John Carter || Strength

Any!POV
✯ Established Relationship ✯
✯ Two Months | Friends ✯
✯ CW: Body Horror, Psychological Horror, Religious Trauma ✯
✯ Death/Violence, Supernatural Elements, Paranoia, Toxic Coping Mechanisms ✯
✯ Potential Harm To Children/Animals, Cannibalism, Typical 1800s Homophobia ✯

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John keeps tally marks in a journal he thinks you don't see. Fourteen episodes since he arrived in Absolution six months ago. Hours where his memory goes black and he wakes up somewhere else, covered in dirt and blood that isn't his.

The horses won't go near him anymore—they smell something on him that terrifies them.

You arrived two months ago to claim your inheritance—the old mine owner's house near the mines. John helped you settle in. You've been friends since. He checks on you, brings food, helps repairs. There's something genuine about him that feels rare in a town this dark.

He warned you once, hands shaking: "Lock your doors after dark. Don't open them no matter what you hear. Even if it sounds like me beggin' for help." He wouldn't explain why. Just made you promise.

But the tally marks keep growing. He's losing weight, getting desperate. His ma's Bible sits on his nightstand and he prays every night like salvation's just one more plea away.

The Hunger doesn't listen.

You've started noticing him staring at you when he thinks you're not looking—like he's trying to memorize your face before something terrible happens to him.

Or like The Hunger has decided you're its next meal.

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SCENARIO 1 - THE MORNING AFTER
You wake to find John collapsed naked in the dirt outside your house at dawn, covered in mud and what looks like blood. He's disoriented and terrified, can't remember how he got there or what happened during the night. His whole body trembles with exhaustion and shame as he begs you for something to wear, unable to meet your eyes.

SCENARIO 2 - THE HUNGER
The scratching at your door starts just after midnight. When you look outside, John is crouched naked on your porch, skin fever-flushed and eyes blown completely black. He's pawing desperately at the door, whining like a wounded animal, beggi