Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Thanks,” Dr. Whitmore whispers as I drop my test on the podium, and “Have a good day.”

I salute and slip through the door, still falling slowly closed after the last student’s exit, ready to escape the cool dim of the science building. I’m not optimistic about the test—there’s no way I made more than a C—but now that it’s over, I can relax. Chemistry’s my last class of the day, leaving three glorious hours of sunshine on this October day. It’s not much, but I’ll take what I can get.

Ever the optimist, my mother would have teased. If she were here. The thought sends a sharp pain through me and I brush it aside, eager to move on. Eager to stop hurting, or forget the hurt for a while. Whichever comes first.

The paths are relatively empty on this side of campus, since most of the science classes occur in the morning. Afternoons are for history, literature, and art, but I took literature last year and art was the hour before chemistry. I’m a free person.

Someone—probably a frat boy—yells in the distance, and my gaze wanders toward the three drainage pipes under the little bridge to my left. Heavily shaded by the trees around it and especially dark at night, it’s a popular location for partiers to get drunk and needle up, although pills and cigs have also been popular the last few years. I usually avoid the area, choosing to take the long way around, but last week a stray cat cut itself on a glass bottle left behind by some drunk idiot or another. I’ve kept an eye on it ever since, stealing a few minutes each day to pick glittering glass shards out of leaf piles and other plant matter. It stinks, and it’s no fun, but better me than them. The local strays and wildlife didn’t do anything to deserve getting cut up by a drunk’s or stoner’s leftovers.

I don’t see any new glass, but I do notice a darker tint to the trickle coming out of the leftmost pipe. Did those idiots leave a bottle to drain? Now the coons can get drunk as well as infected. I step closer, leaving the sidewalk, and glance around cautiously before beginning the brief descent. I’m not too worried about my reputation, but I’d rather not be associated with the partying group. It’s not my scene at all.

The newly dark drainage is thicker up close—more viscous, I correct myself—and falls somewhere between red and black in color. Not beer, then. I’m not too familiar with wine myself, but something about it doesn’t smell, much less look, right. Peering into the pipe, I squint to try and make out the middle. Sunshine colors the other end of the pipe a dirty gray, but the light doesn’t reach far and the middle section is only vaguely apparent. An unrecognizable shape juts up next to the side of the tube, with what looks like knees pointing toward the ceiling. Human knees, to be exact.

“Oh, god,” I mutter, putting my hands on my own knees where I crouch in front of the pipe. “You better not have OD’d, or it’ll be way too late.”

Officially, my CPR certification expired last month, but now I can’t recall if that means I should wait for professionals to arrive or not. I take a deep breath, and immediately gag on the foul stench of cigarette smoke and what I assume is stoner stink. If I have to do mouth-to-mouth in this setting, I just might throw up.

“I’m coming in there, okay? We’re going to get you out of there.” I brace my hands on the sides of the pipe and place one knee in, then the other. “Me,” I mutter to myself. “I’m getting them out of there.”

The pipe’s not long, maybe fifteen feet, but between the smell and the frankly slimy drainage beneath my hands and knees it takes a couple minutes to reach the middle. I’m not trying to go slow—I’m actually trying to hurry—but I won’t exactly be helpful if I’m too busy puking to call 911.

“I swear,” I gasp between shallow breaths, “I swear I’m coming. I’m going to help you, I promise.”

The body doesn’t answer, and I’m beginning to worry they really have OD’d, but then I glance up and see the opposite end of the tunnel, which should be about seven feet away, looks like it’s thirty feet away. And it keeps moving farther.

“This is a really shitty time for my vision to freak out,” I mutter, raising one hand to rub my eye. I hesitate, seeing the grime on my fingers, then freeze. My eyes have adjusted to the dim light now, and my hand isn’t wet with dirty water, like I’d thought.

It’s wet with blood.

“Oh my god,” I say, and I mean to say it in a sort of whisper but it comes out like a really quiet shout instead. Or maybe it’s a regular shout; I wouldn’t know. Some part of me, the seeing part, is no longer in my body, or at least it doesn’t feel like it. It feels like I’m watching the discovery from outside my body.

“Oh my god,” I say again, and look to the body. The body. “Oh my—are you okay? Can you hear me? I need—I need to call the police. Where’s my phone?” I’m muttering to myself again, patting my jeans with bloody hands.

“Great,” I say to myself, to no one. “Now it looks like Bloody Mary slapped my backside." I pause. "No phone either.”

The body in front of me stirs, groans a little. Brilliant introduction, Y/N. “Who’s there?” The words are slurred, but understandable.

“I’m Y/N,” I say as calmly as I can manage given my present situation. “I’m here to help you. Are you hurt?” I shake my head, suddenly blinking back tears. What am I doing? “I’m sorry. Where are you hurt? Do you remember what happened?”

“...s’lot of blood,” the figure mumbles, and I lean forward.

“Yes, I see the blood,” I say shakily. “Do you know where it’s coming from?”

They lean forward too, seeming to examine the blood, the drainage pipe, me. “S’not mine.”

A shaky breath. “Are you sure? Whose is it?”

“Not…mine,” they repeat, and suddenly they’re slumping back against the wall again, spent. “Raccoon.”

“I—what?”

“The blood…is the rac—is the raccoon’s,” they repeat, and point a trembling finger at something beside them. Their body is between me and the supposed raccoon; I hope they’re not hallucinating.

“Okay,” I try again. I fold my hands in my lap. “Do you know where you’re hurt? What happened?”

The figure thinks a moment, staring at the ceiling of the pipe. They’re tall, I can see now, slumped mostly across the floor so that a good foot and a half remains between their head and the pipe roof. Who are you?

“Blast…threw me back,” they say finally. They sound defeated, frustrated, but it quickly turns to anger. “Stupid! Shouldn’t have…need a bigger spot. Need a bigger sacrifice.” They say the last word so meaningfully it makes me shift back a little, but they’re not paying attention. “Need…need more blood.”

“Do you think you need a blood transfusion?” I ask gently, trying to get back on subject. I don’t know what kind of sacrifice they’re talking about, but if their trip was strong enough to make them kill a raccoon, or hallucinate killing one… Maybe last night’s thunderstorm was the blast they meant.

“No,” they say forcefully, and turn suddenly toward me. They fall onto their stomach, propping themself up on their elbows. This close, I can see a finely bearded face, thick brows, wild eyes. Definitely not a student. “Need. More. Blood!”

“Okay,” I say slowly, wishing I had the strength and space to scuttle back out of the pipe. “I’m going to call 911, okay? They’ll know what to do.”

He looks around, briefly. “No, they won’t,” he whispers. Then he looks at me again. Focuses. His eyes narrow. “I need…” He hesitates.

“What? What do you need?” When he doesn’t answer, I try again. “I can't get it for you if you don't tell me.”

“Yes,” he says slowly, nodding. His face is grave. “I need…” Another pause. “I need blood. Yours.”

Now I really do start inching back, bracing my hands on the walls to give me a little pushing power. “Sorry?”

“I need your blood. Now!” He struggles to his hands and knees, slipping in the bloody drainage that soaked through my jeans several minutes ago. I glance over his shoulder, see the other end of the pipe. It looks even further away now, maybe fifty feet, and somehow, impossibly, it’s darker out.

This is a dream. It has to be. Then I see a strange, misshapen lump just behind the stranger’s right knee, and I swallow the rising bile in my throat. The dim light reveals just enough: scraps of coarse striped fur, a mangled leg, what looks like part of a rib cage. Just the right size for a procyonid.

Correction: nightmare.

Chapter Text

My first thought is, See you soon, Mom. My second thought is, I really, really hope he slips.

I’m scrabbling around to the nearer end of the pipe, frantic, panting—Please wake up, please wake up—but it’s just as far away as the opposite end, if not farther. I take a second to process and then bolt anyway, fingers grabbing and slipping as I squelch through blood and whatever else the psycho behind me has managed to spill. Every ragged breath drags a sickly sweet smell through my mouth to my lungs, and I feel like I’m rotting from the inside out. Why else would my vision be failing me like this, my limbs failing to find purchase on the ribbed pipe surface?

I’m hallucinating, I realize, with growing dismay. I’m high on the stoners’ leftover fumes. I’m fucking high.

I’ve never been high in my life.

I can hear the man behind me, muttering and scuttling along in my wake. It doesn’t sound so much like he’s chasing me as it does like he’s searching for something—I can’t imagine what, but so long as I can put some distance between us, maybe lock myself in the closest classroom while calling the police, I don’t really care.

Maybe I should’ve cared, I think as a sharp pain digs into my lower leg, right below the knee. The knife or glass shard or something sharp yanks out and dives again, this time just above my ankle. The man cackles. It’s the kind of giddy laughter you really only hear in movies, only now, the movie is apparently my life.

The sharp thing jabs again, shallow this time, slicing open the back of my calf from left to right. He’s still cackling, to the point where I almost wish the muttering would return; I wonder if the raccoon felt this panicked when he pinned it down and carved it up, or if he granted it a swift death and saved the mangling for later. Probably not; I have a feeling sympathy’s not his thing.

Another stab and I fall flat on my stomach, some desperate instinct urging me to curl into the fetal position and my leg screaming at me not to move or it’ll get worse. The blade’s still in my leg, and he’s still holding on; I can feel the pressure. But why isn’t he moving?

I risk a glance back, arms still mostly covering my head. Not that they’ll do much to stop my attacker, but it’s the thought that counts.

Ever the optimist, my mom’s voice says in my ear, but this time she sounds sad, tired. I’m sorry, Mom. I said I wouldn’t get into trouble.

“Look at me,” the man says, tone dark and solemn. There’s no wrath or even hatred in his eyes, only calm purpose. He’s truly crazy, then.

Mom never liked that word. Said there were no truly crazy people, just people who saw things that others couldn’t, or felt them, or heard them. People who came from another world, a world where morals are flipped and cutting someone up for fun isn’t wrong, it’s power.

Most people would call that bullshit.

“Look at me,” he says again, in that same cool tone. It’s like he doesn’t even know I’m hurting, that he’s hurting me, much less care. He just has some unimaginable purpose, some plan, to fulfill.

Fuck that. “Why?” I demand. “Why the hell should I look at you when you’re carving up my leg, ready to kill me? I’m not doing you a damn favor for murdering raccoons and college girls!”

He looks at me blankly, as if I should know better. “You have to look at me,” he insists, still with that same blank tone. There’s no personality there, not anymore. No emotion.

“No, I don’t,” I hiss, and throw my head back to stare at the ceiling. Only the ceiling ends only inches past my head, behind me, and the sky outside is dark. I remember the other end of the tunnel, the strange idea that time had passed since I entered the pipe, a significant amount of time. But the sky outside isn’t dark with night—it’s dark with clouds.

“Why can I see the sky?” I mumble, dazed and half paralyzed with pain.

“Look at me,” he intones again.

“No, asshole,” I mutter, and twist my neck to better see out the pipe. I’m closer to the edge than I’d thought before he stabbed me, but the world outside looks nothing like the campus green I’d left behind.

“Look at me.”

“The trees are gone. The fucking trees are gone,” I swear under my breath, and suddenly my would-be murderer is leaning over me, eyes alight with irritation.

“Look. At. Me,” he grits out, and I shove him away half-heartedly.

“Your priorities are out of whack,” I snap, and sit up. He’s abandoned the knife in my leg, so I grit my teeth and pull it out in one sudden motion, before he can stop me or I can second-guess myself. I wave it in front of his face, watching his hands carefully. He keeps them by his sides. Which is just as well, because I feel like I’m about to pass out from the pain.

“What did you do?” I tap the knife on his nose, long sharp point to long skinny point. Don’t focus on the pain. “Where are the trees?”

He just stares blankly, glancing from me to the world outside.

A world I don’t recognize at all, when I twist to face it. A world that just barely keeps me conscious with confusion and panic, as screamingly painful as my leg is.

There are no trees at all, at least on this side of the drainpipe, only tall, waving grass, a couple large rocks, and what looks like a sandy beach, only the sand is black like the rocks and might actually be gravel; I can’t tell for sure. But one thing’s for sure: this isn’t my campus. I’ve never been here in my life.

“I need a hospital,” I breathe, and turn back to the man, who’s still watching me. He looks uncertain now, maybe a little unnerved. As if I’m the crazy one.

“I don’t know what to call you, so I’m going to go with ‘Absolute Fuck-up’ for now,” I say sarcastically. “Hope that’s alright with you.” With one last wave of the knife, I scoot forward and stand as best I can, which ends up being badly. The injured leg folds underneath me and I quickly pull my weight off it, grinding my teeth together until the black spots fuzz out of my vision.

One leg it is.

Grabbing the rock next to the drainpipe, I turn, about to force some answers out of the man, but the drainpipe—along with the man—is gone.

“Holy—” I lean against the rock more heavily, panting with pain and exertion. “All those hours in the gym really paying off,” I mumble, as if thirty minutes on the treadmill could prepare a person for stab wounds, and look up at the sky. As if in answer, the clouds break loose and it begins to rain, a heavy, pounding, soaking rain that simultaneously feels great on my heated skin and awful on my injured leg.

A voice sounds behind me, deep and musical but nonetheless wary. The language sounds…complicated.

I turn, staggering a little as I do a stupid little hop to keep my weight off my injured leg. “Hello?”

The boy—man—person in front of me is beautiful, so beautiful that age isn’t really a factor. He looks young, but his eyes…his eyes are ancient.

He says something else in that gorgeous voice, brows creased, but all I can think about is the thrumming pain in my leg and the shock of emerging into a foreign world and the fear of not knowing how to get back, or what—who—will be waiting for me if I do.

I feel myself fall as everything goes black.