever since. ❜ She had probably heard by now. 

❛ I think we’d both sleep better knowing he’s dead. ❜