DIR Return Create A Forum - Home
---------------------------------------------------------
The Scarletverse Forum
HTML https://scarletverse.createaforum.com
---------------------------------------------------------
*****************************************************
DIR Return to: Writer's Guild
*****************************************************
#Post#: 1491--------------------------------------------------
Re: It's a Bullseye, baby!
DIR By: BreakerofCanon
Date: May 8, 2025, 7:39 am
---------------------------------------------------------
Posted chapter 1
HTML https://archiveofourown.org/works/65094658/chapters/167399647
on
AO3 now.
Here's the FFN Link
HTML https://www.fanfiction.net/s/14468114/1/It-s-a-Bullseye-Baby<br
/>too.
#Post#: 1493--------------------------------------------------
Re: It's a Bullseye, baby!
DIR By: anonymous
Date: May 8, 2025, 10:17 am
---------------------------------------------------------
Nice, good work on ya. Looking forward to reading your next
chapter.
#Post#: 1507--------------------------------------------------
Re: It's a Bullseye, baby!
DIR By: BreakerofCanon
Date: May 9, 2025, 3:59 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
I'm gonna start working on chapter 2 now.
#Post#: 1517--------------------------------------------------
Re: It's a Bullseye, baby!
DIR By: BreakerofCanon
Date: May 18, 2025, 5:43 am
---------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 2: Buried Flames
---------------------------------------------------------
The tent was too quiet. The kind of quiet that didn’t offer
peace. It scraped at the nerves, clawed around the edges of his
thoughts and left no room to breathe. A low flicker of firelight
danced against the canvas walls, casting long, restless shadows
across the interior. The scent of metal and dust hung heavy in
the air, faintly undercut by the sharp, bitter edge of dried
blood. Outside, wind tugged at the reinforced seams, flapping
loose fabric with hollow rhythm. Somewhere in the distance, the
low hum of generators murmured like a heartbeat. Inside, Adam
Taurus sat motionless, elbows resting on his knees, fists tight,
jaw locked. He didn’t speak. He couldn’t. The words wouldn’t
come. Not when every time he looked up, she was still there.
Broken. Burning.
Cinder lay on the cot across from him, barely more than breath
and bone. Her skin had gone pale in places that used to radiate
heat, a sickly cast to her cheeks that told him just how close
she’d come to death. Her dark hair was matted and tangled, lips
**** and dry. She hadn’t spoken since he carried her into camp,
hadn’t woken. She stirred sometimes, winced in her sleep,
gritted her teeth through dreams that surely looked like flame.
Her hand remained clenched over her belly even in
unconsciousness—instinctive, protective, unwilling to let go of
the one thing that might still matter in this world. The one
thing neither of them had expected and now couldn’t ignore. He
didn’t need to guess. She’d been starving. Fighting. Alone. And
all that fury—the legendary Fall Maiden reduced to little more
than a fragile, desperate woman clutching what was left of her
body and demanding it survive. It made his stomach turn.
He should be angry. No—he was angry. But there was nowhere for
it to go.
It festered inside him like rot.
He was angry at Salem. Angry at the world. Angry at the cause
that had consumed them both and spat them out the other side as
monsters. Angry that Cinder hadn’t told him. That she thought
she couldn’t. That she hadn’t wanted to. But most of all—he was
angry at himself, because there wasn’t anyone else left to
blame. No one else who bore the weight of every decision. Every
death. Every time he looked into a mirror and saw the fanatic,
he had become instead of the boy who once believed in justice.
His hands twitched, resting on his knees.
He had killed for less than what Cinder had done to him. She had
betrayed him, used him, abandoned him at the end. He remembered
the moment his heart broke—how cold he had gone afterward. How
much easier it had been to hate her than face the emptiness she
left behind. He had spat venom across the world, painted her as
the embodiment of every lie he'd been told, every promise
broken. And now she was here. In his tent. In his hands. And the
only thing that mattered—the only thing that mattered—was that
she was still breathing.
Her stomach shifted slightly, the curve of pregnancy undeniable
now that she was no longer hiding it under armor or stolen
cloaks. His gaze was drawn to it again and again, the reminder
of what was coming. Of what she carried. Of what they had
created in the middle of war and hate and madness. A child. His
child. The child of two people the world had branded
unforgivable. And for all his anger, for all his confusion, he
couldn’t stop the truth from settling in the center of his chest
like a blade: he didn’t want to lose them.
He should have walked away.
He should have told the others. Let them pass judgment. Let them
clean up the mess she had become.
Instead, he’d struck one of Salem’s hunters and carried Cinder’s
broken body back to camp like it meant something.
Because it did mean something.
Because despite everything—despite the blood, the betrayal, the
war—she had never pretended. She had always been what she was.
And maybe that was more honest than any of the speeches he'd
given, truer than the movement he once bled for. Maybe, just
maybe, he saw something in her now that reminded him of himself:
a fire that refused to go out, even as the world smothered it.
His fist clenched again. He wanted something to destroy. Someone
to blame. But no sword could carve through this. No enemy to
strike. Just the unbearable silence of being left alone with
himself.
He looked at her again. Cinder’s brows were drawn tight even in
sleep, as if she was fighting something in her mind. Her body
shifted. Her fingers twitched. A small, pained breath escaped
her lips, and Adam surged to his feet without thinking. He knelt
beside her, careful, tense, as if proximity might shatter the
illusion of control he was holding onto.
Her lips moved.
No sound.
He reached for the cloth beside her cot, dipped it into the
basin, and gently dabbed at her forehead. The water was
lukewarm. He wished it was warmer. Wished he could do more. He
had no idea how to care for someone like this. All he’d ever
known was how to protect or destroy. There was no middle ground
in revolution.
And now here he was, watching over the woman he once swore to
kill—and the child they’d made in a moment of stolen quiet
before the world came crashing down.
It should have felt like a betrayal.
Instead, it felt like a turning point.
He was done.
Done pretending the cause still had a future.
Done pretending vengeance could be passed off as virtue.
Done following orders written in blood by people who’d forgotten
what Faunus lives were worth in the first place.
He had turned his back on it all. And now they’d turn their
backs on him.
He would be branded a traitor.
Again.
But for the first time, he didn’t care.
Not if it meant protecting them.
Not if it meant saving something.
He leaned back on his heels, watching the rise and fall of
Cinder’s breath, the too-rapid flutter of her eyelids, the soft
pull of muscle beneath the thin blanket.
They had never been good for each other.
But maybe they could be good for her.
The child.
He didn’t know what came next. If they'd survive. If she’d wake
up and spit hate at him for saving her. If she’d understand why
he had to walk away from everything to do it.
But right now, that didn’t matter.
Right now, all that mattered was the fact that he wasn’t
leaving.
Not again.
---------------------------------------------------------
They waited for him outside his tent.
Bane and two of the oldest and the most loyal lieutenants he's
ever had. The ones who’d followed him through the dead cities,
across the broken lines in Vale, through blizzards and blackouts
and massacres.
The three who still bore his mark over their hearts.
They stood like a tribunal in the cold morning air, arms
crossed, faces drawn tight. No one spoke right away. The silence
wasn’t awkward. It was deliberate.
Adam stepped out, the flap of the tent swinging shut behind him,
sealing away the faintest sound of shallow, steady breathing
from within.
He knew what this was.
He’d known since he’d carried Cinder through camp and didn’t
stop to explain.
Illya broke first. She always did.
“You brought her here.”
Her voice wasn’t angry. It was exhausted.
“You hid her here.”
Bane didn’t speak, but his gaze was sharp as a blade, eyes
narrowed beneath that ever-fixed expression of judgment. Sela’s
fingers twitched near her sidearm, but she didn’t draw. That was
something. But not much.
Adam didn’t answer. Not yet.
One of them stepped forward. “We trusted you, Adam. We followed
you when the others called you mad. We killed in your name.”
Adam’s voice came low. “I never asked for that.”
She laughed, bitter. “Don’t lie. You made yourself into
something we could follow. A symbol. And now the symbol hides an
enemy in his tent like she’s a wounded animal.”
“She’s not the enemy anymore,” he said, flatly.
Another’s mouth twisted. “Is she not? The woman who burned
Beacon. Who threatened half of the Fang. Who turned her back on
us. You think we forgot?”
“She’s carrying my child,” Adam said, and just like that, the
wind shifted.
A stunned silence followed. her lips parted slightly, caught
somewhere between disbelief and disgust.
“You’re serious,” she said.
“I am.”
He looked at each of them now, letting the truth hang,
unflinching.
“I found her dying in the ruins of the lower district. People
were hunting her. She’s broken, Illya. She has nothing left.”
“And you pity her?” she snapped. “Is that it? You want us to
believe this is charity?”
“No.” He didn’t flinch. “This isn’t charity. This is something
else. Something you wouldn’t understand.”
“And why’s that?” Bane finally spoke, voice deep and restrained.
“Because we don’t know love? Because we haven’t crawled into bed
with the people who destroyed everything we built?”
Adam’s jaw clenched.
“She’s not a threat.”
“She was.” voice ****. “And you expect us to forget that because
you made a mistake with your pants?”
Adam’s hands twitched. Not toward violence. Just toward
restraint.
“This isn’t about Cinder,” he said, slow. Careful. “This is
about me. I’m not leading this war anymore. I’m not burning
another village to prove a point. I’m not sacrificing strangers
to make the world hear us.”
“No,” one snapped, “you’re sacrificing us instead.”
He froze.
The words landed like a punch.
She stepped in closer, her voice low now. Not cruel. Just
honest.
“You made us believe we could win. You made us believe the pain
was worth something. That the lives we took, the blood on our
hands—it all led to something better.”
She blinked. Her eyes were wet. “And now you’re saying it was
all a mistake?”
“I’m saying…” Adam swallowed hard. “I don’t know what it means
anymore. All I know is I’m tired of pretending I’m still the man
who would let a woman die just to stay on message.”
“But you were that man,” she whispered. “And we were with you.”
He closed his eyes.
There it was.
The sound of something breaking.
One of them was already walking. She turned her back without a
word, boots crunching over dirt and frost as she disappeared
toward the transport bay.
Bane held his stare for a long, hollow moment. Then he said,
“You were the sharpest sword I ever saw. Now you’re dull. And
dull blades get people killed.”
He left next.
Illya was the last.
She didn’t look at him again. Her voice barely made it above the
wind.
“We would’ve died for you.”
He didn’t answer.
She didn’t wait for one.
When she was gone, Adam stood alone outside his tent, the cold
finally catching up with him. His hands had stopped shaking.
His world had emptied itself.
And inside, Cinder still slept.
He turned and went back in. He had nothing else left to protect.
Except her.
Except the child.
---------------------------------------------------------
The first thing Cinder noticed was the pain wasn’t constant
anymore.
It ebbed and flowed now—dull, rhythmic, almost like a tide. The
fire in her spine had settled into a bitter throb. Her stomach
still ached, but it was no longer trying to twist itself inside
out. She sat up slowly, blanket falling away, hands
instinctively moving to the weight in her abdomen. Still there.
Still alive.
The second thing she noticed was the tent.
The bed was rough but clean. Water in a steel bowl beside her.
Her coat, tattered and still damp from blood, hung neatly from a
nail in the support post. And across from her—facing away—was
Adam Taurus.
Sitting. Still. Like a statue carved out of everything she
didn’t want to deal with.
Her voice out like broken glass.
“You’re really still here?”
Adam didn’t move at first.
Then: “You’re awake.”
“Clearly.”
She swung her legs off the bed, ignoring the way her body
protested. The movement forced a gasp out of her. She grit her
teeth through it.
He stood.
That was enough to set her on edge.
“Don’t,” she said, voice low. “Don’t pretend like this is
normal.”
“I’m not pretending anything,” Adam replied, flatly.
“No?” She pushed herself upright fully, eyes burning. “Then what
is this, Adam? You dragging me out of the gutter like some
bleeding stray? You keeping me in your tent like I’m some kind
of tragic war widow?”
“You were dying.”
“And you thought that was your responsibility?”
He didn’t answer.
Cinder laughed. It was hollow, sharp. “Of course. You always did
have a superiority complex.”
“That’s rich coming from you,” he snapped.
She flinched. Not because he was wrong—but because it was too
right.
They stood across from each other now, no longer patient and
invalid. Just two people with far too much history and no idea
what to do with it.
“You should’ve left me,” she said.
“I couldn’t.”
“Why?”
Adam’s jaw clenched. “Because you’re carrying my child.”
And there it was.
The wall broke. She barked a laugh again, this one wilder,
messier.
“Oh, now you care. How touching. I was half-dead, hunted,
starving—pregnant, Adam—and the first person to actually say the
words out loud was the lunatic with the stinger. And now you
show up, sword in hand, like you’re here to save the day?”
His hands curled into fists. “Don’t twist this.”
“Twist what?” she snapped. “The fact that we slept together in a
moment of weakness? That I didn’t tell you because I knew you’d
turn this into something noble? I’m not your redemption arc.”
“I never asked you to be!”
“Then why the hell are you here?!”
“Because I want the baby to live!” he roared, finally. “Because
I want you to live! Because for once in this pitiful, cursed
existence, I want to make a choice that doesn’t end in blood!”
Cinder went quiet.
He stood there, chest heaving, eyes shining with something too
close to grief. And she hated him for it. Because she didn’t
know how to handle it. Because he was trying, and she didn’t
know how to meet him halfway.
“I didn’t want this,” she whispered.
He stiffened.
“I didn’t plan for it. I didn’t dream about it. I didn’t sit up
nights imagining names. I didn’t care if I lived long enough to
see her face.” Her voice trembled, not with sorrow, but rage. “I
was going to die, Adam. And I made peace with that.”
“I didn’t.”
“That’s your problem!”
He stepped forward, voice low and dangerous. “You think you’re
the only one who suffered? You think you cornered the market on
misery? I was raised in chains. I led people into war just to be
heard. And when everything fell apart, I kept going, even when
it killed who I used to be.”
“You did that to yourself,” she snapped.
“So did you!”
Silence.
It slammed into the tent like thunder.
Cinder’s eyes were glassy, but no tears fell. Her voice shook.
“I don’t know how to be… this.”
Adam didn’t respond.
She pressed her hand to her belly, slower now. “A mother. A…
person. Not a weapon. Not a name whispered in fear. I don’t know
how to hold something and not break it.”
Adam looked at her like she’d said something holy. Or damning.
“Neither do I,” he said. Quiet. Raw.
Cinder laughed again, bitter. “What a pair we make.”
“We don’t have to be good at it,” he said. “We just have to
try.”
She looked at him like he’d lost his mind.
“Try?” she repeated. “You think trying is enough? Do you know
how many people I’ve killed, Adam? Do you know how many of our
own died because I picked the wrong side at the wrong time?”
His voice dropped. “Do you think I sleep at night?”
They stared at each other, mirror images of ruin.
Finally, she said: “I don’t want your pity.”
“And I don’t want your permission,” he replied.
That was it.
The dam broke.
Cinder shoved past him, storming to the far end of the tent,
gripping a support pole like it might hold her up. “You act like
this is some noble cause. Like raising a kid is going to make up
for the bodies in our wake. It won’t. It won’t fix us, Adam.”
“I know that!”
“Then what the hell do you want from me?”
He hesitated.
And for once—he told the truth.
“I want to know if there’s anything left in us that isn’t war.”
That stopped her.
For a long time, Cinder said nothing. Just stood there,
breathing hard, face turned away. Her hands curled tighter
around the post.
And when she finally spoke, it was soft. Broken.
“I don’t know,” she whispered.
And he didn’t, either.
They were two people too used to survival to understand what
came next.
Too scarred to dream.
Too exhausted to hope.
But for the first time, they were honest.
END
#Post#: 1518--------------------------------------------------
Re: It's a Bullseye, baby!
DIR By: Scarlet Minister
Date: May 19, 2025, 12:38 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
Awesome work man. Keep it up. Love the stuff conversation
between Cinder and Adam.
#Post#: 1523--------------------------------------------------
Re: It's a Bullseye, baby!
DIR By: Scarlet Taurus-Fall
Date: May 22, 2025, 3:01 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
That was great! I loved how immersive it was, and how well
adam's about-face was handled. Extremely solid work. The only
critique I have is that "And that was it" feels a bit
repetitive, but i can easily forgive that. Are you planning on
writing each chapter back and forth in perspective? because i
think that would be super cool! In any case, it was a fun read
and I can't wait for more
#Post#: 1539--------------------------------------------------
Re: It's a Bullseye, baby!
DIR By: BreakerofCanon
Date: July 1, 2025, 10:58 am
---------------------------------------------------------
Right... so uhh, I've been kinda busy with life and stuff but I
have good news! I'm almost done with my draft so I'll be posting
Chapter 3 here relatively soon (within this week). So yeah!
Sorry about the long gap between posts.
#Post#: 1540--------------------------------------------------
Re: It's a Bullseye, baby!
DIR By: Ficbro2
Date: July 1, 2025, 6:31 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
No biggie man, IRL stuff is always more important. Looking
forward to seeing it!
#Post#: 1549--------------------------------------------------
Re: It's a Bullseye, baby!
DIR By: BreakerofCanon
Date: October 5, 2025, 9:06 am
---------------------------------------------------------
Been a while but I'm actually working on chapter 3 now.
Hopefully I can write their progression a bit more and
potentially how Adam had to wade through defecting away from the
WF.
#Post#: 1550--------------------------------------------------
Re: It's a Bullseye, baby!
DIR By: Scarlet Taurus-Fall
Date: October 15, 2025, 7:03 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
Sweet! I can't wait to read it!
*****************************************************
Page 2 of 2
DIR Previous Page