Aiden was breathing heavily, looking down at the corpse at his feet.

A moment later, his eyes trailed from Sirena's dead body (Jesse spotted a glimpse of wide open eyes from her severed head and squeezed their eyes shut) over to the shaking, weak little human a few feet away. Goosebumps stood out on their skin so much that Jesse could've run their fingers over their arm and felt each little individual bump.

His shoes clopped through blood and gore, and Jesse fully expected him to yell at them, yell at them and ignore the fact that they were barely wearing anything anymore while being sprawled helplessly on the ground, yell at them for getting lost, for being a nuisance, for causing trouble for them all again-

A hand (slightly sticky with blood) gently slid behind their shoulders and eased them up into a sitting position, before something heavy draped around their shoulders.

Jesse let their eyes eke open to see that he'd taken off his leather jacket and adjusted it over them. Considering how much tinier they were, it did end up covering a lot, so Jesse drew it around them and shivered.

"Are you alright?" Aiden, rather than snapping and sniping at them, sounded a little concerned.

Jesse drew in a shuddering breath and mopped at their face, tears still leaking out of their eyes periodically. "Y... yeah..."

"Bullshit." He didn't sound annoyed when he said that, just as though he were stating a matter of fact. "Sirena just made you..."

He trailed off, glancing at the dead body, before shifting so they couldn't see it- perhaps remembering the last time he'd beheaded someone. (He hadn't done it since.)

"... well, you know."

Jesse just shivered a little, wiping at their eyes. The jacket was warm, since he'd just been wearing it, and did a lot to hide the way they were shaking like a leaf clinging onto a branch in a windstorm.

Aiden had walked off, leaving Jesse to see Sirena's body from where he'd been blocking her from sight. They closed their eyes and pressed their face to their knees, feeling tremors run through their arms and legs and face.

A moment later, he was pressing their fuzzy jacket and their overalls and shirt into their arms in a little ball. Jesse accepted the ball and held them close to their chest, still shaking.

"I'll keep a lookout. Get changed," he told them- as if they had anything to really change, as if they were wearing something and they were merely swapping out clothing.

Regardless, they swallowed bile and hastily began to tug their clothes on into the proper places like they were a dressup doll, under the leather jacket the whole time. Aiden had respectfully turned around and was carefully scanning the treeline.

Reuben nosed his way into their arms and snuffled once they'd managed to get their clothes on and not put their head and one arm through the hole meant for the head. They gratefully pulled him close and pressed their face to the little pig's back, listening to him snuffle and breathe quietly.

Aiden peeked through his fingers. When it was clear they were done changing, he turned around.

Jesse assumed to grab his jacket, but instead he just picked them up and started to tote them along like they were a baby, jacket still wrapped around them.

(They were unsure of whether or not to be relieved that he could carry them without griping about how damn heavy they were, or to be embarrassed at the fact that he was just carrying them like a baby.)

"Hey, uh, on the bright side though, it seems like you can resist succubi."

Jesse looked up at him.

Taking it as confusion, he cleared his throat and made a little shrugging gesture. "I mean, you know, succubi usually... make you want to fuck with them, so the fact that you didn't is, uh, good– I mean it's not good but in the grand scheme of things we're not gonna have to worry about you just waltzing off with a succubus to– well, you know– yeah."

He was surprisingly awkward, his tongue sounding thick and clumsy in his mouth until he just closed it, cheeks flushing slightly as his red eyes (well, the eyepatch hid the other one, but Jesse assumed it wasn't just moving freely on its own) flickered off to the side and away from them.

He usually was a lot more snippy with them.

Jesse reached out and latched onto him, shaking, and clinging to him much like a baby koala would cling to their mother.

Reuben snuffled quietly from where he'd been nicely squashed between the two, like the filling in some kind of ice cream sandwich or something.

Aiden was quiet. Jesse half expected him to drop them.

Instead he reached up and gave them a brusque little pat on the back, two little pats that left a warm feeling where his hand had been for less than a second.

"Um. Yes. Hello. It's– hey, it's fine, okay..." He sounded really awkward now, but still trying as hard as he could– despite how he usually snapped at them like a snapping turtle (like the one under the bridge at school that Jesse had heard a lot of students jokingly call 'Bitch')– to not snap at them, to not be rude to them.

In fact, almost to comfort them.

They couldn't help it– they started crying into his shoulder.

He stiffened.

Then he wrapped his arms around them tighter in a kind of hug and continued walking with them ensnared in his grip, muttering quiet things to them.

They could barely hear it over their quiet little sobs, but they caught something about 'you'll be okay' and 'kinda wish I left her alive so the others could take turns, but oh well' (which was oddly comforting in itself, and Jesse didn't have the mental capacity at the moment to dissect why) and 'Romeo kinda ordered us to come find you when Reuben came in screaming like a little demon' (which Jesse just found weirdly funny, to think of Reuben 'screaming', but also because Aiden himself was a demon and so describing something as 'a little demon' just felt weird to Jesse).

The trees were deathly silent. Listening to his rambling murmurs. Listening to Jesse sob quietly into his shoulder, scared and small and abused.

That feeling of eyes boring into their neck no longer present.


A/N: We actually have snapping turtles under a bridge (along with normal turtles) at college. One is named Bastard, and the other is named Motherfucker Unlimited (I just call it Bitch because that's shorter, lol).

Hey, Aiden is nice this time around! Probably 'cause Jesse was just traumatized.

Okay back to fluff, angst, and probably a lot of scrambling around to not die next chapter, lol.

Oh, small plug for a game that's not mine– if you like Danganronpa-like games (trials, executions, mystery solving) minus the murder and the really really absurd executions, you should play "Your Turn to Die: Death Game by Majority." I really like it. Characters are fun, it's free... and also the puzzles are great. xD

RQTC: Who is your favorite celebrity/actor/actress from a video game?

Ashley Johnson. (Petra, Ellie from the Last of Us, Gortys from Tales of the Borderlands... yeah xD) Patton Oswalt was second (Jesse said trans rights, you guys!) but I just really like her. She's got a good voice. And dang she can sing xD

I am a cup. Reviews are orange juice. I now am a cup of orange juice. xD

Responses to reviews– thank you for not demanding that my head be put on a stick for the last chapter, by the way.

Happygoluckymegami: Ooof, alright. / Well, she got her head cut off, so... xD

Toni42: Thanks, bear. But oof, yeah xD / Nyeh

TheAmberShadow: Ah, found the problem– FFN doesn't really like the name apparently so I have a site where you can support me- it's the one with an orange and white P as a logo xD / Oh deer, I have to question the safety of this battle now. (There were more puns but FFN pulled a deletus on me) / I think so, yeah. / Yep! Although Redstonia isn't NEXT next. / Unless they only recognized the name; not everyone meets everyone's contracted humans. Fred is also the type of person to be more polite about showing their face on 'camera'. / Kind of. / Nope, you were close, though. / It's kinda implied that the trees have dryad spirits that can be influenced by succubi. / Mm, yeah.

Northern Goshawk: Don't worry about it, dude, that's the entire point of the trigger warning! That should be the darkest chapter so you should be okay with the rest of this story. / Yay, Aiden. / Yeah... / You didn't offend me, don't worry about it.

Darkbeast Dend: Yeah... that should be as dark as it gets.

Guest: Not sure what that means, but thank you I guess xD

Guest: Yeah...

That's all for now! See you, so long, and g'bye!

x.X. A.L. X.x