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bratkook · 4 years

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queen of broken hearts. jjk (m) part one.

I’m the queen of broken hearts, break you in a thousand parts.

part two. part three.

pairing: jungkook x reader genre: smut, heavy angst word count: 3.2k warnings: one sided pining, jungkook is in lurv, oc is definitely not(also kind of a bitch), smut, penetrative sex, unprotected sex, slightly rough sex, finger sucking, creampie author’s note: this is based on a request from @koochiekoo for the milestone drabble yay! hope you like it bb ❣️

Jungkook doesn’t know why he allows himself to constantly wind up in this position. He knows it’s not good for him, leaves him feeling hollow each time his mind clears, leaves him wanting more of you in ways he knows aren’t possible.

Yet somehow his common sense and dignity leave without warning the minute you come to mind. His morality and self respect jump right off a cliff with no parachute in sight, succumbing to your every wish like a dumb little puppet for you to play with. There’s just something about the way you call him over, your saccharine lies wrapping him around your finger so beautifully he almost doesn’t hate it.

He knows you’ll never love him, not like he does at least, his heart’s open for you like a treasure chest, ready and willing for your taking but nothing inside was of value to you. It didn’t matter if he dipped his heart in gold and covered it in pearls, you’d seal the chest back up, weld it shut with a kiss to stop the lid from opening up again.

It was always a kiss, a kiss that left him swallowing the words back down that he knows will tear him away from you. As much as it pains him to know he could never fully have you the way he wanted, being able to go on dates, telling his friends you were his instead of having to pretend as if you two never spoke, being able to hold your hand in a tender act of love instead of the way he gripped them as he rocked into you. He’d rather have you like this than not at all.

He preferred to have you pouting underneath him because he had slowed his pace too much for your liking, your beautiful eyes giving him a roll that shows that your patience was slowly slipping. That was the only face of irritation he could handle from you, he could only picture the way your face would screw up in displeasure if he let the words of confession come tumbling off his tongue the way he wanted to.

No, he didn’t want that. He could settle with this.

“Jungkook,” you sigh out, your hands pressing against his chest being the anchor to bring him back to the ground, pull him out of whatever day dream he was currently in, “fuck me faster.”

The words hold no bite to them despite your impatience, but he knows if he doesn’t listen they’ll only get meaner. He briefly wonders if he might have a kink for that, the teasingly degrading words that dig into his skin like the blunt edges of your nails are now, they make his cock pulse inside of you as he recalls them.

Jungkook needs help.

A groan of annoyance finally fills the air as you lift your upper body up, your hand pushing at his chest once more to get him off of you. For a brief moment he wonders if you’re gonna kick him out but the thought leaves him just as quickly as it comes when your hands grip his slim waist, flipping the two of you over until Jungkook is sprawled out on what he knows is your side of the bed. He can tell by the sweet smell of your shampoo that lingers on the pillow by his head, the floral fragrance invading his senses and only making his heart twist further in his chest.

“You going soft on me?” You joke as you straddle his waist, your soft hand gripping the base of his sticky cock and guiding it towards your entrance once more.

The curve of your lips as you smile at him pulls him further under whatever hex you must have on him. Your hair hangs over your left shoulder as you stare down at him, taunting him as you let the bulbous head of his cock nudge against your hole, the angelic mask you don not doing much to hide the devilish intent you always had.

“No.” He weakly responds, rutting his hips up towards you to get you to sink down on him, succeeding in letting the tip of him breach your entrance. The warmth of your walls sinking onto the first inch of his cock has him groaning, his hands scrambling up to clutch onto your sides, giving you another moment to make your decision before giving up and forcing you down the rest of his length.

A sudden shout of his name reaches his ears as your thighs smack against his, your neck now exposed as you throw your head back at the feeling of his cock filling you up once more.

This was why you always called him over, a bad habit you couldn’t shake, a guilty pleasure no one could know about. Jungkook’s cock stretched you out just right, nudging along the sweet patch inside of you with no effort needed. It made you lose your inhibitions, left you hungry for something only he could satiate.

“Good, I can’t have you going soft on me,” you practically purred on top of him, grinding down on him in an intoxicating motion that sent his mind into a frenzy, “you know I don’t like it soft.”

His eyes roll back into his skull as you lean back, your palm resting on his thick thigh to give you leverage while you begin to lift up and slam back down on him, a pace intent to make him lose his mind.

“Let me fuck you then.” Jungkook whines out, the fingers digging into your sides helping you keep the momentum, the resounding smack of your skin connecting filling up your room in the dirtiest way.

“Mm, tried that already.” You mewl out when his hands slam you down even harder, the tip of his cock just shy of hitting your cervix, making a shudder rack through your body. He feels the way your walls flutter around him, a wicked smile spreading on his lips when he sees the way you try and fail to act unaffected.

“You got too distracted.” You continue with a slight tremble to your voice, your free hand trailing up your torso until you’re fondling your tits in front of him, twisting and pinching your nipples until you’re keening from your own ministrations.

Jungkook lets out a curse as he plants his feet on your mattress, the action jostling you forward until both your hands are planted firmly on his chest, a squeal of surprise slipping out of you. As much as you liked to act like you loved being in charge Jungkook knew you too well to leave it at that.

The way you all but sob as he pistons his hips up into you spells it out, you liked being manhandled, jerked around in his grasp and Jungkook revels in it, in knowing that for this brief moment you needed him.

“Oh fuck.” You cry out, collapsing on top of him as he ruts into you in a brutal pace, the raunchy squelching with each thrust of his hips only making another gush of wetness escape you, leaving his cock glistening in your arousal each time he pulls out.

Jungkook laughs now, a teasing edge to it as he watches the way you crumble above him, the bratty responses programmed in your head and filed underneath his name being wiped from your mind as he spears you open on his cock.

“Not distracted anymore huh?” He taunts, a choked moan dying in his throat when you tighten around him as his cock curves just right inside of you.

A fog falls over your mind, too heady with pleasure to understand his question until he’s flipping you back over once more, his cock staying nuzzled inside of you. A huff leaves you at the change of position, turning into whimper when he hooks his arms around your knees and pulls them forward, reaching deeper inside of you with each roll of his hips.

“I asked you something Y/N.” Jungkook pants, the tingling pleasure creeping up his spine at his approaching orgasm, his brows pinching on his forehead as he ebbs it away, intent on focusing on you first.

A sharp snap of his hips clears the fog, your head turning to the side as a gasp rips through your throat at the delicious way he pounds in to you, “J-jungkook, ah–“ you murmur, almost delirious with lust and he wishes he could capture this moment in his brain forever, the way you sound so needy for him only, “no nngh, not distracted, you fuck me so good.” You slur in a way he can just barely understand.

He knows though, with the way your back arches up, your hands twisting and pulling at your sheets as he continued the deliberate roll of his hips. Whenever Jungkook was around you he was more often than not buried to the hilt inside of you, knowing the telltale signs of your approaching orgasm well enough to know that you were teetering dangerously on the edge.

Your chest heaves as you feel the coil winding up inside of you, a desperate cry of more being thrown out and he can’t deny you. His pace never falters, bringing his hands towards your face and up against your lips, brushing along them until you open up just enough for them to slip inside.

He lets out a pleased groan when your tongue laps at his digits, your lips wrapped around his fingers and sucking as if it was his cock, swirling around them like your favorite candy that gets pulled away too soon. Whatever complaint you had at the loss dies when you feel those same drenched fingers snake down your torso and press against your aching clit, the tight roll of his fingers combined with the urgent thrust of his hips turning you into a blubbering mess.

“You called me for a reason babe,” he lets slip, his own words wounding him as he says them out loud, admitting to knowing that he was being used for your pleasure, “you gotta let me do what you called me for right?”

A pathetic whine is all you give him, one of your hands coming up to spread across his back, your nails digging into his skin in a slight burn that leaves him hissing.

“Right.” You keen, your own hips rolling up in time with his, desperate for the release that was blossoming inside of you.

He feels the way your walls get impossibly tight around him, your nails leaving half moons in your wake, littering his back with indents that only serve to send him rushing closer to his own release.

“Fuck, you gonna cum for me?” He asks gently, his fingers rolling over your clit in a way that nearly makes you shriek, “Gonna get my cock all nice and messy?”

“Ah, y-yes,” you cry out, a helpless gasp leaving you as a final thrust of his hips sends you flying over the edge. Bursts of light flash behind your lids in a way that resembles fireworks as you squeeze your eyes shut, your muscles tensing up as your climax rushes through you in waves, crashing against the shore of your mind and bringing you back to the present, leaving you laying limp and whimpering as you slowly come down.

Jungkook continues to fuck you through your orgasm, your pulsing walls fueling the fire inside of him as he rocks in to you with more desperation. His eyes are glued to the fucked out look on your face, your lips wet and shiny as you pout out and mewl underneath him, begging him to cum inside of you.

Fuck, how could you say things like that to him and expect him not to fall for you?

Jungkook takes it as an order, doubling over you and burying his face into the crook of your neck as he ruts into you, his hips finally losing the grace they always had, stuttering with need until he’s cumming with a guttural moan of your name.

Your hands rake through his hair as he fills you up, soft yanks against his scalp that only leave him grunting against your skin while he gives another handful of shallow thrusts into your dripping cunt, stilling his hips, his arms giving out on him.

As he lays on you in a heap, the both of you being exhausted from getting your fix, you give him a moment to recover. His soft breaths hit your skin, your sore legs stretching out after he released his hold on them but he was still buried inside of you, leaving you feeling sticky and a little uncomfortable.

“Kook.” You whine, your fingers jabbing at his sides a little too harshly to come across as playful. The sweat on your skin was becoming tacky and the added heat from his body only aided in making you more desperate for a shower, desperate to get him off of you.

“Hm?” He grunts out when your fingers dig lower on his sides, squirming on top of you as if he didn’t weigh a thing, like he wasn’t just a mass of muscle that was slowly cutting off your oxygen supply.

“Get off.” You groan, both your hands cupping his sides and trying your best to haul him off. He doesn’t relent this time, knowing he was toeing the line by the tone in your voice.

Jungkook pushes himself up and off of you, hiding the groan with a clear of his throat as he pulls his cock out of your sensitive core, not getting a chance to properly stare at the way his cum coats your folds because the second he’s off of you, you’re sitting up on your bed.

He rests on his haunches as you card your fingers through your hair, fixing the bumps and knots he had caused as you stand up. The curve of your ass draws him in, he wants to reach out and touch you but his hands stay glued by his side. All he can do is watch as you saunter through out your room like he wasn’t still there, sitting naked on your bed.

The initial sting of this had left him a while ago, having grown accustomed to the routine that followed. Hardly any words ever followed this. Jungkook can only pull his lips together as he steps off your bed, grabbing his discarded underwear and jeans off the floor as you make a beeline for your shower.

He takes his sweet time buttoning his jeans, hearing the soft mist of the water splashing against the tub, along with the song you played on your speaker. A smile sneaks its way onto his face when he hears your gentle singing echo through the open door.

Jungkook allows himself this much time, his eyes roaming your room, seeing the traces of you in forms of posters framed to the wall, the mess of stickers and books sprawled across your desk, photos of you smiling and laughing with friends. He finds himself wishing that he could take the place of one of those photos one day, a snapshot of the two of you smiling in the same way, out in the open world instead of being confined in the four walls of your room like a dirty secret.

It’s that same wish that keeps him rooted on your bed, the same confession begging to come out at his new childish want. Jungkook can only blame himself for this, you had never expressed desire for something more and even though you had an inkling that Jungkook’s feelings lingered a little too deeply, he was the one who remained. He was the one who came to your beck and call no matter what time it was, regardless of what he was doing. If he turned around and denied you he knew you wouldn’t fight him on it, but he wasn’t stupid enough to think that you wouldn’t turn around and find someone else to fill his shoes. Jungkook found solace in knowing that he was still the one you reached out to when you needed to get your fill.

As the shower squeaks off he starts to panic, scrambling forward to grab his shirt and slip it on. Just as his head pops through the top you exit the steamy room with a towel wrapped snuggly around you, a look of obvious confusion on your face when you spot Jungkook still in your room.

“Oh, you’re still here.” You quip, a curious smile on your face that he can’t pinpoint.

“Yeah, sorry, I got...distracted.” He cringes at his excuse, the confidence he had for a confession slipping through the cracks the longer you stare at him.

You laugh at his remark, holding back the teasing comment you want to say in order to not keep him here longer than necessary. You rest against the side of your dresser as you eye him when he finally stands up, he looks hesitant for the first time, like he has something he wants to spit out.

“Did you need something?” You question, your eyebrow cocking up when he steps towards you with his hands fidgeting by his sides.

“I, uh,” he chokes out, his mind scrambling the sentence he wants to blurt out. How hard was it to tell you how he felt, just ask you out for coffee, not even dinner because that seemed too formal, something that would scare you off.

“I kinda have somewhere I need to be at right now Kook.” You cut him off, the phone you held in your hand vibrating and lighting up just as you say that. His eyes find the screen, eyeing the contact name that said ‘Joonie’ with a handful of heart emojis tacked to the end of it. It vibrates a few more times, an influx of messages from him filling your phone and it doesn’t take much guessing for Jungkook to realize that wherever you needed to be was with whoever this guy was.

And just like that the confession dies in his throat once more, your soft lips pressing into his in the first kiss of the night, succeeding in welding the treasure chest shut in the way you always did. It doesn’t prevent him from shutting his eyes and enjoying the kiss, even when he knows its intent is to shut him up.

You pull away with a light smack, pressing your lips together at the dazed expression on his face as he blinks back to reality, “Okay, I’ll see you around then?” He finally finds his voice, digging himself deeper into this like he always did.

“Sure Kook, see you.” You wave at him, giving him a sincere smile as he fumbles on his way out of your room like a dork.

Once he closes your apartment door behind him he sags against the wood, desperately wanting to bang his head against it but the last thing he needed was to have you thinking his banging was this Joonie person knocking.

“Next time,” he breathes out to himself, “next time I’ll tell her.”

#ficswithluv #goldenclosetnet #btswritingcafe #btsghostie #yoonkooknetwork #jungkook smut #jungkook angst #bts smut #jeon jungkook #new

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copperpieceharlot · 3 years

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Bud I’m sorry to swing into your inbox uninvited like this but my soul is having an OOTS renaissance thanks to your content in the tag and did you say Leverage AU

haha holy SHIT this got Long. but yes. i’ve been. Thinking. (also literally Never feel like you have to apologize for sending me messages. i was Hoping someone would ask me about this. now i have an Excuse to share EVERYTHING ive written abt it :3)

Obviously, Roy is the leader/brains of the outfit. He grew up having some Strong Opinions abt what’s Legal versus what’s Right due to tragic backstory involving the death of his little brother which was definitely SOMEONE’S fault for negligence but since there technically wasn’t any illegal behavior, there were no consequences for it. Also he’s still angry at his dad bc he thinks his dad is also partly culpable (and also also just a dick). He’s the Moral Backbone of the team (alongside Durkon, more on that later) in basically the same way Nate was in og Leverage. He’s actually not the best at figuring out what people want (that’s Haley and, shockingly, occasionally Elan), but once he has that info, he is the absolute best at figuring out the ideal plan of attack to use in any given case.

Haley is still a thief. I mean she maps to Parker almost PERFECTLY. Her dad was a thief & a conman, her mom wasn’t but knew about it and mostly accepted it, but she died tragically in a mugging gone wrong or smth, which made Ian crank the paranoia WAY up and taught Haley to do the same in the name of “safety”. Let’s keep the “Ian is in Trouble and Haley needs money, Fast” which is why she signs on to the first job in the first place. She’s less acrobatic than Parker, tending towards finding (or making) weak spots in security, but she can still make a tumble check when she needs to.

Elan is the grifter who is somehow an Idiot but also not???? It baffles everyone. When he’s playing a part for a con, he’s FLAWLESS, but then the rest of the time he’s just. No Thoughts Head Empty. He probably gets lured in initially because he’s decided to try his hand at being part of a full team, rather than the two-man cons he’s been running that invariably end w his partner conning him as well and stealing half of his take. Also he likes the idea of being Crime Friends. He’s that tweet where it’s like, Roy: “after the heist is over, we split up and never communicate again” / Elan: [about to unveil his Crime Buddies Forever Friendship Quilt Puppets]: “never?”

Vaarsuvius is the hacker/gadget person. They have a Vaguely Snobby Yet Unidentifiable accent, dyed(?) purple hair (nobody has ever seen their roots) and nobody knows who they “really” are or where they came from, but they’re good at what they do so everyone just accepts the mystery. They probably got suckered into the team by their initial employer (who I’ll get to Eventually, lol) framing it as a challenge to their intellect, like, “oh, I see, you’re not smart enough to make this team work for you...” to which they were like Fucking Watch Me and also melted his computer. Anyways. They are joined (digitally) by their Intrepid Friend And Co-Conspirator (his words, not theirs), a fellow hacker known only as Blackwing, or, on certain forums, Blackwing_Bird. (In the first season, V only occasionally references him when saying they’re “calling in extra help” or smth for a particularly complex hack job. He starts showing up a little more in s2 and eventually by the start of s4 is a regular & established presence, but only appears as actions in a computer interface or output.) Elan is convinced he’s an AI, Belkar doesn’t think he actually exists, Haley pretends she doesn’t think he exists, and Durkon and Roy try not to think about it too hard, as long as B and V still get the job done.

Belkar is the hitter. He is on the team bc their initial employer got him out of jail for it. He doesn’t have a tragic backstory, he just likes doing violent crimes. As the series progresses, he grows some empathy & stuff, but really only for people who actually deserve it. Assholes still get decked. It’s all very touching. (Also he has dwarfism caused by achondroplasia. It doesn’t actually bother him and is useful in fights bc his opponents frequently have no fucking clue how to approach him, but he likes Pretending to take offense at stupid things just to see how far he can go with it.)

Aaaand last but not least, Durkon is the least involved member of the team. He’s actually a career criminal and Roy’s mentor, and wasn’t a member of the initial team that [redacted, I’ll tell you later, PROMISE] put together for a couple of reasons, the main one being that he’s Officially retired in order to spend more time with his family, which consists of his mom, his friend (not girlfriend) Hilgya, baby Kudzu, and a truly stunning number of aunts, uncles, and cousins. Roy frequently calls or visits him for advice and he Occasionally shows up to help out on local jobs, but generally he avoids doing crime if he can (as part of a deal with Hilgya, who is also a career criminal; basically, they’ve both cut back on the crime in order to provide a more stable home environment for Kudzu. But sometimes, you gotta do a little crime, and in those cases, Sigdi enjoys spending time w her grandson.)

NOW. THE BIG REVEAL YOU’VE BEEN WAITING FOR. Who got the team together in the first place?!

The answer: Lord Shojo (or whatever Normal Person Name you want to assign him). Now this is where it gets tricky: he had them do a thing that they thought was good, THEN they thought it was BAD, but then when they confronted him he revealed that it Appearing to be bad was actually a test of character and would they consider working as basically internal investigators for him? But then he had a heart attack, so, rip. But THEN it turned out that he’d left them a bunch of money anyway and they were all feeling kind of Inspired so they formed the Order of the Stick, LLC (which, no, i am not coming up with a new name, actually, because I just don’t care. someone else can come up w a justification for that name, tho, i’m sure it’s possible). Also Miko was there and was unhappy abt their actions, and also their general existence.

Moving on. Villains!

Redcloak is the Sterling replacement, because that DEEPLY amuses me.

Xykon is a season-long main villain, probably one that Redcloak finds himself working for but then “teams up with” (read: blackmails) the Order to bring him down bc even Redcloak finds Xykon distasteful. That’s season 3, let’s say.

Tarquin is another season villain, say season 2. Nale probably shows up pretty early in s1, actually, as another recurring antagonist like Sterling but uh. Less good at it. Anyways the s2 final 3 eps deal with them (accidentally) discovering that Tarquin runs some Evil Empire Company, then trying to outplay him and take him down. Idk if Nale still dies in this version tbh.

Tsukiko is a one-off s1 villain who returns briefly in s4 alongside Miko, who has gone well and truly off the rails.

Season 1 finale has to do w Roy finally getting Vengeance for his little brother.

The vampire squad is the s4 finale villain who do smth terrible to Durkon and then get the Mother Of All Revenge served up to them by the Order.

I envision the show as being 5 seasons (like og Leverage) but I’m not going to sketch out s5 because I think it should be based off whatever happens in the current story arc, possibly involving some legacy of the OotSquiggle.

Other stuff!

The Order of the Squiggle is a legendary criminal team from the 60s who stole a BUNCH of famous shit & then proceeded to legendarily implode. This has no bearing on the plot I’ve sketched out, I just think it’s fun.

The Sapphire Guard members should probably be reworked as FBI. I don’t care about most of them but I do think that Lien and O-Chul could be like, FBI agents who Choose to look the other way while the Order does their very-much-not-legal-but-still-fair Justice Crime, and maybe even help them out on occasion.

So, the Final season-by-season outline, based on everything I’ve written so far:

s1 e1: getting the team together, doing a con for Shojo, then at the end he dies and the gang is like “dang what now?" and intend to split up except then they Don’t.

mid-s1: Nale shows up and tries to trick the Order, but then gets beat like a drum.

late s1: Tsukiko is an underling of the Villain Of The Week, winds up in police custody. But She’ll Be Back.

s1 finale: Roy’s Vengeance: The Vengeaning. also we meet Redcloak as an antagonist.

s2 e1: the truth abt Haley’s father comes out

early s2: The Two Live Crews Job but it’s the Order vs the Linear Guild and the Linear Guild ARE all bad guys.

mid-s2: Redcloak returns. ugh.

late s2: the sapphire guard FBI makes its first appearance, hello O-Chul and Lien.

s2 pre-finale: once again they’re in conflict w Nale over smth, he spends the whole episodes making Cryptic Remarks, they basically beat him (like a drum!) but then the stinger at the end is that Tarquin reveals himself and Elan is like “Dad?!”, roll credits.

s2 finale, part 1: Elan is hanging out w Tarquin bc he’s DEEP in Denial, the Rest of the team tries to take Tarquin down, but it doesn’t work.

s2 finale, part 2: Elan finally gets a clue and they manage to beat Tarquin. still haven’t decided if Nale dies or not, but I’m leaning towards yes. also they rescue Haley’s dad.

s3 e1: fuck dude idk.

early s3: Redcloak shows up, AGAIN, everyone groans. he has blackmail on them, he wants them to take Xykon down.

mid s3: The Rashomon Job but it’s about stealing the Talisman of Dorukan and it turns out that Nale was there too (“oh!” Elan says. “I was wondering why I looked so weird in all those mirrors! But it wasn’t my reflection, it was Nale’s!” “Sweetie, that wasn’t Nale’s reflection,” says Haley. “Huh,” says Elan, “so the mirrors were broken?”, cue eye rolling from everyone else.), and the Successful thief was Hilgya, who’d nabbed it from the owner before it even went on display.

s3 finale: they beat Xykon, actually factually, because he deserves to get his ass Thoroughly kicked, even if only in AU form. Lien and O-Chul are there, so are some other less helpful FBI people. There’s a bit where O-Chul Exact Wordses his way out of telling his superiors about the Order’s less legal activities without technically lying. King shit.

s4 e1: doesn’t really matter. maybe smth to do w some legacy of Tarquin’s company to set up the drama w Malack & Durkon later.

early s4: Durkon gets SENT TO PRISON. Malack approaches the Order abt this because sure they have Different Ethics but they’re still Friends. (Roy is surprised and a little hurt that he’s never heard of Malack, but he ignores that in favor of Let’s Get Whatever Fuckers Did This To Our Friend.)

immediately after that: Miko and Tsukiko return as a Team, preventing the Order from working on the Durkon situation

mid s4: Redcloak makes another unexpected & unwelcome appearance but he’s maybe a little less of a dick? the Order collaborates with Malack & his Crime Buddies (hello, Vector Legion) to pull one over on him tho, because “less of a dick” does not mean “a pleasant or decent person”, and also he was mean abt Durkon being in jail, so he totally deserved it. he still gets whatever he wanted tho, just takes a blow to his pride. also prevents the Order from helping Durkon. they’re having a LOT of setbacks wonder why that could be, not to make sure the season fills its whole length or anything, no sirree

s4 finale: something something taking down the organization, headed by Hel (yes that’s her real name), which framed Durkon for their Big Crime. Durkon goes free and Extra Firmly retires, For Good, He Swears, but says he “met someone new” who might be an asset.

s5 e1: minrah joins the team! and the episode is set in like, somewhere really snowy. that’s all i got.

the rest of s5: don’t know, don’t care, it’s open-ended until the comic finishes up.

#mine #ask #corvidcorgi #order of the stick #oots #leverage #leverage au #oots au #au #outline #haha this thing clocks in at 1.9k words because i am LITERALLY incapable of shutting up #hope u enjoy it bc i spent Way Too Much Mental Effort mapping out how the OotS plotlines might play out in a leverage setting #and then promptly ignored Most of that in favor of making it funnier & dumber & more villain-of-the-week #(bc lbr the comic is Good but it's got an overarching plot form that the Leverage story style does Not jive with)#i'm not tagging all these characters lol

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bro-strider-hate-blog · 3 years

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YOUR TAGS ON MY SIS POST??? IMMACULATE

I will include my tags again but only because i cant get enough of myself and not to sound like im tooting my own kazoo but this is the one time in my entire life that ive been objectively correct in every way

Lengthy and unrelated thing under the cut:

Let me talk about canon bro for a second 😌 even though its barely and tangentially related to this and you dont have to read it <3, in fact i would encourage you not to read it i just wanna run my mouth. People love to use him as a cheap villain in their dave angst fics which is like... hilarious to me. Like i get it, since hes abusive he must also be misogynistic and homophobic and transphobic and also genuinely hates dave and revels in his suffering right? Lmeow no, hes just some guy and despite everything he is in fact trying his best. Hes naturally intense and aggressive and this doesnt translate well to child rearing, especially since his one goal is to make dave strong enough (physically and mentally) to Survive whats coming. The random sneak attacks ? The traps littered around the house ? To keep dave on his toes and buff his spatial awareness. The cameras ? To monitor his progress (if hes not up to standard then we’ll just up the “training”) and / or film some puppet snuff (puff ? Snupp?) so he can keep running his dumb website and like provide for them or some shit , or ig to buy random crap and throw it around the house. Who cares if the kid sees the porn anyway its just puppets, plus hes seen way worse at that age and turned out fine (no he didnt). Dave has to be resourceful , he has to be creative and think on his feet , lets have impromptu rap battles and scrabble games. He has to know numbers like the back of his hand (idk why this is even a phrase do any of you memorise what the back of your hands looks like) to effectively utilise his sylladex.... actually nobody even uses that shit idk why bro was so insistent on it. Dave is his protege, his charge, dave is NOT his friend and hes not gonna let him forget that. He teaches him all he knows, in the way he knows. Making comics, mixing music, ironic jokes, being cool and getting shit done. Actually its GOOD that the kid is terrified of him, if hes the scariest thing in the room then dave wont fear anything else. Lets spar then, if dave wins then hes trained him well. If dave loses then hell become resilient. Either way he has to be strong or else hell die, training is necessary. Its either this or failure and failure equals death. Do your own laundry, ration your own food, become independent as fast as possible because i wont be around to take care of you forever

Nothing bro does is without reason, neither is it “sadism”, its all very logical to him despite being horrific to any sane person because his only friend is the mansplain-manipulate-manspread puppet that raised him and he has awful coping mechanisms that barely stretch past beating himself 1. up 2. off. Like he kept his baby alive to the point where it could keep itself alive (kind of alive) and thats a win to him.

That was my thesis on why bro is not a bigot like ,, he makes porn of fucking smuppets, that gives him zero chance to fetishize The Ladies. I doubt he has porno mags littered around the house its just endless plushie dicks and asses (and the two puppets handcuffed together were legit kinda funny like Why). So why would dave have internalised homophobia if it did not stem from his brother ??? Acting as if his only friends werent exuding anti gay vibes, like christ, john “im not a homosexual” egbert, him and rose’s competitive flirting gag (before they found out they were related >.>), just generally the three of them accusing each other of being gay, yknow, as kids do (jade is exempt from the argument we love jade here). Things were just more homophobic back then and its not like bro and dave had a sincere talk about gender and sexuality in the 13 or so years they lived in the same house like why would you even come out to your younger sibling if you could just not !!! Lol !!! I could be getting all this info wrong lol so correct me if im wrong but bro has this cute comic artstyle and it was about someones charge (? Sibling?) straight up dying and the saw guy makes an appearance the end , like there was no sex or gore or whatever but if you look at sbahj the second page literally has an incest sex joke like where does dave even get his material from , which online sites has he been trawling , well haha its not bros job to monitor his kids search history lets ignore it and move on if the kid wants to be gross and make dumb jokes who is he to judge , spread your problematic wings and soar into the cancel clouds little guy

Anyway heres a disclaimer: if youre gonna clown on this post and tell me im an abuse apologist or some shit just understand that i have a lot of free time and love being a huge asshole when provoked but like youre so welcome to add to the discussion i love bullying my favourite character bro strider by steamrolling him we’ve talked about trans rights for too long now is the time for trans wrongs

#//1 #sorry for airing my grieviances on your ask addie Q_Q i hope you do not mind </3 #Bro strider #sometimes i do want bastard trans rep like we cant all be purrfect #Heres more bastard trans guys in homestuck: eridan cronus sollux karkat equius gamzee caliborn hal

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aravenwriter · 4 years

Text

Aravenwriter’s Prompt List

"It’s better if you stay where you are for now."

"I don’t have what you want. I never did."

"Do you like my socks?"

"For the first half of it I thought we had a chance"

"She was never a good friend, and you guys know it"

"Do you find this place as creepy as I do?"

"I wish I could block you in real life"

"My heart is tired of this shit"

"You’re not a victim. You’re just fooling yourself if you really think that."

"Get some sleep, he’ll still be here when you wake up"

"Stop, stop. Shut up. I don’t care."

"I don’t want to be your sidekick. I never did."

"I bet my left arm they work together in this shit.”

"Can you just leave me be? Really, is it so hard?"

"I love you, but I can’t just go on living like this"

"Lock him up and leave him there for a couple of hours"

"This is the last time. It’s never happening again, understood?"

"The clock was ticking so loudly and I just couldn’t stand it"

"I just played along because I thought that’s what friends do."

"It’s like his mind is always somewhere else"

"Stop saying that. I do care about you."

"That’s your problem, you know? When all is said and done you’re worth shit."

"Can nothing ever go right?"

"This is a huge house! You live here alone?"

"He was her comrade, her partner in crime, her… friend, in some sort of twisted way."

"I know you’ve been talking shit about me, and I don’t care."

"You can’t hide the truth forever."

"She won’t stop until she’s better than you."

"Everytime I hear his name I flinch in fear. That’s how bad he was."

"Ah, but you didn’t do it, right?"

"That was oddly specific"

"You’re the one who’s ruining my life!"

"And I know if I listen closely I won’t hear the sea anymore"

"If I could, I’d send you far away from me forever and I’d be happy at last"

"I’m trying to keep my identity a secret"

"You thought you could trust me? How cute"

"They hunted me down."

"Come with me if you want to have some fun"

"Honestly, I didn’t know if she was crying or laughing"

"I just want to punch her in the face, but that would just help her sell that story"

"Well, at least you had good intentions."

"I think I know someone that could help us"

"She sits in front of me, but she has not noticed yet"

"You broke my heart and we weren’t even a thing!"

"Somebody had to corrupt you."

"You won’t let him go, right?"

"Leave me alone or else I’ll kick your ass. And believe me, I’m dying to do that"

"Letting go is hard, but you have to do it"

"Look closely and tell me: can you see it at all?"

"To fight you? I’m enough"

"Did you want me to do it?"

"I’m not a child anymore! Stop this"

"The irony is only bitter now"

"I need some kind of clue."

"I was so afraid you-… well, I guess it doesn’t matter now"

"I’ll get to where I want to be without stepping on anyone’s neck"

"We’re just two little fishes in a sea"

"I’m so sick of hearing you talk"

"I can feel his heartbeat!"

"Even you can do something this time"

"I worry you’ll be disappointed and… I can’t see you looking at me like that."

"You didn’t deserve anything that happened to you"

"This isn’t a journey of redemption."

"You’re always waiting for me to tell you what to do"

"Now, who’s ready for the apocalypse?"

"Everything I wish for gets burnt to the ground"

"I can go and tell him ‘hey, fall in love with me!’ but that won’t work, don’t you think?"

"I’m an hypocrite, you know?"

"I’ll break it if you come closer"

"I don’t want to feel this anymore."

"You really think anyone wanted you to come back here?"

"You have to believe ME, please!"

"Whatever happens, I’ll think of you"

"Just shut up! I dont care about you or your damn work!"

"It was you who made me feel worthless and empty"

"We will be there in time, I swear"

"It seems I didn’t get her approval"

"Someday you’ll fall, and I’ll be there to point and laugh at you"

“Is that what you said to her?"

"Not sure how to do that but I might do it anyway"

"I don’t want to say goodbye to you yet but I have to"

"I don’t have time for this, so hurry or shut up"

"Every conversation makes me crazy"

"It was kind of my first day there"

"Calm down, you know that’s not what I meant!"

"I was perfect and you… Not so much"

"I’m still here, aren’t I?"

"You don’t have any power over me anymore, you absolute moron!"

"You said this wouldn’t hurt!"

"Listen to you? I never did that before, why would I start now?"

"Yes I’m nervous and no, I don’t want anything."

"I still remember how we were back then, why can’t I go back?"

"All of you are just puppets dancing to his song"

"If I hear another child crying, I might get crazy"

"You still owe me a big one, honey"

"There’s people who love you, you know?"

"It was my fault, but it was you who suffered the consequences"

"I can’t sleep. Not after seeing what we saw."

"My name is not something you should know"

"I was always looking at you. Just you."

#rp meme #prompt list #aravenwriter #writing #writing prompt #writers on tumblr #writer #prompt #writing idea #writing inspiration #inspiration #dialogue #dialogue prompt

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yellowocaballero · 3 years

Text

Hunt!Tim: Five Times He Murdered Someone And One Time He Loved them <3

Just kidding. This is a fic set in my Roleswap AU, acting as a character study over the course of the series into...whatever the fuck was going on with that guy. I spent so much time and energy actually figuring out his arc and character that when I finished Solitaire I hadn’t said everything I wanted to say, so that’s why this exists. It’s...not funny at all. Tim takes himself far too seriously. I’m very sorry, there are almost no jokes in this. It just doesn’t work.

Content warning for story typical issues; but more explicit depiction of suicidal ideation, kidnapping and physical assault, just in general a very fucked up little dude, and gendered violence that is more explicitly discussed as a possible precursor to further violence. Rest under the cut.

“I’m going to fucking kill them!”

“Well,” Sasha said, tapping away relentlessly on her phone as she sat primly on his couch. During work hours she was always doing something mysterious on her laptop, and after work it was on her phone. She had once alluded to being the moderator of an improbable number of forums. She liked the power. “We could probably make that happen. It’s the Magnus Institute, it’s suspicious if nobody's dying. But four people at once may not be prudent.”

“I don’t care!” Tim yelled. He paced his living room in tight lines, turning sharply on his heel at the end of the room. It felt like he was bursting with pent-up energy and rage, sending his heartbeat thumping in his ears like a war drum. “They’re obstructing justice, withholding evidence from an investigation, probably acting as an accomplice -”

“I’m going to fucking kill them!”

Sasha’s head snapped up, eyes glinting at him behind the big glasses that she always hid behind. “So you do think they were involved in Gertrude’s death?”

“Who cares. They did something, they’re obviously guilty of whatever. Every one of them have rap sheets.” Everyone but that blonde woman, which seemed a little counter-intuitive. “We just have to find something.”

Sasha hesitated, just momentarily, and she carefully put her phone down. “You’re angry, Tim. It’s affecting your judgement. Remember when we talked about that? Deep breaths. Come on, in one and out two. ”

Tim grimaced, but Sasha was right. He stopped pacing, and at Sasha’s encouraging look he resentfully took a few deep breaths. It did make him feel better. His heart wasn’t thumping in his ears anymore. She was so good at calming him down. She was just so wonderful in every way.

Thinking about how great Sasha was effective in clearing his head, but it just highlighted how terrible those women were in comparison. No respect. It was disgusting.

“Thanks,” Tim said gruffly, eliciting a beautiful smile. He collapsed on the couch next to her, disgusted and frustrated. “We’re never going to solve this Robinson case so long as those women are in the way. I won’t tolerate any obstacles in getting justice.”

“I know, and that’s what’s brave about you,” Sasha soothed, clasping his shoulder gently. Her thumb worked into his shoulder, gentle and soothing. “But we have to do it quietly. We don’t just need them out of the way, we need information. I’ll work on the technological side. You can dig up an entire life online, trust me. But if they know any of the secrets about the Institute and the Archives, we have to press them. That’s your strength, Tim. You can get anything out of anyone, because you never give up.”

Tim turned his head and smiled weakly at her. “And your strength is that you’re always there for me.” Her eyebrow ticked, but Tim hardly noticed. “I’ll keep pressing. They can’t stonewall me forever. I have their boss’ address, I’ll just show up there.”

“He’s going to ask for a warrant -”

“Oh, who gives a shit, nobody cares.” Tim snorted. “He’s a pussy if he’s hiding behind those women, anyway.” At Sasha’s carefully arched eyebrow, Tim quickly added, “Coward, I meant coward.”

“So you do remember our conversation about being PC,” Sasha said, making Tim snort. Please. Those sensitivity training the department was always forcing on them was a joke. Tim laughed with the other guys about it afterwards. He didn’t know why Sasha was complaining; she laughed just as mockingly as the rest of them. But she just readjusted her glasses now, a sign she was a little nervous. “Tim, about what you said just before we left -”

“What about it?” Tim said sharply.

Sasha was silent for a minute, before adjusting her glasses again. “Nothing. Just - be careful, okay? People who get too close to the Magnus Institute end up dead.”

If only they would. But Tim grinned at her, bright and sharp, and Sasha hesitantly smiled back too. Tim’s conviction, his bravery, always seemed to make her feel better. Sasha thought too much. She rarely second guessed herself - that was why Tim liked her - but sometimes she just thought herself into twists. She needed someone like him to cut that Gordian Knot. “Don’t worry, Sash. The good guys always prevail.”

Tim would kill them. All he needed was a reason.

ii.

Tim had nightmares, now.

Not full ones. Strange, fragmented dreams that were quickly forgotten after he woke up. Most of the time. But not always. And they were so strangely vivid - as if he was really living that moment over and over again.

It was of that construction site. And of Danny, watching those murders and the corpses with a sick, fascinated smile. And of Tim, defenseless and powerless and trembling and weak, watching it all happen.

Sometimes there would be a man. Just once or twice. The man, who would always be wearing really stupid pyjamas that contrasted wildly with how attractive he was, would frown at Tim.

‘Hey’, Sims said, ‘aren’t you that prick?’.

And Tim would wake up, heart beating fast, thumping in his ears, afraid in exactly that same poisonous metallic way that he hadn’t felt since he was a child.

Tim was going to kill that monster.

****

On a Monday afternoon, Tim sat in the driver’s seat of his car, checking his gun.

Gun, check. Rope, check. Shovel, check. Lighter and gasoline, check. Axe with belt, check, just in case things went really south. Gag, check. Tim had no idea how many secret powers that thing had, he wasn’t taking any chances.

Monday was the only night that they all went home alone. It took two frustrating weeks of stake-outs to realize that. Since he had cornered that bitch Melanie she even walked home with Daisy, who apparently lived close by. It was worth it, though. She was finally feeding him useful information, even though Tim knew that she thought she was giving irrelevant information about what they really wanted. He gave most of it straight to Sasha, who was salivating over all of the puzzle pieces Melanie was casually dumping on them as if they were meaningless. Whatever. That was Sasha’s job.

She had been worried about him lately. Probably. Tim hadn’t really noticed. He was focused on the case. Tim was a perfectionist like that.

Finally, at 5:20, Tim saw the monster - Jon, whatever, he wasn’t scared of him - round the corner. He was a little hard to distinguish in the darkness, but that was why Tim had left the headlights on.

His heart was thumping, roaring in his ears. Tim was giddy with excitement and anticipation and thirst. Catching them wasn’t the best part, but this would feel so good. He had been vividly imagining the look of fear on the thing’s face for the past month, ever since he assaulted Tim. He just couldn’t decide how he wanted to kill him - he brought his nightstick just in case he wanted to bash his face in, but fire was practical and incredibly painful.

Showtime, Tim thought, as he opened his car door and stepped out. After Tim took care of this, he and Sasha would be safe. That was the important thing. He was protecting Sasha from that thing. That was why he did it, all of it.

Jon startled a little when he saw him, but his face was backlit from the headlights and his features were probably obscured. It wasn’t until Tim stepped forward, easily and casually, that Jon began the slight speedwalk of a pedestrian encountering a persistent panhandler on the street.

“Stop right there.”

Jon froze. Not as stupid as he looks, then. Still pretty stupid.

Tim walked forward until he was standing at Jon’s back, already silently drawing out his handcuffs with one hand.

“Detective Stoker,” Jon said, and Tim almost respected the way his voice didn’t shake. “I wish this was more of a surprise.”

Normally Tim appreciated a good intimidating monologue, but he could be more efficient right now. Besides, there was time for that later. Jon turned his head backwards slightly, trying to see his face - perfect - and Tim waited until he could see his expression before he jammed the barrel of his gun on Jon’s throat.

There it was. The expression that few people besides Tim had ever seen, that secret face of man that each person felt so few times in their lives if they felt it at all. The face of a man who knew he was about to die.

It was Tim’s little secret.

“Why -”

Tim bashed it over the head with the barrel of the gun, and it dropped on the gun like a lanky puppet with its strings cut. No use letting it finish a question.

Handcuffs, rope, trunk. Carefully just under the speed limit, barrelling out of London into the cold and emotionless woods. Turning on the stereo - some mindless Amy Winehouse song. Tim found himself whistling along with it, fingers drumming on the steering wheel.

It wasn’t that Tim liked killing people, or even things that looked and begged and cried like people. But it was just something you had to do. Tim shouldered that burden, so innocent people wouldn’t have to. As a police officer, he had sworn to be the wolf that protects the sheep. That was Tim - that loyal and heroic wolf.

The thrill was overwhelming. That was why people had sex in public - that excited thrill over possibly getting caught. Not that he would, and even if he did Tim basically had carte blanche to handle his cases how he wanted, but he could. His skin was prickling, his heartbeat thumping in his ears. Saliva was pooling in his mouth, which he wiped off with one hand. Adrenaline did weird things. When he looked at the rear mirror inside the car to check on Jo - the monster, he saw the light of the headlights glinting strangely against his eyes, but in another second it was gone.

Tim didn’t have a ‘spot’ because that was fucking idiotic, but all of his dumping places had basically the same characteristics. You had to drive a while to get something really private. It took an hour, but they got to Chiltern hills eventually, and Tim was forced to squint at Google Maps to find the GPS coordinates he had planned out. It felt a little ridiculous to use Google Maps to find a burial spot for somebody but - well, life was weird.

When he stopped, he carefully took out the gag, the axe, the shovel, his own hunting knife, and dumped them in the spot he had picked out. He held the gag and holstered the hunting knife before carefully popping open the trunk.

Jo - the monster was awake. Which was fortunate; there was no fight when they were unconscious. He stared up at Tim with big brown eyes, all innocent and pleading, and Tim rolled his eyes before bending down to securely jam the gag in his mouth before grabbing him by his tied hands and dragging him out. The thing made a bunch of sad noises, and from the sounds of it he had wrenched a shoulder, but that wouldn’t be an issue in a few minutes.

The thing’s legs had clearly fallen asleep, and he stumbled onto the ground the minute Tim let go of him. He kept his eyes on Tim almost frantically, as if he could brainwash him by his eyes alone - could he? Could he? His eyes were fucking freaky.

Jesus. What if he could. Fuck, Tim barely knew anything about his freaky powers. But if he could brainwash via eye contact, couldn’t he -

No. Tim shook himself. That was the fear talking. Which shouldn’t exist. The fear should be gone. He had the thing bound and gagged at his feet, terrified out of its life, he couldn’t possibly still be scared of it. Fucking stupid. He was just cautious. That was caution. Tim was a cautious person.

Time for his favorite part, then.

Tim grinned lazily down at the thing, letting his white teeth flash in the lit headlights of the car. He hadn’t been able to sleep last night, writing all of this out in his mind. “Not so great on the other side, huh?”

The monster’s eyes widened.

Tim dragged him away from the car, not bothering to be gentle. He kicked and pushed on the ground, and although he was bony as hell the guy was tall and desperate, and Tim was forced to kick him down on the ground and draw his gun. He hadn’t wanted to draw the gun - they never fought and kicked and snarled and bit with the gun - but he wasn’t taking any chances here.

“I want you to know,” Tim said, friendly and warm, “that I’m doing this because I made a promise. On my badge and on my life, I protect the innocent from predators. I defend society from threats. There’s a corruption in the world, a sick and rotting infection, and it’s my job to tear it out. But I get no joy from this, okay?” He didn’t know why it was important that the monster knew that. It wasn’t like he was going to hold a grudge. The monster tried to sit up, but Tim kicked him again until he hit the ground again. Tim hated how he was shorter than him when they both were standing. He wanted to look down on him for once.

The monster was always looking down on him. With his little girl gang and his bestest buddies. With that - that moral superiority. He thought he was so smart and popular. Just because he could rip someone’s deepest secrets out of someone, he thought he was better. Just because he knew Tim’s worst fear, he thought that he had power over Tim.

Nobody did. Nobody had power over Tim. Not anymore.

“But you,” Tim hissed, “you, out of everyone I’ve ever killed - I’m going to enjoy you. You’ve crept into the lives of all those humans. You even got fucking Sasha telling me you’re not all bad. Is that what you do? Convince everybody around you that you’re a good person, when you’re a piece of shit inside?” His hand was trembling on his gun - that wasn’t in the script. Why was that happening? “Well, guess what. No matter how great you think you are, you will always be a monster.”

The handle of Tim’s gun was coated in sweat, making his trembling hand slide. Why? The gasoline and lighter were standing by his feet, ready to burn the body. His heart was thumping in his chest, not from anticipation and thrill - why? Why? Why?

“Tim, no!”

Tim, so focused on what he was doing, jerked so hard he almost fired the gun. He whipped around to the source of the voice, and found to his shock a familiar car and a familiar woman standing by it, face set in a fierce determination.

It was Sasha. Somehow, the sight of her was deeply wrong to Tim. She shouldn’t be here. Sasha should never see this. She knew, she had helped - always the finger pointing in the direction to unleash Tim - but she shouldn’t see it. He knew it wasn’t real to her, what he did.

“Sash,” Tim said weakly, hand drooping.

Jon screamed from behind his gag. He might have been calling for help.

“Put the gun down,” Sasha said coldly. She was just dressed in jeans and a messy t-shirt, as if she had come here in a great hurry. How had she kno - okay, Sasha knew everything, it was no surprise.

“Why? Sasha, what are you doing here?” Tim cried, in genuine confusion. “What’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong is that Jon is innocent of everything!” Sasha yelled, and Tim almost flinched back. “He didn’t kill Gertrude, he doesn’t know anything about what’s going on! Trust me, Jon and his team have nothing to do with any of this!”

“He’s a fucking demon, Sash,” Tim said incredulously. How could she take his side? How? “Don’t you remember what he did to me? How can you forgive that?”

“You’re not a saint either!” Sasha screamed - the first time Tim had ever heard her scream at him. He couldn’t believe this was happening. How had he lost control of the situation so badly? “If you kill him you will break his team.”

As if a single coworker nobody dying will upset anybody. “And how long until he attacks or kills his team?” Tim asked furiously. “They’re the biggest bitches I’ve ever met, but they’re human. Monsters hurt humans, Sasha. It’s in their nature. How long until he hurts someone else? How long until he hurts you?”

“If you kill him,” Sasha said, quiet and strangled and hurt, “I will never forgive you.”

Nobody had power over him - nobody, perhaps, save Sasha. She held his heart in his hands, ready at a moment’s cue to crush it or rip it out of him. He couldn’t bear her disapproving face, her quiet disappointment. If she didn’t love him, if she took that away - he wouldn’t have anything. Nothing would be left. He had to protect that love, protect her.

“Sasha,” Tim said weakly, “out of everybody, I thought you would understand.”

“I do. I’m the only one who will ever understand. That’s why you have to trust me.”

Maye that was the problem. Tim did. She was the only person he had ever trusted.

Tim flicked the safety, and dropped the gun.

Just to make himself feel better, he bent his leg back to kick Jon, but - but, for some reason, he didn’t. It just seemed so tiresome. What was the point? What was the point of any of this?

The point had always been to protect humans from the monsters. To protect Sasha. But Sasha didn’t want his help. What did he have now?

“Take him back to his house,” Tim said dully. He glared fiercely at Jon, whose face was falling in relief. “If you tell the police about this, nobody will believe you and nobody will care. If you tell anybody else about this, I’ll find you again and beat you half to death. Got it?”

Jon nodded fervently.

After that, it was all a blur. Sasha helped him up, took him to her car, and he saw her cut through his restraints once he was safely inside. Tim just gathered up his materials and dumped them in the trunk of his car, sliding into the driver’s seat and gunning the engine.

He drove home in a depressed haze, feeling worthless, feeling powerless, feeling exactly like Jon always made him feel.

His hands clenched on the steering wheel. If Jon didn’t know shit about what was going on - and Tim believed that, guy was fucking stupid - then who did? If Jon hadn’t turned into a monster on purpose, then who had turned him into a monster?

Elias Bouchard always gave Tim a bad feeling.

He’d collect some evidence. Give it a few weeks, then confront him. Bouchard would bend and crack. Then Tim would be free. Free of the Magnus Institute, free of how it made him feel.

He roared towards home, unsatisfied and angry, still afraid.

iii.

“Can you pass the rice?”

Tim silently passed Mom the bowl, staring intently at his own plate and silently shovelling potatoes in his mouth. Dad was doing his usual thing and just kind of squinting at his plate and chewing like a cow with cud. Danny was, from the outside, eating food like a normal person. Tim knew that he was vibrating with anticipation.

“So,” Mom continued, faux-brightly, “it’s been a while since you boys came home. Too good for your old folks, huh?”

The passive aggressive route - deal with the criticism, but if you bit back then it was ‘just a joke’. Favored tactic of Ha-eun Stoker.

“Sorry, Mom,” Danny said, one arm thrown over the back of his chair, utterly unrepentant, “work’s been hell lately. Big case came in, and if I want to be promoted to junior partner…”

Sure enough, Mom brightened right up. “Really! Tell us all about your case, Danny!”

Then they were off. Tim zoned out, blankly spooning gamja jorim into his mouth as Danny endlessly rattled off about his accomplishments and Mom cooed and aah’d relentlessly. Dad just chewed, occasionally grunting in satisfaction and approval.

Wow, the coveted paternal approval. Way to make them all jump through hoops for it. Tim rolled his eyes.

Unfortunately, he was caught. Mom turned her piercing gaze on him, smiling pleasantly with perfect teeth. Of course they were perfect; she had work done. All of the other women in the neighborhood do it, Tim, we should fit in. Oh, this necklace is just so in style, I saw Ms. Wallace down the street wearing it. Fucking lemming.

“What about you, Tim?” Mom asked. “How’s work going? Normally you’d be telling us all about your big arrests.”

Ah. The reason why Tim had done everything possible to avoid family dinner. They had this once a month, the only time they could all be assed to talk to each other, and Tim had jumped through hoops to try and escape.

Danny didn’t let him. This was way too entertaining to him.

He knew. Tim didn’t know how, but that was irrelevant. Danny always knew. He couldn’t lie and make up some case. Tim took a careful sip of his dak gomtang, stalling.

Finally, he said, “I took a new job, actually.”

Dad looked up from his plate. Mom’s jaw dropped.

“But you loved your job,” Mom said, for all appearances broken-hearted. “What happened?”

Danny leaned back in his chair, hands folded behind his head, grinning. “Yeah, brother. You loved that job, you’d never quit. What happened?”

“My work partner was caught and forced to sign an employment contract by a middle management stoner, blackmailing me into working with her so I wouldn’t get arrested by the police for my dozen murders.”

Everybody stared at him. Tim sipped some water.

“That isn’t very funny, Timothy,” Mom said.

God, these people were so serious. In the stupidest second of his entire stupid life, he missed the Archive team just a little bit. At least they had a sense of humor. He’d never known those bitches to take anything seriously. But even when they were literally engaging in cult-level shunning of him and Sasha, they were always together. What was with homos and that gay found family shit?

“Kidding. I don’t know, Mom, I was just going stir-crazy. Being a copper just felt like such a dead-end job.”

“But you said you were on track for Lieutenant,” Mom gasped. “How could you throw that away?”

“I don’t know, Mom,” Danny said, shit-eating grin plastered on his face. “I don’t think Tim would quit his job voluntarily.”

Mom’s jaw dropped. “You were fired?”

Tim was too dead inside for this. “Sure. I’m a librarian now. It doesn’t matter.”

“Doesn’t matter?” Mom positively screeched. “What am I supposed to tell Mrs. Walker now? That my son’s not on track to Lieutenant, that he was fired? I’ve never been so ashamed of you. You’re going to make me a laughingstock, Tim. In all my life, you’ve never once cared about how your actions affected me. Let me tell you right now that this is disgraceful. You’re a grown man, and you’re still acting like a child who blah blah blah. Tim’s a disappointment and we hate him blah blah. How could I have raised such a lazy yammer yammer yammer. I only pay attention to you when I’m yelling at you and I’m totally in the right because Rachel Granger said that yada yada -”

“Well, this was fun,” Tim said pleasantly, wiping his mouth with a napkin before balling it and tossing on the table. He put his chopsticks down and stood up, dusting off his hands. “Great to see all of you again, so much fun, but I have a cat to go iron.”

But Dad was staring at him, even when Mom was fuming in rage. In Korean, he said, “You’re disrespecting your mother, Ji-hoon.”

“For god’s sake, Richard, we speak English in this house. His name’s Timothy,” Mom snapped. Danny rolled his eyes.

“Why not?” Tim asked in Korean, just to piss off Mom. Basira would have sneered at her respectability politics. Melanie would have lost her temper an hour - no, thirty years ago. Why were they stronger than Tim? “You don’t respect her.”

Almost silently, Danny whistled.

“Timothy,” Mother started, scandalized, “listen to your -”

“Why? What can she say to me, besides the same shit I’ve been hearing my entire life? She’s not saying anything interesting.” Tim smiled brightly at his family, flashing all of his teeth. “You know what? In comparison with my life lately, you three are pretty fucking boring. Bye.”

That was when his mother burst into tears, and his father started yelling at him at the top of his voice and thumping the table until the dishes rattled, and when Danny started laughing. If they did anything else, if Dad was about to get out of his chair and smack him, if Mom was going to disown him, Tim didn’t wait around to see it. He grabbed his bomber jacket and stalked out the door, letting it fall behind him.

He breathed heavily on the pretty little sidewalk in front of their pretty little house. The pretty little roses in the pretty little garden bloomed perfectly, and their thorns were all cut off. Down the street pretty little houses made of ticky tacky loomed, and they were all within HOA compliance in their gated little community. Nobody in. Nobody out.

When he was fifteen, Tim hated it because his parents were always trying to impose normalacy on him and he had never fucking measured up. When he was a young adult, he had hated it because he had fancied himself a gritty, street-wise cop who grappled with the dregs of society and always came out victorious. The perfect little families here thought that their gates could protect them from the cold and hard outside world - but the monsters in the world lived and breeded in their backyards, and they were too busy trimming their lawns to notice.

He should go home. It was late, and he had his ridiculous, evil, gloriously imperfect job tomorrow. God, Melanie would hate this place. She would sneer at him for ever having lived here, chalking it up with his infinite list of sins. All you pigs are the same, she would nag, privileged and sheltered. Bitch. Why was she always right?

But Tim just couldn’t work up the energy to drive all the way home. His heart felt scooped out with a grapefruit spoon. Instead he stumbled into the little alley next to the house, where the garbage trucks and the alley cats roamed, and he collapsed into a little patch of scrubby grass. This had been his favorite place to sulk as a child. Or hide from Danny. Danny always found him, of course, but it was the principle of the matter -

“Man, I can’t believe I got that show for free. You should have charged, Ji-hoon.”

“Fuck off, Danny,” Tim said, tone dull with how rote the phrase was.

When he glanced at him out of the corner of his eye, he saw that Danny was dappled in night. The only light was from the streetlights, and the lights of their porch. In the dim lighting, Danny was lit by a bright aura but his features were hidden in the dark. Like an angel, Danny shone, and like a devil, Tim hid in the shadows. Hidden in the corner, like a powerless child.

“It’s a compliment! Normally you’re the most boring, predictable bitch alive. Wind your key and watch you go. But not even I could have predicted the shit you pulled today. Fantastic.” Danny grinned, a slash of the mouth. “You’re dead disowned, buddy. You crossed a line. They’ll never forgive you.”

“Fuck off, Danny.”

“I’m looking forward to being an only child,” Danny mused. “Mom and Dad were always so obsessed with you, it’ll be nice to have them all to myself. When I make junior partner, do you think Dad will clap me on the back? Give me a hug?” He affected a sad look, pulling his face into a mockery of tragedy. “I’m really going to miss you. You always lowered the bar for me.”

“Fuck off, Danny.”

Apparently that was one ‘fuck off’ too many, because Danny kicked Tim in the ribs. He always knew exactly where to hit - right in an old scar in the ribs, a bullet wound that he had never told him about. Tim wheezed, but he didn’t move. No point.

In a brief, strange flash of memory, Tim remembered bending his knee back to kick Jon in the stomach. Jon hadn’t flinched. Had there been no point?

“I know you spent your entire sad little childhood thinking I ruined your life. That’s bullshit and you know it. You didn’t need anyone else to ruin your life, Timbo. You’ve always been good enough at that yourself.” He pulled a faux-surprised face. Every expression Danny ever had was fake. Everything was a mask, plastic and fake. “Even your relationships, right? How’s that Mexican bird you got following you around? She still refusing to fuck you? I should pick her up, I bet she’s real easy -”

Tim saw red.

It was easy, in the end. Maybe too easy. He leapt up, in one easy and smooth motion, and tackled Danny to the ground. Tim had always been bigger but Danny had always been stronger, no matter how long Tim spent at the gym, but that didn’t matter now. Tim was faintly aware he was snarling as Danny hit the ground hard, head bouncing on the grass.

There was no time for him to recover. Tim punched him in the face, keeping him down, before punching him again. He felt bone break under his fist. A nose.

He didn’t remember anything after that. Everything fuzzed out a little, trapped in the swirling of his rage and the thump of his heartbeat. It wasn’t Martin’s anger, it wasn’t Sasha’s cold chase. It was just hatred.

It wasn’t that - that thing inside Tim, the thing he had spent years denying. It was just Tim. Or maybe Tim was that thing, and that thing was Tim.

He was faintly aware that somebody was grabbing him by the elbows, pulling him off. There was screaming. Wailing. He couldn’t really tell. Tim was dizzy, hands wet and sticky. Someone was crying - the nauseatingly familiar sound of his mother sobbing.

Just boys roughhousing, Tim wanted to say. That was a good line, snappy and sarcastic. Just boys being boys, the same line he had heard time after time after time when Danny coated his entire torso in bruises. Monsters, acting like monsters. Men, doing what men always do.

Tim left the scene. He wouldn’t be back. Never return to the scene of the crime, ha ha ha. He wouldn’t be welcome back. It should have felt crushing, isolating, terrifying.

But instead, Tim just felt free. As if a crushing weight had fallen off his shoulders, and he no longer felt suffocated by endless picking and prodding and pushing. It...he didn’t feel scared.

Tim walked down the street, taking the long way home, whistling happily. He hated himself a little bit less than usual tonight. Things were looking up.

iv.

Tim stared at Melanie as she slept.

It wasn’t hard. They kept the lights on, although after a few days Melanie had started to use a sleeping mask. She had recovered from what happened fairly quickly. She still let him keep his arm on her.

It tingled, just a little, where it touched her. She was warm and soft, breathing softly in a gentle rise and fall of her chest. Her face was slack with sleep. No nightmares. Melanie only looked gentle when she was asleep: any other time, her face was screwed up in intent thought or a mean comment or an exaggerated face made behind someone’s back.

It was the first time Tim had slept in the same bed as a woman without sleeping with her. At Sasha’s, he always slept on the couch. It was a little weird. It was really weird. He kept on telling himself to pull away, to rebuild that bridge that had been so effortless with Sasha, to act normal and stop being desperate and needy.

But he didn’t. He couldn’t. Every time he let go of her, he was alone. No matter how many people surrounded them, no matter how big the room or busy the sprawling London streets, when she was out of the room it felt as if she would never come back.

He hated the way he felt. It was disgusting, crawling in his gut and heart like rot. He hated himself for feeling it, he hated the world for doing it to him, and he hated Melanie for making him feel this way.

He didn’t know love could be this painful.

***

Did he love her?

Tim was fairly sure he couldn’t love anybody. Whatever he felt for Sasha, it couldn’t be love. It could only be a selfish, disgusting poison. Or maybe he really did love her, and love really was poison - if it was the kind of love Tim felt for other people, if it was all he could give.

But Tim knew Sasha, down to her soul. He knew her dark secrets, every skeleton in her closet. He knew what she was running from, why she had landed in England and never left, why she felt just as passionately for Tim’s crusade for justice as he did.

Justice. What a joke.

But Melanie wasn’t like that. She was rough and bitchy and meddling and willfully idiotic, but if you scratched that surface she was perfect. Kind, understanding, forgiving, patient, supportive - the kind of girl Tim had always wanted. Not that Sasha hadn’t been - but Sasha was somebody he should probably stay away from, for her own good.

Melanie had saved him. Melanie was trying to fix him, and she wouldn’t stop until she did. She wouldn’t give up - she never gave up on anything or anyone. Even Tim. Maybe, if it was her, Tim could be fixed.

He squinted at her in the soft lights keeping away the dark lingering in the small windows. Did he want to kiss her? He should, right? Any emotion this strong, anything that made him feel so vulnerable and desperate and insane had to come with wanting to be with her. Not that she could ever like him that way back…

The idea was oddly nice. Men and women couldn’t be friends. But maybe Tim and Melanie could - Melanie, who would never love him in that way, freeing Tim of the obligation to reciprocate.

He settled a little bit more, tucking her a little bit closer under him until he could no longer see her face. The idea was heady - that she was letting him do that, that she could be open and vulnerable in front of him too. That Tim had never really protected anybody, that Melanie was the first person to ever protect him, and that maybe he could pay that back.

Maybe she could fix him. Give him love that was pure instead of corrupted; selfless instead of selfish. Tim needed her.

He tried not to hate it.

***

That night, Tim had a dream that he was fucking Melanie in his old bed in his old flat. Danny was there, somehow, constantly mocking Tim on how badly he was doing, and every time Tim would yell at him to get out he would just laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh -

***

Melanie dragged him to work with her the next morning, as Tim chugged a shitton of coffee and considered braining himself with a hammer so he could forget the dream he had last night. He would literally prefer the construction site nightmares. He could barely meet her eyes, and lived in relentless paranoia that somehow she knew and was going to call him disgusting which would be fair and true and -

“Do you think the old man in Home Alone is a Jesus allegory?”

Tim blinked blearily at her, still chugging his coffee. They had gotten his car keys and car back from Sasha - she still had everything he ever owned, but he didn’t want to deal with that - but Melanie was driving, since Tim’s reaction time wasn’t that good anymore and he tended to zone out. They would take the tube and avoid London traffic except, well…

“I have no opinions on Home Alone,” Tim said blankly. He had been reading Thus Spoke Zarathustra on his phone. So far he had several points of disagreement, his largest was the man’s weird obsession with atheism. Granted, it was hard to be a nihilist and be religious, but Tim had insider information on the nature of the universe and he was working on a thesis - anyway. Anyway. “Why?”

“It’s a good movie, right? We should watch it for movie night tonight.”

“I thought you wanted to watch T2 today.”

“Aw, fuck, right.” Melanie slightly slapped the steering wheel. They didn’t move - traffic was really hell. “I am a slut for fictionalized violence. Isn’t Sarah Connor the most badass action hero ever?”

“She’s awesome,” Tim agreed warmly. “But Schwarzenneger in that movie is just peak. Have you ever seen Predator? It was his best role.”

Melanie snorted. “Predator was so boring. Just a lot of oiled up men flexing at each other.”

Typical. Tim rolled his eyes, propping an elbow below the window, but he found himself smiling anyway. “What do you want me to watch instead, Blue is the Warmest Color?”

“Laugh all you want, idiot. You’re getting the whole rota of required watching for gay people. First on the list is the Birdcage, then right after that Paris is Burning -”

Tim groaned theatrically, drowning her out, but all that did was hit him with the musk of his small, battered car. The smell of Melanie hit him like a truck - her Melon shampoo, her 24 hour deodorant, the dust of the Archives, something unique to her that he just couldn’t place.

To Tim’s horror, the scent pulled at that deep pit in his stomach. Don’t think about it. Don’t tell anyone. Don’t let them know - except for Sasha, who always knew. It made him want to do - stuff that he didn’t want to do. Not really. Tim didn’t want that. Whoever Tim was.

Counterintuitively, the hunger made it easier to keep that fake smile and forced manic energy when they got to the office. He wasn’t really up to it today - some days were easier than others - but that didn’t really matter when he had to aggressively convince everybody that he was fine. The alternative was everybody giving him sad and pitying looks, which was a thousand times worse than any infernal hell torture.

It wasn’t. But he still didn’t want to deal with it.

So he kicked the door open, yelled something meaningless about how the bitch was back, and let Basira ignore him and Martin roll his eyes and Sasha very pointedly ignore him. He noted that Daisy wasn’t in this morning - ever since their planning session, she had been dropping by more frequently to flirt obnoxiously with Basira, but she obviously couldn’t spend all of her time here if she wanted to keep up the pretense with Peter Lukas.

Which was...somewhat of a relief.

Tim collapsed in what used to be Daisy’s chair at her desk, which was for far more important reasons than just because he didn’t want to sit next to Sasha. The upside is that Melanie sat diagonal from him, across from Basira, who didn’t give a shit what he did if she wasn’t using him as a meaningless sounding board for her constant venting. It wasn’t all bad, if he didn’t look too hard at whatever the fuck Martin was doing at any given time.

So he swiveled in his chair as Melanie, Basira, and Sasha disappeared into the library. He stood up to go with her, but Melanie made a gesture that sent him sitting down again. Martin, who was writing something ornate in his journal, snickered.

Six months ago Tim would have snapped at him, but instead he just leaned back in his chair and squeezed his grip trainer. The grind never stopped. “Writing love poetry, buddy? In the Romantic tradition or the...fuck, I don’t know any other poets.”

Martin silently held up his journal. The only thing written was ‘murder kill murder’, repeatedly, up and down two pages.

Well. That was enough teasing Martin for one day. He really had no idea how Melanie was brave enough to get Martin to listen to listen to her - or, worse, why he did.

After an hour or so, spent reading Plato and disagreeing with a great deal, Jon slunk out of his office and blinked owlishly at both Tim and Martin, who had been politely minding their own business.

Tim realized - in the same way that, whenever he saw Jon, he was inescapably reminded that he knew what he looked like when he was about to die - that the room was filled with two guys who had tried repeatedly to kill him. Fuck, he was probably uncomfortable. Good job, Tim. Way to keep terrorizing people. But he really wasn’t capable of doing anything else, so it was hardly a surprise -

“Hullo, Martin. I’m picking up some food from the vending machine, do you want anything?”

Oh. They were going for ‘disturbingly banal’ today. Martin smiled shyly at Jon, who blushed in response. “Surprise me. Thanks, Jon.”

“Want any razor blades in the apples?”

“You know that’s a myth, Jon,” Martin said disapprovingly. Or maybe not.

“It doesn’t have to be.”

“You are the sexiest guy I’ve ever met,” Martin whispered.

Then Jon flushed, and leaned casually in what he probably thought was a hot pose and unfortunately totally was against Martin’s desk, and Tim was subjected to their absolutely fucking atrocious flirting for the next ten minutes. At that point, Tim found his breaking point and left the Archives, the terror of being in semi-public outweighed by the terror of Jonmartin. That was what Basira and Melanie kept calling it. He really didn’t know what that meant, but whatever.

But after fifteen minutes of standing in front of the vending machine himself, quietly overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of choices and colors and flavors and sugar, he heard someone else approaching. He snapped his head to the left to see a gawky, hunched scarecrow slouch down the hall, raising a hand apologetically. That man put no effort into his appearance, how as he still that hot -

Maybe Jon and Martin were normal, Tim secretly wondered, and Tim just didn’t understand gay courting rituals. He had to find out, right? How do you flirt with guys? It wasn’t as if he could practice with the two guys in the office. Especially Martin. Tim had never really paid a lot of attention to him before he came back to life, writing him off as a beta male - which ended up being so hilariously incorrect it forced Tim to sit down and reconsider his entire framework of alpha and beta males. Melanie had given him a sticker.

“Uh. Hey.”

Tim stared at him blankly.

Jon rubbed the back of his neck. “How...are you?”

Tim blinked at him.

“Well. I would, er, enjoy using the vending machine.”

Oh. Obviously. Tim stepped aside, cheeks burning, and silently let Jon punch in the code for a Mars Bar (for Martin, probably) and a granola bar (because an alarm went off on his desk if he didn’t eat a snack at 3pm).

It wasn’t their first time being alone together since he came back, but as Tim had been more or less catatonic at that period in time he was inclined not to count that. Jon hadn’t seemed scared, anyway. Probably. Tim hadn’t paid much attention.

He should do this. He had to do it. It was all about making up for the shit he did, right? He had to face this. Then Jon would forgive him, not that he had to, and - and something vaguely good would happen. He would find that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and the hunger would go away, and the intrusive thoughts would be all gone. Melanie would give him another sticker. Or something.

“You can go for it, you know.”

Jon whipped his head around, shocked at Tim addressing him directly for the first time in a very long time. “What?”

Idiot. If this guy had been in a single fight in his life, he’d eat his hat. From what Jon had seen of his childhood friend, Georgie’s girlfriend who he hated for absolutely no reason, she had probably defended him from every bully. It was almost cute.

“You can get a good one in,” Tim repeated slowly. He turned his cheek. “Promise I won’t punch back or anything.”

“I - do you mean punch you?” The Mars Bar rattled down the machine, dropping heavily into the tray. “Why would I do that?”

Jesus, the guy was thick. “Do you remember when I kidnapped and tried to kill you, or is that just me?”

Jon blinked owlishly at him. “Lots of people try to kill me.”

“Don’t you want to?” Tim cried, a little bit higher and a little bit louder than he intended. “Come on, as if you’ve never wanted to do it? Wouldn’t it help? You got in a week of being a passive aggressive asshole, that isn’t enough. It doesn’t make up for anything. This would.”

“How would that fix anything?”

Tim’s breath hitched. But Jon was just staring, as if he could see right through him. Maybe he could. “What?”

“How would hurting you make me feel better?” Jon repeated slowly. “It won’t change what happened. Punching you wouldn’t change what you did to me. All it would do is make you feel better, as if that fixes it. It doesn’t. Is that how you solve all of your problems? That explains a lot.”

His breath was coming faster, hitching again. He couldn’t control it. “I’m trying to do you a favor, asshole.”

“No, you’re trying to make yourself feel better.” Jon smiled politely and, before Tim could jerk away, clapped him on the shoulder. “I forgave you a long time ago. Not because of you. But I just didn’t want it hanging over me. I gave myself closure and moved on. Sometimes bad things happen to us, and we have to get up the next day and go to work anyway. My friends helped. My family did too. I’m sorry you don’t have that, Tim. You’ll get closure one day.” Jon looked thoughtful for a second. “I mean, getting closure about being almost killed one time must be a lot easier than dealing with the fact that you killed fifteen people in your life? Twice that supernatural people, I think. You know you’re technically a serial killer? I won’t judge, this is a safe space, but I thought you ought to know.”

Somehow, inanely, all Tim could think of to say was, “It’s not serial killing if it’s part of your job.”

“Which is why I’m sure you took that job,” Jon said brightly. “Let’s get back to the office before Martin decides to amuse himself.”

For a second, just for a second - or two, or ten, or a minute - Tim vividly imagined himself ripping Jon’s throat out. Killing him properly this time, putting that look on his face again. It had felt so good, and - and it had made him feel so bad, but that felt good too, and he still didn’t know why, and he wanted to eat Jon so bad. Jon, who was innocent in everything, gentle and kind. Nothing like Tim. That was why everybody liked Jon and hated Tim.

From what he had heard, while Tim was going insane hyperfixating on the chase a few years ago, the girls had spent ages talking Jon down from a breakdown and steering him away from the same path that Tim had barrelled down. Who had done that for him? Sasha made a big show of keeping his head level, but she had used him just as ruthlessly as he had used her. She never had an investment in keeping him sane; just functional.

If somebody had done that for him, would he still be cruel?

They went back to the office, and Tim pretending that the hunger swirling in his gut was just self-hatred. But, then again, they really were the same thing.

When Melanie came out of the library with Basira and Sasha on her heels, talking quietly about some new scheme they were cooking up, Tim found himself reaching out to her. Melanie smiled and squeezed his hand, before gently heckling his choice in literature.

Some stupid part of him - maybe even a large part - thought that once he was clasping Melanie’s hand again, the hunger would quiet down. It had protected him underground, it felt as if it should protect him in the world above.

But it didn’t, and it didn’t solve anything, and Tim tried not to think about the fact that he was slowly unwinding, and that he didn’t want to see what was inside him when everything that was Tim Stoker fell away.

***

A short yet tumultuous time later, Tim was called into Jon’s office.

He hadn’t wanted to come to work. But the alternative of stewing at home - Melanie’s flat - was much worse, and Basira had reported that too many skip days made them all way too sick. Might as well come in. Melanie had spent the night at Georgie’s - like she had the past two days, what a fucking coincidence - so he didn’t have to worry about that awkwardness.

After too long memorizing the face after too many sleepless nights, Tim could imagine it vividly. Soft, uncreased, innocent of how hard the world could be. Tim couldn’t bear it. He had to ruin it. He just couldn’t bear it.

He was the first one in the office, so it was easy to see the poisonous death glare Basira shot him when she walked in. So Melanie had told them - of course she fucking told them, she hadn’t done anything wrong, she wasn’t obliged to lie. Daisy was hot on her heels, and she actually properly snarled at him before Basira pulled her back while somehow giving the full impression that she wanted to do the same thing.

He should probably go hide in the library before Martin came in. He couldn’t decide whether or not this was worse than the shunning. The shunning had driven him absolutely crazy, but at least he hadn’t been legitimately afraid that Martin would stab him and that nobody would stop him.

There was the faint sound of raised voices in the cowpen. Tim knew that they were arguing about him. He already knew what they would decide - wait for Melanie’s verdict. But are you sure she isn’t too close to this? No, she knows the fucker better than anybody else, she would judge if they needed to do anything. What are we going to tell Sasha? The truth, fucking obviously.

Sasha. Tim wanted her to be surprised. He knew she wouldn’t be. That hurt more.

After what felt like an infinite amount of time but he knew was only a few hours, pouring over Sasha’s collection of Vast and Spiral Statements, he heard the library door open. It was Jon, standing at the threshold, and all Tim could think was - oh, man, here we go.

It was a regular walk of shame into Jon’s office, and he couldn’t miss the way everybody’s heads snapped to look at him. Sasha, just as he thought, looked resigned. Melanie was frowning.

Jon’s office was the same as ever, not that Jon went in too frequently. The only strange thing about it was that Jon locked the door behind him. Tim didn’t know what that boded, but it wasn’t good.

Well, might as well take control of the situation. He collapsed on the chair in front of his desk and propped his boots on Jon’s desk, wishing he had a drink to obnoxiously sip. “Is this the part where you threaten me?” He affected a fake baritone, somehow still not even hitting Jon’s register. “ ‘Touch her again and you’ll answer to me’. ‘Stay away from her or you’ll face the consequences’. Come on, I’ve read a thousand creeps the same riot act. Get it over with.”

Jon sat down heavily in his office chair. The office had chipped in to buy him a new one as a birthday gift, much more comfortable than the old one. But he was leaning forward now, arms folded on the desk.

“Would that make you feel better?”

Great, this again. “Yeah, it evokes the emotionally absent father I was raised with,” Tim snarked. “If you aren’t going to say it, what am I in here for?”

He was afraid to know what he was in here for. Melanie had told him that if he did it again, she’d sic Jon on him. And Tim knew what it looked like when Jon was sicced on someone. This wasn’t it.

“Tim,” Jon said seriously, and he was somehow kind about it. “You know what this looks like, right?”

Something ugly and ashamed twisted in Tim’s gut. He fought the urge to sink in his seat. “Yeah.”

“You know why we’re worried now.”

“Yeah, I know.” Tim looked fixedly at the wall, unwilling to meet Jon’s eyes. “I - I’m not going to do it again. I swear. And - and it wasn’t like that. I promise. I’m not - I’m not a creep, okay? Ask Sasha. I’ve never - I’ve killed people, but that’s not nearly as bad as - I’m not going to do it again. It was a mistake.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Tim’s head snapped back to Jon, and before he could think about it he found himself half-rising from the chair. Jon’s cold stare had him sitting back down again, but his heart was thumping a drum in his chest. “Then what do you want?” Tim just barely restrained himself from yelling, knowing that the girls were probably listening at the door anyway. “What can I do to convince you that’d rather chop off my own hand than hurt her?”

“You can give your permission to let me ask you some questions.”

Tim faltered. “What? Just questions?”

“Uh.” Jon waved his hand in a circle in the air, as if that meant anything. “You know. Questions. I haven’t really done it since - since I think I did it to you? But I think I can do it on command now. I don’t like to.” His eyes sharpened, and for a second Tim could have sworn that they glimmered. “But I can’t take a chance. Not on this.”

It was like he was falling again, through that infinite void that was the last taste of freedom he had thought he would ever have. It was like he was suffocating again, a mile of dirt piled on his chest, banging incessantly at the lid of the coffin. Nobody saved him, until she did. He was distantly aware that he was barely holding back hyperventilating, but all Tim could feel was dissociated horror.

“You - you can’t. Jon, I - I won’t do it again, you can’t.”

Jon’s mouth twisted into a frown. “I won’t if you give me a flat no. I don’t like doing it.” That was a lie and they both fucking knew it. “But if you don’t, we can’t trust you again. We’d convince Melanie to let you stay with Martin. We wouldn’t leave you in the same room together. You’re not stable, Tim. It’s obvious. We thought it was harmless - or, at least, the only person you were hurting was yourself - but it’s not anymore. We’re all scared. I don’t want to hurt you just because we’re scared, but Melanie is the only one here who couldn’t really defend herself if you decided to do anything else to her.” He grimaced slightly. “Not that she admits it. She always puts herself between us and any enemy. But we have to pay that back. I know you understand.”

He did.

Hate burned in his stomach. What a hypocrite. Giving all of that big talk about choice and options. He knew that there was no option, not if they were going to rip him apart from the one person who he felt safe with.

The one person who wasn’t safe with him.

Tim deserved this. Even if it had been his worst fear a year ago - well, Tim had experienced much worse than that since then.

When you did shit to other people, you make up for it. You make sure that you can’t hurt anybody else again. Jon was right - gestures didn’t mean anything. He had to commit. He had to improve, be better. Otherwise he’d be sent straight back down to that place when he died, and there would be no saving him.

“Yeah,” Tim said, mouth dry, “you can do it. But - but no personal questions this time, okay? Just stick to the subject.”

“They seem to always end up a bit personal,” Jon said apologetically, “but I’ll try.”

Deep within Jon, inside of the unassuming and kind and gentle man, the subject of Tim’s nightmares rose. His eyes flashed green, then shined with a bright and sickly radioactive green. His hair strained against its bun and fuzzed at the end, but it didn’t break free.

“What’s your name, Tim?”

The worst part about the compelling, Tim had decided long ago, was that you didn’t feel brainwashed.

You felt exactly as if you were talking normally, that there was nothing strange about Jon or you. His words didn’t ring with a mysterious power. If you had entered it thinking you were talking of your own volition, you probably wouldn’t notice. But if you knew what was happening, the curtain was lifted, and you were deathly aware of the way the words were ripped out of you with fishhooks. It left Tim gasping, straining for air.

“Timothy Ji-hoon Stoker,” Tim said, and it was almost as if he wanted to. “My dad just calls me Ji-hoon though. So do my grandparents. My last name’s made up as fuck - I think Mom just saw a book at the airport and picked it out from the cover. Kind of ironic, considering everything.”

“Oh, really? Daisy says that she got Tonner because her English wasn’t great and she misheard someone at the airport asking her for a tenner - right, right.” Jon coughed. Wait, was the reason why Daisy barely talked when he first met her was because her English was bad? “On topic. Tim, do you want to attack Melanie again?”

“Of course not,” Tim burst out, and these words, at least, came easy. “I love her. I hate hurting her, I hate how I’m constantly fucking up and doing it anyway. I’m just violent and I don’t know how not to be violent. It’s the only way I deal with things, being violent, and I know it’s eating me up inside but I just can’t stop it. But if there’s one person who can help me stop, it’s Melanie. She’s going to fix me, I know it.”

The words were unbelievably humiliating, the kind of thing that Tim had never wanted to admit, but Jon’s expression didn’t change. Tim wanted to look away, to pretend that this was just an internal narration and that he wasn’t telling this his fucking coworker, but he found himself incapable. Their gazes locked, and Tim couldn’t pull away.

“Why did you do it?”

“Because I was scared, and I hate being scared so much. It’s what I always do, ever since I was a kid - I would get scared, and I would try to hurt something or someone about it. I did it to you, I was so scared of you that I obsessed about killing you and covered it up with some bullshit about justice or Sasha. It was just about me, it’s always been selfish. But - but- but -” The words were sticking in his throat, coagulating on the wound ripped open by Jon and his fishhooks. “But I hate her. I hate that I care, and I hate that I need her, and - and I don’t think I did it just because I was scared. I think I did it because I was scared, and I love her, and I hate her, and I’m beginning to think I have some kind of weird complex about women because of my mother’s overly dependent narcissistic personality and my father’s emotional detachment -”

“You just now figured that out?” Jon asked incredulously. “Sorry, you just now started realizing that your toxic masculinity controls your entire justification for your actions?”

“I’ve known for a while but I’ve been repressing it,” Tim said hurriedly, forced to answer that one despite Jon probably intending it as a rhetorical question.

Jon stared at him for a second silently, giving Tim time to catch his breath and try to control his breathing. He was one bad step away from a panic attack, and his hold was still clenched on this throat like a fist. Danny had done that to him one time, the son of a bitch, and he had never forgotten. Should he tell Jon that? Does he have to?

“Tim,” Jon said finally. He looked very uncomfortable, but also resolute. As if he didn’t want to ask, or maybe he just didn’t want to know, but he felt as if he had to. “Are you in love with Melanie?”

Tim opened his mouth to answer him, and found that he couldn’t.

The strange and evil magic didn’t like that. Whatever Tim wanted to say, if there was anything to say, it caught in his throat and made him gag. It choked him. He was well acquainted with the feeling, but it sent him into a panic anyway. His breath started shuddering and heaving, his vision swimming, and he kept on answering his mouth to answer because you have to answer but he couldn’t, he just couldn’t, he didn’t know how -

“Forget it! Forget it, Tim, don’t worry about it! Tim, what’s your favorite color? Tim, your favorite color! Answer me!”

“Grey!” Tim cried out. “Grey, it’s grey!”

He didn’t so much stand up from his chair as fall out of it. He didn’t so much let himself sit on the ground as found himself incapable of moving. He just breathed, waiting and waiting to spit up dirt and grime and rocks, but nothing happened. It was just a panic attack, because his hell was within him, and there was no escape.

No escape. There was no escape. Not from what he’d done in his past, not from how badly he’d hurt Melanie and Sasha, not from how he would inevitably hurt them in the future.

You had to cut out the evil things in this world. One bad apple spoils the bunch. When criminals are left to run wild, they corrupt and destroy society. Evil had to be eliminated. Evil people shouldn’t exist.

Evil people shouldn’t exist. It wasn’t a new thought for him. Neither was the thought after that. It was a thought he’d had for a very long time - before he even met Melanie, before he even admitted it.

“Tim, are you alright? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

After a few heart-wrenching seconds, Tim found himself calming down enough to answer. “You meant to. You just didn’t want to. I made you do this.” One bad apple spoils the bunch. “Is - is that enough? I can answer more -”

“No, that’s enough,” Jon said quickly. “It’s - it’s not my place to pass judgement on you, Tim. And your, uh, disturbed thinking. Melanie - anyway, we’ll work on it.” He smiled weakly, placatingly. “I’ve been there. The others helped. If it wasn’t for them, I’d be - I don’t know where I’d be, but I’d be a lot worse off. We can help you too. If you let us. I know it’s scary, but it’s worth it. I promise.”

“Right,” Tim said. “Can I go now?”

When he left Jon’s office, everybody was at their desks. He knew what the guilty expressions when they all pretended they hadn’t been eavesdropping, but they weren’t wearing them now. Maybe everybody had grown up a bit recently.

Tim slunk into the library, and for good measure locked it behind him. He pulled out a thick stack of books, a teetering pile of Statements. He needed to research. There was a decision he had to make, and he needed as much proof as possible and a well-laid plan. It wasn’t quite a hunt, but it was close. It wasn’t quite the apocalypse, but it was his own.

But, of course, it was a lie. Tim had made his decision a few minutes ago. He had made it a long time ago. He kept making it, every time. Everything else was just justification.

It wouldn’t fix anything - but it’d make him feel better.

#my writing #the magnus archives #tma #tma fanfic #hunt!tim #timothy stoker #melanie king #sasha james #jonathan sims #martin blackwood #this one's a roughie try not to read it if you're in a bad place right now #danny stoker #also keep in mind that tim absolutely one of the most unreliable narrators ive ever written if not the most #it was incredibly fun #anyway enjoy

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twh-news · 3 years

Text

[Article contains spoilers to 'Loki' S01E05]

Crunch time

After the relatively seismic events of episode four, this week’s episode was always going to have its work cut out. And with just the finale to go, it’s fair to say we’re not much nearer to finding out the truth about the TVA than we were.

Of course, we now know it’s not just the Loki variants that end up in the Void, but all pruned people and material from reset timelines. If that is the case, given the sheer vastness of what that would entail, I do wonder how all those Lokis, Mobius and Sylvie managed to find each other so easily. But let’s not split hairs.

We know Mobius is still around, though didn’t have a lot to do. Here’s hoping he gets his jetski trip next week after a revealing face off with Ravonna Renslayer back at the TVA.

I feel like the dialogue between Loki and Sylvie wasn’t as effective as when they were talking on the train in episode three. It didn’t drive the plot forward, and they only clumsily addressed the fact that falling in love is classed as a nexus event. And, Loki, if you have the ability to conjure a blanket for the shivering person sitting next to you, that you happen to love, don’t wait to be asked. What do they teach you in Asgardian finishing school?

Withnail & Lok-i (hat tip to MrSpigget for that one)

Richard E Grant was a joy as Classic Loki, teaching Tom Hiddleston a thing or two about hamming it up. “Sounds terrifying,” he snapped, hilariously, when Loki asked if anyone had met a female variant. I enjoyed the recollection of how he escaped Thanos, while hissing “You bastard” was pure Withnail.

Crucially, his character offers further proof to Loki that he can change, and stay that way. Lokis don’t always have to resort to cheating, murdering and “the game within the game”. “We’re broken. Every version of us. Forever,” he said, escaping the lair, before going on to show, with his dying actions, that that is not the case. How beautiful that he conjured a full-sized Asgard for his final stand.

The end of time

What next for the TVA? As the episode began, we saw the aftermath of Sylvie’s actions, turning the organisation upside down (as emphasised by the rotating camera work). But who or what is now in charge since the Time Keepers’ demise? It no long matters those puppets aren’t functioning if a higher power is actually pulling the strings, but how long can Renslayer keep that a secret?

The judge did do a good job of convincing Sylvie – and me, to be honest – that she was going to help her visit the void, but even if she is not to be trusted, I still believe she has no idea what’s going on and who her paymasters might be. Whether she leans in to villainy or sees the light is still to be seen, but I wouldn’t bet on her turning her back on the TVA, whatever it might be.

Further minutes

There were many, many Easter eggs here. We had Mjolnir buried in the ground above the Lokis’ bunker. We saw a rusting version of Thanos’s helicopter, first seen in #39 of the 1979 comic Spidey Super Stories and, best of all, Throg, a frog version of Thor, captured in a jar. Was there also a pair of downed Chitauri Leviathans on the ground when Loki and the gang assembled on the hill before facing Alioth? Did you see anything else?

The episode’s title, Journey Into Mystery, was a nod to the comic book series of the same name in which Thor and later Loki made their debut in 1962.

The sword Kid Loki gave Loki before the battle was a callback to his analogy on the train about “love being a dagger”.

I was pleased to see Hunter B-15 still with us, trapped in a glittery cell at the TVA. It can’t be long until she is freed, and wielding that pruning stick in the name of justice.

The battleship that appeared and fired on Alioth was, I think, based on the numbering on its side, the USS Eldridge, the vessel at the centre of the Philadelphia Experiment.

One I missed from last week – Cailey Fleming, the actor who played Sylvie as an eight-year-old on Asgard also played Rey as an infant in The Force Awakens and The Rise of Skywalker.

You may also recognise Kid Loki actor Jack Veal from playing Little James in Channel 4’s The End of the F***ing World.

Why was President Loki played by Tom Hiddleston when almost all of the other variants are played by someone else? Keep your eyes peeled in the MCU for a familiar looking Loki missing a hand. It reminded me of Thor, in Loki’s illusion, having his right hand cut off in Thor: The Dark World.

#loki #loki series #recap #richard e grant #tom hiddleston #loki spoilers #loki series spoilers #spoilers #the guardian

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extremelyblackandwhite · 4 years

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the unseen one - 28

Pairing: Hades!Bucky Barnes x Reader

Warnings: death

A/N: we’re close to the end and i’m getting really emotional over this ending soon 😭 also did i write this watching the death scene in west side story? yes i did so i was sobbing through this.

Next Chapter

To say that Bucky had been ignoring her was the understatement of the century.

With the excuse that she probably needed some fresh air rather than being in the meadows, Bucky had sent her a week ago to be at the Elysium with Hecate and the other maidens. Despite all her protesting and fighting against the idea of being in the Elysium, Buck had gotten the upper hand and without any argument on his part or even a single word, left her at the care of Hecate, who was probably acting just as weird as him. Before he left he had promised to visit but those visits were as short as seconds where it looked like he’d check on her, kiss her forehead and then leave again. He said that it would be better for her to be an environment similar to that where she used to live but in all honesty, she was certain the pollution in Brooklyn was worse than the meadows.

She spent her days questioning Hecate and the maidens as to why Bucky was suddenly busier than Santa on Christmas Eve but they would just say it was all on her head. It wasn’t. Even back when she was in Brooklyn, he’d come to visit more often. It also did not help that everyone in the Elysium treated her like she was made out of glass, not allowing her to do any work and basically leaving her sat on one of the stone benches with a book until night time where she would sleep in Hecate’s quarters. Psyche and Ariadne would come to visit regularly with stories of their husbands and other tales with the rest of the greek pantheon.

Those visits had quickly became the only thing Y/N held onto and the only way she could get news from Bucky. She would constantly nag both mortal turned goddesses about him, wondering if he had finally grown tired of her but they would reassure her he was just busy. Somehow, everyone seemed to know more than her, almost as if they had locked her into a glass bubble.

Today was like any other day, she was walking down the gardens, one of the books she had been lent in hand, trying to free her mind from the countless thoughts telling her Bucky was tired of her, he didn’t want to deal with her anymore, when she felt it again. The dizziness, the light headiness hitting her like a freight train. The book slide off her hands as she allowed her legs to hit the stone of one of the several marbled benches all over the Elysium’s gardens, sitting down to steady herself. She felt weak, cold again.

- Y/N? - a few maidens noticed this change in posture, rushing to her side to check on her as if she were an injured person. Her hands were laying on her lap as Hecate checked the motion, taking her hands in hers and immediately sensing the coldness of them.

- Notify the king. - she heard her tell one of her maidens but the words looked further away, detached even. - Y/N? Can you hear me?

- Yeah. - she managed to take herself off that plane of thinking. - I’m alright, just dizziness.

Hecate nodded, allowing Y/N to be alone for a while. She knew better not to try and force care onto her, specially because Y/N had become specially good at running and hiding. Hiding was what she felt right now, so, as per usual, she took shelter into the dying Grooves that seemed to now be flourishing with various amounts of white roses. She sat against the bark of one of the dying trees, trying to fight the tears threatening to come out of her eyes. She knew nothing, Bucky barely visited and she felt like the more time she felt in the Elysium the more miserable she felt. She missed him, missed seeing his messy hair or how he would bit onto his pens whenever he was looking at paperwork.

- My lady? - she was too busy in her own miserable thought pattern she didn’t notice the presence of someone else in the Grooves. She cleaned the corners of her eyes with the fabric of her dress, turning to see the same lady from the golden threads. - I knew it was you.

- I’m sorry, I just ... I just really need to by myself right now. - workers of the Elysium tended to have curiosity about the mortal, something Y/N didn’t really mind but right now she wanted to understand.

- Something seems to be on your mind, milady. Might I guess it must have something to do with the God of the Underworld? - she took a seat by her side, basket in hand. - Overthinking minds don’t look at thing clearly.

- I guess you’re right. - she chuckled.

- Here. - she took a pomegranate from her basket, handing it to Y/N who suspiciously took it. How funny, this small fruit had started it all. - Mortals tend to look at it and interpret it in various wrong ways. I’ve never seen a single mortal or deity who ever understood what the pomegranate really means.

- What would that be?

- Love. The type of love that makes you go against the forces of nature, crazy, unthinking love. After all, the god of the Underworld fed it to his bride when the danger of losing her came about and she ate it willingly.

- Some mortals think she was forced into eating it.

- A goddess can’t be forced into the Underworld, my lady.

Meanwhile, Bucky had been mid meeting with Zeus when one of the handmaidens came rushing into the room like a maniac. His heart stopped as he saw her standing there, mind running wild as to why she would be here, to if Y/N was still alright, still alive. However, the news she carried didn’t ease out the heart clench. She was dying a little every single day and James was watching powerless. The past week had been filled with a platoon of meetings along with various gods to determine the cause as to why she was losing her life source. It came to no surprise that a mortal in the Underworld is unnatural and the way the forces of nature have to deal with that is to regain balance by turning a mortal into the state at which they belong into the Underworld.

The problem that stood once more was the same problem, taking her away from a contract she had unwillingly signed by eating the fruit of the dead. Most gods did not want the contract broken however James knew exactly who was easy to break down and that was Zeus. Zeus, god of the Gods, he could go against laws of the Underworld if he wanted and right now despite all attempts, he still refused to return Y/N to the mortal realm.

In a twisted manner, he seemed to enjoy watch the god of the Underworld walk around miserable knowing someone was dying and he couldn’t do anything. Knowing the all powerful who could order the death of whomever he pleased couldn’t control the fate of the one he cared for. At least the one who still remembered him but after she passed, it wouldn’t be long til that too disappeared.

James had even threatened ordering the death of whatever demigods related to Zeus still roamed the Earth, but he only laughed at those empty threats. What would that help in his case? It wouldn’t. He was powerless in this situation and Zeus was relishing on it.

- I wonder if she’ll make it to the Elysium. - Zeus thought out loud, making James’ blood boil. - You should’ve expected this. Besides, mortals die everyday, you’ve seen your fair share of relatives dying. She’s just one more.

- If I marry your daughter, will you break her contract to the Underworld?

James didn’t want to be married to Aphrodite. Being married to Aphrodite meant Zeus would forever have control over him, over the Underworld and he would just be someone else’s puppet again. But yet again, he had been HYDRA’s puppet for decades and if being a puppet to Zeus for centuries to come meant Y/N would be safely back into her life, free to do what she wanted, then he would do it.

Zeus face twisted into that of someone who had won the lottery, imagining the countless opportunities. Not only would it put the control of the Underworld onto his only and direct bloodline, it would rather amuse his daughter which was no small feat.

- I’ll make sure your daughter becomes Queen of the Underworld as long as Y/N is returned to her home, unharmed. - he sat down in his chair, looking at a petal from the sunflower she had given fall into the soil of the pot. - She returns home today.

- I can ensure she returns safely to the mortal real but I won’t supply her with any protection once she’s there.

- She gets there safely and I follow the end of my deal. - he extended his hand up to him, looking at the sunflower.

Y/N had put the pomegranate in the pocket of her gown, returning to walk around the Elysium like a lost soul with a book in hand. She had probably read the same book several times in the space of a day, but she didn’t feel like bothering James asking for another book. She was a burden as she was. She closed the book, holding against her chest and huffing, getting ready to return to the rest of the maidens once she saw Bucky’s figure at the distance.

A smile stretched itself on her lips as she grabbed the fabric of the gown and used whatever was left of her strength to run over to him. Her feet paddled onto the grass as she finally reached him, wrapping her arms around him in what James thought was the loveliest, warmest hug he’d ever felt. She kissed his chest, holding his head as she stared onto his blue eyes.

- You’re late. - she teased, caressing his jaw with her ring finger.

- You can go home, lovely. - he smiled, kissing the crown of her head. - You can finally return home.

- What do you mean home? I’m home, I’m with you. - she wrapped her fingers around his.

- No, sunflower. You get to go home to Brooklyn.

- Buck, is that why you’ve been so distant lately? - he leaned his face against her touch, wondering how long it would be before he could do that again. Before he could feel her warmest touch.

- I’ll explain later, sunflower. Zeus is waiting for you and he’s not very found of waiting.

She followed him out of the Elysium, turning back to see what had been her normality for the past month and then back to him. She didn’t really know what to expect once she reached Brooklyn again, she didn’t know how she would act with Anne or if she even had a job back at the nursery. She didn’t know. Did returning to the home which she was once homesick for meant not seeing Bucky again?

Her mind was running wild with possibilities. She should be happy, she should be happy to return to her normality, she wasn’t a goddess, she didn’t belong here, she belonged up above with her people, with her daily runs and her jokes with co-workers. However, she wasn’t happy, she was worried, worried about Bucky, worried about herself.

Maybe, had she had the time to discuss it out she could’ve cleared up her doubts but it seemed like in a flash Bucky has handing her off to Zeus, kissing her and telling her it would be okay. It wouldn’t be okay, he didn’t look okay and she didn’t feel okay. She didn’t understand why she had even been thrown in the Elysium for a week, she knew nothing.

- I got to give you to you, Y/N. - Zeus took her off her own thoughts. - If I had known that all it took to get my way was for you to almost die, I would’ve made sure it happened sooner.

- Almost die? - she scrunched her face, stopping on her path which made the god of gods stop too. - What do you mean almost die? And what do you mean by getting your way?

- Why do you think you’re feeling so weak, lately? Mortals don’t belong in the Underworld unless they’re dead and you can only fight the forces of nature for so long until they win. - it hit her like a freight train and she didn’t know if too feel mad or upset with James for hiding it. It finally made sense, the Elysium, the constant sick like treatment she got from people who originally despised her and James’ willingness to let her go so soon. - Besides, he made me an offer I just couldn’t refuse.

- What offer?

- Let’s say, the Underworld will be under my control as it should’ve always been. You can turn a mortal into a god but unless they’re controlled, they’ll never do their job correctly.

Y/N took a step back, the room seemed to start spinning. Under control. Under control. The once controlled Winter Soldier pictures came back to her mind, how he had told her about how the only good thing about being a god was being able to do whatever he pleased, not being controlled. Now here he was back again, under someone’s thumb and it was her fault. At those thoughts, much to Zeus’ confusion, she took another step back. Her eyes lingered over the pomegranate laying still on the pocket of her gown and then back to Zeus.

- Can I ... can I go back? I forgot something.

- I’m sure he’ll probably get someone to bring it up to you. I don’t have all time.

- I’ll be back in no time, I promise. - she swore and he sighed, pointing his arm out back to the meadows and once again she was holding onto her dress, rushing down to the meadows. She could feel her heart beat faster and her legs begging her to give up, head pounding like a drum. The once path that seemed so short was now very long but still all she could think about was running, running back into his home which she eventually did.

The sound of her crashing through his door had alarmed James whose eyes widened at seeing her standing there, breathless against the door. She gripped onto the door, eyes gazing with James as she felt her body give up of her. Feeling she was about to faint, Bucky rushed over to her, holding her against his torso not sure if he was mad she had ran back or worried that he desperately needed to bring her back to her path.

- Y/N, you need to come back alright. - he pushed the hair away from her face but she only gave him a soft smile raising half a pomegranate with whatever was left of her strength.

- I’m afraid I spoiled your plans. - the fruit rolled away. James world collapsed as he thought about ways to get Zeus to break the contract again. Gods, he would beg on his knees for it. - You’ve died before right?

- Stop talking about that. We nee ...

- Does it hurt? - she interrupted him, clutching onto his torso. Her breathe got unruly and the once easy act of breathing became the hardest thing she ever could do. Noticing the will in her eyes, the decision she had taken, he soften his approach.

- No, sunflower. It’s like falling asleep.

- Falling asleep sounds nice. - she caressed his face, that familiar feeling of going into a deep slumber reaching fast. - I love you, Bucky.

- I love you too, sunflower.

She was wrapped into that tempting slumber that had been pulling at her, the last thing heard being James telling her to awake up but there was nothing left now. Just darkness.

Darkness and silence.

tag list: @philogrobizedvee @keithseabrook27 @inlovewith319 @nwbstan @romanoffs-heart

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might-be-a-zygon · 3 years

Note

Ohhhh Thasmin and "are you kidding me?! you're not 'fine'!" OR River/13 and "i can't believe i almost lost you

This one got away from me a little, I’ll admit. It’s pretty angsty and features a lot of (canon) character death, so fair warning on that one.

I’ll add an AO3 link in the reblogs!

---

The Ghosts That Broke My Heart

Sleep had always been a funny thing for the Doctor. She certainly needed a lot less of it than her human friends, but it had always been a reliable break from whatever life chose to throw at her that week. She had dreams, like everyone did, but there was one thing which the Doctor didn’t really do.

She didn’t have nightmares.

Really, what would she have them about? The Doctor faced the creatures of nightmares every day. To some species, the Doctor was a creature of nightmares.

Still, after what had happened on Gallifrey? She’d found the creatures that could jolt her awake screaming.

Ghosts.

Whatever she’d done to overload the matrix had broken centuries of carefully constructed barriers, holding back the people she’d lost, and now her mind saw fit to make her relive each dark moment whenever she let her guard down to try and sleep.

It had started out right away- that first night in the Jadoon prison she’d laid down on the slab that passed for a bed, and closed her eyes to sleep.

“What does that mean?”

Jenny was practically bouncing on the balls of her feet, all wide-eyes and excited smiles. The Doctor could recognise a lot of her own nervous energy in the young woman- ready to go off and explore the brave new world that awaited them. She also saw the gunman poised to take all that away in a moment.

It was like she was watching through thick glass. Poised on the sidelines, watching her past selves getting it all wrong over and over, but helpless to interfere. She slammed her palm against it, sending a too-real shooting pain through her arm, but making no audible sound.

“It means a new world.”

Sandshoes was grinning now, more genuine hope than she could ever really remember feeling shining in those eyes. He’d burned in the end- she remembered that much. He’d been angry. Vengeful.

The Timelord Victorious.

How different might things have been if he’d just turned around? The Doctor tried to speak, to shout for him to get her out of the way. Her voice didn’t make a sound.

She watched the happiness melt from Jenny’s face, even as Sandshoes maintained his stupid, complacent grin. The Doctor was pounding on the glass now, silently screaming that it wasn’t worth it, but of course she couldn’t change it. Jenny shoved Sandshoes out of the way, the bullet striking her square in the chest. Martha- brilliant Martha who she’d never once deserved- she knew right away there was no chance. She watched her past-self hold their dying daughter, and tell her of a future she’d never see, already knowing she was beyond saving. Lies had always fallen too easily from her tongue.

“You’re gonna be amazing, you hear me, Jenny?”

Had she even heard?

That first night, when she woke with a whine, curled up into a tight ball on her uncomfortable prison bed, the Doctor had attributed it to stress. She’d jumped haphazardly from Byron, to the cybermen, to Gallifrey, to prison with no time to clear her head. The Master always did funny things to her mind, anyway, it was normal there’d be some aftereffects.

Her hand ached from where she’d been slamming it into the ‘bed’.

She tried to shake the traitorous vision of Jenny- bright, young Jenny with so much potential sacrificing herself for the father she hardly knew. The father who would go on to do so much damage.

Against her better judgement, she’d turned over, and tried to get to sleep again. It was the last time she made that mistake.

The first thing the Doctor heard this time, was screaming.

She was on a ship, which certainly wasn’t her TARDIS. It took her a minute to recognise the place- but, maybe that made the whole thing even worse. Somebody was screaming for her help, and she couldn’t even remember who it was.

She stood there, behind whatever barrier her mind had constructed to stop her interfering, and watched the doddering old fool she’d been back then just stand there while a good woman was in trouble just feet away. She could have reopened the airlock doors- she’d known how- but she’d been so desperate to look for a way around it, that she’d left Katarina there screaming.

“Change course.” The Doctor in front of her finally ordered. “Take him back to Kembel. Take him back to Kembel! Let the Daleks deal with him.”

In that moment the Doctor looked into her own eyes and saw a spark of that ruthless fire which would one day burn galaxies. It was that same fire that made her risk tearing time apart for Clara Oswald- the fire that burned too brightly. If she was feeling generous, she might have called it admirable, that she was willing to fight so unbelievably hard for the people she loved.

Right now, she called it selfishness.

Steven stepped towards the old Doctor, his anger doing a poor job at masking his fear. “Yes, and us!”

“Don't worry, dear boy, We'll find a way out.” The Doctor cringed at her first face (or, the first face she remembered), while standing in her glass prison. Her methods of comfort hadn’t come on any in three thousand years. She was still a liar.

Both of the men who’d been with her bck then had been afraid. Bret had even tried arguing with her, but the Doctor had never been an easy person to argue with.

“I can't sacrifice everything for the sake of that one girl.” He argued, still at the controls. Luckily, she was spared the embarrassment of having to watch her former self argue by Steven stepping in.

“Listen! Without us you wouldn't have got off Kembel at all, and nothing would be worth bothering about!”

“All right, so we all go back together. But without me, I doubt that you would have got this far either.” Bret had given in quickly enough, and all the while the Doctor just stood and watched, and listened to Katarina’s frightened screaming in the airlock.

She watched as Katarina broke free and hit the release for the airlock. She watched as both her and Kirksen were sucked out into space. She watched, and knew that that girl- that girl who was so brave in the face of so much danger- had sacrificed herself so the three of them could get away.

Her hearts ached, as she thought of a dozen ways she could have saved her, if she’d tried harder.

“She wanted to save our lives and perhaps the lives of all the other beings of the Solar System.” The old Doctor in front of her began to make his silly speech, and the Doctor turned away, revolted at her own self-importance. “I hope she's found her Perfection. Oh, how I shall always remember her as one of the Daughters of the Gods. Yes, as one of the Daughters of the Gods.”

Rule one.

She hadn’t thought about Katarina in centuries. That poor, brave woman, who had made the ultimate sacrifice to keep them all alive, and the Doctor hadn’t even bothered to remember her.

The Doctor had awoken, still curled up on that cold stone slab, unable to shake the revulsion at her own actions. Was she still like that man? So pompous as to think that every being in the universe made their decisions based around her.

She hadn’t tried to sleep again, after that, shifting to lay on her back, staring at the celling, and trying to shake what somewhere, deep down, she knew.

There were very, very good reasons, she was in prison.

At first, it was always death. Faces she’d remembered, and ones she’d long since forgotten, all meeting their end because the Doctor had failed to save them.

“It snapped my neck, Sir. It wasn’t as painless as I expected, but it was pretty quick, so that was something.”

Angel Bob.

The Doctor had forgotten all about Angel Bob. He was young, and clever, and he was so scared, and she had just walked away and forgotten all about him, as though he’d never even existed.

She could see the look on the faces of the others- the muted horror on River’s, and the more pronounced look of it on her mother’s, as well as the well-managed grief of the soldiers who’d fought with him. They were all ghosts, now. Amy, River, the soldiers. All blown away like smoke on the wind.

“If you’re dead how can I be talking to you?” She tried not to think about the genuine interest her former self’s voice held in that moment- a man had just died, and Bowtie was curious about the mechanics.

“You’re not talking to me, Sir. The angel has no voice. It stripped my cerebral cortex from my body and reanimated a version of my consciousness to communicate with you. Sorry about the confusion.”

She tried her absolute best not to think too hard about how conscious the original Bob was at that moment. Had he known what had happened to him? Had he felt the angels turn him into their puppet?

She watched as Bowtie told them all to run- to run into the maze of weeping angels with no plan, and to just trust him, and she watched as he stopped behind to defend himself.

“Yes, I called you an idiot, and I’m sorry-“ He didn’t sound sorry at all, but the Doctor in her glass cage watching it play out certainly was, “But I couldn’t have saved your men.”

“I know that, Sir. And when you’ve flown off in your little blue box, I’ll explain that to their families.”

She watched, sick to her stomach, as Bowtie smirked.

“I’ll have to tell his mother.”

Seeing Rose, even after all this time, was still painful. This was only the second day they’d met, back before they’d travelled together. Before she’d managed to soften the war ravaged Doctor standing in front of her now.

The Ears had been one of her shortest lived, and angriest faces, and the ways he’d treated people were downright cruel at times. She saw the questioning look he gave Rose, clueless in the face of Mickey’s apparent demise, and why she’d be at all upset.

Why Rose hadn’t walked away then and there would forever be a mystery to the Doctor. She’d never once deserved that kind of love.

“Mickey” I’ll have to tell his mother he’s dead, and you just went and forgot him, again! You were right, you are alien.”

Alien didn’t have to mean cruel, though. So why did callousness seem to come so easily to her? Maybe it was just the sheer amount of death she’d witnessed, but it still hurt to see. She had to keep reminding herself that this death, at least, hadn’t been real- that Mickey was alive and living on earth, raising a son with his dad’s eyes and his mum’s brains who’d have the whole world talking in a few years.

At least it was a good reminder of why she was staying away from August Smith.

“Look, if I did forget some kid called Mickey-“

“Yeah, he’s not a kid-“

The Ears cut Rose off before she could keep speaking, but the Doctor watching from the side-lines found herself nodding in agreement. Rose was right. Of course Rose was right.

“It’s because I’m busy trying to save the life of every stupid ape blundering about on top of this planet! Alright?”

“Alright!”

“Yes, it is!” Ears sounded insufferably smug.

The Doctor shook her head in disgust, glancing at Rose and quietly muttering, “Why did you ever put up with me?”

“Look out!”

It was another voice she hadn’t heard in a long time, and one she’d frankly been dreading hearing. If Nyssa was here she had a good idea of what she was about to see. She saw the cybermen coming up behind her back, while her fifth-self fumbled with the controls. It was as good as useless.

A cyberman lumbered up behind her, and her past-self ignored it completely, leaving Nyssa to have to shoot it down with a discarded cyberweapon. She was once again saved by a more competent friend, and her own hypocrisy when it came to guns.

She wasn’t sure she’d ever even thanked Nyssa for saving her life.

“I must save Adric!”

Stuck in the corner, exhausted and emotionally drained, the Doctor was just glad that, while she was having to watch another of her failures, this version of herself was at the very least trying.

“Look!”

“Adric.”

The screen came to life, and the Doctor tried to shut her eyes so she wouldn’t have to watch, but of course it didn’t work- in her dreams she wouldn’t be allowed to block out the parts she didn’t want to see. The only consolation was that she wouldn’t have to look him in the eyes.

She’d always been cowardly like that.

She watched as the ship began to come apart- watched as Tegan and Nyssa held each other, and Celery just stood there gawping like a fish who couldn’t believe his own incompetence.

She still remembered that feeling- like someone had clawed the hearts out of her chest and shown them to her. Back then, it’d been such a long time since she’d really lost someone that she wasn’t used to the pain of it anymore.

When had she become careless enough that death just bounced off of her?

It only took ten days of reliving her worst moments before the Doctor had begun actively fighting sleep. Prison, at least, was a safe enough place to do it. She’d pace her cell at night to keep herself from drifting off- reciting books she knew by heart, or just talking to herself to keep her eyes from closing for too long. During the day, she’d do the same- chatting to the other prisoners, pacing, never letting herself remain still for fear of finally giving into the exhaustion which seemed to have seeped into her bones.

Of course, even a Time Lord (if she could even call herself one anymore), couldn’t stay awake forever. After weeks of forcing her eyes to stay open, she’d eventually collapse, usually when she was in her cell, if she was lucky, and she’d endure another walkthrough her past- too exhausted to even wake up- before being woken by the prison systems to begin all over again.

After a while she’d slip into waking dreams, too exhausted to even think straight. She’d sit in her cell, nutrient block in hand, while her sleep deprived mind played out snippets of her life, a few seconds at a time, while she fought to wake up enough to dismiss the visions.

At first, when she next saw herself- sitting on a bench, eating chips, she thought maybe this was just her mind crying out for some real food. It was easy to forget the specifics of what had been discussed all those years before, after twenty years sitting in a cell.

“She scares me.” Came Bill’s voice from next to the older-Doctor, quiet in its honesty. Admitting you were scared was something so few people ever did- least of all when they were around the Doctor, and being brave was so important, but Bill had never been afraid to admit it to her. She’d been strong like that. “Like. She really scares me.”

As much as she still, after all this time, wanted the Master to be everything she knew he could be, it was hard to deny how right Bill had been to be afraid. After all- it was the Master who’d handed her over to the cybermen, in the end, just not the version she’d feared.

“Okay. Just, promise me one thing, yeah? Just promise you won’t get me killed.”

“I can’t promise you that!” Eyebrows had laughed at her, as though her concerns were something flippant. As though her fear was something worth laughing at. He’d been right, in the end, he hadn’t been able to keep Bill alive, but it was horrible looking back at it now.

The Doctor had managed to shock herself back into reality, but she hadn’t been able to shake the self-contempt that settled in her hearts.

Most of the time, those waking nightmares came while she was stuck sitting around, waiting for the time to come that she’d be allowed out into her tiny cube of the exercise yard, just for something to break up the routine of sitting alone, and thinking about death.

“I keep remembering all the people I’ve killed. Every day I think of more. Being bad- Being bad drowned that out. I didn’t know I even knew their names. You didn’t tell me about this bit.”

“I’m sorry, but this is good.”

“Okay.”

The Doctor watched herself hold her self-ascribed goodness over her oldest friend, and couldn’t help but wonder if this wasn’t what had driven the Master to the depths of madness he’d displayed on Gallifrey. She might have lorded it as a good thing back then, but she was quickly learning the types of things that isolation, imprisonment, and guilt could do to the mind. If she got out of prison with her sanity, she’d count it a blessing.

She’d dreamt about Missy a lot, after a while. The longer she stayed locked up, the more her guild-addled mind saw fit to remind her of her stint as jailor.

On those nights she was too exhausted to keep her eyes open, the Doctor saw herself through the glass again. It was her twelfth face- well, the twelfth she remembered- the one with the angry eyebrows and the trusting nature. She saw Missy standing there, looking more dishevelled than she had before the vault, standing so close to the forcefield that it was rippling. She looked strangely earnest despite the pantomime of madness she put o- as though she was proud of herself for actually helping.

She watched as Eyebrows shoved Bill back away from Missy, not seeming to care much about how what had just transpired had clearly affected her. She’d never been good enough for Bill- the kind, inquisitive girl who’d gone out of her way to buy the Doctor Christmas presents and who’d called her grandad, and who she’d promised she wouldn’t get killed. Bill who had been so strong, who had fought off the monks and the cybermen by sheer force of will. Bill who’d deserved so much more than what the Doctor had given to her.

She watched Eyebrows walk up to that rippling forcefield, and look his oldest friend in the eyes like she was still the monster she pretended to be.

“Even if that was the truth the fact that you’re suggesting it shows that there’s been no change. No hope. No point.”

Eyebrows sounded angry, and the Doctor winced slightly at that. How was the Master ever supposed to change with the Doctor constantly telling her that her progress meant nothing? Was that why she’d given up in the end? It had to be easier to go back to what you’d known before rather than being constantly strung along and put down by someone who had promised to help you become better.

Missy’s face contorted for a moment. The Doctor left her here for months, all alone in this dusty room with almost nothing, and then he’d turned up just to talk to her like this? Her Twelfth face was one of the few she’d always thought of as good- or, if not good, at least kind. Sandshoes had been angry from the war and from everything he’d lost, but Eyebrows had tried so hard to be kind. Was this really what her version of kind did to people?

After her own stint in prison, leaving Missy trapped like this for so long was beginning to seem more and more cruel. She’d wanted to help people, she really had, but it wasn’t as though her friend had come to her and asked. She’d saved her, and then abused that power, keeping her prisoner for decades to try and make her into something she’d never tried to be. It was hard, knowing what had later become of the Master, not to wonder what all that time in the vault had done to their already fragile mental state. How much had she contributed to his snapping and destroying their home?

Looking at it like that how was the Doctor any better than the Jadoon? And how was Missy running off with the Master much different from her running with Jac They’d both been escaping jailors who kept them confined alone for long enough to drive them half-mad.

“We don’t sacrifice people.” The scene playing out in front of her was hardly easy, but the Doctor laughed anyway, because the irony of that wasn’t lost on her. She’d let so many people die for her as Rainbows that Eyebrows’ words felt hollow. “It’s wrong because it’s easy.”

“Back in the day I’d burn an entire city to the ground just to see the pretty shapes the smoke made. I’m sorry your plus one doesn’t get a happy ending, but like it or not I just saved this world because I want to change.”

There was a forced lightness to Missy’s voice, almost undetectable unless you really knew her well- and the Doctor knew her better than anybody. It’d been a cry for help, of sorts- she’d wanted her friend back, and Eyebrows had ignored her. She’d saved the world- the Doctor would have likely spent months searching for infected water supplies and food chains following up his own stupid theories, and Missy had told him the answer freely, and without reward. She’d saved the world and he’d told her there was no hope for her- no wonder she’d run.

“Your version of good is not absolute.” She continued, her fingers pushing slightly against the forcefield now. The Doctor watched it ripple from behind he own glass patrician, and she knew the look in Missy’s eyes far too well. If that forcefield had been replaced with glowing blue bars it could have been her in her own cell. At least during her imprisonment she hadn’t had to live with the knowledge that her oldest friend was her jailor. “It’s vain, arrogant, and sentimental.”

Vain, arrogant and sentimental.

She always had said the Master knew her soul a little too well.

Once the spectre of death faded, somewhat, it was her own shortcomings her subconscious decided to force onto her. Those moments when she’d forced others into complying with what she’d wanted- as though that was always her decision to make.

She was the Doctor, after all. Who would ever dare to question her whims as anything less than genius?

“You know you can fix that chameleon circuit if you just tried hot-wiring the fragment links and superseding the binary binary binary binary binary binary binary binary binary binary binary binary binary-“

Not this. Not Donna. How was this fair? At least with Jenny she hadn’t seen the gunman. She could see it in her past-self’s face that he knew this was killing her, and he was just standing there like an idiot, watching it happen. He could have stepped in sooner.

“I’m fine.” Donna was showing off that big grin, back to talking a mile-a-minute. The Doctor had always wondered if on some level she knew what this would do. She had all of that knowledge inside her head, it must have been somewhere in her all along that she’d become an impossible thing.

She didn’t pound on the glass or scream this time, watching her own past unfold with her hand pressed up against it. She mouthed I’m sorry, but no sound came out.

“I bet he’s great, Charlie Chaplin. Shall we do that? Shall we go see Charlie Chaplin? Shall we? Charlie Chaplin. Charlie Chester. Charlie Brown- no he’s fiction-“ She watched as Donna pranced around, playing with the console and the phone. This wasn’t quite Donna- not really. This Donna was far too Doctor- maybe that was why she found it so unsettling, seeing her charming, funny, irreverent friend talking like someone she hated.

“Friction, fiction, fixing, mixing, Rickston, Brixton-“ Donna cut off with a gasp, and the Doctor wanted to slap Sandshoes for leaving her in this state. She had to be scared, and he wasn’t even bothering to explain it to her. Of course, with that much of the Doctor’s mind burning through her own, Donna had probably understood it all already, but there was still something to be said for compassion in a situation as horrific as this one.

“I was gonna be with you forever.” The sadness in Donna’s eyes spoke volumes. She’d trusted the Doctor so much, had so much planned for them, and it was all the Doctor’s fault.

If her hearts hadn’t already shattered they did now. Nobody ever stayed with her forever- not really. Even if she wanted them to, she’d always destroy them before they got a chance.

She was on the floor, kneeling on the dirty floor of a TARDIS she’d long since tried to forget. When had that happened?

“I know.”

She screwed her eyes shut, grateful that this time, at least, she managed to block out the visuals- maybe because this time, the sound of Donna begging for something the Doctor was too selfish to give her was enough. She wouldn’t watch Sandshoes lie to her like that- like he’d lied to Jenny, and to Bob, and to Steven. Pretty words to ease the pain she was about to put her through.

“I can’t go back. Doctor. Please. Please don’t make me go back.”

Listening to her beg wasn’t any easier than watching it. Or living it- especially now she knew just how painful it was to have your memories taken from you. Gallifrey may have erased her path, but she’d run roughshod over her friend’s mind just as carelessly.

“Donna Noble. I am so sorry. But we had the best of times.” Was that supposed to make either of them feel better? She’d been so self-righteous back then. The Doctor opened her eyes again, and regretted it almost immediately, curling in on herself behind her little partition. “Goodbye.”

“No. No! No please! No. No! No!”

Staying awake proved easier once she’d left prison.

During her incarceration, it had only been the thought of getting home to her fam which had really kept her going, so having Yaz back at her side was a real boost to her mood, which kept those waking nightmares at bay.

The running helped too- adrenaline in her system keeping the more dangerous effects of her sleep-deprivation at bay. Still, it didn’t mean that nights didn’t come where she came down from that high of finally being able to help again, and her tiredness came crashing down on her like a crushing weight.

This time, it came after a particularly harsh day.

She was getting sloppy in her exhausted state, and that sloppiness had put Yaz in far greater danger than she’d ever wanted to risk again. She’d told herself, that after the cybermen, and the daleks, she’d be more careful, but then all of a sudden there they were, stuck in a trap she should have been able to spot, if she was thinking clearly.

They’d been held hostage for longer than she was willing to admit- some scrapper who was very keen on getting hold of the TARDIS- not that he really knew what it was or what significance it held. No, for this man the greatest ship in the universe was worth some spare parts, and whatever the scrap value of its base components was.

They’d gotten out, in the end, but it wasn’t as though she could even take credit for that- it was quick thinking on Yaz’s part which had distracted their attacker for long enough for them to get to the TARDIS. As impressive as it was, it was still terrifying to see Yaz be so like her in the way she acted. The last person who’d wanted to be the Doctor had gotten killed trying to do so.

She’d hardly said a word once they returned to the ship, trying her best to ignore the furtive looks of concern she kept getting. She slipped off to the library alone when Yaz went to make a cup of tea, getting there on her fourth attempt (since the TARDIS seemed insistent on placing her room behind every door she opened), and counting on the near-infinite nature of the TARDIS rooms to hide her for a while. She needed a little space while she cleared her head and tried to get rid of some of the overwhelming guilt that was eating her up inside.

She could have gotten Yaz killed today with her carelessness. If Yaz wasn’t as good as she was, she would have gotten them both killed.

No matter what horrors from her past her brain decided to drudge up, a world without Yaz was still a terrifying thought.

“I’m not asking you for a promise. I’m giving you an order.”

She really didn’t want to see this.

The Doctor had not gotten her memories back just so she could watch Clara Oswald face the raven all over again. Even in prison her mind hadn’t been cruel enough to remind her of that particular death. She remembered the others- Oswin, and the governess she’d met in London, and a hundred other Clara’s who’d died to save her- but this one had never come up.

Evidently, her subconscious thought she needed a reminder of what happened when she took her eyes off things for a moment too long.

“You will not insult my memory. There will be no revenge. I will die, and no one else here, or anywhere, will suffer.”

Well there was a promise the Doctor hadn’t managed to keep. She’d tried to tear time itself apart to save Clara, and worst of all, she’d never even known if it succeeded. Testimony didn’t remember whether Clara had lived or died- it’d been taken the moment before the raven hit- before the Doctor had tried to pull her from her timeline. She had no memory of anything that’d happened with Clara after this, and while she knew they’d been together on Gallifrey, she didn’t know how permanent that salvation might be, or what about it had taken her memories to begin with.

“What about me?” Eyebrows asked, and the Doctor who was watching him managed a harsh, bitter laugh. Clara was dying, and as usual her former self was there to be selfish and make her comfort him.

“If there was something I could do about that I would. I guess we’ll both just need to be brave.”

“Clara-“ He was trying to argue again, but all at once she was pulling him into a hug, and looking at the desperation of it from the outside, the Doctor just knew that Clara was trying to pull some comfort from it too, since Eyebrows hadn’t been offering her any.

She’d been human, and she’d been dying, and she’d been scared, but she’d forced herself to be brave so her friend didn’t have to be.

Looking back on it, Clara had always been so much stronger than the Doctor had ever been.

“Don’t run.” It had to be the first time she’d ever said that to one of her friends in a bad spot. “Stay with me.” Eyebrows was practically begging her now. Worse than that, the Doctor knew that if she had to go back and do it again, she wouldn’t be any stronger.

“Nah.” She could see how heard Clara was working to keep her tone casual, not wanting to hurt the Doctor any more than this whole thing already would. It was heart breaking, really, knowing that even in her final moments she’d had to suppress her own feelings to try and save her pain. “You stay here. In the end everybody does this alone.”

She shouldn’t have had to do it alone.

“Clara-“ Eyebrows tried again, and if the Doctor wasn’t stuck in her self-imposed cell, she might have hit him. This was his last chance- why couldn’t he say something to her? Why couldn’t he make sure that she died knowing how deeply she was loved.

“This is as brave as I know how to be. I know it’s gonna hurt you but- please. Be a little proud of me?”

There was a hopeful note to Clara’s tone despite everything, and in the end that was what really broke the Doctor. Her hand was pressed against the glass, desperate to say something, but unable to- the sands of time separated them more surely than the glass ever could.

“Always.” She promised, because if Eyebrows wouldn’t say it, then this new Doctor would. “I’m always gonna be proud of you.”

Clara turned away from her, and walked towards her grave.

“No no no no…”

The Doctor’s eyes blinked open, giving her a hazy view of the warm purple walls of the TARDIS library. She was curled up in one of the armchairs near the fire, her eyes still heavy with sleep. How long had it been since she’d last slept? Weeks, at least. Maybe months. And since she’d last slept properly? Well that had been decades.

Her hands ached from where she’d been clutching onto the arms of the chair.

Her eyes were already falling closed again, too exhausted to even force herself to stay awake.

“If you die here it’ll mean I never even met you.”

She’d never really appreciated how true that statement was. Without the Doctor blundering through her mother’s life, River Song would never have existed. Melody Williams (would she even have been called Melody, with the paradox of her name?) would have grown up safe and happy, the human daughter of the journalist and the nurse. She’d have had a normal life. She’d have been raised by loving parents, and have had a happy childhood, and maybe even brothers and sisters- maybe she’d have still written books, or taught archelogy, and had a much happier marriage than theirs had been.

Melody Pond would have been so much better off if she had never met the Doctor.

“Time can be rewritten.” For once, she seemed to be in agreement with Sandshoes. He was selfish, but at least he’d have been doing her a favour.

“Not those times. Not one line. Don't you dare. It's okay. It's okay. It's not over for you. You'll see me again. You've got all of that to come. You and me, time and space. You watch us run.”

Live great lives. That’s what she’d told her fam. If anyone had lived up to that, and lived a great life despite the Doctor’s meddling, it had been River Song. They’d had some amazing times, saved so many people, so many planets. There were stars out there still burning because River Song had been there to save them.

If the Doctor had found a better way around getting the people out of there, there might have been so many more.

The computer counting down the seconds left of her life in the background wasn’t helping the way that the Doctor’s hearts were pounding. She was crying, now- she wasn’t sure when that had begun.

From her cell, she watched Sandshoes babble on about his guilt- his suspicions, being expertly put down by River. She was so used to shutting him up when he was talking about things he didn’t know anything about- she could really use that, right now.

She should have saved her.

“Hush now. Spoilers…”

River smiled, and the Doctor lunged at the glass in front of her, shouting words that even she could barely comprehend. She was still clawing desperately at the glass when the room flashed bright white.

The Time Lord didn’t even fully wake that time, despite having thrown herself onto the floor at some point during her anguish. She was barely drawn out of her nightmares for a moment, a noise that sounded awfully like a whimper escaping her. Her eyes were shut too-tightly, and she had her arms wrapped tightly around herself, fingernails digging into her arms as though that would protect her from the horrors of her own mind.

“Who decides they’re so unimportant? You?”

The Doctor knew where she was this time without even looking up. Somehow, this scared her even more. She wasn’t watching a loved one die, she was watching her own stupid power-play blow up in her face. This hadn’t been a mercy mission, it’d been her trying to prove to the whole Universe that the Doctor had power over all.

“For a long time now I thought I was just a survivor, but I’m not. I’m the winner- that’s who I am. The Time Lord victorious.”

“And there’s no one to stop you?”

“No.”

“This is wrong, Doctor. I don’t care who you are. The Time Lord victorious is wrong.”

Captain Adelaide. She’d been so brilliant- she’d understood more about this than her idiot younger self ever could. The Doctor just about managed to give her a smile from behind her glass wall before she resumed staring at Sandshoes in disgust.

“That’s for me to decide. Now, you better get home.”

It was chilling. Watching her old face shift so quickly. Darkness turned cocky in an instant as he pointed his sonic at the door. Unlike with the other dreams, The Doctor wasn’t shouting. She didn’t try to say a word, just watched on with self-loathing and dread weighing down her hearts. A silent spectator of her darkest moment since the Time War.

Sandshoes smirked at that brave, doomed woman, challenging her to argue her fate further. He’d set himself up as a self-styled God. “Oh it’s all locked up- you’ve been away. Still, that’s easy.”

“Is there nothing you can’t do?”

“Not anymore.”

She watched as the great Time Lord Victorious turned his back on Adelaide. She watched as the captain drew her gun. She braced herself for that flash of blue light and the thud of a body hitting the floor.

“Don’t do it, Adelaide.” She was talking to nobody, but she still couldn’t help herself trying to butt in- trying to fix the damage she hadn’t noticed until it was too late. “You don’t have to do this. You don’t-“

“Doctor?”

A hand on her shoulder drew her out of there before she had to watch that, jolting her awake. She came to, immediately caught off guard by the shadow of someone standing over her, and the scent of a familiar perfume hitting her. It took her a moment or so to place it, but when she did her hearts picked up a little. Yaz. Brilliant, wonderful, human Yaz who��d probably just heard her rambling all sorts of scary nonsense in her sleep.

“Doctor are you alright?”

The Doctor swallowed a little too hard and sat up quickly enough to make her head spin, forcing a familiar, false grin to spread across her face. Her body was aching from sleeping on the wooden floor, and she was pretty sure she was going to be bruised from where she’d fallen off the chair.

“Yaz! Yasmin Khan- Sorry, must have nodded off-“ Her voice sounded a little false even to her own ears, and she did her best to pass it off with a yawn.

“Sorry, just, you were talkin’ in your sleep an’ I thought-“ Yaz looked a little sheepish about waking her, and her eyes were full of concern.

“Oh, yeah. Sorry- Time Lord. Vivid dreams- I was…” She forced another yawn, trying to give herself time to think of a lie. “Did I ever tell you about the time I met a real life siren on a pirate ship? That was a good one, that. Dream about that one a lot. M’fine, though. Really.”

Yaz shot her a look that showed she didn’t believe the Doctor for a moment. There was a beats pause, before she exploded

“Are you kiddin’ me?! You’re not ‘fine’!” She drew air quotes around that last word, straightening up, to stand over the Doctor, showing she was serious.

“I’m-“

“I swear if you say ‘fine’ I’m gonna-”

The Doctor shut her mouth before Yaz could finish the threat.

There was a tense moment, almost like a standoff between the two of them, before Yasmin’s hard eyes softened, and she bent down to help the Doctor to her feet.

“I’m worried about y’.”

Suppressing her initial urge to insist that she was fine, the Doctor bit her lip.

“You shouldn’t be.” She eventually managed.

“When was the last time ‘y slept?” Yaz asked.

“About a minute ago.” The Doctor tried to make a joke. Yaz laughed weakly.

“Before that.” She clarified, glancing at the floor where she’d found the doctor collapsed.

“…I don’t remember.” The Doctor admitted.

Yaz sucked in a surprised breath through clenched teeth.

“Doctor-“

“I’m not human. I don’t need as much sleep as you lot.”

Raising an eyebrow, Yaz gave her another of those easy, disbelieving looks. “And that’s why I found you passed out on the floor cryin’?”

The Doctor blinked, bringing her hand up to her face. Sure enough, she’d been crying- she hadn’t even realised. Waking up with tears in her eyes was just normal by now.

“What’s so bad that it’s keepin’ you up?” Yaz leant forwards, taking one of the Doctor’s hands in both of her own. “Please don’t lie to me.”

There was an earnestness in her eyes that reminded the Doctor of all the people she’d loved most. Rose, Amy, River, Clara. Even Koschei. She’d always liked the people who could be honest with her the best- she needed honest people to stop her tearing herself apart and taking everyone else with her.

“I’ve lost a lot of people, Yaz.” She said, resigned note in her voice. “You saw Gallifrey. My home world is gone, my wife is gone, my children are gone, my granddaughter is gone. I’ve lost most of my friends, and- since Gallifrey, I can’t block them out anymore. I see them die every night.”

All at once, Yaz leaned forwards, just like Clara had in her dream, wrapping her arms tightly around the Doctor, holding her grounded to the spot. Even that brief contact allowed some of the tension in the Doctor’s body to loosen, her shoulder’s slumping as she leant into the contact.

“’m sorry.”

“So am I.”

Yaz pulled herself back from the hug, keeping her hands firmly on the Doctor’s arms, so she could ground her while looking her in the eyes.

“Have you got a bedroom on board?” She asked.

“Somewhere. How come?”

Yaz smiled, “Because you’ve gotta sleep sometime, and I think it’s probably comfier than the floor.” She let one of her hands fall, the other moving up to brush the hair out of the Doctor’s eyes. “Come on.”

She caught Yaz’s wrist in her hand, suddenly looking nervous. She was really worried where her subconscious would go from what had to be one of the worst things she’d ever done. “I don’t wanna. Not yet.”

“Y’ need to.” Yaz insisted, still trying her best to smile. The Doctor recognised that look from how often she herself wore it- that false-cheer that just barely covered the worry. “I promise I’ll sit with y’ the whole time- I can wake you up if you start makin’ noise.”

The Doctor thought about that for a minute. It’d certainly been easier to deal with the dream about Adelaide since she’d been pulled out of it before she actually had to hear the shot go off. If Yaz could pull her out of the bad moments before she had to see anything too bad- Maybe it would let the Doctor get a bit of sleep. It wasn’t the most elegant solution, and it didn’t seem as though it would last too long, but- it was an infinitely better one than her current plan of depriving herself of sleep until she could hardly stand.

“You really wouldn’t mind?” She eventually asked, her fingers still resting around Yaz’s wrist, though she wasn’t trying to use them to push her away any more.

“I love you. Let me take care of you, for once.”

There was another slight pause, before the Doctor let go of her hand, nodding. “Okay.”

Yaz let out a relieved breath. “Thank you.”

“For what?” The Doctor turned to her, genuine confusion etched across her features.

Yaz took another step closer, cupping the Doctor’s face in one hand, and giving her the most genuine smile either of them had shared since they’d reunited. “For letting me in.”

#thirteenth doctor #doctor who #thasmin #yasmin khan #yaz khan #madeathing

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serpentinerose · 3 years

Text

I’ve now published 300k words in the 2Ha Ao3 tag! Thanks to my friend on twt for this prompt to push me over the 300k threshold.

Prompt: Mo Ran and Xue Meng bonding in the 5 years Chu Wanning was in seclusion.

No spoilers beyond the current tl. Rated G. You can check out the rest of my fics on Ao3 @ serpentinerose.

Xue Meng thought he could spend the rest of his life without ever hearing the name “Butterfly Town” ever again.

It was almost funny, Mo Ran would say, that this insignificant town a mere half day away from the foot of Sisheng Peak would ever become something of significance to them. A town known for nothing but the captivating fragrance that snaked between the broken slats on windows forever shuttered, for the reddish earth that never produced anything of substance, soaked through with far too much blood for a town of that size. A town of ghosts and promises buried in coffins that shook under the weight of their own grief. Xue Meng would have never stepped foot there a second time, were it not for the fact that Butterfly Town refused to lift its shadowy wings from the course of his life.

Mo Ran would have said all that, Xue Meng thought, but not Mo-zongshi.

Not this tall, broad man in white who stood before him today.

They scrubbed the blood out from under their fingernails, washed the gore from their swords in the stream, and stared into water so deep that neither of them could see what had sunken into that great river. Butterfly Town laid quiet behind them; the disciples of Sisheng Peak had busied themselves with the task of carrying away the wounded and burying the dead. The mangled pieces of demon flesh littering the expanse of the earth behind them were quickly spirited away, sent into flames so high that those red tongues dared to reach toward the sky with its own stripes of red, dispersed among the clouds.

Xue Meng’s fire core had made quick work of that mess. The resultant acrid smoke irritated his nose; he sniffed, stomach clenching at the nauseating smell of roasted meat, sweet and succulent and altogether wrong.

“Hungry already?” His cousin’s voice held little trace of its former ever-present mocking tone, but there was a little humor in it all the same. Mo Ran’s white robes were splattered around the hem with various shades of brown, and Xue Meng wrinkled his nose, wiping away the mess that the yao corpses had made on the shining metal of his armor.

“Your defense needs work.”

“Your attack needs more work,” Mo Ran shot back, but there was no heat in it. “Anyway, what does it matter? You were supposed to be guarding my back.”

“I was guarding your back,” Xue Meng argued. “It’s not my fault you couldn’t manage to keep in formation. Did anyone ask you to jump ahead? Did you want to show off to the pretty ghost lady?”

Mo Ran barked out a laugh. “I’m surprised you could tell it was a ghost lady at all.”

“It wore a bracelet.” Xue Meng scrubbed his hands together under the water. Red swirls spread on the surface; the dying sun, too, cast its own redness over the glittering water, swallowing away the evidence of their work. “Anyway, it’s too late to head back to Sisheng Peak tonight. We’ll make camp here. The inn seems to be in good shape. They might still have some food and wine to offer us.”

“So you are hungry,” Mo Ran pointed out. “Fine, Young Master. Let’s go get something in that stomach of yours.”

The inn was spared, but barely just. The entire second floor was uninhabitable, but the eatery still held its scattering of mismatched, coarsely carved tables and chairs. It would have to be rebuilt, Xue Meng thought. But not by them.

They had already done enough for this town.

Whatever had remained of the food supply had disappeared far too quickly into their cavernous stomachs. Some of the other disciples had decided to wash off the filth of the day more fully in that dark river, and some had even found the ingenuity to catch a great bounty of silvery fish along the way. It turned out that three arrows and a cloak strung together with spiritual energy were quite enough to form a kind of net. The smell of roasted fish finally cleared that stench of yao corpses from the air. They had eaten quietly, and then, one by one, the disciples trickled out to the tents they had put up along the main street of town, now cleared of all debris.

Butterfly Town had never looked cleaner, Xue Meng thought.

It was just him and Mo Ran left in the inn. The innkeeper had generously offered them a bundle of blanket and a corner of the main eatery hall. Under normal circumstances, Xue Meng would have turned up his nose at the meager accommodation, but not tonight.

After all, Xue Meng doubted if they would get any rest at all this night.

Their dusty table was littered with the clumsy wooden pieces of what would somehow become a Holy Night Guardian. Xue Meng never had any affinity with the process of creation; the constant rumor mills of Sisheng Peak, powered by both its disciples and Elders alike, liked to insist that upon Xue Meng’s first meeting with his shizun at the age of five, he had destroyed an entire room’s worth of inventions with only a file in his hands.

Chu Wanning had looked inordinately pleased, as much as that was possible for his shizun. Or so Xue Meng was told.

Mo Ran’s skills also lay elsewhere, but there was no other choice. Their shizun still remained in seclusion at the Red Lotus Pavilion, shuttered behind barriers too advanced for either of them to broach, and the contingent of Sisheng Peak disciples who had survived this last battle had never trained under the Yuheng Elder.

It was up to them now. Carrying on their shizun’s legacy until he returned.

Sometimes, Xue Meng wondered whether Mo Ran’s shoulders broadened under that strain merely by adaptation.

They worked in silence; the candlelight flickered between them, casting large shadows that loomed over them, although the shadows seemed more contemplative and watchful rather than ominous even as this broken down inn bowed under the storm swirling overhead. The water dripped at regular intervals from the misshapen slats, scorched in some places and warped in others, and Xue Meng cast a clumsy barrier over their table. Mo Ran’s eyes flickered strangely as that shining blue sphere descended around them.

“What?” Xue Meng demanded.

A ghostly smile curved playfully at Mo Ran’s lips. “Shizun would have scolded you for this barrier.”

“You think you can do better?”

“Yeah, probably,” Mo Ran snorted. “But I’m not going to show off. This is passable enough, I guess, if you were a novice under Elder Xuanji.”

Xue Meng threw a wooden stick at Mo Ran’s head, who ducked it all too nimbly. The relief that flooded him at that moment was unreasonable. Xue Meng kicked himself, but his mouth quirked upward all the same. “Oh, fuck off.”

Mo Ran laughed once, and the shadows seemed to have shifted. The candlelight grew just a touch brighter. Xue Meng fixed his eyes on the notches he had made on that stick of wood; Longcheng was a proud, fearsome sword, more suited to the destruction on the battlefield than the delicate work of carving eyes and a nose into this wooden frame. It was a little ridiculous, Xue Meng thought, that wood could walk and move and protect. A mere instrument in their hands, imbued with their spiritual power, compelled to perform duties it had never asked for, and yet could never refuse.

He wondered if wood could feel. If wood understood what pain was when it was struck. The steel of sword and the steel of lightning. If, when the wood splintered under forces greater than it could withstand, it would also feel the cut deep within whatever sliver of soul had managed to form within its rings.

All wood had once been trees. Living things.

But that was impossible, Xue Meng scolded himself. Strange musings brought on by this strange town.

After all, wood was just wood.

“I’m leaving tomorrow,” Mo Ran said. Xue Meng swallowed the lump in his throat that had formed without his knowing. The distance between them, a mere table apart, had seemed as insurmountable as that between Sisheng Peak and wherever it was that Mo Ran found fit to stay for longer than a fortnight or two.

The twisted pieces of wood, discarded from the remnants of their failed Holy Night Guardian, lay on the table between them, next to a jar of wine that the innkeeper managed to scrounge up from the kitchen. They eventually did succeed in making a passable rendition of their shizun’s invention, and that wooden puppet had started its first patrol of the outer perimeter of the village.

It had a crooked little face with a crooked little nose, with arms slightly uneven and a body halfway between ugly and pathetic. Mo Ran had shrugged helplessly when Xue Meng pointed at the way the little wooden puppet stood tilted to the side. Nonetheless, it worked.

It walked.

It would fight, given time and opportunity.

“Oh.”

“There’s much to do in the world still.” It was as if Mo Ran wanted to argue the point for himself. He twisted the empty porcelain cup in his fingers, stroking at the hairline fracture that had formed on the surface of that fine bone after too many years of use, no matter how careful the washing had been.

It was simply the way of the world, Xue Meng knew. And in this lower cultivation world, the reality of their lives was filled with far more decay and broken things than what lay just beyond the border into the upper cultivation realm.

“Where are you going?” Xue Meng only said. The wine had not yet gone to his head, although he knew it would, eventually. “Where haven’t you gone yet?’

“Jianghu is vast,” Mo Ran replied smilingly. Xue Meng truly looked at his cousin this time; Mo Ran had changed in recent years, not the least in the expanding span of his shoulders or the widening of his back. Or the ridiculous lengthening of his legs. It wasn’t the simple outfits of white that marked Mo-zongshi out in a crowd, and neither was it that gentle smile that Xue Meng never remembered from his rash cousin’s younger years.

Whatever it was that had changed, Xue Meng could not put it into words. But he could feel it in the way Mo Ran looked at him, the drag of time that had etched itself in that faraway gaze, as if Mo Ran had lived at least two lifetimes and carried the weight of them on those shoulders.

“Shizun would return soon,” Xue Meng noted, taking a sip of his wine. By etiquette, he should have turned away, hid his face behind his sleeve, but there had never been any ceremony between the two of them.

Their backs pressed against one another, dampened with blood and sweats. Their faces splattered with the gore of their targets’ guts, the stench of fresh blood clinging onto their skin for days, for weeks.

If shizun could have seen them then...

Mo Ran’s dark gaze shuttered, and for a quick moment, Xue Meng could swear that those eyes flashed a deep purple color. His cousin’s lips pressed into a thin line so uncharacteristic on that face; and yet, so many things that Xue Meng had never associated with his cousin had begun to be inextricable from that figure.

Mo-zongshi, Xue Meng had heard. Sometimes, when he looked at his cousin’s figure from far away, those white robes picking up the slight breeze of late summer, Xue Meng could almost swear that it was their shizun’s image on that dusty road.

It was only the smile on Mo-zongshi’s face that had distinguished them.

Mo Ran was not smiling now. “I’ll come back before he awakens.”

“How can you know for sure?” Xue Meng demanded. “Have you been counting the days?”

With a jolt, Xue Meng realized that he had not. Four years ago, Xue Meng would have sworn up and down that his life would halt until shizun returned to them.

Each day that passed without his shizun’s commanding presence would have been too unbearable.

And yet, he bore them all. Days turned into weeks turned into months, and soon enough, four years had already passed. Life seemed to move on even when he least wanted it to, and Xue Meng thought he could reach out for the stream of time, wade his fingers through the soft water, and come up with the grains of sand that he had been searching for, undisturbed beneath that torrent. It was only time itself that had revealed to him exactly how foolish he was being.

The sand stayed. The water didn’t, and Xue Meng was carried along with the current.

Mo Ran said nothing, but there was a strange, enigmatic smile on his face. “I’ll be back in time, don’t you worry. You think I’ll let you take all the credit with shizun without me there?”

Xue Meng punched his cousin’s shoulder, thankful that they had taken their armor off for the night. Clad only in their inner sleeping robes, Xue Meng could almost believe they were back in that inn of long ago, refreshed from the hotspring, with shizun just a step behind them as they bickered their way back to their upstairs rooms.

It had been a long time since that inn.

“You know there’s a place for you at Sisheng Peak,” Xue Meng found himself saying without knowing why. The lump in his throat had grown in size; he downed the rest of the wine and filled their cups to the brim again. This time, his words came out slurred. “It’s still your home.”

Mo Ran’s face stiffened, and there was a shadow in that gaze that seemed to hint at things only spoken aloud between the last breath of the night and the first blush of dawn, shrouded in the mist that seemed to descend upon the earth for that particular instant before the sunlight cleared it all away. Xue Meng would have asked his stupid cousin what it was he still thought could be hidden between them, but Mo Ran already shook his head and smiled. “I know. It is my home. It’s simply not time yet.”

“You’re just hiding,” Xue Meng accused. He wanted to say more. Horrifyingly, there was a tight pressure building up just behind his nose, spilling forth as warm wetness that slid down his face and stained the cracks between the dirty wooden table. “You…”

He wanted to say more, but the words would not come out between the sobs that shook his entire body.

Shizun was already gone, Xue Meng wanted to say. And you would rob me of yet another.

How selfish of you.

How very like you.

Even the words spoken in anger, at their very worst, when the vitriol was too much to bear, still bore some remnant of truth.

Slowly, cautiously, Mo Ran reached out a hand for his shoulder. “There, there.”

“S-stupid Mo Weiyu,” Xue Meng managed, swallowing air between the syllables. “You are so stupid.”

“Yeah,” Mo Ran sighed, shifting closer. The hand on his shoulder seemed to emanate warmth far beyond that of an ordinary person; through that thin layer of fabric, Xue Meng felt a rush of something almost like spiritual energy from his cousin’s fingers, knowing that it was all too absurd to feel such a sensation when no such transfer took place. Mo Ran seemed to have that effect on people, much to Xue Meng’s chagrin. “I’m stupid. Xue Meng, come here.”

“No,” Xue Meng hiccupped, hugging the wine gourd to his chest.

“I’m coming over then,” Mo Ran warned. “Don’t hit me.”

“I’m not.” A pause. A sob. “Not promising anything.”

Mo Ran’s shoulder was solid, broader than his own. Xue Meng buried his face into it, letting his tears stain the white of Mo Ran’s robes. His cousin sighed, patted his back awkwardly, and must have looked upward at the ceiling. The slight jostle to his frame suggested as such. “I know you miss him.”

“Who doesn’t miss him?” Xue Meng snarled, but the heat was gone. The words were curtained in tears, shrouded in grief, and every syllable struggled against the jerks of his throat. “You stupid dog.”

“You haven’t called me that in a long time,” Mo Ran commented.

“I haven’t seen you in a l-long time,” Xue Meng stubbornly replied. Mo Ran fingers pried away the wine cup from his hand, set it down on the table, and resumed that stuttered task of patting his back. “Stop touching me.”

“Are you going to stop crying?”

“I’m not crying.”

Mo Ran pushed him away. “You’re not a child anymore, Mengmeng. Don’t lie like that anymore.”

Xue Meng’s lips trembled; he willed them to stop, but his body had never liked to listen to his mind too much. “I…”

��It’s okay,” Mo Ran said. His eyes stretched into long, thin lines, softened by an emotion that Xue Meng could not identify. The corners of Mo Ran’s mouth turned upward even as his brows were weighed down by something heavier than grief. “I miss him too.”

It was the first time he had ever heard his cousin admit that.

Throughout all this time. Throughout all the times they had fallen asleep curled up in a dirty tent in a battlefield, washing up in whatever water they could find, scrubbing the blood from underneath their nails, Xue Meng had never once heard Mo Ran mentioned shizun.

Until now.

“Ge,” Xue Meng tried. “When will he be back?”

“Three hundred and ninety one days,” Mo Ran murmured.

That choking sound came from him. Xue Meng realized belatedly that it had started out as mocking laughter, turned too quickly into something unnameable. It was something he had realized for a long time, Xue Meng thought, the way words sometimes would not suffice, and yet there was nothing to do but cling clumsily to whatever sentiment could be expressed through that inadequacy.

I miss him, Xue Meng wanted to say. You miss him, too.

The words had been spoken, and yet, they might as well have been weightless for how little they truly meant. Platitude. Useless sentiment that talked of everything and conveyed nothing.

Sometimes, the words that mattered the most were the ones least expected.

Three hundred and ninety one days.

“Ge.”

“Go to sleep, Xue Meng,” Mo Ran said. “We still have to teach the village how to use the Holy Night Guardian tomorrow.”

“It’s cold,” Xue Meng whined, and his cousin sighed. The warmth left; Xue Meng shivered relentlessly in his thin robes, and then, from behind, a warm cover had replaced the warmth of Mo Ran’s hand.

His cousin had taken the pile of blanket on the floor and wrapped it around him. “Don’t be a brat. You’ve withstood worse.”

But I don’t want to, Xue Meng thought helplessly, peering up under lashes ladened with tears.

Mo Ran regarded him for a moment, sighed, and ruffled his hair. “Go to sleep.”

“Don’t go,” Xue Meng found himself asking. “Ge. Don’t leave.”

A deep sigh. The candlelight was close to extinguished; the wax pooled on that wooden table, the wick almost completely submerged in the melted wax. The shadows on the wall seemed lighter; when there was no light in the world, the shadows, too, melted away.

“I’ll be back,” Mo Ran said, and Xue Meng’s eyes slipped shut.

Mo Ran would be back. Xue Meng knew this to be true. And yet, time ticked away without regard for man’s wishes, and the sand of today will simply remain under that current until one day, a pair of eyes will open in that Red Lotus Pavilion, and this time, the stream would push along whatever rested on that riverbed, sand and silt and stones smoothed by the ever flowing current.

Three hundred and ninety one days.

Xue Meng had been waiting for a long time already.

#2ha #2hanet #2ha fanfic #xue meng #mo ran #my stuff

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