Songbird in a Snowstorm [Yandere! Marble Hornets x Reader]

Prologue

Frigid water surrounds your figure, stealing the last bits of heat from your body. You had long since ceased your wild thrashing, now leaving the water to drag you down deeper into its murky depths. The water that fills your lungs only brought with it another blissful wave of tranquility. It didn't hurt anymore. Nothing did. A mercy, as it would be.

The weight of the water around you felt like it was seconds away from caving in your skull, but you couldn't find it in yourself to care. That type of awareness left you long ago. Minuscule bubbles slip from your mouth, drifting upwards to the frothy surface. What little light that dared to reach down into the cloudy lake was getting further and further away by the second. The water was colder down here. Still and lifeless, not too different from your own limp body.

At this point you might be asking yourself, how the fuck did I end up in this situation?

You were running. Until the end you were running. From your past, your problems, your peers. No matter what excuses you fed yourself, deep down you knew exactly how you ended up here in this forest. It wasn't to 'find yourself' as you had explained to your family and friends. You weren't taking a break from college- you dropped out. Or more accurately you were kicked out. Apparently your GPA is important after all.

This wasn't exactly how you imagined your life ending, but you are here all the same. Ice crawls from your fingertips to consume the rest of your body. The pressure in your ears only magnified tenfold, to the point where you would try to wriggle away from it if you still had the energy. Slimy tendrils embrace your body as your back meets with the silty lake bed. Sediments puff up in a cloud around your body, only to slowly drift down and settle once more.

You're free. Once and for all. Darkness gnaws at the edges of your vision, seconds away from swallowing you whole. You let your gaze drift skyward, framed by long billowy plants. Your eyes latch onto what little light is still trickling down from above, muted and peaceful in the still water. One question still clung to your psyche as you lost consciousness.

Are you happy with the life you lived?

Squinting through the fluorescent white light of your computer, your eyes land on a promising job listing. Fire lookout needed. $22,800 for seven months. Honestly, it's not like you had anything better to be doing. Might as well take the better part of a year to earn some easy money. Even better since you don't have to deal with rent or pay for your own food. On its own that would be a gift from the universe itself, but along with the money? It was an offer too good to pass up.

A couple weeks later and you were busy making the trek up to your new home, a fire lookout no less than three days of backpacking away from the nearest road. The assignment was simple enough. Call in at noon once a day, talk about the weather and any smoke on the horizon, and spend the rest of the time staring out at trees. Near total isolation... and no real obligation to talk to anyone for months at a time. A paid vacation if you'd ever seen one. All things considered, things were starting to go well for once in your life.

Dragging yourself up the last couple steps of the fire lookout, you shoulder open the flimsy door and flip on the light switch. A single light bulb in the center of the ceiling flickers to life above you, revealing a bare cabin furnished with nothing more than a small kitchen, a desk, and a metal cot. No more than two steps into your new home and a combination of high pitched mechanical chirps and static assaults your ears.

"Hello?" A woman's voice calls out from the radio on your desk, "Hello? Earth to tower 44!" You wince, the shrill sound like nails on a chalkboard after days of nothing but birdsong and gentle wind. This must be your new partner.

Shuffling over to the desk and snatching up the radio, your fingers quickly find the button that would allow you to respond. "And you are?" The words came out sounding a lot snarkier than intended. You definitely weren't making any friends tonight.

"Names' Jessica. I'm in the tower across from yours." Your eyes scan the horizon, initially finding nothing but trees. With a little more attention you find not one, but two more lookouts on peaks far in the distance. Odd, as you had only ever heard of having one partner. It might have been something you glossed over in the ad though, it's not like you really paid too much attention to anything other than 'get money to run from your problems.'

You chirp out your name as your eyes fall on the shadowy outlines of the towers. Somehow the structures looked right at home with the rest of the forest, darkening under the light of a dying sky. "And also, which one? I see two other lookouts." You queried, turning your gaze to look back into your new home. Scratches and divots littered the wooden floors. Just about everything had a layer of dust on it. There were even the remains of some shiny wrapper abandoned in the far corner. Whoever was here last even left an old deck of cards and a couple books scattered on the desk.

There was a brief silence before Jessica responded, "The one with the lights on." She deadpanned. Blinking again, another look out the window reveals that one of the other lookouts did indeed have the lights on. It stood on the opposite end of the lake, perched on the highest ridge. The faintest yellow glow bled from the tower's windows into the surrounding forest.

Tonight was going great. "Oh, yeah. My bad." You wince both at the word choice and the discomfort lacing your voice. Hopefully you'll be more keen after some sleep, lest the entire forest goes up in flames due to your own obliviousness. Then again, at the very least you could finally list something under 'achievements' on your resume.

"It sounds like you should probably get some sleep. I'll teach you about fire lookout 101 in the morning." Whatever social missteps you were guilty of, Jessica seemed more than happy to chalk them all up to exhaustion for tonight. She probably wasn't that far off the mark either. The hike left all of your muscles sore and your mind entirely spent. Lumbering over to the cot, you all but fall into the thin sheets, frowning at the scratchy texture.

They would be more than enough for the time being, as the summer temperatures rarely drop below sixty even at night. Your contract would end before winter crept over the landscape. The only time you'd have to deal with the cold was when you would inevitably be thrust back into civilization come late fall. That was a long, long time off though, a problem for future you to deal with. With this thought in mind you let yourself drift off into an undisturbed sleep.

Time for a well-placed and extremely tasteful author's note to start this train wreck. This story is set after the events of marble hornets with the canon divergence sometime before the comics start. Speaking of which, there will be spoilers for the comics Issue 2 onwards so if you ever planned to read those, read them before you read this.

Obligatory trigger warning. Without going into spoilers, this story explores very dark topics and thought processes- I can't stress this point enough. This will be your only warning for the entire book. Having said that, there is no torture, physical or otherwise, in this book.

All characters in this book save for Mc belong to the creators of Marble Hornets.

In case there was any question, Mc is at the very least eighteen in this story.

With all that said, I hope you enjoy the story and please know all comments and hearts are greatly appreciated.