hobo heart x reader. Perhaps we value each other?

Chapter 7

I had never seen my aunt look so deeply shaken since the day I first uncovered the existence of the Creepypastas. Years ago, while snooping through her old room, I had stumbled upon a dusty, handwritten diary buried at the bottom of a chest. Its pages were filled with unbelievable stories of killers, monsters, and anomalous entities. It was a chaotic chronicle of grand adventures, dark romance, heartbreaking losses, absolute ass-kicking, and brutal murders. When I finally confronted her about it, she reluctantly answered almost every burning question I threw her way, likely hoping that satisfying my curiosity would make me drop the subject. But with every mystery unraveled, my obsession only spiked—especially regarding the specific topics she flatly refused to talk about.

Now, she was staring down at me with that exact same look of profound dread and fear. I realized then that all of her silence hadn't been a game; those unanswered questions were meant for my own safety, but I had just been too stubborn to see the warning signs.

"Molly," she began, taking a shaky breath before forcefully pulling her composure back together, her gaze turning intensely serious. "I am what is known here as an off-branch proxy. And as of three days ago, so are you. We are fundamentally similar to the other proxies in this house, but with one major catch: while they are technically immortal, we are not. They live forever, while we continue to age. However, our bodies can sustain unrealistic amounts of physical trauma and still function perfectly, as you can clearly see right now." She gestured toward my exposed, heartless torso. "The downside is that our healing process is significantly slower than theirs. I will answer whatever you want to know now, but understand there are still a few things I am forbidden from telling you. Slenderman's rules."

I sat there completely dumbfounded, the seconds stretching into what felt like ages before I could finally find my voice. "S-so you are telling me that I am some kind of supernatural anomaly? Something that's only supposed to exist in horror stories, myths, and folklore?"

My aunt simply gave a slow, solemn nod.

"And everything I read in your book... it's all true?" I looked at her, my eyes swimming with a volatile mix of emotions ranging from cold dread to a strange, desperate hopefulness.

She let out a soft sigh, nodding once more. "Yes. Those weren't just standard diary entries, Molly. Those were official mission logs. The Operator instructed me to keep a detailed record of every single anomaly, encounter, and event that happened to me while out on the field or inside the mansion."

I fell silent for a long moment, my face dropping slightly as a sudden realization hit me. "So, that one specific chapter about you and Laughing Jack... that was—"

"How about we keep the questions strictly to a more relevant topic, shall we?!" she forcefully interrupted me, her pale face instantly flushing a violent shade of crimson. She darted a nervous look toward the heavy wooden door, lowering her voice to a sharp whisper. "There are a few notorious eavesdroppers wandering these hallways, and I would heavily prefer they don't overhear something that intensely personal."

Despite the throbbing pain in my head, I had to suppress a genuine chuckle as I nodded in agreement. I took a silent moment to process the sheer weight of everything she had just dumped on me. It was an overwhelming amount of information to swallow at once, but one massive, logical question stood out above the rest. "So, how does this even happen? How do we exist? You are my maternal aunt, so it's not a direct genetic line from my parents, right?"

My aunt sat back in her chair, letting out a heavy, exhausted sigh. "I figured that would be the first thing you'd ask, which is why I spent years preparing for this exact day." She pushed herself up from the leather seat, stepping behind Slenderman's massive mahogany desk and opening a locked lower drawer. After a few moments of rustling through old parchment, she pulled out a thick manila folder and slid it across the desk toward me.