Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

You see your life from a distance, as if watching it through a screen.

You came to know shame most intimately.

Your mama was a Vaporeon. Zephyr would have been able to write a biography of exclusively what she had said to them, but the truth is, you couldn't remember her face. You did, however, remember what she taught you.

She repeated, over and over, that you were going to die.

You were born with fur that sparkled silver, and you were much smaller than your siblings. While they practiced pouncing upon Rattata, you were lucky to not be spotted by even the blind, and even then it would remain half your size. You were taught to despise this, to hate every core of your own being. From the roots of your fur, to the pattern on your tail declaring you as male when you were nothing of the sort.

For a time, you envied your largest and most powerful sibling, Zephyr, for the arcing patterns on their tail denoting them as female. Surely, being female would liberate you from the foul taste being male put in your mouth. However, you learned that being female did not suit you either- even in what had been expected to be such a simple field, you were Other.

One day, you asked your mama if you had a name. Zephyr had one, as did your other siblings. She had been irritated with this question, insisting that corpses needed no name.

"Your only destination in life is the morgue, thankless food thief," she had snarled. You felt pain and wetness on your face.

Yet, you thrived.

What you lacked in strength, you made up for by learning quickly. What you lacked in size, you made up for by slipping into places others could not reach and climbing. What you lacked in intelligence, you watched until you succeeded. You would not accept loss, you told yourself- not now, and not ever.

One day, after mama hit you a few times, Zephyr stepped in. They got in a fight with mama and lost, but it ended with them running away and taking you with them.

From that point on, wandering homeless and parentless in the wilderness with only your sibling by your side, you grew up to be known as Morgue.

And you are dead. You are dead, gone, never to draw breath again.

You take trips on boats to new lands with Zephyr by your side. You remain smaller than them, but where they go, you follow. They teach you reading, they learn how to use your pelt to your advantage when hunting. It turns out that, due to the brilliantly sparkling fur you don, snowy areas are the ideal hunting grounds for one such as yourself. When you both visit the mountains, the tundras, the poles, you prove yourself an even more effective hunter than Zephyr is within their element. You eat more than ever in these places.

One boat ride, you are watching the waves drift by with Zephyr by your side.

"What do you think we'll evolve into?" they ask you, fluffy ears perked up and waving like little twin trees in the breeze. You did not realize, at the time, how much you would miss those little movements.

"You'd be an Umbreon, obviously." The words come out so easily at the time. It simply feels right- Zephyr, your older sibling, rarely smiles unless they are speaking to you, and even then it isn't a common response. It would become rarer still in the future. They only seemed to hold love for you and for the night, cool air billowing through their thick fur. You can easily imagine them covered in black fur and golden rings. It simply feels right.

"Hmm, okay..." Zephyr does not sound convinced. You look away as their ears twitch back.

"As for me, uh…" You hesitate. It wasn't a thought that had crossed your mind before. You knew of each evolution, but which one fit? You supposed there was only one obvious choice, only one that would make logical sense as your next step in evolution. "Glaceon, I guess?"

"Huh? Really?"

Your mane puffs up in embarrassment. Their voice hints at amusement, an incredulous tone gilding its edges. Who gave them permission to question this decision, much less directly following their asking of it?! "Don't 'huh, really' me," you grumble and huff. You find yourself staring at the waves, even as you turn your head toward them. You do not acknowledge this feeling as embarassment- no, it is simply frustration. Yes, that must be it. "No one would think twice about a Glaceon with silver fur." It was true, after all- and you were an excellent hunter in the snow, no one could deny-

"And they'd only see how short you are?"

You tackle Zephyr. "Alright, that's it- you're DEAD!" you bark, chewing their ears in frustration as they fall back and cackle, protesting against your assault in futility.

You are, of course, sure not to draw blood. You care for them. You must not hurt them.

So, then, why did they hurt you, why did they leave you as if you were nothing? Why did they try to dispose of you? Was your admiration one-sided? Did they feel nothing? Were they by your side simply out of necessity? Perhaps they thought you weak, simply a toy to abandon.

The doctor is speaking to you. You struggle to hear the words being said. "If you had not been there when you were, they'd have died."

The Vaporeon, the one who had birthed and hit you, she had found you again. She demanded her child back- not you, of course, but the other one. The one that was worth time. The one that was not a waste. The one that was not dead. Not you, but Zephyr.

You were too timid. You did not make yourself bigger, only shrunk away in fear. You were paralyzed as a blur of brown attacked her with a yowl, terrified when she traded blows with Zephyr, and only snapped out of your inflicted stupor when your larger sibling shoved her down with a splash.

It was the first time you had truly, sincerely seen the Tar.

It was nothing much, of course- only a dark liquid that did not shine in the light so much as display a lighter colour in it. Avoiding it was simple, and you did not hold curiousity for it. It was an odd thing that showed up in some places, not something you noticed. It was beneath your attention- that was, until you saw Zephyr shoving your mother into it.

It didn't take long for her to stop moving. Only half her body touched the liquid, yet her belly, where Zephyr stood with flecks of black dotting their fur, was the only thing that remained blue. Zephyr was still, staring blankly as the Tar slowly crept up their mother like a serpent, little rivers of dark that entered her eyes and mouth. She didn't move or make a sound.

You asked Zephyr to come back. You begged them to come back to land, belly close to the ground and tail lashing. You'd deny it if asked, but you were shaking.

They showed no sign of even hearing until the Tar touched their paws. And then, with a gasp and cry, they leapt out of the liquid to stagger onto land.

It didn't take long for them to start acting strange, either. You lead them to the nearest city and dragged them to the nearest hospital.

And now, the doctor was praising you for getting here so quickly, as if Zephyr was not hooked up to life support, their once-alert ears sagging and their paws, even once washed, stained a violent black down to the skin and through every hair follicle.

It did not feel as if you should be getting praised. No- you needed to get stronger, bolder, fiercer. You could not freeze like that again, you could not stand at the sidelines.

You hated the Tar. It took your sibling from you.

You hold onto that feeling. In thoughts that are not your own, but are not divergent of what would be expected from yours, you are reminded that the Tar has been spreading and spilling. You are not certain who else is here, or why such thoughts are invading your mind. They have a point, even so…

Zephyr's ears are never the same. They bend near the base and sag under their own weight. Sometimes they cannot hear when you speak, and they lack feeling in their paws. Still, they are alive, and that should be enough for you.

It isn't.

You and Zephyr become chasers of the tar, patrolling its side to warn others to flee. You watch as the Tar begins to pool, begins to seep into water sources, and eventually even swallows villages beneath it. Zephyr is the one who is best at speaking; you find yourself disliking the company of others. They protest and resist moving, even as their homes are in danger.

You get to see many resist their way to death as the Tar eats through their skin, then fat, then muscle, and then internal organs. It is a tragedy, but at least it did not happen to Zephyr- they remain strong, though their hearing suffers and their joints sting and their eyes suffer from eternal miosis. Sometimes they stare too long at the ever-expanding ocean, but you are there to pull them back to reality…

You think, anyway. Sometimes you doubt how much of them is left.

You were correct to doubt. After what Zephyr has done to you, that cannot be denied. Perhaps you did not deserve to be killed, yes? Perhaps, looking back, they cared not for you.

Your claws dig into rain-softened soil, tearing at roots. You could hear the stream from here, as well as a steady dripping from Tar-tainted trees. You did not want to be here, in the centre of a town that would soon be a seabed. You did not wish to speak to anyone, but warning the residents came before your emotions. You did not like others, you never truly had.

You pass a high-tech device- a television, though you'd never been drawn to them yourself. You were, as some said, 'wild'. You were not kin to technology and braved weather of all sorts. You would not be some pampered city-folk, this screen did not interest you. Who knew what electric-types were being exploited to create even a second of recording for this?

The video showed a paw-drawn Meowth giving an explanation of what the Tar was and how to act around it as children huddled around the screen. It was very clearly unrealistic, as the Meowth was drawn holding a bottle of Tar. You knew better, it would simply eat through glass. "It will try to trick you," said the jolly feline, pixels shuddering and dancing around it. "Don't listen! It will try to tempt you to touch it."

Your mind flashed back to Zephyr, a mask around their snout to keep them breathing as dark liquid dripped from their paws.

'The Creeping Tar', some called it. More like the bane of your existence.

Something to destroy. Something that, by Zephyr's paw, had killed you.

"But," Zephyr said to you one night, pupils smaller than you had ever seen in the light of your campfire, "what if we could talk to the oil, for real?"

You recoiled in disbelief.

They clearly took this reaction badly, beginning to stutter. "I-I just mean-!" A thick tail hits the ground, kicking up dust. "It must be lonely, to be so hated."

Surely you had seen the signs… hadn't you?

Even so, emotion overrode all logic.

"No," you snarled, your fangs instinctively baring toward even your beloved kin. You were, at least, honest. "It needs to be killed."

I could bring you back to life.

Be my plaything, and I will grant you your revenge.

Chapter Text

"SO LONG AS THIS BODY IS YOURS, MY BLESSING SHALL PREVENT THE CREEPING TAR FROM CONSUMING YOU FROM THE INSIDE OUT."

Those words echoed in your head unbidden. You grasped for and grappled with the ground beneath you, struggled to open your eyes, struggled to be alive at all. One eye felt like it was weeping a strange liquid and was blind to the world, yet the other struggled to focus on anything. You were on top of something soft, in a place that smelled of cleaning supplies and blood. A hospital, perhaps?

No matter how much you tried standing, your legs continued to betray you, shaking and buckling like a newborn Deerling. One leg kept getting stuck on something, so you snarl and snap at it with your teeth, only to find your head being pulled back and away by a strong grip. In fear and fury, you lash out to bite at whatever it was, taste blood, and feel a sluggishness seep into your muscles.

With the last bit of strength in your bones, you try to tear and rend flesh, but the world faded away, leaving your assailant's fate uncertain.

"...wasn't from a mission. I did suspect he's been self-destructive, but this…"

You blearily opened one eye- your other struggled and refused to obey any command. A strange pressure bound it down and caused a light throbbing in your head. Were you bandaged, or was this a restraint?

"This will seem backwards, sir, but Houndour-ing him about it won't do him any good, either."

All you saw was light. You felt around by shifting and shuffling your front paws- some sort of downy pillow was beneath you, a solid and slick floor beneath that. One leg was bound and attached to something- ah, if this was a hospital, perhaps you were hooked up to… to… in your haze, you couldn't manage to recall the name of it. Medicine upon strings, dripping like Tar, one of those. You felt disgusted by the very thought, but if it was keeping you alive, so be it.

"I know! I know, I wasn't gonna, like- I dunno. It's just hard. I wanna help 'im!"

Your surroundings were slowly coming into veiw. Wires from technology you weren't the least bit familiar with, cloth beneath your paws, bandages wrapped tightly against your body, counters cleaner than anywhere you had been before…

"I know, I'm sorry. We need to give him the space to come to us about it."

You craned to look to those speaking. A Mawile and a Skitty with a blue-dyed tail were talking to one another in hushed, serious tones. The Mawile was dressed in white, red and black feathers being slowly chewed by its second mouth- the doctor, perhaps? So, the authority here, then. Neither had noticed you were awake quite yet.

"Wish things could be simple," huffed the Skitty, fur ruffling and puffing outward. "What CAN we do?"

Was there anyone else in here? You scanned the room as best you could with only one eye operating. While there were more beds, it was only you, the lone Eevee, bedbound and linked to an IV- oh, that's what it was called. The Mawile was cleaning what appeared to be a set of sheets, the Skitty conversing. There was one bedding- likely the same as your assumed 'pillow'- without a sheet, revealing a bundle of blackened, reddened feathers that implied you had narrowly missed someone else more injured than you… hold on, was the Mawile's extra mouth eating the soiled bedding?

"I'd like to start him on an antidepressant, with your permission? But he'd need to be watched carefully while taking it, so you could talk to Flicker first and discuss it with them, too." The Mawile checked the sheets against a light. While they looked just fine to you, it evidently wasn't acceptable to the doctor, who shoved them back into soapy water.

"Eh? Why ya askin' me? Of course I'mma say yes if it'll help," scoffed the Skitty. "But in the end it's up to him, yeah?"

"Of course."

You felt less like jumping the doctor and running, more like sleeping all of the sudden. Maybe you were more hurt than you had assumed after all? Besides, you could bide your time to escape. You have a mission, you couldn't afford to wait for some shoddy medical system to sap you dry of money and willpower. But perhaps, for now, you could take advantage of their services.

You closed your eye and drifted back to sleep.

"A'ight, bites-a-lot, you gotta get up and eat."

You blearily opened an eye in response to an irritating prodding on your snout. You snapped your fangs at the intrusive paw, but only sunk teeth into air as the Skitty drew back with a cocky grin.

"Oh, you're faster now, that's a good sign! I ain't gonna let you bite me like you did Lo, though."

Up closer, the Skitty had faint tabby stripes and bright green eyes kept wide open. One eye pointed inward much farther than normal, an eye that was outlined with the bright blue design of a pawprint, dyed into her fur like a tattoo.

You try to reply, but your mouth is sluggish. Much too sluggish. It was as if you were muzzled from the inside. Were you seriously this weak? You muster up a small growl, a little tickle going down your back as your hackles rise.

"Don't overdo it, you weren't doin' so hot out there." The Skitty's tone was more serious. "You were out in the Tar-infested wastes and zonked for days. Only woke up to call my wife a cur and bite folks. So, you needa take it easy. Yeah?"

A pause. The stranger was awaiting a response. You bare your teeth with another growl and, with as much energy as your lungs could muster, manage to get out one word- "Who…?"

"Ah- PaintPrint, at your service! Paint for short. She and her, if you please."

She and her? You… hadn't had someone introduce themself like that before. Not ever, really. In your exhausted state, it took a little while for you to understand what that even was intended to mean. Paint-Print, a strange name. You didn't get it.

Then again, you were named Morgue. Perhaps judgement would be nothing but foolish.

You tried once again to speak for only garbled nonsense to spill from your jaws. PaintPrint shook her head and pushed a bowl of berries closer. Oran, Razz, Chople, Sitrus… only then did you realize just how dry your mouth was, and how empty your belly was. You pause only to sniff at the offering to be sure it wasn't tainted in some way and watch PaintPrint suspiciously for a time. Once you were sure she wasn't attempting some vile trick, you snapped the meal up greedily as if it were to be your last. While meat was preferable, this would do well to tide you over for the time being.

The Skitty closed her eyes and began to lick the side of her paw and rub it from the back of her ears to her snout. Instinctively, you growl at the movement, prepared to defend your meal, but she simply ignores you. You are below her interest.

It angers you farther, but now is not the time to be starting fights.

You swipe a tongue across your muzzle and push the bowl of only remaining liquid and scraps away from you. You can already tell you ate too fast, an ache beginning in your gut and stinging your throat, but to slow down would have been to keep your guard lowered. You could not simply do that.

You do, however, feel a tad stronger already. You lick the taste of berries from your lips again and try once more to speak. Your voice is rough and weak, but finally manageable, though it hurts to use. "What. Happened."

PaintPrint opens her eyes once more, corners of her mouth twisting to a frown. "You were in the wastes, all covered in Pale and with that goo over your eye, so I dragged you back." You eye her suspiciously. She doesn't look like she could carry you, or anyone for that matter. "Yer prolly gonna have severe brain damage with how that stuff eats through people, but you talking's an honest shock!"

She says it so casually and so earnestly. She genuinely seems worried for you. This gives you a strange prickling feeling at the nape of your neck, one you decide that you do not like. So, you stay silent, only glaring up at her defensively.

"Now, I ain't the prying type, but I can't help but notice, Tar's only on one side of your face. That's not exactly common, either. So, who did this to ya?"

Your mind flashed to Zephyr. Your snout crinkled, causing your fangs to bare whether you wanted them shown or not. "I was betrayed," you said. It came out an eighth of how fiercely you wanted the words to come out, if you were being generous. Your heart was in it, but your body had other plans. "Smacked Tar over my eye using… using a glove."

PaintPrint's eyes close halfway. She tucks her paws underneath her, becoming akin to a pebble on the floor. "It's hard enough, livin' out there, before all that."

Your heart burns cold with anger over the gentle tone of her voice and the pity you were perceiving. She had no right to speak of your experiences, talking as if you were defenseless. You were the small runt of the litter, but you could hold your own, you COULD.

In a moment of blind fury, you push yourself up to your paws, up on all fours. Your body is screaming at you, aches in places you weren't aware had nerves at all and your bandaged eye feeling as if it would burst from your skull. It felt terrible, but at this moment you HAD to stand.

"I'm leaving now," you announced, even as stars began to dot your vision and your surroundings became hazy.

The loudest silence you had ever experienced hit your ears like a dodgeball. You were vaguely aware of tripping on something, but nothing makes sense suddenly. You are on the ground and flying, present and gone.

You come back to with a bloody nose and PaintPrint towering over your laying form like a Duraludon.

"...More vitamins," you hear when your ears stop ringing and her words are comprehensible once more. "It'd suck if ya died right after all that."

No, you can't die. You move to take a step- ah, no, you're not in the right position. You only touch silken fur and feel yourself moved back.

Your vision swims back in. PaintPrint is standing over you- too close. You attempt to bite her, but your jaws aren't operating properly and your snout hurts.

Against your will, your eye slides closed as you are gripped by an overwhelmingly violent sleep.

You dream of a Glaceon and Umbreon hunting side by side.