pomegaverse 1

this is probably going to be long, but i wanted to dig in to the pomegaverse — you know, that thing that should be all cute and happiness but i’ve decided should be ambiguously fridge horror instead.

i think it would be unique if there was an omegaverse society built into a “normal”, beta society where alphas and omegas are more rare so it’s typically not seen as any kind of issue in ppl’s everyday lives. they just kind of have their own structure that fits in the overall scheme of things and it’s relatively chill unless you’re part of like, a legacy family or something, since maybe secondary gender things are somewhat hereditary.

so within that smaller network of legacy families of with secondary genders, there is a distinct social hierarchy and it’s very traditional in that most families want alphas to carry on their family names and have lots of children. omegas aren’t necessarily disappointing, but they are mostly seen as useful for being sold off to other legacy families to strengthen their social power by being joined together.

within omegas though, there’s a rare defect where some of them are unable to emotionally or physically handle distress, so rather than react as a normal omega would, their feral sense of fight vs flight and the pressure it puts on them is unbearable so. they pom. it’s seen as shameful in the traditional families because they are seen as un-bondable, since if they don’t bear children then they have “no purpose”. it’s like the dark side of these traditional secondary gender families that most modern secondary gender people don’t really know much about.

they are often discarded, abandoned or treated cruelly because “no one wants them”, which can lead to dangerous or even fatal situations.

i think alphas probably fit in well in a military environment and are welcome with open arms. the structure, bravado and physical activity do well to keep them feeling mentally and physically healthy because they feel really engaged.

so naturally, i think it would be very interesting to see an archer who has been honorably discharged from an overseas war possibly due to an IED/and potentially suffered consequences by ignoring his own injuries to tend to his fellow soldiers. the possibilities of shrapnel injury, fractures (even open fractures), and other physical trauma resulting in a disability and giving him a load of PTSD. maybe it’s been less than a year and he’s still going through a lot of doctors visits and physical therapy while navigating civilian life and being independent now that he isn’t in a rehabilitation facility.

so he’s walking back to his apartment one day. it’s raining, so he’s got the hood of the sweatshirt under his jacket over his head. he’s taking the back way through an alley so he isn’t troubled by using the sidewalk likely full of other people when he sees a tiny animal up ahead of him dart across the pavement. curious, he walks a little faster. it’s a small dog, frantically looking for some kind of shelter from the rain. archer looks in the direction the dog came from and sees a cardboard box, soaked with rain so much it’s collapsed. the dog is soaking now, whining and trying to squeeze between a couple of trash cans to take cover. archer approaches softly and the dog is wary, obviously scared of people. he patiently crouches down, though, and tries to coax the dog over. he’s a little overwhelmed, actually. he desperately wants to help this poor, small thing. its obviously scared. eventually the dog is drawn in by archer’s gentle voice and kind eyes and gets close enough to archer to be pet and soon, picked up. holding him inside his jacket, archer walks home with purpose as the rain gets heavier and he can feel the little dog trembling from the cold.

there’s a warm bath involved with a lot of gentle scrubbing and a soft, fluffy towel. he checks for any injuries. it seems malnourished, but he obviously doesn’t have dog food just hanging around in his house. dogs can eat rice and vegetables though, even without any meat, so it makes a decent substitute until archer can get something more suitable. plus the rice would be more gentle on its stomach if it hadn’t eaten in a while. (unbeknownst to archer, the dog would never eat dog food and instead be forever confused that he wasn’t given the same as whatever archer was eating. archer would give in easily, finding comfort in knowing that this way he had complete control over the dogs nutritional health. without realizing it, he’d adopted the dog. it followed him around and eventually wanted to lie beside him often. when archer was going through any kind of pain, whether physical or emotional, the dog was right there and archer realized how much comfort he found in that. he’d gotten attached without realizing it.

so archer, by chance, happened upon his new best friend who also is the perfect support dog for him. it feels serendipitous — like the best thing to happen to him in years. having something to take care of gets him out of bed on his worst days, if only for a while. the feeling of having something depend on him was something he really needed.

as for shinji, there is a likelihood that he was already somewhat of a disappointment for being an omega, so when his internal stress finally got to be too much and he started pom-ing, the scorn from his family came down on him hard. he was essentially ostracized, only acknowledged to be berated for taking up space. as he got older and the situation started to feel more desperate, he couldn’t help but regress more and more. this obviously wasn’t tolerated in his home, so he was often locked away if he managed to be seen/get caught during these episodes. it got to a point where he spent more time as a dog than a person for some stretch of time and was assumed to be broken. eventually he was taken into the city and abandoned. he spent and undisclosed amount of time wandering the streets, his stress levels so high that he forgot how to shift back. eventually he forgot about shifting all together. then, he forgot who he was. it was all his mind’s way of protecting him.

he lived quite pitifully as a stray until archer found him. shinji had been really terrified of humans until that moment for reasons unknown to him. something about archer, though... it felt safe. he decided that maybe it was ok. archer was patient. he told shinji to take his time, that would wait. slowly, he approached. archer let shinji sniff his hand and then, when archer pet him??? it felt amazing??? he’d never been pet, much less ever touched in an affectionate way and it somehow felt life-changing. shinji got closer to him to shield himself from the rain and before he knew it he was being cradled against archer’s chest in the warmth of his jacket.

adjusting to living indoors was a little difficult. something about being “inside” felt like he was waiting for something bad to happen, but it never did. rather, the only person he ever saw was archer and archer only did kind things for him. he was patient and gentle and talked to him... it felt nice. on one of archer’s Bad Days shinji could instantly feel like something was wrong, so he stuck close to him and provided what comfort he could. nosing at his face and lying beside him to watch over him. after that he would trail behind archer most of the time, trying to make sure he was alright.

maybe archer couldn’t sleep through the night without waking up in a panic, so he would take sleeping pills to tamper down his hyper vigilance caused by his PTSD. the early, early morning that shinji wakes up in his human body — a couple of months after he was initially “adopted” resulted in a moment of pure horror. shinji couldn’t remember being human. not right away. archer was able to sleep through the event itself, not noticing the feeling of the mattress shift under the additional weight of another person instead of a small dog. the panicked cry, however, he couldn’t sleep through.

while shinji had been able to understand what archer had been saying for some time, he often didn’t process it very clearly. he usually got the basics of it, though, and could act accordingly. now that he has his own speech capabilities back, he’s struggling to remember how. this feels terrifying and Bad and something about this body makes him feel sick and unsafe, but there’s a block in his brain as to why. he isn’t shifting back into a dog, however, because somewhere locked away it’s as if he knows he’s actually safe.

he and archer exchange a moment of wordless panic as he suddenly jolts upright in bed and shinji raises his hands in a “please don’t hurt me” way. there are enough visual similarities that shinji is recognizable, but he can’t wrap his mind around /how/ for quite some time. shinji is obviously trying to scan his own mind for answers, trembling hard enough that it vibrates against the mattress.

tentatively, archer pats his head.
he had forgotten that omega like this could exist — in fact, when he first learned about it, he doubted that it was a real thing. as an alpha he felt compelled to look after shinji as a dog, but now that he’s human, the scent of omega, especially distressed omega fills the room.

thinking about archer both trying to process this and calm down this mystery omega is like, almost overwhelming. he had been living with this dog for how long??? he was actually a person? an omega? internal scream.