Divine Singularity || Reader x Murder Drones

II

You and J sat by the stream in silence. You were curled in on yourself, a haphazard dome of feathers and folded limbs, hunched into a shape that shielded you from the outside world. The occasional twitch betrayed life. Nothing else did.

J leaned against your side anyway.

She kept silent willingly. Not because she didn't know what to say (even though she didn't), but because she knew none of her words would land. Instead, she just let her weight rest against your flank, her frame dwarfed by yours. Her hand toyed with the edge of the Dove's nest she'd carried on the way back—frayed around the edges, barely holding itself together. Whatever had attacked the Dove had done a number on the nest too.

Still, she'd taken it with her. Figured you'd want every part of the little bird kept close. Even the detritus. She wasn't sure if you even noticed. You hadn't looked at it once since she'd retrieved it. But she held onto it anyway.

Her eyes drifted a short distance away, to a small mound of dirt beneath a pile of hand-stacked stones. Simple. Unceremonious. Just a grave, if one didn't know better. But for you, it was more than that.

The burial itself hadn't taken long. Your claws made short work of the earth, scooping it away with just a few strokes. But after the final stone had been placed—and the bird's body settled beneath—you hadn't moved. You hadn't spoken. It didn't even look like you were breathing. You'd just... gone still, like you were trying to blend in with the world, no matter how much you stood out.

The digging had been the easy part.

It was the aftermath that proved harder. Or quieter. Or both.

J let out a slow breath, shifting slightly. Your feathers rustled beneath her as she leaned back further into them, letting them form a makeshift cushion. For something supposedly out of this world, you were surprisingly comfortable. Warm, too. Like sitting against a living campfire. She could see why that little bird had loved to sleep within your feathers so much.

She looked at the nest again. Studied it like it might reveal something new. Some hidden meaning in the weave of twigs. But all it offered was more silence.

Then she looked up at you. Or what little of you she could see.

"What are you thinking about?" she wondered.

——————————

Red.

It starts there.

Not a scream, not a sound—just color.

A scream would have been kinder.

Such a little body, wasn't it? Small enough to fit in your claw, smaller still inside the silence it left behind. But the red—it was too much. It bloomed like a wound in the world—so much red, spilling from feathers like ink soaking through old paper.

You blinked.

And it was still red.

It smeared the inside of your skull. Pooled in the gaps between thought and feeling. It wasn't just on your hands—it was your hands now.

It painted the sky. The leaves. The silence. Everything looked bruised.

A claw. A god. A guillotine.

A single breath.

A soft shiver.

Then—quiet.

And all of it: red.