Watcher, Are You Out There Still?

You were not one to be so easily consumed, spirited away; made to disappear by the will of others. When you realized that they were coming for you, you ran, and you've been running through the forest ever since with a wrapped bundle in your arms.

This was what they were after. They would not cease pursuing you until they had it, or you were dead. Or both. Perhaps the only advantageous thing from this entire situation was that you chose to run into the forest instead of on the road. The chance that a passing car would be willing to stop for you was slim, and the chance that you would survive climbing down the damp ravines into the forest if you'd been seen was even less.

So, the forest beckoned you inside its core with the precious thing in your arms that you'd promised to bring back a long time ago. It was round and nestled tightly to your chest as if you were a parent fleeing with an infant. Except it did not breathe life nor retain flesh, and it could not babble or speak to you—not as it was, anyway.

From nearby, a gunshot rang out overhead. A warning. A threat. They were coming to take back what they had stolen themselves, a humorous irony of fate. They had said that the town would cease to exist if you fled with it, that no good could possibly come from the outcome that you desired.

Perhaps, in the end, they would be right. But you loved him. Loved the way he caressed you softly despite his presence and strength. Loved all of his impatience and rage, his understanding that you would eventually be ravaged by time, and he would never, so he treated you tenderly.

Another gunshot sounded, but this one struck you in the calf. You screamed and fell down onto the wet detritus of leaves, moss, and mud with the precious thing still in your arms. You intended to hold it until the last, until you were cold and rigid, and they'd have to prise it from your arms.

The agony stole your voice, your breaths harsh pants as you tried to climb to your knees and crawl towards a tree without the use of an arm or leg. You couldn't bring yourself to look back at your leg, to investigate the warmth flowing freely from the gaping wound, and the smell of petrichor wrapped in earthy decay with a metallic tang.

"Told you didn't we?" said the Sheriff, unholstered gun at his side. "We keep our secrets here, honey. We'll be taking back the Horseman's head."

"No!" you spat through teeth and saliva. "It doesn't belong to you! It never has!"

He spun the barrel of his pistol, readied the next bullet, and pointed it at you—at your head. "Maybe not. But everyone will be a lot worse off if you get your way about things. You'd be willing to wipe out an entire town for that…thing? How sick are you?"

Sicker than most, but not sick enough to hide secrets like these for over two hundred years.

So, you said nothing when the Horseman approached from between the darkness of the trees, cloaked in weathered red and black armor, tarnished sword drawn and raised. You closed your eyes and listened to the Sheriff's shriek of terror end with steel cutting the air, flesh ripping, and blood geysering from his severed neck. His head landed some ways off with an underwhelming thud, like a tree branch hitting the forest floor.

You did not search for the head when you opened your eyes, nor did you seek out the body, though it lay there much closer to you than the head. It was the Horseman whom you were looking at as he sheathed his sword and came to you. His footsteps were heavy and precise, terrifying to anyone who did not know them.

It was getting colder, and your leg still ached, but you sat on your knees as you unraveled the fabric from around the bundle to reveal a pristine skull. While grayed and dirty from age and the time it had spent underground, the skull was without lost teeth or cracks in the orbital sockets. For all of the town's fuckery, they'd taken care of it remarkably well.

The Horseman took it from you once offered, but did not attach it to his empty neck. Rather, he attached it to the belt around his waist and turned his torso towards you. His thick, gloved fingertips sought your face and gently stroked it, smearing blood across your cheek while trying to rid you of your tears.

He reached around your body then, hoisting you up into his arms as he gestured somewhere off into the trees. A white horse with a torn face emerged, emitting an otherworldly whinny as you were placed in the saddle and he climbed on behind you.

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a/n; if anyone has ever come across the headless horseman story called "in a sleepy town" on here or AO3 in the past, that was by me and one of my first original x reader projects I ever started. it was never finished, but it holds a special place in my heart.

Just like that, the world was up, and then it was down.

You passed through the nothingness of the portal as though it had been a grimy film; dishwater that had sat for too long and separated when you stuck your hand through. The blackness receded back into the portal as you were wrapped in daylight without warmth. You could see your body again, clothes wagging in pockets of rushing air, and a vast blue sky following your descent.

Now you were falling, but there was nowhere to fall to.

Enormous skyscrapers resembled those in Labyrinth City, the ones that kept being built higher as though trying to reach Heaven without God. These were different. You saw their flat peaks with rooftop bulkheads and glowing radio antennas when you came through the portal, but as you fell, the buildings seemed to stretch with you.

The emptiness beneath your back was an oddly comforting thing, knowing that you'd either continue to fall forever or splatter across a surface and die instantly. A brief respite was shattered by shrill screams and cackling fast approaching on batlike wings.

At first, you hadn't seen it because you were desperately scanning the sky for a dark mass, like the clawed nightmare from before. This monstrosity was different. Emaciated. Skin terribly thin with the yellowish-green hue of decay. Worst of all was its face—its two faces. It was nearly a blank slate sans two sets of milky eyes and a severe cleft from its forehead to its chin that opened like the pod of a flower, rows of teeth within. A long, tubular tongue slithered out from the cavernous mouth.

The nightmare grabbed you by your clothes, stopping your free fall with such suddenness that your body jolted, vision smeared and spinning. It took your face by its other hand and felt for your lips, trying to pry them open. It slipped a finger inside, but you gnashed your teeth around it so hard that its bones dislocated. Blood so foul and viscous and black touched your tongue that it made you want to puke.

It screamed and dropped you.

You screamed because you were falling again, stomach afloat, filled with cold dread. The feeling deepened as the nightmare's wails were transformed by fury, four sightless eyes glaring after you, and the sounds of your terror. It tucked its wings and dove for you, taking hold of your face with both elongated hands, thumbs forcing your jaws apart and pushing inside your mouth.

There was nowhere else for you to look but at the monstrosity, at its ugliness and primitive evil, and the tubular tongue rising from the black gorge in its skull. You tried gnawing on the nightmare's thumbs as hard as you could, thinking you could hurt it enough for it to release you again. It shrieked and stretched the corners of your mouth wider, opened your jaws further apart, and let the tongue probe along your face before aiming for your throat.

Then, just as quickly as this had all started, you were freed of the nightmare.

You hadn't noticed the man, the one from before with the monstrous head and lipless grin, until he had already wrenched the nightmare away by its wings. Black and purple blood sprayed the sky as the man tore the nightmare's wings from its body and flung it. The nightmare descended faster than you and the man were, bellowing in agony, reaching towards the wings that had been stolen from it. Perhaps it would do that forever.

The man-thing looked to you now. He reached one of his gloved hands out for you.

You were next.

Why couldn't you catch a fucking break today?

But you realized then that he was gesturing somewhere beyond you, below you. You braved the wind stinging your eyes to look down, the ground fast approaching—no, not the ground, a ledge?—and did what you could in this situation: Nothing.

The man-thing gripped you by the arms, turning your bodies so that he was falling ahead of you, and tucked you tightly into his chest. In normal circumstances, you would have found comfort in being held by a man. As it turned out, the inevitability of death numbed both fear and solace in equal measures until there was just empty acceptance. It occurred to you then that you had wished for this all along.

He patted one of your shoulders as though to get your attention before flipping his body once to place his feet under him to meet the ground. Gray-beige concrete cracked and cratered from the force of the landing, emitting a thunderous echo that beat in your ears.

Once the moment settled, the man-thing let his arms fall away from your body as he crouched low to the ground inside the crater with slabs of upturned concrete surrounding him. If he was in pain, he made no indications or sounds that he was. You collected yourself and stumbled out of the destruction as fast as you could, eyes sharp on him and your immediate surroundings.

"What the hell is this place?"

He responded to that by looking up at you with his monstrous face and split grin, then tucked his head back down towards his thighs, where his arms rested. It was such an ordinary human thing to do, definitely indicating some discomfort. Before today, you had never witnessed a nightmare in pain, nor knew the capacity that they were capable of experiencing it.

Then again, this man was not all one thing, was he?

You watched him from a distance. How he swayed on the balls of his feet a bit longer before finally standing, apparently shaking off the worst of what he felt. You watched as he came towards you and halted when you gained that space.

"Stay over there!" you said. "I know you can understand me. Stay away!"

He raised a hand in the air and let it fall as if to convey, "Suit yourself." Then, he walked away.

There was no question that if he had wanted to kill you, it would've already been done. Since tearing apart that pale abomination in the sky, he'd had chances to snap you in half or rip out your throat with his teeth, yet he'd chosen to save you, let you go instead. He comprehended human language as well as you could speak it, and he seemed to know where he was going.

Now, you were many unsavory things, but a damn fool wasn't one of them.