Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Twigs snap below you as you run through the forest quickly away from him. Blood drips from your feet due to the wounds you sustained while running through the dense forest. You will not stop though, no way you would let him catch up to you. You growl lowly at the mere thought of it. Your feet pound dully onto the forest floor as you run quickly. Your legs were perfect for running away quickly, especially with the extra help of adrenaline. You can hear him behind you trying to catch up with you.

After a while of running you finally lose him among the trees. Though you do not stop, you continue to run because it might be a trap. You can not go back there, the things he did make a shiver crawl up your spine. On another hand though, what if the world out here is worse than that place? Anxiety creeps up on you at the thought as encounter a large house. You weigh your options, you can go inside and hide or you can stay out here. You pick the former. You look down at your sharp, bloody nails and steel your nerves before crawling inside the basement to hide out.

You hear people walking above you, going about their lives like nothing is wrong. Good. No one knows of your existence just below them. You lick the wounds you can reach in order to clean them and stop infections as best as you can. You also clean the blood off your long, sharp fingernails. The feel of the semi-dried blood is off and sort of sticky on your tongue but you do not mind. You do not mind because the blood on your claws tastes bitterly sweet in flavor. Once you are clean you let out a soft growl before laying down in your hiding place in exhaustion.

Sleep takes you over quickly despite the anxiety of someone catching you. Your eyes flutter closed in exhaustion.

You are awoken a few hours later by someone coming down the stairs of the basement. Your instincts are going haywire as you press yourself close to the wall silently, you even slow your heartbeat in order to not be caught. You can not see the person who came down but that does not matter to your instincts which are not reacting well to this new threat. Your advanced hearing tells you that they are coming closer to your hiding place. Your body tenses as the person moves slowly closer to your hiding place, and you prepare to attack them. Just as you are about to attack the person begins to walk away from your area. You do not move a single muscle until you are certain that they are gone.

You flop down silently in order to try and sleep but you can not sleep anymore. Your stomach growls quietly in hunger so you will have to hunt. It has been a week since your last live hunt but you are far from rusty at it. Once the person is surely upstairs you slowly crawl out of your hiding place to scout out the area, your enhanced sight making it much easier to see in the dark basement. Your sharp, sound-enhanced ear picks up the pitter-patter of rodents scurrying around in the dark basement. Perfect. You pinpoint a single rodent and begin to slowly creep towards it while it is none the wiser. You wish you could hunt for something far leaning than rodent but you do what you must to survive. Your instincts guide you as you hunt down the rodent. You quickly pounce and catch it. It struggles for its life in your sharply clawed hand. You tear into its flesh quickly giving it a swift and somewhat painless death.
Once you are finished with your meal you lick up the blood off your clawed fingers so nothing goes to waste. Not your best meal but it will have to do. You have eaten worse. Your soul thrums in contentment at being fed as you go to go back to your hiding place. You realize something, there is a shadow in front of you. A tall shadow that is not your own. You tense your body and growl while turning around. As you growled and turned around you noticed that what you thought was a human was in fact a living skeleton. A tall one who was frozen in shock at witnessing a dirty, somewhat bloody human chow down on a rodent in their basement. Your growls do not cease as you stare him down. The skeleton grows nervous and begins to back away slowly while having his hands raised to show that he is not a threat.

Your growls slow to a stop as the skeleton goes out of view. You watch where the skeleton went closely so you can be ready if they come back. You growl softly before slowly crawling back to your hiding area on all fours but before you can another shadow falls over you, this one is shorter though. You growl up at another skeleton, this one is shorter than the last skeleton that was here. The skeleton's grin is pulled tight as you tense and growl loudly at the skeletal stranger. Your figure is tense like a puffed-up cat as you continue your growls.

As you make your move to attack the skeleton, they summon a bone club and hit you on the head with it, knocking you out in a single swift strike. Your vision goes black as you fall to the cold concrete floor.

You slowly begin to wake up, your instincts instantly making you alert. You growl loudly when you realize that you are locked in a cage. You begin to try and bite/claw your way out of the cage, you can not be trapped like that again. You stop trying to escape when you notice the amount of skeletons around you. You growl loudly at all of them but your growls trail off when your eyes land on a skeleton with claws much like yours. In the moment your instincts said that in a room full of strangers, that skeleton was the one closest to what you were and therefore the one to trust. The skeletons all give each other confused looks when you start to make a purring noise while looking at Vermillion. Vermillion does not know how to feel about this.

Chapter Text

Soft purring sounds echo around the room much to the confusion of the skeletons who just saw you being aggressive and also the blood staining your ragged clothes. Seeing you calm down while looking at Vermillion was confusing and made skeletons look at him with confused and perplexed expressions causing Vermillion to start to sweat red magic. You suddenly let out a protective growl as you noticed that Vermillion was nervous. Your growl causes multiple skeletons to jump in surprise at how sudden it is.

For several hours the only people that could come near you were Vermillion (because you think that he is a part of the same species as you) and Cobalt (because you think that he is a youngling that needs to be protected). After long talks, it was decided that you could be let out of the cage but only Cobalt and Vermillion were allowed to get near you. You had no say in it but that was because you could not speak nor communicate in any way other than growls, purrs, and body language.

The cage was tentatively opened for you to finally be able to leave that stuffy cage. You hesitantly make your way out of the cage on all fours, growling softly at anyone who comes too close. You crawl over to Vermillion and Cobalt instinctively because of the overwhelming instinct to protect kin and younglings. You would never hurt a youngling. Vermillion tenses slightly as crawls over to him on all fours, he becomes less tense though when you begin to nuzzle him with your head. Once he is fully calmed down, you stop nuzzling him. When you stop nuzzling Vermillion, Cobalt gets the courage to come over to you and pet your matted, tangled hair. You lean into Cobalt's touch because you think of him as a youngling.

You let out purrs as Cobalt pets your messy, tangled hair. “HUMAN, LET'S GET YOU INTO A BATH.” You do not understand much of the sentence so you just agree and follow the young one to the bathroom. You jump in surprise as warm water pours from the silver faucet attached to the old-looking bathtub. Cobalt urges you to get into the water to get clean. You strip away your rags without care, much to Cobalt's embarrassment. You do not know why the young one is bright blue now but it does not seem to matter so you shrug it away and climb into the warm, soapy water.

The blood and dirt are slowly scrubbed away from your body until you are clean from the evidence of your past. Too bad it could not scrub away the trauma of your past. The water is almost black by the time you are clean. You climb out of the bath and shake your hair to help dry out your heavily wet hair.

Before Cobalt could tell you to get dressed you ran out of the room bare as the day you were born. You run over to Vermillion, who was waiting outside the bathroom for you, and tackle him causing him to curse while falling to the ground. Your breasts press against Vermillion's skull causing Vermillion to glow bright red much to your curiosity and amusement. To you, they were just used to feed your children and nothing more. Your children… Your easygoing grin instantly fades and is replaced by a somber and mourning look. You climb off of the confused and concerned Vermillion to huddle into the darkest corner of the room to hide the guilt and shame you feel for not fighting harder.
You whine and whimper in shame and sin you feel from losing them, the only light in your dull little life. That just means you will have to fight harder to keep this new young one safe, the safety you could not provide your own young ones. Pain blossoms in your soul as you whimper in the pain of those precious losses you faced. You cry and mourn for the lost little souls that were TORN away from you. Rage and vigilance fill your cracked, mourning soul which thrummed with fresh, rage-filled power. You WILL protect them, if you do not, then that's it.

Cobalt and Vermillion look toward you with concern at your pain-filled whines and whimpers. They look towards each other and have a silent conversation with each other. They come to an agreement before Cobalt slowly walks over to you, making sure not to scare or upset you further. Cobalt cautiously sits down next to you to try and comfort you. Cobalt jumps as your head snaps to look at him in your frazzled and desperate state. Your arms suddenly shoot out and grab Cobalt, pulling him towards you and hugging him against your body. Cobalt would be embarrassed if this were not a sad and concerning situation.

Cobalt wraps his skeletal arms around your neck and hugs you as you hug him tightly back, desperate not to lose this little bit of happiness you have. You are careful to not let your claws nick his “young”, flawless bones. Cobalt acknowledges this with gratefulness as he did not have his bone marrow flowing today, even as a harmless accident.

You simply hold Cobalt against your body protectively, trying to keep him safe from any threat that you think could harm him. You growl at anyone who tries to take Cobalt away from you, Vermillion was the only one who could get close to you but you still did not let him take Cobalt from you. Vermillion decides to just sit next to you and make sure that you do not hurt Cobalt.

Hours pass without you relenting, even your hunger could not move you from your protective hold over Cobalt. Finally, you and Cobalt get so hungry that you have to move and look for food for you and Cobalt. You, obviously, do not trust the food that was pushed towards you by the other skeletal household members so therefore you do not take that food. Vermillion tries to get you to eat it but you keep refusing so he gives up and gestures for you to stay where you are which is fine with you. While Vermillion is away you coo softly and purr to help relax Cobalt even further because he was a bit too tense.

After a bit Vermillion comes back with food for both Cobalt and you which you gladly take. You first feed Cobalt which he is grateful for, of course, he just wishes you would also eat while he is eating, he is not unable to eat by himself. Once Cobalt finishes eating you begin to eat, and your stomach is finally being filled with warm, delicious food that you did not know even existed. You pull Cobalt protectively to your bare chest as you fall asleep while cuddling Cobalt tightly against you.