𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐃𝐄 𝟏: 𝐘𝐎𝐔𝐑 𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐓𝐇

I imagine AU or rebirth without magic, where they couldn't meet because they live too different lives. A rich heir to a large company and an ordinary schoolboy who gets by on part-time jobs.

Knife in the belly

Chapter 1: Convalescence

Pairing: Jackson Joel Miller x Doctor Female Reader Chapter Rating: M. Chapter Summary: "Help him," Maria says. "Help Tommy’s brother, Joel." Chapter Warnings: HEAVY SPOILERS FOR S2E2, FIX IT FIC, pov switching, joel survives abby's encounter, injuries, healing, blood, death, apocalypse health care, temporary blindness Words: 2,725

A/N: I don't think I've ever written something so deep and sad, but damn, Joel Miller will do that. Thank you to @mothandpidgeon, @schnarfer, and @for-a-longlongtime for guiding me and looking everything over.

Healed Masterlist Masterlist

—- You’ve given up trying to avoid the glass. Blood smears red against the clear shards strewn across the floor. Too many voices, too many cries of pain. You’ve been in Jackson for only one day, a town that you thought would be a sanctuary amongst the wreckage of the world you used to know. And yet, you quickly learn, no matter how tall the walls are, the blood never stops flowing. The room suffocates beneath the hot, metallic tang of it, pooling beneath your feet as you move among the bodies. You can't get away from the screaming.

You are doing this on instinct. You must be.

"You're a doctor," a voice says. Maria, one of the leaders, grips your arm. "We need a doctor.”

You follow her as she pushes through the crowd, leaving the blood. 

The air is bitter as you step outside, the stench of death is strong as you make your way through the corpses of your new neighbors and the infected. 

"We need a doctor," she repeats, as you follow close behind. "Before it's too late."

You don't have the heart to tell her that it probably already is. You’ve already seen this type of despair line the streets through the apocalypse.

You’re both running down Main Street, the same street you rolled down just yesterday, exhausted and starving.

You should still be worn down from the days of travel, from the confusion and loss. But each time you think you can't take another step, you do. It’s almost enough to give you hope… until you see the gate burning while a group quickly seals a fissure in the fence.

Just past the flames, a man kneels over someone lying in the snow.

"Help him," Maria says. "Help Tommy’s brother, Joel."

—-

He’s not moving. His leg is mangled, tourniqueted by a belt soaked in red. You put your ear down to his heart and check for a pulse. Nothing.

Tommy still kneels, crying and pleading as his shaky hands grip Joel’s shoulders.

“Move,” you command, getting into position. You find the center of his chest and begin compressions.

One, two, three, four…

A small group forms around you, whispering Joel’s name as they look on. You can’t focus on them now.

Twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty.

You tilt Joel's head back, pinch his nose you’re sure is broken, and give him two of your breaths. His broad chest rises slightly with each one. Back to compressions.

One, two, three, four…

He fills his lungs with air, but it sounds like the opposite… like they're letting the air out.

He’s alive, but barely.

He needs surgery. Now.

"We need to move him," you say urgently, looking up at Tommy. "Can you carry him?"

Tommy nods, and with the help of two other men, they lift Joel's limp body. His head lolls back, face gray beneath the blood. You keep your fingers pressed against his neck, feeling the faint flutter of a pulse.

—-

There's too much blood to hold on to anything, it's impossible to even see without a suction running the whole time. This is not what they taught you in med school. This is nothing like it should be. It hasn’t been for 25 years.

You're out of practice and out of your league.

There’s no oxygen therapy in the apocalypse, and he’s barely breathing. His pulse is weak, but he’s still here, holding on after you brought him back to life. 

A doctor, who looks like he should have retired years ago, tells you it’s nearly impossible to save Joel’s leg.

"I’ll try," you respond.

The bullet fragments are still in his leg. Some of them. Maybe not enough to kill, but enough to leave him limping the rest of his days. If he makes it through.

Your steady hands dig and find, dig and find. Shards land on the floor with a tink as they hit the tile.

The operation shouldn't have lasted this long, not with what looks like an old man, not with the slight pulse he barely holds onto.

But he lasts.

Joel Miller survives.

You wash his blood off your hands and breathe in relief for the first time today.

You walk out the door of the tiny, barely sterile operating room, Tommy stands across the hall.

"He's going to live," you say, that’s all he needs to hear.

He hugs you.

"Thank you,” he whispers, pulling away. “He needs care," he says, hands still on your shoulders. “The hospital's overrun. Joel—" His voice breaks. "Joel's gonna need someone who knows what they're doing."

"I'm not sure—"

"Please," his grip tightens. "You saved his life. I'm asking you to help him keep it."

—-

And that’s how you found your new home. Save a life, get a bed. The room across from Joel’s is now yours. 

It’s a nice enough room. A queen bed, two worn side tables, and a closet that can easily fit your one change of clothes. You haven’t had an actual bedroom to yourself in ten years. Yet, you hardly spend any time in it, it’s easier just to sleep in the worn recliner near Joel's makeshift hospital bed that sits in his living room.

The silence during the day is overwhelming. Just your footsteps on the worn floorboards, your soft voice telling Joel what you’re doing as you care for him, your knitting needles tapping against one another as you knit with what little yarn you have left. He never stirs; he just lies there silent.

The nights are even quieter. Joel’s breathing is the only sound you hear when you drift off to sleep every night, air filling and emptying, rattling his lungs.

He sleeps for days. You change his dressings, monitor the fever that makes him sweat and shiver, and refill the makeshift IV drip that hangs from a nail in the wall. 

There’s a framed sketch sitting on his mantle. The man that stares back at you from the yellowing paper is quite handsome. You think it’s him.

But for now, his face is only a collection of pain.

Bruises, cuts, scabs.

Contusions, lacerations.

Stiff and swollen.

You unwrap his bandages, cleaning his wounds twice a day. You talk softly to him, as if he’s listening.

He's really not much company. The house sits still like him. And yet, every morning you tell him good morning and reintroduce yourself, just in case.

It’s lonely.

Sometimes there’s company, but not enough. 

Maria brings you new clothes, spools of yarn, and some essentials you haven’t had in so long. When she leaves, she grabs your hand, tears welling in her eyes, and thanks you. “So many people depend on him here.”

Tommy checks in every day, and on the days he has the time, he sits silently watching his big brother’s chest gently rise and fall. He brings you food, one less thing for you to worry about as you spoon-feed Joel broth and blended vegetables. 

“He’s tough,” he always says before leaving. “He’ll pull through.”

You only nod. The wounds are severe; infection is a constant threat. And yet, Joel refuses to let go.

—-

A young woman hobbles in one day. Ellie. Tommy’s mentioned her many times. She winces as she sits, damning her broken ribs when she leans forward and grabs Joel’s hand, tears falling down her cheeks.

She asks if he’s okay.

You nod.

She asks if he can hear her.

You nod.

She asks you to leave the room.

You leave.

—-

His face is still swollen and misshapen, barely recognizable. You stare at the sketch on the mantle. Ellie drew it, a supposed perfect reflection of who Joel was, you look over at his broken face. If you squint, you can almost make it work. You wonder if he will ever look like the man in the drawing again.

His body sprawls on the bed, limp under the blankets that you pull away from him as you check over his body and wash it.

"I'm going to clean you up a bit," you tell him softly, dipping the cloth into the basin of warm water beside the bed. You're not sure if he can hear you, but you talk anyway. "It might sting a little."

His body tenses slightly at your touch—the first real response you've gotten from him.

It’s all so clinical, but you can’t help but take a moment to notice the size of his body. He’s marred, yet still golden. Purple bruises cover his torso, and a large, mangled scar stretches across the side of his stomach. You wonder what story it tells.

“You’ve been through a lot,” you whisper aloud to nobody.

His leg is healing, though still swollen and damaged. He must be in so much pain.

He stirs under your touch, and the briefest twitch of his eyelid tells you he's still hanging on. "Joel?"

Nothing.

It's so strange to care for someone like this, someone who doesn't even know you're there. Or maybe he does. Maybe somewhere in the darkness he’s shrouded in, he can feel your presence.

—-

You don’t know if you’ve ever been around this much silence. You’re quietly reading in the recliner when you see his fingers twitch, the corner of his mouth pulls back just enough for you to tell he's fighting his way back to the world.

“Joel.”

You say his name. His breathing quickens at the sound, but there's no response otherwise.

He's drifting in and out, unaware that you're beside him. But at least he's moving.

He's barely conscious, his breaths turning into grunts and mumbles as you watch over him.

You place a hand on his arm, soothing him softly, petting against the small part of him that isn’t injured. He calms, his breathing evening out. “You’re okay, Joel. You’re safe.” He doesn’t respond, it’s not like you expected him to. 

If you can't hold a conversation with him, at least you can try reading to him.

You start taking books from his bookshelves. You start with the westerns. He stays still, stuck under a haze, but you read to him like he's listening. “Lonesome Dove, hm,” you muse to him, when you pick up a thick hardcover book. “Sounds kinda like me right now, doesn’t it?” 

You pull the chair close to Joel’s bed, 

“When August came out on the porch the blue pigs were eating a rattlesnake – not a very big one.”

You barely finish the page before you nod off. You’re exhausted, you can’t remember the last time you stood in the sunlight.

When you wake, his fingers are twitching again.

You pick up the book and read on, twenty pages this time. 

Days blur into one another as Joel's condition improves just enough for you to keep your spirits up. He can't see you through the swollen mess of his face, but you know he hears you.

You read him chapter after chapter, the only entertainment for the two of you. He barely says a word, just grunts in approval or pain.

You feel more like a librarian than a doctor.

—-

The sound of your voice is more real than anything else. He floats through the clouds of half-consciousness. Part of him thinks he’s dead.

He must be a ghost, hovering above the empty shell of his body. But when you speak, he’s tethered back to life.

He wants to see you, to open his eyes and find out if you're real, but it's too much work. His lids are heavy with injury, and the swelling doesn't allow them to open.

He hates the dark.

Sometimes you hum, sometimes you talk out loud to yourself, sometimes to him. He holds on to your voice because when you speak, the pain goes away.

He can just make out your silhouette backlit by the window near his favorite chair. Your face is a blur he can't bring into focus. Maybe he did die, maybe this is some sort of limbo he’s in, because you sure as hell sound like an angel, and when you touch him, he feels at peace.

A whole week passes. The swelling is still too much for him to see anything besides shadows and forms. 

He hears pages turning and knows you're still there.

He hears the edge of worry in your voice as you talk to his brother and knows you care.

You’ll sometimes drift to sleep while you’re reading to him, always waking when his breaths become strained, when he struggles in his dreams.

Always there.

"You need to wake up," you tell him. 

And still, he can't be sure you're not a figment of his desperate imagination.

Sometimes he’s sure he must be dead, because he thinks you’re an angel. He wonders if he deserves one.

Another day passes.

Another.

And another.

He loses track of how long you've stayed by his side. Until he loses track of everything except the sound of your voice.

But you don't leave him.

His body refuses to cooperate, but you don't give up.

And then, after god knows how many days, progress. His voice is the first thing that returns to him. It barely makes it past his throat.

"Ellie?" It's the most important question.

"She's safe," you tell him.

“Water,” he manages, the word scraping against his dry throat.

“Here,” you say. Your hand slips beneath his head, lifting it gently as you bring a cup to his lips.

“Slow,” you whisper. “It’s been a while.”

"How long?" he asks. He sounds like such an old man, but at least he sounds like himself.

"A while… but you survived.”

“Who are y–” the question dies in his throat, he’s too weak to form it completely.

“I’m a doctor, your brother asked me to care of you."

“Your voice,” he says, the words barely audible. “I know your voi—”

“Try to rest,” you tell him as you adjust his pillows.

—-

Soon, he’s able to say a full sentence without feeling like he’ll never be able to speak again. He gets to tell Tommy he’ll be okay. He gets to tell Ellie he missed her. He gets to say your name.

It has to be easier to take care of him now, he tries not to think about how much of a burden he is to you. A stranger, in his home, taking care of him in the way that you do. The soft way you adjust his pillow, the way you gently brush his unkempt hair out of his face, the sweet way you greet him every morning. 

Every night, after dinner, you read to him. It’s his favorite part of the day. The familiar sound of the chair scooching into place, your soft throat clear, and then your voice.

“Live through it," Call said. "That's all we can do.” Your voice catches at the end of the line.

“Repeat it,” he requests. 

You read it again for him. He sits silently. Your sweet voice saying “live through it” is repeating in his head.

—-

The breathing gets easier, the swelling begins to subside, and you still don't give up on him.

He flutters his eyes open just enough to see, to test it. It’s no longer shadows. 

This time, he opens his eyes and he sees you. He sees your face.

He really sees it.

You’re as beautiful as he imagined, backlit by the window, you’re bathed in an aura of soft light shining in through it. You are an angel.

He stares at you. The mystery of the metallic clicking he’s been hearing is solved. You’re knitting, two needles clicking away in your hands. His vision is the clearest it's been. 

He says nothing and watches you. He watches and he memorizes.

You don't even notice him. You're so used to him lying there, lifeless, that you don't even look to check… until you’re done counting your stitches and look up, your needles freezing mid-stitch.

“Joel…”

He croaks an affirmative.

You drop your knitting needles and gasp.

"Joel?" You kneel by the bed, and for the first time, he can see your whole face. For the first time, he’s sure you're real.

You press your palm to his forehead, testing his temperature before grabbing your stethoscope and checking his heart rate.

“Can you focus on breathing for me, Joel? Your heart is elevated.”

He takes a deep breath, trying to settle his heart, knowing it’s only because of you. 

—-

My perma tags: @forspringcleaning, @schnarfer, @mothandpidgeon

Tagging those who showed interest and asked! Please let me know if you'd like to be removed or added.

@secretelephanttattoo, @sawymredfox, @yopossum, @beefrobeefcal, @tinytinymenace

@ace-turned-confused, @lotusbxtch, @tuquoquebrute, @007maiz, @keseqna

@jethrojessie, @catnip987, @joelsbloodyhands, @pedroswife69, @christinamadsen

@desuidesu, @ccmoonshine, @cuntstiel, @karaslqve, @blog-luvdance

@i-wanna-be-your-muse, @bergamote-catsandbooks, @kyloispunk, @idungoofed, @sunnytuliptime

@thatgirlmendo, @visenya-targarye, @mystickittytaco, @noisynightmarepoetry, @mirandablue1

@yxtkiwiyxt, @glitterspark, @missladym1981, @deviscave, @littledebbieinabigworld

@flawssy-227, @lillaydee, @nandan11, @moel-jiller, @brittmb115

@ashleyfilm, @katwriteshardy, @picketniffler, @casa-boiardi, @cumberstarkispunk

IMPOSTER

possessed!scholar husband x reader |18+| 3.8k

in an act of self-preservation, your family marries you off into an exorbitantly wealthy family. it's a loveless marriage to a reclusive and reticent man. one day, he informs you of leaving to handle the last affairs of his deceased uncle's estate. when he later returns, you're convinced this man is not your husband...

story warnings; dark content, dubcon, explicit sexual details, masturbation (mc), mirror sex, implications of sadism, classism, animal death (mentioned briefly), grotesque details + body horror, murder, pseudo-victorian setting, I am well aware that this is not how Victorian marriages would've gone — bite me 👊🏻, detail + prose heavy, roughly proofread

this is a concept piece #1 for my upcoming project: the lord of phantasm. please let me know if you'd like me to post the other concept pieces!

sequel piece: root rot

reposted from my deleted blog: theoxenfree.

if you enjoyed, please leave feedback + reblog to help your girl out 💓

In the airless dark of your bedroom at night, you knew the man lying next to you under covers was not your husband. Once he had been, but now he no longer was.

The revelation had come to you before noticing the stillness of his broad frame in bed, certain stiffness which seemed more alike to rigor in a days old corpse rather than a man wrapped in the comforting spell of deep sleep.

His breaths were silent, if he even breathed at all, reminding you of childhood where the floorboards wouldn't creak so loudly if you sucked all the air out from your lungs into your throat, snagging it, holding it firm. Suddenly, you'd be lighter; effervescent; floating across the wooden slabs towards the kitchen past midnight, or out the front door during the years where testing your parent’s patience and fraying the head maid’s nerves was your favorite thing to do.

You’d learned later on, after the loveless vows and complicated legality behind joining your two families, that your husband had a knack for slipping away at night as well. Only, he wasn't at all the sort for flirtatious gallivanting and loquacious rendezvous with secret lovers in dim rooms, smells of mildew masked by a numbingly sweet, perfumey fog.

He was reclusive and reticent; one of those outstandingly brilliant scholars who believed the rest of the world was below him because he hadn't found an equal in conversation or thought. Social obligations—no matter the occasion or person—pained him to where he intentionally brought you as a buffer between himself and whomever was trying to speak to him.

Some of the talk was so astronomically beyond you that parroting the long-winded answers he spoke softly into your ear back to his audience made you burn under the collar from embarrassment and his proximity to you. His peers could not understand why he simply wouldn't talk for himself; meanwhile, they also wondered why someone without their level of formal education had even accompanied him.

At night, he became one with darkness and retreated to the depths of his study across the massive house you shared together. It was part of one of his family’s various estates dotted across the country and his favorite, due to its location near the university where he worked (at his leisure), and its closeness to his only relative he actually cared about.

“My uncle—he has passed. Of complications caused from tuberculosis, I've been told. I was the only family member placed in his will, therefore it falls to me to settle all remaining affairs he may have overlooked,” he said, letting you help him into his heavy, wool coat he left on a hook near the front door. At his side was a hulking suitcase; one he often used for trips that were days—weeks away from home, from you. “He was a far more private man than I, so there's no telling what I'll come across while I'm there. I cannot tell you how long I'll be away. I'm sorry.”

You expected nothing less from him. This man who had only ever touched you once, on your wedding day. He did everything that he was supposed to: tonelessly regurgitate scripted vows he committed to memory, hold your hands, and kiss you at the altar for more than two seconds but less than five, and then gently lead you away once both families were pleased with the performance.

Right after, now as newlyweds, he poured bourbon into exquisite crosshatch crystalware and examined the glistening amber under wan lamplight. He apologized for kissing you, that he wouldn't have had at all if it hadn't been so important for your families.

At the time, it made you feel very ugly and undeserving of the silk and ornate lacework decorating your body. The gold band fitted around your finger was a lofty symbol of acquired wealth, heavy and unforgiving.

“Write to me every once and a while,” was all you could think to say at present, managing your composure well enough as he gripped the handle of his suitcase and leaned into its heftiness on that side. “It'd just be nice to know how you're doing. If you find anything interesting. When you'll be coming home. It gives me something to look forward to.”

“I'll try to,” he said, but looked through you, pierced you, as though trying to see something else. You saw this look most often at events or parties where he'd fixate on a specific point (usually you) and seem to recede inside himself, into his thoughts, perhaps trying to dissect them or make them congeal into something linear.

“Uncle was an eccentric man. There's no telling what he's left behind for me to find. I must go. Be well, my dear.”

Once again, he left you behind without remorse.

Four months passed with agonizing, gripping slowness from the crisp mornings of late autumn into the icy vise of winter and a shimmering white-blue landscape outside your windows. In those days, you occupied yourself as best you could with guests and alcoholic merriment, whisked yourself away to parties and dinners after wringing out the invitations from friends, and spent many sleepless nights sprawled across the floor beside the fireplace coveting self-pleasure.

You imagined it was your husband there with you, immediately a renewed man after his return and finding you boundlessly desirable, fucking you with his cock rather than the freezing metal dildo you thrust inside yourself.

Even once you were finished, fucked out by your own hand and the object gaping you wide, you kept masturbating until you lost sensation, the motions and metal numbing you inside—until the intimacy and thrill of self-discovery had lost meaning to you.

Sometimes, you were found the next morning by a maid like that: thoroughly debauched with the phallus having rolled away nearby or still shallowly pressed inside. You only needed to threaten her livelihood once for her to never speak of it, pretend each time she hadn't witnessed a regrettable case of personal depravity.

It'd eventually become a frequent enough sight to her that she knew better than to look directly at you when she entered the room. Rather, now, she carried a laundered pair of trousers in with her. They were draped neatly over a bent arm, along with a warm and soapy rag in her hand, which she used to lightly clean you of dried fluids. Afterward, she helped you into the new garment.

“You have received a letter from the Master,” she said unexpectedly one morning, after fastening your pants and tucking your blouse inside them. “It's strange, though, because it doesn't feel like a letter. Not enough… substance. Shall I open it for you?”

“No! No, that's alright.” You took the long, pale envelope from her once she revealed it to you, realizing that she was right. There was nothing to it. Light as a feather, but completely sealed on the back with his personal emblem hastily stamped, or more appropriately, smeared, with red wax dribbling away from center towards the bottom of the envelope as if sudden jerkiness had unsteadied his focused pour.

You flipped the thing front to back several times, testing the way the opposite ends fluttered from nothingness within, and glanced aside to your maid.

She looked to be just as thrown.

“You're sure this is from him?” you asked, bemused. “Who delivered this?”

“Why, a courier on horseback, of course!” she said with conviction, so you knew she wasn't lying to you at that moment. It wasn't her habit to weave tales to get a rise out of her employers, anyway. “I even spoke to the courier for a while because I made a comment about it being so light. He wasn't sure about it, either, but the description of the man who hired him matched the Master almost exactly.”

You had found a letter opener on the desk nearby and made a quick cut under the wax to break the seal without ripping the envelope itself.

“Almost? What does that mean here?” you raised the intact flap with the messy seal attached, freeing all of the residual tracks of wax from the paper so that they fell to the hardwood below like pebbles shaken out of a shoe after a stroll through the yard. “The man was either my husband or he wasn't.”

The maid tried to subdue her intrigue of the envelope, turned, and moved onto bunching up the soiled sheet you'd spread out on the floor last night. “Please don't misunderstand. It was him. But, the courier described him as ‘a very interesting and friendly fellow to converse with’.”

“What?”

You were responding to two things simultaneously right then: what your maid had just told you, and the fact that the only content inside the envelope was a single shred of paper torn from an unlined journal.

The maid fluttered back over to your side as you plucked out the slither of paper, letting the envelope fall freely from your hand to the floor. Leaning into your proximity, she read aloud the same three words that your eyes skimmed:

“Father Marius DuMonde.”

Just as you had done before with the envelope, you flipped the scrap back and forth as though trying to magically flip something into existence. Your husband's handwriting was recognizable in the lettering, but it was impatient; scrawled across a page in one journal in his vast collection like he hurriedly walked past, and then ripped it out.

Nothing else was revealed to you in the seconds after, nor in your long, contemplative stare.

“Who is that?” you asked the maid to alleviate a fast yawning gap of uneasiness beginning to make you fidget and fluster. “A priest?”

The maid beamed in awe of your fast deductive skills and nodded eagerly. “It would seem that way! The city has more places of worship than it does homes for the hungry and sick. Although, I suppose a church offers some of those services.” However, the lightness sank out of her face when you didn't reciprocate that enthusiasm whatsoever. “You’re unhappy? What's wrong?”

“My husband is a scholar. A rigid man of science,” you said, bending over to pick up the discarded envelope to closer examine the disastrous wax seal. “He denounces faith in all forms. Why did he write a priest's name to me?”

That maddening thought followed you for days afterward, sufficiently distracting you from all the regular vices you'd come to rely on to fill the void of your husband's absence. Fulfill the needs he'd never tried to meet even while he was around.

You spent your days brooding in the window seats in whichever room was warmest, molding against their domed shape while leaning a cheek flush to frigid glass, eyes bloodshot and watering against the sun’s searing neon reflecting off of a lawn of undiluted, glittering white.

Seldomly, a finch or small vermin would come into your view—hopping or lunging through the snow, making tracks, digging holes, disturbing your beautiful wonderland and almost arousing you into unreasonable outbursts which then inevitably became the servants responsibility to contend with, should any be nearby to provoke you.

It was the early evening during one of your normal watches, just after dinner and a glass of red wine, when a great clamor carried swiftly to you from the foyer of the main entrance. The servants’ voices were a feverish amalgam of nonsensical babbling, high-pitched, and accommodating in a way that made you think of groveling dogs with flattened ears, wagging and tucked tails, bellies upturned to their masters.

“Come! Come quickly!” called your maid from the sitting room door, her shrill, excitable voice a violent jostling in your head, scrambling your thoughts and anger with it. “Master has returned! He's asking for you.”

You delayed the reunion, waiting several minutes after she had gone before standing. You realized that the anticipation you felt swelling in your chest, rising like growth—a malignant tumor into your throat, thickening your tongue and fouling your taste and smell, was because you were uneasy, haunted by the cryptic message he had presumably sent you weeks ago.

A while later, you entered the foyer to see most of the staff had already dispersed and the ones left behind were your husband’s most loyal. There among them, speaking so unremarkably, so casually in a way you'd never witnessed, was your husband. His good spirits and animated gestures as he handed off all his things to many hands were an odd sight, staggeringly unlike his typical dour.

So, the rumor was true. There was something discomforting in that.

Whatever topic he'd been engaged in fell wayside once he took sight of you: standing, waiting, subtly shifting your weight, picking your overgrown cuticles to remedy how nervous you truly felt in that moment. You'd always been a little uncertain of how to deal with him as he was hardly affable, but this—

“Oh my… there you are, my sweet!” his voice was exactly the same, but his way of speaking was too jarring, almost lilting. Unnatural. No one else seemed to notice. “I was worried you may have been cross with me for being away for so long. As it turned out, uncle had far more beneath the surface to find than I once thought. But, all is well! The old man has been laid to rest forever. The estate is in the right hands. I've come back to you.”

Could this man really be your husband?

He came to you in brisk strides with a certain clumsiness to the way he moved, somewhat off. You thought about seasoned drunkards who could walk along a path, but never on a straight line without gently swaying on and off of it. Mostly in control, but never so well to appear normal.

But, you didn't detect that stiff, hot, fermented reek of alcohol on his breath nor any subtle odor sticking to his clothes as he gripped you tight in an embrace. The only one he'd ever given you. Where you should have been over the moon in joy at his profound change in heart, the little sweetness was like an anchor—arms of a sinewy willow pinning you to an even stronger trunk.

“God, you're breathtaking.” He even sounded winded as he spoke, lifting your face up with both hands to see his dark, dark gleaming eyes. You startled from his cold touch, fingertips pinpricks of pure frost and ice as they pushed into your skin, but you felt trying to reach much deeper than that. “Come with me, my love. Let me show you just how much I've missed you.”

As if fantasy had become real, he fucked you relentlessly that night next to the fireplace, consuming you so completely that every orgasm made your insides churn in agony.

He laved at you with his entire mouth, tongue and teeth hardest at work while his hands bruised and fondled you, fingers thrusting up into your tight hole oozing his saliva and your arousal. It was shameful to think that it took this sort of handling from another person to get you off, squeal like a sow.

He fucked you however he could, wherever he could. Rutting you from behind and against furniture, pressing your bare chest flush to frosted over window panes to make your nipples erect and ache from the cold biting them. Then, you were settled on his lap in front of a mirror hanging adjacent across the bedroom, his thighs spreading you wide open before your own reflection where you watched his cock plunge deep, filling you to the base of his shaft, balls slapping your sticky skin.

“Touch yourself, darling.” His throat rumbled, turning over stones and shards of glass, overall sounding very husky. There was something of wheeze that trailed the end of his every word, like he’d been patched for a long time. “Touch yourself. Watch yourself while you do it. Fuck yourself like the whore you are.”

Although the things he said were horribly uncouth, unbefitting of a man of his status and who you'd known him to be, there was great allure in hearing him, obeying his wants. You'd only had one glass of wine that evening, but your head and body warmed and buzzed like you'd had several.

His voice was a raspy whisper in your ears, seeping deep into your mind; spreading; fitting the grooves of your brain like the slow sprawl of sap through the gaps in bark. You were hardly yourself those minutes, those hours onward where you witnessed your reflection stroking throbbing parts, moaning, weeping, cumming until it hurt, and then doing it all over again.

The person in the mirror seemed to be someone completely different, whether simply disassociation from yourself or some hallucination evoked by exhaustion and ecstacy. Your husband had faded into the background, his voice creating sounds and noises, holding the cadence of language while seeming entirely unprobable, unknowable to you.

You couldn't understand him, yet you could, and the things he said were vile and disgusting and moralless. He told you of every way he'd like to fuck you, watch you be fucked; but, mostly, he wanted you to fuck yourself with the bulbous bedposts, the metal phallus held under lashing flames to be inserted next to his own cock.

He suggested orgies where the servants could take turns with you. He had almost convinced you to call for your maid so he could watch you suck on her breasts and lick her clit, while he rammed you from the back. He suggested drugs and whores, robbing the mortuaries, and worse and worse and worse and worse…

The next morning, you were stiff and immobile, bedridden unless two servants came into your room to help you squat on the commode. Your abdomen was tender and your genitals were untouchable, forcing you to lie in bed without undergarments to alleviate the raw chafing that could happen with fabric.

“I'm sorry, my darling. I—I lost control of myself. I got carried away,” your husband confessed later on, his sallow complexion keeping a weird, waxy sheen to it. A mask that fits, but not quite perfectly. Some of his former somber nature had returned to him as he sat on the edge of your bed, caressing the side of your face. He was still ridiculously cold. “Forgive me. I never meant to hurt you. I didn't realize just how desperate I was to see you again until you were in my arms. And then—and then, it was like it was all a dream.”

You thought the very same. You could believe he forgot himself in an uncharacteristic blaze of lust, as men were never taught to be any other way, and most men couldn't fathom the level of restraint he’d had until last night.

Everything else, you'd wanted to believe, was simply imagined after drinking more than you once thought and getting inside your own head full of sinful indulgences.

Still, one thing bothered you: Father Marius DuMonde.

“I need you to go to the city and find him. And show him this paper. Explain to him everything that you know, you hear?” You'd handed your maid the old envelope and scrap of paper, and handed her a generous bag of coins from your own safe. She looked at you, everything else, in bewilderment. “Don't ask questions. If you're able, bring him back here. Beg him if you must. If it's all nothing, he will simply be an honored guest we feed well, house, and send off gracefully the next day. Should it be something…”

“Are you afraid of him? The Master?” asked the maid, perhaps out of faithfulness to him. Perhaps out of devotion to you the most. “What do you think happened at his uncle's estate?”

It would all be speculation and unjustified gossip without proof, of which you had none. So, you told her that you couldn't be sure of anything right now. “Wait until sundown. Take the old pony in the stables, the one that usually lags behind all the rest. Be silent. Be careful.”

The maid did as you asked and left right before the final light was extinguished by indigo nightfall. You were able to move to one of the windows, seating yourself gingerly, watching her lead the sluggish old pony into cover of tree tops and then nothing else.

But, five days later, the maid hadn't returned from her mission, nor had you received any correspondence from her, nor the priest that she was supposed to retrieve.

A week after that, it was revealed to you that neither she or the old pony had made it out of the woods. The details of the old pony were so gruesome you couldn't bear to remember them. But, the maid was found nearly decapitated, head twisted around to face backwards, her pale skin hideously purple and black and swelled where it had been stretched like a strap of wrung leather. It was mentioned she had been disemboweled as well, but you promptly burst into tears and ran from the room before the visiting coroner could finish speaking, leaving him to discuss the rest with just your husband.

That night, you lay next to your husband in bed. The deep silence of night filled your ears with static and crunching cotton, whereas a hum resonated inside your head, your chest, seeping into your bones like a cold blanket of rainfall. The black air took on weird shapes: imagined appendages curling, reaching across the ceiling towards the bed, towards you. Your eyes couldn't focus enough to ward them off, nor the depth of dark your husband's silhouette had at your side.

He was faced the other way, his clothes back to you, completely unmoving. You ventured closer to listen for the thin breathing of sleep, the automatic rise and fall of his body, and yet he could've been mistaken as one of the dead. As dead and gnarled as your maid.

“Who are you?” you asked him. Asked the swirling nothingness in the room. “Where is my husband?”

“You've nothing to worry about, my sweet,” he said readily, so clearly anticipating to have your voice ring out at some point in the night. “He is here with me. Such a selfish, unlovable man. I am the one worthy of this vessel and you. Not he.”

Then, he rolled on top of you and kissed you deeply. Your bedclothes were shucked from your bodies and he pushed your thighs apart to seat himself inside of you. He took you with greedy thrusts, face fitted against the arch of your neck where his breath left a moist film across your skin, but the rest of him was freezing.

Your whimpers of pains were dwarfed by his hot moans into your flesh, teeth suddenly sharper and sinking deep when he bit into your neck. You were trapped staring at the ceiling, wrapped in agony and pleasure, feeling his body under your fingertips beginning to distort and change into something far more monstrous.

a/n; the upcoming story is meant to be my take on the whole possession subgenre in horror. if you're interested in reading it, I suggest you stick around my blog bc I do intend to start working on the actual story here in the next month or so!!

also, father marius dumonde is the same priest from my vampire priest x reader fic—of flesh sin. so, father shaw will be making a reappearance in it.

whats your type?

Fictional men written by women.

MARRY THE TRAITOR ; gojo satoru

"as much as i would like to end your suffering, princess, i won't give you the satisfaction... you are going to suffer for a long, long time, just like i have."

⟡ the day you met your demise is the same day you met gojo satoru, your betrothed from a world so different from yours—a cruel prince who is undoubtedly in love with someone else. as the stakes rise and you race against the clock to beat your brutal fate, can you make the ultimate choice between your heart or your happily ever after?

⟡ fem!reader, royal au!, arranged marriage, reader is a florist in our world, mentions of terminal illnesses, mentions of blood, mentions of wounds, mentions of death, unrequited love, slow burn, enemies to lovers, mean!gojo, yandere!gojo, reader is called 'princess cerena', reader is described as having pink hair, isekai, talks of classism, misogyny, ideations of suicide, talks about self-harm, attempts of suicide, mentions of violence, mentions of alcohol, suggestive mentions, mentions of pregnancy, mentions of conceiving, language, tension, more tba...

⟡ crowned prince!gojo satoru x princess!reader

ACT 1, SCENE 1: MIRI'S REPRIEVE

ACT 1, SCENE 2 — THE TUNNELS

ACT 1, SCENE 3 — THE VILLAGE

ACT 1, SCENE 4 — THE THRONE ROOM

ACT 2, SCENE 1 — THE INFIRMARY

ACT 2, SCENE 2 — THE SICK BED

ACT 2, SCENE 3 — THE WINDOW LEDGE

ACT 2, SCENE 4 — THE GALA

ACT 3, SCENE 1 — THE HEDGES

ACT 3, SCENE 2 — THE BREAKFAST ROOM

ACT 3, SCENE 3 — THE GLASSHOUSE

ACT 4, SCENE 1 — THE LIBRARY

ACT 4, SCENE 2 — THE CHURCH

ACT 4, SCENE 4 — THE HIDDEN COTTAGE IN THE FOREST

ACT 5, SCENE 1 — THE WEDDING

ACT 5, SCENE 2 — THE MARKET SQUARE

ACT 5, SCENE 3 — HOME

ACT 5, SCENE 4 — SPRING RETURNS

©️ all rights reserve to lalunanymph. do not copy elements of my story, repost or claim as your own.

They’re going to a formal function.

ROOT ROT

possessed!scholar husband x reader |18+| 3.4k

following your husband's return from his deceased uncle's estate, he has not been the same man. you confide in your husband's best friend and colleague on the matter of these eccentricities, only for him to resurface a depraved recent past.

story warnings; dead dove do not eat, explicit sexual content, major dubcon, sort of coercion, implied double penetration, mentioned voyeurism, cumshot on stomach, cum eating, graphic + horrific details, unrequited love (ox to reader), smoking, drinking, heavy prose + detail, roughly proofread.

reposted from my old blog: theoxenfree

this is a concept piece and follow up to imposter. you don't have to read it, but it definitely helps for understanding!!

please leave feedback + reblog, it would mean a lot!!

“He is simply not himself!”

Bartolomé Medina knew his best friend better than you knew your husband, so you believed him when he said that your husband’s newly acquired, increasing eccentricities were not some fictitious imagining of yours.

Although, Medina himself could not explain the unexplainable and all of the oddness without growing visibly flustered. A bit flushed in the face, singeing the roundness of his ears. He'd stamp out your justifications for strangeness in the same way he did the fine cigars he'd been accustomed to sharing with his friend, yet had not for quite sometime now.

“And you say his garden is dead?” Medina looked stricken with dread, suddenly ill by repeating something so blasphemous. “Now, my dear, please don't mistake my shock as disbelief. I very much believe in what you're saying. I've seen Solomon and his weirdness! Why, just this morning over breakfast, at a time where you were still tucked away in deep sleep, he wouldn't drink his coffee. So bizarre! That man knows the thousands of tastes and varieties of coffee beans, and he spat the very stuff out on the floor like it'd never once touched his tongue!

“But his garden? A botanist without his garden is like a bird without wings. A dog without a tail to wag. A newborn without his mother’s teat! Vulgar, I understand, but you see my point.” He drank from a heavy glass in his hand. The inside had nearly spilled over at one point with light brown which glittered gold under the overhead light, smelling slightly sour and earthy. “To think that Solomon would let it all die. Something is wrong. Something has happened to my only true friend and to your husband.”

You did not drink with any enthusiasm or anguish from your own cup, rather you used those seconds of delicate sipping to gap the conversation, separate yourself from it all for just a moment. You'd had your time to grieve and contend with knowing the man you had married and come to love was not the same one who kept you awake at night.

Solomon had once been a reclusive and reticent man, the only son of David Agrippa and sole heir of the Agrippa Diamond Mines and Jewelry Galleria. He'd never been able to replicate his father's ardor for business and entrepreneurship, choosing towards academic ventures of entomology and botany and most of everything belonging to the natural world instead.

Among his most prized things was a sprawling, domed greenhouse made of large sheets of pale blue-green glass soldered with metal which shifted rose-gold in bright daylight.

“I loved his garden, but I didn't much like to be in there with him,” you confessed, forgetting your manners as you kept your cup still against your lips, mumbling your words. “He liked to tell me about the plants and flowers he grew. Most of it I could never hope to understand, but… I loved seeing him come alive. He seemed to glow when he could tell me things, so I got into the habit of listening to him when he wanted to speak.”

Medina, not yet drunk or driven to any untoward behavior, set aside his empty vessel with jittering ice cubes and looked at you admiringly. “You said that you didn't like being in there with him? Why?”

“The bees. The bugs. The humidity. The fertilizer he liked to use because of the nitrogen content. He told me that it mattered what he used and couldn't just break up soil from the yard.” You said, tilting your cup.

After taking another sip, you determined you hated the taste of the liquor and how it slid down along your throat like fire trailing an oil spill, yet clung there with residual, syrupy stickiness that nearly made you gag.

“Why did you keep going inside?” Medina asked tranquilly, much of his previous frustration softened, body and soul warmed by the alcohol and how fondly he regarded your sweetness towards his friend.

You thought very little before answering, “I wanted to be where he was. It didn't matter to me if that meant his greenhouse or the coldest part of the arctic.”

That was the truth of it. Once you'd received the first crumbs of understanding who Solomon truly was beneath his stolid exterior built brick-by-brick from tragedy and grief and a lifetime of emotional ineptitude, you would've gone to any length to see more of him. To see his pale eyes gain a wild, flickering candlelight of passion, and the faintest of trembling smiles disguising how deeply your questions had aroused his soul.

In those moments, he revealed to you the things he loved the most and what you envied the most: the natural world.

The flittering, fat-bodied pollinators whose entire world were yellow and red flowers with succulent centers and lush, girthy leaves where they'd rest their weary, iridescent wings and could never understand your husband's appreciation of them.

The thousands of specimens he'd collected from every corner of the world and articulated thoughtfully against wood and felt. Their dead little limbs were pinned in place; perfect mimicry of how they would've been if still alive and crawling. He’d had them all meticulously framed and arranged across the walls in his office; trophies of his success, of his studies and hard work.

The innumerable plants and flowers he trimmed and watered in his greenhouse and the ones not contained within it. Some species he had planted in the yard, others in the cool shade of the nearby woods where they smothered native varieties with tendrils-like vines and climbed upside trees. More aquatic species were placed by the edge of the lake, growing into the water; buoyant; a woman's deep dark hair reaching forever for the surface.

He had turned the lonely, sprawling estate into a monument of life, of love that did not belong to you. And for that, sometimes you hated living there. Hated the things that he loved.

Choking the plants, poisoning their roots with any number of things from your father’s pharmacy crossed your mind more than once.

Feeding the bees something enticingly sweet and deadly; filling the greenhouse with noxious gas at night while they slept on their big leaves and your husband in his bed. It would've been such an easy thing for you to do—own your husband's grief as you held his face in your hands and comforted him in the morning when all had atrophied and rotted.

But, those feelings had become a reality you truly never wished to have seen after Solomon returned from his deceased uncle's estate months ago.

He was not the same man.

“Tell me what happened.” Medina’s voice buzzed in your ear from nearby, closer than it had been before. Your hand was caressed by tight warmth—his holding yours, his handsome face looking up at you from where he had crouched in front of your chair. “Tell me everything you've seen. It's of grave importance that you remember it all, as curing Solomon from his affliction relies solely upon you.”

You could not deny his earnestness, the squeeze of his fingers. A promise that he would not be easily shattered by what you had to say, and would think no less of his friend for it. Within his sincere stare, you saw the gleam of another, secret promise. The likes of which you pretended not to see, that he'd never speak of out loud.

“I…” you distracted yourself with the embroidery on your clothes, pinching loose threads and beads. “It was subtle, at first. I noticed some of the bees were dead on the ground. And then some plants had started developing spots. Leaves turned brown and yellow and fell off. A lot of them withered, even though their soil was still damp when I checked…”

And then, the morning came where you witnessed Solomon among a carnage of broken stalks weeping foul-smelling sap, leaves he'd ripped apart with his own hands, and some of his larger flowering plants with fiery manes completely severed. Their bountiful heads lay at his feet, flattened by the heel of his boot as he walked aimlessly, snipping and tearing indiscriminately.

“My god, Solomon! Stop!” you stepped around the countless tiny, contracted bodies of bees and other pollinators to reach him. He let go of the gardening shears as you grabbed them. “What are you doing?! What have you done?! Decades of work! Gone! Are you mad?!”

“Well, you've gone and ruined my surprise for you. I've been working on it for hours. I didn't expect you would be awake so soon.” Solomon said, sounding much like himself despite the savagery he stood surrounded by. He smiled at you in an unfamiliar way, as if trying to navigate his facial muscles around a mask. “Isn't it simply wonderful?”

The sweltering humidity trapped within this greenhouse of death had turned the air stagnant and foul, heavily pungent of detritus and mildew. Across all zones of the greenhouse, once painstakingly organized and labeled for the purpose of easier cataloging, no slithers of greenery or color remained. Each step you took in any direction seemed to sink you deeper into the decay, wet gurgling underfoot as you crossed stumpy mounds of plants and flowers he'd destroyed and thrown into piles.

“How could you? My husband spent almost twenty years building this garden and studying it. This was his life’s work!” You wished you could force life back into the severed plants; pray that the ground of yellow-brown waste would suddenly freckle with tiny, green sprouts and grow with thick stalks and thorns to keep his hands away.

“I am your husband.” Solomon took the gardening shears from your hand and tossed them aside. He leaned into your body, nose and lips pressed into the fabric covering your neck. “I've only done what you wanted. What you wished you could've done yourself, but never did.”

You flinched against the movement of his hands smoothing down your waist to the notches in your hips. Sliding inward, he unfastened the hook-and-loops and buttons holding your trousers up to push them down your thighs along with your undergarments.

“I know your thoughts and what you really think. I've been listening the entire time. I've always been listening.” Solomon let his hips roll along the back of his hand while he used his fingers to lay long, languid strokes on you. “It was tiring, wasn't it? Always competing for love and affection in a place like this. You were never going to have what you wanted. Not with this place still standing. Not with his ineptitudes and selfishness.”

His touch weakened you indescribably; like the caress of heat from the fireplace against your bare skin once the opium had taken effect. Swapping tiny pills on wet tongues with your maid until they'd dissolved into saliva and into your cheeks. You explored one another's bodies thoroughly on those cold nights, silky with sweat from the fire and exertion.

Yet, this was not the same as back then when the sexual appetite of two teenagers transcended societal morals.

Solomon encompassed you in a feeling; consumed you without ever digging into you with his teeth or nails. He could whisper hideous secrets and depravities to you to tip you over into searing euphoria. He had once penetrated you with a hot metal phallus resting on top of his own, thrusting with both until the metal cooled, and you still came anyway.

He'd put worse inside your body and done far worse than that in only a few short months since returning home, yet he never tired of the torture and you remained malleable and enthralled by it all.

“God, you are so beautiful. And you are mine.” Solomon had maneuvered both your bodies to the ground, atop of the soggy detritus. Your back was exposed to the mush, leaves, and crushed flower petals, weight pushing an indentation in the loose soil. “This is the fruition of your desires, darling. Don't you love it? Destroying what he loved so you could have it all?”

The one who came back to you was not Solomon; the one fucking you into waste and dirt was not Solomon, either. You told yourself you needed to love imposter as well, because he looked like your husband; wore his signet ring, too.

At night, you imagined only his softest expressions behind clenched eyelids when he wanted to have his way with you, as something else entirely took his place. A creature so diabolical and unsightly that the servants now awaited your screams to rouse them awake in the murky midnight hours.

Every time they arrived with their candlesticks and oil lanterns, the thrusting spectre receded into the dark as a black mass hardly distinguishable from shadow.

Only Solomon would remain, and he was swift to send the servants away before they could see your improper, disheveled state sprawled across the bed sheets.

In the daytime light, his face stayed familiar and comforting to you and you could bear to see him, form some coherent words.

“Someone might—might see us out here, Solomon. Mr. Medina is supposed to—oh, oh, mmm—he’s due to arrive at any time.” You were given several long kisses, which turned into severe caresses of hot breath when his thrusts turned savage, cock reaching so deep you were starting to feel numb below the waist. A feverous response. “Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck…”

He adjusted himself to lay on your chest, the sweat on your bodies offering an effortless glide and new angle for his cock that made your moans deeper and dire. Such sounds, whether in agony or pleasure, were melodious to him. Addicting drags from a pipe in an opium den; an alcoholic's first sip at breakfast; a cheating man's night with a new lover.

“Wouldn't you like for them to see that? For someone to witness you being fucked into the ground? Surrounded by everything their master loved?” Solomon tucked his face into the curve of your neck and groaned, hips slow and stuttering. “Bartolomé would be the one to find it most tantalizing. His only friend in the world ruining the only person he's ever loved. Wouldn't that be a sight? We could invite him to watch.”

At the time, it had been quite jarring to learn Bartolomé harbored those silent, ardent feelings for you. It had sufficiently pulled you from whatever trance Solomon had lulled you into, reacquainting you with all the sounds of sex and the filth clinging to your skin. It was as though your mind had been locked into a mostly airless, noiseless void that he controlled and released at will.

You held tight to his shoulders as he molded you deeper into the muck and plant litter. The squat, friable walls of soil holding your shape like the cushions in a tomb, whereas Solomon was the man lowering you into the dark earth; the last to see your face before covering it in clay and dirt.

He was in your ear with loud moans that resonated through you, simultaneously as carnal as a beast amidst its seasonal rut, and velvety as the feathery smooth glide of fingers down your spine. His throat rumbled against you, resembling the intensity of a purring housecat nestled near your head in contentment.

At his tipping point, he removed his cock from your body and used the slippery stuff glistening off it to stroke himself; weepy, deep red tip to the base. You received the aftermath of his release in thick ropes across your abdomen and chest, the warmth of it already cooling on your skin while he continuously kneaded the head to force out what remained as if they were dewdrops made from pearls.

“How do you think Bartolomé would fare seeing you like this?” Solomon swept two fingers through the cum in an elegant curl to smear it around his cock. The viscous white thinned into pale gloss on his girth and a sticky residue inside his hand.

Your lips parted to give an answer, but his fingers and taste were faster than your words.

“And… that is all? Truly?” Bartolomé asked, shattering your visions of the recent past as he revealed a compact silver case from inside his vest, pulling a cigarette from within it. “You simply walked into the garden one morning and saw that he had destroyed everything? He gave you no explanation whatsoever?”

The imposter had stolen much of your dignity over the months, but enough of it remained for you to omit every significant detail from your story. You'd only told him that Solomon had cut the heads off of rare flowers, mumbled in a disorienting way, and gave you no difficulty with the gardening shears.

Bartolomé went away from your side for an open window across the spacious sitting room, matching his cigarette and blowing gray plumes out into the dense summer air.

“This is concerning.” He spoke loud enough for you to hear, even with his thumbnail tracing the underside of his lower lip, muffling him somewhat. “Solomon is considerably worse off than I first thought. We need to investigate this, retrace his every step since the moment he left you that night for his uncle's estate.”

“Oh, Bartolomé, that will be very unnecessary.” Solomon announced himself as he walked in through the open doors, offering you a tepid smile, which came nowhere close to reaching his eyes. Your chair jostled slightly as he stood behind it, a weighty hand landing on the tall back above your head. “Why trouble yourself with employing some ludicrous scheme when you could, ah, inquire as to what haunts you instead?”

Bartolomé tamped out his cigarette on the windowsill and pocketed it. “You are ill, Solomon. You may be suffering from some form of hysteria. It's time you visited a doctor, my old friend.”

“Well, that just isn't true.” Solomon kept the neutrality in his tone, but you tracked a rumble of agitation; a warning not far off. His hand followed the curvature of the chair down to the arm that you leaned against, fingers touching your shoulder, lightly kneading you through your clothes.

He was sure to be in Bartolomé’s eyesight as he did this, further aggravating the heavy disquiet. You didn't dare to move out of reach of his touch.

“But, it is true, Solomon!” Bartolomé insisted, gesturing toward the window. “What of your garden? All of your life's work now means nothing, you damned fool! You've snapped, old boy. See a doctor before you do something you regret.”

“That garden was more a source of misery than it was a boon. At any rate, I'm quite finished listening to you harp at me for one night, my dear friend.” Solomon lightly stroked down your cheek with bent fingers, coaxing you to look up at him. “It's time for bed, darling. Us impropertious brutes have kept you up for too long.”

You hesitated, and then stood when Solomon took your arm. “Alright.”

“As usual, your accommodations should exceed expectations. I'll have a servant wake you for breakfast again tomorrow.” It was too soon to call those Solomon's departing words to Bartolomé, as he stopped with you in the doorway, your hand caressing the meat of his forearm. “You know, Bartolomé, I would recommend marrying soon. There is no greater feeling than having the one you love so close to you, don't you think?”

Bartolomé became unreadable as he fished a hand into his vest pocket for the cigarette case again. You were led away for the bedroom before anything else could be said, but you knew that Solomon had struck a nerve.

“That was cruel.” you said.

Once in the bedroom, your back was pressed flush to the door while he unfastened the buttons to your outerwear and the blouse underneath it. Solomon kissed your lips slowly, first, before moving underside your jaw after shucking you down to your undergarments.

“And you are mine. You made your vows to me. Remember that, my sweet.”

You watched him strip out of his clothes and then stroke the length of his cock until it was hard.

“I married someone else. Not you.”

As he dimmed the lights within the space, sweeping the bedroom under a shroud of near pitch black, your annoyance shifted into a swell of anxiety both freezing cold and burning hot. Your body pulsed in rhythm with your wild heartbeat, throat clenched as tightly as infantile flower buds.

You waited for Solomon to touch you, startling once he finally did. His fingers had elongated and sharpened, his touch now far more delicate and methodical.

“Don't worry, he’s still in here with me.”

top tier 

ᴛʜᴇ ꜱᴡᴇᴇᴛ ᴏʟᴅ ʟᴀᴅʏ ɪꜱ ᴀ ᴡɪᴛᴄʜ

ᗢ jujutsu kaisen x scarletwitch!reader ᗢ

warning:

will contain spoilers from the jjk manga and the latest mcu shows (particularly wandavision and loki, as well as rumors from doctor strange in the multiverse of madness). once again, this will contain heavy spoilers—you have been warned.

other stuff to look out for? this is a part-crackfic slash reader-insert story, so you'll be breaking reality (plus some hunky hearts, mehehe) with your chaos magic while being a shop-owning badass grandma. i'm telling ya'll, it's just absolute craziness here and the author being sleep-deprived. (シ_ _)シ

what's even better? #girlbosses nobara and maki call you a milf (cutiepatootie yuuji calls you mom, though). if you don't like that and the webtoony title, just scroll away. („• ֊ •„)

oh! before i forget, i was also inspired by the amazing @elysianslove and one of her wonderful works about a haikyuu x scarletwitch!reader. mwah, go and check it out! ヾ(*'▽'*)

00. how it all began

01. nanami kento: the workaholic who needs a year-long vacation from everything and a limitless—pun intended—white-haired headache

02. gojo satoru: the overpowered manchild who loves to annoy everybody and splurge his excessive wealth on sugar instead of being an actual sugar daddy

03. fushiguro toji: the ex-assassin who wears his shirts two sizes too small while being an expert at not paying child support

04. ryomen sukuna: the sadistic maniac who's just too bored with his life so he waits to pick a fight as he sits on his throne made out of the skulls of his enemies

05. geto suguru: the traitor who calls people monkeys but later on gets his body hijacked by a literal mastermind creature

06. kamo choso: the precious big brother who only wants to have his little brothers all safe and sound

07. witchcraft & other shenanigans

08. spellbound

09. grief

...?

(still a work in progress; chapters will be updated with links throughout the next few months)

Bonus Scenes:

Visitors

The Return to KFC

synopsis:

When you moved into this new universe, no one warned you that you would become the mother figure to several traumatized kids while at the same time juggling six adult men who had their own personal issues (one was a blunt workaholic with a peculiar fashion taste in neckties, the second was a narcissistic overgrown kid with too much power, the third was a supposed-to-be-dead deadbeat dad slash hitman, the fourth was a sadistic tattooed psychopath with a secret chocolate addiction, the fifth was an ex-mass murderer who had his body stolen by a brain, and the last one just wanted his brothers together, poor thing).

You were just a retired witch owning a small shop, wanting to live the rest of your miserable life in peace. They called themselves jujutsu sorcerers, and apparently this new universe you'd chosen to settle down in had nasty monsters—curses, they said—that were born out of people's shitty emotions.

Who knew that being an old lady was hard these days? Now you understood what Dr. Strange felt when you and Loki accidentally unleashed the Multiverse of Madness. Maybe you did need to see Bucky's therapist.

taglist: to be added! (just comment below or message me if you'd like to be included)

SCARLET & SHADOW

ᱬ The Darkling x Scarlet Witch!Reader ᱬ

series masterlist & synopsis • thera's masterlist

chapter one.

▪︎ once upon a dream ▪︎

Aleksander had dreams of you long before he even knew you. Maybe it was the stress of this neverending war. Either way, you weren't real anyway... were you?

warnings: the darkling himself is a warning lol, mentions of experimentation, violence, and wallowing in self-regret, no beta we die like wanda

word count: 3.8k words

(author's note: yay! finally, after weeks of debating if i should write this, i did. and i can finally sleep in peace.)

Dreams.

He's been having some strange dreams lately. There was always a woman whose face he could never see. Aleksander had started seeing her in his dreams about a year ago. It had all been so blurry at first, but he could recall a woman in what seemed to be like a cage encased in clear glass. Her back was turned to where he was, but her hands were covered in unworldly, crimson... vapor... or whatever it was. It was unlike anything he's ever seen before. The woman had been using the red mist to lift wooden blocks into the air. Vaguely, he also heard whispers of men with foreign accents speaking, as if he were beside them but not.

"The dead will be buried so deep their ghosts won't be able to find them."

"And the survivors?"

"The twins." The voice sounded gleeful. Proud. "Sooner or later they will meet the twins."

"It's not a world of spies anymore. Not even a world of heroes. This is the age of miracles, doctor."

Aleksander did not understand the dreams at all. However, he listened, watching the faceless woman make the wooden blocks hover in the air.

"And there is nothing more horrifying... than a miracle."

Snap!

That was his first dream about her. He woke up with a start after that, not feeling like himself the whole day.

The next dream came again weeks later. The Darkling could never see the woman's face. This time, he heard screaming in his dreams. Crying. Devastation. All he saw that night was a burst of crimson energy which had obliterated metal around it.

The woman was kneeling at the center of some sort of dilapidated chapel, clutching her heart as she sobbed. Then, he woke up again. This time, he felt a bottomless emptiness within him until he went back to sleep the next evening.

"Strange dreams," Aleksander thinks, but still, thinks nothing of it. Perhaps it was his imagination running wild lately due to the stress of the war. The dreams would come and go. Sometimes, there was nothing. Other times, nightmares of his... lengthy past. Occasionally, the faceless woman would be there in his dreams.

On the first day snow fell that year, the Shadow Summoner sees her in his dreams again. First, sitting in a bedroom, silent and pondering. Next, sitting in what seemed like a metal cell, straitjacketed, unmoving. The more he had these dreams of her, the more curious Aleksander grew about what the woman's face looked like. These were supposed to be only dreams, yet, it was always her.

Were these truly just dreams?

Eventually, the dreams become nightmares.

He was starting to hear whispers of what nearly seemed like Old Ravkan, but not. He saw the woman surrounded by mirrors and sharp glass, with more blood, death, and gore. Screams of a hundred souls. The last that he saw of her at night was in what seemed like a strange, old tomb atop a mountain.

Aleksander saw a stone statue of a woman—a goddess, maybe—with a pointed crown. Seconds later, he saw that very tomb crushed into a landslide. A blizzard. So much snow.

That night, the Black Heretic woke up cold and freezing despite the fireplace burning strong.

After that, the dreams and nightmares of the unknown woman stopped completely. And he'd nearly forgotten about it all. Tired from reading another list of his dead soldiers up in Ulensk, the man decided to take a stroll in the gardens of his Little Palace.

ᱬᗢᱬ

"No more magic." That was what you had sworn to yourself after the millennia you had spent searching for and destroying every copy of the Darkhold in the Multiverse. You despised yourself for falling for the temptations of the Book of the Damned.

What have you done?

Every day, you asked yourself the question, plagued by the guilt of your sins to the Multiverse. Ultimately, you accepted the fact that as the Scarlet Witch, you were maybe meant to be alone. Fated for eternal solitude until Death finally decides it is time to end your life again.

"I should have stayed dead in the Blip," you chuckle humorlessly. Maybe you would have been happier. But from experience, being blipped was no afterlife. You did not see them. Your parents, Pietro, Vision, Billy, and Tommy. You could only remember the fresh rage you felt at Vision's murder just for the Snap. There was no peace.

The last world that had a Darkhold was... quite interesting, to say the least. It was not as advanced as your world, Earth-616, but not too primitive, either. It could be likened to the 19th to the 20th century in your original planet, with all its horses, carriages, ships, and steam trains. Very... Industrial Era, you described when you initially arrived. Good enough to survive for, hopefully, the few remaining years of your life.

What was interesting, however, was the specific land you found yourself in. Ravka. It was something literally out of Czarist Russia, long before the Soviet Union was formed. It led you to thoughts of your late best friend and mentor, Natasha... then the World Wars... then Steve Rogers... SHIELD... which led you to quite unpleasant memories of experiments with HYDRA and consequently, Ultron and Sokovia.

Still, you found it half-amusing and half-disappointing that even universes away, war and politics were unavoidable. You soon learned that Ravka was not on very good terms with its northern and southern neighbors, Fjerda and Shu Han, respectively. (The Shu reminded you of China and Mongolia. You wondered if they had Khans there, too. Fjerda, on the other hand, reminded you of Thor, Valkyrie, and a certain God of Mischief.)

Now, one of the biggest reasons why Ravka was at war with Fjerda and Shu Han? People called Grisha, you quickly learned. Kind of like the Enhanced or the Mutants, in your world and other worlds. It was just that they could mainly be divided into different orders and classifications and were usually found serving the Second Army. Either way, it did not make much of a difference to you. You had met a living tree and a talking raccoon in the fight against Thanos so... yes, not the strangest thing you'd seen in the universe. You didn't really care, but you did feel some empathy for the Grisha oppressed by the otkazat'sya. Ordinary humans.

You knew all too well what it felt like to be different in a world full of regular people.

Unfortunately, Ravka itself was also at civil war between its East and West because of a border practically made of darkness. The Shadow Fold, supposedly created four hundred years ago by a crazy Shadow Summoner titled the Black Heretic. Many prayed for a mythical Sun Summoner to come save them from their plights.

You internally scoffed. You yourself were a myth, the ever coveted Harbinger of Chaos. The Scarlet Witch, destined to rule or annihilate the cosmos. Maybe you already ruined it. Somehow. You just hoped that if the Sun Summoner were real, they would be a true saint and do their "destined" good deed.

And a small part of you hoped that they, too, would either escape or fulfill their prophecy. Maybe live a happy life, unlike you did. No one ever thinks that myths and legends could be living, breathing, feeling people, too.

ᱬᗢᱬ

You were cut off from your thoughts by two young boys bumping into you, making you drop the basket of apples you were holding. You were about to scold them when you saw the state they were in.

One of the boys was holding a damn toddler.

All three of them dressed in rags, covered in soot and dirt. Thin and malnourished, nearly shivering from the autumn cold. Your heart almost broke when you saw the small girl in their arms try to reach out for the fallen apples on the ground.

"Sorry, lady!" The boys shout, turning on their heels to keep running.

"Wait!" You yell after them. "Do you want an apple?"

That made the boys stop in their tracks. You pick up the apples and place them back in the woven basket you were carrying. They seemed apprehensive on trusting you, so it was you who decided to make the first move.

"Here. Have the entire basket. You kids need it more than I do."

One of the boys, a pale boy with bright blue eyes and curly black hair past his shoulders, hesitantly reaches out to take the basket you were offering. "Thank you... lady..." he mumbles. The other boy holding the girl, looking nearly the opposite of his friend, reassured the fidgeting toddler in his arms. This boy was tanner, looking as if his hair were kissed by fire itself with eyes the shade of a vibrant forest.

"What are your names?" you gently asked. They share a look, silently communicating, then nod.

"... Henrik," the blue-eyed boy answers quietly, inspecting the basket of apples, still torn on thinking if this was a trick. He seemed more conservative than his friend, who answered in a louder voice.

"I'm Dmitri, lady!" He was more eager to talk after realizing you were no threat. Seemingly. He gestures to the tiny girl in his arms, no older than three. "And this is baby Katyusha."

Your heart nearly broke seeing the sleepy toddler carried around by her... brother? You look around. It was getting dark. "Where are your homes? Your parents? It's getting late for children to be out in the evening."

"It's just us, lady," Henrik answers, as if it were normal to not have an adult accompanying them.

You frowned deeper. "Why were you guys running?"

At my question, the boys grow concerned. "Because..." Dmitri begins, before Henrik shushes him. You shake your head.

"No, it's okay. What is it?" You try to encourage.

"The three of us... we are Grisha," Dmitri whispers, green eyes filled with guilt and fear. Your eyes widened. Including the toddler they were holding? "The townspeople aren't exactly welcoming to our kind, lady. Except you. Weirdly enough."

Henrik, the quiet one with blue eyes, sighs. "I'm a Tidemaker. I think. Dmitri here can control some fire, so Inferni, if I'm right. Maybe that's why his hair is that red..."

Dmitri snorts. "Whatever."

You almost stammer as you ask, "And Katyusha there?"

"... We think she's a Heartrender. When... she gets angry or hungry or fussy... sometimes, we feel like we can't breathe, whenever she holds us," Henrik explains, gazing at the tiny little girl, who looked ever innocent and adorable.

"Where are your parents?" you ask carefully. You prayed to the gods, the saints, and the fates that these children had grown-ups to look after them. Unlikely, though, based on how they looked.

Dmitri shook his head, "My mom worked at a brothel but died from tuberculosis. I then lived on the streets after that. Henrik was left on somebody's doorstep. And Katyusha... we found her in a garbage can. The three of us used to live together in a hut east of the chapel but... um, the storm last week..." He trailed off.

Three, young, Grisha orphans. No family. No shelter. No food. You stared at the three of them, voices inside you telling you to be on your way and avoid getting attached to these orphans. To avoid getting attached to people ever again.

But it was too late. You already saw yourself in them.

It was like you and Pietro, once upon a time.

Sighing, you hold out your arms. You knew you might regret this in the future.

"Give me the little girl. And you boys, follow me," you instruct. They give you questioning looks.

"Huh?"

"You're all coming home with me. To bathe and eat and sleep without fear of being hunted down," you disclose, waiting for Dmitri to hand over Katyusha. The boy was too thin to be carrying around the toddler. "I live in the forest."

"We don't know you, lady," Henrik protests warily, but grips the basket of apples you'd given even tighter. "What if you trick us? Or hurt us?"

"... My name is Wanda. Wanda Maximoff." You hum, smiling genuinely at them. "Now you know me. And from now on, I promise to protect you. You can eat the apples while we walk."

"..."

"It's not poisoned, don't worry." You took a bite out of one, then tossed it to Dmitri. "See?"

ᱬᗢᱬ

Not long after, you had, in fact, confirmed with your very eyes that the three orphans you'd taken in were Grisha. Undeniably so. Dmitri, the eight-year-old redhead, was an Inferni—true to his appearance and loud personality. Henrik, the introverted seven-year-old with jet black curls and icy blue eyes, was a Tidemaker—as he mentioned before.

Lastly, two-year-old Katyusha was indeed a... well, baby Heartrender. You learned that the hard way when you tried to leave her alone for a minute to get her some warm milk in the kitchen. You felt the air constrict out of your lungs for a few brief seconds as she wailed from separation anxiety, gripping your arm like a lifeline.

It nearly shocked you that at such an age, she could do such feats just by touching you.

A year into sheltering and caring for these children as if they were your own, you came to the decision that it would be best if they were not with you—AKA former multiversal threat and retired but still dangerous witch living as a hermit in the woods of Tsibeya.

Which was near Chernast.

And also the Fjerdan border.

That meant a significantly high possibility of drüskelle sighting or finding the kids, even if you did last use your magic to make sure your little cabin would be safe and sound and undetectable to any intruders.

The children deserved a better future than staying with someone like you. (You came to that awareness when you'd tried stealing a teenage girl's multiverse-traveling powers and possessing your alternate self's body to replace her as a mom to her kids.)

Plus, you had no idea how Grisha powers really worked.

And as much as you wanted to just fly the kids off to their best chance at a good future in Ravka... or maybe use a teleportation spell, you'd sworn off your Chaos Magic for a good while now. You also didn't want to have to manipulate the memories of the three kids—especially little Katyusha—into making them believe in a fake journey or forgetting you entirely.

So, a good old-fashioned trip to the Little Palace it was.

ᱬᗢᱬ

That trip went well. Sort of. After a few days of painstakingly traveling on foot, you'd finally arrived in Os Alta in one piece.

And so did Dmitri, Henrik, and Katyusha. But there was a slight issue.

"I still can't believe you knocked out that drüskelle by yourself, Aunt Wanda!" Dmitri continues to gush excitedly—as he had for days now since the encounter with a lone drüskelle who tried to attack all of you. And yes, the boys had taken to referring to you as Aunt Wanda.

Which was better, somehow. You don't think you'd be able to handle being referred to as... well... that word after what happened with Billy and Tommy.

The problem was little Katyusha who practically imprinted on you as her mother. Her first words—quite late at the age of two—were mama. Directed to you. (You cried that night in your room.)

"You did not even see me do anything, Dmitri. Didn't I tell you to close your eyes?" you sighed, adjusting the sleeping Katyusha in your arms.

"I swear I closed them! But one moment, he was coming towards us then the next, thud! When I open my eyes, he's on the ground in front of you? How'd you do it, Aunty?!" he excitedly squeals.

"Just a very well-timed punch," you reply carefully. A well-timed punch that may or may not have been enhanced not with your magic, but your psionic energy. It still irked you that you had to use your... abilities once more. Even if it was not your Chaos Magic.

But you would never hesitate to protect these children.

This time, it was soft-spoken Henrik who asked, "What about those two Grisha slavers who tried taking us away in the middle of the night?"

Okay. Perhaps the trip didn't go that smoothly. And that did not pair well with young children who were at the age of being extremely curious about everything in the world.

"Bribed them with some money," you lied. More like using your telepathic powers to manipulate their minds into leaving your traveling group alone.

"... You didn't need to give them your gold and silver for us, Aunt Wanda," Henrik murmurs guiltily. You halt your steps, frowning as you crouch down to the boys' level, ensuring Katyusha's head was still supported.

"Hey. Boys, listen to me." You wait until they make eye contact. "When I first took you in, I promised that I would protect you. And I would do everything in my power to do that, okay?"

"Aunty, I'm not sure I want to go to the Little Palace," Henrik shares regretfully. Behind him, Dmitri goes quiet, too, having second thoughts as well.

Your brows furrowed as you smile sadly. "But you must. You will be with your kin. The Grisha there can teach you to grow and hone your powers. I cannot as I am only otkazat'sya. Your future lies in the Little Palace." You gaze fondly at the sleeping child in your arms. "Your sister's future lies there, too."

Henrik and Dmitri share a look as you urge them to continue walking. Just a couple more minutes and you would arrive at the gates of the Little Palace. When you were near, that's when you stop.

"Remember what we talked about during the trip? What you have to do when you get to the gates?" You remind them.

The boys nod. I slowly unwrap the cloth on my torso which was carrying tiny, two-year-old Katyusha. Henrik takes her. She momentarily fusses in her sleep, making all of you freeze, but her breathing steadies.

"Tell the oprichniki at the gates that we are Grisha seeking refuge in the Little Palace. Orphans from a small town in Tsibeya," Dmitri repeats the script you guys practiced while traveling.

"And say that we went along with a traveling hunting group until we got to Os Alta, before we journeyed to the Little Palace alone," Henrik adds.

You smile at them, embracing them tightly. "Good. Good. Now off you go. Before it gets dark."

"Will you visit us?" Dmitri asks eagerly. You hum in thought.

"Perhaps. I'll really try, you two. But it could be years until I see you all again," you say to him honestly. You weren't sure if the Little Palace allowed visitors to the Grisha kids like it was a daycare.

They nod, a bit disappointed, but slowly go. You stand up from where you were crouched, a familiar feeling of these children slipping through your fingers, too. The same way your twin sons did, once.

Then, Henrik paused, turning around. "Aunty?" he calls.

"Yes, Henrik?" You tilt your head curiously.

"Thank you for being our mom!" the usually quiet boy shouts, warming your heart. It has only been a year since you took them off the streets and adopted them, but you were already attached.

Too attached.

Typically not ending well for you as the Scarlet Witch, based on experience.

You watch them as they run to the path leading to the gates of the Little Palace. Then, you lurk for a few more minutes to ensure that they really do manage to enter the Little Palace.

When the oprichniki allow them in, a Grisha appearing and escorting Henrik, Dmitri, and little Katyusha, you breathe a sigh of relief. You were about to leave when...

"What do you mean he quit to become a gardener at the Grand Palace?!" a voice yells from a nearby corner.

"The Queen adored his flower arrangements and offered a larger pay!" another countered defensively. "Hell, I'd take up the offer, too!"

You pause, head turning to listen in more on the conversation. Looks like an interesting job opening.

"He's one of the only gardeners at the Little Palace who could do his job right, dammit!"

It was a bad idea. A terrible idea, even. You should just go back to your cabin in the woods, living the remainder of your life in solitude. The children would be fine in the Little Palace, amongst their other fellow Grisha.

That was what the rational side of you said. But you always did have a tendency to be swept away by your emotions. Listening to the arguing men, perhaps this is where your green thumb could step in.

You really should have listened to your instincts, because three months later, you start to feel a set of curious eyes watching you as you crouched and plucked stubborn, overgrown weeds from the dirt.

Your insides were on overdrive, sending off alarm bells. You worked in the secluded portions of the Little Palace garden, the ones harder to maintain daily, so no one usually came where you were stationed. Pausing, you slowly turn around to see obsidian eyes watching your actions.

And you freeze.

The Black General of Ravka was right behind you.

Snapping out of your stupor, you quickly stand and bow.

"Moi soverenyi," you address him politely, avoiding his eyes.

Of all people—of all Grisha to notice you—it was the infamous Shadow Summoner himself.

General Kirigan of the Second Army.

You've only heard stories about him since you arrived in this world. Ruthless. Powerful. A Shadow Summoner. The strongest Grisha currently alive. And you never even thought you'd be speaking to him face-to-face ever.

"Huh. I was not made aware we had a new gardener," he muses out loud, examining you from head-to-toe, dressed in garbs similar to the other servants, just modified for greater mobility.

You seemed awfully familiar to him. He just couldn't place his finger on it.

Meanwhile, you tried your best to seem like any other unassuming otkazat'sya servant. It was tempting to just read his thoughts given how he was scrutinizing you but no, you resisted.

"What's your name, girl?" General Kirigan asks. And you inwardly cuss—so much for a low profile—yet your face was perfectly neutral.

"Wanda, sir."

"Surname?" He raises one fine brow.

"... Maximoff, sir."

"Wanda Maximoff." He combines the two names. The dark-haired man stares longer. It took all your willpower not to squirm and be suspicious. Then, he nods and continues on his way.

The moment he was out of sight, you let out a breath you didn't know you were holding. You were the all-powerful Scarlet Witch. Or, rather, formerly the Scarlet Witch.

So why did this man unnerve you the way he did just now?

to be continued.

Hearts, reblogs, comments, interactions, and constructive criticism are very much appreciated! If you wanna be tagged in the upcoming chapters, comment here or on the series masterlist post.

Thanks! ♡