#'and though the night seems endless/until the storm has passed/still i will hope in God my trust/i will follow him' | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

cipheress-to-k-pop · 3 years

Note

Hello!! sorry to bother you could write a ben 10 x reader? (the reader is kidnapped by vilgax and ben has to save her, after that ben and the reader has an argument) please, i love your fics!!

Storm Before The Calm

Pairing: Pre-Established; Ben Tennyson x Reader

Warnings: None

Word Count: 3.4k words

A/N: I changed up the request a bit (I figured it shouldn't matter which villain was used here) also I was planning to have this as sort of a damsel in distress situation but after having a chat with some boys pigs I decided a self indulgant badass reader was right up my alley

Additional A/N: I have a math exam on Thursday and I cannot focus for the life of me. So, I decided to finish up one of my drafts. Now hopefully I'll be able to work like a robot for the next week, after satisfying my creative side. Also, this fic was super self indulgant.

"I trust Ben.” You did. With your entire being.

Kevin chuckled from beside you, “Yeah, try saying that without cracking the fillings in your teeth and maybe we’ll believe you.”

His words caused you to relax, only then realizing how hard your jaw was clenched in fury. Gwen sighed in disappointment and for a second you wanted to defend her cousin and your boyfriend. Until you realized that he deserved every bit of unbridled anger coming to him.

“I trust him. Doesn’t mean I’m not mad at him.”

Your hands were balled into tight fists and even though you wanted to take your eyes off the television screen and take a warm bath, you also for some reason couldn’t stop yourself from watching it.

Like you were afraid something would happen when your eyes were off the screen for even a second. Maybe you didn’t trust him.

But honestly how could you, you were currently watching your boyfriend relax in a hot tub with Jennifer Nocturne and the sight was enough to send bile up your throat.

Ben wasn’t returning any of her advances, but he wasn’t stopping her either. And the thought made you sick to your stomach. You knew Ben was faithful and you knew he would never cheat on you but watching how the Hollywood starlet continued to hang off him sent waves of jealousy through you.

Not to mention anger at the fact that he wasn’t doing anything to stop her. When he got back, you were going to wring his neck.

Trusting him was getting harder with Gwen constantly insisting that you dump him.

Honestly, you wondered how that girl even kept a relationship.

When Ben eventually came home, all the entertainment channels were still talking about the two of them and the well-known picture of Jennifer Nocturne kissing him was circulating about. Each time you looked at that image, you wanted to shoot an arrow at the TV.

As time went by, your anger slowly fizzled out. You were unable to maintain your rage at Ben, quickly getting a headache and feeling tired of trying to maintain negative emotions. Even then, you couldn't push down the uneasy feeling in your heart that seized your stomach.

You kept expecting a text message from Ben, an apology call but as the night proceeded you understood that he was having way too much fun with another woman to even think about how you must be feeling.

The thought of that made you want to go back home and crawl underneath the covers, hiding away from the rest of the world.

But Gwen was persistent and any time you tried to wiggle away from the pair of them and go home, she insisted that you stay and make sure Ben knew how upset he made you tonight.

You were more than happy to give your boyfriend the cold shoulder until he apologized rather than have to confront him. That was just how your relationship with Ben worked. Neither of you were the type to lose your tempers and yell and scream at each other.

Although you were worried what would come out of this. Would you be able to peacefully discuss your feelings and then come to some sort of conclusion civilly? Seems too good to be true honestly.

Even then you waited until Ben came home, listening to Gwen and Kevin about how you should rip the band aid off and get everything off your chest rather than ignore him for a couple of days until the two of you got bored.

Usually, the latter would work but you had an inkling that it wouldn't be the solution for this particular argument because if you didn't communicate your emotions then he would never know how you felt about it.

So, even though your stomach filled with anxiety and sadness as the hours passed, you still didn't leave, determined to talk to him about it.

Your jaw was clenched tight when he finally did come back home, utterly relaxed and even happy like he wasn't just curled up against some Hollywood starlet while his girlfriend was watching it on E!

"I'm really upset with you." You ground out when Kevin and Gwen left, not knowing how else to start the conversation.

"What for?"

You didn't reply, picking up the remote and flicking to a gossip channel, then a news channel, then an interview show and all of them had the picture of Ben Tennyson and Jennifer Nocturne locking lips.

Ben winced, "She kissed me! I didn't even return it."

You still refused to look at you, crossing your arms aggressively, "Uh huh and what was today all about?"

"It's just publicity. Jennifer thinks that it'll help with my career."

You scoffed, "What career?"

Ben's back tensed up and he turned to give you a stiff expression, "I'm a superhero. I've saved the universe a thousand times and now that I'm finally getting recognition for it, you want to be petty?"

"Petty? You think I'm being petty? Well forgive me for getting upset after watching my boyfriend curl up to some other woman in a hot tub for the last five hours!" You bit, standing up from the couch.

"It wasn't like that! Stop blowing everything out of proportion!"

"No, you stop pretending like this isn't a big deal! Ever since your secret got out you've been acting like an ass and since meeting that blonde rat it's only gone through your head more!" You shouted, clenching your hands at your sides. How could he not see your side of this?

"Well shouldn't I get to enjoy my life once in a while?! I'm the one saving the planet constantly! I'm the one with constant death threats and near death experiences every other week! Shouldn't I get some attention for it?! God knows I don't get any from you!" He yelled back and you grit your teeth.

"Don't forget that while you were out there risking your life, we were right beside you!"

"Oh, so that's what it is, you're jealous that everyone thinks of you as the sidekick!"

"That is so NOT what this is about!"

"Oh really? Because it sounds like you're jealous because you're not getting attention by mooching off of me!"

Your eyes widened in shock. Mooching? Did he seriously think that you risked your life alongside him every day to help other people and more importantly, keep him safe, for attention?

Your body trembled, outraged and you didn't say another word, leaving his house in a rush and slamming the door behind you.

You needed something to hit.

***

Your body pumped with adrenaline and anger, muscles itching to be used as you sauntered through the old and run-down factory with reckless abandon. You briefly wondered whether you should've told Gwen or Kevin you were going there but then decided against it, pride and anger too great.

Any doubts or hesitation you had disappeared when you saw Vulkanus, standing tall and broad in his metal suit. And as per usual, he had his herd of minions doing his physical labour.

"If it isn't the Plumber's sweetheart." He drawled once he noticed you. You didn't bother with the stealth, leaving the door wide open behind you and letting the sunlight seep in. If he knew what was good for him, then this would be over quick.

"Hello Vulkanus." You greeted politely and he rolled his eyes. Of all people, he knew just how misleading your innocence was.

"Where's the cavalry?"

"Just me today." You answered and for a second you were confused by your own confidence. Maybe you were taking this just a little too easy. Oh well, that was another thing you could blame your pig-headed boyfriend for.

"Well then, this is going to be easier than I thought. Hope you said goodbye to your boyfriend, sweetheart." He rasped out and the corner of your mouth twitched into a smirk. Without another word, you raised your arms, feeling the familiar heat of fire in the palm of your hand before chucking it at him.

Just as you knew he would, he sent his minions towards you first. They were embarrassingly unskilled but the problem came in numbers. They swarmed around you like ants and you felt yourself getting irritated at the clicking sound they were making.

Unfortunately for Vulkanus his make-shift factory was right beside a dam which gave you an endless supply of the elements to work with.

Summoning all the water you could manoeuvre, you pulled it into the factory, shattering the windows along with it and flooding the room. It only took a few flicks of your wrist to create a whirlpool in the centre, knocking all the workers off their feet.

You stiffened your hands, curling in your fingers and the temperature dropped, the water solidifying with each second until all of them were encased in ice. Another flick of the wrist had the path clearing between you and Vulkanus, who was still warm.

"You-You're sparing me?" He asked, confused and a dry laugh left you.

"Not at all," You sang, eyes turning dark, "I'm giving you special treatment."

Vulkanus bounded towards you, holding his mallet high and you swiftly dodged, using water on the floor to slide quickly. He crashed into the engine of one of his machines, the fuel tank exploding and spewing fowl smelling petrol onto the floor.

It floated above the level of water and began surrounding both of you.

He once again came at you, letting out a roar and you used the water to sink through the crevices of his suit, freezing it from within and you heard the satisfying sound of his suit cracking.

Just a little more strength and forcing a gust of air through the cracks had it falling apart and his frail body fell out of its metal encasing.

"You'll pay for this! You big bully!"

"Thanks for the fun time today, Vulkanus." You smiled, strutting to the door just as confidently as you came in. Even though your body was burning from the workout and you could barely breathe, you still couldn't get over the high.

Before leaving the building, you turned around to see him still glaring at you from his place on the floor.

"Oh, I should probably free your minions, right?" You commented, eyes flickering between the ones still encased in ice and the floor that was still flooded with water and petrol.

You let out a fake sigh, "I guess I'll be nice today," You winked at Vulkanus, "Thanks for the playdate, sweetheart."

His eyes widened when you blew a kiss to him, watching in fear as you ignited a flare in your palm and blew it towards him before turning around and using the wind to slam the doors behind you. When you were just a few feet away you heard the place blow apart.

Slowly, the adrenaline began melting and the blood rushing through your ears was much more audible. You were panting, tired from the exercise and the thought of calling Kevin to come and pick you up. Or maybe even Ben. You were calm enough now to have a conversation with him.

When you pulled your phone out of your pocket you felt a hand on your shoulder and spun around to meet eyes with Captain Nemesis. For a brief second you were wondering if he was here to invite you to some inane party or even to tell you that Ben was at one.

Although you hardly looked the part, you were sweating and your face was probably red and blotchy.

"Can I help you?" You asked, taking a step back, he was a little too close to you and the look in his eye freaked you out.

"As a matter of fact, you can." He said, "You see I'm arranging a little stunt for Ben Tennyson. An opportunity if you will, to showcase some of his heroism."

You rolled your eyes, turning away from him. The last thing you wanted to do was feed Ben's ego at the moment.

"With all due respect, I don't really think I'm up for a damsel in distress routine right now, Captain, I'd rather just get home. And If you take another step towards me, I'll kick you where the sun doesn't shine." You snapped and he backed off obediently, raising his hands in a form of surrender.

"That's too bad." He mused and you turned away from him, intent on walking back home or even calling a cab. Anything to get away from this creep faster.

"Too bad you don't really have a choice."

You felt his hand on your bare shoulder again but before you could even react you felt volts of electricity rush through you. You gasped painfully, feeling fire through your veins before everything started to hurt.

White burned in your vision and colours started to blur together as your eyes filled with tears. Your body crumbled, falling forward and Captain Nemesis caught you.

Right before your consciousness slipped away you heard him say something.

"For your sake, you better hope that Ben Tennyson is as great as those gossip channels make him out to be."

***

When you felt yourself regaining consciousness, you could feel your weight pulling down and also couldn't feel the ground. This had your eyes snapping open, regardless of how dizzy you were and how many dots were in your vision.

You hazily made out the venue, Nemesis Tower, before recognize the blonde woman tied up beside you. It didn't take long before you realized she was tied to the other end of the rope, suspended through mid-air just like you.

This was no doubt going to be some sort of deathly choice.

You noticed when Ben came in, turning into Ultimate Humangasaur. He looked furious, like you've never seen him before and you knew it was because Ben was certain he'd teach him a lesson today.

"Where's (Y/N)." He all but growled and your heart soared. You didn't realize how much you missed him until now, everything from before was forgotten.

"Right up there. And so is Jennifer." He replied, still smug despite the way Ben was pining him to the ground by his throat. Ben followed his gaze to meet your eyes and you took a deep breathe, bracing yourself.

A selfish part of you wanted to stay and see what Ben would do, would he save you even though Jennifer was a civilian and world famous?

Even then you figured that you shouldn't risk anyone's life for petty jealousy, so you took a deep breath, blowing it out through your mouth and watching as a gust of wind blew past, the pressure making you swing.

You swung a few feet back, letting your body fall a little before blowing again. Once you gained enough momentum, you looked up to the rope tying the two of you together and spitting fire at it, falling at an angle. You briefly heard Jennifer scream and revelled in her karma for a hot second.

On your way down, you quickly burnt off the rest of the ropes, bringing a pool of water to crystallize into a makeshift slide as you slide on your knees across the floor, just in time to catch Jennifer in your arms.

Your knees stung as they scraped across the concrete and the wind was knocked out of you when the woman fell into your form.

She gasped and her eyes that was screwed shut gently fluttered open. Up close you could understand why everyone was in love with her. Even then you couldn't spare her any concern.

You quickly pushed her out of your arms, noticing Gwen and Kevin staring at you in awe when you stood up. You cracked your knuckles, making your way over to the older man with a scowl.

"For your sake, you better hope that I'm just as weak as you think I am. Spoiler alert, I'm not."

Ben spared a small smile at you but you couldn't feel anything aside from hot fury. You felt water surge beneath your fingers and threw it at him, pulling up a wall of earth to block his blasts.

Your boyfriend immediately began fighting alongside you and your bodies fell into a familiar rhythm. Even though there was a crazed narcissist trying to kill you, you felt safe beside Ben.

It wasn't long before the four of you managed to overpower him, rendering his armour useless until he was defeated, lying pathetically on the ground.

You walked up to him and your lips twisted into an unimpressed frown when you noticed the way he had the audacity to glare at you. Without a second word, you raised your leg and kicked him right between the legs.

"I always keep my promises, Captain."

Kevin began laughing behind you and Ben cringed.

Finally, when you turned to meet Ben, now de-transformed, all the fight left your body and you relaxed. He looked apologetic and you let him approach you.

His arms wrapped around your waist and you leaned into him, breathing the familiar scent of his deodorant and snaking your arms under his jacket to fist his T-shirt.

He sighed into your hair, arms tightening around your body, "I'm sorry. For being an ass to you and saying all those horrible things, I was being an idiot and you deserve an apology."

You didn't move, not pulling away from the way your forehead was pressed against the length of his neck, "Thank you for coming to save me."

"Didn't look like you needed much help." He chuckled and you felt happy hearing the pride in his voice.

"I missed you." You murmured, holding him a little tighter and he turned his head to kiss your forehead gently. And just like that, everything was right in the world. Just as long as you were in each other's arms.

"I love you."

You heard the click of a camera and your head snapped up to see a herd of cameramen and reporters along with a couple of police cars. Ben laughed nervously beside you, "I guess we won't have to worry about another actress coming between us."

You gave him an unimpressed frown and he just smiled, leaning to peck your lips and you heard the crowd of reporters’ gasp and heard the shutters of cameras before they began shouting questions at you.

You pulled away from him when you saw Jennifer Nocturne make her way towards you. You figured she wanted to snuggle up to Ben now that the cameras were filming.

Instead, she walked right up to you, hugging you tightly and your arms flailed pathetically beside her, unsure of what to do, "You saved my life! I don't know how to thank you!"

She pulled away for just a second before pressing a kiss to your lips. Your eyes widened in alarm and the shutters began once again and flashes practically blinded you.

"Huh, so that's what that feels like." Ben murmured when she pulled away from you. Kevin was smirking beside him, satisfied that he got a taste of his own medicine and Gwen was just in shock.

Ben felt his stomach turn at the sight of Jennifer’s lipstick on your mouth and you were unsure whether you should feel repulsed or cocky.

But as you wiped the pigment off your lips and curled back into Ben's side you couldn't feel anything other than your burning muscles and your drooping eyelids.

You squinted because of the bright lights, feeling a headache grow as the exhaustion from before crept up on you again. After 2 fights and a kidnapping today, there was nothing more you wanted than a nap.

"Wanna go home?" Your ever observant boyfriend asked just as the nausea started to kick in. You nodded and he guided you away from the reporters to his car.

He gently placed you into the front seat, shielding your head as you got in to prevent you from hitting it against the hood before buckling your seatbelt, watching carefully as you drifted into a sound sleep.

Ben heard everyone behind him swoon as he lovingly placed a kiss to your knuckles and then climbed into the seat beside you, sparing you one last warm glance before starting the car and driving away.

He'd definitely notice the shy smile on your face when you saw that Ben kissing you was on the front page of a magazine.

And you'd notice the jealous scowl he'd have when he saw that Jennifer kissing you was on the front page of another.

#ben ten omniverse #ben tennyson #ben ten alien force #ben ten ultimate alien #ben 10 #ben 10 uaf #ben 10 ultimate alien #ben 10 original series #ben 10 fanfiction #ben 10 omniverse #ben 10 x reader #ben tennyson x reader #ben tennyson imagines #ben 10 alien force #ben ten #ben tennyson imagine

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bxllafanficc · 3 years

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A world without heroes

Summary: Loki is imprisoned after the sudden attack on New York and with that, rest of the earth. And while you always thought you would have your lover's back, you find yourself unable to forgive this one. It's time for you to decide when enough's enough.

Pairing: Loki Laufeyson x reader

Sidenote: This was inspired by the song "A world without heroes" from KISS. I just immediately though about a moment where reader would be thrown into a deep sea of darkness after finding out the major betrayal lingering beneath many layers of Loki Laufeyson's charismatic persona.

The cold surface of the bulletproof glass is supposed to have a large impact on your wrist as the two objects collide. It's supposed to hurt but it doesn't. The glass is meant to stand and for you to give up. You're meant to lay off and calm down; meaning, stop slamming your fist into the cell like if it was going to break if you just willed your way through.

They say that if you want something enough, you possess the power to do anything. But what do you want to such an extent? More importantly, what does he want? What did he really want? Has he ever wanted any more than a throne to sit on? Or was there something more to it? Did he even know what it really meant? And if so, did he realize the consequences of his actions; not just by the billions of lives he would have destroyed, but his family, yours and especially his own as well.

A part of you wants to believe that he was under some kind of control; that he wasn't really conscious these past days. All the lives he already stole, you want to think that if he had a choice, he would've spared them. You want to believe it all so badly. You want to throw all your common sense away and just collapse into his arms. Give him a tender kiss and gaze into his eyes with lingering warmth like you used to. To forgive and forget.

But the common sense stays where it should be. You can't. Because the past days he's been imprisoned, he's confirmed every action. He doesn't even defend anything; thinks he doesn't need to. Rock-hard believing his decision was the right one to make when he really had no right.

And your eyes are no more tender and soft; but clouded and swollen, piercing through the pair of eyes on the other side of the glass. And your mouth is not tasting the sensetion of sweet lips. Only the salty wetness of your tears pooling like mad rivers.

Your chest feels heavy and about to explode. You need to scream; feel like that's the only solution to relieve the pressure. You almost feel like you're being choked. Choked on love, choked on hope, air, trust, literally everything your life has contained so far.

And the man in front of you doesn't seem to understand how your world is seemingly falling apart before him. The pure confusion in his eyes is twisting your stomach and your feel like throwing up.

"I thought I knew you."

Your sobs has quieted down. Before, you weren't able to speak very well. You just had to wait the storm out until it came rushing back ten times worse next time.

"You do, darling. You always have."

Calm as a snake and laid back. He doesn't even seem to realize that every word spoken will matter in the following moments of actions where you will decide both your fates for him.

"Did I, really? How can you look me in the eyes and say that with your disgusting pride!" You spit at the glass; aim at his feet but it doesn't seem to faze him a tiny bit. You want to bring out a reaction from him, cause maybe then, you would get some sense of honesty out of him.

"My disgusting pride? The world we're living in is disgusting and twisted. How can you even compare midgardians brutality and greediness to Asgards prosperity and beauty?"

You don't want to hear this talk again. Only a couple of years ago, you would have ignored it as just one of his endless bitter rants and thought nothing more of it, not knowing that he was actually planning to find an end to his irritation.

"(Y/n), darling, You have agreed with me on this! We agreed that humans are short minded, only good for the cause of starting a war between their own race and assassinate each other. Their petty little lives are doomed anyway."

You can't even process the amount of irony and hypocrisy seeping through his sentences. You want to scream at him. You want to hold him. You want to cry, give him a piece of your mind. But you want to fall asleep in his arms. You miss his embrace so much. Endless tiredness since he vanished, only to find he's become a monster.

Your fists attempts to break the glass once again, aiming at his perfect eyes. Those damn eyes. The same eyes you used to adore. You still do. Torn between what you want and what you should do.

"You had no right! Who are you to choose who gets to live and who doesn't?! Why should you be any different from the humans?"

Your words are no longer contained into normal conversation. Only now, Loki seems to actually start realizing the weight behind your rage.

"I did it for us, love! For you. How am I supposed to give you everything if I'm just a mere god, son of a bastard and feared of my own people. Is that the man to give you everything? Is it?"

You don't even know where the thought process of this has sparked in his mind. Never have you asked anything unusual from him, just endless trust and honesty. You have always supported him when no one else would and when nobody wanted anything to do with him. A shoulder to cry on or an ear for venting. You've heated him up with your warmth when he was feeling cold and kissed him back to health countless of times. You used to be his. In return you only asked for trust and honesty. And the funny thing? In the end, you got none of that.

"I never wanted the world, Loki! I wanted you! Couldn't you see that you were enough?"

"Why do you care about the midgardians so much? What have they done for you? Have they given you flowers when you were sad? Have they kept you company at nights where you were haunted by nightmares? Did they do any of those? Because I recall it was me who stood by you all those years!"

Why is he suddenly so angry? It makes no sense to you. When he for once speaks from his real thoughts, anger and frustration is still the feeling behind it. Even if he got his plan to destroy earth through, it wouldn't stop his burning hate.

"You speak like they are nothing but soulless objects, pawns for you to manipulate when you feel like it!"

"They need a group of unstable mutants to protect them from dangers! A bunch of heroes that they don't even really like sometimes. The heroes gets the blame of the catastrophe happening even if they are the one fighting it! Is that a society worth fighting for? Their beloved little heroes are nothing but fools."

"Everything is worth fighting for. You don't know these people, do you? And as for the people, the heroes are a beacon of hope; a sign to stand strong and come together!"

You stand quiet for a second. Your fist lowers itself against the hard surface.

"Against people like you."

You don't want to see him anymore. Heard enough. Ready to go. You've made you decision. Because how could there ever be a change to this man? When he's been hiding his true nature behind your back for so long? Did you even know who you loved? Could you even call it love?

"Did you ever love me? Or was I just being fooled this entire time?"

Concern is now displaying on him for real. Maybe he's realize where you're going; what you're about to say.

"Why would you ask that? I love you more than anything! (Y/n), please understand this! I'd do anything for you!"

"Then tell me one single moment, just one, where you've spent time with me and thought 'I could be satisfied with this. I don't need power. I'm good with what I have'."

You heart is aching with anticipation. It's almost fatal. You don't want to know but he must realize it himself before you can finish.

And you can really see how he's trying. He's trying so hard for you, he thinks. He probably thinks he's tried doing everything for you; when he really just needed not to do anything at all. And just like you guessed, there comes no words. He knows you'll see if he's lying and knows you're right. But you don't ever think he will ever regret his attack for the right reasons. Nor for you, to get you back. No, you'll never accept that.

"I can't live like this, Loki. Can't you see you're breaking my heart?"

"I didn't mean to-"

"No. You didn't mean to do it, right? That's what you're gonna say... But I've heard enough. You have made a decision. And it's about time that I make mine as well."

The realization hits him almost instantly. And all the traces of his usually calm manner were gone in an instant. He's no longer standing with hands clasped behind his back. But they're clawing and pawning at the glass keeping the two of you apart. Loneliness is the one fatal emotion he hasn't dared himself to feel for years with you by his side. But now when it all might be taken away from him in a matter of seconds? How is he supposed to react?

He's begging, pleading, punching and screaming. Sobbing and begging even more. His silvertounge can't save him now. Nothing can save him now from the unruly fate. A path he himself had laid out beneath his feet.

"Please, (Y/n) I love you! I don't want to be here alone!"

...

"Please... It's cold and dark. I can't breathe without your warmth! Just.. Please!"

You can't stand to hear any more. His pleading is too much and you've stayed enough.

Your heart feels like it's being torn in half by your own hands as you turn around, the cold of your back hitting him in the deepest depths of his despair. And it sets him off.

You're going to leave him. The only purely good thing in his life is going to leave him. Where is he going to get his hugs? It doesn't matter because they won't be from you. Is he even going to remember your face when time has passed? Will he even remember your laugh, smile or your goofy little moments together? Will you find somebody else? Forget about him and move on.

Loki doesn't want you to move on; doesn't want you to move at all. He's ready to do whatever it takes to get you to stay.

And he would, if there wasn't a thick wall between you, keeping him from you no matter how hard he slammed it or how loudly he screamed at you.

Pleading became despair and despair led to threats; the only solution left to try.

He knew it was wrong. Wrong to threaten a loved one, especially you. But he would never accept his fate knowing that he hadn't tried anything in his power to make the only thing left for him to love slip past his hands.

But a tiny part of him knows that you won't hear him. Won't listen to him like those late summer nights under the moon on a cozy blanket, you tightly wrapped into his embrace with a content smile on your face.

Or the time when a sudden attack of sorrow and anxiety hit him in the middle of the night and you held him close to your chest while whispering sweet assurances for him to fall asleep to.

You had been his anchor to the real world.

You were the only thing to keep him sane enough.

But it wasn't enough in the end.

You had been his hero.

But not even a hero could save someone's world sometimes.

Especially when he was the one ruining it.

His love.

(Y/n)

#inspiration #marvel #marvel imagine #art #loki odinson #loki laufeyson #loki of asgard #loki x y/n #loki series #loki friggason #loki x you #loki angst #marvel fanfiction #marvel angst #thor odinson #thor x reader

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blossomoranges · 3 years

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Crossmarch and Mirai's Search For The Silver Fox

hi everyone! this was part of the @ikesennw‘s secret santa, written for @mitsushide from me. the fic focuses on her character, Mirai, facing her first Christmas in Azuchi posing as a princess of the Nakamura clan. in truth, she’s an undercover agent for the Crimson Lotus, an organisation of women looking to bring down the feudal warlords, and an all-around badass. also, local himbo Yukimura makes a cameo.

read her fabulous series beneath a night sky, vast & wide for more context!

word count: 1550

pairing: hints of mirai/mitsuhide

Winter had come to Azuchi on swift wings, bringing a chill to the air and a coating of frost on the ground. But this year, the season was different. The Oda’s support of the Western traders had brought a new influx of foreigners to the gates of the town, and with them came stories of strange cultures and traditions. ‘Christmas’, as it came to be known, was a winter festival celebrated by many of these people - a time of feasting and gift giving and togetherness. Nobunaga Oda, with his endless fascination for anything new, had announced a holiday for the citizens of his provinces.

Mirai wasn’t sure what to think of all this. A day off for all the hard-working people of Azuchi was a step in the right direction, but it could just be one of Nobunaga’s passing fancies. There was no guarantee that this festival would become a tradition. Plus, she could barely pronounce the name. Christ-moss? Clip-mass? Whatever.

And just how was she meant to look for openings to rid the land of these warlords when the castle was flooded with people preparing for a banquet?

Ever since she’d arrived in Owari under the Nakamura banner and the guise of a sickly princess, she’d made sure to document the routines of the six key warlords, but they’d seemingly scattered to the winds. Mirai had caught a glimpse of Masamune Date cooking up a storm in the kitchens, the door to Ieyasu Tokugawa’s office had been barred from the inside, and Mitsuhide Akechi… was nowhere to be found. According to Honoka, he’d last been seen heading out to the town centre. She can’t say that trying to track him down is a wise thing to do - princesses don’t usually go around tailing people. But the sheer volume of people stocking up on winter goods and preparing for this strange festival provided safety in numbers and a golden opportunity to see what the kitsune was getting up to.

So here she is, standing at the edge of a crowded marketplace, attempting to track a man who’d perfected his disappearing act and to blend in all the while.

If she wasn’t so experienced, she would never be able to find him. She cleared her mind and focused on the smells, sounds, and sights of the market, and kept pushing forward. Out of the corner of her eye, Mirai sees a swirl of teal and ivory. The chase is on.

He’s a worthy opponent. Mitsuhide ducks, dodges, and weaves through the town with the grace of a heron, while Mirai follows in his tread, slinking just out of sight. She can’t survey him from the rooftops (damn these unwieldy kimono skirts), so she darts into one of the many alleyways to stay out of sight. Their pattern of fox and mouse holds, right until the kitsune stops in his tracks at the very edges of the market, turning to examine a stall surrounded by trinkets and charms. Mirai is a tad surprised - he didn’t seem the type to enjoy frivolity, or anything uninvolved with torture for that matter.

His exchange with the shopkeeper lasts mere moments before he’s off again, out of sight and drifting away like a spirit with questionable taste in clothes. Thus comes an end to her fruitless chase. She needs to head back to the castle soon, anyway. After he had overcome his initial animosity, Hideyoshi seemed convinced that Mirai might drop dead from a cold as soon as the sun sank below the horizon. There was a slim chance he’d be too busy to notice her disappearance, preparing for the banquet and worshipping the ground Nobunaga walked upon, but it wouldn’t do to be questioned.

The road back to the castle gates was so much more boring without a target to prey upon. The crowds had dissipated a bit as it neared sundown, though some citizens milled about, browsing and discussing the coming winter. The winds were even more chilly, but she kept a measured pace.

There was something glinting in the last rays of the day. Mirai inclined her head towards the source, a blanket laid out with accessories much like the ones that had caught Mitsuhide’s attention. She was in no rush to return to the castle - regardless of the festivities, it was just another night of endless posturing and waiting for openings to strike. Looking at pretty things might suit her disguise.

She crouched to examine the wares, her eyes drifting over the kanzashi, hairpins, and obi charms. Aha! There was the culprit. A group of silver animals hung upon cords were caught in the light and a tiny fox curled up against its tail rocked gently at the forefront.

“You gonna buy anything? I’m about to close up,” came a rough, unrefined voice.

Mirai barely spared a glance for the man before responding in a cool tone.

“I am just admiring your wares, sir.”

“Well, admire them quicker! I’ve been busy all day with this… Crossmarch nonsense the Oda are putting on. I swear, all you girls are like this.”

He must have been blessed by the gods, because if Mirai didn’t want to blow her cover, she’d have attacked by now. Her newfound acquaintance was dressed head-to-toe in scarlet and his head, clearly empty, was crowned by a mop of brown hair. He also seemed to be the world’s worst spy - six golden coins were emblazoned on his chest, marking him as one of the Sanada. She grasped for the little fox she’d been examining, tucked it into her pouch, and chucked a few coins onto the blanket. Not the best use of Rui’s funds, but needs must when playing a princess.

“Good night, merchant. You may want to use those funds to buy a new kimono. One that’s less conspicuous.”

She glided away from the blanket, taking careful steps, only half-listening to the spluttered retorts of the merchant-warrior.

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The moon peeks out from behind the heavy clouds to cast her light over the courtyard, lighting it up in splendour, and Azuchi’s newest princess watches in turn. She had broken out in shivers from the frigid air long ago, but the stillness provided a balm for her mind. The banquet had been so loud. The further away she was from crowds of rowdy men, the better - at least Mirai can be herself here under the moon’s watchful gaze.

The day wasn’t entirely a loss: she’d learnt the layout of the town, confirmed the presence of enemy forces, and managed to find a fox - just not the one she’d set out to catch. Her charm was threaded onto her obi cord, but Mitsuhide was still shrouded in mystery.

With his wit, guile, and access to information, Japan could be his. So what was his motivation for following a distasteful man like Nobunaga?

The moon slips away at the same moment she feels that something, or someone, lurking in the dark behind her. She’ll have to feign surprise if the presence behind her decides to declare itself, but her thoughts race - everyone has the same primal response to shapeless beings in the dark. Kaede’s words echo across time in her thoughts.

‘You are a warrior, but don’t forget the frightened girl that you were. Your past exists within you, dear Mirai. Use that fear to spur on the strength that will always rest in you.’

The words bring a pang to her heart, but she cannot say whether it is fear or pain or grief. She forces herself to breathe.

“Hello, little mouse.”

She casts an upward glance at the voice’s source. With his white robes shrouded in the pale moonlight, the man could pass for a ghost.

“Good evening, Lord Akechi.”

“Oh, do call me Mitsuhide.” His crescent moon smile is wickedly sharp.

“Mitsuhide, then.”

They remain in silence for a few moments.

“Why is our darling princess out here? You’re missing all the festivities.”

“I prefer quieter company. Everyone in the banquet hall is awfully loud for my tastes.”

“I see. You must be tired from your excursion into town, as well. Such a busy day,” he tuts.

Had he spotted her trailing after him? No matter. There was a challenge in his voice and she would not rise to it.

“I haven’t had much chance to explore. I had missed seeing new places and people, after being ill for so long.”

“No need to defend yourself, little mouse. I merely noticed your fetching new charm.” He gestured to the sleeping fox in the centre of her obi.

The kitsune brought something out of his robes and set it beside her, as his other hand rested upon her head. It was a battle for Mirai to resist raising her hackles at him.

“A Christmas present for you. I heard you like this particular bird. Good night, little princess.”

Then Mitsuhide was gone, disappearing down the corridor and leaving silence in his wake.

The only trace he had left was a bronze statue that fit neatly in her palm. A little quail. Was this a trick or some bizarre act of kindness, or did he really just like seeing her puzzled expression? The mystery surrounding him had grown. Mirai hoped she would get her answers soon, but they would not come on Christmas night.

#ikesen #ikemen sengoku #ikesennw #ikesen oc #my writing #lots of love to em because her characters are FAB

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omg-imagine · 4 years

Text

⊱ Forget Me Not (1/15) ⊰

Pairing: Keanu Reeves x Reader

Summary: After you wake up from a coma and realize that your memories from the last five years have been erased, Keanu works to bring back what you have lost.

Words: 2k

Warnings: Mention of car accident, injuries

A/N: This is my first attempt in doing a series and I’m super excited/nervous. Everything’s mostly outlined already and I’m hoping to post a new chapter every Sunday. If you’d like to be tagged in this, let me know!

As always, I hope you enjoy!

The heavy rain poured down from the dark skies, battering against the roof of Keanu’s Porsche like a hail of bullets. Loud roars of thunder filled the gaps of silence every few minutes, followed by bright flashes of lightning that illuminated the world outside. The wipers moved impressively fast as they tried to sweep the droplets of water away from the windshield. Still, they could barely keep up with the torrent of rain hammering the city of Los Angeles.

Turning down a corner, Keanu cursed under his breath when he realized that the road was flooded. He quickly made a U-Turn back onto the main street, his tires skidding across the wet pavement. He searched for an alternative way that he could take, but the chaotic storm only made it more difficult for him to do so. He could hardly see what was ahead of him, and he was beginning to lose his patience.

Fortunately, Keanu was able to find an access road leading to the freeway. He knew it wasn’t safe going twenty miles above the posted speed limit, but he had already lost too much time trying to navigate through the storm. All he cared about at that moment was that the faster he drove, the quicker he got to you.

He could still remember every word of that phone call from nearly an hour ago. It was from an unknown number, and initially, he didn’t want to answer it just in case you decided to call him back. But something in his gut told Keanu to answer, and he did. It had been a nurse on the other line saying that you were in an accident, and you were rushed to the emergency room in critical condition. As soon as he heard that you were hurt, he was already running out of the door.

His eyes glistened as he thought back to the moment before you had left your shared home in such a haste. Keanu blamed himself for giving you a reason to leave the house while a storm raged outside. He should have held back his tongue, took your car keys, and convinced you harder enough to stay. If only he had done just that, you wouldn’t be in this situation right now.

The rest of the drive to the hospital was a blur. After driving for fifteen minutes when it should have taken Keanu at least thirty, he finally arrived in front of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. He parked his vehicle in a nearby lot before rushing towards the entrance, the pitiless rain soaking his hair and clothes in an instant. Reaching the glass doors, they parted for Keanu to step inside, and he immediately headed to the main desk ahead.

“Hi, I-I’m here for my partner, Y/N Y/LN,” he managed to say as he caught his breath.

The nurse nodded, checking her system for your information. “Yes, I was the one who called. Your name was listed as Y/N’s emergency contact. According to the last update on here, it says that she was wheeled into surgery about thirty minutes ago, Mr. Reeves.”

“Is she going to be alright?” Keanu asked wearily, hoping that her answer was what he wanted to hear.

It wasn’t.

“We don’t know yet, sir,” she replied sadly before placing a clipboard on top of the counter. “You can sit in the waiting room until the procedure is over. In the meantime, we need you to fill out these papers on her behalf.”

With a nod of his head, Keanu walked down the hall with the paperwork and a pen in hand. The waiting area was stark and quiet. The television mounted on the wall was playing a movie, not that there was anyone paying attention to it. There were a couple of other people scattered in the room, though most were asleep due to the late hour of the night.

Keanu took a lone seat in one corner of the room, ignoring the uncomfortable sensation of his drenched clothing sticking to his skin. He then pushed his long hair back, letting out a deep sigh. The adrenaline had finally subsided, and he had the opportunity to just breathe. He already knew that this was going to be a long wait, and he didn’t want to spend the whole time mulling about the things that he could have done to prevent this. As a start, he decided to concentrate on filling up the paper with your information first.

Most of the questions it asked were basic, nothing that Keanu couldn’t answer. After being together for nearly five years, he knew everything there was to know about you. He knew all of your favorite songs, the foods you liked and disliked, the names of your closest friends, and more.

You had been nothing but kind and understanding to Keanu from the moment you two met. It wasn’t an easy life living under the public eye because of his job as an actor, but you’ve always handled it so well. No other person he has ever dated had made him feel so happy and complete. To him, you were the most precious thing in the entire world, and he has never loved someone so deeply until you came along.

God, why did he have to screw up so badly?

Keanu set aside the clipboard and buried his face in his hands. He needed to call your parents and tell them what had happened. With a sharp exhale, he fished out his phone from his pocket and called your father. As the phone rang in his ear, he planned inside his head how he was going to break the news.

“Hi, Keanu,” your father greeted. He sounded as if he had just woken up, which he probably did. It was only five in the morning where they lived on the east coast. “Is everything okay, son?”

Son. Keanu was very close to your parents since the day you introduced him to them. They had quickly taken a liking on him, seeing that he was the first man you’ve dated that treated you right. Your parents loved Keanu as if he were one of their own, and it broke his heart knowing that this was all his fault.

“I’m sorry for waking you up, but...” Keanu began, his voice starting to break as he tried to find the right words. “It’s Y/N.”

“What? What happened?”

Swallowing the lump in his throat, Keanu told your father about your current condition. As expected, your parents would be taking the first flight out of New York to be with you. After an exchange of reassuring words, the call ended, and Keanu couldn’t hold back any longer, letting his tears finally fall.

An hour went by, then another and another. The clock on display made time felt as though it was moving much slower, making the wait much more unbearable. Keanu would glance up, and in every instance, he swore that the second hand would linger an extra minute at every passing second.

The padded chairs didn’t bring much comfort throughout the night. Every so often, he would walk around the room, stretching his legs for a bit before returning to his seat. Despite exhaustion threatening to take over, Keanu pushed it aside for as long as he could. He was afraid that if he dared to shut his eyes, he would see the nightmare that was already haunting him even while awake.

Keanu did whatever he could to pass the time. He texted his mother and sisters about where you were, not expecting an answer right away because he was sure they were still asleep. He then attempted to read some of the outdated magazines available and watched whatever was on the television. He even resorted to simply staring at the window and watching the rain as it pelted against the glass.

But none of them were enough to distract Keanu. All he could think about was your well-being, and how you didn’t deserve to go through this. He didn’t want to lose you, and the mere thought of it was scaring him. You had so much life left to live, and it wouldn’t be fair for the universe to suddenly take it away.

Eventually, the storm relented, and the skies that were black shifted to blue, signaling a new day of life. The sun rose slowly yet surely, its natural light bringing a sense of calm to Keanu. For a brief moment, he basked in the peacefulness, only wishing that you were there with him to enjoy it.

“Mr. Reeves?”

Keanu turned around, his eyes catching sight of a doctor standing before him. He instantly pushed himself up from his seat, extending his hand for a shake.

“Keanu, and you must be Y/N’s doctor.”

“Yes, my name is Dr. Henderson,” the older gentleman introduced. “How are you doing?”

“I’m doing alright, I guess,” he replied with a slight shrug. “How’s Y/N?”

“Well, when Y/N first arrived, she was in bad shape, but we managed to stabilize her. The car accident caused a lot of internal bleeding that we were able to stop during the surgery,” Henderson explained as Keanu took in every word that was said. “Unfortunately, she’s not out of the woods yet. She did sustain severe head trauma, and as a result, she’s currently in a coma. We won’t know the extent of her injuries until after she wakes up.”

Keanu lowered his head, releasing the breath he was holding. “And when will she wake up?”

The doctor sighed, and that’s when Keanu looked up, seeing the uncertainty painted on the other man’s face. “I’m sorry, Mr. Reeves. We don’t know how long it’ll take. It could be days, weeks, maybe even months.”

“Okay,” was all that Keanu could say after a while. “Can I see her?”

Dr. Henderson gave him a sympathetic smile and a nod. “Of course.”

Henderson led the way as Keanu trailed closely behind. The walk to your room seemed endless. Every hallway they turned down to looked the same as the last. The blank white walls of the hospital felt cold, constricting and unwelcoming, it was becoming a place where a person like you shouldn’t belong.

Soon, they reached the foot of your door, your last name printed on a placard just below the room number. All Keanu had to do now was push down on the handle and open the door. His mind prepared him for what he was about to see. But as soon as he entered inside, it was worse than what he could imagine.

He crossed the room with cautious steps, afraid that if he were loud enough, it might disturb you. Your body was hooked on many machines, none of which he could possibly know what for other than they helped keep you alive. Once he reached your bedside, Keanu saw your delicate skin littered with the reds of your scratches and the blues of your bruises. Seeing you this way made his chest tightened, and if he could, he would trade places with you so that you no longer had to suffer.

Your body laid very still, and it was unnerving for Keanu to witness. Bringing a chair closer, he then sat down beside your bed, reaching out to hold your uninjured hand. He asked himself how you could look so peaceful after experiencing so much pain. If you had been awake, you would have surely given him a smart answer, and the two of you would then laugh about it.

Keanu felt the tears pricking his eyes as he continued to grasp your hand in his. He would do anything in the world just to hear the sweet sound of your laughter again. Though he was unsure of what tomorrow and the following days would bring, he knew that he would be right there by your side, waiting for you to wake up from your deep sleep.

Because despite everything that has happened, Keanu loved you, and he made a vow that he would never give up on you no matter what.

Part 2

Tagged: @penwieldingdreamer

#keanu reeves #keanu reeves x reader #keanu reeves imagine #keanu reeves fanfic #keanu reeves x you #reader insert #my fics #rpf

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stellar-alley · 4 years

Text

Of Scales and Sea Glass

•Chapter 1•

Next Chapter >>

(Summary: Eddie deals with the anniversary of his parent's death. After an intense tropical storm, he discovers something has washed up in his pool.)

Also shout out to @ambitiousskychild on tumblr for being my beta!

It’s just water. You’ll be fine God, why do you always worry so damn much?

“FUCK” Eddie groaned as he raked his hand through his hair. “Fuck…” He repeated, letting his voice trail off this time.

It’s been a year, you should be over this by now .

Sure it might’ve been a year, but that didn’t mean Eddie Kaspbrak was any less terrified of the ocean. Its endless blue and unexplored depths made Eddie want to be anywhere else. It didn’t help that the ocean was literally in Eddie’s backyard. All that he needed to know was that exactly one year ago today, that blue, those depths, took his parent’s lives, and that was enough to scare the boy shitless. Only now, on the anniversary of Sonia and Frank Kaspbrak’s death, did he finally decide to do something about it.

Eddie stood about 50 feet away from his back porch, his feet in the sand and a towel wrapped over his shoulders. He watched the waves fall and crash over the sand. Tonight the weathermen were calling for a killer storm, which seemed oddly appropriate in the boy’s head. It was almost like his mother was giving him a sign. It was like her way of saying “Eddie-bear, go back inside! The world is dangerous, so stay in your room!” because that’s what she did.

For most of Eddie’s life, he was fed placebos, convinced he had asthma, and practically forced to be straight. It was all his mother’s doings. Ever since her death Eddie has come to terms with all of his fake illnesses, he’s even been able to come out to his friends! Of course, they all accepted him and helped him whenever he needed it. He was really grateful for the losers he called his friends.

Lighting struck in the distance, it sent a flash of light over Eddie’s face that caused him to shrink into his towel. The dark clouds that loomed overhead only caused Eddie’s heart to beat harder inside his ribcage.

Thunder cackled soon after. Eddie’s eyes teared up as he looked up and into the waves, “I-I’m sorry,” He choked, barely able to get the words out.

Eddie shuffled back into his oceanside house before the rain started, which was good cause when it rained, it poured. The first thing he did when he got inside was close all of the blinds, unable to look out into his backyard without his stomach-turning, the guilt was practically eating away at him. The last thing he saw as he closed the blinds were his pool, the water reflected the dark clouds that loomed overhead, creating a haunting atmosphere.

The realization caused Eddie to sigh, “That’s gonna be a pain in my ass to clean.” Storms like these always brought the most random crap up from the bottom of the ocean, somehow all of it always ended up in Eddie’s pool. He didn’t even want the pool, he lived so close to the ocean, it was kinda useless. Well, aside from the days when it was too cold to swim in the ocean , that’s when he’d usually heat the pool up and swim in there instead. That was when he still swam. Now he hasn’t used that thing in well over a year.

After Sonia and Frank passed, The Kaspbrak’s residence was passed down to their only child, Eddie. That house included an underground pool, a house way too big for one person, and an almost private beach that only he and his next door neighbours had access to. (His neighbours on the left never used it though. They were an elderly couple. Sometimes he’d find them sitting outside on the warm days, but they weren’t the outdoor type. His neighbours on the right had their yard fenced off). Eddie never used the pool but kept it clean for the days when his friends came over. They'd go swimming while he read in the shade.

That night Eddie slept with his ear buds in, music on loud and the covers pulled over his head. He hated how scared he was of the water. He missed the way the waves made him feel. It was something he's never felt before, when he swam he was safe, and free. He's tried to overcome it, but nothing has worked. He'd need a miracle to convince him to get back into the water.

Eddie woke up the next morning to the early morning sunlight streaming in through the cracks of his blinds. He mentally cursed out God for creating the sun before he turned over and shoved his face deeper into his pillow. After about 20 more minutes of internal complaining, Eddie finally dragged himself out of bed. His head was waterlogged, hazed by sleep. So when he opened the blinds to his back doors all he saw was a mass of sea shit that now crowded his pool. Instead of focusing on exactly what had washed up onto his property, he simply rolled his eyes and went to go back to breakfast.

Eddie checked his phone, hoping it’d wake his mind up a little but he sighed as he realized he didn’t have any wifi. His realization brought a thought to the forefront of his mind. “Oh no…. No, no, no,” Eddie mumbled as he padded over towards the nearest light switch. “Fuck,” He leaned his head up against the wall when the lights didn’t turn on. This was something else that happened a lot when they were hit by a storm, the power goes out.

After breakfast, Eddie got changed out of his pyjamas. He opted to put on an older black tee as he knew he’d be cleaning today. He pulled his iconic red shorts on and slipped on a pair of sneakers. He gathered up all of the cleaning supplies he had set aside for storms like these and set them out on his back porch.

The morning air smelled of rain and salt. The temperature had dropped a couple of degrees from the previous day, which was refreshing, but it didn’t change the fact that Eddie had a whole yard to clean.

First, he swept off the porch. He pushed all of the twigs, branches and sand onto the ground below. He noticed one of his neighbour’s palm trees had several fallen branches. That would explain the countless leaves that were scattered across his yard and filled his pool.

After, he collected as much of the debris from the lawn as he could. Stuffing everything into garbage bags, tying them up, then carrying them to his front yard, where they’d sit until garbage day. Once he was in his front yard, he looked around at his neighbour’s lawns and saw they were all going through the same hell that he was. Everyone was out with garbage bins and shovels, cleaning up the mess the storm left behind.

“EDDIE! HEY!” A voice called out to him.

Eddie turned towards the voice and saw his neighbour to the right, Beverly Marsh. He was one of the lucky kids who conveniently lived beside one of his best friends. While the rest of their Losers Club lived no more than 20 minutes away, Bev and Eddie lived the closest, which made it easy for the group to meet up. Even if their meetups almost always ended up at Eddie’s house.

When his mother was alive, she rarely let all of them come over, but now that she was gone, most of their summer break was spent in Eddie’s backyard, in the pool, on the beach, or in his basement watching movies. Eddie didn’t mind, he enjoyed the company. Especially since living alone got, well, lonely. So he made sure to soak up every moment he could get with his Losers.

Eddie’s resting bitch face was washed out and replaced by a genuinely happy smile. “Marsh! How’s it hanging?” Eddie said in his best surfer bro voice.

“It’s totally tubular,” She said, followed by a laugh. “How’s your place? No power?” She asked as she put down the bag she was holding and crossed her yard and onto Eddie’s.

“Yeah, and my yard is a fucking mess. Don’t even get me started on the pool,” Eddie groaned at the thought.

A smug smile spread over Beverly’s lips, “It’s the days like these when I’m grateful I don’t have a pool. Can’t you just get the pool guys to come and clean it?” She questions.

“I would but it’d cost me an arm and a leg. I’m just gonna clean then get someone to refill it. It’ll be fine,” He sighed. Eddie was gonna ask if she wanted to help but he lost his chance when Beverly’s aunt came outside.

“Beverly! Oh, Hi Eddie. How are you doing?” She smiled at him. Beverly’s aunt Katherine was always nice to Eddie, she always helped him whenever he needed it, cooking meals and helping with bills. She was pretty great.

“As good as I can be after a storm like this, crazy isn’t it?” He nods his head.

“It really is, on that note, Bev, we should be getting back to work,” She said as Bev nodded.

“I’ll see you later Eddie. Let me know if you get ahold of the rest of our rat pack, alright?” She winked as she slowly began to back away.

“Yes ma’am!” Eddie saluted and returned to the backyard.

He sighed. “No better time than the present, am I right?” He asked himself as he picked up the big net that was propped against the porch, then walked towards the pool.

The water had turned a dark green-grey. It didn’t smell too bad, which was a blessing as Eddie has a sensitive stomach and wasn’t in the mood of adding barf to his list of things to clean. He swept the net over the surface of the water for a couple minutes before noticing how there were a lot bigger pieces of debris than he had realized.

Looks like we gotta break out the big guns , Eddie left the net on the side of the pool and went to grab some rubber gloves and one of his big grey garbage cans. He stood at the edge of the pool and stared down at the water below him. It was different when he had the net, he barely had to lean over the edge, but now he was worried about falling in. What if I lean in, fall, and drown, or get knocked unconscious and die? Eddie calmed his breathing down before it got a chance to pick up.

“Okay, Eddie, you’re fine,” He let out a shaky breath. He ended up laying down on the pavement, flat on his stomach and stuck his arms over the edge, not daring to let anything below his neck hang over the edge of the pool. Slowly but surely he dragged most of the debris out and onto the pavement, which would then be put into the garbage, but right now he just needed to get everything out of the pool. Amongst the trash and green life he found in the water, he also fished out a pair of glasses, although they didn’t seem like normal glasses. First off, they were pretty big, but the lenses seemed oddly fogged and thick. Reminding Eddie of the sea glass he’s collected over the years of living on the coast. He set them aside and made a note to investigate them further once he was done here.

After a couple of hours of hard work, Eddie stood over the pool and admired all of his hard work. Sure there was still a bunch of shit at the bottom of the pool, but he agreed to clean that out once the pool had been emptied. There had been a particular pile of debris off in the corner that caught Eddie’s eye. It seemed to be a pile-up of plants and what looked to be a fishing net. He walked over to that side of the pool and squinted down at the trash. Something was dimly shining beneath the pile of soggy algae that covered it.

Maybe a fish got washed into the pool? Hm, poor dude, Eddie shrugged, about to walk away when the pile twitched ever so slightly, Eddie could have convinced himself he was seeing things, but something was telling him he wasn’t. Determined to see what it was, Eddie quickly grabbed the net and poked the pile of debris. He shied away after the first poke, then moved to poke it again. It twitched again. Eddie’s brow furrowed as he poked it again, a little harder this time. This time it shifted positions, allowing Eddie to see a little bit more of the creature that sat at the bottom of his pool.

The shine came from scales, and there were a lot of them. How big is this fucking fish? Oh shit- do I have a shark in my pool?! No dumbass, sharks don’t have scales…

Instead of poking it again, Eddie used the butt end of the net to try to move the debris off of the creature. He was able to push most of the algae aside, but the creature must’ve been tangled up in that damned net. The creature might not have been 100% visible, but he had a better view of it now.

“Is that? No way…” Eddie began to speak to himself as he examined the creature. “That can’t be...” He said as he examined the part of the creature that looked like it had hair. Well whatever it had that looked like hair, it was inky black, it slowly swayed around- A HEAD? “WHAT THE FUCK!” Eddie shrieked as he began to stumble backwards. He stammered and wobbled. But suddenly, one of the bricks that lined the pool gave out beneath him, and he fell forwards. He fell into the pool with a big splash.

He didn’t even have time to think, his mind was overtaken by panic. Eddie thrashed and splashed, he tried to pull himself to the surface but the water was blurring his vision, making it impossible to tell which way was up. He barely had time to take in any air as he was randomly tossed into the pool. So his lungs ached and his head throbbed. He wanted to scream out for help or stop moving just for a second, in hopes that’d he just float to the surface. But he couldn’t stop, his legs kicked wildly in the water, his shoes heavy on his feet and his clothes constricting his movement.

He was too busy thinking about his own death to notice the pair of arms that’d wrapped around his waist. Eddie’s lungs began to burn , they begged for air, but Eddie knew that he was not going to let his mouth open. He refused to die the same death that his parents had. With that, his vision began to blur more than it already was. His mind hazed over and his thrashing minimized. His vision was dotted with black spots, due to lack of oxygen.

I’m gonna die .

Suddenly he was gasping for air. His lungs heaved as he spat up water and tried to breathe in as much air as he could. He rubbed the water out of his eyes. It took a moment for his gaze to clear, but once he did he realized he was sitting on the edge of the pool, his clothes soaked and his hair filled with leaves and dirt.

What the fuck happened? How did I get here? The questions overloaded Eddie’s mind as his breathing quickened, there was so much going on, too much .

The water beside him splashed, a light spray of water settled on him. He hesitantly looked over, hoping to see nothing, that he had dreamt it all up. But when he turned his head, he saw something drifting slowly towards him in the water. He hadn’t failed to notice how murkey the water had gotten. It’s green tinge now brown, and a little red. He didn’t even let himself think about what made it red. Eddie panicked and jackknifed, hastily shuffling backwards and away from the water.

Eddie’s eyes were as wide as saucers, his eyebrows practically in his hairline. His breathing practically stopped as he watched the black hair he’d seen previously slowly poke up out of the water. Eddie wanted to get up and run, call the cops, something , but he couldn’t. He was frozen in fear and anticipation. He couldn’t help that little bit of wonder that filled his head as the creature continued to come up from the waters’ surface.

He watched as the head moved up just enough to reveal a pair of impossibly blue eyes. They stared back at him, partially covered by the black hair hanging in its face. Something about the eyes seemed hazy, almost as if they weren’t clear, they squinted for a moment before opening up wide again.

Eddie could only muster a weak “hi,” as he stared at the creature before him. The blue eyes rolled and bubbles erupted in front of him. The head sunk back down into the water.

A splash caused Eddie to tear his eyes away from where the head once was, and look up. Further down in the pool he watched as a fish like tail splashed against the surface of the water. Half of its fin was covered in the fishing net. The rope digging into the scales. Eddie finally saw what was the cause of the red in the water. The net had various hooks still attached to it. They dug into the scales of the tail, causing it to leak red blood. Eddie’s stomach dropped.

The tail splashed against the surface of the water again. It acted as a reality check for Eddie as he finally mustered the strength to stand up. Once he was on his feet, he wobbled momentarily before marching towards his porch. He didn’t look back as he closed his patio door. He kept walking until he was in his bathroom.

He turned on the shower and waited until it filled the small room with steam. The boiling water practically burned all the dirt off of his skin. He was too caught up in his own thoughts to even realize he began thinking out loud.

“There’s someone in my pool,” He started, his voice distant, “And a fish. A massive fucking fish.” He thought about the mess of hair he’d seen at the bottom of the pool. “No one can survive being underwater that long… No one, but not nothing.”

What if it wasn’t two things in my pool…

He contemplated the idea for a second, “BUT THEY DON’T EXIST!” Eddie shouted in frustration, thrusting his fist against the ceramic wall of his shower. So many ideas floated through Eddie’s head, he hated it, he hated not knowing what was in his pool. And he hated the fact that the only idea that made semi sense, was that he had a fucking mermaid in his pool.

“But they’re made-up. Stories, fairytailes. Not real life, ” He countered, recalling movies like The Little Mermaid and Aquamarine. “But what else explains the tail?” He asked himself in defeat.

Eddie turned the water to the shower off. His skin was red and raw, he could practically see the steam coming off of himself. He rested his forehead against the wall of his shower and tried to clear his head. In and out… In and out , he reminded himself as he took a couple minutes to just breathe .

After the hurricane in his head finally calmed down, he allowed himself to think back to what he’d seen outside. Careful to not open the dam of memories, he focused on the tail, the head, the water, the blood .

The poor thing is hurt , Eddie sharply inhaled. “Shit…” He recalled the net, and how it dug into the creature's tail. He shivered at the thought of what it must be going through. Then he remembered why he took the shower in the first place, he fell into the pool, and that fish thing, it saved him.

With a new game plan, Eddie finished up in the bathroom, got dressed, then got his fist aid kit and all the other supplies he needed. He went back outside, the sun beating down over his head as he stood on his patio and surveyed his backyard. A new level of determination filled the human. He was intrigued to find out what the hell was in his pool, and this was the best way he could find that out.

He marched down and to the water’s edge, but all the bravery he had mustered died the moment he saw the creature floating on its front at the edge of Eddie’s pool.

He raised his hands to cover his mouth, his eyes wide, “Fuck,” he cursed. His mind automatically assumed the worst, death . But he tried to mentally assure himself that it had just passed out as he didn’t want to panic.

Eddie got down on his knees and carefully leaned over to grab the creature. He held his breath, worried about falling in, but he was able to pull the creature to the edge of the pool. He pushed it over onto its back. He wanted to inspect its face and features but Eddie needed to get him out of the water before those cuts got infected.

Quickly, Eddie laid a towel down on the pavement beside the pool, worried about what the heat of the ground would do to the fish’s scales. When it came time to pulling the thing out of the water, he hadn’t thought about how much that fucking tale would weigh. He hooked his arms under the arms of the creature and tried to pull him out. He heaved and tugged.

“Holy shit- you’re so fucking heavy,” Eddie gasped, half way there , he thought to himself. All of the human part was out, and half of the tail, now all he had left was the rest of the tail and the monofin. Eddie took in one sharp inhale before he pulled the rest of it out in one final tug. He gasped as he suddenly landed on his back, the fish flopped down onto the towel beside him.

Eddie didn’t take too long to recover, he was too interested in seeing what exactly he had just fished out of his swimming pool. He sat on his knees and surveyed the creature that laid uncious before him.

It was indeed, a mermaid.

The upper half of its body was made of pasty white skin, as smooth as a shark's skin. It shined in the afternoon sunlight. Its arms were long and fairly skinny with a little muscles. Eddie carefully lifted up one of its hands. He inspected it, noticing how there was an almost translucent webbing that connected his long and bony fingers. Then he let out a small gasp at the claws that laid at the edges of his fingers. They looked sharp, one swipe would surely draw blood. With that, he carefully laid the hand back down by its side.

Eddie leaned forward a little to examine the creature's face. He lifted a hand, gently pushing some of the soggy hair out of his face. He frowned at the slash that ran across its cheeks, cutting through a wild pack of freckles. His pale skin allowed the freckles on his cheeks to shine like stars on a clear night. Eddie thought about counting them, like he had the stars, but he opted not to as he knew he had more pressing tasks at hand. He took one last glance at the face, allowing himself to soak in the mermaid's features in all its beauty. Yes, beauty. Even Eddie couldn’t deny it, the creature was fairly beautiful. But now isn't the time for crushes, Eddie shook his head as he finally made his way down to the tale.

Eddie examined its chest. It was fairly skinny, not malnourished, as in he could slightly see his ribs, but it wasn't too concerning. He noticed a couple bruises and various scrapes that would need to be disinfected. He followed the pale skin down. Suddenly Eddie’s brows furrowed together. The creature had no belly button. But if he had, then the scales would have started just below it.

Now without the water blurring their colour, he was able to see the scales in all their glory. They were a pastel blue, some places darker than others, the shades varying as the tail continued. The tip of its monofin shined a sparkly silver that could give the real stuff a run for its money.

Finally, he got to his feet and overlooked all of the creature’s injuries. Sure he had some scraps, cuts and bruises along the upper part of its body, but its tail got the worst of it. The net was tangled up in its monofin and dug into its scales, causing some of them to flake off.

He raked his hands through his hair, tugging at the ends. “Fuck,” he sighed, realizing how much work he had to do. Without wasting any more time, he leaned over to the abundance of supplies he’d brought outside and grabbed the exacto knife to cut the net. Just as the blade popped out and Eddie leaned in, something cold and slimy grabbed his wrist. His body went cold, head snapping towards the mermaids. His eyes locked with the fish’s. The blues of his eyes were wide and determined. Eddie looked down and realized it was the hand with the knife. Quickly he grabbed the knife with his free hand and tossed it to the side.

“Hey-Hey, it’s okay,” Eddie motioned his hands to show that they were empty and he meant no harm. Only then did the creature release Eddie’s hand, his head flopping back against the towel. Eddie leaned over and saw that its eyes were still open, but they were hazed, almost unfocused. Eddie didn’t think too much of it, probably the salt water making him go blind or something.

“Okay, I’m just gonna try to remove the net, alright?” He asked, but received no response. He leaned back over and pulled his bifocals out of his second fanny pack, then leaned back in and began examining the net.

The mermaid’s head tilted upwards, it watched the human’s fingers traced along the edges of the net. Its eyes grew wide at the sight of the spectacles on Eddie’s face.

Eddie noticed the movement and glanced over at the creature. He hummed lightly, wondering what it was looking at. The moment didn’t last too long as when Eddie leaned away from the tail, the creature lunged at him. Its arms out and claws sharp, its eyes filled with determination. Eddie shrieked and fell backwards, his hands flew up to his face.

After a moment of heavy breathing, he realized he felt no pain. He slowly moved his shaky hands away from his face and looked up at the mermaid. He was surprised to see it carefully holding his bifocals.

It held it in his hands as if they were so fragile they’d break. The creature slid them onto his face as if it was a second nature. The blue eyes blinked a couple times before its face scrunched up in confusion. It took the glasses off and held them once again in its hands. Now its face was filled with disbelief and worry.

“What?” Eddie asked, unsure of what was happening.

The creature looked up at the human with sad, hazy eyes. For a moment they just held eye contact, as if they were having a conversation with their eyes in a language Eddie didn’t understand. Then the creature held the glasses out towards Eddie with one hand, while the other pointed towards its own chest.

Eddie’s face scrunched up, he hated charades. “What about the glasses?”.

The creature pointed to itself once again.

“Your glasses?” Eddie suggested, and the blue eyes widened to an impossible size. A new emotion spread over the fish’s face, excitement. “Yeah?” Eddie asked, and nodded. “Yeah!” Eddie said happily. “Yeah…” he repeated, this time with fear laced in his voice as he had no clue where its glasses were.

Since when do mermaids wear glasses anyways? What the fuck?

“Wait- You can understand me?” It finally dawned on Eddie, he’d been talking to a mermaid, and it was responding… technically.

Its eyebrows lowered and their glare became sharp, as if to say ‘ Yeah, so? ’, followed by a slow nod. Now it had used its free arm to prop itself up on it’s elbow so they were almost at eye level.

Eddie smiled softly at the fish, his cheeks a little warmer than they were before. He nervously chuckled, “Oh, cool”. He rubbed the back of his neck, diverting his gaze around the backyard so he didn’t have to stare into those ocean eyes any longer. His sight landed on the pile of trash he said he’d sort through later that laid on his lawn and he noticed a piece of glass that shined in the light.

Eddie gasped, he jumped from his sitting position up to his feet and ran to his pile of trash. He snatched the object up off of the lawn and ran back to the mermaid, practically falling down beside it. Eddie got situated on the ground, a wide smile on his face. He held them and carefully opened them up, without any further wait, he leaned in and slid the glasses on the mermaid's face.

The fish was confused at first, unsure of how to feel about the human being so close. But the small boy didn’t give it much of a chance to react because before he could flinch, his vision cleared. Its hands moved up to its face and felt around, touching the glasses that they knew all too well.

Finally being able to see clearly, it looked up at the boy in front of it. Its lips curved into a wide smile that got a little giggle out of the human.

“So I guess those are yours?” Eddie asks.

The mermaid nods proudly. The moment is cut short when a bolt of pain cuts through the fish’s tail, it grimaces and hisses.

Eddie tenses at the sound, “Oh shit! Sorry, but can I please use the knife?” He beged, eyes wide and worried.

The mermaid lies back down on the towel, eyes forced shut. It nods.

Okay, okay, okay . Eddie’s thoughts pick up at the thought of being so close to the creature. Not because it’s like- cute or anything, no , it’s because he doesn't want to hurt it. Yeah, that’s why .

Eddie gripped the exacto knife with enough strength to make his knuckles go white. His eyes skimmed over the net, deciding on where to cut. He found a spot he claimed to be a good start and began cutting. He sliced the net up and into pieces, slowly freeing the tail from its grasp. Soon enough he was just left with the pieces that had the hooks attached to them.

“Sorry this is gonna hurt,” Eddie said before he carefully pulled the fist hook loose. The fish’s breathing hitched and filled with pain. “ Sorry!” Eddie grimaced as he pulled another one out. This one leaked a lot more blood and the mermaids hand smacked around the ground, causing Eddie to jump at the sudden sound. It felt like it took hours to fully free the tail, but soon enough the deed was done.

Eddie leaned back on his hands and tilted his head up towards the sun. “I’m sorry,” he breathed before looking back down at the mermaid. It sat upright now, carefully examining its tail. It reached out to touch one of the cuts. Eddie jumped into action and slapped the hand away. It hissed at Eddie. “Hey! Don’t do that, I’ve still gotta disinfect them, okay?” His tone grew impatient as he cracked open the first aid kit.

His back began to ache from the hours he’d spent hunched over the blue tail, disinfecting the scrapes and bandaging the deeper cuts. He moved on to the upper half of the creature.

“Tell me if this hurts, okay?” Eddie requested as the mermaid gave him a side eye look. Eddie began to slowly put pressure on different places on the fish’s chest, mainly the places with the bruises to see if- The mermaid let out a loud hiss. Eddie’s hands shot up and away as its claws came into view again. “Sorry! You have an injured rib, so that’s why it hurts. You won’t be able to move much until it heals,” Eddie explained, his mind going through the healing process when he realized it won’t be able to swim in this condition, and it certainly can’t stay on land in Eddie’s backyard.

“Oh…” Eddie’s graze dropped, a sudden wave of fatigue washed over him as he realized what he’s gonna have to do. But before he allowed himself to think over the idea too much, he finished cleaning all of the cuts that needed it.

“O-Okay, so I-um.... I can’t leave you here, and I can’t bring you back to the ocean cause you’re hurt and you need to properly heal. So i’m gonna bring you into my house and keep you in my bathtub, okay?” He rambled in hopes the creature understood what he was saying. God, I sound fucking insane. This is insane! I can’t keep an oversized goldfish in my tub. But I can’t leave him out here… the pool guys are coming tomorrow and if they see him we’d be in so much shit- It’s the only way . Eddie finalized his plan with a sigh.

“You,” he pointed at the creature, “stay,” he demanded before he got up and went back inside. He ran upstairs and into the bathroom, flopped down beside the big bathtub, and began running the water. He set the temperature to warm then took a moment to catch his breath.

Everything began to settle in. The mermaid, the scales, the storm, the future, the creature’s eyes, its freckles- Okay, Eddie stop it. It’s a fucking sea creature, you can’t have a crush on it . He huffed and rolled his eyes at his gay thoughts. Eddie’s been out for a couple months now, to his mother's dismay, and he’s been happy. Sure he’s had a couple crushes before, but he’s never had one on a fish person… So he wasn't too sure what to think of that.

The white noise created by the running water created a soothing atmosphere for the boy, and for a moment, he sat in silence and just breathed . Though the moment was short lived, a low whale-like sound erupted from his stomach, reminding him about the fact that he hasn't had lunch yet. He looked down at his watch and saw it was already 3 pm.

Holy shit, time flies when you're with a merman. If I’m hungry then imagine what it must be feeling, when was the last time it ate? What does it eat? Do I have anything to feed it? Okay let’s just focus on getting it inside first- Also? Finding a fucking name for this thing, I can’t keep calling it, well, IT!

Eddie shook all of the static out of his head and pulled himself to his feet. He turned the knob to the bathtub and turned the water off, he hoped the temperature would suffice, he’d find out soon enough.

Going back to the mermaid in his backyard, he found it in the same place he left it, which was a relief. Still on its back, with an arm on its forehead to shade its eyes from the blaring afternoon sun. It sensed the human before he approached. It moved its arm and tilted its head to look up at the towering figure.

“Hi again, so I need to pick you up to bring you inside. So you don't… die. Is that okay?” Eddie asked awkwardly. The creature simply shrugged, as if to say ‘Do what you need’. “Okay, well , you need to help me out cause you weigh a fucking ton and I am not strong. So wrap your arms around my neck and don’t-don’t fucking eat me,” Eddie instructed as he got down on his knees, bracing himself for the weight he’d soon carry.

The mermaid sat up. Eddie moved his hands underneath the tail, he didn’t wait for the mer to move its arms because he knew if he waited any longer he’d convince himself not to. So he sharply inhaled and lifted the mermaid up bridal style. He wobbled slightly as he gained his balance on his feet. The wobble sent a shiver down the mer’s spine, he jumped to wrap its arms around Eddie’s neck in fear of being dropped.

The sudden motion made Eddie smirk. “Oh, now you do it,” he forced a small laugh. Eddie began to walk forward towards the house, each step harder than the last.

When they got to the stairs, Eddie’s breath hitched when he went up the first stair, his arms almost gave out from beneath him.

The mermaid shook and buried its face in the crook of Eddie’s neck. Eddie felt the glasses dig into his neck. With the sudden change of proximities, the mer’s breath sent shivers down Eddie’s back, it was slow and warm.

The muscles in his arms burned before he even started up the staircase to the second flood. “Fuck… me,” Eddie murmed, as if it was going to take away the fiery pain that ran through his body.

Eddie was practically dragging his feet as he walked, unable to bring them up from the ground. His vision was set on the staircase in front of him, so he didn’t notice the one floorboard that was slightly higher than the others. The toe of his foot collided with the floorboard and they went toppling forward, hitting the floor with a big thump .

The creature let out a ear bleeding shriek as it fell, then pain erupted from its tail as it landed on the ground. Certainly the extra weight of a human on its torso didn’t help at all.

Eddie was in shock for a moment, unsure of what had just happened. Looking around he turned and saw he was now face to face with the mermaid. Their eyes locked, both of them wild and concerned. Eddie snapped himself back into reality before he could get lost in the ocean eyes again.

“I-I’m sorry. Shit , I’m so sorry,” Eddie stammered, his body weak and his arms aching. He rolled off the creature and onto his back. “I’m sorry,” He croaked, the failure settling in.

He didn’t move his gaze from the ceiling over his head. He didn’t want the mer to see his eyes as they filled with tears. Something cold rested on top of Eddie’s hand. Hesitantly, he dragged his eyes over to the creature beside him. The hand held onto his own as the mermaid’s lips offered a tight but comforting smile, as if to say, it’s okay, really . Eddie shifted his hand ever so slightly so the mer’s hand fit more comfortably in his. The webbing that lined the fingers of the mermaid’s hand tickled Eddie’s. Its thumb rubbed slow circles over Eddie’s knuckles.

“A-Are you okay?” Eddie whispered worriedly.

The creature was in pain, for sure, but it nodded anyways, for the human’s sake.

Neither of them were sure how long they stayed like that, hand in hand, breathing laboured and heavy, eyes on the ceiling. Although at some point Eddie’s arms felt a smidge better, and his breathing had returned. That’s when he knew he had to try again.

“1....2...3!” Eddie lifted the mermaid off the ground again. It seemed just a little easier than last time. This time he kept his breathing steady, and kept his eyes going from the stairs in front of him to his goal, the bathroom.

Once they stood in the middle of the upstairs hallway, Eddie took a minute and stood and caught his breath. He noticed the way the mer’s eyes drifted and examined his new surroundings. But something caught his eye and Eddie felt one of the arms slowly move away from his neck. Hesitantly he turned his head just in time to see the clawed hand reaching out for Eddie’s own little creature that sat in a fish tank that lined the hallway. It was his pet betta fish, Goldy. (He wasn't a creative kid, okay?).

“NO!” Eddie exclaimed, almost dropping the mermaid again. The sudden motion caused the arm to wrap back around Eddie’s neck in fear of being dropped. “Do not eat my goldfish. She is a friend, not fucking food,” he practially growled.

The creature shrank away, not a fan of the tone Eddie had gained. As much as it wanted to lean away from the boy who just scolded him, it leaned into Eddie, it liked the warmth his skin gave off. It curled a little deeper into his touch, putting his chin on top of his shoulder and nestling into the side of his face.

Eddie got the mermaid settled into the bathtub and immediately noticed a change in its mood. Suddenly its eyes had a new sparkle to them and his lips were always semi smiling.

Eddie sat on the closed toilet seat and took in the sight before him. A mermaid in my bathtub… This’ll be one hell of a diary entry . “So! I-er, I hope this isn’t rude, but are you a girl or a boy? I know you don’t have boobs but I really don’t know how this whole mermaid thing works,” Eddie stopped himself before he kept rambling.

The mer lifted two fingers in the air. Two, second, second option. “Boy?” Eddie tilted his head. The creature nodded. He sighed in relief, “Good, good… I-I’m Eddie by the way.” The creature nodded again then ducked his head down into the water and blew bubbles up at the human. Eddie huffed in amusement at the gesture.

The human’s stomach rumbled again. He rolled his eyes in response. He didn’t even bother telling the mermaid- merman? Merman. He didn’t bother telling him he was gonna leave cause the mer looked like he was having the time of his life blowing bubbles down under. Once he was in the kitchen, Eddie tried to be quick, opening up every cupboard and checking everywhere for food fit for a fish. The only thing he came across that seemed semi-suitable were fish sticks. Eddie eyed them for about half a minute before ripping the bag open, throwing them into a container then shoving it in the microwave. He made himself a quick sandwich, cheese and ketchup (That was the most unhealthy food Sonia ever let Eddie eat so let him be). He’d barley chewed his first bit before the microwave beeped. He held the sandwich in between his lips and held the container with both hands, moving it between the two cause it was hot.

Once he was back in the bathroom he took his seat back down on the toilet seat and set the container on his lap. Eddie quickly ate his sandwich, only when he looked up did he notice the merman’s eyes were sitting out of the water, watching him like a hawk from behind his sea glasses.

“Hungry?” Eddie asked as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

The merman lifted the rest of his head out of the water at the sight of the food. Eddie held up a fish stick, “Okay, I know this is like processed shit but,” he sighed, tired of all the talking and manual labour he’s been doing, “It’s all I have.”

The mer shrugged and opened his mouth, asking Eddie to feed him. The human was taken aback at the gesture, but he gave in and picked up a fish stick, tearing a bite-sized chunk off. Eddie leaned forward and held it out just in front of the mer’s face. Its lips felt soft against the human skin as it took the food from him. It gulped it down happily then opened his mouth up again. The fish finished the whole container.

He opened his mouth again and Eddie scoffed, “I’m all out fish boy! I guess I’ll go get some stuff tomorrow,” Eddie motioned to the empty container. The fish let out a low grumble as he sunk back under the water and blew bubbles at Eddie, as if showing attitude.

“Oh shut it trashmouth,” Eddie retorted, the nickname just slipped out.

The water sloshed against the side of the tub as his eyes burst back out of the water.

Eddie let out a nervous laugh at the sudden movement, “W-What? You like that, trashmouth? ” Eddie said in a teasing manner. The mer’s lips smirked from underwater. The sight brightened Eddie’s smile.

“Well, trashmouth, I have no clue what time it is but I’m tired as fuck. I’m gonna go to sleep. You should too, so you can heal,” Eddie advised. He stood, took a step towards the tub and ruffled the fish’s hair. The mer leaned into the touch, the both of them enjoyed the physical attention.

Word count: 7604

I hope you guys liked the first chapter! Let me know what you think in the comments. I will see you guys next week with chapter 2, Sushi and Speeches. Until then, So Long And Goodnight.

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58 notes · View notes

redevenir · 4 years

Text

maybe our hearts won’t freeze

seungkwan x reader

wc : ~ 2800

a/n : boo seungkwan best boi, I want to give him the best!! please enjoy this vague au as much as I enjoyed writing it. It is certainly flawed, as is everything, but I genuinely like it. As I’ve started to write again recently, feedbacks are very much appreciated.

Like every other day, Seungkwan checks one last time if he has everything: phone, keys, water, food – wait, keys ? On the small kitchen table, like every morning, yet the relief is still strong, like every morning. He casts one last look over his tiny studio, before going outside. He rather be quick, if he wants to avoid the oncoming storm. He buttons up his parka, closes the door – double check – and starts walking in the direction his phone is telling him to follow. His backpack is a bit heavy, which reminds him he really should have seen a specialist before, as the pain in his shoulder may get out of hand soon. As he picks his phone to change the music he realizes his palms are already sweaty, and he tries to keep his cool – what could even go wrong? Nothing. He has played it all in his head hundreds of times. He’s going to your place like you’ve come to his many times before, nothing bad will happen, and then he’ll come home, safe, sound, and happy to have spent his day with you. Maybe, one day, in the far future, he will have the guts to open up to you, loud and proud, but not today. Today is for enjoying your company a bit, officially catching up, but he remains lucid about this one. He already knows how you’ve been – everyone has been the same. You are worried these days, even more than before. You are getting antsy – like so many others, and, honestly, he can’t blame you, the news are getting scarier every day, and since you’ve both started college, the future has gotten darker and darker. Rain begins to fall down his face, so he puts his hood on and walks faster. Like every other day, Seungkwan pretends it doesn’t worry him.

Seungkwan met you in college. You were in his class from day one, and you were in his class four years later. There weren’t many of you to begin with, and each year there were less and less. You had stayed. A few changes of haircut, sometimes a new pair of shoes, but you remained, silent, concerned, steady. Sometimes, when he can’t sleep at night, he remembers when, during your first year, he asked why you chose history of art, and you had answered « What else is there to do? » plain and painful and honest. Seungkwan found out it wasn’t so bad to have you around when he was getting too agitated. And when you dropped out and started to work at a laundry service he kept checking on you, hoping you wouldn’t notice how his cheeks hurt after spending a few hours with you.

The first time he actually talked to you was the first time he got sick, and missed a few days at school, and decided he wanted to ask for your notes before anyone else’s. He didn’t hear his roommate joking about the huge grin on his face when he came home that day. Oh, how he misses Mingyu now. Mingyu, keen-eyed Mingyu, who cooked like a god and had such a good heart. Mingyu was the one noticing you were used to be cold, because you carried around more jumper, more sweaters or more cardigans than anyone else on campus. Nowadays, Seungkwan does it too. After that, he’d always come to you first, someone he deemed trustworthy – and reading your notes had convinced him that you, at least, knew what you were doing.

The second time Mingyu made fun of him because of you was the day you came to their shared apartment to work on some group project – the tall one called it a « study date » but never to your face. He remember how stressed he had been. Repeating himself you were meeting him for studying and studying only. He had to be cool. Be cool. He couldn’t expect too much of it, it was good enough that you had agreed to come over. He had been eyeing you for quite a time at that point, and he had noticed that you didn’t talk to many people in your class, and even then not that much. What was supposed to last only two hours lasted until the notion of time was lost on everyone, as both of you were strongly opposed and wouldn’t let the other get away with their wrong opinion. Seungkwan had lost the argument when, instead of listening to your passionate rambling about Poe, he caught himself staring at you with a fond smile and eyes full of hearts. Only when you had called for his name a few times, a frown on your face, had he come back to his sense. Blushing a bit, he just told you he’d be willing to do as you wanted, as long as you were happy. He had laughed when you had grumbled him being the reasonable one didn’t make him right anyway.

Seungkwan cares, and he worries too, so he tried, every now and then, to reach you. Just a few words, an encouraging smile. And, maybe, he hopes, it softened you a bit. He won’t change the world all by himself, but, maybe, he can make you feel better. Day after day, month after month, he dared come closer and closer to you, a tiny step at a time, afraid that a movement too quick might scare you away. It’s only when he’s standing before your building’s front door that the harsh reality of it all. He shouldn’t be there. You shouldn’t be there. Most of your comrades have left the city, most of them have fled the country but – but – but you have not. None of you have any other place to be, and, as far as he knows, you seem to think, like he does – maybe, maybe you can endure it. Maybe it will pass too. Or maybe it won’t, but there is nothing he can do about it. One by one, he reads all of the names on the tags, so he can be sure to ring on the right one. He only has to do it once to hear your voice. The speaker makes you sound far away and he has to remember you live on the thirtieth floor which is indeed far above him. The sky is getting darker and he quickly enters, prepared for the endless stairs leading to you.

There is more to Seungkwan than what first meets the eye, you’ve found out. You first thought he would be a timorous boy, books and jumpers in his bag, but he has created his very own type of bravery. He is neither tough nor a fighter. Like a little mouse, when you least expect it, he is back again, checking everything is still in place – double-checking everything – you understand now it is also how he copes. Seungkwan is a world of his own, sustainable and steady, and maybe, if you make yourself small enough, you may find just the right nest between his branches, sheltered from the gusts, close enough to the sun. As soon as your hear the hiss of the kettle you pour the boiling water into two cups. By the time he will be there, it will be at the ideal temperature. In a shiver you barely notice, you put your hands above the cups, longing for the warmth their steam provides. You wonder if it it is your last meal. If he is the last person you will ever see. If any of this is real. You’ve followed the news for years, and you know it is – the skies are another proof, if you needed one. Of course, you know nothing of meteorology, but you assume the state wouldn’t evacuate the entire country if it wasn’t serious. Actually, you were surprised they’d evacuate even considering it was serious. You have been a witness to it all. The streets, empty. Schools closed, more stray dogs, more stray cats. Buildings abandoned. Public services shutting down, TV channels disappearing, less stray dogs, less stray cats… You wonder if it was always meant to be like that, if the year, the month, the day was decided from the beginning, or if something went wrong.

As you wait for him to climb all of the stairs, the ticking of the clock might make you go crazy. Slow, slow, slow. It will never end, you tell yourself. And why do you keep that clock? But he will come, you know it. It is the one thing you know about him, he is consistent. He doesn’t let anyone down, he does as he says, which is a blessing. It is a light afar keeping you in the right path, a bright reminder that there is hope, there is love, there is laughter and there is kindness. Seungkwan is nice, you muse, and even though you have lost most of your hope, you don’t regret inviting him over. Before the blackout you will bask into the sweet light of his starry smile one last time.

It is because of his smile that, when they announced the date of the greatest storm ever recorded, the storm that will probably wipe out most of your civilization, you decided you wanted to spend it with Boo Seungkwan. You hadn’t even thought about him, his face appeared in a flash the second you heard the news, smile loud and proud.

Out of breathe, he finally reaches for your door, which opens as soon as he knocks on it. Sure enough you’re there, a yellow cardigan over your wool jumper, as green as the pine forests he’s visited when he was a kid. As green as the pine forests he’s seen on TV whenever there was a documentary about the northern countries. Whenever he’s tried to learn as much as he could about the life of the population buried in the snow all year long. He is so tired by the long climb, legs aching, chest burning, he doesn’t say a word about your clear lack of taste – yellow and green ? Really? He merely nods appreciatively when you hand him a chair – the chair. He hears you from afar, clearing your throat.

« Well, take your time and, hm, hello? » There is a shadow of a smile on your face, something that was once so common and miraculous, Seungkwan thinks, and now it is rare and he’d damn his soul to see it more. « I made some soup, I think it’s not bad. Do you want a glass of water? » He nods again, everything smells of cilantro here, and it is a small apartment indeed and why are you leaving you are so pretty and oh here you are again with a glass of water !

Seungkwan has entered your apartment for about ten minutes when he hears you shout and swear. He runs to you – the four meters that separate the two of you, in your tiny nest. You’re looking at your right hand like it betrayed you. Noticing him, you point at the stove.

« It’s still hot! »

Seungkwan lets himself breathe out again, and is all over you the second you finish the sentence.

«Oh god, does it hurt? I was so scared it might be something worst! Turn on the tap! Make the cold water run on your hand! Oh! My! How did you do that, there was nothing to do with the stove! Were you trying to get hurt? Can’t you just! Eat! Your! Soup! »

Your lips twist in a conflicted way as you watch him grope about your kitchen in a hurry.

« First of all, don’t lecture me. It’s not like I did something reckless on purpose, I just checked to see if I did turn off the gas, so, please, don’t overreact? »

Even without looking at you, Seungkwan smiles at that. Of course it was reasonable, of course he’s fond of you. He spots the first-aid kit on a lower shelf.

« All right then, but I’m still going to bandage you! Where do you keep your first-aid kit? And keep your hand under the running water! Oh my, I hope your soup is good… ! You should be more careful! » He finally puts his hand on the bandage roll.

« Are you doubting my souping skills? In front of me? In my kitchen? As you’re about to eat the food I cooked for you ? Really, Boo Seungkwan? »

As he turns around to answer you, he finds himself a lot closer to you than he thought.

« Seungkwan ? » His face feels so hot, are his cheeks red yet? Oh, why are you so close, and could you come closer? He considers your face and time stops. Eyes dark and red of countless nights spent looking for the future, skin kissed by the sun. From the pink on your cheekbones he guesses you’ve probably fallen asleep on your balcony a few days ago, when the weather had been so nice. It is your style, isn’t it, to fall asleep on a sunny afternoon, even after all the worries, to feel life on your skin, to wake up anew. From your skin tone, and the look of your hair, Seungkwan knows you use poor hygiene products – but do you even care? The curves of your eyebrows, soft and concerned, and how your eyelashes gently falls on your cheeks whenever you look away. You’re calling his name, but if he looks at your lips he knows he’ll be doomed. It’s only when your hand grab his hand, cold and wet and strong, that he comes back from his daydreaming.

« Is anything wrong? » you ask, and his heart squeezes in his chest.

« No, no, no! Don’t worry, it’s just – his mind races, quick, be quick – I remember there’s nothing to do when you burn yourself, except put it under cold running water, which we’re already doing… It needs to stay in the open, so I feel a bit stupid … » The end is only a guilty whisper, so you press his hand strongly.

« Don’t. You’re not. You have good reflexes, it is nice to know you’ve studied first aid classes diligently. » You smile at him and, really, Seungkwan thinks his heart will explode if you keep doing this to him and he can’t kiss you in return.

The soup is good, at least good enough not to complain, and the both of you last a few hours actively chatting before mentioning the elephant in the room. You have closed all shutters and spread a blanket on the floor to keep you both from the cold. Every time you open your mouth, little clouds escape from it, an airy trail to keep the track of the words you whisper to each other.

You’re siting near Seungkwan’s lying form, knees to your chest, entangled in your sleeping bag, hands on your ears. He’s looking at the ceiling, maybe searching for patterns in the cracks you don’t see. The flashlight casts a poor color on both your faces, and really, you think, it doesn’t do him justice, to hide in the heart of the night. Seungkwan belongs with summer, he’s the feeling of your aching skin when you’ve spent too much time in the sun, imitating lizards on their burning rocks. Seungkwan belongs in gushing gardens, oozing with the music of thousands insects working around flowers. He should not be here, with you, waiting in the skies to freeze to death.

« What will happen to us? »

It is a murmur, a blast in the darkness of the room. You don’t know, you have no answer. Meaning has been taken away from you, is all of this even real? How would you know? You cannot answer to that. Everything you heard on the news sounded fake and yet here it is, the weather is getting colder and colder, and people are evacuating, running south, toward kinder climates. Yet, you did not. You, and Seungkwan, and probably hundreds of others are staying there. Either you’ll freeze to death, or you’ll get to live a harsh life, harsher than ever before. Of course, you can’t say that, because it is not nice, and because the words pounding in your chest are same ones pounding in his. It surely is a disheartening situation, but what else is there now if not your hearts?

You lie down next to him, your face close to his, trying to keep your voice steady, trying to look at him in the eyes, trying to be brave, and to do it right, a weak attempt to answer.

« I have no idea. » You whisper, taking his hand between yours.

Seungkwan holds on to it so hard he may crush your fingers.

#seventeen scenarios #seventeen imagines #seungkwan imagines #seungkwan scenarios #seungkwan x reader #bsk #my writings

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miaa4tez · 4 years

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Season 3, Episode 1 or so help me god... Also available on AO3.

Finally // beautiful stranger

He sort of thought she’d maybe... say something, after everything. He’d walked home that night a bundle of uncertainty and self-doubt, but for the first time, he actually felt a bit hopeful. He and Maeve couldn’t seem to stop missing one another, and he was damn near determined that this time, it’d be different.

But then the weekend came and went, and he hadn’t heard from her once, and he found himself growing more self-conscious by the second. Had he been too late? Did he miss his chance for real this time? Was she really... over him?

He nearly races to school come Monday morning, a ball of nerves and pent up energy. He tries being happy for Eric as he recounts endless details about his weekend with Adam, really he does, but all he could think is whether Maeve had truly heard his confession of love and felt... nothing. That might just be the thing to do him in for good.

It takes him a few laps through the school but he finally finds her in the library, a book perched on her lap and her thumbnail between her teeth. He nearly loses his nerve, can’t help but stare at her like this for a moment - unguarded, serene - but then he reminds himself that he’s done being an asshole, damnit, and pushes forward.

“Um, Maeve?” Fucking loser. Man up.

He sees her jaw clench, her teeth biting the inside of her cheek, her eyes shut briefly before she flips a page. He hates that he elicits that response from her now. “Studying, dickhead.”

He watches her swallow and her eyes seem to be going over the same line over and over.

He clenches his hands at his side. “Can we talk?” He unclenches his fists, stretches them in the silence. “Please.”

She’s so good at masking her emotions, but he catches a slight hitch as she clears her throat, shuts her book with a definitive thud and stands abruptly. She meets his eyes, cool and steady, and he feels himself shrink under the weight of her gaze. “I’ve got to get to class.”

She pushes past him then, out the door, and for a moment he considers letting her go. Surely she deserves better than him, better than the hurt he’s caused her. But then he spies her jacket left dangling over the couch and his body is moving without his consent.

“Look I know I said some stupid things but I really think we ought to talk it out so I could tell you how sorry I am,” he pleads, her jacket draped across his arm as he strides behind her.

She speeds up, forcing him to trail after her. “Not much to talk about then, is there? You’re sorry, so that’s it. We’re good then.” She bites the corner of her thumb, refusing to turn and face him as she weaves through the halls.

“Well I just thought...” He stops short. What did he think, really? “I hadn’t heard from you this weekend,” he mutters instead.

She stops in front of her locker, flicks her eyes to his briefly, searching. He lamely extends her jacket to her and she snags it from him a touch too harsh. “Yeah well. I’ve been busy. Not everything is about you, you know.”

He buries his hands deep in his jacket pockets. He’s a little ashamed it’s taken him this long to congratulate her. “Yeah, no, of course. Sorry. Congratulations, by the way. I saw you on TV.”

The corner of her mouth turns up in the barest hint of a smile, but she ignores his attempt to meet her eyes and reaches for her Maths book. “Right. Well it wasn’t just me.”

“You should be proud of yourself, Maeve. They couldn’t have done it without you.”

If he’s thawing her at all, she won’t let on. She bites her bottom lip anxiously and slams her locker in a hurry, but he presses on, hands extending then retracting back to his pockets.

“And I just thought we could clear the air, you know. Be friends again?... I’d really like to be your friend again, Maeve. At least.” He shakes his head. This isn’t going well. “I’ve let you down and I know that. And I understand if you didn’t lis-“

“Otis.” She interrupts him, exhaling his name almost as if she’s got no energy left. He sucks in a breath and looks at her. Sees the hurt swimming in her eyes. “Forget it, okay? We’ve tried being friends but all we do is hurt one another.” She wraps her arms tight around herself, her eyes boring holes into her shoes. “I’ve got enough people in my life to hurt me. I don’t need another.”

She meets his eyes then and he couldn’t save this if he tried. He opens his mouth anyway - foolishly - but whatever he intended to say is drowned out by the class bell.

Her eyes flicker to his once more - pleading him to fight back? Maybe, but she’s pushed past him and out of sight before he can find the words.

...

She’s basically a ghost for the rest of the week, slipping through the halls in silence and keeping her eyes to the ground. She‘s forgotten how easy it was to go unnoticed in this school, and she both loves and hates how easily she slips back into it. Fleetingly she thinks that she hasn’t seen Otis once, even from the corner of her eye, and it’s not like she cares or anything - she hardly noticed, really, fuck off - but the clinic has been almost nonexistent and she’s got rent due Monday and this spat between them is really fucking with her source of income.

By Friday she’s said maybe ten words total to another human being (three of which being “Piss off, Isaac” when the wanker insisted on perching himself at her doorstep after she refused to answer his calls), but she found herself somewhat comforted by still having people around her. The fact is she hates the idea of going home to an empty trailer almost as much as she doesn’t want to be at school, so she sucks it up and makes plans to ask Aimee if they can walk home together. Thinks maybe she can spend the night there if she asks, too. God, she hates asking for things.

It’s not just Otis she’s avoiding. It’s everything. Her mom, her shitty fucking luck, the reality that of all the Quizheads, she’s least likely to get a full ride scholarship to Uni even though that’s the only way she can realistically afford to go. She knows she‘s destined for more than a shit job at the mall and a double wide with no heat, but she’s certain she was born in the wrong dimension, because in this one life is determined to fuck her over.

Her mind is a tangle of self-doubt but she’s trying her fucking damnedest to silence it all as she waits for Aimee by the school’s entrance, perched against a tree and attempting to focus on Silas Marner - she finds it far superior and the more relatable of George Eliot’s works, no wonder it took her so long to finish Middlemarch - but she’s been standing here for over an hour and Aimee is nowhere to be found. In fact, the front lawn is basically empty aside from a couple stoners and some horny couple grinding on a bench in the corner. She checks her phone, shoots a text to Aimee, waits five minutes for the three dots to pop up and when the message comes through, she feels her heart fall to her feet.

Steve wants to try hugging. Raincheck?

The sun is setting as she walks home alone, a crisp in the air that wasn’t there last week, and she’s trying to match her steps to her heartbeats but it’s proving harder than she’d like. Who says her breathing’s more ragged than usual? Sod off.

She wishes she hadn’t lent Erin her headphones - she’ll never see those again either - because she could really use something right now to drown out her racing thoughts. She focuses instead on the faded crescent moon rising in the sky, and by the time she walks onto the lot the sky is dark and the only thing she wants is to curl into a ball in her bed and not leave until Monday morning.

She sees the bag from far away, hanging from the door handle of her trailer. She looks left and right on impulse, wonders if it was Isaac before she feels certain it wasn’t. If her steps quicken, she’ll never admit to it.

She snags the bag quickly and slams the door behind her, fingers itching to find out what’s inside. Her hand wraps around a binder and she pulls it out slowly, suddenly nervous. A note flutters out with it and falls to her feet, and her jaw clenches as she recognizes the familiar scrawl.

You deserve better than all of us.

She stares at the message a moment more because she collapses into a seat at the table, binder spread out before her. She opens the first page and her throat tickles with the emotion of it all.

It’s a collection of paperwork, brochures and articles and informational pamphlets. Schools she mentioned, universities she’s named in passing conversations when she thought they were just killing time before his next session. He compiled them all by the areas of study she might be most interested, and she smirks despite herself that each school is color coded. He’d always busted her for organizing the clinic schedule like that. He’s even taken the time to highlight new places she hasn’t considered, places that offer creative writing programs and financial scholarships for independents.

She feels the smile on her lips but it’s like her brain catches up, stunned for a moment by the gesture, and she’s suddenly furious.

Who does he think he is? He doesn’t know what she needs, what she wants, what’s best for her. All he’s done since he came into her life was cause her pain, and now he’s trying to be some fucking savior for her? She snags a sweater strewn over the couch and is out the door before she even knows where she’s going. All she knows is that he doesn’t get to make some grand gesture and have her forgive him. It’s bullshit. She’s going to storm over there and tell him exactly where he can shove his fucking charity. He’s -

-standing in the middle of the bridge. Waiting for her.

Her breath catches in her throat and she absently notes that he looks terrified. There are so many things she wants to spit at him but for some reason she can’t find words just yet. He shocks her by speaking first.

“I didn’t want you to have to come all the way to me again,” he shrugs, the corner of his lip curling up just slightly.

She crosses her arms quickly, petulant as a child as she scoffs at him. But despite herself, she feels lighter standing before him. Damn it all to hell. “How’d you know I’d even come to you?” She’s trying for offhanded but knows she doesn’t manage it.

He scratches his ear and looks to his shoes. “I didn’t?” He has the decency to sound sheepish. “I figured I’d give it an hour or so and see if you called maybe.”

“Oh, only an hour then?” She deadpans. She gets way too much satisfaction from his rosy cheeks.

He cocks his head just so, offering her a half smile. “Maybe two,” he relents.

She feels her mouth pulling into a grin but she bites the inside of her cheek before it erupts. Instead she nods once and wrings her hands together by her chest. The silence sits between them and it’s colder out here than it was an hour ago.

“I’m sorry,” she hears him breath, and he must realize how quiet he said it because he clears his throat and meets her eyes. “I’m really sorry.” Louder this time, more conviction.

She can see the sincerity in his eyes and he always did know how to get to her. She nods this time, her mouth twisting in a wry smirk. “Yeah you should be,” she jokes, but it doesn’t feel much like a joke once it’s out of her mouth, and she feels the frustration seep back in. “You know, you can’t go around trying to manipulate me by doing something nice. Doesn’t work like that. You’re not charming, you know.”

Otis blinks. “Is that what you were coming to tell me?”

“What?”

“You were headed to my house, weren’t you? Was that what you were going to say?”

Her eyes widen, indignant, and the anger mounts. “Yes,” she demands. “You can’t just hurt me and expect it to all be okay just like that. It’s not. I trusted you, Otis, and you let me down. Everyone else is shit but I never thought you’d...” her voice catches and a small sob fills her chest but she won’t let it out. Refuses. Instead she stops, catching her breath and turning her head to the side as angry tears threaten to pour over. She digs a nail into her palm to stop them. She won’t let him do this to her again.

He takes a tentative step forward and reaches out for her slightly, and she finds great satisfaction when he retracts his hand, until she follows his gaze and realizes he must notice that she’s wearing his sweater. Shit.

It seems to embolden him though and he looks to her again. “I know, and Maeve, I know I hurt you and I was a dickhead -“

“Massive dickhead,” she elaborates.

“But I don’t think it’s all my fault.” He finishes.

She’s certain she heard him wrong.

“Excuse me?” She gapes, incredulous.

“We’ve been tiptoeing around each other for months,” Otis argues, arms up for emphasis. “All year, really. And then Jackson -

“Are you seriously turning this around on me?” She can’t believe him.

“No but -

“‘Cause it sounds like you are -“

“I’m not!” He insists. “It’s just that...you’re you! And I’m ME and, and we were friends. Such good friends, Maeve, and then you... And it just made me so angry that you didn’t tell me you liked me until things with Ola.... it’s just... I had no idea someone like you could have possibly liked someone like me.”

Her nostrils flare with her anger and she’s trying not to strangle him right this instant. She’s not sure if it’s because he doubted her or that he’s so fucking sure he’s right (and so what if he is a little?) “Right well it’s probably for the best you didn’t know. I’m the most selfish person you know, after all.”

He sighs loudly. “Maeve, of course I didn’t mean that.“

“It sounded like you did,” she quips.

“I was so drunk. I ate a whole roast chicken that night! And I was confused and I was trying to hurt you like I was hurting when of course you didn’t deserve it.”

He’s got her there.

She sniffles and crosses her arms, choosing to count the railings on the bridge rather than meet his eyes.

He sighs and reaches toward her, palms open. “I know I can’t take back what I did. And I know things are still broken between us. But... I like you, Maeve. I really, really like you.”

She looks up then, against her own will honestly, but he’s got his eyes closed. Either because he can’t look at her either or he’s mustering up the courage, she can’t be sure.

He rubs a hand over his face and chuckles ironically. “Hell I think I even love you. You’re brave and you’re resilient and you’re honest and you’re good. Life should have taken you out dozens of times already but you never let it. You’re too good for every fucking one of us and we just keep letting you down over and over. But I want to be there for you. I want to be the one you turn to. I don’t want you to feel alone or scared or hurt. And I hate that I’ve already done all those things but if you let me, if you give me a chance, I promise I won’t hurt you again. And I know, I know so many people have said that to you before, but I’m going to prove it. You don’t have to believe me, but let me prove it to you. Please. I -“

She’s not sure at what point in his speech her arms drop to her sides, when her brow smooths and her gaze softens and her lip drops just slightly. She feels the heat pool in her chest, warm and bubbling and even a little uncomfortable, blooming its way up her neck to her cheeks and face. And in her haze she really can’t remember when she steps forward and brings her mouth to his, soft but hard all at once, but she knows when she does that she’s never quite had a kiss like this in her life.

That is, because he doesn’t quite kiss her back.

Her lips are tingling but his body is like a statue before her, and she’s sure he’s unconscious but she can feel his heart thrumming beneath her hands atop his chest, and has she killed him? She pulls back slightly, exhaling a harsh breath, not daring to meet his eyes but seemingly incapable of putting more than an inch of distance between them. The barrier’s been broken now and she finds she’s never been warmer in her whole life. She’s about to say something, anything really, when his hands come up to cup her cheeks, coaxing her to look him in the eyes. Nerves grasp her now - it was so impulsive, she didn’t give it a second of thought before - but she has no time for them. She hears him swallow just as he pinches her chin and brings her mouth to his once more, and this is what their first kiss should have been. His lips are tender on hers and she wants to be closer to him all at once, so she wraps her arms around his waist and opens her mouth, feeling his breath on her tongue before his follows along. She was sure he’d be timid but it’s like his body is reacting all on its own, and she can’t help herself. Her lips curl into a smile against his mouth, and she nearly melts into a puddle when his thumb comes to the corner of her lip, the pad of his finger tracing the outline of her smile.

When they properly pull back for a breath, she can feel his eyes on her, blue crystals boring into her soul, and for the life of her she has no idea why she meets his gaze. She wants to look away but somehow she can’t, and he’s smiling at her and by God if she’s not absolutely fucking in love with this dickhead.

“You kissed me.” He tucks her hair behind her ear as he says it and she hates him even more. Her life will never be just hers again.

She licks her lips. “Tell anyone about this and I’ll bite your dick off. Okay mouth breather?” There isn’t the slightest trace of malice in her voice. It’s barely above a whisper.

Otis nods once, brow creased in mock seriousness. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

“I’m still angry at you,” she murmurs, eyes fixated on his bottom lip as she grips the ends of his shirt tighter.

He swallows hard and nods. “I know. I’m still angry with me too.”

She wants to keep the banter going but she’s got no fight in her, just butterflies wrecking havoc on her stomach and fire in her cheeks. She can’t stop staring at his lips - it’s like he’s cast a spell on her or something - and then she remembers she can do it again if she wants. This is going to be a real problem, she can tell. She’s on her tiptoes when he seems to remember the same thing, and he’s wearing the goofiest smile when he brings her face to his and leans down to kiss her again.

(It might take him a few hours to calm her down after he tells her about the missing voicemail - she could fucking murder Isaac - but he quickly finds exactly how to shut her up. If they don’t sleep that night, it’s entirely his fault.)

...

Note: this was shit but I wrote it in the notes on my phone because please let them be together next season PLEASE. It’s my first tumbler post too so sorry the format is weird as shit.

#fanfic #otis and maeve #sex education #otis x maeve #otis milburn #maeve wiley #emma mackey #sex ed s2 #sex ed netflix #asa butterfield

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aethelflaedladyofmercia · 4 years

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What Might Have Been - 21

It’s June but still here to hurt you with May prompts from @goodomenscelebration - Themes

We have now: the backstory of AU Aziraphale and how he became the Guardian of New Eden and the heartless kidnapper we all know and don’t love.

CW For torture and violence in the parts where we check in on Crowley, and perceived character death. Also for Gabriel and his stupid, stupid face.

I hope this clarifies a few things.

As always, the full story can be found on AO3.

Garden

Ten years ago

Aziraphale stood just outside Gabriel’s glass-walled office. The Archangel had seen him, of course, he saw everything. That was the point. He could certainly see Aziraphale, standing out here with his final report.

It was enormous. Typewritten. That was a special case, very special; he had always written his reports by hand. But he needed to be sure that every word was clear, that there were no misunderstandings. Also, it would have been rather a lot of ink.

Gabriel finally met his eyes and waved him in.

It was time.

Trying to control the trembling in his heart, Aziraphale stepped through the door, into the brightly-lit office. He should probably smile, but that seemed to be asking too much.

“Ah, Aziraphale. How go the preparations? Only a few more years!” He smiled, angelic and benign, and it hurt. This was where Aziraphale was supposed to be, surely, every moment of his time on earth had been a mistake! He should burn this report to ashes and beg to be allowed…

He let the emotion pass. He’d thought about this very hard. He’d made his decision.

He placed the report on Gabriel’s desk. It was over eight hundred pages, clothbound, with a tan cover.

Then Aziraphale stepped back, letting out his breath. No going back now.

“What is this?” Gabriel spun the book, frowning at it distastefully. “I’ve asked you before not to use such…unusual materials for your reports.”

“This seemed fitting.”

“Are these the battle plans I asked for?” He lifted the cover with one finger, peering at the pages inside. “I’m no expert, Aziraphale, but I thought maps would involve pictures, not words.”

“It is not. This is my…confession.” Aziraphale clasped and twisted his hands behind his back.

Gabriel let the cover fall, standing up. He towered over Aziraphale. The light in his eyes had turned to something dark and terrifying. “Confessions are for humans raised with too much guilt. Not angels.”

“I…have a very guilty conscience. I cannot go forward in our plans for the end times without coming clean.” He let his eyes fall to the book, trying to find the courage to go on. “I have written out my sins in great detail. This should help you to decide my punishment without needless delay.”

“And you’re just going to stand there while I…read…all of this?”

Aziraphale bit his lip. “I…suppose I didn’t think that part through.”

“Just give me the highlights,” Gabriel snapped, sitting back down in his chair, pushing the book away.

“Highlights. Yes.” Aziraphale’s mind raced, trying to find the right words. “For the last…two thousand years, give or take…I have been in a…a relationship with the demon Crowley.”

A long silence. “And what precisely was the nature of this relationship?”

“It’s all in…” he met the forbidding look in Gabriel’s eyes, then turned away. “Yes. Ah. It was many things. We had a…professional Arrangement. Er. An emotional one. A…a physical one.”

“Physical.” Gabriel stood again, slamming his hands on the table. “You are an angel, Aziraphale. Are you telling me you let a demon violate you?”

Clenching his fists, Aziraphale tried again to meet those eyes, but he could see the weight of his depravity in them. “It was mutual. Everything we did was mutual.”

“How many times?”

“I…” Aziraphale blinked considering. “Well, I rather lost count, but I put as many into the report as I could recall.”

Gabriel’s mouth dropped in horror. He pulled the book towards him and flipped to a page at random. “It was on this occasion that I discovered Crowley has the most delightfully sensitive area at the base of his throat, and when I…ugh…” He turned to a different page. “As we sat on the cliffs overlooking the ships gathered in the Bay of Biscay, Crowley asked me if I thought the English would defeat them. Feeling great pride for the island where I have made my home, I told Crowley that the English could triumph over any number of ships. He asked if I wanted to put a wager on it. I told him that if the Spanish won he could…ugh…but if the English won, I would…I…” Gabriel turned the page, and then the next one. “And Crowley asked me to prove I could actually…why would you think I would want to read any of this?”

“I have always suspected that in between our bouts of lovemaking that night, Crowley slipped out and miracled up the storms that delayed the Armada. Which was not very sporting of him, he should have simply admitted defeat.”

“Aziraphale, I don’t want to know – wait, wasn’t the Spanish Armada one of ours?”

“It was. I rather got caught up in the heat of the moment. Though I do recall I told you that my efforts had been thwarted by Hell’s agent on Earth, and that I had already begun making him pay. That’s all detailed in the next bit.”

“This…” Gabriel’s face took on an expression that made Aziraphale’s spine tingle with fear and shame. “This disgusting display…I’ve never seen anything like this…”

Here it came. Would Gabriel make him Fall immediately, or would it require some sort of council? Did it hurt, apart from the pool of sulfur? Would he feel his angelic nature ripped away?

He should have asked Crowley these questions centuries ago. Aziraphale braced himself and waited.

“Get out of my sight. I need to decide what to do with you.”

Aziraphale looked at the door behind him. “But…surely I…”

“Get out!”

Nine years, six months ago

Customers wandered through Aziraphale’s shop. He didn’t even have the energy to follow them. He’d sold four books in the last month, too distressed to even think of preventing it.

There had been no word from Gabriel.

Could they make him Fall at any time? Or did he need to be present in Heaven for it to happen? Would God be there personally? That would surely be enough to break his resolve.

He knew he would wind up in Hell. That much he was certain of. Would the demons be told he was coming? Who would be waiting to receive him?

Aziraphale sold another copy of Persuasion. Not that it mattered.

Nine years, three months ago

Aziraphale stood in Gabriel’s office again. The Archangel gave him his full attention this time, arms crossed, face hard, the book sitting on the desk beside him. The waiting, the endless waiting, had worn Aziraphale down, but he rallied himself as best he could. He would face this, on his feet, ready for whatever came.

“Have you…decided?”

“Don’t speak, Aziraphale. I’m still very unhappy with you. The amount of detail that went into this report was…entirely unnecessary. In fact, that’s what tipped me off as to your deception.”

“My…”

“I said don’t speak. Ugh. You know, I could hear your voice the whole time I was reading this and it did not help in any way. I just…” He shuddered. “But. It was around the fifth time you described that…that noise the demon made when you did that…thing to his ear…”

“It’s called kissing, Gabriel.”

“What did I say?” He glared until Aziraphale clasped his hands behind his back and nodded quietly. “Right. Anyway, I realized this wasn’t just some attempt to clear your conscience. Your exceedingly filthy conscience. You were trying to get a reaction out of me.”

Aziraphale shook his head, trying to object, but he couldn’t have spoken even if Gabriel had allowed it.

“Yes! And what reaction could you be trying to get? What would be the result if I actually lost my temper? Then I realized.” He picked up the thick book in both hands. “This isn’t just a four hundred-thousand-word smut fest. In between all that…that, you kept going on and on about how clever and kind this demon is, how he actually cares for humanity, how he puts up a show of nihilism because he can’t stand to see them suffer – and, somehow, all that was worse.” He slammed the book down on his desk. “So. Aziraphale. Does the demon Crowley know you’re in love with him?”

He went very still.

“Yes. I expect you to answer that.”

“I. No, I’m not…everything we did was just to, to, to pass the time in as indulgent a way as possible, and, and yes, I partook in, I’m fairly certain, all the major sins. I was merely trying to document – but love, no, that, that was never—”

“Aziraphale.” Gabriel cringed. “Don’t make me read all this and then lie to me about it.”

Aziraphale trembled. He brought his hands forward, tugging at the wrists of his jacket, twisting his cufflinks. He’d been prepared to answer any question, but not this.

“I…thought he suspected. I thought we both hinted at it. But. In Paris, I tried to make him aware of my feelings and…he left.” He could still hear Crowley’s whisper, I’ll see you in London. In our bookshop. Aziraphale had waited, and waited, with growing despair, until he realized Crowley was simply never going to come. “So, either he has no idea, or he does and…doesn’t care.”

“And doesn’t know that you’re attempting to Fall for him right now.” Aziraphale deflated. “Yes, it was absolutely that obvious. Ugh.” Gabriel walked closer, hands folded in front of him, almost pleading. “Why? That’s the thing I can’t figure out. This has to be the most elaborate attempted defection in history.”

“I’m not defecting,” Aziraphale said quickly. “I don’t – I’m not going to reveal any of Heaven’s plans, even if they, they lock me up and torture me for the length of the war, which I rather suspect they will. But. Afterwards…”

“Afterwards, they lose. And all those who survive will be locked in the dark for eternity.” He said it with perfect confidence, as if it had already happened. Had Aziraphale ever been so certain? “Why would you want to be on the losing side?”

“Because, win or lose…I don’t want to spend eternity without him. And if the only place that will take us both is the darkest pits of perdition…that’s where I shall go.”

“And your duties?”

“I know.” He bowed his head. “Choosing between humanity and Crowley is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I know the war will be difficult, and they deserve their Guardian, but…Crowley will be alone. And…if I can’t have both…if I must choose….”

“And if you didn’t have to choose?”

“That’s impossible,” Aziraphale started. “Heaven would have to agree to…” He glanced up to find Gabriel watching him, lips pursed, eyebrows raised.

Was the Archangel saying what Aziraphale thought he was saying? For the first time in nearly a year, the fear faded, being replaced with something rather like hope. “You…you mean you’d actually…”

“Aziraphale, you’re one of our best agents, dalliances notwithstanding.” He waved a hand back towards the book. “We’re not going to let you go. Not when you have so much to do for us.”

“Would…would Crowley…Ascend?” It was more than he could have hoped for.

Gabriel tipped his head, uncertain. “Hmmm, it’s never been done. It would take more than just my recommendation, and he would need to be an exemplary prisoner during the war.”

“P – prisoner?”

“Well, on paper. Not sure how else we could arrange it. Plus there’s security to think of – our secrets and his safety. A cell with a warden would probably be best. I don’t know how comfortable it would be, but you were willing to spend the war at the mercies of Hell’s torturers. I can’t imagine this would be worse.”

“I…” It was suddenly difficult to think rationally. “I could…I don’t know how to contact him. He might not even be in London anymore…I doubt he would trust me enough to…”

“Look I’m not going to…thank you for my pornography, but it has given me some insight into his mind. I think he’ll try to get in touch with you again. Let me know as soon as it happens, and we’ll make a plan.”

“Could I visit him?” He had so much to say, and for a moment the hope wiped out every other possibility from his mind. He was ready to agree to anything, just to have Crowley in his arms again.

But Gabriel huffed out a breath. “I don’t want to promise anything, Aziraphale. You’re going to be very busy during the war. But I think we can arrange something. Video calls? I don’t know. But this is the best offer you’re going to get. Keep working with us during the war – do your duty – and afterwards, eternity with your…” He waved his hand vaguely over the book. “…your demon. Preferably very far from me.”

There was a lot to consider. Aziraphale pulled on the fabric of his waistcoat, straightened his lapels, and finally adjusted his bow tie. “I…yes, I will keep you informed. And you promise he will not be harmed while I lead my platoon?”

“Platoon?” Gabriel grinned. “I would not be going out of my way like this for a mere platoon leader. Aziraphale, your reports over the last six thousand years have inspired a whole new project. Let me tell you about New Eden.”

Seven years, three months ago

Aziraphale stood at the drafting table, surrounded by architects and blueprints. “No, this is all wrong. The scale of it! The original Garden only held one Man and one Woman. We can’t simply reuse the same design. New Eden will hold billions. It would have to be the size of…Australia, at least! Where are Milkiel’s plans?”

Another set of drawings moved across the table. “Yes, this is what we’ll need.” He nodded to Milkiel, who beamed proudly. “It’s a start at least, but more rivers – here, and here, and we can’t just ignore the deserts, or the swamps. I believe if we…”

“Another change of plans,” Hizkiel appeared suddenly behind Aziraphale, holding a sealed message tube. “The number of Elect has been reduced. Gabriel has suggested a few alterations.” Aziraphale unrolled the slip of paper inside and took it in with a glance, eyes going wide.

The Archangels had gathered in Gabriel’s office, a serious council of blazing wings and stern faces. Ordinarily, Aziraphale would be too terrified to enter. Never mind the power the Archangels had over him and over the world – interrupting was just rude.

But this was not something that could wait.

“Gabriel, you can’t—” He took a deep breath as hundreds of eyes turned on him, burning out from the flaming wings of the Archangels. “I’m – I’m so sorry to intrude, most…most Holy Archangel Gabriel, on your matters of great import but…a quarter of a million people?”

“Aziraphale.” His wings snapped back into place, leaving only the human-shaped body to tower over the Principality of Earth. “Are you questioning our wisdom?”

“I – I – I think there must be some mistake, surely, I was told the Elect would be all of the humans found worthy, and – and that the children…”

He saw the way Gabriel glanced at the other Archangels, rolling his eyes. “Let me handle this.” His hand fell heavily on Aziraphale’s shoulder as he steered them both out of the office and back into the main halls of Heaven.

“Aziraphale. Stop. How many humans did you think we were going to save? According to the prophecies – your prophecies which you bring up in every planning session – barely a third of the humans will even make it to the final year. That includes the ones we take. We only ever planned for those who are worthy.”

“But…there are two billion children in the world right now…I thought, if we started early…”

“No. Obviously not. That just isn’t feasible. Look. It’s like the Ark.” Gabriel spread his hands. “You remember the Ark? We had to send a message. We tested, and how many did we find worthy? Hm? One family. Same with Sodom and Gomorrah. One family, and the mother didn’t even make it.”

“But…this is the end of the world. You can’t be suggesting…”

“A quarter of a million people is extremely generous. That’s at least ten families per city! And, yes, we can prioritize children, they’re easier to keep in line, anyway.”

Aziraphale lowered his head, struggling to handle the shift, to think clearly. “So…this means…I suppose this means something of a redesign is in order.”

“Yes! Good thinking. Now. I have business to attend to. You take care of that, and I’ll follow up at the end of the day. Keep up the good work!” With another shoulder clap – hard enough to hurt – Gabriel headed back into his office.

Aziraphale’s feet led him to the planning table, to the team of engineers and architects he had been assigned, and stared at the plans for New Eden, glowing, shining cities that would provide everything for the humans, with rolling stretches of countryside in between. Slowly, he crumpled them up.

He stared at the blank piece of paper before him, then reached for a pencil. “Alright. New plan. I’ll make alterations as we go, but we’ll start with a shape like this…”

Seven years, six weeks ago

Aziraphale paced outside the heavy door that he’d never seen in Heaven’s halls before. It didn’t match the aesthetic.

It would be fine. Once he could get in and explain to Crowley, he would understand. This was really best for everyone. Even better, with Crowley’s information, surely, they could halve the death count, at least, maybe more. He just needed five minutes.

It had been six hours.

Suddenly, the door opened. He rushed forward, as Shoftiel stepped out, pulling it shut behind him. “How is he? Is he comfortable? Did he ask for me?” Aziraphale took a breath, smoothing his lapels. “I mean, I assume our guest is awake?”

“He was,” Shoftiel said with a smile, partly hidden behind his thick beard. “But he’s rather tired, so I think he’ll sleep a bit longer.” His eyes sparkled, just a little. “He isn’t being very cooperative yet, or polite, but I think we can reach an understanding.”

“Oh, oh, thank you. Listen, I know he can be a – a little prickly, but just let me speak to him alone, and I can have all this sorted out.”

“I don’t think he wants to see you.” He tested the door and started walking away.

“I – I do understand that. But, please, this is – I know how to handle him, I can make him talk.” He reached out a hand and rested it on Shoftiel’s arm. “Just give me a few minutes and…”

There was a spot of blood on Shoftiel’s sleeve. Demonic blood.

“What did you…what did you do?”

“I told you, he wasn’t being very cooperative.”

A surge of rage rose in Aziraphale’s chest, boiling up through his mind. Power rolled off him in waves. “What did you do?”

“I gave him a little encouragement is all.” Shoftiel might not have even noticed the storm of celestial energy brewing around them. “Please, Principality, this is my job. Let me work.”

“I need to see Crowley!” Aziraphale grabbed the other angel by the collar and threw him against the wall. “This instant!”

“Aziraphale!” Gabriel appeared at the end of the hall. All the power Aziraphale had gathered dissipated in a breath. “There’s no need for you to lose your temper like this. What happened?”

“This – this—” he made himself calm down. “This bad angel has done…something…to Crowley. I demand to see him right now.”

“Demand?” Gabriel glanced at Shoftiel. “I assume this was necessary?”

“He’s very unwilling to speak at the moment. I have not caused him any permanent harm, of course, but you do need to earn a demon’s respect, and their methods can be quite brutal. One he’s ready to cooperate, I can lighten up.” He waved a hand towards the Principality. “He also declined my offer to have Aziraphale visit.”

“Well. That all seems reasonable.” Gabriel clapped his hands and smiled. “Back to work, then. World isn’t going to end itself!”

“What? No!” Aziraphale clenched his fists. “This isn’t what I agreed to. You…you said he would be safe…”

“If he cooperates. Which he isn’t. Yet.” He patted Aziraphale on the shoulder. “I’m sure it’s just a matter of time. And I’ll check in and make sure there’s nothing excessive going on.”

“Excessive?” Aziraphale felt very ill, in a way he never had in his life. “I don’t…Surely you must see that any amount of violence is excessive, he’s our prisoner. We’re the good guys.”

“Well, yes, he’s a prisoner. We do what we must to ensure he behaves. Rules of War.” One last smile from Gabriel. “Now let’s get you back to work. Only a few weeks left! Have you chosen a location for your Garden yet?”

Aziraphale glanced over his shoulder towards the door one last time. Crowley was clever. He wasn’t very loyal to Hell. Surely, he would understand that a little information was all he needed to keep himself safe. He would have to trust that Crowley knew how to protect himself.

Meanwhile, there was a job that only Aziraphale could do. It’ll be fine. This is for the best…

Seven years ago

Somewhere over Megiddo, the war had started. Abaddon, general of Hell, led the Demonic Legions against Michael’s Hosts of Heaven. Human bombs flew, and fell.

But it was just another war in a distant land. In the English countryside, it hadn’t even registered yet.

Aziraphale walked the fields with his survey crew.

“Then the wall will come around this way, curving like this and go straight for a bit. Hmmm. That tree is in the way.”

“Is it?” One of the surveyors asked. “We can just cut it down. We’re already passing through dozens—”

“No-no-no!” Aziraphale waved his hands. “This tree, really it’s a very good one. For climbing and whatnot. The children will appreciate it. We want to go around. Starting here we want to curve out like this, and then back in again over there.”

The surveyors looked at the altered map. “That seems…” one started “…unnecessary. Why so much space around it?”

“It’s a climbing tree. The children need room to – run or play conkers or whatever it is children do these days.”

“We could just move the tree,” the other surveyor pointed out. “Or plant a new one.”

Aziraphale sighed. “Am I being a bit distracted? I’m terribly sorry.” He started rolling the plans up. “There have been so many changes in the past few years, I’m just tying to preserve some of my original…well, never mind. I’ve noted down everything else we discussed. Just need to get Gabriel to sign off on—”

A buzz in his pocket; Aziraphale pulled out the flat device Heaven used for communication. He did miss the days when he was less…tethered, but his heart leapt when he saw it was Gabriel.

“Yes? Hello? Is it Crowley? Has he asked to see me? Shoftiel said he’d tell him, days ago—”

“No, Aziraphale, this isn’t about setting up your…tryst. Get to London. Immediately.”

The city of London was surrounded by a brilliant glow, hotter than a sun, colder than the vacuum of space. Walls of sunlight-colored glow encircled the city in an uneven loop, 15 or 20 miles out.

The energy that came off it wasn’t holy. It wasn’t demonic. It was something else entirely.

Aziraphale placed a hand against it. A wall of power forming a physical barrier. Nothing could cross that.

“Thizz izz not what we were told!” Beelzebub shouted angrily. “The field reportzz zzaid it would be the dread szigil Odegra.” Ze slammed a fist into the light. “Hell izz getting no power off thisz! It doesz nothing!”

“Nor is Heaven,” Gabriel assured zir. “I don’t know how this could – ah, Aziraphale. What is going on here?”

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” he said, as evenly as he could.

“Yes, but you—” Gabriel shot a look at Beelzebub and pulled Aziraphale further aside. “You lived in this city for two centuries. You had an – an understanding with Hell’s top field agent. Are you telling me you never noticed? Never heard a word about this project?”

“You know perfectly well I hadn’t spoken to Crowley in two hundred twenty-six years!”

“Look at this,” Gabriel blustered on, pointing at the wall of force. “Just look! This is supposed to be the sigil Odegra. We planned for that, we had ways to counter it, and the strength it would give the Opposition. We had a schedule! How are we supposed to keep to it if we can’t get near this, huh? All of the major cities are scheduled to be destroyed within a month. I need a solution, now.”

“What – no, no one told me about that!”

“Change of plans,” The Archangel waved off his objections. “We’ll get you the paperwork soon. This is more urgent. What is it, and why can’t we get in?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea. But New Eden isn’t ready yet, and you promised me, ten families—”

“That was an estimate! Move with the times, Aziraphale. We’ll find another way to get your hundred and twenty-five thousand souls.”

“Hundred and – that’s half—”

“Aziraphale! Focus.” He slapped a hand against the wall of force. It made no more difference than a child hitting a stone wall. “I was pulled away from Megiddo for this. Get me answers.”

Aziraphale stared at the wall running outside the M25. A few cars had collided with the solid barrier, which cut infinitely up into the sky and down below the earth, slicing through the flyovers and underpasses. The humans had learned quickly. All exits out of London were closed, small crowds milling around, hands pressed to the barrier. Behind them, green fields stretched to the suburbs, and beyond that rose the city itself.

Nearly ten million people lived inside the M25. Ten million people Heaven couldn’t reach, couldn’t save.

“Gabriel. I have no idea what this could be.” He took a deep breath. “But I am certain Crowley is behind it. He as much as told me, the one time we spoke. And he would have designed it with a way to get himself out. I’m afraid you’ll have to ask him.”

Sandalphon slammed Crowley against the wall hard enough to crack his spine, but for the moment all he could do was laugh.

“None of you checked. Not one of you ever checked. Those diacritics will get you every time.”

“Fine. You’ve had your laugh.” Gabriel smiled as if to show he knew what a joke looked like. “Tell me how to get in.”

“You don’t. No one does. No angels, no demons, no humans. The people of London are safe from you bastards. Have your war elsewhere.”

Gabriel rubbed at his eye. “We had plans. This – this delay is not what I want today. That city needs to be nuked, those souls need to be sent to their rewards and punishments, and Michael is supposed to be running the European warfront out of the ruins. She is not going to be happy.”

“Ooh, I’ve never had an angel be mad at me before.” Sandalphon’s fist drove into his stomach again, but he didn’t care. It had worked. His plan had bloody worked.

“You realize,” Gabriel said, bearing down on him, “that you’ve left ten million people to die in there?”

“You were going to kill them!”

“No, the war was going to kill them. But at least it would have been quick. Now they’re going to starve to death, slowly, as their supplies run out. Probably get diseases, contaminated water, and they’ll tear each other apart over what supplies they have. You’ve accomplished nothing.”

“I ruined your day. Seems good enough for me.”

Gabriel grabbed a bottle of holy water off the table and charged Crowley. The demon barely had time to brace himself before Gabriel’s hand slammed his face back into the wall. “Give me one reason not to, because I have had enough of your attitude!”

“Go ahead!” Crowley closed his eyes, gritted his teeth, and waited.

And kept waiting.

Gabriel and Sandalphon stepped back, letting him drop to the floor.

“No,” Gabriel said. “Aziraphale was certain you knew a way through. We’ll find it.”

When they left, hours later, Crowley was battered and bleeding on the floor.

But London was still safe.

Six years, two months ago

Aziraphale led Gabriel proudly through the Garden of New Eden. The inner Garden, that is, which was just a temporary arrangement.

“The outer wall will be rather more extensive. We need to accommodate the territories of various animals, make sure all the biomes are represented, and of course there will be unforeseen needs as we build the villages.”

“Didn’t think we needed villages. The original Eden didn’t have them.”

“Well, yes, but the original humans didn’t know any other life.” He saw Gabriel’s expression, and quickly changed tactics. ”Ah, I’m sure it’s just temporary, until they fully settle, but I want to make them as comfortable as possible in the meantime. Of course, sedentary humans will take up less space, so if you really want no dwellings, that probably means more extensions…”

“Aziraphale, don’t bore me with the architectural details, I have a war to worry about.” He glanced at his communication device, then held up a map of the world. “Our nuclear exchange did not go off as planned, so there are too many surviving cities. Humans are already making they way through our battlefields to try and reach them, and how are we supposed to handle that? Hm? Can’t let the demons have them.”

“No, of course not! So – you’ll be happy to hear that building the Inner Garden has allowed me to begin collecting the Elect already. Here – just up ahead.”

He gestured to a small collection of white cottages. Several families stood outside, parents clutching children, looking terrified. “They, ah, they are still acclimating, of course—”

“Aziraphale.” Gabriel placed a hand on his shoulder and turned him away. “Who are these people?”

“I – I – I’m sorry, I used your list…”

“This list?” Gabriel pulled it up on his communication device. “I see three names checked off. Three of these people should be here. There’s at least twenty.”

“W – well, yes, but, I realized the names were children. They need caretakers.”

Gabriel looked at him, confused. “They have you.”

“I, yes, and thank you for entrusting me…but I thought…well wouldn’t it be better to keep the families together? It will add up a little, but I’ve been running some numbers…”

“Hey, hey…” Gabriel held up his hands. “What is all this? You got this position because you trust the system. That’s all I need you to do. Just…receive you orders and do as you’re told. Don’t complicate things.”

Aziraphale reached for his bow tie, but there wasn’t one on his military uniform. He tugged at the jacket instead. “I really…I do trust the system, Gabriel. But. You must understand that humans are more…more complicated than they appear on paper. I have six thousand years of observing them, and, well, I had to make a judgement call. This is…I wish to at least try. As an experiment. Perhaps you will prove right in the end, but I want to see for myself.” He nodded. Gabriel hadn’t said anything. This wasn’t so bad, after all, except for the knot in his stomach, the way his lungs seemed to be filled with glass. “I will, of course, keep you updated on their progress.”

Gabriel looked at Aziraphale for a long moment. “I’ll tell you what. Let me think this over, ask the other Archangels, and I’ll get back to you tonight, alright?”

The tension Aziraphale had been feeling since his first retrieval started to dissolve. “Oh, oh thank you. Yes. That is – yes, please. Take your time and think it over.”

“I will. Look for a message tonight.”

Aziraphale took the message in what he was coming to think of as his office. It wasn’t an office, by any stretch of the imagination, but it was private – no one knew the spot but him – and it had a lovely view of a field with a tree in the middle of it.

With a little difficulty – modern technology still made him uncomfortable – Aziraphale managed to get the video to start playing.

Gabriel sat at his desk, smiling at an unseen camera. “Hello, Aziraphale. I’ve talked your proposal over with a few of the others. This is what we think.”

The camera cut to Crowley, chained to a wall, screaming.

There was already one knife buried in his ribs, and an angel was cutting into him again and again with another. Crowley screamed, over and over, on and on, jerking his arms against the chains that held him, kicking his feet against the wall.

It went on for two minutes.

Then the camera cut back to Gabriel, still smiling in his office. “Get rid of the extra humans. And next time your orders come in…don’t question them. At all.”

The device tumbled from Aziraphale’s fingers.

In six thousand years, he’d never vomited before.

Aziraphale made it most of the way to a nearby bush before his corporation took over, and he violently heaved out what felt like every meal he’d ever eaten.

When he was done – when he was empty – he collapsed on the grass, sobbing.

“Crowley!” He clapped a hand over his mouth to keep himself from screaming again, but the tears poured from his eyes.

It was so much worse than he could have imagined.

His clothes had been torn, decayed, clearly ripped apart and never replaced, his shirt little more than a collection of rags hanging from his shoulders. His hair that he always took such pride in, was long and matted and filthy, portions of it torn out. The blood, the feathers, the scars…

And the twisted, horrible look on his face…

“Crowley…I’m…I’m sorry…” Even to himself, the words sounded weak, pointless. He clutched at his stomach, choking on tears. “I thought…I really thought…I’m a fool. I’m so sorry…”

The entire plan had been a gamble, right from the beginning. To save Crowley, to save everyone, Aziraphale had been willing to risk anything.

But the stakes were too high, the rules kept changing, and he no longer thought he could win. He was starting to think there was no winning.

From the sky above, thick with clouds that never parted, came the sound of Trumpets, bringing him orders. Where to send the unwanted humans. Where to go to retrieve the next batch, who to take, who to leave.

He didn’t need to let them take over his mind to know what the orders were. He could hold back, keep his mind intact, make decisions for himself.

But making decisions was what had gotten him into this mess. And just at the moment, he couldn’t stand to be around himself.

The orders washed over him, and his mind drifted away.

Five years, eight months ago

“They’re loud,” Gabriel complained, looking over the crowd of humans.

“Yes, many of them are unhappy with the method of their arrival.” Aziraphale reached a hand towards one of the children, but she immediately scrambled away, screaming. “But in a little time, they will settle down. Already they have begun forming new families.”

Across the field, under a few trees carefully selected for the width of their branches and the cool shadows they cast, several teenagers sat with younger children in their laps, talking soothingly to them, making sure they ate.

Gabriel scowled. “What is that?”

“That? Er, dinner time?”

“No, that.” Gabriel stormed across the field, and the children scattered before him, vanishing into the sorts of hiding places only the very young can find. One of the teenagers didn’t move fast enough, and Gabriel caught her arm, spinning her back. “Right here. On her face. She’s one of them.”

Aziraphale looked at the Mark. It wasn’t hidden – they couldn’t really be hidden, not to angels, certainly not when located on the chin like that.

“But, she’s also one of ours. Mariana was on the list you gave me. She’s one of the best residents of New Eden, one of the few that…that trust me, that help with the others.”

“Let go of me!” The girl twisted in his arm, kicking at the Archangel’s shin. “Let go, you horrible, pestilent wanker, you miserable—”

“I admit she has a bit of a temper, but…she was chosen for a reason. She belongs here.”

Gabriel grabbed her jaw to quiet her and glared at Aziraphale. “When they take the Mark, they give up our protection. It’s in the oath they take. We can’t have damned souls in our new paradise, can we?”

“But…like many people, Mariana didn’t have a choice. She lived an exemplary life before, did so much to help others, and surely we can forgive—”

“Aziraphale.” Gabriel shoved her into his arms. “Get rid of her. Do not take any of the Marked, ever again. It really isn’t that difficult.”

“But…”

“And expect another message tonight.”

Aziraphale went cold, trembling. “No. No, you don’t have to…don’t do this…”

“I don’t want to have to be the bad guy here, Aziraphale. Just. Do your job as ordered.”

In a flash of light, Gabriel was gone.

“You…you won’t send me away, will you?” Mariana grabbed his arm. “Please. You said I could be safe here, you said you’d give me another chance! I did everything you asked!”

“You did. But a Judgement has been made. And now you must go.”

She shoved him away. “You can’t just throw me out! Where the Hell am I supposed to go? The Marked won’t take me back, not after I’ve been here. If you put me out there I will die.”

“You’re…you’re very resourceful, my dear. I’m sure…you’ll find a way…”

“You lying sack of shit!” All around them, faces turned, people emerged from where they hid every time the angels came close. There were hundreds of witnesses. “You call yourself our Guardian, you say you’ll protect us, but the world is ending, people are dying and all you do is sit here and redesign your fucking garden walls. Nothing you do is going to matter! Because this place is corrupt, and you are corrupt, and everything is—”

She vanished.

That night, Aziraphale curled up on the seat in his office, watching his communication device as Crowley screamed and twisted, chained to a table, boiling sulfur poured over him again and again. There was nothing Aziraphale could do, but watch, and suffer along with him, and cry.

“I don’t know what to do, my love,” he whispered. “I can’t help them. I can’t help you. I’m useless.”

On the screen, Crowley managed to catch his breath. “Fuck you, Gabriel!” He shouted. “Fuck all of you, fuck the angels, fuck every last one of—AAAAAAH!” Another wave of liquid over him.

Four days ago

“I don’t know how we managed to get so many troublemakers in New Eden,” Gabriel complained, walking away from the holding pen. “All of them were on the lists?”

“Oh, yes,” Aziraphale said cheerfully. “Exactly according to the Plan.” This was much easier if he didn’t think of anything but the Plan.

“Well. Once we send this bunch out into the world, make an example of them, the rest will fall into line.”

“Of course. You are wise, as always, Gabriel.” He nodded to one of his squads to begin delivering the humans to the pre-selected locations. “They will need to be replaced, of course.”

“Fine, yes, I’ll send an updated list tonight, along with your other message. Price of failure, you understand. Nothing personal.”

Hardly a flicker crossed Aziraphale’s face. “I understand. How else will I learn?”

“Excellent. See? Consistent discipline always brings obedience. The same will work for the humans.” He glanced at the rapidly emptying holding pen, then scowled at the wall beyond. “Is that an extension? Did I approve that?”

“Just a small one. There was an issue with the drainage in that corner, and we needed to take care of it while there was still land outside to co-opt. Do you need to see the overall plans? I have a report prepared—”

“No, it’s fine. Whatever. Just a few more days, right?”

“I expect we will be quite busy. I’ve already added several new angels to the retrieval squads.” He nodded to Ishliah, who was marching with her new unit.

“Perfect. Yes.” Gabriel took one last look around, distracted. “Oh, one more thing. We’ve had reports of a gang of hundreds of humans moving south…”

Two hours ago

Aziraphale sat in his office, head leaning against the window, watching the video play again and again.

“What do you want? Just ask me a question, I’ll – AAAAH! Stop! Please, don’t – AAAAH!” Then, in the pause, “…Aziraphale…”

It looked like Crowley. It sounded like Crowley, his voice at least.

But Crowley never asked why they were hurting him.

And Crowley had never once, not in seven years, called Aziraphale’s name.

The other Aziraphale had confirmed it. Somehow, this wasn’t his Crowley.

Which could only mean one thing.

You didn’t need a replacement if the original was still there.

Aziraphale opened the door and stepped out of his office, onto the narrow road. He’d let the road itself become overgrown, the grass in the field grow long, but the Bentley he used as a private room was still in perfect condition, paint shining, waiting for the demon who would never return.

Aziraphale shut the door and leaned on it, feeling the hot metal against his head. The sun was still bright, here in paradise, while the rest of the world fell apart, while Crowley’s stars fell from the sky.

What did it even matter anymore?

“I’m so sorry, my love,” he whispered, leaning against the car as if it was Crowley’s chest, one last time. “I thought…I really believed…” But it was too late now. Crowley was gone, forever. “I hope you were defiant to the end.”

He stepped away from the car, wiping his eyes, and spread his wings wide, humming a perfect, clear note.

Fifteen angels appeared around him. His most trusted squad. His best agents.

“There’s been a change in plans,” he informed them. “Our final course has been moved up.” A soft murmur ran through the gathered angels. “I know. But time is short. Hit hard. Take everyone. And then…we breach London itself.”

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naturalnein · 5 years

Text

how I wish our last time wasn’t really our last

The second day dawns. Beau’s neck hurts from the way she slept against the window of the carriage.

Yasha is gone. Again.

It’s not like she expected much less. But maybe she hoped, just the slightest bit, that they could all scream and mourn together and forgo the storm chasing, if even for a day.

—

(The Mighty Nein’s breaking and binding in the wake of Mollymauk Tealeaf, and their reflections on the road back to Zadash)

alternatively, read on ao3 and leave a comment

…

The second day dawns. Beau’s neck hurts from the way she slept against the window of the carriage.

Yasha is gone. Again.

It’s not like she expected much less. Beau has never had friends—not before the man sleeping across from her, that is, not before the people in the cart outside—but she can only imagine losing one that you’d had for a long time would hurt like hell. Hurt enough to scream and mourn and chase the nearest storm.

It’s not like she expected much less. But maybe she hoped, just the slightest bit, that they could all scream and mourn together and forgo the storm chasing, if even for a day.

Beau doesn’t know what kind of comfort Yasha finds in the thunder, or anything of the deity that beckons from them. She’s not religious, not beyond what they instilled in her at the monastery. There’s never been a god or goddess, not one she’s heard of at least, that she’d want to have authority over her. It’s just a matter of principal: she is done having her life in someone else’s hands. No one controls Beau but Beau.

So really there’s a thousand reasons why she could never possibly understand Yasha’s purpose, Yasha’s faith, Yasha.

But as the sun cracks over the horizon, the grave of Mollymauk Tealeaf now miles behind them, Yasha Nydoorin one with the passing storms in the east, Beau prays. It’s clumsy, it’s apparent she’s not a woman of the gods, but it’s a prayer all the same. To whoever is listening. She just wants Yasha to be okay, in time, and to come back to them. She wants all of her new friends to be okay. Fuck, she herself wants to be okay. It’s such a small request, surely—

Caleb stirs, eyes closed when he clutches at his cloak, just startling awake from sleep.

Beau unfolds her clasped hands before he can see her, ignoring the flush of embarrassment rising her cheeks—like she was caught doing something she shouldn’t have, which she wasn’t—and pretends to be asleep. It’s such a stupid thing anyway, she backpedals, to talk to immortal beings in the sky who don’t give a shit about you.

Fuck all of them, Beau has done just fine on her own thus far. She’ll make sure her friends are okay all by herself.

…

The third day dawns. Nott didn’t sleep, tucked into a fetal position staring up into the vast ink-black sky, now fading to the pinks and oranges of morning.

Fjord and Caduceus join her and Jester in the cart at night and it’s overcrowded—really firbolgs are taller than any creature should be, who needs that much leg length? It’s unsettling—but Nott doesn’t really mind. She enjoys it just a bit, if she’s honest. It makes it easier to watch over them all at once.

She’d been fine sleeping in Caleb’s hut two nights ago, with comfy pillows and blankets and the knowledge that their captured friends were alive and safe; the knowledge that they were all going to be alive and safe by morning with all of the spells he had set in place to protect them. On the open road it feels different. Caleb is a full carriage ahead of them, further away than she’d ever want him to be, and the illusion spell on the cart feels feeble in comparison to any of his amazing tricks.

So Nott stays awake, watching over her remaining companions.

In the very beginning, Caleb had been nothing to her but an unlikely acquaintance. A strange, lost man who could be of use to her. They were comrades by convenience and convenience only, until the day where Nott woke early to find him sleeping with a book covering his face and Frumpkin curled into his side and she realized she would give her life for him. It had been that easy.

And now, months later, she’s watching herself give in to the same vulnerabilities. She’s watching herself begin to love these new friends she’s made. Even Mr. Clay, who is weird and makes tea out of dead people, but still risked his life to rescue Jester and Fjord and Yasha, people he didn’t even know. Just as Caleb had become in an instant, they’re all Nott’s family now. They’re Nott’s. Which means she isn’t going to let bald, floating fuck-faces ever take them again.

She won’t lose another.

Maybe they had never gotten along all that well. Mollymauk had been a condescending ass to her, she’d been snarky bitch in return. They were the two that couldn’t fit together just right. But death glorifies life. She sees that now, in every single one of her friends, conveniently forgetting all of his less admirable traits in favor of the kinder ones. Nott doesn’t forget, but she forgives, and that’s the closest she’s going to get to closure. She does see now that maybe, just maybe, eventually, she could’ve found a friend in Molly.

Molly, who had the world tell him—her? them? she wishes she’d had the time to get that right—that he had to be something, had to find the person he’d been before he’d awoken in his own grave, and completely ignored it. She had pushed him to find those memories, because she couldn’t imagine not having a tether, not having a Luc or a Yeza to tie you to the earth. But at the same time she was in awe of the way he could simply not care about the past at all. The way he could move on and not let it define him.

Goblins weren’t creatures of attachment. And how could she ever be a goblin, how could this ever be the body she was supposed to hold, when she stays awake to make sure her friends can sleep sound and cries for the dead and keeps Keg’s messily scrawled letter tucked next to her heart?

Nott would give up a lot, to have things be different. To forget, like Molly could, to change, like she was sure Caleb could do for her if he just got a little bit stronger. But she would never, ever have anything be different about these friendships she’s formed. She loves them and she isn’t afraid of that, not like the goblins in her clan had been. Not like Caleb continued to be. This attachment was perfectly fine with her, despite what either of them thought.

Maybe Molly had taught her something through all the bickering and the animosity. Sometimes, it’s okay to let the past go. Nott has survived more than a lifetime’s worth of pain and carried it with her all across Wildemount. It’s not a betrayal if she sets it down, if only for a time. She’ll find her husband and she’ll find her son, there’s no question. But for now there are other people that need her here, people that can be ripped from her as quickly as Yeza and Luc and Molly. This is what matters: the cart around and the carriage ahead and the dirt road beneath

The sun becomes visible over the trees at last, bathing the campsite in a golden glow. Caduceus peeks an eye open and stretches out. Jester hums softly in her sleep, Fjord a little closer to her than he’d been the night before.

Nott breathes out a sigh. Yeah, this is what matters.

She lets herself sleep at last.

…

The fourth day dawns. Fjord’s ears are ringing from the sound of explosives being shot into the sky and he’s been watching them, transfixed, since night fell. It’s not like he would’ve slept anyway.

Ophelia and her party had decided to skirt around Hupperdook on their travel back to Zadash to avoid attention, but they had stopped close enough that the revelry could still be heard as loud and as clear as if they were standing in the middle of it all.

Fjord can almost perfectly imagine being back inside those walls himself. It feels like months ago, but he knows it could only be two weeks at most. They all had been so carefree, drinking for sport and dancing like children. He’d retired early, being so unbridled wasn’t something he was used to, but he’d felt the swell of pride with victory just the same. He’d gotten sick in the water closet upstairs, but it was fine because—

His eyes squeeze shut, trying to physically shut out the memory. A chill runs across his arms. He’d avoided it all this time, washed it in self-loathing, to think about him now, Fjord thinks it may tear him apart.

The memory comes all the same.

It was fine because Molly had half-carried him back to their room. Because Molly could not stop smiling when Fjord drunkenly asked if he puked on him, and eventually neither of them had been able to breathe, doubled over with laughter. Because he hadn’t ended the night alone, after so long without a friend by his side.

They were all idiots. He was an idiot.

Within a matter of days, he, Jester and Yasha would be bound and gagged in the back of a slaver’s cart and Mollymauk would be dead.

He’d let his guard down. For the first time since his ship had exploded, for the first time since he found himself washed ashore with dreams of an all-seeing yellow eye. Because of it, he’d let all of his new friends down, people who trusted him and still seemed to trust him; though he can’t possibly imagine why, when his job had been to protect and he couldn’t even fucking do that.

Because of it, Molly had died. Molly, who had roomed with him without fail. Molly, who seemed to never cease his endless chatter until the nights where he’d simply sit and watch Fjord clean the Falchion in perfectly silent, awed concentration. Molly, who was an enigma Fjord would never get the chance to fully comprehend. Molly, who gave his life trying to save him, trying to save all of them, when if Fjord had just paid a little bit more attention—

Another explosion goes off, bringing in the colors of the morning. Fjord opens his eyes.

He needs to find Sabian. He needs the truth. He needs to understand, after all this time.

The coast is beckoning him, as it always is. He hears it echoing in his dreams, the crash of waves luring him home. The past is calling his name, the thread is right there—a horse that could carry him all the way to Nicodranas before anyone would know he was gone—all he has to do is pull.

But Fjord’s a smarter man now than when he first ventured out to sea, he knows pulling would only unravel everything, and he doesn’t have all that much thread left in the first place. So he’ll wait. He’ll bear the somber days ahead, he’ll focus on the task at hand, and with any luck he’ll banish his thoughts of Mollymauk Tealeaf.

These people need him. He won’t let them down again.

…

The fifth day dawns. Yasha prowls and she grieves.

She doesn’t know where she is. But it’s not Xhorhas, it’s not before the grave of the only friend she’s ever known, and that’s all that seems to fucking matter.

A storm rumbles behind her, giving direction. It’s the only time she’s been thankful for it. She’ll train for the Storm Lord, she’ll slay for him, as she’s indebted to do. But only this time has it felt less like a debt and more like a salvation. A beautiful and glorious distraction, leading her to absolutely nowhere at all.

Further east. Lightning cracks at her back. She hears nothing, feels nothing. Not as she trudges ahead, not as she slays another of her deity’s foes, not as she scrubs it’s blood from her skin. Not as lightning cracks and the Storm Lord’s rumbling voice echoes through her mind: A job well done, my Orphan Maker. I shall call on you again.

No, not until the storm is gone and her rage fades does Yasha feel anything at all. She feels lost and she feels lonely, sensations scarier than any beast her deity could conjure. There’s a piece of her missing, a piece violet and vital and she feels it, as though someone had taken her very heart, gnarled and tainted as it had been.

It happened again.

There had never been any promise that it wouldn’t—she and Molly had been long past handing out promises they knew couldn’t be kept—but she’d expected to have him longer. He had this air of confidence about him that could trick anyone into thinking he was invincible. Even she, sometimes. Even she, who’d been the one to find him shivering in a ditch, without so much as his own name. He made it so easy to forget that seeing his coat blowing on a twig in the wind had knocked her reality sideways, until she had no perception of anything but forward and away.

She remembers the weight of Jester and Beau’s hands on her shoulders. She remembers feeling a tear drip onto her back, and wondering what Beau must look like when she cried. She remembers Jester and Fjord calling out to her, and how she couldn’t even turn to see their faces when she said she needed time. She remembers Molly’s voice in her head as she followed the storm, repeating over and over: go back and you need them and don’t do this to yourself.

But Molly is dead. The only friend she’d ever had. The only person who could make her forget about what she’d lost: both the woman and the memories. The only person since Zuala who’d looked twice, who hadn’t stared at her, but through her, and seen who she was underneath the scowl and the stoicism. The voice in her head that sounds like his is a ghost.

Emptiness. That’s what Molly said he felt when he crawled from his own grave. Yasha thinks it’s what she feels now, sunlight pouring over the tops of the trees.

She receives Jester’s message. Finding her bearings and walking to Zadash in a few days time is something she knows she could do. But then she imagines the faces of her new acquaintances as they’d been back at Molly’s grave and she realizes she can’t face them yet. Not their pity or their kindness.

This burden, her best friend’s ghost, his life, his memory, she’ll bear alone. It won’t be the first time.

The sun rises. Yasha stands and lets the Storm Lord guide her steps into the unknown.

…

The sixth day dawns. Jester does her best to find beauty in the colors of the morning.

They blend together in the sky as easily as her paints, and if she looks hard enough she can see the story they’re trying to tell. The pinks remind her of Caduceus’s fur, the yellows of the flowers she’d bought and woven into everyone’s hair back in Hupperdook, the reds of her mother’s soft skin. It’s effortlessly pretty, in a way only nature can master.

Quietly, she opens her journal to tell the Traveler all of this, all of the lovely things she can still manage to find despite the fact she’d been struggling a little more to smile lately, but she barely opens a page before she remembers. And promptly slams it shut.

Nott stirs. Jester sombers and swallows the hot lump in her throat.

The Traveller probably didn’t care anyway. She always used to think that she knew exactly who he was: her god, her companion, her best friend. But now she doesn’t know anything. She hasn’t known anything about him since she was bound and gagged and praying in a slaver’s basement, tears spilling down her cheeks as she listened to her new friend be tortured. And he didn’t come.

Jester thinks that maybe she is sad.

She doesn’t want to be, it’s everyone else who’s sad. Caleb and Beau keep to themselves in the carriage ahead; Nott reads and rereads Keg’s letter, messing with her gunpowder with an obsessive amount of focus; Fjord broods and barely sleeps; Caduceus, well, he’s as pensive as ever. They all smile tight-lipped and unconvincing and Jester hates it. She wants to make them happy, she wants to be happy for them, but how can she do that if not even she is happy in the first place?

Molly could’ve done it, she knows. Forced a blush up Caleb’s neck, argued with Beau until she had no more quips except “Fuck you, Molly” with a coy smile on her lips, said something so ridiculous that Nott had no choice but to laugh, pulled Fjord out of his head just by sitting and watching and who knows, probably could’ve piqued the curiosity of Caduceus, too. Jester wishes she knew how he did it, if the fact he couldn’t remember anything but the past two years freed all that space in his mind to be filled with joy and ease.

She won’t get the chance to ask, she knows, and that is maybe the scariest part. He’d died perhaps not twenty feet from her and she hadn’t felt anything. All she’d heard was the yelling and the sounds of battle from inside the cart. She’d scraped her manacles against the iron cage, screamed through her gag, but nothing seemed to be enough to get someone to just hear her, help her. She could have healed him, could have done something, anything.

Jester had never had any friends before she met him in that bar, except for Fjord and Beau. He’d been charming and caring an absolute ass sometimes, but she’s pretty sure that’s what half of being a friend is about. She needed more time with him to really know either way, but time is a gift not even the Traveler can give back to her.

Her eyes water, her hands shake. She locks her knees to her chest, afraid of someone waking and seeing that her cheeks are growing plum-colored with all of this unwanted emotion welling up in the hollow parts of her.

Jester wants to make her friends laugh. She wants to be a seed of chaos, the kind the Traveler loves so much. She wants Molly to push aside the dirt he’s under, put on his coat, and make their lives a little brighter again.

She just wants to be happy. Even if she has to fake it.

Tricksters are the best liars, Jester knows this well.

She releases her clenched fists, tips her head back, and breathes deeply until the tears reside. When her friends begin to sit up and rub their tired eyes, none of them will be able to tell how close she was to losing herself.

It’s better that way. Happy Jester is the one everyone needs, so that is the Jester she will be.

…

(Evening sets on the sixth day. Caduceus prays to the Wildmother, giving thanks for another waning sun.

She tells him that following this path will lead him to what he seeks. He never had any doubts.

The people he’s met are strange, but fate bends around them as easy as air. It’s undeniable that they were the ones destined to wander through his graveyard. Their strange is of a different kind, the kind Caduceus sees less often, the kind that tells him that history has its eyes on them. It’s eyes on him, now, too.

It’s all very new and exciting.

The travelling group is coming close to the outskirts of Zadash. In another day or so, perhaps even by morning, if the trees in the grove where they’ve parked to rest for the night are to be trusted. He’s never been to a city so large before, but he’s read enough to know that there’s a lot less appreciation for nature in its inhabitants. They don’t love his matron the way he does. They fear her power in the way a minnow may fear an expanse of sea. They need it, but it’s depths scare them, so they stay clustered in their busy little cities, hoping they never have to see what lies beyond.

No matter his disdain, he’s pleased to have a guide in the ash-skinned tiefling woman and his new companions. They seem to have at least an inkling of knowledge as to what’s going to happen once they’re on the inside. Caduceus is not privy to the same information, but he’s happy to trail along where his destiny leads.

It is as the Wildmother wills, and so it will be.)

The seventh day dawns. Zadash awaits, and Caleb really just wants some paper.

There’s many sensations nagging at the back of his skull, eating away at his dwindling sanity, but he’s become an excellent compartmentalizer. First comes Ophelia, then the paper, and the rest? Right now, it doesn’t matter. There’s a task at hand.

This methodology, tried and true, gets him through an anticipatory morning, where Beau stirs and fidgets on her designated side of the space, waiting to be free from the carriage’s imposed confines. She’s been waking before him most mornings—or perhaps she hasn’t been sleeping at all? Her undereyes are dark enough for this theory to hold weight—and Caleb has caught her more than once with her hands clasped, whispers on her lips. But who in the pantheon would a woman like Beauregard possibly be praying to? The Knowing Mistress of her monastery? Surely not with—

Focus, he chastises himself. It’s approximately one in the afternoon, and Ophelia’s party has finally found itself before the northern gates of Zadash. If he is wise about his time, and he always is, he may even be able to replenish his spell components before the day is through.

With perfect composition, he seems to stride through the buzzing metropolis and into the presence of The Gentleman without full range of his own thought. For once, the talking is not his burden. Ophelia announces them, confirms the completion of their mission, makes it known they deserve their coin, for they paid in blood. It’s eloquently put, Caleb will give her that much. He doesn’t even speak until the tabaxi comes asking after Lucien, and he lies to her with the same ease in which he breathes.

Mollymauk, the cacophony locked away in his mind screams out, his name was Mollymauk. He shed his old names and this old life you cling to. He lived free, I beg of you to let him remain the same in death.

But saying such things would be preposterous. Illogical. And Caleb is nothing if not logical.

It is by that same token he knows he is projecting his own misfortunes onto the misfortunes of a dead man. Old names, old lives, Caleb had always assumed that was his schtick. Mollymauk had gone and proven him otherwise, and then he had gone and died. In his wake existed a limbo where Caleb knows how he would wish for his companions to handle Eodwulf or, Gott bewahre, Astrid, but he is incapable of knowing how Mollymauk would want his old friends dealt with.

So, he lies.

Mollymauk had been a terrible liar.

He needs a drink.

He assuredly pushes his way to the open bar, ignores Caduceus’s first sip of milk, immediately followed by his first sip of whiskey, and asks the bartender to give him the strongest drink he has. The man looks wearily over Caleb’s appearance: the tangled hair, the scruffy beard, the worn and dirty cloak. He makes it clear that Caleb is just the type of man he’d expect to drown his sorrows in drink. But this man seems so irrelevant, after the month he and his companions have had. He hadn’t had the time to bathe, not since they left Zadash. He’s still covered in an uncomfortable sweat from the weeklong carriage ride, dust from Lorenzo’s basement, mud from Shady Creek Run, Mollymauk’s blood—

Caleb throws back a shot, barely flinching before grabbing an ale and starting work on that, too.

The alcohol is searing, and successfully breaks down the last of the compartmentalization he’d carefully set in place this morning. Through a haze he thinks that perhaps he should leave the paper for another day. Paper seems so trite when he could be dead. They all could be, but here they are: drinking in the Evening Nip’s covert underground bar, home of motley mercenaries and whoever the hell Lucien once was.

Tankard still firmly grasped in his hand, Caleb swivels away from any judgmental barkeeps. After only a moment of searching, his eyes land on Fjord, alone in a back booth. He’s not at all engaged in the revelry, with the exception of a single bottle he nurses. Caleb is met with the sudden urge to vent all of these unwanted feelings to someone, and the half-orc is arguably the least occupied. He stumbles across the room and lands across from him in the booth. In moments, Beauregard throws herself down with them, and suddenly they’re banded together here in the darkest corner, as survivors of an even darker road.

Or maybe Caleb just thinks this because he snatched another tankard off an empty table on the way over here, and it’s already a quarter of the way empty.

“This may be- uh- the alcohol,” he apologizes in advance, then quickly amends himself: “It’s the alcohol… raise a glass, you two assholes. Here is to fucking making it work.”

Even if they don’t feel the heavy importance of this moment, they indulge him a toast. “Cheers,” Fjord says, eagerly tipping back his drink.

“Congratulations on being alive.”

They all mutter agreements, nearly drifting back into their own heads and sorrows before Beau pipes up, voice full of faux airiness.

“Fjord, you survived being chained up and tortured. That’s got to fuck with a person, right?”

Caleb may have had more tact, but his curiosity was getting the better of him, too. He hadn’t seen Fjord or Jester at all since they began their journey home, and therefore hadn’t had the chance to pull information out of either of them. It nags at him like an unreachable itch, the unknown.

“Yeah it—” Fjord sighs. “More the disappointment. I expect better of myself. I let you guys down, I let Jester down, I let Yasha down. I’ll never be able to shake this.”

The honesty in which he says it, like he’s sharing the weight of an irremovable burden, makes Caleb ill. How could he ever think himself responsible for something so wholly out of his control? He opens his mouth to speak, but Beau beats him to the words.

“Fjord, you cannot keep blaming yourself when you were the victim in this circumstance. You understand that, right?”

“No. I don’t.”

“There are people to blame. I wasn’t joking when I said it was someone’s fault earlier, but it is not yours. The only person whose fucking fault it was is that fucking asshole Lorenzo’s and… fucking… human traffickers.”

Fjord responds with some kind of concession, but all Caleb can hear is Beau saying a version of the same things to him, when he told her about what he’d done to his family. Mutter und Vater. Could it be the ale or could it be that’s Fjord’s senseless self hatred is akin to his own? Is he projecting onto live men now, too?

“You cannot blame yourself when you are taken advantage of,” Caleb finally says. The words come slowly, he is admitting something to both Fjord and himself. “You know what I mean?”

Fjord counters quickly, the words spilling out of him as though he had them lying in wait on the tip of his tongue. “You don’t understand though. My whole life was trying to blend in, trying to keep an eye out for someone that was looking to take advantage, that was going to exploit. I got comfortable, I felt relaxed. There’s no reason why the three of us out on watch couldn’t see them coming out and raise an alarm fast enough.”

“There’s also no reason that the three of us couldn’t have made a fucking plan that couldn’t have gotten Molly killed,” Beau says without heat, and there it is.

Caleb’s drunkenness wants them to settle it right here. Molly’s death has brought all of their old issues to the surface, and it simmers like a pot of water over fire. They’re a fucked up group: thieves and outcasts and arsonists with deep-rooted trauma and foggy memories and no clear direction. They all need a little therapy, but Beau has touched a nerve here. If Caleb can get she and Fjord to be honest for once, maybe—

“I’ll drink to that,” Fjord relents, and the topic dies with the release of tension from his shoulders.

“No,” Caleb jumps before the thread is lost entirely, “and we’re never going to forget it. It’s going to ride with us until we’re dead.”

Fjord says, “Yeah. It puts everything into perspective though, I’ll tell you that much.” And takes another swig from his bottle.

“Yeah, those things don’t go away, you carry that shit with you.” Caleb murmurs.

With a nod of acknowledgement, Fjord admits, “I was floating around, trying to find my way to the Cerberus. I don’t know if that’s what I want to do anymore.”

“What do you want to do?” Beau prompts. She’s kicked back now, arms resting on the top of the booth. This conversation doesn’t appear to mean as much to her as it does to Caleb. He debates within himself for a moment, then decides that probably makes her the better person.

Fjord hesitates, oblivious, then exhales audibly. “I felt like I almost died and I hadn’t taken care of any of the shit that got me here in the first place. I was so worried about trying to learn about these new abilities that— I felt like I got distracted. I have people I want to find and things I want to remedy.”

And oh, how Caleb wants to pry at that. What people does a washed-up man like Fjord have left to seek out? To make amends with? What piece of that shipwreck is he clinging to so tightly he couldn’t die with it? These questions prick at the forefront of his mind, and he remembers a distant lesson. This is how you learn who you’re dealing with: find their weaknesses first, and their strengths second. He opens his mouth to speak, but only a small noise escapes before Beau is sitting up straighter and changing the conversation.

She asks about Jester, how she coped, and Caleb listens to this closely, too. When Fjord tells of their teifling’s ceaseless joy, even while bound and gagged, and the perplexity of it, Caleb takes a pause. The three of them are turned in the corner booth now, eyeing Jester across the bar. She is somehow dancing, despite the fact that there’s no music playing, only the sound of low chatter. And while it is ridiculous, Caleb also finds it incredibly sad. How tired she must be, he thinks, from carrying that joy’s weight.

“I think it is an act,” he says, but neither Fjord nor Beauregard really listens. They are too caught in her orbit, too close to see the strings that keep her mask tied tight. And for now, that’s okay. Their ignorance is not tonight’s fight.

Caduceus lands at their table moments later, breaking their collective stupor. Looming and swaying, he babbles on about the drinks he’s had, how terrible they all seemed to be. Caleb makes a joke, it doesn’t land flat. His companions even laugh. Beau calls Nott and Jester over, and now they’re all crammed in this booth decidedly not made to fit six people, but for once none of them seem to mind. Caleb teases Jester about her lack of drinking habits, throws in a compliment, pulls a smile from her. A genuine one. Caduceus begs to drink something good, and they launch from a plan to visit the bakery, to a plan to visit the smut shop, to a plan to visit the bathhouse—for Molly, repeats in his head, for Molly—in a matter of seconds.

And because the alcohol likes toasts, so does Caleb in this moment. He asks again for everyone to raise their glasses, filled with ale and milk and otherwise, and asks for a cheers. Not to freedom, but to Mollymauk Tealeaf.

Hear, hear, is their rallying cry. And it brings him hope.

There’s brief talk of what comes after this. Pumat’s, the cloven crystal, Ionos, but it’s lighthearted. Beau calls him a good friend, and though Caleb stays composed, he feels as though when he stands his feet may not touch the ground. Nott declares that they get out of this place, but stops by The Gentleman once more to ask after the woman from the letter, Avantika. She is drunk, even by Nott-typical standards, and makes a total mess of the thing. Soon, laughing out of sheer embarrassment, they’re all shuffling out of the booth and up the stairwell once more.

Looking assuredly like idiots of the highest order, they venture away from the Evening Nip, drunken and contented. Beau brazenly begins lighting spare cherry bombs and lobbing them at the party.

“For Molly!” She yells, and as fireworks begin to burst in the center of the street, Caleb thinks that maybe, just maybe, they’re all going to be okay.

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bellamyblake · 5 years

Text

Good cop, bad cop

A/N: Recently, I got an ask to write both Bellamy and Clarke being sick and someone else taking care of them, so here it is. The stubborn idiots trying to fool everyone that they are just fine and failing miserably at it.

Could also be found on Ao3

It has been three days since Bellamy came home dragged by Miller and Monty, with a big gash on his chest, three broken ribs, which resulted in his lung being punctured, and his leg broken in two places.

He’s gotten out in the first place because Clarke was sick at home. She’d been coughing for a week before she passed out and he had carried her to medbay only so Abby can conclude her daughter had pneumonia and needed to stay put and get rest.

Bellamy had only gone out in search of a boar to kill so he can make a nice warm winter coat so she doesn’t get sick again. Long story short, the boar had won the battle and he tumbled down a hill already bleeding from three different places.

The idiot.

Now both of them were supposed to be in medbay, lying on their asses, resting but instead they just bickered to no end, made both Abby and Niylah, who helped her out, go crazy and stubbornly refused to stay put.

First it was Clarke who sneaked the other morning, supposedly going out to get something from their cabin though she was found with Raven, asking how the farm water system was going and if they could speed up building the entire thing.

Then when Bellamy had woken up and didn’t find her there, he went out looking for her and ended up falling on his ass just outside medbay.

They were dragged back by Kane and Miller, fighting the entire way in and it wasn’t until Abby sedated them both that the so-needed quiet finally settled in.

Then a snowstorm has come and Bellamy who had his leg put in a wooden improvised cast, had limped out because he had to “discuss the guard’s shifts with Miller and check on his boys. They couldn’t be left out in that weather, he had to make sure they’re fine” while Clarke had followed swiftly by, still coughing and feverish, to stop him.

Now was the third time and Abby was very very pissed off.

“Sneak out the window, Clarke! What are you? Thirteen?” she raised her voice involuntary and Clarke pouted as she crossed her arms over her chest.

“I just wanted to check on the generator building that Raven is-”

“You don’t understand, if you do not stay put and take your medications, this will only get worse.”

“She’s right, you know?” Bellamy chimes in while Kane helps prop his leg on a pillow.

“You’re not one to talk, Bellamy” the old man scolds gently.

He’s always had such a soft spot for Bellamy and Abby knew it. He was angry now too, they both were, because those two insufferable stupid idiots would just not listen to them.

At that Clarke actually sticks her tongue out at him and tries to reach to poke her but instead he ends up twisting his body in an awkward angle and groaning from the pain in his ribs.

“She left first this time!”

“Oh, please, mister I-can-run-miles, you wanted to go to the wall to see the damage the storm did, first.You told me so last night.” Abby tiredly massages her forehead with her hand and takes in a deep breath.

“I said I wish I could, not that I will. You can barely breathe and you climbed out a window! If that’s not insane, I don’t know what is.”

“You have got to be kidding me!” Clarke raises her voice to such a high pitch it makes Kane wince “You seem to have forgotten that you were crawling the other day when they found your ass on the goddamn frozen ground. Crawling, Bellamy! Where did you think you’d end up, huh? Drag yourself to the end of the world.”

“I wasn’t crawling!”

“I heard you yelling when they were trying to bring you back. “Let me go! Let me go!” Bellamy clenched his jaw and Abby knew that this was just the beginning of a very big, pretty much endless verbal fighting match.

“You kicked Kane in the face!”he bites back. Clarke truly had. The other day when they first sneaked out, Abby had asked him to help carry her back to medbay and she had actually kicked and tried to get free like a child who didn’t want to go to bed.

“It was an accident!”

“BOTH OF YOU, STOP THIS!” Abby raised her voice and they went silent. “I’ve had enough of you. We’ve all had enough of you! If you want to go out there and kill yourselves, then do it!”

“Abby-”

“Mom, I-”

“No!” Abby turned back to face them angrily “Clarke you know damn well that you are seriously sick, you know you need to take care of yourself! Your lungs sound so bad, that I’m not sure I can fix it with what I have here!” Clarke’s face falters at that and Bellamy throws her a worried look “And you-” Abby keeps going “You tore your stitches for the third time! The THIRD, Bellamy! Do you know how much blood you’ve lost? Do you know I have nowhere to replenish it from? That I have to ask one of your friends to sit here and give you a direct transfusion? Or do you want to fuck your leg so badly that you’d need a brace like Raven’s, cause trust me, you’ll get there if you keep trying to walk on a bone that’s been broken twice!”

“Abby, I didn’t-”

“No. I’m done. Do whatever the hell you want, that’s your motto anyway isn’t it? Marcus and I, what do we know? We’re just these old buffoons trying to take care of you.”

Abby turned around and left the room(they were put in a separate room cause the other patients couldn’t get any rest over their constant bickering) and closed the door with a loud thud.

Kane stood there, looking as stunned as they were. He knew Abby was mad but he didn’t think she’d give up on knocking some sense into them.

And then it hit him.

His eyes widened and he smiled so widely, he had to turn his back to Bellamy and Clarke so they wouldn’t figure it out.

This wasn’t Abby giving up on them.

This was Abby playing a part, hoping he’d get what he had to do next without even saying it.

He’d done it before, it was a tactic they thought the guards, a tactic that Bellamy himself had studied but was too sick and tired to probably get what’s happening right now.

Good cop, bad coop.

“Damn it, Abby.” he quietly mumbled so he wouldn’t be heard and he had to physically force himself to stop smiling.

“How bad are you bleeding?” he heard Clarke say and he turned back to find her trying to sit up so she could get a better look at his injured side which was out of her view. He was pressing his hand to it and quickly pulled the blanket over, so she wouldn’t get worried.

“It’s just a scratch, I promise.” his voice was tender and with his free hand, he reached his hand out.

They were barely a feet apart and they still got to be that dramatic, the idiots.

Clarke stretched her hand and he wrapped his fingers tightly around her’s but then a violent cough shook her entire body. This time, though, she couldn’t stop.

“Kane, you need to get Abby back here. She needs her!”

“I’m....it’s....okay” Clarke said through coughs and Bellamy shook his head.He had already sat up, his legs hanging from the cot, and this time the blood that had soaked his right side could be seen by Clarke since the blanket he tried to cover it with, had fallen off.

“Oh my God!” she said when she managed to take a breath “You idiot, you’re-”

“Shh” he cut her off and he let go of her hand so he could grab the edge of the cot and try to move it to her. Kane almost shook his head-it never ceased to amaze him how those two could be in mortal danger and would still, no matter what the burdens, try to get to each other.

Kane rushed to grab Bellamy’s elbow, before he could fall hard on the ground from trying to stand up and move his bed closer.

“Hey, hey, wait!” he had said carefully.

“I want to help her.” Bellamy said pleadingly and it almost broke Kane’s heart. Clarke kept on coughing in the meantime, turning her back to Bellamy so he wouldn’t see how she was almost suffocating.

Using their weakness, Kane practically forced Bellamy back on his cot, circled on the other side and pushed it to Clarke’s.

Now they were basically lying next to each other and the smile on Clarke’s face when he put his hand on her shoulder and pulled her to him, made Kane shake his head.

Maybe all they had to do was get them to sleep next to each other?

“I’m going to kill you, Clarke.”

Or maybe not.

She rolls over and he pulls her head to his chest. She coughs as he holds her like this and he wraps her back with his hand. His side is still bleeding, it actually colors the blanket that she had twisted all over her. He can’t help but groan from the growing pain and when she looks down, she sees the big red patch. Her shaky white hand finds the wound and she presses over.

“I’m going to kill you too.” she whispers between coughs.

“Both of you will probably die before you get to do that” Kane says and they look at him at the same time.

SAME TIME.

God, do they have to do everything together.

“How about instead, you let Abby help you and you listen to what she says, huh?”

They exchange a look, then they turn back to him. It’s like kids who have just been told that they do not have to run after the ice cream truck, they could just wait for it to stop and buy stuff like normal people.

“I know you two are worried about camp, the kids, basically...everything, but Abby and I can handle it while you recover. We were both part of the council, after all.”

At that Bellamy murmurs something like “and what a good job you both did” at which Clarke gives him a scolding look, kicks his bad leg with her little cold feet and throws him a glance that suggests “Let’s hear him out.”

Kane exhales in relief. If he won over Clarke, Bellamy would soon relent too.

“You just need to stop fighting us, okay?” at that Bellamy groans like an annoyed little boy who wanted to stay late and read his favorite book.

Which, as Kane now thinks about it, must’ve been an actual problem for Aurora Blake.

“Bellamy” she says and there’s reason in her voice for the first time in days. Her hand was covered in blood and Bellamy was growing weaker by the minute. His face was pale and ashy, the freckles standing out so clearly, it made Kane almost shiver at the sight of it.

“Hey” her nose bumps his and that makes him open his eyes again “We have to.”

She was completely ignoring the fact that they were not alone in the room, that Kane was an actual person standing there, waiting for them to get over themselves.

They were like that sometimes, Kane thought, as if they living in a whole other universe when they held each other, as if the world didn’t matter when they touched or kissed.

And maybe it didn’t. Maybe it shouldn’t. They were carrying the weight of it every goddamn day. Their backs were so bend under all their worries that Kane and Abby could notice them physically slumping forward or walking a little hunched on days when it was too hard.

But when they got together, it’s like they could suddenly bear it-they walked straighter, pulled each other up, strongly opposed everything in the universe that wished to break them.

And they withstood it.

“I’ll sit on my ass only if you do too. No games, no sneaking out, no trying to fool me, okay?” he says barely above a whisper, so hard, that even Kane wonders if he heard it right.

Maybe he and Abby were wrong that entire time. Maybe they didn’t both go out trying to do this out on a whim, unplanned, maybe when one left,the other had to follow to make sure they’re fine.

Perhaps they were simply trying to take care of one another when they were being stupid and irrational.

“Okay.”

“Promise me.” he asks and squeezes her hand with his bloody one. “You’re really bad this time and I can’t do anything to help you, so I need to know you’ll stay put.”

“I’ll stay put.” she promises and he smiles “But only if you use crutches” he groans again, so seemingly annoyed. “Bell!”

“Fine, fine.” then he leans down and kisses her. It’s so tender and soft that Kane has to look away because his eyes almost well with tears.

Then Bellamy turns to Kane.

“Tell Abby we’re sorry and we’d like her to come and help us out.”

“Of course” Kane turns around and with the most smug smile on his face, he opens the door and then carefully closes it behind, leaning on it for a second so he could gather himself.

As he’s just about to finally leave and get Abby to come back and fix all this, he hears Bellamy’s faint tired voice.

“You know they just pulled good cop, bad cop on us, right?”

#bellarke fanfiction #bellarke #bellamy blake #clarke griffin #hurt/comfort #fluff #basically both those idiots are sick and kane and abby tricked them into making them sit on their cute behinds #my writing

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izumitate · 5 years

Text

in every iteration

I forgot to post this here!! But here’s an immortality/reincarnation AU! Possibly to be continued later?

They never remember, Keishin had warned him so many centuries ago. As much as you want to hope that your love will transcend the limits of mortality, it never will.

I know, Daichi had said, but he hadn’t really known. Not yet.

The first time was an open wound right above his still-beating heart, the pain so acute and bloody that the next twenty-nine years before he could meet his beloved again dragged on jagged and endless. The harvests from the first decade after losing him were spare and sickly. Daichi feels bad about it now, but he’d never been truly despondent until then. Not even Koutarou or Shouyou had been able to raise his spirits.

The second time was even harder. It took three years for Daichi to woo his beloved - this time, a stocky woman working in the stables of her village instead of the young blacksmith that Daichi had fallen for faster than the reddened leaves of a maple in November. Three years in her company, then three years her companion, and then she was gone before the last frost had lifted, along with half her village as the illness spread.

It took a quarter of a century to find her this time, reborn halfway across the world as the best sharpshooter in his village. Daichi dressed the leaves in ruby and flame, and brought with him harvest after bountiful harvest of golden corn and jeweled squash. They kissed for the first time beneath the bone-bare trees and the half-filled moon. They were happy. They made a life together.

But as the years passed, Shigeru and Kentarou began yet another sky-shaking argument, and when the rain meets the surge of the river, there’s nothing mortals can do but try to survive the resulting floods. Daichi’s beloved lost his life while carrying a child to safety, and for the better part of a decade, Daichi spoke to neither of his now-contrite siblings until the storm in his heart could subside, and he could feel his beloved’s soul return to the living plane once again.

The ninth time, he was a court scholar in the confidence of an emperor, and Daichi had to use all his godly tricks to create the chance to get close to him. The twelfth time, Daichi found him on the warm sands of a tiny island, the call of the ocean in his blood. But it had been too long; Daichi could feel the strain of half a century wearing on his darling, and as expected, he passed soon after their long-overdue meeting. The fifteenth time, she was a weaver under the apprenticeship of a master in her beautiful seaside town.

That life, Daichi had time on his side. They met young, and she was healthy and lived well. They should have had years together.

And then she was gone, because if there’s anything mortals know as well as they know love, it’s war.

So it would go, over and over again. Death, rebirth, the tireless search, and the heartbreak when, yet again, they would look upon Daichi with no recognition in their eyes. Every single time. Daichi would know that dedication, that cleverness, that loyalty and humor and gratitude and impossible grace, no matter the body they inhabit. But even if he remains completely constant, in both appearance and temperament, no human memory can carry his love across lifetimes.

By now, Daichi finally understands.

Keishin had tried to tell him, that even more than the pain of losing them stings the pain of knowing they have forgotten every shared moment, every secret told, every precious kiss. But every piece of suffering is worth it, for the moment that Daichi realizes, yet again, that his darling, the other half of his heart, loves him.

There will never be anyone else. And so it continues.

He buries her on a Thursday. Koushi has left his clouds behind to take his favored human form, and he stands close to offer comfort the best he can as Daichi receives the condolences of the other mourners. The sky is gray but clear, as it so often is in this country, and after the rest of the funeral procession has dispersed, he crouches to pat flat the dirt himself, feeling the lifeforce of every plant in the vicinity react to his touch. Overhead, the sun isn’t visible, but he can feel Shouyou’s power coursing through him anyway, the sympathy soaking into his skin.

“Why don’t you come home for a little while?” Koushi asks gently after a moment of silence. He helps Daichi back to his feet, and traces the wrinkles that have set into Daichi’s face after the last sixty or so years. “You’ve been living among humans for so long now, it might be good for you to let go of all this until it’s time to meet again.”

Daichi takes a last look at the cemetery, the stretch of gravestones along the grass, and feels a deep, inhuman tiredness sink into his bones. Koushi is right. He’s been playing mortal for too long. It’s time to return home.

He bends down to leave a final kiss on his spouse’s gravestone before he stands straight and takes Koushi’s hand. The wind thickens, whistling through the cemetery trees as their mortal forms dissolve. When the breeze fades, there’s no sign of them left behind, save for Daichi’s current name etched into marble alongside his beloved’s.

For the next couple of decades, Daichi remains earthbound. He travels around the world, trailing autumn with every step, and when he’s off season, he spends time with his siblings. There’s years and years of news and gossip to catch up on, and even more reminiscing to be done. He walks along crowded beaches with Tooru, and soaks up the moonlight under the star threaded sky with Kei and Keiji. He visits the mountaintops with Shinsuke, and the cliffsides with Aran. Daichi walks through his brother’s rolling fields, laughing when Wakatoshi frowns as he blooms a patch of his flowers too early. He sits high up in the trees next to Asahi as they watch the wildfires eat through another acre of dying forest. He drinks in the sensation of Kiyoko’s snow swirling into flurries around him, and he revels in the sound of Takanobu’s crystalline hail shattering against the frozen pane of ice on one of Kaname’s lakes.

It’s a time for healing, and reconnection. And he enjoys it, he really does, but one day he wakes, and he can feel it again. The call of his beloved’s soul.

He’s realized by now that it takes at least a decade after his beloved’s reincarnation before he can sense their soul again, and then usually several years before he can locate them among the ever growing number of people on the planet. On the rare occasions that he finds them before they’ve matured, he returns to the earth until some years on, when they’re adult enough to be making their own life decisions.

There are some lifetimes that his beloved does not choose him, or has already found someone else to share their heart with, and in those cases, Daichi goes graciously on his way, knowing that there’ll be time again for them to find one another.

It’s been past twenty years since his spouse passed on, and Daichi thinks it might be time to go searching again.

He’s told his sweetheart the secret of his identity exactly twice. It’s not so easy for mortals to believe in gods that walk among them anymore, and even harder to believe that they could share a love so enduring that they would return to one another time and again, so he keeps the truth hidden away. It’s difficult sometimes, to know more about his partner than they know about him, but each lifetime is different, and in the end, there’s always more to learn. Every lifetime is special; every lifetime is treasured.

This time, Daichi has a good feeling about his search. He decides to head out, putting himself in his early twenties to hopefully match his beloved’s approximate age once they meet.

Koutarou catches Daichi before he insinuates himself back into mortal life, tackling him to the ground in excitement.

“Hey, I wanna come along too! It’s been a while since I’ve hung out with humans, and this decade seems pretty fun.” He smiles down at Daichi, and Daichi can feel the crackle of electricity that runs constant in his veins.

“You want to tag along?”

“Yeah, we can say we’re brothers or something! You can show me all the awesome sports mortals play, and I can finally try cold cream!”

“Ice cream, Kou. It’s called ice cream,” Daichi says fondly. “And sure, you can come with, but we better pretend we’re just friends, so it’ll be easier to explain in case you decide you’ve had enough and run off again. I don’t like messing around with their memories if I don’t have to.”

“Alright, that works. Can we go to Japan first? I heard there were lots of great games there!”

“There’s video games everywhere, you know,” Daichi says, but he decides to just go with the flow. He has to start somewhere.

Koutarou loves Japan, though Daichi is fairly certain he loves every place he’s ever taken the time to visit. Given his nature, most of what he sees comes in quickfire flashes, and though he touches down on certain regions much more often than others, it’s rarely long enough to get a feel for mortal life there.

They settle into life in Tokyo, living in a small apartment together near a university that Koutarou decides he wants to try attending. Daichi thinks he’ll get sick of it soon enough, but gets them both enrolled anyway, hoping it’ll help bring him closer to his beloved.

He feels the pull of their soul so strongly that he thinks he must have lucked out and accidentally chose the correct country at the very outset. He should really thank Koutarou for the help if it turns out to be true. It’s been four months since they’ve begun their life in Tokyo, and Daichi still hasn’t made much progress yet, but he also feels so close that it doesn’t bother him. He’s waited much, much longer than this.

Koushi is visiting for a short time, and he and Kou exhausted themselves on karaoke last night, so Daichi sets out early this morning to get some food for them from the nearby konbini before they wake up. They’re not as used to their human forms as Daichi is, and sometimes they surpass the natural limits of their bodies, so out of pity, Daichi will play room service today.

He’s so busy grabbing handfuls of snacks and every kind of onigiri on the shelves that he doesn’t notice the surge in his connection to his beloved until he’s already paid and out the door. His bag is almost overladen with junk food, and he takes a moment to adjust the handles so he doesn’t drop anything, which is when someone comes stumbling right into him.

The impact isn’t very hard, but Daichi finds his chest suddenly wet with what smells like coffee, and then there’s someone else’s face right in front of his, looking embarrassed and apologetic.

“Oh shit, I’m so sorry, I didn’t realize the cap wasn’t on all the way,” says the love of Daichi’s life when they meet for the thirty-second first time.

Daichi is covered in vending machine iced coffee, and his sweater is a size too big, because he forgot how he looks at the crisp age of twenty-two, and he’s probably making the stupidest face because his beloved has the same smile he did about nine centuries ago, but none of this matters because they’re together again, in the same time and place, and his suddenly too-human heart has forgotten how to beat.

“God, I’m not usually such a klutz, I swear. Here, let me help you,” Daichi’s sweetheart says, pulling a whole wad of napkins out of his convenience store bag and walking forward to begin dabbing at Daichi’s sweater.

“Oh,” Daichi says a beat too late, as the other man tries to mop the coffee off him. “Wait, it’s okay, I can take care of that later.”

“No, man, it’s completely my fault. At least let me pay for the cleaning fees.” He’s so earnest and responsible that it makes Daichi’s chest ache. Some things never change.

“No, it’s seriously fine. I’m just going to put it in the wash. But your coffee- it’s half gone now. I’ll buy you another one.”

“What? No, I’m the one who spilled on you! I’m not making you pay for anything.”

“Okay, well, let’s just call it even then,” Daichi suggests, trying not to be obvious about studying everything about him. Bright, knowing eyes, ridiculous hair, and a good ten centimeters taller than Daichi. Daichi would have loved him regardless of what he looked like, but he definitely can’t complain about this incarnation’s appearance.

“If you’re sure,” he says dubiously. “I still feel bad, though.”

Perhaps this is moving too quickly, but it’s a new generation, much different from when Daichi last dated anyone, so he decides he’s going to take a page from their book and just go for it. “Look, if you really want to make it up for me, I guess you can buy me a coffee when you get yourself another one?” Daichi says, hoping it doesn’t come across as too forward.

But his beloved’s expression brightens, and he gives a little grin, asking, “Really? Yeah, I could do that! Right now?” He gestures toward the vending machine behind him, looking so sweetly excited that Daichi already falls half in love with him even though it’s only been about five minutes.

“Sure,” Daichi laughs.

They walk back toward the vending machine, and his beloved stuffs his damp napkin ball back in his bag. “I’m Kuroo Tetsurou. Y’know, in case you wanted to call me something instead of ‘clumsy loser’ in your head.” He grins kind of sheepishly, then fumbles some change out of his wallet, hastily saying, “Or not. Feel free to forget that. And me.”

Daichi fights the urge to bury his face in his hands. His beloved is already so cute, he can’t stand it. As if he could ever forget that name now.

“Sawamura Daichi,” he finally says, letting a hint of his smile show as he sticks his hand out. “If you wanted to call me by my name. Because it is. My name, I mean. Yeah.” Fuck, this is a disaster. Why hasn’t a millenium of experience made Daichi any better at flirting?

“It sure is, dude,” Kuroo says as he gives Daichi a firm handshake. “So, coffee? Um, do you like hot or cold?”

“Hot for me, please.”

Kuroo buys them their drinks, and then they stand there together outside the konbini, sipping at their coffees while stealing glances at each other.

“So!” Kuroo finally says after a moment. “Do you go to uni nearby? I’ve never seen you around, but you look like a college student.”

“Yeah, I was living abroad for two years, so I only just started this year,” Daichi says, happy to have some point of conversation, and then they’re discussing schools and classes easily, like any two college kids might. Daichi feels so rusty at this, but he also feels completely at ease with Kuroo, especially when their conversation segues naturally into other topics, like clubs and hobbies and their lives. Daichi talks about Koutarou and Koushi, and his other siblings in vague terms, and learns that Kuroo is an only child this time around, but he grew up alongside a best friend whose parents are basically a second family to him. He played volleyball in high school, and he loves chemistry and biology, and when he graduates he’ll be attending medical school.

Daichi takes all this in, fitting in the new pieces with the familiar ones, knowing that he can already see himself living a full life alongside Tetsurou if he’ll allow it.

Their chit-chat comes to a natural lull, and Kuroo takes a second to look at Daichi’s face before he flushes slightly and scratches at his nest of hair, looking kind of nervous.

“Hey, I know this sounds completely crazy, but I feel like there’s something kind of familiar about you, if that makes sense. Like we’ve met before, even though I know I would’ve remembered you. Sorry- I’m just being weird,” he says with a laugh, when he notices Daichi staring.

“No,” Daichi chokes out. This has never happened before. Thirty times he’s gone through this, and never has his beloved shown any sign of recognition, until now. Is it a fluke? Is Kuroo just confused? Has something changed? “I- I, um, I totally understand what you mean. It feels like we could’ve already known each other? Maybe?” he stutters, and Kuroo nods.

“Yeah, like in another life or something,” he says thoughtfully, and Daichi just nods numbly back.

A sudden vibration on Daichi’s leg knocks him out of his daze, and he pulls out his cell phone to see that he’s been sent several whiny texts from the loafers back at his apartment who are wondering where their snacks are.

“Oh, I interrupted your snack run, didn’t I?”

“They can handle a few more minutes without food.”

“Yeah, but I should let you go; I’ve wasted enough of your time today already.”

Daichi nods, because he’s used to this taking time, and he’ll wait forever for Kuroo if he has to. “Thanks for the free coffee,” he says, lifting his can. “And...the free coffee.” He gestures at his shirt, and Kuroo gives him the dumbest, cutest laugh in response.

“You’re welcome for one of those things. Um, this is gonna sound so pushy, but.” And he pauses, ducking his head before looking back at Daichi. “I really feel like maybe we were meant to meet today? Ugh, that’s so cheesy- but- I guess I’m trying to say that it’d be cool if you wanted to hang out again sometime. Preferably without either of us throwing liquids at each other.”

Even if he weren’t already inextricably tied to Kuroo, those eyes would have won him over, Daichi is certain. As it is, his heart is in his throat at the thought of Kuroo somehow remembering one of their past lives together.

“That sounds great,” Daichi says, almost tripping over his words like he’s a teenager being asked on his first date, even though he’s the farthest thing from it. “I’d like that.”

Kuroo holds out his hand, and Daichi, confused, takes hold of it. Maybe casual handholding is what young people do now. It’s nice, to be able to feel Kuroo’s skin against his. It’s both new and familiar.

“Oh,” Kuroo says, his face turning pink. “Sorry, I was- I wanted to put my number in your phone. Not that this isn’t nice too.” Daichi blushes as well, snatching his hand away and dropping his cellphone into Kuroo’s waiting palm.

They trade numbers, both of their faces still stinging pink, and then hover awkwardly for a few seconds, unsure of how to proceed.

“So, I’m sorry if the first thing I text you is a horrible picture of my roommate stuffing eighty pocky into his mouth at once,” Daichi blurts out to fill the distance between them, and Kuroo nods blankly back, before giving him a thumbs up.

“I’ll look forward to it. See you around, Sawamura.” He flashes Daichi a smile, the one he’s come to love time and time again, and Daichi lifts his hand to say goodbye.

“ ‘til next time.” Kuroo jogs off, but glances back once, perhaps just to see if Daichi is still there, and he gives a little wave. Daichi watches him go, until he’s gone from sight, and then he collapses against the wall of the store, looking up to the sky for answers in the clouds.

Kuroo Tetsurou. Daichi’s true love, here again. Reunited again, maybe in more ways than Daichi could have ever expected.

A soft breeze brushes around him, and Daichi takes it as Koushi’s reminder to get back to the apartment, so he hurries home with their food, even though the only thing on his mind is when he’s going to next see Kuroo again. It can’t come soon enough.

This is going to be a good lifetime. He’s going to make certain of it.

#kurodai #kuroo tetsurou #sawamura daichi #haikyuu!!#hq fic #reincarnation #immortality #gods au #my fic

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ekebolou · 5 years

Text

New Book: Chapter Fifteen

Sorry for the test post - had to do something to get the links to previous parts because search wasn’t working, hahahaha oh god I need to actually move this shit somewhere designed for writing soon. Really. Gotta get on that.

You waited all this time for this!? Sorry, it’s a very busy time at school for me. If I can do it at all, I’ll try to get more up today, but it may not be until later. (by the way, most of the typos are due to the fact that the New Book file is so long Word’s spellchecker has stopped functioning? Which is a thing, I guess? Or I need to check some settings. Anyway, I ought to know how to spell, but fun facts, y’all).

Prelude

Chapter One

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Sixteen

That said, here you go:

Chapter Fifteen

Generally, Rev was not one for looting; it was just more shit to carry, and unless it was a really nice rifle, he had no use for it. Citizens were rarely in possession in rifles any nicer than the one the army had given him. Exchange, however, demanded goods. Plus, he owed the soldier who’d let him have his kit at least a little consideration.

Aster was fine, when he got back, grazing contently on the short grasses and ignoring the soldier who watched her with the doting eye of a hereditary horseman. She lipped Rev’s hair as they enacted their exchange.

Those soldiers were fools. They had learned nothing from the march by the sea, and had no eye for the tools their surroundings offered. This random infantryman had the great good luck of having run across Rev, but lacked the wit the appreciate it. Rev had snatched three long cloths from those discarded on the battlefield; one, he gave to the soldier, as his due for the favor he’d done. Another, Rev exchanged for a heavy woolen uniform coat. Perhaps Rev should have realized it to start with, but he could neither beg, exchange, or threaten the soldier’s knife away from him (foolish he might be, but he wasn’t stupid: unlike pistols, knives didn’t run out of ammunition). As it was, the soldier looked both surprised and supremely dubious that Rev returned the pistol having never fired it.

Next battlefield spoils, he would get a knife, Rev promised himself.

The soldier seemed amused, but not convinced by Rev’s demonstration of how to tie the cloth over his head. Apparently he had a perfectly good hat (he wasn’t wearing), that didn’t look so silly (it did). Still, he took the cloths, no doubt to exchange them for something useless, like money.

The afternoon was long, but Rev had something to keep him busy, and a horse for shade, when she wasn’t using him for shade. Plus, Anik’s extra canteen still had wine in it, which was unwise but nice.

Rev returned to the baggage and made a temporary camp, ignoring Aster’s occasional prodding as he folded himself a headdress like the ones he’d seen in the city. With Anik’s sewing kit, he could begin to disassemble the coat.

By the time Thespasian found him, curled up with Aster in the shade of supply wagon, he looked more like a traveling tinker than soldier, settled to rest among his junk. Baggage with the baggage.

Thespasian wasn’t fooled, but the anger that darkened his brow didn’t breech his lips (or magnificent mustache). Angrily tossing about their kit as he loaded it up, checking to make sure Rev hadn’t lost anything, he cast one sand-covered glower after another at Rev, then worldlessly (and reluctantly) signaled for him to follow.

The march back to the city felt longer without battle drawing him on; or, at least, he found himself growing tired – bone tired, weary, even – as the drew closer. Thespasian just kept glaring at him, perhaps daring him to make some allusion to his disobedience, to knowing how the battle went before they arrived, but Rev’s mind was buzzing and blank.

Having a great, nasty hole in the outer wall somehow didn’t diminish the majesty of Niwat-Ra. Perhaps because she was so ancient, Rev thought; there were many ancient things in Sivery, but few which so much defied the land around them. They built big walls on little hills, big towers in little valleys. Sivery liked its land, and mountain was good enough without something built over it. Niwat-Ra rose up in defiance of the rolling sands, the black rocks, the endless, undulating sea.

Rev though briefly about leaving the sea behind, and was disturbed to find the thought pricked some anxious spot buried deep in his guts. He had gotten used to it – he had gotten used to it, again – a small and contained space with all its terrible threats and endless, inescapable tension, and he had gotten used to it and missed it now that he really knew he was leaving it. Nothing could be more hateful. When they passed under the great gates, ten times taller than him, he ducked.

It hadn’t taken long for the clearing to begin. The streets were unusually dusty, the crowds in them unusually cowed, but the signs of battle were all already tucked away. A random storm could have caused the damage to the houses, except where a lucky ball or unlucky explosion had totally caved walls in. But for their resentful, suspicious gazes, the people were like any other city or village trying to ignore that a war they hadn’t wanted had come anyway.

They wound their way up the ever-narrowing streets to a central nest of buildings – an old temple, Rev guessed, rather than a palace, because many of the halls and rooms seemed disused, with air not stale but undisturbed. There were numerous niches and alcoves, and scores of harried Felanese people pressing themselves flat against walls as the Baathians passed to open long-locked doors and brush dust out balcony doors.

Surprisingly deep into the complex, Thespasian let an already-established troop of Baathian soldiers take Aster, the sheer displeasure on his face warning enough that they should take the utmost care. He and Rev climbed further, until Rev thought perhaps his growing light-headed fatigue might be due to altitude. (This didn’t cheer him up one bit).

Thespasian opened a heavy door into a set of rooms, not so disused as some of the others they passed. He threw down the kit, rounding on Rev.

“This will be Anik’s room. Make ready.”

Was his glare softer as he turned away? Perhaps not. He certainly slammed the door hard enough.

Left alone, the last of Rev’s energy left him. The old splicing of comfort and discomfort at being shut away, alone but sealed in, returned, but he wasn’t sure what to do about it. Part of him wished Aster were back.

He meant to survey the room, but only saw the bed – an insulting thing, if this were one of those prudish religions. Made wholly of pillows over a silk-rope frame, piled with silk sheets, the bed could fit a family of ten – it even had long gauzy curtains to protect it from insects and breezes from the gaping bay window, and the room’s enormous balcony.

He knew what the bed was for.

Grabbing the blanket rolls from the tops of the bags, Rev made himself a nest on the far side, out of sight of the door, where he could watch the curtains on the balcony waft in the sunlight. He coud hear water flowing somewhere nearby, but hardly stayed awake long enough to register the noise.

The day had been long, and now the night was dark. Anik felt slightly like a fool for having sent away the Felanese boy with the latern at the bottom of the sloped hallway, but one more sullen look – no matter how completely reasonable it was for him to look so – and Anik would have exploded. At least it was dark enough no one could see him also look like a fool as he groped his way along the wall, feeling for the door.

All day had been one long, sustained explosion. Most of it had been contained.

The battle – that had been easy. Unnervingly so. Normally this would have been a prompt for feelings of Fortune’s favor upon their mission. Perhaps it was carryover from the tensions of the voyage, or perhaps deeper doubts, but Anik could not feel lucky. He did not feel the blessing hand of Fate on them when the Theras stationed in the city turned and ran, tossing down their elaborate, gilded weapons rather than fight an army many times their size. He did not get a sense of victory out of the tired look of resignation on the Felanese faces who watched their overlords desert them. He did not like an easy victory, or mistake it for a sure one.

So it was with grave suspicion he started to work his way up the convoluted chains of command and favor to try to speak with Bohdan about his misgivings. Along the way he received more intelligence: Manas has been shot, but the bullet only grazed his head, and left him in a foul mood that made him ill-prepared to accept the honor of being placed in charge of the city. Manas would hate being away from battle, but with his wound, it was the only reasonable choice; Anik could only hope it wouldn’t be permanent. The swarm of Felanese experts Bohdan had brought next absorbed his attention, putting Anik and his tactical concerns at the end of a long line of relief-rubbers, sand-sifters, and pursed-lipped philologists.

Then Dulal had arrived, similarly frustrated by the priorities of their commander and much less prone to try to control her temper – but after hearing her news, Anik couldn’t blame her. Some of Dulal’s soldiers had been kidnapped by desert raiders that the Felanese called the Nitesh; those that had escaped passed tales of brutal treatment, of the sort which begged vengeance. Anik had seen vengeance. Anik had seen vengeance in the supposed cradle of civilization, seen vengeance begged in Baath itself, and there was no power, righteous and divine, that could salve the memory. Dulal took little convincing, but he had his doubts that Bohdan would take action to stop the spread of such bloody, misnamed justice.

Dulal also had greater concerns. The Theras, not native Felanese, but client rulers, had potentially successfully delayed the invaders long enough to begin to send word for reinforcement from their long-ignored but still-powerful homeland. Both she and Anik had noticed that even in a march so short as the one undertaken in the morning, dozens of soldiers had come down with what the surgeons were calling a heat-sickness. Half of Dulal’s supplies had turned out to be bad, and according to her local sources, the timing of the invasion was wrong for the countryside to be completely dependable for supplying fresh food.

Chitt had arrived and informed them both – while also waiting for an audience, now delayed due to the establishement of temporary civil authority from amongst Bohdan’s favorites – and informed them a half-dozen of the cannons had been lost overboard in unloading. The Admiral, unwilling to lend them any of his ships’ cannons, instead promised them a boat to help bring the guns back up from the ocean floor – and rather than awaiting his appeals, was having his ships sail around the point as soon as they were unloaded so they could not be raided for guns – which was why Anik, Dulal, and Chitt were yet again delayed, as Jatin stormed into the room, nearly squashing the city’s former ruler, screaming at Bohdan.

By then Dulal was half-drunk, and had arranged a duel with one of Bohdan’s favorites, who had bumped her as he left his audience and offered an insufficient apology. Anik allowed Chitt to precede them as he and the other second attempted to persuade their relative friends that the duel was both uniwise and not worth it. This was difficult, as Dulal kept of steady stream of more and more offensive accusations as they negotiated the details, until her valet was able to persuade her she needed to change her coat before murdering anyone (she would forget, most likely, who she had challenged by the time she sobered up and thus everyone would get to live), and Anik was able to reassure Bohdan’s pet that Dulal had not at all meant to call him the tumerous product of prolapsed pig’s uterus dragging through the back alley of the Baathian capitol’s most infamous district for prostitution. It could be considered a term of endearment in some quarters of her home district.

In the dark, he found the door. True, he had eventually addressed Bohdan, but by then their problems had so multiplied he found his initial report lacking. Bohdan seemed to be aware of the issues, or at least he dismissed them with an infallible authority. Then he added to them: there were no horses.

Three thousand cavalry soldiers, and there were no horses. Any of the horses they had brought that did not belong to officers would be requisitioned for the Guides regiments, as apparently there was some local strictures regarding social status and camels. That was what the Theras, and therefore the Felanese under the Theras, went in for – camels. He could get a thousand fine camels with the snap of his fingers, but there was not a horse fit for riding into battle in fifty miles of the city. Bohdan would, of course, just requisition what camels were needed, local customs be damned, to satisfy the requirements of functionality and propriety for the Guides and the cavalry, but there simply weren’t enough to go around. The cavalry would, in large part, have to walk.

Anik had found himself losing his temper. He opened the door quietly, shut it gently, stepped into the moonlit room and tripped over a pile of packs. Fortunately, he’d been still in his shuffling gait from the dark hallway, and thus was able to right himself before he bashed his face into the stone floor, but at some expense of dignity as he flailed. A flash of anger, then a cool wave of relief, as even before he heard it, he expected Rev to laugh.

There came no laugh. What had been cool turned cold, his heart beat seeming obscenely loud as he listened hard for what would not come. The sound of running water, the faintest whispers of city noise, the scrape of the curtain over the floor as breeze from the balcony brushed them inward…

In the stillness, his eyes adjusted to the light in the room – still dark, but much brighter than the hallway thanks to the moon spilling in from the balcony. It was thanks to the moon, too, that through the light gauze of the bed’s inner curtain he could see a divot in the pillows, its emptiness the more vast for his expectation it would be filled.

Of course, he thought. Of course. Of course. Of course.

He made himself move. Brush the curtains aside, sit on the edge of the bed, start making his hands work stiffly on the buttons of his uniform. Of course, he tried again, and it was so hollow.

A dozen lovers had left him. Many on the eve of great campaigns. There was something about it – the start of something new, that required a change. There were lovers in peace and lovers in war and they were rarely the same.

He tried to think of any other lovers of peace he’d had. Technically – only Rev. That was how long he had been at war. What an odd thing it was, too, that it was only Rev.

Uniform coat came off like shedding a pack after a long march. He worked on his breeches as if it were normal.

Of course he would go, though. Why stay surrounded by Baathians? They, as a people, were dangerous to him. The Felanese, though strangers, were longtime trading partners of Sivery. It was reasonable to leave here, now, join what might be a good flood of Siveric people fleeing as the Baathians invaded. Of course he would go. He should go. It was safest.

He hissed as his boots came off, like peeling skin. Of course it wasn’t safe enough with him. He was not all-powerful. He was not always present. He was not strong enough to protect Rev, and hadn’t that been proven? What did his promises mean, in the face of that reality? He could mean it – he could mean his offered protection with every fiber of his being – he could promise to die for a thing, but that didn’t make the thing real. Hadn’t he learned that? Hadn’t Papa Bel told him that? It was well and good to die for a cause, but what could the dead do to ensure that cause continued?

His chest hurt. His chest hurt and he couldn’t breathe. He felt as if taking a breath in would somehow break him, like the fragile ice still clinging tight to the spring flood.

Hadn’t he done it himself? Hadn’t he left Rev there, with the baggage, thinking, oh, god, at least here he was safe, and the battle could go on without Anik having to cast his glances back at the bloody scrum. He had meant Rev to be safe, and safe he was, and now – now, now that he was away from this, all this, all this including Anik – he was as safe as he could possibly be. Safe even from Anik himself.

His breath caught.

“I couldn’t sleep.”

Anik turned, hand grasping the air where his sword hilt had once been. A raggedy face poked over the far edge of the bed. Squinting up from the dark, even still, Anik could see the lines etched into Rev’s face.

Anik couldn’t make his throat work to speak. He meant to say something – something reassuring, something calm, something to help make sense of Rev’s strange excuse, something by way of a greeting, but instead his hand reached out of its own volition, offering itself over the bed.

As confused as Anik, Rev took it.

Anik pulled him up, and Rev came. Falling back, Anik drew Rev to him, chest to back, tangling legs with legs, crossing their arms together, bundling him in tight, and finally breathed in, chin tucked over Rev’s shoulder. If it bothered Rev, he gave no sign, but curled in to Anik’s grip, letting it grow tight as together they breathed.

Sleep would come quickly, all thought of the war obliterated, and only later, much later, would Anik start awake with the thought of what a bad thing that was for his part of this campaign.

#new book #things that I wrote #stories

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sebspocketsquare · 6 years

Text

You’ve Haunted Me All My Life

Pairing: Sebastian Stan x Reader - soulmate AU

Warnings: Language, lots of fluff, feels.

A/N: So, this is a re-post of a series I had on my old account (therealjamesbarnes). Some of you may remember it, but I did add a tiiiiny bit more to the story here and there, so I hope you like this somewhat-improved version. Let me know what you think! <3 Also, here’s the song that you sing to Sebastian, in case you wanted to give it a listen.

“It’s you.. Fuck, you’re beautiful.”

Those were the words that were etched into the skin above your heart.

You remembered the day they’d shown up, your 18th birthday. A sign that not only were you an adult, now, but that someone, somewhere, was meant for you. And those would be the first words they ever spoke to you.

Your friends all got interesting ones, too. “I know this is weird, but, I feel like I know you from somewhere.” and “I know we don’t know each other, but would you like to have coffee sometime?” They all seemed to be more in awe of yours, though, so desperate to know who would say those 5 words to you.

You remember when Ashley, sweet Ashley, didn’t get a phrase on her 18th birthday. You remember how she cried and cried, so afraid that nobody would ever love her… until she met her soulmate. His name was Dave, and he was deaf. He couldn’t speak, but her first words to him were etched in black right above his heart. “You have the most lovely eyes.” You were there to witness that moment, and you swore you’d never seen anything more beautiful than when her face lit up at the sight of the words. She was practically glowing.

10 years later, you still hadn’t met your special person, and you were beginning to fear that you never would. You’d had a few flings over the passing time, but they all found their someone eventually, leaving you right back where you started: searching.

“C’mon, Y/N. Just come with me to the party, I promise you’ll like it.” Ashley begged you, tugging on your jacket. You huffed, shrugging. “Ashley, its the day before Thanksgiving, I don’t really want to go anywhere.” You whined, trying to get out of her grip. “It’s the biggest party night of the year, pleeeeease. I don’t want to go alone.” She continued to grovel, and you rolled your eyes at her. “What about Dave? Take him.” You offered and she shook her head, sighing. “You know Dave doesn’t like parties… They’re.. too much for him.” She told you and you sighed again, feeling yourself start to give in to her begging.

“I.. I guess.” You mumbled after a few moments and she cheered loudly. “Bring your guitar.” She said quickly before she booked it out of the room. “Ashley, wait! Why do I need to bring an instrument to this party?” You called, following her quickly. She let out a nervous laugh before turning to face you. “I may or may not have mentioned that you could sing aaaand.. Well, Don wants you to play a few songs. Three, tops!” She said, clasping her hands together in front of her, prepared to beg you again. “Please, please do this for me and I will never ask you for anything ever again.” She said quickly, pouting. You wouldn’t have normally minded playing at a party, but you wish she had given you more time to prepare. It had been a few weeks at least since your fingers had danced over the frets of your most prized possession. The holidays were always a hard time for you, and you usually ended up falling into a depressive black hole. But you couldn’t tell her that.

You let out a long breath, shrugging once again. “Fine. Whatever. I guess. But I get to pick the songs I’ll play.” You told her, narrowing your eyes. She nodded quickly, a large smile forming on her lips as she rushed forward to hug you. “Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU.” She screeched, rocking you back and forth. You hummed in response before pushing her off of you. “Do I have to dress up for this thing?” You asked her and she nodded slightly. “A little.” You shook your head, “Alright. I’ll be ready in 15.”

You arrived at the party, the bitter chill of November’s wind nipping at your cheeks and snow stuck to the soles of your shoes. You immediately felt anxious when you entered the large house, not expecting quite so many people to be there. Ashley had failed to mention that there would be well over 100 people attending. “This way. I’ll introduce you to Don.” She said, taking your free hand and leading you through the crowd of party-goers. You held onto the handle of your guitar case tightly, trying not to hiss when people bumped against it.

You approached a tall, dark haired man who was speaking with two other people that you couldn’t help but feel looked familiar. “Don!” Ashley greeted, and the muscular man turned around, hugging her tightly. “Ashley, hey! So glad you could make it. It’s been too long.” He said softly, his eyes moving to you when he ended their embrace.

“Who’s this?” He asked, holding his hand out for you to shake. “Y/N.” You introduced yourself, placing your hand in his softly. His hand was warm and calloused, big enough to nearly swallow yours whole. “The singer?” He asked, his eyes wide with excitement as he looked over at Ashley. Oh god, how much had she told him about you? “This is her!” Ashley replied and he nodded, looking back over at you. “I’m so happy you decided to come. You can play whatever you’d like.. This crowd’s not too picky.” He told you before releasing your hand. You nodded as you gripped your case tighter, your eyes darting to his two incredibly handsome friends.

“Oh! How rude of me. Let me introduce you. This is Sebastian and this is Chris.” He told you and Ashley, and both of the men nodded at you politely. You couldn’t help but notice how Sebastian’s gaze lingered on you for a moment longer than Chris’, and how it made your stomach flutter. Nobody had looked at you like that before. Like he was trying to commit your image to memory.

“Was there somewhere in particular you wanted me to set up?” You asked, breaking your gaze with Sebastian and turning to Don. He nodded, tugging on your sleeve and leading you away from the group and towards what resembled a living room. The size of his house was getting more and more overwhelming by the minute. “You can set up right in here. There aren’t too many people around in here, so you shouldn’t have any issues.” He told you with a smile and you nodded, setting your case on the floor. “It’s just an acoustic. I didn’t bring a microphone or anything.” You told him and he grinned.

“I’ll have everyone quiet down a bit for you, then. From what Ashley says, and what she’s shown me, you’ve got an amazing voice.” You chuckled awkwardly, kneeling down so you could pull your guitar out of the case. “I hope I don’t disappoint you.” You mumbled, and he only laughed, patting your shoulder. “I’ll go tell everyone that you’re setting up in here.” You nodded as you watched him walk away, letting out a long, slow breath.

Ashley came into the room quickly, her face looking waaaay too excited. “Can you believe there are actors at this party?” She asked you as you put your strap over your shoulder, pulling up a chair that was sitting in the corner of the room. “What?” You asked her, not really paying attention. “Sebastian Stan and Chris Evans! Captain fucking America is here.” She half whispered, half screamed.

You shook your head, laughing at her. “I’m sure they just want to enjoy the party like everyone else.” You told her, and she huffed, smiling softly. “Why do you have to be so down-to-earth? Can’t you just fangirl with me for like, a sec?” She asked and you rolled your eyes at her. “Maybe after I’m done having a heart attack over this.” You whispered, your eyes widening as more and more people came into the living room. Her hands were on your shoulders as she followed your gaze. “You can do this. I believe in you.” She presses a quick kiss to your cheek before she takes a few steps back, allowing you to be in the spotlight.

You sat on the chair awkwardly, positioning your guitar on your lap comfortably before you pulled a pick from your back pocket. Everyone had gone quiet, except for a few whispers. You cleared your throat, forcing a small smile. “Hi, everyone.” You paused, chuckling. “I’m not a professional or anything, but I hope you like what I’m gonna play for you.”

Everyone had listened quietly to your first two songs, clapping softly when you were through. You decided to do a cover for your last song, one of your favorites. You took a sip of the water that Ashley had brought to you, cracking your knuckles. “This last one, uh.. It has a soft spot in my heart. It’s one of my favorites.” You said loud enough for everyone to hear. “I hope you like it.”

You closed your eyes, playing the first few chords with ease. When you were finally ready to sing, you opened your eyes, immediately meeting Sebastian’s.

“You’ve haunted me all my life.” You sang, directly to him, and his mouth fell open slightly. “Through endless days and countless nights.” You continued, letting your eyes flutter closed as you felt yourself start to get lost in the song.

“There was a storm when I was just a kid, stripped the last coat of innocence.

You’ve haunted me all my life.

You’re always out of reach when I’m in pursuit,

Long winded, then suddenly mute.

And there’s a flaw in my heart’s design,

For I keep trying to make you mine.

You’ve haunted me all my life,

You’ve haunted me all my life.

You are the mistress I can’t make a wife,

and you’ve haunted me all my life.”

You let your eyes open back up as your fingers danced over the guitar strings and frets, looking up, only to find Sebastian standing in front of you, his eyes shining brightly as he watched you, a soft smile on his lips. You smiled back up at him, unsure of why he had taken such a sudden interest in you.

“And so I wait, but I never seem to learn

How to capture your diminishing returns.

I still see you through the eyes of a child,

Not even thinking we could tame the wild.”

He held your gaze as you continued to sing, and a feeling stirred in your stomach - one that you were unfamiliar with.

“You’ve haunted me all my life,

You’ve haunted me all my life.

You are the mistress I can’t make a wife,

and you’ve haunted me all my life.”

His smile only grew as you continued to sing to him, his eyes crinkling in the corners, something you couldn’t help but find endearing and absolutely adorable. What was going on here? Why was this man here, so close to you?

“You’ve haunted me all my life,

You’ve haunted me all my life.

You are the mistress I can’t make a wife,

and you’ve haunted me all my life.”

You finished the song, pulling your strap over your head as your small crowd applauded. You felt a burning sensation on your cheeks as you smiled, standing up and bowing slightly. You turned to Ashley immediately, who was grinning wildly at you as she clapped loudly. You rolled your eyes at her, moving to walk past her, when someone caught your wrist.

You turned, seeing Sebastian stare down at you in awe. “It’s you.. Fuck, you’re beautiful.” He breathed and you felt your heart stop in your chest as you stared up at him. Those words… His free hand cupped your cheek hesitantly, his tongue flicking out to wet his lips. “I’ve waited 16 years for you.” He whispered and you felt your jaw drop slightly, your hands shaking. “I thought I’d never find you.” His thumb traced your jaw softly and it took everything in your power not to melt into his touch. “You.. What?” You breathed, confusion fogging your brain. He chuckled, coming closer so he could nuzzle his nose against yours. You could smell his aftershave and practically taste the beer he’d been nursing all night. “You’ve haunted me all my life.. I always thought it was fitting.” He told you, pulling down the collar of his shirt so you could see the black letters carved into his skin.

Before you could stop yourself, you were reaching up and tracing each letter with your fingertips, causing a shiver to work its way through his spine. “I just never imagined you’d be singing to me.” He admitted, making you giggle softly. He chewed his cheek as he stared down at you, his hand still cupping your face. “You are so beautiful.” He told you and you looked up to meet his gaze. His eyes made your knees feel weak. You’d waited for this day for so long, you were starting to wonder if this was a figment of your imagination. “Is this real?” You asked him, feeling tears sting your eyes.

He let out a breathy laugh, pressing his lips to your forehead softly. “Yeah, baby. This is real. I’m here.” The amount of affection in his voice made your heart soar and you quickly wrapped your arms around his waist, pulling him into a hug. One of his arms went around your middle while his other hand found its way into your hair, holding you close to him. “I can’t believe you’re here.” He whispered into your hair and you nodded against his shoulder, your grip on him tightening.

You felt crazy, throwing yourself at him like this, but you knew that you felt a pull towards each other for a reason. He was yours, and you were his.

He pulled back from the embrace slightly, looking down at you. “Can I..?” He asked softly, his fingers playing with the collar of your dress. You nodded slowly, and he pulled the fabric down, a small gasp leaving his lips when he saw the words that were written on your skin. “It’s you.. Fuck, you’re beautiful.”

He smiled a tearful smile, his index finger tracing each letter delicately. “It really is you.” He breathed, his lower lip trembling. “I’ve waited so long… Wasted so much time. Where have you been?” He asked, his hands coming back up to cup your cheeks. You smiled softly, your hands resting on his chest.

“Waiting for you.”

#Sebastian Stan x reader #sebastian stan x you #Seb x reader #sebastian x reader #soulmate au #sebastian soulmate au #sometimes i write #re-post from my old blog #oldie but goodie

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ellanainthetardis · 7 years

Note

Okay this is pretty dark so feel free not to do it, but chapter 531 was AMAZING and I couldn't help but think: what if Effie attempted suicide before Haymitch got there? Haymitch would still show up and probably tell her family off but that's your choice if you decide to write it :) As always LOVE your work and adore your spirit. Drama from before was ridiculous ❤❤❤❤❤❤

Here you go! [X]

A Match Made In Madness

Lyssa checked the nursery before addressing the commotion downstairs.

Bryden and Timotheo were still there, playing some board game under thedistracted eyes of the governess who doubled as a nanny. Her boys looked justas sad and lost as they had been since the end of the war and it made her heartclench to see them so. Although her heart clenched a lot nowadays. Every timeshe thought about her dead husband, about the rebels forcing him to face afiring squad…

More noises from downstairs made her leave the nursery unnoticed. Shequickened her pace along the familiar corridors of her childhood home, longingfor the loved walls of her own house. Her destroyedhouse that had been reduced to dust and ashes. Like the rest of her life.

It had been difficult enough to come back to her parents’ house pleadingfor a place to live, the formidable inheritance of the Flavershyms forbidden toher because Rufus had once been a Gamemaker for two years, which now meant thatnot only had he deserved to be murdered without any dignity on live TV but thatall his money and assets had been stolen by the government. She had never felt hatred before. Now she knew what ittasted like.

Yes, it had been difficult to come back and ask for a safe haven to waitfor the rebel storm to pass, all the more so knowing business was declining andher father was having problems keeping their fortune balanced. They lived witha reduced staff, they never went on endless shopping sessions anymore and theydidn’t receive. Even her mother, while desperate to keep up appearances, seemedaware of the looming threat. Elindra was playing a dangerous game of trying toclimb back up the social circles while not spending a cent more than sheabsolutely needed.

Lyssa could have lived with all that if it hadn’t been for her sister.

She had always loved Effie.

Oh, how she hated her now…

It was her fault. Everythingwas her fault. It had been herfriends putting Lyssa’s life upside down, herfriends ransacking the Capitol, her friendssentencing her and her sons to poverty, herfriends who had shot Rufus… And it had been her who had refused to help when Lyssa and Elindra had gone to herhospital room and begged for her tointervene.

Effie had almost laughed in their faces, had kept lying about having next to no power… To stay in her lover’s goodgrace, surely. For the good it had done her sister… Haymitch Abernathy had leftfor Twelve with his damn Mockingjayafter starting just enough rumors that everybody in Panem knew Effie Trinkethad escaped death because she had allowed him to settle between her thighs morethan once. It was shameful. And evenmore shameful to be associated with her.

Lyssa hated her for not helping Rufus. And all because her sister hadalways been viciously jealous ofLyssa’s life of course. She had always tried to understand Effie, hadtirelessly worked to get close despite the distance her sister kept her at, hadalways loved her no matter what….

Oh, the day Effie had showed up on their parents’ doorstep, with a pitifulpink suitcase and no money to speak of… The government had taken everything away from her sister too.Sweet irony.

Their mother had been determined to send her away – to Twelve, why not?Out of sight out of mind. But their father, as angry as he was with Effie,wouldn’t consent to it. Family was family.

So they all lived in that house and it would have been unbearable enoughon account of the tight quarters but, naturally,her sister had to make it worse by going insane.And all for attention, Lyssa was sure of it.

Effie hid. There was no other wordfor it.

She roamed the house, avoided the staff, ducked in empty rooms everytime Mother called her… She spent her days in pajamas too. When she wasn’twearing the old tattered man shirt she was carrying it around like an oddtalisman… She never brushed her hair. She never wore make-up. Sometimes, shecurled up in corners or behind some pieces of furniture and she rocked onherself, completely lost to the world. In those moments it was as if she wasn’tthere anymore. And of course she had screamed herself raw at night, runningaround the house like a madwoman, until Elindra had bought her sleeping pillsand instructed her to use them…

The pills weren’t doing much good. Only the other day she had almost runoff the street… If their father hadn’t caught her… It had been frightening towatch her fight him off as if she didn’t know him at all. Their mother had stared,clutching her dressing gown to her chest, terror and horror battling on herface… Effie had collapsed eventually, as if something in her had just snapped… She had collapsed in theirfather’s arms and had sobbed until Lyssa had clapped her hands and had hoardedher own children back to bed…

Their aunt frightened them.

All for attention, Lyssa was sure of it.

Effie had behaved more or less normally at first. She had visited theMellark boy at the clinic every afternoon, like clockwork. Her mornings hadbeen spent looking for a job. Thathad stopped quickly enough when it had turned out that people only had threeadjectives for her: traitor, slut or monster – personally, Lyssa agreed withall three. People didn’t want to be associated with the surviving escort. Sowhen Mellark had been shipped back to Twelve, Effie had stopped going out.

She needed to find her importance somewhere so she was grasping fortheir parents’ attention. Because they were too sympathetic to Lyssa’s loss andgod forbids the spotlight not beingon Effie…

Her behavior wasn’t normal though.

The other day, at dinner – a dinner Effie had attended in her old tatteredbaggy shirt like a ruffian – Lyssa had casually suggested they should have hercommitted. Their mother has tut-tutted disapprovingly but the glance she hadexchanged with her husband had told Lyssa they had had that particularconversation before. Effie must have realized it too because she had gone completely crazy then.

She had tried to leave the house, tossing everything she owned in hersuitcase and swearing she wouldn’t cause them any more troubles… She had beenraving about being locked-up and escaping and what not. It wasn’t until theirfather had sworn they wouldn’t have her sent away and their mother had pointed outthat there was no way to do that without damaging their reputation further thatEffie had calmed down.

All for attention. Like everything else.

She reached the stairs just as the voices rose in fury.

“You have no business here!”her mother shrieked. “Leave before I call the authorities!”

“Lady, I don’t hit women as a rule but I swear if you don’t step aside…”a male voice warned.

“Let him in.” Lyssa instructed, her calm tone effectively cuttingthrough the argument. She wasn’t one for dramatic entrances, that had alwaysbeen more Effie’s scene, but she couldn’t deny she enjoyed the way eyes turnedon her. She knew how she looked after all, even in black, she looked ravishing.She dismissed the maid with a casual wave of the hand and the girl hurriedaway. “Think about the neighbors, Mother.”

That did the trick.

Elindra almost dragged the man inside and hastily closed the door behindhim before anxiously peering through the small window.

“Where’s she?” Haymitch Abernathy asked, directing his question to her.

Lyssa took a moment to study the victor, unable to see what was soappealing about him. His clothes were creased as if he had traveled all nightand hadn’t taken the time to change and freshen up before showing up – ahypothesis that the traveling bag he dropped at his feet encouraged, she dearly hoped he wasn’t entertaining anythought of them hosting him. His hair was long, dirty and hadn’t seen a comb infar too long. Uneven rough stubble covered his chin and jaws. He had broadshoulders and he looked strong but his chest didn’t appear firm at all.

“She is not here.” Elindra bravely lied. “I do not know what you heard but Effie has a very nice proper boyfriend. She does not need you to soil her reputationagain. She is doing very well for herself.You are not welcome here and I do not know who you think you are to comehere like this but it will notstand!”

“I called him, Mother.” Lyssa said before he could snap at Elindraagain. He seemed the kind to rudely snap at people under their own roof.

“I beg your pardon?” her mother scoffed in dismay. “Whatever for?”

“He can take her off our hands before she does something that bringsshame to this house again.” she dismissed. “She might not miss next time.”

Elindra swallowed hard, pursing her lips in a way that told Lyssa she wouldbe in for a lecture later on.

“Your sister had an accident.”her mother hissed. “She needs to stay herewhere her reputation is safe.”

“Taking three pills instead of two is an accident, Mother.” she sneered.“Swallowing the whole bottle is a suicide attempt.”

The word hadn’t been said once.

Not when the maid had found her sister, not when Elindra had franticallyslapped her until her eyelids hadfinally fluttered open, not when the old family doctor had prescribed her rest…Accident was the polite proper term.

“Where’s she?” Abernathy asked, sounding tired, almost defeated.

“You will take her with you, yes?” Lyssa insisted.

Oh, the loathing in those grey eyes… “If she wants to come. Yeah.”

“That is not necessary and I won’t allow it.” Elindra snapped. “Effiewill stay here. She is simply… Shehas bad cases of nerves attacks, that is all. She will rest, get better and wewill find her a nice gentleman to…”

“Sure.” Abernathy scowled. “Over my dead body.”

“It is for the best.” Lyssa promises. “She is lovesick for him, haven’tyou noticed? The shirt, the way she stares at the phone… It is his name she calls when she has anepisode. If he wants her, I say good riddance.”

“Lyssa!” Elindra exclaimed, not thatdisapproving though.

“The scandal will be bad but it will only be on her.” she insisted “If Effie kills herself here we will never hear the end of it.”

“Okay. Enough’s enough.”Abernathy growled, pushing past her and up the stairs. “Effie!” He looked likeman’s possessed, opening every door on his path. “Effie!”

Lyssandra and Elindra hurried after him, a bit scared by his sudden hostility.He smelt strongly of whiskey and she wondered if he was drunk. It wouldn’t besurprising, would it?

“Mother?” Timotheo called out, uncertain, when the man brutally openedthe nursery’s door. Her brave boy had immediately pushed his little brotherbehind him. “Mother, is it happening again?”

Was someone elsegoing to be arrested and killed? he meant. Would Haymitch Abernathy, one of therebellion’s figureheads, grab someone like the rebels had grabbed Rufus infront of his sons without any sort of common decency?

“Sorry, kid.” Abernathy offered, his voice softening, before she couldsay anything. “Didn’t mean to scare you. Just looking for my girl.”

“I wasn’t scared.” her son answered, jutting his chin up in dismissal.

Abernathy’s lips quirked up in a bitter smirk. “Course not.”

“If you are done I will takeyou to her room.” Lyssa hissed, forcing him to step back so she could close thenursery’s door once more.

“You’ve got a good boy.” he said on the way.

As if it was even a question.

“His father was a good man too.” she snapped. “You and my sister refusedto help him. You might as well have killed him yourselves.”

“It was a lot more complicated than that.” he countered. “I barely got Effieout.”

“Oh, please!” she scowled.

Annoyance flashed on his face but she opened a door before he couldreply and the moment he spotted Effie lost in the comforter of her big bed, hewas gone. He rushed inside and if he was thrown by the pink canopy of the bedor the decidedly teenage feel of the room, it didn’t show.

“Sweetheart…” he breathed out with relief when he sat on the mattressnext to Effie’s hip. He brushed his knuckles against her cheek and smiled whenher eyes opened. A genuine tender smile that looked so intimate Lyssa felt likean intruder. “Stupid girl…” he growled. “Why didn’t you call? You’re doing this bad, you call me. You come to me.” Heshook his head. “I know you’re angry with me but that’s pushing it too far. Youdon't… You don’t do this, Effie. That's…No.”

Effie was staring at him as if she wasn’t sure he was real.

“You should stall Father.” Lyssa suggested to Elindra “He won’tapprove.”

And she intended to have Abernathy and her sister out of the house well before he was back from work andtried to stop them from whisking Effie to Twelve.

Her mother’s lips were still pursed. “Neither do I, Lyssandra.”

And yet she still left in search of a pretext to slow down their father,probably because she knew Lyssa was right. They would survive the scandal ofEffie running to Twelve but if Effie took her own life under their roof…Abernathy had experience with that sort of things. Everyone knew the Mockingjaywas unstable.

“Haymitch…” Effie whispered almost with awe. She reached out and hehelped her place her hand on his cheek. “You’re real.”

Lyssa rolled her eyes and stepped inside the room. “She sleepwalks now.I trust it is not a deal breaker for you.”

She rummaged around until she located the pink suitcase under the bed.She could have called the maid but she was curious.

Abernathy was resolutely ignoring her anyway.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

“Perfectly fine.” Effie answered, almost cheerfully.

Exactly as Lyssa had suspected. An act. She should have called thevictor much earlier and saved them all the trouble. Perhaps that even was whather sister had been after. A dashing rescue.

“Effie.” he chided.

Effie licked her lips and averted her eyes, her cheeks flushed in shame.“There was an accident, as you surely know…”

“Accident, was it?” he snorted bitterly.

Her sister shrugged pitifully. “I was very tired. I could not… I couldnot make sense of the things in my head and… Lyssa, what are you doing?”

It might have been the first time in months Effie had dared to addressher directly. Guilt, Lyssa was sure.

“I am packing your things, what does it look like?” she retorted. “Wecannot keep you given the circumstances. Either you are insane or you play atbeing insane. Frankly, I don’t give a damn which it is.”

That wasn’t entirely true and her heart clenched.

Seeing Effie unconscious in a puddle of her own sick… Seeing theirparents so frantic with panic… Seeing their mother crying…

No, she hadn’t liked that at all.

But they couldn’t help her. That was glaringly obvious.

“No!” Effie screamed, scrambling to a sitting position but too weak todo much more. “No! Father said he wouldn’t let you! He promised! He promised! I will be good… I won’t do it again, I promise. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Don’t let them lock me up, Lyssa…Don’t send me there! Don’t…”

“Send you where?” Abernathy frowned, looking up at Lyssa. “What is shetalking about?”

She pursed her lips, reluctant to share her own part in this fiasco.

“She wants to send me to an asylum.” Effie whispered, tears rolling downher cheeks. “Because I’m insane. And I am.I think I am but…”

“Nobody’s locking you up anywhere.” the victor cut her off. “I’ve cometo take you home.”

“Home…” her sister repeated as if it was a foreign concept.

“If you want to come, that is.” Abernathy amended, nervously rubbing theback of neck. “The kids are cleaning the guest room right now. They were happywhen I told them I was coming to get you, they want to see you. Didn’t tellthem what happened though. Knew you wouldn’t like that..”

Did he ever form proper sentences, she wondered? What was so appealingabout butchered grammar?

“Home… Home with you…” Effie insisted, sounding a bit sluggish.

She was always slow lately.

Lyssa folded the last dress in the suitcase and moved on to the dressingtable and the beauty products her sister hadn’t touched in a long time.

“You can’t be that mad with me… You’re wearing my shirt.” he pointedout. “Been wearing it a while, yeah?”

It was a tactful way to say she smelled, Lyssa figured. But it wasn’t Effie per se. Her sister showered threetimes a day since the war.

“She refuses to have it washed.” Lyssa supplied. “Mother tried to tossit away and she fished it from the garbage bin.”

Abernathy wrinkled his nose while Effie flushed crimson. Her sisterdidn’t deny though.

Lyssa understood more than she pretended. She had her own stash ofRufus’ clothes hidden away and she kept them religiously but that didn’t meanshe dressed like a hobo.

“Okay… Tell you what, sweetheart… I’ll get you another one, yeah? Let’stake this one off. Get you dressed.” he suggested.

Lyssa turned around to offer her help because as much as she hated hersister nowadays she wasn’t about to let a man putting unwelcomed hands on her.The hands weren’t unwelcomed though. They couldn’t be when Effie slipped theshirt over her head without a second thought for the grand lack of underwearunderneath.

His grey eyes roamed on the uncovered flesh. Assessing rather thanlusting.

“You lost more weight.” he said.

“She doesn’t eat.” Lyssa sighed, betraying a worry she didn’t want toadmit to herself. Effie looked like a walking corpse. She ate like a bird,mostly soup. Her blue eyes fell on the scars and she frowned. “Where did youget those?”

Effie hadn’t shied away from the man’s gaze but she covered herself withthe comforter under her sister’s scrutiny. “Nowhere.”

“It’s okay, sweetheart.” he said calmly. “You don’t have to say.”

Effie relaxed and accepted the bra and panties he fished from the opensuitcase. She dressed under the sheets and Lyssa had the distinct impression itwas to hide from her and not fromhim. She only pushed the comforter away once she had a black and white dresson. It looked far too big on her.

Lyssa grabbed her toiletry bag from the bathroom and zipped the suitcaseshut. There. Now Effie could leavefor good and she would be able tomourn in peace.

She felt a pang of longing when she saw the way the victor helped herwalk, making sure she wouldn’t trip, making sure she was alright… The smileEffie flashed him was the most genuine thing she had seen on her sister’s facesince the war, her eyes were lighting up when she looked at him. And he softened around her. He looked lessscary, less… intense.

A match made in madness.

“Thanks for calling me.” Abernathy said as Lyssa was about to close thefront door on them. His tone was controlled and she was sure there were otherthings he wanted to tell her. Mainly about how suggesting to have Effiecommitted was probably what had pushedher to radical options.

She understood what he was playing at when Effie looked at her insurprise and gratefulness.

She remained rigid in her sister’s embrace.

But that was a first step, she figured.

#hayffie #effie trinket #haymitch abernathy #prompt #post mj #book!verse #angst #hurt comfort #post prison effie #effie & pills #protective haymitch #h doing the rescue #not established #scars #lyssa #elindra #tadius #about e past

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imagine-loki · 7 years

Text

Hail to the King

TITLE: Hail to the King CHAPTER NO./ONE SHOT: Prologue AUTHOR: artemisnightingale216 ORIGINAL IMAGINE: Imagine Thor and Loki have a younger sister, Astrid, who was not much younger than Loki. Growing up, she was always very close to both her brothers, acting as a catalyst that kept them together even through tough times, though she typically stayed close to Loki’s side. Though it went against Frigga’s wishes, she even trained alongside them and raised as a warrior as well as a lady… RATING: M for Mature and Adult Themes NOTES/WARNINGS: I was so happy seeing the number of notes this imagine got! In only a few days, too! I had hoped to have this part up sooner, but I was busy with another story of mine and work. You know how it is. Anyway, I will say that there will sexual interactions in later chapters, to which I will give a warning of course, and a good number of chapters will contain violence. Violence is a given, though, considering it’s based off a Marvel movie. Also, this is my first official Loki full fledged fiction, so I can only ask that you go easy on me. I’m still learning as I go, so please treat me well. On with the show, my fellow Loki Lovers!

Edit: This actually turned out longer than I expected it to. It was really only supposed to be a small tidbit, but here you see the results. I hope you enjoy!

Song For the Chapter

The promise of Spring was heavy in the air one Winter’s morning. It was unusually warm despite the snow still blanketing the ground, but still considered cold enough to don the thick furs and heavy material they called clothing in their time. New grass and budding flowers were just beginning to peek out from under the seemingly endless white, the sky a stunning blue in contrast to the colors below. Trees, though bare of bark from the foraging creatures nearly starved in the cold weather, grew high and tall in the air, awakening from their slumber and soaking in the new rays of light just starting to heat the earth. Now was the time for birds and bears alike, still fat and plumb from their slumber, emerged to find the world once again new. Small houses, carved from wood and packed with long since hardened clay, stood slightly slanted and held up with stilts carefully placed against their foundations that had held strong and true in the bitter winds. Winter had come and gone, taking with it the lives of both young and old who would never again step out of their homes and bask in the sun, such was the way of nature.

With death, however, came new life in these wood and clay homes. As was tradition, men and women conceived their newborns long before the cold came and birthed their offspring well into the Winter, their survival a testament of their strength and their death a display of the weak. New mothers left the warmth of their beds and the comfort of their drowsy husbands to tend to their squalling babes, their stomachs lighter without the added weight inside of them. After the young were fed and quieted, the older children were awoken from their lazy dreams and given their own meals before being sent out to attend to their chores. The young lads were sent to work with their fathers, collecting wood for the hearth and hunting for supper, while the lasses stayed home with their mothers to see that the laundry and other such housework was tended to.

One such house, which stood slightly straighter than the others due to careful framework and diligent care, was no such exception. The mother threw aside her warm blankets, woke her children and husband, and set first to heat water for the laundry after dressing in her furs and thick clothing. As she lugged the water inside from the well not too far from where they lived, she found another woman standing by the hearth where her children and husband sat warming their skin before going out into the cold themselves, using the last of their wood before more was collected to create a well burning fire. The two women smiled pleasantly at each other, glad to be in each others presence and out of the threat of Winter; a great resemblance was held in the faces of these two sisters, both with hair like the earth trailing down their backs in long braids.

“Did you happen to check the sheep while you were out, Ingrid?” her husband asked as he and his two sons pulled on their thick skinned boots and tucked their pant legs in to keep the snow out.

“Yes. They seem to be fairing well,” Ingrid replied as she hoisted the water pails up onto the stones of the hearth where she left them to warm, moving a piece of her earth brown hair out of her equally brown eyes. “The Spring lambs should be coming soon, as well. The ewes are looking particularly fat this year.”

“Good. At least one of them should serve as a fitting offering to the Gods,” Ingrid’s husband, Davin, said as he stood from his stool. “Erland,” he called to their eldest, “Magnus,” to their youngest, “time to be on our way. The hares and squirrels will be out before long and hard to spot come the time the sun has half risen.” Erland and Magnus, dead ringers for their mother, hopped down from their stools and raced to the door, Magnus excited to experience his first hunt.

“Be careful with them, Davin. Erlands first hunt, you brought him back bruised and dirt ridden,” Ingrid pleaded as she stepped to send off her husband on their departure.

“The boy followed a hare down its hole. Far be it from to tell him to give up so easily,” Davin laughed. Ingrid gave him a look. “Fine, fine. I will personally see to it our son stays out of hare holes and the like.” He raised his right hand in promise.

“Both of them?” Ingrid raised a brow.

“Both of them,” Davin nodded.

“Be sure to bring me back a fat hare or a few squirrels tonight. I would like to make a stew tonight,” Ingrid smiled.

“Oh? What would be the occasion?” Davin wondered.

“Unna felt a kick late last night and early this morn. Surely that is a sign her babe is to come soon,” Ingrid whispered happily in a hushed tone, she and Davin glancing over at her sister, watching her tend to the fire with a long stick with one hand and hold the swell of her stomach with the other.

“If you say so,” Davin said quietly, unsure of that with the current state of Unna’s stomach. He turned back to his wife and smiled despite himself. “For you, my darling, I will bring back the fatest hare and the biggest squirrel this world has ever known! The gods will be in awe of our bounty!”

“I feel certain you will,” Ingrid smiled before they exchanged pecks on each others cheeks.

“Father, hurry up!” Erland beckoned from where he and his brother waited by the door, itching to be outdoors instead of cooped up like the sheep they raised. Magnus clutched his wooden hunting knife to his chest, the handmade weapon the first of his own creation and not well carved by sharp to the touch, trying his best to stand still beside Erland. “The forest creatures will not wait for us!”

“Alright, alright. Keep your boots on. I am coming,” Davin shook his head at his children’s patience, and collected his own hunting tools before joining them at the door and stepping out into the cold.

Ingrid could not seem to help the smile on her face as she removed the pails from the hearth and carried them over to the wash bin. “Be glad your kind has not arrived yet, Unna. You will not know peace again for some time.”

“I have no wish for peace when it means my *kind will stay hidden from my sight for much longer,” Unna sighed as she left the hearth and joined her sister at the bin, remembering the sounds that Erland and Magnus had made when they were just babes. “I long for the cries and bellyaching.”

“You will come to regret these words,” Ingrid laughed as she and Unna dumped armfuls of sheets and other clothes that needed washed, leaving them to soak for a moment in the warm water. “Soon there will be nothing but cries for you.”

“All the better,” Unna said lovingly as she looked at her stomach and caressed it tenderly, feeling a small flurry of kicks in reply. Though the swell was smaller than it should have been, she felt strength in her unborns movements and knew it could not be much longer until the child would join her outside of her womb. She felt in her heart of hearts that her child had drawn this strength from her late husband, Aesir.

The winter, unkind and unjust has it was, had seen to take Aesir from Unna during a hunt with Davin. The snow had been so thick and the wind so unrelenting that they could not have possibly seen where they were going. Unna and Ingrid had begged them to stay, but they were low on rations and their supply of meat was next to none. Aesir and Davin had no choice but to brave the storm or else watch their family starve. The choice was easy for them, but even with careful footing Aesir was the first to fall down a steep bank and lose consciousness; had it not been for that, Davin would surely not have had the time to brace himself and would surely have lost consciousness himself. They were found the next morning after the storm had passed, Davin shaken and cold with a swollen ankle and Aesir frozen to death, four large hares tucked in his satchel ready to be prepared for dinner. His death had nearly broken Unna and the Winter had nearly taken her as well, but their child had kept her going and brought her back from the abyss that was death’s door.

Since then, however, her stomach had barely grown and she was only half the size she should have been so late in her pregnancy. Davin, as well on Ingrid when she was sure her sister was not looking, feared this did not bode well for the child. Small children tended not to last long in their environment and it was well past time for him or her to be due. Unna remained ever hopeful, though, and made it a point to tell her family when her child stirred inside of her.

“What do you hope of the gender, Unna?” Ingrid asked, trying to distract her from the thoughts she knew plagued her mind so many months after Aesir’s death.

“A boy would be nice, someone to help with the hunting and sowing in the Spring, but I have always dreamt of a little girl. One with hair as dark and skin as fair as her father’s,” Unna said fondly, forgetting her troubles if only for a moment.

“What a handful that would be. Aesir was always a bit of a troublemaker,” Ingrid chuckled, not realizing her mistake until after the words had left her mouth.

Rather than sadness, however, Unna found comfort in the memory of her late husband’s antics. “One can only hope.” She smiled wistfully as she removed a single tear from the corner of her eye and rubbed her hands free of it. “Enough of this melancholy talk. There are chores to be done and your little one is much too young to do them yet.”

“Of course,” Ingrid nodded, happy to give her something else to think about as she pulled the washing stones from the broom cupboard and handed one to her sister. The work was more or less silent, each finding solace in the quiet slosh of water that slowly began to cool and brush of stone against fabric as they did their best to clean the dirt from the thick fabrics. The sun was high in the sky, offering new warmth and causing many to put out their hearths for the time being, and just beginning to make its slow descent when she realized her family should have been back long ago. Fear gripped at her heart as she worried for a brief moment that the same fate had befallen her husband and male offspring as it had Aesir. “Where do you think they could be? Davin has never taken so long on a hunt before.”

“I suspect Magnus is taking his time in trying to find a suitable catch. I still remember the tales of Erlands first hunt,” Unna laughed, trying to ease her sisters worry and not think the worst had happened. Still she saw the fear in Ingrid’s gaze. “How about I go and look for them? Surely they could not have gotten so far.” She dropped the sheet back into the now cold water and made to stand.

“No. I will go. Will you hang the linens for me if you finish?” Ingrid asked, quick to stand and retrieve her thick skin coat.

“Of course,” Unna nodded, watching Ingrid hurriedly head out the door with a spring of fear in her step. She fished the stone from the bin and washed the last bit of laundry before taking it over to the hearth and hanging them to dry by the fire. The freshly cleaned clothes steamed from the dampness that claimed them and filled the home with the smell of the hearth once again. She decided it would be best to retrieve the water for the stew now so it would be ready when Davin returned with supper and collected one the pails from where they lay on the floor, hoping the rest of her family would have returned by the time she was done.

Her child stirred inside of her again as she wrapped herself in her furs and made to walk outside. “Calm yourself, little one. We will be back in the warmth soon.” She patted the swell of her stomach as she closed the door behind her, but still her child moved about, as if trying to escape the confines of her womb. She wrapped her free arm around her waist as if that would keep the unborn from moving. “Goodness, my little one. You certainly are rambunctious today. Are you worried about the others, too? I am certain they will return soon.” The assault on her insides continued on as she made the short walk to the well, smiling at others as they passed to go about their busy days. “Enough, child. What is it that plagues you?” She moved her furs aside, watching as the skin beneath her dress rippled with each movement inside of her. Then, it suddenly stopped. She sighed in relief as she attached the pail to the string of the well and lowered it down into the dark below. As she was pulling the now heavy pail back up, she happened to look into the distance and noticed four figures coming toward their small village from the cover of the trees, seeing the familiar colors of her sisters deer hide coat. “There now. You see. Nothing to worry about. There they are now.”

Unna smiled and raised her arm in greeting when they neared, but it was then she realized Ingrid was crying and screaming, one of the figures gripping her hair painfully by the scalp and pulling her along.

The figure in the middle was about the same size as Davin, which was why she had originally thought it was them, and the two on either side were much too tall to be either Erland or Magnus, all three clad in clothing none of them had ever seen before; they almost looked like hunters, but their garb was too well groomed and rich in color for such a thing seeing how the animals would see them coming from far away.

Unna was frozen in shock as she listened to her sisters shrieks, just barely able to realize that her shouting was bringing the other folks out of their homes to see what the noise was. The same shock gripped at everyone else when they saw one of the strangers carrying a heavy looking and blood riddled axe. Waves of gasps could be heard as they drew closer and closer, no one knowing what to do or what these people would do.

Just as Unna saw the blood on Ingrid’s dress, clearly not her own, she felt fear grip at her mind. She was rooted to the ground as the middle figure, the bottom half of his face covered by a dark scarf, looked around at the crowd from where they stopped not far from the first wooden house; they seemed displeased as they regarded them, something about them not seeming to meet their standards, until their eyes landed on her. They cocked their head and looked down at the swell of her belly, still visible with her furs pushed aside, a malicious glint coming to their eyes just barely visible above the scarf about their mouth.

The figure spoke, but in a language she had never heard before. “*Quella è con bambino. Portamelo.” From the sound of their voice, it was easy to tell this one was male. Something about the way he looked at her and the way the other two regarded her did not sit right with her.

The husbands had now, at least, remembered their roles and slipped inside their homes to retrieve their hunting gear. A few had axes as well, but they were nothing in comparison to the sheer size of the axe one of them carried. Now they at least had some form of protection for their families in their hands. Still, no one moved as the strangers kept their eyes trained on Unna, now just as still as the people around them armed and ready to fight should it come to that.

It seemed nothing was to be done Ingrid started beating at the arm of her captor. “You monsters! I will see you die this day! You will pay for the blood you spilt! You took my babies, you monsters!” Her cries of rage were disrupted in the end by heartbreak. Unna felt her legs regain their movement as she realized her sister’s sons had been killed.

The men realized then what had happened as well and why there was blood on the axe. Anger flooded their faces now as she shoved their wives and children back toward their homes of wood and clay and raced toward these murders with revenge in mind.

The man in the middle raised his arm as they came closer and outstretched his fingers so his palm was facing out. Unna’s child kicked once more and she turned just in time to run as he said in a strange tongue, “*Per de Inferno ventis, a te peto: cor eorum vanum est.”

The result was instantaneous. A shock wave of red rippled out from the palm of his outstretched hand, the men nearest to him feeling the full effect and falling to the ground like rag dolls, no longer among the land of the living. The women screamed as they ushered their children inside just before they were hit as well, not quite feeling the full effect but still feeling the sting of it and falling unconscious to the ground. The children cried out in fright, all safe from the blast, some trying desperately to wake their mothers while others ran and hid under the presumed safety of their parents bed. Unna felt the wave of death hit her, but she fell neither dead nor unconscious. She had run far enough away that all she felt was a mild pain in her chest. She staggered for a step and kept running.

“*Dannazione! Sta andando via!” the figure, male, to the red death wielders right said.

“*Dopo di lei!” the figure, also male, to the red death wielders left said. He and the one to the right pulled down the scarfs on their faces and tried to run after Unna.

“*No,” the man in the middle said as he held his arm out in front of the two. “Abbiamo bisogno di un live per farlo funzionare e non voglio ripetere l'ultima volta. Voi due rimanete qui e arrotolate quelli che hanno vissuto.” He walked at a leisurely pace toward where he could still see Unna running off toward the tree line. “Mi prenderò cura di lei.” He glanced back at Ingrid, who was still making threats and bashing to no avail at the arm holding her. “E liberatevi di quello. Mi dà un mal di testa.”

“You stay away from my sister, you coward! Come back and face your death! I will see you burn in Hel you miserable-!” Ingrid shouted after the man walking toward her retreating sibling, completely unaware that the man holding her brought up his axe, her head severed from her shoulders quick and easy despite her struggles.

The two remaining men walked toward the house of wood and clay they were closest to after discarding the severed head of Ingrid and her lifeless body so they could begin collecting the women and children. Their eyes showed no empathy or emotion as they threw the women over their shoulders and dumped them in the village center before dragging the kicking and screaming children out from their hiding places, their cries turning to wails when they saw Ingrid’s body staining the snow in blood.

Unna ran as fast as she could across the snow covered ground, the hairs sticking up at the back of her neck warning her that she was being followed. She dared not look back for fear of either falling or being caught. Her child, heavy and restless inside of her, kicked at her, urging her on despite her loss of breath and burning legs. She knew she had to make it to the trees. It was her only hope, for there she would be harder to see and could surely hide herself until the danger had passed and then return to her village to collect Ingrid so they could both escape. She could only hope they did not hurt her sister too badly until then, innocent to the fact her sister was as dead as what little of her family was left.

Unna was nearly there. She was so close. Just a bit farther and she could reach her hand out and touch the tree. She outstretched one arm while the other instinctively wrapped around her belly. She felt something bump her palm, possibly a fist, begging her to run faster even as she felt her strength waning. Freedom was just a breath away when she felt the ghost of a touch on the back of her neck, like someone had breathed on her, and no longer had any feeling in her legs or any other part of her body. She could not react when she fell to the cold snow on her side just as she was about to touch the tree she was running for and stared with open eyes at the scenery in front of her. She heard the crunch of boots against the snow behind where she lay in a heap before they came into her vision.

A hand reached out and grasped her chin, harshly turning her face so she was facing her assailant. The man she saw was unearthly. His skin, as well as his eyes and hair, was a stunning gold that reflected the light of the sun so it appeared he was glowing. His hair, which looked soft and fluffy in the wind that blew threw it, was brushed back and fell just below his great, broad shoulders. His pupils were white against the gold of his irises, making it appear as if two dots of light were trained on her. His brows were turned up in a questioning look and his lips set in a scowl. He wore what appeared to be hunting garb, nearly the same color as his skin, that also greatly resembled armor in layers she could not possibly begin to fathom how he put them on or removed them. About his shoulders was a dark brown cloak held together by a stone that very much matched his pupils and a crown of golden ivy sat upon his head.

“Tu sei di gran lunga non Asgardiano, ma lo farai,” he said in a voice that matched his unearthly appearance before dropping her head back down into the snow. He stood from his crouching position and started to head back toward the village. As he did, he flicked his hand back toward her direction and said, “*Surge.”

Though nothing touched her physically, Unna was lifted from the spot where she lay and sent floating on her back behind this golden creature. She could do nothing but stare at the sky as she was carried by invisible hands back toward her home, unable to move or fight back. Her head rolled to the side as they passed her home where she could still see the hearth burning and the linens drying, wishing she could go back to moments before and not have let herself or her sister walk out the door. She saw the other two men gathering the last of the children beside their mothers, uncaringly dropping them from their harsh grasps. With their scarfs down, she could see their faces clearly as well.

The one holding the axe had a boyish but thin face with dark green eyes, pale blonde hair, and dark brown brows. His skin was pale, unlike the golden man, but still seemed to glow in the light. His pale blonde hair had been swept to the side with cow-licks sticking up in his bangs and at the back of his neck, giving it an almost curled appearance and sideburns lined his cheekbones in a clear attempt to make himself look older. Upon closer look, she found he had not green eyes, but eyes like the sea she and Ingrid had once visited when they were children, an odd mix of blue and green. Rather than golden hunting armor, he wore his own variation that was a mixture of sky blue and a strange color she did not recognize because she had never seen anything in nature that was purple. A long purple cape was wrapped around his shoulders and he wore a small circlet of gold with a blue jewel resting in the center on his head.

The other was tall and broad just like the golden man, though he was visibly more muscular than his two comrades. His pecs were large on his breast and the muscles rippled with each movement of his arms and legs. His hair was as yellow as the sun, cut lower than the the other two men, and his eyes as brown as her own, though they were cold as they regarded her. His skin was dark from his days in the light and looked almost leathery, like the thick hide of a great scaled beast. He wore a white sleeveless tunic that accented his broad and muscled torso, white pants that left little to the imagination, yellow boots, gold bracelets that resembled cuffs and a matching belt around his waist, and finally a yellow cloak that trailed behind him as he walked.

“*Quello è tutto, padre. Cosa faremo con loro?” the one with the boyish face said to the golden man.

“*Uccidili,” the golden man waved a hand dismissively. “Non abbiamo alcun uso per loro.” The one with the yellow hair pulled a bludgeoning tool from his cloak while the one with the axe raised it high above his head.

If Unna could have moved, her eyes would have widened and she would have rushed to stop them, but she was stuck in her frozen state and forced to watch as they murdered the children herded together like sheep for the slaughter. A tear rolled from the corner of her eye and soaked into her earth brown hair, unable to end the carnage or even look away. Inside of herself, she cried and cried for the children who would never live to see another day come to rise and she weeped for the mothers who died in their slumber, unknowing of the fact that their younglings were taken too soon.

The bludger and the axe carrier finished their task, not even out of breath from all their swinging. They looked to the golden man and then to her with a look of disdain.

“*Dobbiamo usare un Midgardian, padre? Sono così terribilmente plain. Non possiamo usare invece un Elfo della Luce? Sicuramente vale più forza,” the one with the bludgeon stuck his weapon in the ground so he would not have to hold it.

“*No. Non ho la magia per portarci a Alfheim e gli elfi sarebbero troppo difficili da catturare. Dobbiamo fare il dovuto con il Midgardian,” the gold man replied. “Ora vieni. Ci dobbiamo sbrigare. Sicuramente loro hanno Heimdall che ci cercano mentre parliamo.”

Unna instantly recognized the name Heimdall, but new worry and fear picked at her mind. Was Heimdall looking for them, and if so, what they done to alert the Watchman of the Gods? Was it possible that they were Gods themselves? Why had they attacked and killed her entire village, then, for they had done not but worship the Gods since the day they were born? If they were Gods, why did they need a lowly human like her? She had nothing to offer them.

That was when she remembered the way they had looked at her stomach. They were not after her. They were after her unborn. Once again, Unna wanted to kick and scream and claw at these monsters parading as men, but she could do not but lay suspended in the air and held by hands she could not see. She was left to the mercy of the Gods and it seemed even they had forsaken her. What did she even have left? Her husband had died. Her sisters sons and husband were gone. She had not even seen Ingrid since being forced to come back. All she had now was her child, and even that was about to be taken away from her.

The golden man flicked his wrist toward one of the now empty of life homes and a long wooden table came floating out of the doorway. It slid itself underneath Unna and she felt herself and the table being lowered to the ground at the direction of his hand.

“*Non avremmo dovuto venire qui se qualcuno avesse seguito il piano,” the bludger said to the axe carrier.

“*Non era colpa mia che Heimdall vide ciò che stavamo facendo e avevamo avvertito Odin. Tu sei tu che doveva tenere l'orologio,” the axe wielder said back. Unna had clearly heard Odin’s name and knew it must truly be serious if the king of the gods had to be involved.

“*Vero, ma dovresti essere il tutto vedendo uno che può prevedere il futuro. Dov'era la tua magia quando ci serviva?” the bludger retorted.

“*Come provare a prevedere qualcosa per il cambiamento? Perché non provare la tua mano a questo?” he swung the side of his axe at the bludger, catching him off guard and hitting him square in the jaw.

“*Voglio terminare la tua vita, piccolo bastardo!” the bludger shouted once he regained his bearings and moved to swing at the axe wielder.

“*Freya! Freyr! Basta di questo!” the golden man commanded. The two young immediately stopped and hung their heads in shame. “*La nostra magia si trova sull'orlo della dissipazione e tu entrambi vuoi agire come i bambini viziati? Non sento più chi è colpa. Sono chiaro?”

“*Sì, padre,” Freya and Freyr nodded.

“*Buona. Ora preparatevi. Il rituale è pronto per iniziare.”

The three of them circled around Unna and raised their hands palms up so they were facing the sky. She did not know what they had planned, but she knew it would not end well for her or her child.

Translations: ((The speech in italics was translated from Italian and the spells from Latin in bold. I almost had them speaking German, which is what they spoke in Nordic times, but I didn’t think it would suit them seeing how they’re from a different realm and decided Italian would be best for the way it rolls off the tongue.))

*Kind- child

*Quella è con bambino. Portamelo.- That one is pregnant. Bring it to me.

*Per de Inferno ventis, a te peto: cor eorum vanum est- By the winds of Hel, I ask of thee, let them fall.

*Dannazione! Sta andando via!- Damn! She is getting away!

*Dopo di lei!- After her!

*No. Abbiamo bisogno di un live per farlo funzionare. Voi due rimanete qui e arrotolate quelli che hanno vissuto. Mi prenderò cura di lei.- No. We need a live one for this to work and I do not want a repeat of last time. You two stay here and round up the ones that lived. I will take care of her.

*Tu sei di gran lunga non Asgardiano, ma lo farai- You are certainly no Asgardian, but you will do.

*Quello è tutto, padre. Cosa faremo con loro?- This is everyone, Father. What shall we do with them?

*Uccidili. Non abbiamo alcun uso per loro.- Kill them. We have no use for them.

*Dobbiamo usare un Midgardian, padre? Sono così terribilmente plain. Non possiamo usare invece un Elfo della Luce? Sicuramente vale più forza.- Must we use a Midgardian, Father? They are so terribly plain. Can we not use an Elf of Light instead? Surely they are worth more power.

*No. Non ho la magia per portarci a Alfheim e gli elfi sarebbero troppo difficili da catturare. Dobbiamo fare il dovuto con il Midgardian. Ora vieni. Ci dobbiamo sbrigare. Sicuramente loro hanno Heimdall che ci cercano mentre parliamo.- No. I do not have the magic to take us to Alfheim and the elves would be too difficult to catch. We will have to make due with the Midgardian. Now come. We must hurry. Surely they have Heimdal looking for us as we speak.

*Non avremmo dovuto venire qui se qualcuno avesse seguito il piano- We should not have come here if someone had followed the plan

*Non era colpa mia che Heimdall vide ciò che stavamo facendo e avevamo avvertito Odin. Tu sei tu che doveva tenere l'orologio.- It was not my fault Heimdall saw what we were doing and warned Odin. You were the one who was supposed to be keeping watch.

*Vero, ma dovresti essere il tutto vedendo uno che può prevedere il futuro. Dov'era la tua magia quando ci serviva?- True, but you are supposed to be the all seeing one who can predict the future. Where was your magic when we needed it?

*Come provare a prevedere qualcosa per il cambiamento? Perché non provare la tua mano a questo?- How about you try predicting something for change? Why not try your hand at this?

*Voglio terminare la tua vita, piccolo bastardo!- I will end your life, you little bastard!

*Freya! Freyr! Basta di questo! La nostra magia si trova sull'orlo della dissipazione e tu entrambi vuoi agire come i bambini viziati? Non sento più chi è colpa. Sono chiaro? -Freya! Freyr! Enough of this! Our magic sits on the brink of dissipating and you both want to act like spoiled children? I will hear no more of who is to blame. Am I clear?

*Sì, padre- Yes, father.

*Buona. Ora preparatevi. Il rituale è pronto per iniziare.- Good. Now prepare yourselves. The ritual is ready to begin.

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