Tumgik
#I know you’re going to burn this city down & i absolve you
celestynne · 4 months
Text
Past Story - Alma (2)
!! Please note that the translations might be inaccurate as i relied on Google Translate and am not fluent in Japanese !!
Tumblr media
A Lingering Stench
Well-Dressed Man : “There’s no point in talking at all! I’m going home!”
Alma : “Hey! Our session is still in progress-”
Alma : “Ah, you’re gone already?”
Chris : “… Are you okay? Alma”
Alma : “What do you mean I’m okay?”
Chris : “Don’t you know about those people? They’re quite powerful aristocrats.”
Chris : “I wonder if it’s okay for me to make you so angry.”
Alma : “I don’t feel attacking the person who committed the crime, if that’s the case, I can’t offer forgiveness.”
.
A nobleman’s father requests for a pardon for his son who committed a violent accident. It seems that he consulted with the officials and secretly come to me to settle his crime, saying he absolutely did not want it to be made public. I guess it’s the nature of the country to seek atonement even if it’s just a formality. I wished to guide his son toward genuine reflection rather than a mere formal confession.
.
Alma : “Well, I wasn’t strong enough either. I wish I could have communicated with him more clearly.”
Chris : “Did Alma’s complex questions and answers troubles the nobleman?”
Alma : “That’s right. I hope he returns when he cools down.”
Alma : “I’m certain he will. If we communicate properly, I believe he’ll repent”
Chris : “I’m a little concerned. Alma believes there are no bad people.”
Chris : “There might be people who can’t change, regardless of persuasion.”
Chris : “I wonder if Alma might get hurt by those people someday.”
Alma : “Wahaha, thank you. But I’ll be fine.”
Alma : “No matter how hard they resist; I’ll keep talking persistently and try to change their minds!”
Alma : “Besides, it’s hard for him to continue living with the burden of guilt. Please help.”
Chris : “…Alma is truly kind. I’m sure you’ll become a exceptional confessor in the future.”
Alma : “Even if you praise me, it won’t change much, wahaha!”
Child 1 : “Let’s go to Alma! I’m hungry!”
Child 2 : “Haven’t you finished your work yet? Alma is on duty today~!!”
Alma : “Hey, it’s over now! Let’s have some stew today!”
Child 1 & 2 : “~!!”
Alma : “Well then, Chris. See you later.”
Chris : “Yeah. Cut the ingredients into small pieces.”
Alma : “Wahaha, I’ll try my best.”
Chris : “…”
Chris : “I hope it’s nothing…”
.
Then, after a while
.
Alma : “Haaa… it’s finally over”
.
The reason for the sigh is a certain rumor that is circulating in Naples’ city center. The baseless claim is that ‘My family of confessors is serving an evil God’. Although i went to the city to clear up the misunderstanding, I faces unfavorable glances everywhere…
.
Alma : (I never expected people to believe this. Everyone is completely convinced.)
Alma : (The influence of powerful noble is amazing…)
.
The source of the rumor is that he had come to confession with the nobleman’s son. He seemed to really despise me for refusing to absolve his crime.
.
Alma : (Even when I go to see him, he just turns me away at the door… I have to talk to him properly)
Alma : (Chris also mentioned he saw something suspicious around the cathedral)
Alma : (I don’t want anything to happen to the children for my mistakes)
.
It’s okay, through conversation, understanding will prevail. As I was walking home, I was determined to clear up the misunderstandings next time…
.
Alma : “…Hmm? What is that light?”
.
When the village came into my sight, I noticed a red light that was extremely bright even though it was night time. The smoke rose and the burning smell carried on the wind. Bad thoughts filled my mind, sending chills down my spine.
.
Alma : “That place is amazing!”
.
Rushing in, the familiar cathedral was engulfed in flames…
4 notes · View notes
luxflora · 3 years
Text
.
0 notes
vidalinav · 3 years
Text
Nessian Week Day 2: Gifts (Part 2)
Summary: Cassian likes Nesta’s night gowns... and buying her things. Swear this is not a sugarbaby AU. It just sounds like it. 
You can thank @arinbelle and @simpingfornestaarcheron for this. They threatened me with knives. 
~
Nesta’s on the armchair when he gives her his gift. She’s already reading a book, and he can tell she’s surprised to see another one resting on his palm. 
“What’s this?” She asks, “It’s not my birthday.” 
Cassian only smirks, looking to wear she traces the cover, and where she traces his hands holding the book as if his skin is more precious than paper. “Does it need to be your birthday for me to give you gifts?” 
Nesta raises a too heavy shoulder for him gifting her a book. But he’s long since heard this argument she gives. He knows her all too well. 
“I haven’t gotten you anything,” she says as if the words might make it take him back. There’s disdain in her voice and Cassian knows it’s for herself. For the lack of love she thinks he’ll find by her actions. 
Cassian thinks no such thing. Nesta loves with her whole heart, so achingly overflowing. She rubs at his wrist without so much as a thought, as if it might soothe some pain in him. But the pain is in her, and so Cassian rushes to absolve her of her misguided guilt. “I don’t give you things, expecting anything in return. I get you thinks because I want to.” 
"But you’ve gotten me so many things lately.” 
Nesta’s right about that. Cassian is endlessly giving her gifts. He can’t stop, it seems. He goes into the city and they pass by a window, and something about that bag reminds him of Nesta. Something about that bike seems like Nesta. Something about that candle smells like Nesta. He passes restaurants and bakeries, and all around he sees food Nesta might try. He goes walks through the city, and he thinks of all the places Nesta would like. 
She never leaves his mind and when he’s spent the day with his friends, meetings turning into dinner, Cassian thinks of Nesta then, too. He stops by the bookstore, because what else screams Nesta Archeron, but a smutty book? He peruses the titles and finds the raunchiest he can find. Cover and all. 
That’s what he gives her to absolve himself of his guilt. For being away for so long, for not asking if she wants to come with, or go somewhere else. That’s what she holds in her lap. Something to ease them both. 
She sets the other book on the side table, and Cassian recognizes the title. One of her favorites she keeps re-reading. Nesta takes the book, flipping to the inside cover. Even the description is tantalizing. Cassian flips to some random page in the store and it has him wanting to read the words to her, or... have her read the words to him. He can only imagine what they can do with all that description. 
“You brought me a romance?” Nesta only looks up at him, blinking those long lashes and furrowing her neat brows. “How did you know which one to choose?” 
She purses her lips and Cassian focuses on the color. A dark shade of pink from where she bites. Nesta always bites them when she reads. A bad habit of hers.
But it’s the color that Cassian holds on to. How nicely it contrasts with her skin, the sweet freckles dotted across her shoulders from when she trains. Her shoulders are bare, except for two tiny straps. Such flimsy things to pull and tug. Still he wants to kiss at them like he does every night. Such an engrained, important routine.  
“You think I don’t know your tastes?” Cassian snorts. “I picked the one with the male that looked most like me. See.” He points to the cover, where there’s indeed a muscled male, with long dark hair. Cassian’s hair is shorter and his ears aren’t pointy and his muscles are much more defined, but it’ll do for Nesta’s fantasies. 
Nesta scrunches her nose and Cassian wants to kiss their too. Everything about her is tooth-rotting sweet. 
“You’re full of yourself,” she says. 
“And you haven’t said thank you,” he taunts. He uses the voice he knows annoys her. Casually chastising. A voice he knows also makes her blush. Maybe that makes her irritated, too, how much he affects her without trying. Cassian uses that tone well, and he uses it often. 
Cassian raises a brow, waiting for her response, but his mate waves a hand, half-dismissive, half-haughty. All manners of insecurity tucked away. This is the Nesta he knows so well. He knows the other parts of her, too. But this is the one he fans the flames to, the one who makes him light up with mischief. “I didn’t ask for the gift.” 
Cassian almost tuts, shaking his head. “But you like it. Page 103 has something in there we should try.” He tucks a stray piece of hair that falls forward, and he makes sure to brush his hands across her neck. “He takes his whole fist and he--” 
“Stop!” Nesta calls. “Fine, I like the gift. Please don’t give me anymore details.” 
Cassian smiles, a wide victorious grin. “And that means?”
Nesta scoffs, “thank you, Cassian.” 
“A please and a thank you, what will the world do?” He kisses her head, suddenly serious. He can smell lavender and peppermint tea and just her scent alone makes him want to hold her close. “You’re welcome, sweetheart. 
Cassian moves to sit on the side of the armchair. His plan is for Nesta to move, to make room for him as she so often does. Another part of their routine. The chair is big enough for them both. Perhaps they can read the book to each other, exchange word for every smoldering word. 
Nesta doesn’t budge from the seat. She begins to read and Cassian coughs, shuffling on the tiny arm space. He nudges against her shoulder, but Nesta simply continues. She doesn’t even smile up at his antics, give him a glare because he irritates her. She reads and she ignores him. 
“You haven’t gotten me anything,” Cassian complains.  
Nesta huffs, “you just said you didn’t give me things to receive anything back.” 
She barely lifts her eyes off the page as she tells him that and something about the way she looks at the book annoys him, has him wanting to reach for it and take it back, throw it out the window if he has to. 
“I can think of more than a few ways to thank me,” he goads. 
Nesta rolls her eyes, “All you think about is sex.” 
Cassian doesn’t disagree. Especially not when she begins biting at her lip as she reads. “Yes, but that’s all you think about, too.” 
He gestures to the book in her lap as proof and Nesta squints at him as if he needs to come up with better evidence.
“No,” she argues, “I’m currently thinking about how long it will take me to read this... I might be up all night.” She flips to another page. “You just got me something new to read and you were just going on about manners, I’d think it rude to not first enjoy my gift.”
“And what of my gift?” He sings.  
Nesta raises a brow, and it’s that expression that has him burning at the seams. Her hair is down and he wants to comb his fingers through it, pull at it, feel how soft it is... and she’s wearing one of those nightgowns again. 
She always wearing one, even if Nesta will hardly keep it on throughout the night. Cassian never knows what to do with his hands while she’s wearing it and he thinks that Nesta must know. She wears it to entice him. To make him want her more like that’s even possible. 
It’s possible, Cassian finds. 
Her nightgown today is the richest green and her skin glows pale in the moonlight. He aches to trace the sweet swell of her breasts with his tongue. They look so inviting in that silk dress of hers and there’s a bow right at the center. His present to unwrap. 
“I’m very satisfied with you being my present.” He says, his voice so low he can hardly recognize himself. With his thumb, he traces the little ribbon. “Look, you even have the bow.” 
Cassian watches as the blush rises at her chest and he wants to kiss there. He aches to do so, but first he moves to tug the ribbon with his teeth. And when Nesta straightens, her book lowering even further, he nips at her nipples that peak through the fabric. Just how she likes. A little bite and a tug, a little pain to entice her. To make her breath catch in her throat. 
He takes his time with them. Nesta’s breasts are gods given. They deserve his attention. Large enough to fit in his palms. 
But Nesta’s impatient as she always is. 
Cassian leans forward, until he’s practically towering over his mate. She’s so small on that couch and she looks lonely there, all tucked in dark blue. The book lays open where the fabric billows between her legs, but Nesta pays no mind. 
“Now will you let me unwrap my gift?” Cassian grasps her neck, and Nesta gasps but he merely rubs his thumb at her pulse. He can hear it hammering away as Nesta blinks, her eyes so wide and her cheeks so pink and he’s just at the edge of her mouth. 
He thinks he’ll kiss her there, but first... 
Cassian snatches the book from her lap. He holds it above his head as she leaps from the chair. Irate and just a tad too slow.
“Hey!” She scowls, “You overgrown bat! You just got me that book and now you’re bending the pages!” 
“It seems you get distracted easily, sweetheart. We should work on that,” He says. 
But Nesta’s been working on many things and so she lunges for him, wrapping her legs around his waist as she reaches for her book. Cassian merely holds it higher. 
“I mean why read smut when you can experience the real thing?” He offers. Nesta reaches even further, pulling at his shoulders. Cassian moves the book to the other hand, just out of her reach. “I’m always willing.” 
“You’re a horrible person and I hate you.” 
Cassian gasps at that, holding his other hand to his chest. 
“I don’t even want your gifts,” she adds, her eyes burning with fury. 
“Now you’re just asking to be spanked,” Cassian says, shaking his head, “Is that what you want, Nes? I think that was on page 50. It’s a shame you never got to it.”
“You just like to hear yourself talk!” But Nesta looks at him as she blushes, and when he smirks, she wacks him in the chest. “Give me back my book!” 
Cassian merely wraps his arms around her, keeping her steady in his arms. The book is tucked behind her back and Nesta twists to no avail. “How about you read it to me?” 
She hits at his chest again and Cassian laughs. “Fine, I can read it to you, but you should know I’m going to make voices for the characters.” 
“I hate you,” she seethes. 
Cassian only smiles and kisses at her nose. “I love you, too, Nes.” 
~
@arinbelle @my-fan-side @sophilightwood @nestaarcher0n @duskandstarlight @soitsgorgeous @swankii-art-teacher @lordof-bloodshed @thewhelk @daisy-in-danger @highqueenevankhell @lovelynesta @sirendeepity @champanheandluxxury @ladynestaarcheron @moodymelanist @teagoddess99 @spoilersteph @angelic-voice-1997 @bo0kmaster69 @drielecarla @generalnesta @cozycomfyliving08
~
Two fics in one day? So unlike me. 
95 notes · View notes
remmushound · 3 years
Text
Curse of the Clans part 56! @scentedcandlecryptid @selfindulgenz
“Get back…” Splinter held his arms out to force his sons to back away as the smell of the predator overwhelmed his senses. The immense form of the yokai was already emerging from the darkest corner of the large space, heavy muscles rippling as he dragged his belly across the floor.
The snake just kept coming, more and more of it uncoiling from the shadows in a seemingly endless chain. Gray scales were flecked with ash marking, more black along the head and down a portion of the neck. There were no arms or legs, but still a suit was draped over the yokai, and on its belt was a holster that carried a very familiarly wrapped bottle releasing a knoxious scent.
“Bishop…” Even in the monstrous form he had taken, Splinter recognized the snake immediately.
“Is it that obvious?” Bishop’s form shuttered as he laughed, pulling himself up to a height that towered greatly over the mutants below, his head brushing against a series of wires near where the chest of the mech suit would be. “You know who I am. Is it too much to guess that you’d know what I am?”
“You’re an uwabami…” Leonardo said slowly.
Bishop seemed genuinely surprised, but then his open mouth curved into a smile. “Correct…”
“How’d you know that, Leo…?” Michelangelo frowned, clinging tightly to his brothers arm as he hid behind Leonardo.
“I’ve been researching all kinds of yokai.” Leonardo said, “Figured it might help on one of our missions; figured right, I guess. The name means Great Serpent, but the only thing great about you is your ego.”
Bishop hissed out an amused laugh. “Funny.”
“What’s funny is the fact that you didn't think to hide that.” Leonardo pointed to the bottle, “Because, well known fact about Uwabami, they make a habit out of drinking sake liquor. I had my suspicions, but Theres one tiny little detail I still can’t quite wrap my head around. Why would a solitary yokai live anywhere near a community, let alone a whole city? It just doesn’t make any damn sense. That’s what was throwing me off.
Bishop laughed. “Well, where there are people, there is food. And here? They practically walk right into your mouth.”
“Of course.” Leonardo nodded; he glanced back at his brothers, smirking as they all got their weapons ready. “And another thing that’s been boggling me. Why bother helping us at all? I’m guessing you’re kinda buddy-buddy with Krang since this is his ship, yet the advice you gave us seemed to be pretty solid. Why send us on that wild goose chase at all instead of just killing us outright?”
Bishop hissed through his teeth and pulled back, starting to coil around himself as Leonardo’s words, piecing together the facts like an intricate puzzle, cut deeper than any knife.
“Unless…” Leonardo mused, tapping his chin. “You were scared we’d find Krang and fix the rift before he could get free. If you’ve heard the stories all about us, you know how lucky we tend to get with ancient evils. You needed an excuse to send us away and buy time for the rift to break, because you knew us curious little creatures wouldn’t be able to resist poking our noses around the new mystic hotspot in Japan. You were scared that we would just happen upon the site, so you felt the need to separate us. Because you know how strong we are as a team, and having other creatures do your dirty work absolved you of any blame. You’re a coward.”
Bishop reared up again, fury flashing like flames dancing in his eyes. “You dare call me a coward?!”
“Yes.” Leonardo answered evenly, “Because that is what you are. Why didn't you kill us as babies?”
Bishop began to circle. “At the time, I didn't know what you were, or what you would become. I had no reason to hunt you, but now I do.”
Leonardo and his brothers kept on a constant swivel to keep their eyes on Bishop at all times.
“Even now, you’re just trying to buy Krang time, aren’t you?” Leonardo dared.
Bishop didn't answer the question with anything but a low growl. “If you are so knowledgeable of my kind, then surely you know of the power I possess?”
“You’re a constrictor. You have no venom, no powers.”
Bishop mused. “Right yet again. I can squeeze the life out of a human in seconds.”
Leonardo’s gaze was steady. “It is a good thing, then, that I am not human.”
Donatello saw a flash. Powerful jaws latching, the screams of his father. Bones crushing, blood pooling at his feet. He blinked and the vision was gone, replaced by the uwabami Bishop’s eyes glancing ever so slightly toward Splinter. He lunged, and in the same instant Donatlelo lunged. The softshell crammed his bo staff into the snake’s open mouth, and when Bishop tried to bring his mouth down to latch upon Splinter’s neck, he was met with the great resistance of the staff and a slash in the roof of his mouth from the blade. He pulled back, roaring as he shook his head violently to dislodge the weapon. When it finally came loose, flying out of his mouth and skidding across the floor, the inside of his mouth was frothing red, and he was even more furious.
“You’ll pay for that!”
***
“CASEY!” Raphael’s eyes followed the girl as she was tossed carelessly through the air, her body gone limp the moment she was struck. She flew over the group too stunned to do anything but watch, and disappeared out of their sights. “NO!”
Draxum grabbed Raphael around his plastron and pulled him to safety just as Krang tried to a massive foot down on him.
“Go!” Draxum snarled, “Find her you fool!”
“But…” It was all Raphael could say; he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. His mind felt as if it had been shut down and the only thought that was still online was screaming at him to go find her.
“I’ll handle this. Go!” Draxum commanded.
And Raphael was running. Draxum didn't watch him leave; he couldn’t look away from Krang, not for a second. This mech was so much like the Council of Heads, so robotic and still, mouth hanging open even as Krang talked through it.
“April.” Draxum said as he fell back to address the girl in green, “I am going to throw you at him.”
“What?” April gawked.
“I am going to throw you into his mouth.” Draxum repeated.
“Uh. No you ain’t.”
“Yes I am.”
Draxum gave her no chance to argue before picking her up and tossing her through the air like a football. April screamed, her feet pedalling on nothing as she tried to make sure she landed upright. It didn't work. She ended up on her side, rolling and slamming hard into something cold and metal. But at least she had made it, right? She was definitely inside the mech, and the thing she saw before her when she was finally able to process the situation was definitely… something.
“Oh?” Krang said almost softly, bringing two tentacles to cross over. “Who are you?”
“I’m a bad bitch, that’s who.”
The words escaped before April could stop them. Her body was sore all over now, stinging and burning and pulsing, but still she brought herself to stand. There wasn’t much inside of the mech suits head, a large operation station in the center holding the giant, blobish menace; wires and pipes worked to support him, digging into the folds of his flesh, and in front of him was a control panel so complex that April didn't bother trying to work out. The rest of the space was empty, and in the back was something that might have resembled a throat, sloping into a dark abyss below. April could hear the echoes of a fight from deep down in the mech suit's belly.
“Well, Bad Bitch, it is time for you to go.”
Krang went to pull a lever, but stopped when there was more screaming. April immediately recognized the voice as Sunita, and not a second too soon. Sunita was flung through the mouth in much a state that April had been, reaching out desperately as Krang moved to dodge her. April reached for her friend but Sunita slipped through her fingers and the young yokai just kept screaming as she plummeted down the throat of the suit until her shouts stopped with a great splat.
“Sunita!” April was still reaching out for her even as she disappeared.
“Oh. How sad.” Krang nodded, “Oh well. Back to business.”
17 notes · View notes
dropssofjupitter · 3 years
Text
Red as the Dawn
Pairing: Dramione
Summary: It has been 3 weeks since Hermione Granger died in a freak accident at Malfoy Manor. Consumed by his own grief, Draco blames himself for his beloved’s death, and gives in to the destruction devouring his mind.
Word Count: 3.7 k
Warnings: Angst, mentions of death, mentions of blood, arson
Masterlist
A/N: This is my entry for the Dramione Death Fest on A03 because I am, first and foremost, an angst writer. This fic has not been beta read. Any mistakes or inconsistencies are my fault and mine alone. - I accidentally deleted this fic when trying to edit it, so this is fun
Tumblr media
Draco was in tatters.
He was erratic; slashing portraits, throwing plates, burning the hedges that bordered the walkway in front of the mansion. The house-elves avoided him, his own mother, for once, didn’t know how to calm him down.
He spent his days wandering through the mansion, destroying whatever the house-elves had fixed the night before. He went from room to room, upending tables, tearing curtains, ripping apart books.
Each day he reigned over his realm of self-destruction, and each day he paused before one door. He would walk up to it, determination draining from him with every step. Some days he would simply stare at it, and then move on, leaving it untouched. But other days he would let his hand rest on the doorknob, his forehead pressing against the cool wood, and let his memories take him away.
“Honestly Draco, I don’t understand why we can’t just put my study with yours. It’d be much simpler.”
“Because, Granger. Your workspace is absolutely filthy, and I don’t want that mess bleeding onto my side.”
Hermione scoffed, indignant. “It is not filthy.”
Draco stared at her, his hand resting on the doorknob to the room that would henceforth be known as Hermione’s study. “Ignorance is not a good look on you Granger,” he stated simply, opening the door and slipping through before Hermione could throw one of the numerous books overflowing in her arms at him.
She shuffled in after him, a retort that was poised and ready on her lips dying as soon as she saw the room. “Merlin’s beard,” she breathed out, turning in a wide circle.
A mahogany desk sat against one of the walls, a large ornate office chair seated behind it. On the desk sat a nameplate, perched towards the edge and accompanied by fabulously extravagant bookends. Parallel to the desk was an entire wall fitted with four wondrously large bookcases, two of which had already been filled with research books, journals, and memoirs that had previously been in the Malfoy library. Illuminating the entire room was a wall filled top to bottom with windows. Enchanted ivy climbed them from the outside, and multiple house plants hung and floated around the windows. Assorted chairs, benches, and even a couch decorated the remainder of the study, all enchanted to immediately conform to the users body.
Draco would never admit it to her, but he had taken weeks out of his schedule to personally design the study. He had haggled with construction workers over the prices of installation, and had even acquired his mothers help in absolving some of the blood curses placed upon the books that now filled the room.
“Do you like it?” he asked cautiously, hands clasped tightly behind his back in order to hide the nervous twisting of his fingers. His eyes bounced between her eyes, to her hands, to the books about to fall from her arms, and then back to the look of awe on her face. He would do anything in his power to make sure that she always looked as wonderfully happy as she did right now.
“Do I like it? Draco, its stunning!” She replied, a soft, incredulous laugh slipping from her lips.
He nodded his head, looking around the room. “It’s alright.”
She looked back at him, a bright smile lighting up her eyes. “Thank you, truly.”
His heart skipped a beat. His hands stopped twisting. A smile snuck its way onto his face despite his better judgement. “You’re welcome.”
“Draco, darling?” Narcissa called, her hand placed delicately on the staircase railing. “Are you alright?”
Draco’s head snapped up, his eyes narrowing and his lips turning into a snarl at the realization that he was interrupted once more. His hand left the door, and he turned sharply on his heel, walking swiftly past his mother in a swirl of black cloaks. “Perfectly adequate,” he replied with a sneer, returning with vigor to his previous path of destruction.
Narcissa sighed, her eyes looking forlornly towards the study. In the background she heard a crash echoing out from the living area. She flinched, hand inches away from the handle, and moved on.
~~~
Draco paced the halls of the manor like a caged animal. He walked, up and down, left and right, until he had patrolled the entirety of the manor over 20 times. Then he moved outside.
His feet slowed, ever so slightly. His breathing evened. And the feeling of an unknown pressure against his chest lifted, just a little. Here, he was free from the endless onslaught of memories. Here, he could relax and relent under the night sky.
His feet led him to the maze that decorated a small portion of the yard, his hands outstretched and brushing against the hedges as he passed them. He inhaled, deep and pure, and let his body carry him to the center of the maze.
There was a small stone bench in the middle, weathered from years of sitting stationary upon the ground. A pond bubbled nearby, magical fish of every variety content to swim in its waters.
Draco sat down on the bench, the tension leaving his body as he tilted his head up to look at the stars that littered the heavens. He closed his eyes, a soft smile perched treacherously on his lips. And then his heart twinged with a memory, and his peace was ruined.
“Draco keep up! You’re going to miss it!” Hermione called out, already yards in front of Draco as she ran frantically through the maze.
“Really Granger, is it that important?” Draco called back, feeling a laugh bubbling to the surface as he watched Hermione get swatted by an overgrown hedge.
“Oh just come on you twat!” She replied, a laugh slipping from her lips as well.
Draco turned the final corner, a goofy grin chiseled onto his face as he took in the scene before him.
Hermione had a muggle telescope set up to the side on the bench, already pointed at the sky and calibrated correctly. Astrology books lay strewn haphazardly around the mini safe haven, and a blanket was laid across the grass no more than a few feet away. She stood behind the telescope, bent at the knees as she peered through it.
She glanced up, her smile returning as she saw Draco. She waved him over to the telescope, excitement seeming to exude from her very being. “Well come on!”
Clasping his hands behind his back, Draco sauntered over, walking as slow as humanly possible.
Hermione, seeing this, waved her arms in exasperation and ran behind him, placing her hands on his back in an attempt to push him forwards. “You absolute prat!”
A deep, low chuckle escaped Malfoy’s mouth as he turned his head to look at her. “Why Granger, whatever do you mean? I’m walking as fast as I can!” He placed one of his hands on his chest and looked at her, appalled. “Are you claiming me to be a dishonest man?” he asked, incredulous.
“Well, I’m certainly not calling you an honest one!” she retorted, still hopelessly attempting to push Draco closer to the telescope.
He laughed again, relenting and continuing willingly towards the contraption. He hummed, contemplating his actions before bending down and peering through the eyeglass. “I don’t see what the excitement is about, honestly. It’s just the sky. We’ve seen it hundreds of times in - oh.” Draco’s thought was cut short as the stars began to rain down, trails of wispy ethereal light painting the inky blackness of the sky in their wonder. He moved away from the telescope, his head instead tilting up to look at the sky without the object’s assistance.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” Hermione breathed out, her eyes trained on the sky as well.
Draco looked over at her, his heart beating erratically against his chest as a soft smile creeped onto his face. He watched as the heavens fell in her eyes, as her beauty built cities in his mind and tore down any deities previously known to man. He watched, helplessly, hopelessly, as he fell for her. Mind, body, and soul. “Yeah,” he breathed out, hands itching to intertwine themselves with hers as he watched her face light up. “It is.”
Draco opened his eyes, once again staring up at the stars that littered the heavens. He felt a now familiar ache return to his chest as tears began to blur his vision.
“You always were able to see the beauty in everything,” he whispered to himself, eyes wandering down to the corner of the stone bench. His hands ghosted over the initials carved there only weeks before. H.G. Hermione Granger. “Even in a monster.”
He felt a stray tear begin to slide down his cheek, and he quickly wiped it away, standing abruptly and walking towards the exit of the maze. Before he left, however, he turned. Gazing upon the place that had been so painful for him to exist in. Without a second thought, he lifted his wand, eyes staring at the cursed stone bench as he set the haven on fire.
He saw his mother run out of the mansion moments later, collapsing to her knees as she saw the destruction that her son had wrought, saw his true nature. He walked past her, pausing just behind her, and turned his head. She looked back at him, tears in her eyes along with an emotion that caused Draco to grit his teeth in anger. Pity.
He didn’t want, nor did he need his mother’s pity. He turned sharply, walking back into the darkened mansion and slamming the door behind him. Let her watch the wretched garden burn. Let her inhale the ash with every cry, and scream for the house elves as she desperately tried to put out the flames that he had created. He was done receiving her pity. And he was done avoiding his own.
With his anger rising and his emotions high, Draco stalked up to the study that he had avoided for so long. A concentration of magic that Draco hadn’t even known existed within him burst towards the door in his high emotional state and knocked it off its hinges. Without a second thought, Draco stepped into the room.
His mind went blank. His eyes took in the room, a thin layer of dust covering the objects. He saw photographs of him and Hermione decorating the walls, pictures of her parents, the plants that she had meticulously cultivated for so long in order to test their in a new sleeping drought. His eyes roamed over the bookcases, overflowing with double and sometimes triple stacked books, scraps of parchment sticking up from where she had found something of note in her research. Quills were set about in no particular order in the room, essentially guaranteeing that she would be able to have one handy at all times, just in case.
Draco inhaled, and his face crumpled. It still smelled like her.
The intoxicating scent of honeysuckle and cedar that he had come to know so well was stuck in the room, circulating over and over with nowhere to go. It filled his senses, overwhelming his mind and making everything else . . .muddled. He tried to take a step backwards, but his legs were weak. He stumbled.
His eyes slid over to her desk, and his breath caught in his throat.
A letter was perched on the edge of it, caught in between the two bookends that he had gifted her long ago. His name was written on the front in her messy handwriting. Hesitantly, he reached out towards it, his fingers smoothing back the folds in the envelope as he stared at it. Had this letter been here for him this whole time?
He flipped it over and was face to face with the glaringly red seal on the envelope. He dropped it.
Draco looked down at her body, convulsing on the floor. Red bloomed on her stomach, spiraling and twisting in intricate patterns as it soaked through her clothes. He had said many times that Hermione looked ravishing in red, but not this kind of red. This red was hot, and dark, and sticky. This red drained the color from her face every time it grew more vibrant.
He rushed over to her, falling to his knees and sitting in the puddle of her blood that had harrowed him so. His mind was racing, or was it numb? He couldn’t tell. He pulled out his wand and hoarsely spoke a healing spell. “Vulnera Senentur.” Nothing happened. Frantic, Draco tried it again, his voice stronger now. “Vulnera Senentur!” Nothing.
Hermione weakly opened her eyes, moving her lips in an attempt to speak.
“Shh,” Draco hushed her. “Save your strength Granger. You’ll be at St. Mungo's in no time.” His thumb caressed her cheek as he turned his head towards the door, calling for his house elf. “Winky! Winky I need you!”
Desperation filled his being. He couldn’t apparate her, or he would run the risk of splinching her. None of his healing spells or diagnostic checks were working. He didn’t know what to do.
Hermione raised her hand, wincing as she placed it on one of his arms. Her mouth moved again, and a hoarse whisper of his name escaped.
He looked back over at her, leaning his head down and touching his forehead to hers. “It’s okay Hermione, it’s going to be okay. Can you tell me what hurt you?” He shifted his weight, slowly and cautiously dragging her body into his lap. One of his hands ran over the cut in her stomach, and he grimaced.
“Draco. .” she whispered again, her hand moving steadily up his arm until she was able to cup his face. Her lips curved up in a small smile and she dragged her thumb over his cheek.
He leaned into her touch, looking down at her with hot, angry tears in his eyes. “Don’t you dare say it Granger. Don’t you dare say goodbye.”
“We both. .” she inhaled sharply, and it sounded wet and coarse. The cough that followed caused a small splatter of blood to find purchase on his shirt. “We both know that I’m not getting out of this alive.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he replied, his voice wavering as his own hand reached up to wipe the blood off of her chin. He cleared his throat, hands shaking as he gingerly held her face. “You’ve gotten out of worse scrapes than this. Bloody hell, you had Potter and Weasley for friends, the amount of pure chaos that follows those two should have gotten to you long ago.”
She laughed, her face growing paler by the second. “I’ve always been curious,” another deep, shuddering breath, “you know? I mean, this is the one question that I’ve never been able to answer.” She paused, and it almost looked as though she was staring past Draco and up at the ceiling. Her eyes were unfocused, her hand fell slightly on his face.
He brought his other hand up to hers and held it against his cheek, knowing what she wanted, and knowing what she deserved. She deserved an answer that would make her happy, that would make her peaceful. She deserved an answer that held just as many mysteries as the question, and one that was just as fantastical as the world she had been brought into.
“I. .” his voice caught, and he cleared his throat again, tears falling from his eyes. “I always liked to think that we never actually die. That our magic just gets passed on to some new witch or wizard. Someone like us.”
Her eyes focused back on his face, and her smile seemed content now. “I’d like that,” she said. Her voice was weak. Her breathing was shallow. Her hands and face were growing cold to his touch. “Maybe,” another wet cough shook her body. “Maybe our magic can find each other again. Like soulmates.” Her smile was shaky, and her eyes were beginning to shine with tears.
“Draco,” Hermione said, her thumb weakly running over his bottom lip. “Thank you for showing me what it’s like to be loved.”
And then she was gone.
Her body went limp. Her hand fell from his face. Her eyes, once filled with an undeniable brightness and eagerness to learn and solve and question, were dull and void.
“Hermione?” Draco called out, his voice breaking. His hands were shaking. He was frantically running them over her face, her hands, trying to elicit some sort of response from her.
“No... no no no no.” Tears were streaming down his face as he picked up the wand that he had discarded earlier on the floor. He dropped it twice before he was able to properly hold it, and even then, his hands were shaking too much to perform the wand work required for the diagnostic spell.
Frustrated, he threw it across the room and gathered her body in his arms. He leaned down and touched his forehead to hers, willing for her to open her eyes and lecture him over the proper way to stir a wolfsbane potion, or to hit him and call him insufferable. To do anything.
“Please,” he whispered. “Please I . . I can’t . . I don’t know what to do without you.”
Draco hadn’t realized it then, but he knew it now.
When Hermione had died, he’d died with her.
He looked down at the letter on the floor beneath his feet, and stooped down to pick it up. He flipped it over in his hands, looking once more at the bright red seal. The image of Hermione, on the ground, covered in her own blood came back to him, and he closed his eyes, gripping the letter in his hands like a lifeline.
Even if it hurt him. Even if it somehow caused him more pain than he was already feeling, he had to know what she had written to him.
Carefully, he opened the letter and unfolded the parchment, his eyes watering as he scanned the page.
My heart,
I had hoped that you would never receive this letter, and never have to feel the pain that you are going through right now, but alas, it seems inevitable.
I suppose that I should explain what this is, though I would wager that you have already guessed. Upon my death, however likely or unlikely, I had arranged for a letter to be sent to you. I updated the letter weekly, of course, to keep things recent and up to date. However, lately, I have been writing a letter to you every day.
It’s not necessary, in fact it’s far from that. It’s . . well I suppose it’s simply because I don’t entirely know how to fit everything into one letter. If you wish to read them, they should be stashed in the top left drawer of my desk.
On to the main purpose of this letter. To put it simply, I love you.
I’m not exactly sure when it happened if I’m being honest. Whether my affections began when we were forced to work together for a project in the Ministry, or when you had somehow memorized my caffeine schedule so thoroughly that it no longer surprised me when you brought me my morning coffee. But it happened.
I imagine that this is of no shock to you, considering that we are currently engaged, but I also know that you don’t hear the words enough. And I know that you doubt, every day, whether or not I will finally ‘come to my senses’ as you have put it before, and leave you for something or someone else.
If it wasn’t already evident, let me put it more clearly. I am yours, Draco Malfoy. Body and soul. I have been and always will be. I love you more than you will ever know, and more than I would ever care to admit.
And if I know you well enough, which I do, I know that you are blaming yourself for whatever has happened to me. Please, for your mother’s sake, mine, and your own, don’t. Know that I could never, ever, blame you for anything that has happened to me.
You are the one mystery in my life that I will never get bored of, the one puzzle piece that finally completes me, the one constant that I never want to change.
I can guarantee you. In my last few moments, all I will think about is you and the happiness that you have brought me. I will relive our first kiss, and your proposal. I will relive the day that I moved into the Manor, and that tea that I had with your mother where she showed me your baby photos.
And if I am so lucky, you will be there with me. And I will get to see you one last time. I will get to memorize every feature of your face, and your temperamental eyes. I’ll be able to run my hands over that scar on your bottom lip, and tell you how much you mean to me.
But most of all, I want you to learn how to be happy again. I want you to smile when you remember me, and correct my work when you go through my research. I want to be remembered as I am.
All my love, and so much more,
Hermione
Draco smiled weakly as he finished the letter, his legs finally giving out as he collapsed onto the floor.
He heard footsteps behind him, and moments later his mother’s arms wrapped around his shoulders. “It’s like she never left . .” she murmured, tears falling down her cheeks.
He looked up at the study once more, taking in the piles upon piles of research and notes and musings that covered the room. There, in that moment, in that place, he swore he could hear Hermione laugh at something snarky that he had said, and feel her hand on his shoulder.
“I don’t think she ever will.”
.
.
Add yourself to my taglist!
17 notes · View notes
Note
Would you feel comfortable writing Obikin or nah?
Tumblr media
Or a crack fic like a potluck picnic at the Jedi Temple? 🧐
🧺
So this started out as a little thing and turned into a slow burn multiple chapter monstrosity. 😅😬this first bit is mostly angsty and fluffy but I promise I will update with the second (maybe third parts?) tonight and hopefully tomorrow. This became a slow burn thats torturing ME LOL. I like a lot of lead up. You’ll learn to love this about me. I hope.
Shoulder Your Burden (part one)
It had been a particularly rotten day, even for war.
The 501st and the 212th had been deployed together to a Separatist stronghold though, which meant Obi-Wan and Anakin would be commanding alongside one another.
The council typically tried to avoid situations like this, not only because in the tragic and unlikely event that both units were wiped out, they would lose some of their best men and potentially two of their best generals, but also because anyone that had spent more than fifteen minutes in a room together with Obi-Wan and Anakin was readily privy to the fact that they tended attract chaos and misadventures.
The fact remained, however, that they were two of the Republic’s cleverest, and had navigated themselves out of dozens of ostensibly no-win scenarios in the past, suffering only minor casualties.
Not to mention that this mission had required a degree of ace flying that not many in the galaxy were capable of, and the two men had years of that under their belts.
Due to a miscalculation, or bit of bad information from and informant, they had found themselves in a Separatist ambush today.
And due to an honest mistake and misjudgment on Anakin’s part, they had lost a lot of men. This settled heavy in Anakins stomach like duracrete. The guilt seeped into every fiber of his being. He’d been foolish and now men were dead.
He had thought that splitting the units and having Obi-Wan’s men ambush from behind and drive the droids into a narrow canyon so they could be picked off easily would be the best move. What their informant hadn’t told them, was that there were already droids waiting in the valley to ambush THEM, and what he had effectively done was corner his men and send them into a slaughter. Their plan had been completely reversed on them, and now the canyon was an abattoir reeking of death, and it was his fault.
The battlefield was permeated with the stench of blood and ozone, and spent blaster fire, and Anakin was steadily becoming overwhelmed. The guilt settled in his stomach along with the heavy stench of death suffered due to his mistakes overcame him. He leaned against a large boulder and wretched, becoming sick.
He wiped his mouth, jumping and weaving over the bodies of fallen clones and droids, trying his best to make it through the narrow canyon alive.
He was steadily being swarmed by battle droids when he saw the transport coming in for a landing at about 80 yards out.
Naturally, once again, Obi-Wan was bailing him out.
He picked up pace, jumping over debris and bodies, scanning for survivors.
He spotted a clone struggling to get out from under a piece of ruined machinery, a tank he thought.
He stopped, ducking to avoid blaster fire, and attempted to force push it off the soldier.
A bolt grazed his hand, flames of pain immediately licking his palm all the way up to his shoulder.
He let a frustrated growl of pain, concentration broken momentarily.
“Leave me, sir! There’s too many.”
Anakin shook his head stubbornly, still trying to move the debris.
“No! You’re making it out of here with me.”
The clone shook his head, gesturing to his ruined legs pinned beneath the hunk of metal.
“No sir, I can’t walk. It’s been a pleasure serving, General Skywalker.”
“No, Dozer,” Anakin grit out through the pain.
Anakin felt Obi-Wan’s force signature tugging at his.
He deflected a rain of blaster bolts with his saber, still not willing to give up on Dozer.
Just then, a droid lobbed a grenade that landed squarely between the two of them. Anakin reeled back instinctively, placing enough distance between him and the explosive to avoid being filled with shrapnel.
“Dozer!”
Anakin felt himself then being pulled backwards into the transport, along with the meager few clones that had managed to survive the attack.
“No!” He thrashed, trying to dive out of the transport back into the battlefield.
Stop! Anakin we have to go.
He wrenched his arm free of whoever had a hold of him, and watched helpless as the transport doors closed. He took an unsteady breath watching from the view port, bringing a shaking hand up to wipe the blood and sweat from his brow. He stayed there for a moment, trying to push the nauseous guilt from his stomach and the vertigo from his head. His ears rung.
He felt the familiar warm hum of his masters force presence before he felt the hand on his shoulder.
“We received bad information,” Obi-Wan began, immediately absolving Anakin from any responsibility or guilt before he’d even appealed for it. It made him mad.
Anakin shook his head, not looking at his master.
“Rex and Hardcase make it out?” He asked darkly, arms crossed over his chest.
“Yes,” Obi-Wan said quietly.
“Cody?”
“And Waxer, Boil, and Trapper. All accounted for.”
“At least some of them made it out,” he growled darkly, chewing the inside of his cheek,
“Where’s Ahsoka?”
“Medbay, but she’s fi-“
Anakin had already turned on his heel to stride towards Medical to check on his young padawan. She shouldn’t have even been on this mission, and because of him, she could’ve been killed. They could’ve all been killed.
He ignore the pain singing in his own hand, and pushed forward as he strode through the medbay doors that hissed open in front of him.
“Ahsoka?”
his voice was firmer than he intended, laced with the guilt and panic of having more casualties on his hands.
“Over here, Master,” the tired yet evergreenly cheerful voice of his student resounded from the far corner of the medbay where she was being worked on by a diligent medical droid.
“You’re hurt,” he said firmly, eyebrows knitting together as he sat next to her on the cot.
“I’m sorry,” he started, nodding to the injured hand the med droid was busy with.
“Just a couple of broken fingers, Master. I’ve had worse.”
His battle wearied padawan didn’t even acknowledge he blaster burns on her sides or the superficial cut above her brow. He cursed himself for setting a bad example and ignoring injury, and as he considered his, his own injuries thrummed warmly, reminding him he still needed to attend to his wounds.
“You’re staying at the temple until you’re healed,” he started, not meeting her eye until she issued a whine of protest.
“But Master-“
“Ahsoka,” he warned
She quieted, looking down at her wounds.
“And anyways,” he continued, “after today I imagine the whole 501st and 212th will be grounded for awhile. At least until we can heal, and figure out if we’ve got a bad informant or a turncoat on our hands. You need the rest anyways,” he said offering a dull smile, placing a reassuring hand on her shoulder.
“Yes, Master,” she agreed, offering a similar weak smile.
Anakin stood and strode from the medbay, neglecting to mention his own injuries to the medical droid.
—————
Anakin found himself standing in front of the viewport, cradling his injured hand in his mechano-hand.
Since he had been foolish enough to neglect to seek attention from the med droids when they were on the Jedi Cruiser or the clone transport, he figured he would just grit through it and handle it himself when the city transport got them to the temple.
Anakin felt Obi-Wan tentatively approach to take a place next to him at the viewport. The two were quiet for a moment, content to merely be in one another’s presence. Their force bond hummed like a live wire between them. Anakin knew that Obi-Wan could feel how taut and raw his nerves were, and it made him squirm. He hated feeling weak and emotionally compromised.
“You’re injured,” Obi-Wan stated after a time.
“I’m alright,” Anakin grit through his teeth.
Obi-Wan drew nearer, half expecting Anakin to hiss at him like a feral Loth-cat.
“Let me see.”
“No.”
“Anakin,” Obi-Wan sighed, exasperated, already going for the med kit.
“I’m fine, Master.”
“Sit still,” Obi-Wan huffed, dragging the med kit out.
Pain pulsed through Anakin’s hand, making the ends of his fingertips sing with a dull throbbing each time his heartbeat roared in his chest. The gash in his palm was deep, but not enough to need stitches, he thought. It was ugly and singed around the edges, and it would scar.
Obi-Wan took his hand gingerly, and Anakin gasped at the contact.
Obi-Wan’s brow furrowed in concern, guilt dancing darkly in his eyes as he brushed an unspoken apology against their force bond.
Anakin resisted, maintaining a tight clamp on his mental walls. His Master couldn’t know the gasp was simply in response to be handled so gently by him. Anakin had scarcely felt touch that wasn’t hand to hand combat or a rough grip on the shoulder from one of the clones in months. He was a man starved, and he ached.
“Sorry, dear one, I know-“
A sharp hiss through his teeth that was in response to his pain echoed through the ship as Obi-Wan started with cleaning and dressing the wound.
He would flick his eyes up to meet Anakin’s every so often, trying to gauge for pain, but Anakin was looking at the floor, the ceiling, out the viewports, anywhere but the deep empathetic pools of Obi-Wan’s eyes.
Obi-Wan worked diligently and delicately, putting concerted effort into causing the younger man as little pain as was possible when addressing a wound like this. It wasn’t as bad as either of them had originally feared. It would hurt for several days, but Anakin had had worse, and he figured he’d have forgotten he even hurt it within three or four weeks. It would scar, though.
He tapped his thigh, busying his mind with charts, timelines for healing, anything to keep his mind and eyes off of the way his masters eyes pierced into the very core of his being.
They were too deep, and too kind, and they made him feel like he was suffocating. He didn’t deserve the worry and care the man handled him with. It nearly made him angry. He absolutely couldn’t look at him now though, not with the way the concern and guilt and worry washed over him through their force bond. It made him feel safe, but it also made him feel small, like a child. He could handle himself. He wasn’t some clumsy youngling who needed all his little wounds dressed.
He tried to push back cheap reassurances, but Obi-Wan’s energy was so overpowering.
“I’m fine, Master,” he finally managed, his voice thankfully more steadfast and sturdy than he thought he would be able to manage.
“Something troubles you,” he posited softly, finishing work on bandaging his hand.
Anakin shook his head.
Obi-Wan sighed, and Anakin felt a tinge of sadness seep into their force bond before his master clamped down on his emotions.
Obi-Wan patted the newly bandaged hand, letting his hand linger just a moment, a gentle gesture that made Anakin’s stomach flutter.
“All fixed up, dear one. Do try not to lose this hand too.” Half a smile tugged at Obi-Wans tired face.
I’m only teasing.
Anakin rolled his eyes, allowing himself a small smile.
I know.
They weren’t so much words as, impressions of feelings that...felt like words. It was hard to explain to a non force user, but Anakin imagined it was much like how animals communicated. With impressions rather than words.
Obi-Wan’s eyes lingered on Anakin for a moment, hoping he would air whatever ailed him.
Anakin looked at the floor, chewing his cheek.
“Men died today, Master. Because of me.”
Obi-Wan sighed, stroking his beard contemplatively.
“Men died today, because we are at war, Anakin.”
“But ultimately I made the decision. I’m responsible for my men and today-“
he grit his teeth, jaw working against the overdue tears pooling in his eyes. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying desperately to block out the tirade of his feelings crashing over him.
Obi-Wan’s presence brushed against his mind, caressing him warmly like he had since he was a child. It was gold, and warm, and gentle.
Stop.
Anakin pleaded. The kindness overwhelmed him, and crying right now would be mortifying.
Obi-Wan placed a hand on Anakin’s shoulder.
“You cannot let the burden of horrors of a whole war you did not start rest on your shoulders, padawan,”
Obi-Wan hummed softly, his thumb gently and subtly rubbing reassuring circles Anakin’s shoulder. It felt like a hot poker, in the best way.
Electricity zipped through his body at the touch, but he grit his teeth against it. Anakin fought the urge to nuzzle into his hand.
“I’m not your padawan-“ he spat.
“Still you call me Master,” Obi-Wan retorted, eyes dancing with hopefulness that Anakin would let his shields down, even for a moment.
Anakin chewed his cheek, finally turning to meet his former master’s eye for what felt like the first time all day.
Obi-Wan was radiant. It felt like Anakin could see the warmth he produced rolling off him in waves. He was long suffering, so patient. He was beautiful. Why did he continue to be so patient with him, Anakin wondered.
I’m here.
The phrase sang against their force bond as Anakin placed his forehead on the older man’s shoulder, allowing Obi-Wan to pull him in for a brief embrace.
Energy thrummed between them, and Anakin felt pinpricks of electricity everywhere their skin touched.
Why did he feel like this? He was sure he hadn’t always. He’d spent long years alongside Obi-Wan, sometimes having no other companions. So why now did he suddenly feel exhilarated each time their skin touched?
Thinking back on it actually, he had always harbored a deep affection for the older man that he assumed all padawans had for their masters. That or, it was his damn tendency to be over emotional. He could never tell if his emotions were bigger and heavier than other Jedi, or if he was just exceptionally bad at controlling them.
Obi-Wan seemed so steadfast, not even radiating with the tremendous grief Anakin knew he must have felt after he lost his master and was immediately stuck with Anakin. Anakin had wept, and he’d only known Qui-Gon a short time. Master Kenobi had remained with a stiff upper lip in those days, serious but not broken, and he certainly didn’t let on that he was hurting. Anakin remembered how it had made him mad, that Obi-Wan could be so unfeeling and unperturbed by death. But he grew to envy that trait over the years.
These thoughts zapped through his mind at light speed, neurons firing and firing again, grasping at missed cogs like a broken droid, as he tried to sort out what exactly hummed in his stomach. If only he could tinker on his brain the way he could tinker on speeders and droids.
“You’re going to the medbay and getting pain pills and antibiotics when we land.” Obi-Wan’s voice seemed to pull him back into his body, grounding him, as it always did.
Anakin groaned, rolling his eyes, pulling away to gather his things and prepare for landing.
“And bacta spray!” Obi-Wan called after him.
———————-
Anakin settled himself into his quarters at the Temple. As he had predicted, the council had grounded both their units for three weeks until they could get to the bottom of what was going on with their informant. Ahsoka, had been granted a full week off. Anakin had found out later that she had been solely responsible for making sure Rex made it out alive, and he figured she deserved the full THREE weeks off. But the council insisted she upkeep her training. Sometimes it felt as though Ahsoka ought to be training him.
Anakin had been expecting a verbal thrashing from the council. He loathed going to council meetings. It made him feel so examined, so naked.
They had sort of thrashed him, but not worse than he was used to. So he was his regular level of sour and displeased upon returning to his quarters. He felt like he’d been sent to his room to think about what he’d done. And think about it, he did. It was all he could think about.
Obi-Wan had offered to swing by and split some Ruby Bliels with him later, and after mulling it over for a moment, he’d decided to oblige.
Anakin knew that Obi-Wan knew they were his favorite, and only offered when he knew Anakin was in his head and really suffering. It made Anakin feel naked and embarrassed to know his old master had such a good read on him, but from time to time he obliged the older Jedi and allowed him to extend the kind gesture.
Still, Anakin was nearly surprised when the soft knocks resounded on his door. He couldn’t be bothered to get up from his spot on the floor where he was meditating, so he flicked his wrist and let the force do the work of opening the door.
———
Sorry to leave on a cliff hanger! Tumblr is so mad at me for posting this much text 😂 there’s a lot more. Stay tuned!
Tagging: @haydens-moles @chokemeanakin @anakinswhore @fistmebuckyskywalker
Part 2 Part 3 Part 4
50 notes · View notes
the-darklings · 4 years
Text
—𝒘𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒊𝒔 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒘𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒔𝒉𝒐𝒖𝒍𝒅 𝒏𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒓 𝒃𝒆;
Tumblr media
—PART XIV. | WHAT IS AND WHAT SHOULD NEVER BE
pairing: john wick x f!reader x santino d’antonio
word count: 10.4k+
summary: A part of you has missed this quiet, this dark.
warnings: aside from pain? none.
notes: well this will either be the saddest or the happiest chapter of COA so far. Let's roll!
children of ares series: 01 | …. | 12 | 13 | . . | 15 |
Tumblr media
“My mother who was a great lover of art always told me that life is like poetry. It rhymes.”
Inhale.
“I believe that everything eventually comes around full circle.” 
Exhale. 
The silver viper ring between your fingers rotates for the hundredth time. 
For the first time in days your hands are not shaking. 
A stillness has fallen over you; a hush that has wiped away all else. A part of you has missed this quiet, this dark. It has given you back a sense of ease. You can’t even feel the pain in your body anymore. There is just…nothing. 
Crisp footsteps approach the spot where you are sitting and you don’t need to look up to know who it is. 
Winston sits down beside you with deliberate slowness but there is a heaviness to it. Distantly, you wonder if anything like this has ever happened before. The man next to you is unmerciful in enforcing the rules in his hotel and city at large. Such a violation must be a first.
You sit in silence for several minutes, neither of you moving. Your elbows keep digging into your thighs but all you can focus on is the ring between your fingers. On the faint traces of blood still lingering beneath your nails and cracks of your skin. 
The stillness between you is the loudest thing you have ever experienced. Matched in magnitude only by the initial few seconds following the gunshot—
“What happens now?”
Your question is so steady, so calm—it surprises you. You might as well be asking him about the weather. 
The older man doesn’t answer right away even though you feel his attention turn to you. 
“The High Table has been informed,” he tells you flatly, his hands clasped in front of him. “This will…echo.” 
There’s just enough trepidation in the final word for you to know that a more accurate expression would be a “shitstorm”. You wait for something—anything—to hit you but nothing comes. Panic, fear, dread that have always followed any possibility of invoking the Table’s wrath is absent. Winston’s words barely register. Maybe you can go into hysterics later. Maybe not. 
“Is there anything I can do—”
“You could come to Paris with me. You still owe me a trip, carissima.”
The ring in your hand rotates again. 
Winston focuses on the movement but doesn’t comment. You’re not quite sure if he knows the significants of the ring in your hand, if he’s ever even guessed it. He has certainly seen it before. He knows you’ve had it for years. 
The silence stretches for what seems like hours. 
“Are you—”
“No.”
It’s an empty answer to an empty question. You’re very not alright right now. 
Your fingers still, folding around the ring till the viper disappears, devoured by your hand. By the prison of darkness. 
Your head finally turns to look at the older man and his expression draws tighter at whatever he finds on your face. 
“Will you—”
“Yes,” he cuts you off before you can finish, nodding his head just once with a pointed stare. “Even if it wasn’t a part of my job—and it certainly is—yes, of course. You need not ask.”
It’s one of those few, serene moments where you feel immensely grateful for having him in your life. To a point you doubt there are any words that could aptly express it. Neither of you is prone to displays of sentimentality though so you choose to say nothing. Still, you think he can read it on your face. See it in the way you blink just a little too fast and swallow thickly with a grateful dip of your head. 
Your fingers stiffen into a fist, and you feel the metal ridges of the ring cut into your flesh. It’s a dull, vague discomfort and you turn to stare at the too-clean floor for another beat before you rise smoothly, your joints clicking. 
Nothing hurts and the fingers of your other hand flex. Experimental. Deliberate. 
Your turn to go. 
“Where are you going?”
You pause, but don’t look at him. “I have unfinished business.”
More hollow, calm words that drag from somewhere deep down. From the abyss. 
But because Winston is Winston, he doesn’t drop it like most would. “I know what Johnathan did was—”
Inhaling sharply at that name, you begin walking away. 
“V,” Winston calls out, and you hear him rise. “(Name).”
It halts your feet, that tone. The authority in it. 
But you don’t stop because you fear Winston. You stop because you respect him enough to do so. Care for him enough to at least hear what he has to say if he’s so insistent on saying it. 
“If you do this,” he begins, and there is such worn heaviness in his voice that it almost makes you falter. Almost. “You will regret it for the rest of your life.”
Don’t go down this path again. 
He doesn’t have to add it verbally for you to hear the words in the space between you. Be it because he doesn’t want a bigger mess than this has already become or because he wants to shield Jo—
Or maybe he just cares about you in his own way. 
He knows what revenge does to a person. He knows how slippery of a slope hate can be. He has seen what resentment has turned you into once. 
That, you think coldly, was child’s play compared to now.  
You look back at him over your shoulder. His face is still drawn, his eyes narrowed, but you know that if you choose this, he will not stand in your way. 
A man who believes that everyone is a master of their own fate. That one has to learn how to live with the consequences of one’s actions. 
You are the father I wish I had. You taught me well.
It’s what you want to say but don’t. 
Instead, something far less kind leaves your mouth, “The only thing I regret right now is not letting him bleed out on that platform.”    
With that, you turn to go, and he doesn’t try to stop you again.
Tumblr media
Kimber Super Carry. 
A custom semi-automatic model with a good sturdy handle and sleek edges, making aiming easy and reloading smooth due to lightweight casing. The seven-round magazine is the smallest capacity it’s manufactured to as far as you know but it’s undoubtedly a weapon crafted for death all the same.
A gun that was fired on Continental grounds. 
A gun that—
Your feet halt in the debris of a dream. 
John’s home is now rubble. 
You haven’t seen it since the news about its destruction reached you and you drag your eyes over the ruined space. Once upon a time, you think it would have made you sad to see this. Now, you don’t feel much besides an inkling of satisfaction. 
Consequences.
The echoes of them are everywhere you look as you move through the ash and the dirt. Your footsteps crunch underneath you, and the charred remains still stink of smoke even with the heavy deluge of rain falling down on it.
Your grip on the pistol doesn’t loosen as you step slowly through John’s home. 
As if there’s anywhere else he would go to mourn, to wait for what he already knows he will not escape. 
Like a ghost, you move across the graveyard of John’s dream. Your eyes linger on the half-burned photograph of him and Helen that still sits on the crumbling mantelpiece. Half of John’s face is burned away, leaving an echo of a smile and love and you stare at it for longer than intended, your jaw set. 
You find him minutes later, sitting alone and hunched over on a blackened armchair. 
He doesn’t move. 
Even though you know he’s aware of your presence. 
Rain trails down your face and you blink the tiny droplets out of your lashes as you step into the room unhurriedly.
The dog suddenly appears, dashing towards you from behind the seat and wags his tail happily at the sight of you. He nudges your hand with his nose and your fingers absentmindedly play with his ear, patting him a few times. 
Your eyes don’t leave John’s prone figure once. 
A dark spectre haunting the ruins of his own life. 
Lips parted, he lifts his head towards you eventually, a thin bracelet tangled in between his bloodied fingers—the same hand you injured with your blade only hours ago. His face is bruised just like yours, and through the space between you, the roar of rain washes away the would-be silence.
He doesn’t say anything. 
Your lips curve. 
“No apology this time?” 
John with his sorrowful, dark eyes who is always quick to plead for forgiveness. As if you have the power to absolve him of his many sins. You are not his absolution. He has shown that time and time again. 
There is, perhaps, no one left on your side now.
John’s shoulders slant backwards with a deep breath, his voice a rasp, “Not when I did something I know there will be no forgiveness for.”
You stare at him. 
He’s not wrong. 
He doesn’t look at the gun but you’re both intimately aware of it. His hand had forged your own after all. Right now all you can think about is those long months of work you had to put in just to barely keep up with him—too slow, too erratic, too rigid. His grip on your wrist and the low, measured words of instruction, of guidance. 
Viggo Tarasov never made you. He gave you the tool to make yourself.  
John Wick never made you. He guided the creation with his careful, deadly hands and an unspoken promise that he will be by your side, always. 
Santino D’Antonio never made you, either. 
You did it all yourself. 
“I spent the journey here thinking how I’m going to put a bullet in your head,” you inform him calmly, amiably. “How far we have come, Jardani.”
His sad, worn expression goes rigid at your gentle murmur of his real name. A name you have held sacred in your heart and hidden so meticulously underneath your tongue for years. 
This is not anger, or rage, or hurt. 
This is just…nothing. The final stage perhaps. 
“He had me hunted,” John mutters in defeat, his voice thick with pain as he stares up at you. “I gave you time, (Name). What was I supposed to do?”
“Stop, Jardani,” you whisper sadly. “You could have stopped for me. Like he did.”
John’s expression creases and you watch as rain trickles down his nose and lips. His confusion is palpable. You take a single step towards him and the dog whines, sensing the shift in the air. 
“I was taken after we split apart,” you reveal to him and make sure that every word sinks in, your words slow and deliberate. “That trouble you wanted to help me with initially, remember? The Black Dragon and the Lovers. You won’t know much about the latter because it was after you left. But you know how it goes. Bad blood from years ago come back to haunt me. I was taken but managed to break out with some help. I rushed to the gallery. I got there only minutes before you did. And then I asked him to stop. Call the contract off. Do you know what he said to me?” you wonder bitterly and don’t wait for his reply. “That he’ll do it. You were minutes away from freedom, Jardani, and now look at you.”
Doomed. 
One way or another. 
Now, there will be no ticket back. No peace. 
You watch the realisation sink in. The quiet agony that follows right after.
“I—”
“I don’t care that you didn’t know,” you choke out, pained, watching the planes of his face crease at your wet words. “I just wanted you to listen. How much more? How much more can you take from me?”
You wait for his answer but this time he has nothing to say. Nothing, at least, that won’t be empty words designed to make you forgiving and docile. 
“I walked through your home and figured it would be symbolic to finish it here,” you continue through the thundering of rain and the dog whines again, quieter this time. “But then I realised something. You want this. You want it to be by my hand. The moment you pulled that trigger you knew exactly what would follow. All that carnage. An attack on Continental grounds. A forfeited life debt that makes your life mine. You knew that I would never forgive you for almost taking the people I consider my family away.”
Drawing a breath, you lift the gun in your hand but don’t aim it at him. The gleaming, silver surface greets you and in it, you see a blurred reflection of your eyes. The shadow of emptiness there. The hollowed out person staring back at you reminds you of a girl from years ago. 
“You did love me,” you go on after another moment, still staring at the gun. Your body is soaked from the rain by now but you ignore the heavy weight of your clothes clinging to your skin. “I think a part of you still does. But the sad truth is that you never loved me more than this. This dream of a normal life. You leaving was never about a choice between Helen and I. It was always a choice between being John or being Baba Yaga. You didn’t stop for me because you couldn’t. Because you don’t know how to stop. Not even for yourself. I bet you used to wake up every morning, look in the mirror, and feel just as empty as I do. Maybe you thought that by running from this life—from yourself—you could be happy. And I think you were for a while. But Tarasov was right to say that we’re cursed, the three of us. We don’t get happy endings.”
You lower the gun and take another few steps closer towards him, watching his expression as you feet creak on the damaged floor. He looks accepting of whatever you will say or do next.
“You said…almost.”
A brief, harsh smile contorts your face. “Yeah,” you acknowledge quietly, viciously, your grip on the gun creaking. “You failed. I made you fail. Santino lived. I don’t know…I don’t know for how long…or if he will ever—”
You can’t continue because it hurts too much. 
Because you remember a haze of blood and Winston pulling you back. You sobbing that Santino is still warm, that he’s still breathing. 
A bullet that had hit the side of his head, creating what had appeared like a river of gushing blood. 
Missed shattering his skull by 2 millimetres. You saved him, (Name).
Winston’s hand on your shoulder, gripping, gripping, trying to tug you back and over the edge with his words.  
“Critical care,” you spit out and press your lips together to stop yourself from cracking now. “They don’t—he might still not make it and even if he does…there is a high chance of permanent damage. It’s too early to say yet.”
John exhales, staring up at you in wonder. Maybe even relief. You don’t care enough to search deeper than that. 
You simply don’t care. About any of this.
Taking another step towards him, you reach into your pocket, pulling out the ring that’s been with you for years. Your only reminder of him. 
The man in question goes as still as death at the sight of it. 
You can still remember his muted disappointment at the fact that you no longer wore it. He no doubt thought that you had gotten rid of it.
“I wonder what it says about me that I still have it,” you mutter with a bitter chuckle and droplets of rain cover the metal in moments. “I kept it with me for years. And when Santino asked me if the fact that I still have it means that I love you, I told him no. But that was a fucking lie. I convinced myself that I wanted to mend our relationship because of what happened to Marcus. So I would never have regrets but that was only half the truth. I just…missed you. A tiny part of me never stopped loving you. Despite everything,” you exhale weakly, pausing, and your expression hardens with your next words. “Until you pulled that trigger I would have still forgiven you. I still loved you. Even after all these years. Now…Now I don’t know what you are to me. Not anymore.”
John’s breathing has picked up, his chest moving up and down as he stares up at you. For once, his calm has fled and his dark eyes are desperate, wilder. 
“(Name)—” 
“You will never stop,” you state frankly, knowingly, your tone wooden. “You will destroy yourself, Jardani. This vengeance will consume you till the man Helen and I both loved is long gone. I don’t hate you. I pity you for that. I pity you.”
The ring in your hand stills. It hovers against your skin. This familiar warmth of metal you’ve clung to for years. 
The rain falls harder, beating against your skin, a distant rumbling of thunder echoing in your bones.
The girl who had needed this blanket of safety and comfort is gone now. 
You don’t need anchors to the past.
You just need Santino to live. You need Roberto to recover.  
You just need yourself. 
No one else. 
Your hand tips to the side and gravity does the rest. 
The ring sails through the rush of falling rain and drops at John’s feet and into the ruin surrounding you both soundlessly. 
Like a stroke of the sharpest blade, it cleaves the past from the present. 
“I will not kill you,” you tell him simply, but you’re not sure if John is listening. He’s staring at the ground, at the ring, and you can no longer see his face. “You will live and reap the consequences of your decisions. Maybe one day I can find a way to forgive you for this. I…I don’t know. But know that if you ever touch the people I love and care about again…” you give him a grim, empty smile. “You’re as good as dead to me.”
Silence. 
You’re not quite sure how much time passes.
Eventually, the downpour eases up, a few minutes of tranquillity following that. 
There’s a dull crack of someone stepping onto burned wood and your head slants to the side. 
Charon stands still and silent in the ruined doorway of the living room. His face is solemn and like a messenger of death, he chills the space at least a few degrees. 
Behind his glasses, his eyes glow with quiet, unspoken regret as he looks at John. 
The High Table has been informed. This will…echo.
This, you know then, is about to go South in the worst way possible.
His stare is full of relief when it meets yours though, and you know that he was prepared to find a very different sight. 
John dead. Or maybe you dead, or even both of you. Destroyed by the others’ hand. 
Won’t that be ironic?     
“Mr Wick,” Charon begins and John’s head rises slightly at the call, just barely. “You have been summoned, Sir.” 
There is a breath of quiet and then Charon’s eyes transfer to you. Something about the look on his face makes you release a slow breath. 
“As have you, Miss.”    
Tumblr media
The dog naps draped across you both, seemingly the only one enjoying the heavy hush hanging over the car. 
John doesn’t speak. You don’t either. 
Charon knows better than to even begin and untangle this mess of a situation. So he does what he’s always done, and that’s obey his orders without comment. 
You stare out of the window, taking in the scenery of your city and wonder if you are still living in a world that has Santino in it. You have no way to contact anyone and his condition—
“You’re right,” John’s voice slices through your thoughts and you almost flinch, your fingers stilling against the dog’s ribs. “Everything you said back there. You were right. I love Helen but a part of me…a part of me never let you go either, (Name).”
You don’t reply. 
He’s not expecting it either because he no doubt realises that his confession is ill-timed. 
You imagine it’s less about forgiveness and more about…
You’re not sure what it’s about. Not anymore. 
What’s done is done. 
It will not change anything now.
Your fingers play with the chain around your neck as you continue staring out of the window. 
The quiet stretches on and by the time the car crawls to a stop just outside of Bethesda Fountain, you know that Winston is waiting for you. The fountain is the man’s favourite spot at Central Park and both of you have taken walks here several times over the years. As have—
As have you and Santino. 
Cockiness in his step and a sly smirk on his face. 
You rip the door open, gasping for breath, and try to blink away the phantom of him beside you, offering the crook of his arm to you. 
Walk with me, cara mia?
He’s not dead. 
Yet, adds Kishi’s cold voice inside your head.
No, let him live. Let him live even if I— 
“It has been a pleasure, Mr Wick,” Charon says politely, offering his hand to John as you round the car. The two men shake hands and you can see John’s hesitation, his attempt to read the situation. Charon stares at him for a beat before adding a quieter, “Goodbye.”
John’s head lowers in understanding and he moves in the direction Charon extends his arm towards, leaving you behind. 
For a few moments, you stare at the man who has been a part of your life for years. Who has seen you at some of your best and worst. 
“Miss Vipress.”
Charon’s voice sounds defeated, a touch sad, and behind his glasses, you see a glimmer of remorse. 
“Take care of the old man for me, would you?” you request softly, taking a step closer when you notice John pause, realising you’re not following him. “The safe in my room. There are two letters inside. One for Winston and one for Santino—”
You work your jaw, trying to bite back your emotion and Charon’s neutral expression strains, too. 
“The combination is 29091942.”
For the first time since you’ve met him all those years ago when you were nothing more than a young naive girl, lost and alone, you see Charon’s expression crack. Just slightly. Just enough. 
He knows what those numbers mean. 
Winston’s birthday. 
“Would you—” your wet whisper breaks off and he nods his head promptly. 
“Of course, Miss,” he tells you quietly and offers his hand to you, his eyes sad. “It has truly been an honour and a joy.”
You grasp it firmly, squeezing the gloved fingers before leaning forward and wrapping one arm around him too. Charon is rigid but doesn’t push you away. 
“Thank you,” you breathe into his woollen coat, scratchy and comforting and him. He smells like the Continental. Like home and you soak in that scent one last time. “Take care of them for me. Please.”
“I will.”
You step back but he doesn’t let go of your hand, giving it another gentle squeeze before releasing your digits. 
You both know this is goodbye. 
There is no other reason as to why you would be summoned. 
With one last look, you turn to go, straightening your spine into a rigid, unyielding line. Whatever it is, you will face it as always. 
There she is, a sly voice hums in your ear. My sea on a stormy night, hm? 
John is still waiting for you a respectful distance away, his eyes downcast, and you move past him without a word. The dog trails after you, his tail wagging and you hear John follow moments later. 
Winston is waiting for you by the fountain, his head tilted towards the sky like his thoughts are miles away, and the muted glow of the setting sun paints him in a golden light. 
You come to a stop before him as always and his eyes go to you first before John halts at your side, too. 
Your stare is desperate, you know that, but something in your heart eases when Winston simply dips his head in a tiny nod of reassurance. 
Still alive. 
Oh, Santino. 
You cling to that knowledge with every shred of your being. 
The older man takes you and John in, all limbs attached, and his eyes flicker to you again. He doesn’t say anything but you can’t help but think that perhaps some minute part of him is proud. Maybe just a little bit. If you’re foolish enough to allow yourself such a pathetic thought. 
“Johnathan. V.”
“Winston.”
John’s voice is weary, guarded. There is subtle tension coiling those limbs that tells you he’s expecting an open attack at any given moment. But if that were a case it would have happened by now. Something else is going on and Winston’s thoughtful hum as he stares at his old friend only confirms it. 
“What am I looking at?” John asks eventually when Winston does nothing more than gaze at him blankly. 
The older man bobs his leg up and down, still staring, but the look in those blue eyes is cutting. It surprises you a touch—the lack of pity you see there. 
“Camorra has doubled Santino’s open contract. It’s gone international.”
14 million. 
Your blood chills in your veins. 
Gianna dead. Santino clinging onto threads of life. 
It surprises you it’s not more. For Camorra, that kind of money is pocket change. 
John exhales. “The High Table,” he assumes. 
Winston hums again, nodding. He looks no less weary, then, and something tells you that the worst is yet to come. 
“And the Continental?”
Your muscles lock. For one, sluggish second you see red. Almost go for him with your bare hands alone. 
After what he did—
Winston’s head snaps up, and this time something old and merciless stares back at you both. “You shot a member of the High Table on company grounds, Jonathan,” he reminds him coldly, the corners of his mouth tilting downwards. “You leave me no choice but to declare you Excommunicado. The doors to any service or provider in connection with the Continental are now closed to you.” 
No weapons. No medicine. No supplies. 
Every helping hand cut off and your body effectively tossed to the very bowels of the pit that is the underground world ready to be devoured. 
You’re not surprised that it takes John a few moments to digest something like that. 
Your eyes lower and you smile. 
A sad, accepting thing. 
“I am so sorry,” Winston says with an exhale. 
Your eyes lift and his stare is on you. 
“Winston,” John growls under his breath. “She had nothing to do with this.”
The man before you blinks, sparing his old friend a brief look before he nods his head. “Oh, I am well aware of that. The High Table, however, does not see it that way.”
You look towards the lake, towards the sky, towards the trees. 
“Santino lived because of (Name) interference,” John insists, his voice growing colder, harder. “She saved his life.”
Winston rises to his feet, his hands slipping into his pockets as he strolls closer. His steps are forceful though, and there is just a trace, a glint, of anger there as he stares at John flatly. 
“Do you believe that I do not know that, Johnathan? The fact that Santino lives is the only reason why, unlike with you, there is no bounty on her head. Yet.”
“But—”
“There are no buts about this,” Winston cuts in, his calm words laced with ice. “The security footage from the museum was retrieved. Can you guess what it showed? V saving your life time and time again. The High Table believes that she should have shot you in the head the first chance she got and been done with it. Her inaction with Tarasov and subsequent saving of your life when you came after Santino—one of their own—has been deemed treasonous.”
John is quiet after that; a rolling, barely contained storm.  
You’re still staring at the trees, silent. 
In the far distance, kids screech happily as they chase pigeons. 
You wonder if any of them belong to the Bowery King.
Winston steps closer and you meet his stare calmly, expectant. “I told you this would happen, my dear. I did warn you,” he remarks unhappily but his words lack accusation. They’re just…sad. “You can’t expect to walk this line between both sides forever and come away unscathed every time.”
Luck runs out. Consequences follow. 
His words from your last summoning right after Tarasov’s death. 
You should have known that it’s only a matter of time before they came back to haunt you. 
“Keep him safe.”
It’s the only request you can think of. 
The only one that matters right now. 
Because the list of people that would rather see Santino D’Antonio dead is a long one.
Winston’s mouth thins into a hard line but he dips his head in agreement, his gaze solemn, and the relief that follows that is immense. He will keep his promise. Even if he doesn’t like the Italian. You would trust no one else with it. 
“I’m sorry but both of your lives are now forfeited.” 
There is regret there. Genuine and plain to hear and see. 
The older man looks like he rather be doing anything but standing here with you and delivering this news. 
“Then why are we not dead?” John wonders carefully, his words low. 
Winston’s head tilts, almost insulted, and that ruthless man you have come to respect and rely on and even love over the years stares at John like he has said something incredibly funny. 
“Because I deemed it not to be,” he replies bluntly, his head turning to nod at someone behind John. 
You hear a faint command of “now” and every person in the Bethesda Fountain Square simply stops. 
They turn to face you as one, and your eyes track over the crowd, taking in all the faces surrounding you. 
Winston’s eyebrows arch, amused, and you think that on any other day you might have been both amazed and terrified by such a casual display of power. Of influence. 
Winston is the beating iron heart of New York City. 
He nods once, and every person in your line of sight turns around and walks away.
Dozens of people. Gone.   
Just like that. 
The older man pulls back his sleeve, checking his watch before calmly informing you, “You have one hour. Couldn’t delay it any longer.”
He reaches into his pocket, pulling out an all too familiar object and offers it to John. “You might need this. Down the road.”
A Marker. 
Your jaw clenches subtly. 
Another trap for someone. 
Those wise blue eyes move towards you, and you force back a scornful smile. “Let me guess? Locked down?”
Winston sighs and slants his head in agreement. “Yes, any and all of your arsenal located at the Continental is hereby locked down and no longer accessible to you,” he informs you coolly. “They have forbidden anyone from so much as touching it. Everything is now under the Table’s jurisdiction.”
Your lips pull back but it’s not a smile. “Good luck to them,” you mutter tightly. “They will never get their hands on my work.”
You had made sure of it.
His lips twitch slightly, a gleam in his eyes. “But of course not,” he agrees easily, knowingly. “However, this was in my personal possession and as such I see no reason as to why the Table’s restriction rule should apply to it.” 
A tiny box rests in his palm, even smaller than the Marker he offered John moments prior. 
You know that dark gleaming surface well. 
Your breath hitches, your wide-eyed stare flying up to his. “Is that…”
“Mhm.”
He offers it to you and you reach for it, having to draw a few deep breaths to keep your voice steady. “Thank you, Winston.”
A possible lifeline down the road. And a personal risk if anyone ever finds out he gave it to you.
His weathered, warm fingers linger against yours for a beat. “You know what you have to do,” he tells you pointedly, sternly. 
You will always make the same mistakes. You will always lose.
Yes, you do know. 
You’ve always known.
Fight, Winston’s expression tells you and you straighten, your fingers clenching around the tiny box. Make me proud.
I will.
His mouth twitches again. 
“I do.”
Here at the most critical time in your life—and even with the lingering, awful dread churning in your gut about Santino—you feel calm. 
You feel the calmest you’ve ever been. 
Santino will live and I will succeed. 
You repeat it in your head. Over and over. In the beat with your usual counting.
Those words will be forged into reality and you don’t care who you have to go through to make it happen. 
The significance of your exchange with Winston might have escaped John, but that doesn’t stop his next, icy words. “Winston, tell them, tell them all,” he starts and for the first time since his house, your look towards him. It isn’t John speaking, not right now. “Whoever comes, whoever it is, we’ll kill them all.”
We.
Before you can interject, Winston speaks with a faint smile, his previous coldness easing a touch. “Of course you will.” 
For several moments, you all stand unmoving but you know you can’t delay any longer.   
“Johnathan.”
“Winston.”
The man glances at you, a furrow between his brows accenting the deep lines of his face. “It’s a goodbye, my dear.”
You don’t so much as blink. “For now,” you note coolly. 
“Coffee and brandy are 7pm sharp every night,” he remarks casually, seemingly pleased at the steel in your voice, and his hands slip into his coat pockets. “I don’t tolerate tardiness.”
You read his words for what they are. 
I’ll be waiting for you back home. 
Nodding your head once, you turn to go. You don’t look back, either. It would hurt too much. There is always a chance—
No, no chances. Not this time.
With every step, you repeat your new mantra in your head. Form a new plan. 
Continental first. Not for weapons. But because you need—
“(Name).”
“Make it quick, John.”
His fingers brush over your hand and you pull back, halting on top of the stairs. He stands a few steps below and dog joins you at the top. 
“We should stick together,” he tells you urgently, his voice soft, cautious. “If there are people out there who are after you then they will use this opportunity.”
“Let them.”
Let Lucien come. He wanted you over the edge. 
Right now, you feel ready to rip his spine out with your bare hands. 
Lucien. The pale-haired monster who robbed you of the precious hours that could have averted this entire mess in the first place. 
He might not have pulled the trigger but he took from you the only chance of fixing this peacefully. 
His name has joined the list of those who will be dead soon enough. 
He wanted a dance. You will give him a hurricane. 
“In an hour we’ll be hunted by at least half of this city.”
Your eyes sweep over the park before they drag back to him and your brief smile is cold. “No, John,” you disagree mildly and watch him blink. “What will happen is that you will be hunted by 90% of them because they’re money hungry and 14 million is a pretty price to pay for someone’s head. People will come for me, too, but they will be so eager to get to you first that I will be long gone from this city by then. Buy me at least an hour, would you?”
You turn to go but he grips your wrist and you tense, rotating your body back in his direction. 
“Where are you going?”
“None of your business.”
“(Name), please.”
Your eyes narrow and you tug your wrist back. “I don’t owe you anything, John. Good luck. And I mean that, but you’re on your own.” 
Tumblr media
It’s started raining again.
The harsh, cold liquid slides down your arms and clothes as you dash up the staircase of the Continental.
The doorman pauses when he sees you, inclining his head in polite greeting. You only spare him a brief smile before dashing inside. Ignoring the wet squelch of your shoes against the gleaming floor, you go straight for the elevator, not needing to look towards the reception to know that Charon is not back yet.
Your eyes track over the people in the lobby, watching for any threats. Even with 35min still on the clock, you’re not about to take chances.
Wiping the water from your face, your partially numb fingers press on the floor one level below the basement. The basement floor only Charon and Winston have access to. The vaults. But you know better than to tempt fate. You’re not here for your solutions or poison.
The door pings open and you pull the door to the side, pushing ahead as quickly as possible.
Continental’s medical floor is eerily still. Most visitors receive care in their own rooms. This floor is for emergencies only. For worst of the worst.
Hurrying along the hall, you stumble to stop at the sight of a lithe frame of a woman sitting alone on a bench ahead. Her tattooed fingers rest on her other heavily bandaged hand and you exhale slowly, approaching cautiously.
Ares looks up, her expression pinched. She doesn’t look surprised to see you.
The clinical, dim light makes her face look more gaunt and the usually fierce glow in her blue eyes is dimmed too.
She rises slowly and you can see the difficulty in the action.
Your paralyser, as always, has done its job well.  
“Ares—”
It’s slow and clumsy and you see it coming but don’t try to dodge.
Her punch connects with your lower jaw and your head snaps to the side, the impact rattling your teeth.
You steady yourself with a wince, your fingers rising to nurse your tender skin and meet her raging eyes with a single, understanding nod.
“Yeah, I deserved that,” you mutter tiredly, wiping at your still damp skin. Your eyes lower for a second with a shaky swallow. “Can I see him?”
It’s a faint question, brimming with uncertainty.
For several minutes she only glowers at you, unmoving.
You’re about to plead with her that you have to see him but her hands lift before you can open your mouth again.
Alive. For now, she signs and her movements are more sluggish than usual. But no one is allowed to see him. Still in operation.
Swallowing, you glance towards the floor.
Few droplets of water have fallen to the floor from your dripping clothes.
“And the blood?”
They had enough.
The puncture wound in the crook of your arm twinges at those words.
An emergency transfusion had been a priority after the doctors just barely managed to stop the bleeding.
Noting the still furious twist of her features, you let your eyes flutter shut in defeat.
“I’m sorry,” you breathe quietly. “But what was I suppose to do?”
Ares doesn’t hesitate.
Shoot him in the face.
Your jaw clenches and you shake your head. “You know I couldn’t do that.”
And my friend and boss might die because you could not, is her angry reply and your throat closes up. I thought you cared about him more than that.
“I do care for him. I—” you shoot back immediately but your words twist around your tongue, halting you. “You have no idea just how much I care about him,” you add quietly, your voice thin, and something about the hard set of her features eases a smidge at that.
“I guess the punishment fits the crime,” you continue with a sardonic twist of your lips. Your eyes meet hers and the confusion you see on her face, in turn, confuses you. “I’m being made Excommunicado, Ares. I have 35 minutes before it goes live,” you explain slowly, your voice pinching with pain.
She blinks, her lips parting slightly.
The morose curve of your lips stretches. She knows full well what this means.
That’s why you move closer towards her even as your jaw still aches from her earlier punch. Reaching deep behind the layers of your clothing, you pull out an ordinary looking flip phone, holding it out to her.
“So please. I know you’re angry at me. I know, but—” you plead for her and tighten your grip on the burner phone. “I need to know. Whatever happens to him I—please, Ares. Please.”
After everything that’s just happened, she doesn’t have to do anything you’ve asked of her. She doesn’t owe you anything.
But her hand grasps yours, tightening her thin but worn fingers around your own. Your shoulders sag in relief as she pulls the phone from your hand and slips it into her pocket with a single, reluctant nod.
She still looks angry but—
“Thank you,” you whisper with a wobbly smile and focus on her bandaged hand. “Your hand?”
Roberto, you know, is recovering already.  
She doesn’t get to answer though.
Because before she can do so, a door opens from behind you, and a group of purposeful footsteps approaches.
At least four pairs.
“Well, well, look who it is.”
Your expression slackens.
Ares doesn’t react fast enough.
Hector reacts just fast enough.
You’re not sure if it’s the adrenaline or that humming dark or desperation or just anger and poor timing on his part, but you slam the man twice your size against the wall with a strength that causes a bang to rip through the empty hallway.
“Where were you?” you snarl, furious and low, your blade against the curve of his throat as you other tangles in his silky, dark suit. “Where the fuck were you?”
“Careful, sweetheart,” Hector warns softly, his mouth twitching into a sneer, but something glints in those icy eyes for a brief second. Surprise. “I’ll give you one free pass given the circumstances but there won’t be a second.”
Bodies surround you, but you ignore them, still glaring at the man before you.
“V, stop!”
“Oh, let her beat his ass, Julian,” another familiar voice drawls, unconcerned, his voice full of amusement. “I’ve been waiting for a rematch for years.”
A frustrated sigh. “Shut up, Step, you’re not helping.”
Another tall figure comes to a stop beside you—one that towers even over Hector but neither of you looks away from the other. “Let’s cool it, everyone,” that deep rumble of a voice tries to ease the tension. Dario. If Julian fails to mediate, then the burden falls onto him. Some things truly never change. “Come now, bella. Ease it up. V.”
You ignore Ares. You ignore the other members of the Four who are watching you and Hector with clear worry.  
“Where were you?” you wonder with a quiet exhale, your fury palpable.
Hector scowls at you and leans into your blade. The metal kisses those mighty wings but there is no fear in his eyes and your expression warps with rage. “Did you hit your head?” he mocks, annoyed. His grip on your hands constricts, his rings scoring your skin. “I was covering your slow ass and taking on a small army so you could get to Santino quicker but oopsie, am I right?”
You drop your hands away from him with disgust, breathing heavily and Hector rolls his eyes, fixing the cuffs of his suit with a bored expression.
“You failed him,” you whisper, choked, your voice soft with vicious sort of accusation. “You failed Camorra.”
The lowest insult you can offer him. His loyalty to Camorra is absolute. He may not follow the individual but this harms the entire family.
It goes so quiet at your words that you could hear a pin drop. Even Step’s not so subtle snickering ceases. Like they can all appreciate that this situation may take a turn for worse very quickly.
The last time you two fought, there was blood spilt.
This time, you imagine it might come down to more than just blood.  
Hector straightens, his sharp features stony. “I know.”
But it’s not enough.
And you can’t stop the avalanche now that it’s been unleashed.  
“He needed you to be there for him and where were you?” you continue on, spitting out every word out like a curse, an anathema. “You should have been faster getting to the gallery. You should have been better.”
Hector peers at you, unblinking.  
“Are we still talking about me?”
You leap at him but this time he’s ready for you and catches you in his grip, his back hitting the wall again, quieter this time.
Julian and Dario are there at once, their hands trying to drive you apart but a cool, calm command freezes you all.
“Enough.”
Charon.
Others look towards the man at the other end of the hallway but you and Hector are unmoving, still glaring at each other. You’re practically shaking with fury.
He’s right.
Your words were directed more at yourself than they were ever directed at him.
And yet.
“This doesn’t concern you, butler,” Hector calls out coolly, his quicksilver stare drilling into you and his grip on you doesn’t loosen. Smart man. “This is a Camorra matter.”
“Miss Vipress is not, however, Camorra.”
The unspoken Get your hands off her is clear to anyone with any semblance of common sense.
Hector relaxes against the wall, his head tilting as he waits.  
“If you’re done with your hissy fit, sweetheart,” he speaks gruffly after another tense few seconds and clicks his tongue. “We need to talk. In private.”
All eyes are on you.
Hector only blinks, bored.
You release your grip abruptly, your fingers flexing, and Ares practically materialises by your side while Dario partially places himself between you and the Camorra Devil.
Your eyes slide towards Charon who stands with his hands clasped behind him. He’s still clad in his coat and scarf from earlier, indicating that he’s just returned. Winston is nowhere to be seen. You incline your head in a silent thanks and cut a brief look at the Camorra Elite.
All four are rigged out in their typical dark suits. The deep burgundy you have also seen them wear is for Camorra’s special occasions only. Like births, deaths and coronations.
You suddenly recall that Julian and Dario never wore the typical Camorra wine red on Gianna’s coronation and your curiosity peaks. Except, of course, you have no time for a catch up with them now. No matter how welcomed the distraction would be.
“Fine,” you mutter, your muscles still taut. “Hurry it up.”
Hector brushes past Dario and the Four part for him, following his lead effortlessly. They move like a well-oiled machine. Dario shares a brief look with Julian, and the shorter man looks like he’s forcing back a sigh, his dark moustache twitching.
Hector wrenches the first door in the hallway open, slanting his head in your direction impatiently.
Ares, Dario and Julian walk in first; all of them varying degrees of uneasy.  
Step moves to follow, too, but Hector raises his hand, stopping him halfway.  
“Not you.”
Step with his thin, wiry frame and pale face looks like a kid picking a fight with a bull. Even though he’s the youngest from the guard, that makes him no less dangerous. You can’t quite see his eyes behind those customary round sunglasses he usually wears everywhere but you can see the irritated strain on his face.  
“You’re joking.”
His voice is low and stark with bitter disbelief but Hector doesn’t so much as twitch.
“No,” Hector deadpans without missing a beat. “Guard the hallway. We don’t need ears.”
For a second, those pale eyes jump over your shoulder where Charon no doubt lingers.  
“Fine,” Step forces out, forcefully cheerful and his head tips in your direction, his grin bright. His tattoos stretch across his neck and he wiggles his fingers at you, his own Camorra rings gleaming in the artificial light. “Would thy fair lady like anything from the vending machine? My treat.”
Your eyes go to Hector for a second.  
“Skittles.”
Step grins even wider, if possible. “Only if you let me eat the yellow ones.”
You almost smile, then. If all this wasn’t going on, if Santino wasn’t clinging to life and you weren’t about to become one of the most wanted individuals in the world, you might have.
“Sure,” you agree before adding a deliberate, “I reckon I owe you after the last time.”
Hector’s eyes narrow at that, becoming two slits, and Step’s strained grin transforms into something slyer, more biting.
He always enjoys having something over Hector’s head.
He pushes the glasses up his nose and gives you a staged nod. His tongue pokes the inside of his cheek and he gives Hector another stare before wandering off without a backwards glance.
The leader of the Elite’s gestures for you to get into the room and you push past him.
Julian is signing something to Ares when you enter, and Dario stands beside them, his hands burrowed deep into his suit pockets. His long hair is pulled back into a high bun as always and loose strands brush against his beard when he turns towards you.
Beneath their pitch-black jackets, you can just make out the gleam of their weapons.
They’re armed to the teeth.
Good.
The other two turn to you when you enter the room and you try for a smile, no matter how forced.
“It’s good to see you both,” you tell them and mean it and both men smile, too. Your attention swings back to Hector, however, just as the Devil closes the door behind him, sealing you all inside. “But whatever it is that you want from me make it quick.”
A subtle threat.
The man doesn’t outwardly react, simply lifting his arm.
“Catch.”
Your hand snaps out, your actions instinct alone, and grab the tiny object that sails through the air towards you.
It’s small and cool to the touch.
Your fingers loosen from a fist, blinking in confusion and something in your gut hardens at the realisation of what exactly you’re looking at.
“They—” your voice cracks and you pause, forcing calm back into your demeanour as you turn your attention to Hector who only stares at you emotionless. “They will not follow me. I’m an outsider. Half of them don’t even like me.”
The ring of Camorra sits in your outstretched palm.
The ring only the Head of Camorra is permitted to wear.
Or, in this case, the Acting Boss appointed prior.
Your stomach churns.
You have seen this ring on Giovanni’s hand many times. The golden metal that gleams like new even though you know it’s been in the D’Antonio family for generations. The blood-red ruby the size of your thumb nail glimmers in the light and you stare at it in disbelief. You can’t even begin to imagine this ring’s worth.
“You’re right,” Hector retorts blankly, unfeeling, and crosses his arms over his chest. A ripple of his muscles teases the deadly strength there. In dimmer light, his pale eyes seem to almost glow with wry mirth as he addresses you. “Frankly, they rather shoot you dead than follow you. But there are still those who value what that ring represents. That believe the order and the command that comes with it. Those who answer to that ring will obey. Princeling at least had enough foresight to prepare for the worst case scenario. Little Saint has made you his heir, sweetheart. And until he either dies or revokes the title himself, it’s binding.”
Binding because it came from Hector himself and no one would ever question his loyalty or integrity towards Camorra.
Santino has outmanoeuvred everyone by giving away his symbol of power. The very ring he’s been desperate to wear since he was a little boy.
A safety net in case he dies.
The realisation makes your heart hurt.
The families of Camorra will not obey you because, to them, you are nothing. You have not been sworn in, do not answer to their laws and their authority. But they cannot harm you either. And anyone who does, Camorra or not, risk invoking the wrath of the entire family if they do.
But above all that—
Those who answer to that ring will obey.      
Your head turns towards the other two Elites’ and Ares. They’re already looking at you and not one of them looks surprised by this turn of events. Either they already knew beforehand or know Santino well enough to not put a gamble like that past him.
Almost in sync, the three of them bow their heads.
A show of respect. An unspoken promise that what you command, they will do.
A shuddering breath rushes out of your lungs that has nothing to do with your damp hair or clothes.
Clenching your jaw, your eyes drag towards Hector who hasn’t moved from his spot by the door.
He doesn’t budge, his arms still crossed over his chest, stretching the seams of his suit.
The Devil of Camorra does not bow his head to you.
He bows to no one.
The only man he’s ever respected enough for such a gesture is rotting six feet under the dirt and his ring is now in your hands. You don’t think there will ever be another individual alive that Hector will ever respect enough to bow his head to them. Oh, if only Giovanni had known years ago that one day you will be bestowed the most valuable heirloom in his family’s possession.
You imagine he would have killed you on the spot.
He laughed, and he said, ‘He is more like me than I realised. He would let this whole world burn to ash, as long as she’s the one standing beside him in the flames.’  
Gianna’s words echo at the back of your mind, and a part of you wonders if perhaps Giovanni always did know. If perhaps he always suspected that due to whatever circumstances you might reach this moment in time one day.
You think about your brief conversation on that snowy balcony at Prague and know that you’re right.
“Stay here,” you tell the trio on the other side of the room. Your words sound far away, distant, but strong too. Focused. “No one who isn’t us or the doctor comes near him, understood?”
Your stare drifts to the far off wall in a daze, and you know that somewhere in this building, Santino is out there fighting.
As will you.
Nodding your head at them, you turn to go.
Hector’s arms loosen across his chest and he steps after you when you move in the direction of the door.
You halt at once, your head snapping to face him.
“What are you doing?”
A slow, lazy roll of his eyes as he fishes for a cigarette.
“Coming with you. Were you not listening? I go where that ring goes,” he informs you dully, and lights a cigarette with expert ease. He takes a deep drag, savouring it, and frowns at you, the deep curve of his eyebrows pinching together. “Drop the fucking scowl, sweetheart. I know you think that just because you’re in New York and your connections here run deep, you’re untouchable or some shit but you’re wrong.”
Smoke rolls from between his lips as he talks and your scowl only deepens. In return, he looks amused at best. “In twenty minutes half the scum of this city will come for you just to prove a point,” he reminds you, tapping the glass of his expensive watch, and the bird tattoo on the back of his hand flutters like your slipping time. “Don’t let your over-inflated sense of self-importance cloud your common sense.”
Your turn towards him fully, your chin tilting.
“You will stay here,” you tell him calmly, ignoring the way his eyes narrow and every strong muscle in his body quivers as if in anticipation. “And you will guard him with your life.”
You think you hear Julian curse under this breath. Dario takes a step towards you both.
“Are you ordering me?”
A dark, silky snarl of a question.
Your expression is as rigid as your body. Your fingers around the Camorra ring tighten. “I’m asking you. And I only do that once out of respect.”
A glint of something in his eyes that’s gone too quickly for you to examine.
He retreats and it feels like missing disaster by a breath.
The cigarette returns to his mouth and he grins around it. It’s a callous, mocking thing.
“Fine. Enjoy being hunted, sweetheart.”
You stare at him for a beat, too aware of your time constraint.
Camorra ring rolls in your damp palm again. Grasping it, you drag the heavy metal onto the middle finger of your left hand. Your fist clenches, the skin under your knuckles straining. The ring glimmers in the light, filling your veins with…purpose.
I will see you again, Santino.
Inclining your head in an equally disdainful manner, you only offer the man before you an aloof, “Blood for blood.”
Camorra’s words.
D’Antonio family words.
This time Hector’s version of a smile reveals teeth, almost pleased.
“Blood for blood.”
Tumblr media
Streets blur around you.
Stumbling through the rain and the puddles drowning the New York streets, you count every breath you take, focusing on both not exerting too much energy but also your surroundings.
Everyone is an enemy.
In 7 minutes that will become a painful reality.
No one has tried anything yet. But you have seen and felt far too many eyes on you already. Many are no doubt weighing the risks. There is no reward for killing you, and most know the danger that shadows your every step.
You don’t need to touch them to kill them.
Ducking into a narrow alleyway, you slam your body weight against the sturdy metal door. Your fists follow, slamming against the door over and over again.
“Doc! Let me in! It’s me!” you shout over the pour of rain and slam your fist against the metal a few more times. “Doc!”
The door swings open suddenly and you brace yourself against the door frame.
Doc’s frantic stare meets yours and all he forces out is a shaky, “You shouldn’t have come here.”
Bowing your head in respect, you push past him. “Yeah, I know,” you mutter under your breath, working on steadying your breathing. “I just need a few things. I still have time so—”
Your words die on your tongue and you halt, your eyes narrowing.
John sits on the patient chair, his white shirt undone and a lamp shining over his bloodied shoulder.
Fresh blood.
He grips a gun in his hand but doesn’t raise it in your direction.
You hate the fact that he looks relieved—happy, even—to see you.
Blinking, you swipe your forearm over your face and move towards the shelves. Doc rushes back towards John and you glance at the clock on the wall.
4 minutes.
“What happened?” you question coldly and start opening different drawers and pulling ingredients apart.
“Ernest.”
“Funny guy but always lacked common sense,” you drone without looking at him and rip another drawer open, rummaging through the content inside. “Did you know that he tried to ask me out on a date once?”
“No.”
“Yeah.”
3 minutes.
Grabbing a familiar-looking vial, you give it a shake, lifting it to the light before you unscrew the top and drown the liquid inside.
The taste is bitter and numbs your tongue a little. You allow your face to scrunch up in disgust and shake your head harshly.
“I’m going to pay you back, Doc,” you wheeze, continuing your frantic search.
The older man huffs and you hear the fatigue there. “Just try and not make a mess.”
A few beats of quiet follow aside from your hurried rooting around Doc’s supply closet.  
“Where is it, Doc?”
“Indonesian Green Erla—”
“I’ve found the plant,” you cut him off, glancing at the clock on the wall again. “Where is it?”
2 minutes.
Doc works with nimble, experienced fingers but he’s meticulous and his focus remains on John’s wound. The man in question looks bewildered by your exchange but doesn’t interject.
“Doc—”
“You gave it to me because you told me that you were afraid of what it can do—”
“Where is it?”
You have never dared to take that tone with him. Because you like him and respect him too much. But your frayed temper strains and the coldness in your voice stills both Doc and John.
“Doc, I need it.”
The clock keeps ticking.
Your head snaps towards the wall for the hundredth time.
1 minute.
“Floorboards. Under the table by the wall.”
You rush towards it, pushing the table aside roughly, and ignore the clatter of glass as vials and medical supplies fall.
Slipping free a blade, you wedge it between floorboards, trying to rip it open.
John is urging the Doc to hurry but you focus only on your task.
“Five.”
John counts and your breathing kicks up a notch.
The wood creaks, finally coming loose and you rip it away, dropping it unceremoniously beside you.
“Four.”
You pull different boxes and packages apart. You know what you’re looking for.
“Three.”
Your eyes snag onto a tiny box and you grab it. It’s a twin—the same dark, smooth material that fits into your palm—to another tiny box already sitting in your pocket courtesy of Winston.
“Two.”
Your two deadliest creations. One created out of hate and malice and another out of hope for a better future.
One finished. One incomplete.
“One.”
Your gaze snaps to John’s just as the clock above head strikes 6pm.
Time’s up.
. . .
an: And so everyones’ favourite Italian lives. For now. :) also the man really said “fuck tradition, I do what I want” and we love to see it!!! 
Fun fact, I was planning to do Chicago (finally) right after C13 but since Chicago will be a 2 parter, I imagined that waiting for six weeks to know if Santino lives might not have been that much fun for you lot lol. 
Also a few people really worried about Team John after C13 and were like “Team J is ded” and actually as you can see from the events of this chapter the exact opposite is true. Now, you may be reading this and be like “how is this positive for them?” but this had to happen. V needed to realise that she still clung to John and loved him but it wasn’t the right kind of love. A love for a man gone, a spectre, a dream. Her dropping the ring represents her letting go of the past and starting completely fresh. Their mend after Marcus was just a prelude oppose to actual break. This is the break. All these years, V has blamed herself for John leaving by assuming that she wasn’t good enough or that John loved Helen more. Neither is true. The choice was always between who John was and who he wanted to be. He loved both V and Helen the same and it really could have gone either way. Now, at this juncture, they can start again on the same page. Now, this is not to say he’s magically forgiven for all the shit he did. He isn’t. A lot still hinges on Santino and how he will get on in the upcoming chapters. But a lot of you were like “um kat wtf?” and I hope this chapter proves that I do things for a reason and that this build up has been coming for a while now. 
There’s been a lot of things set up that are yet to be revealed. 
As always, all my love to all of you for your support and encouraging comments <33 and love for my dumb OCs, too! Love you guys and hope you’re all staying safe!
481 notes · View notes
aliceslantern · 3 years
Text
Give/Take, a Kingdom Hearts fanfic, chapter 2
Ienzo has been too busy since the war to be overwhelmed by the past. But with little progress to be made in his work with Kairi, old nightmares start to invade.
Riku is a glorified housesitter. Lonely and faced with no choice but to wait for a way to find his friends, he eagerly accepts when Ienzo asks him to help do repairs around the castle. Before long, the two strike up an unlikely friendship, united by their dark pasts and their attempts to be better people.
But just as they begin to consider something more... Kairi wakes up.
Ienzoku (Ienzo/Riku), post-Melody of Memory, slow burn. Updates Thursdays until it's done.
Chapter summary:  Ienzo and Ansem have an honest conversation about his time as Zexion. Riku is restless.
Read it on FF.net/on AO3
---
Ienzo thought often about sleep. Most of his days were preoccupied with sleep, and hearts, and trying to remember what he had studied years ago. In the intervening years in the Organization, he had cared less about hearts and more about Kingdom Hearts.
Hearts. Sleep. Old men passive-aggressively jabbing at each other.
His hands were on the keyboard, and he saw code slowly and steadily ticking in. Code he should subsequently be de coding. But he… felt…
Ansem’s hand on his shoulder startled him, making him gasp aloud like a startled animal. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
Ienzo shook the fuzz out of his eyes, his heart still pounding in his chest, adrenaline making him shaky. All of these human reactions were so sensorily intense . “It’s… it’s alright. I was the one far away.”
“Are you alright?”
“I’m fine. I’m fine.” He stood, feeling woozy. “I’m…” He pressed two fingers to his brow, trying to hide the dizziness.
“How long have you been here?” Ansem asked softly.
Ienzo blinked, and realized, “I don’t know.”
“Why don’t you go get some rest?”
“I don’t need rest, I need to keep working through this.” He scowled. “It doesn’t help that my memory of coding is hazy at best--”
“Then why don’t you let me help you? I can give you a refresher on the basics.” He smiled kindly, and Ienzo felt an unexpected stab of memory--sitting as a small child on Ansem’s lap as he taught him the very basics of HTML, his eyes gleaming with pride at Ienzo’s first project (a page that simply said “HELLO!”).
But then, equally… his eyes flicked over to the closed door to the lab, the one he’d begged Ansem to finalize. And he was reminded for the millionth time that this was his fault.
“Would that help?” Ansem prompted.
He shook his head to dismiss the memories. “Yes. Yes, that would be prudent.”
“When was the last time you slept?” Ansem asked.
“I’m fine.”
He frowned.
“Really. I’m fine.”
There was a pause. Ansem knotted his hands together. “Naminé once told me that Nobodies do not need sleep. Is that true?”
Ienzo’s eyebrows shot up. Ansem hadn’t brought up the reality of their pasts--namely, the ten years he and Even had been Nobodies. “Yes, it’s true,” he said. “One physiologically can , of course, but it is not necessary to live.”
Ansem pursed his lips. “Does it feel… odd, to return to those needs, then?”
Ienzo considered, woozily. “Yes, it does,” he admitted. “I feel like I’m losing a lot of time from my day.”
He opened his mouth, closed it, then finally said, “do you like being human again?”
“Well, I had no say in the matter,” he said, “but it is… better than being the monster I was. I…” He rested his hand on his chest, feeling the pound of his heart. “I like having choice.”
Ansem smiled. “I’m sure you must.”
Ienzo exhaled. “I’ve done a great many awful things,” he said. “I wasn’t… a passive captive. Were it not for Saїx’s machinations, I likely would’ve been second in command. I… cared for their goals. I wanted it.”
Ansem cocked his head. “To be whole?”
“I don’t think so.” Ienzo squinted, trying to remember how it had felt to be Zexion. “In pursuit of… knowledge. Of growth of the Organization. I’m… I’m sorry.” Guilt hardened into a sour seed in his stomach, making him nauseous. “I’m so sorry.”
Ansem digested this, his eyes going somewhere distant and sad. “It says a lot about who you truly are, that the moment you were whole again, you chose the path of light,” he said gently.
“It does not feel that way.”
“I’m sure,” he said. “But we’ve all done things we regret. There’s no changing the past, as paltry as that sounds. Helping Kairi, and ergo, Sora and Riku… is a good first step.”
“I’m not sure it will ever be enough.”
“You can’t help how you grew up,” Ansem said. “In darkness, in nothing, manipulated, I’m sure, by them. You were just a boy. You said so yourself. How old were you, Ienzo?”
“Just shy of nine,” he said, not wanting to make eye contact.
“Precisely. A brilliant child… but still a child.”
“But what of--when I grew older? When I should have known better?”
Ansem squeezed his shoulder a second time. “By then you already believed.”
“I’m not innocent. I… the things I’ve done…” He exhaled. “I cannot simply absolve myself of guilt. I… I don’t want to.”
“I do hope that someday you can forgive yourself,” Ansem said. “You’re too young to live with such a heavy heart.”
“I think it is earned,” Ienzo said.
Ansem sighed.
“I’m going to go try to sleep for a few hours,” he said. “I’m sorry to leave this all in your lap.”
“It’s quite alright. I don’t mind.”
Ienzo wasn’t sure what else to say, so he started walking back to his room. He thought about what Ansem had said. His heart did feel heavy--quite literally. But how could he just… move on and have a normal life after everything he’d done? He didn’t know of anyone who’d messed up as colossally as he had. Wouldn’t it be wrong ? Masturbatory, so to speak? Where was his karmic payback? Why had he gotten this wholeness so many craved so dearly? He didn’t even want --
There had to be some way to silence the noise in his head.
Ienzo took a quick shower, put on some pajamas, and climbed into bed. His bedroom felt more cluttered and cramped than he remembered, the window by his double bed drafty. The overburdened bookcase was packed two and three deep, the rolltop desk flooded with yet more papers. He should clean and organize, remove the very last of his childhood things; there was still kid’s clothing in some of his dresser’s drawers.
His mind was swimming hopelessly with memories of the Organization’s plans to take down worlds--
Somehow, Ienzo fell into a restless sleep.
He recognized this dream, this nightmare. The tight, dark corners of the basement of Castle Oblivion. A redheaded demon, a boy in a black-and purple jumpsuit. A sharp glove at his throat, the tight heat of darkness swallowing him, and he couldn’t breathe couldn’t breathe--
Ienzo sat up. Slowly. He touched the scar at the base of his throat, thick and ridged. It was the darkness, not the replica’s sharp gloves, that had left this mark on him. Tears burned his eyes. He felt pathetic, weak, for being in the grip of this memory. It was over with. It was the least of what he’d deserved.
Human.
He thought of the dizzy spin of those first few moments after he’d woken, on the cold lab floor, bleeding from the marks around his throat. How the swelling had made it feel like he couldn’t breathe, still, how everything felt like it was echoing loudly around him, his heart like a weight in his chest. Trying to push himself up, seeing Even and Dilan’s brutalized forms, Aeleus trying not to show how much pain he, too, was in. Being the least injured, it had been up to Ienzo to try and tend to their wounds. At least he’d had the foresight to study medicine in the Organization.
And truthfully, even though it had been nearly two months back in this body, with this heart, Ienzo… still was not used to humanity, the pulse and pound of unexpected emotions. Once he couldn’t get open a jar of peanut butter for his breakfast toast and the anger he felt when he struggled was so overwhelming he’d just thrown the damn thing. But more than anything he felt a guilt so thick it was like lead, and an anxiety he could never fully set this right.
He looked at the clock. He’d slept about five hours, which he supposed after that nightmare was all he’d get. He was feeling nauseous and achy again, shaky with low blood sugar. So much time I must spend doing maintenance on this body. It seemed almost like a waste.
But he needed to stay alive. To help, to atone.
Ienzo got up and went to the kitchen.
---
Riku couldn’t take the silence anymore. It was almost making him jumpy, and after so long without human interaction, he thought he was starting to hear sounds that weren’t there. The dizzy nightmares of that city didn't help. He wondered if he should tell Ienzo and the others about it; but every time he tried to remember fine details, all he could recall was the deep blue color of the sky. Not helpful.
If not for the gummiphone, Riku would’ve lost track of time, too. Ienzo had told him how to use it, but he still struggled a bit with the interface. But, he figured, if Sora , who had nearly failed their high school computer literacy course, could grasp it, so could he.
Sora.
Riku felt something like a stab of pain. It felt like it had been a long time since he’d seen him, since they’d gotten to do more than chat for a few minutes. Kairi, too, he’d barely gotten to speak with at the beach during their brief victory party. At least he knew she was--physically--okay.
He felt so… alone.
He took a deep breath in and let it out, slowly. I’m not alone, he forced himself to think. Even if it feels that way. Our hearts are connected.
That didn’t make the silence any less piercing.
Riku got up. He had to go get some laundry, make himself something to eat. At least this was something he could do.
He wondered if it were too soon to go back to Radiant Garden. He knew Ienzo said he’d call the moment something came up, but maybe Cid had something new, or maybe there were even some Heartless to fight. Something. Someone.
“Oh god, I’m losing my mind,” he said out loud. He took out the gummiphone and looked down at its screen. It was still set to the generic background it came with, mostly because he didn’t know how to change it. With clumsy thumbs, he opened the text messaging app and started to write. The keyboard felt awkward in his hands.
Mickey,
I hope your journey with Donald and Goofy is going well. I’m guessing it must be good to spend time with them again. How’s the Queen?
I’ve been staying in the Land of Departure. Terra asked me to, but I think it’s partially because he wanted me to feel like I had an official duty as a Keyblade master. Mostly it’s just housesitting. If you ever have time, you three should come by. It’s a lot prettier than Castle Oblivion. It feels more alive.
The Radiant Garden guys are still hard at work studying Kairi’s heart, so she’s been asleep. They warned me it might take a long time. I still wish there was something I could do, but the power of waking won’t help in this case. So they say, anyway. I don’t really understand it fully myself.
If there’s anything I can do to make your journey any easier, let me know. Take care of yourselves out there.
--Riku
This written, it didn’t make Riku feel any less alone. More like he was speaking out into nowhere. He went and finished his chores, worked out for a little while. When he came back there was a response.
Howdy Riku!
Great to hear from ya! The Queen and Daisy are both doing great. We actually got to talk to them last night--love these nifty gadgets! If only we’d had them years ago… can you thank Ienzo for them the next time you see him? Chip and Dale also say hello to you both.
So far we’re doing our best to find more information about Sora, but so far there are no leads that I can tell, anyway, and you know how sharp Goofy is looking for these things. This all got so complicated… but I have hope that we’ll all be together soon!
I hope you’re not getting too stir crazy up in there. If you like, the Queen says you’re welcome to visit any time. And if we’re in the area I’m sure we’ll drop by! I hope staying there isn’t too hard on you.
Thanks for writing! Speak soon.
--Mickey.
Riku exhaled. He was positive he was reading too much into the tone of the letter. Mickey was never condescending towards him. Every word he’d written, he’d meant.
Maybe Riku should get out of here. He could thank Ienzo, for one thing, maybe help with some Heartless there, or the restoration committee was always working on some project or another. Get his hands dirty, like the work he used to do on the play island--
He was used to the accompanying stab of pain he got when he thought of them, but it didn’t make it any easier. Yes. Riku very much needed to get out of here.
---
It was raining in Radiant Garden when Riku got in. It washed away the rest of the gel in his hair, making it fall hopelessly into his eyes, and he kept trying to blow it out of his face. The haircut had been a spur-of-the-moment decision, something to get rid of that old self, but this current in-between length was unbearable. He didn’t want to think about spikes or spiky hair. (The fact that he’d run out of hair gel was also besides the point.) He wandered the streets for a time. Just seeing other people was nice, made him remember he was real.
The slope up to the entrance of the castle was muddy in the deluge. At least I’ll have an excuse to do laundry when I get back, he thought. One of the guards--he didn’t remember their names yet, and decided he really should--waved him in. “Try not to track mud all over the place,” he said, rolling his eyes.
Riku washed off his shoes with a water spell and kept walking. The place was always dank and damp in the best of circumstances, but today it was downright cold. He shivered and wished he knew air magic, something to dry himself off. Oh well. He’d had worse recently than being a little cold and wet.
The path up to the lab was very much familiar now. He saw places where the people here were trying to repair all the structural issues; the moldy carpeting torn up, the fallen pipes cleared away. The circular office before the lab had been cleaned up too; the bits of broken glass were finally gone.
Riku saw them before they saw him. He observed them for a few minutes, in their long white coats and oddly formal scarves. He tried not to audibly shiver, his hair sending droplets onto the floor.
“All looks… very much ordinary , from what we’ve been able to decipher,” the one formerly known as Vexen was saying. “Would help if I could understand your shorthand.”
Riku saw a scowl cross Ienzo’s face, the first mean expression he’d seen on the young man since they’d met again. He thought of Zexion, all claws and cruelness and teeth. “My shorthand is up-to-date. It’s not my fault your knowledge of coding has fallen by the wayside.”
“Boy, I have more important things to do--”
“Like what? Is this not our priority?”
“ She is our priority. Keeping up with some language is not.”
“Your sniping does not help either,” Ansem the Wise added. He went over to the console computer, punched some things in, and shook his head. “Though I agree with Ienzo that we should all at the very least be on the same page.”
Ienzo’s smirk became a hesitant smile.
Then, “I think we can all use a crash course.”
The smile became a scowl again. Riku chuckled despite himself. So the politeness was partially an act. Good to know. He crossed over into the hallway, letting his footsteps make more noise than earlier. Their heads snapped up; Even seemed to struggle to get his expression to be neutral, while Ansem offered a kindly smile. Ienzo’s face simply went blank, and Riku felt an odd surge of jealousy for his control over his emotion. “Oh, hello, Riku. We weren’t expecting you,” he said.
“I’m sorry just to drop by like this,” he said, feeling a blush color his face. “But I was wondering if--” Seeing their faces fall just slightly, “there’s… no news, is there?”
Ienzo took a few steps closer to him. He always seemed to be a little… cautious, in the way he moved around Riku. Could this really be about the bad blood in their past? “I’m very sorry, but no. No significant change.”
He glanced over towards Kairi, still fast asleep in the chair. He noted that at least they’d given her a blanket. “How’s she doing?”
“She’s being kept very comfortable, I assure you,” Ienzo said. “Neurological functioning is the way it should be.”
He crossed his arms, trying to suppress the shivering; it was even colder in here. “Could I… can I go up to her? It won’t interrupt anything, will it?”
Ienzo shook his head. “She’s too deeply asleep to be disturbed by our voices. Though perhaps--” Looking him over and wrinkling his nose. “You might like a towel?”
Riku looked at his palms. His wrist braces were awkwardly wet, and he knew they’d take hours to dry out. “Sorry. It’s, uh, raining.”
He nodded. “Come with me.”
He followed Ienzo. He was only the slightest bit taller than Riku now, but his strides seemed long, quick and precise, the white coat flaring out. “If you’d like, I can get you something dry to wear,” he said. “We’re probably about the same size.”
The idea of dry clothes was appealing, but the idea of wearing something of Ienzo’s made him feel, well, pretty weird. “No, that’s okay, thanks,” he said. “I’m probably gonna head out before too long anyway.”
“I imagine you must be quite busy.” Ienzo opened a door to a very average linen closet and pulled out a white towel. Riku did feel much better with it around his shoulders.
He just shrugged in response. They started walking back.
“If you’re worried about her health, she’s in quite good hands,” Ienzo said. “I… understand why you might be hesitant.”
“It’s… not that.” Not entirely. “I just…”
“Worry about your friends?” Ienzo prompted. “I can imagine. Yes, it’s been… a rather tectonic year or so.”
“We’ve all been separated on and off since our world fell,” he said, feeling a stab of guilt. “Though that was… kind of my fault. Not kind of. It was .”
Ienzo’s eyebrows shot up. “Is that so?”
“I know, I know. Some hero, right?” he forced himself to laugh.
“I… know that feeling exactly.” Ienzo cleared his throat. “Were it not for all we’ve done here… well.” He sighed. “We cannot… change the past. Not without a lot of nonsense.”
Riku smiled a little despite the heaviness of the conversation. “It almost feels… fake, how all this happened. When I heard about the… vessels, and the time travel, I was just like… are you kidding me? ”
Ienzo chuckled. “I think we all had that reaction. Even I cannot comprehend what exactly he was planning to do--and I was part of some of it.”
Riku thought about that laugh for a moment, how different it sounded than Zexion’s. More human, softer. Then again, the boy next to him was human. Trying to be better. Aren’t we all, he thought, wryly.
Back in the lab, he crossed over to Kairi and took her hand, hoping his wasn’t too cold. Her breathing was deep and even, and she looked peaceful. He wondered if she actually felt that way, what the “examination” made her feel. He almost asked, but Ansem and Even seemed to be deep into some conversation he couldn’t understand, and Ienzo seemed distracted, his brows furrowed. “So, uh,” he began slowly. “How’s the Heartless population around here?”
He looked up, startled. “The claymore defense system manages it quite well,” he said, with a touch of defensiveness. “Though I guess there might be a few hanging around the edges of town.”
“Gotcha,” he said. “Well. I’m going to go check in with the committee. But before I go. Um. The King said thank you for the gummiphone. And that Chip and Dale said hello.”
“Of course,” he said, his expression again quite neutral. “That was kind of them.”
Riku took off his damp towel and folded it. He left the castle and went back out into the rain. If anything, the deluge had gotten heavier, to the point where his left wrist (which had never quite healed correctly) was throbbing. Ienzo had been right about the Heartless; the few ones in the center of town were easily dispatched without him even having to draw his Keyblade. Riku found himself scowling. Logically, he knew that the system was fantastic for the civilians here. But it took from him the only thing he could do to be of use. As it grew darker, he wandered farther and farther into the fissures surrounding town, where he finally found something worth fighting.
He tried to vent his frustration into these Heartless, especially at his own uselessness. He was a Keyblade master , and all he could do was beat up a few mooks, was wait around for things to happen. He hated feeling like this; it was so like the old days on the island. At least this time he wouldn’t do something so off-the-walls stupid like let a creep in a robe persuade him to do what they wanted.
No, instead he was fighting Heartless. Alone. In the rain.
By the time he’d fought the last one in the vicinity, it was dark, and he could no longer suppress the shaking. “Idiot,” he said out loud. The clothes might protect him from darkness, but they wouldn’t protect him from the common cold. He should go back to the Land of Departure, take a hot bath, make himself some soup, and go to bed.
Riku went deeper into the fissures.
2 notes · View notes
efrmellifer · 4 years
Text
FFxivWrite ‘20, Six
Prompt: choose your own word (unbroken), post-5.3 (includes spoilers), 1,281 words
She wasn’t leaving, she reminded herself as she slipped from the bed. She was staying on the Source, she was staying in Ishgard, just not in the house.
The covers clung to Etien as she rose to her feet, rising unsteadily and taking her first steps of the day. It was still dark, so she relied half on the strength of her vision and half on feeling around as she slid on a dress and stockings thick enough to keep her warm in the pre-dawn weather of Ishgard and gathered up her lyre.
As she lifted it from its place, she turned back to look at Aymeric, hoping he was still sleeping. He was,  though his arms were outstretched across the bed, as if they had followed her form, reaching out for her as she’d parted from him.
She wondered how many times he’d slept in that position while she’d been gone, her heart only sinking at the thought. She could believe that he still wanted her, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that even so, she was depriving him of something, having to be gone so often and so long. Even as she tried to mitigate the extended separations.  
She’d never been warned that there was so much guilt associated with the mantle she took up.
She made her way to the door, shrugging on a cloak and toeing into her boots. Then she was out the door.
As Ishgard started to stir around her, Etien took in the scenery. It didn’t look much different, but with the snow stopped for a moment, the sky clear, she could almost imagine the place in springtime. Still, a wintry stillness held its command over the stones. Knights on their watches blinked slowly into the light growing stronger with every moment, but other than them, the city was empty.
Nobility sleeps, indeed.
She kept walking, her steps barely audible even against the quiet atmosphere, finally echoing when she’d started down the stairs to Foundation.
Etien settled into seated, tail draped next to her and avoiding a patch of snow, on that rough, raw edge of the city’s walls, where they dropped off into nothing at the sides of the Steps of Faith.
She got her lyre resting comfortably in her arms, strumming at it absently until things started to solidify for her. She had been thinking about guilt when she’d left bed, and that wasn’t for no reason.
She may have told Aymeric and Estinien about the fear she’d felt during Elidibus’ trial, but not the guilt. She wanted to, wished she could, absolve herself of the feeling, when she hadn’t had much of a choice. She’d even said so—what was she going to do, fail or die?
Failure would have only proved Elidibus right. Death would have only damned the First, the Source, and the Scions.
Well, some part of her wanted to think Feo Ul could have done one last favor for her, carried the vessels between worlds, one by one, until they were all whole again, and Etien could be laid to rest at the bottom of the ocean, too faithful to her own pursuits to kill a magicked cubus.
But she hadn’t done that. She swallowed her feelings like she’d swallowed all that light before, took up her bow, and dry-sobbed as the arrow flew. She had always been an excellent marksman, even with tears in her eyes.
Whom did the storm weep for?
The notes were coming faster now, still with no words, as she thought. She’d even delayed it in the moment, starting with Raubahn. That hadn’t been pleasant with all the history and fellowship there, but at least she could lie to herself and say this was a show of her skill, same as it had been during the very grand melee that was being replicated here.
And then, Lucia. Lucia, who had been one of her bridesmaids. Wasn’t that some fine betrayal, to have her as accompaniment to the altar and then turn weapons against her? This was harsh psychological warfare Elidibus was waging, that it still echoed in Etien’s mind when all had been resolved, the battle won, and she had returned to comfort and relative peace at home.
She would have been at peace, if this guilt wasn’t still looped around her like a chain or collar, heavy for all it implied.
But finally, of the three who had rushed her, only one remained, and she couldn’t look him in the eyes. If being under Aymeric’s loving gaze was like standing in the warmth of the sun, this recreation’s eyes on her felt like being thrust into daylight after too long confined in darkness, burning and painful.
She didn’t squint, though, her vision just blurred and streaked with another wave of tears that made that familiar, favorite shade of blue wobble in front of her, the wavering gleam of gold too harsh. Something had taken her over, shouting down her heart’s screams of Don’t hurt him, after all he’s done for you, with all he is to you, mechanizing her motions.
Retrieve an arrow. Press its nock to the bowstring, press it close until she could feel it stick. Draw all the way to her chin and… release. It sank into flesh, a muffled grunt her sign she’d struck true enough.
She stood there a long time when he fell, or what felt like a long time, just thinking, lamenting. Ah, only her aim was true, if she would willingly loose an arrow at the heart of her beloved.
Recalling him apologizing to Estinien for that very same action only added another layer of weight. It was fake, and she knew that somewhere within, past the rote motions and the wailing that wouldn’t quiet (how could it, in such a situation?). But the necessity of pressing forward had her trusting her instincts and ignoring her senses in equal measure, and it had her head spinning.
It was… eerie, recalling it now, how Elidibus had taunted her with something deeply similar to a comment she’d made (yowled) to Zephirin, about how only Haurchefant hadn’t been using her.
Knowing these darknesses of her heart were being played out and called down to her to mock her eased the pain a little. In fact, it was this moment that her strumming stopped, that realization dawned on her the same as the morning’s light was finally hitting her.
She had not been helpless, the proof of that was that she had come out of the battle alive and relatively unscathed. She had been made victim to dirty tricks and underhanded designs tailored to break her. But she had remained unbroken. Twice now, she had been unbroken.
Etien had trusted in something innate, past preternatural powers, past Hydaelyn’s blessing, and it had brought her out the other side. It had brought her here.
She scooted back from the precipice and stood up, bolting for the stairs to the Pillars.
She shed layer after layer as she ran through Borel Manor, eager to get back to bed for a whole host of reasons that didn’t include exhaustion.
She was in only her smallclothes when she slipped back under the covers, back into the warm, loving arms that had reached for her when she’d drifted from them.
“Etien, you’re freezing,” Aymeric mumbled, still half-asleep.
She pulled herself closer to him, tucking her head under his chin and purring before she’d even chosen to start doing so. “I need you,” she replied, “to keep me warm.”
Perhaps the best thing was that no matter where she went, no matter what she stared down, two things remained unbroken: her spirit and their vow.
3 notes · View notes
Text
Rough Night In Commorragh
@lordsofmedrengard You know what I do have another ficlet! I wrote this before I got on tumblr, when Taffy was still being developed as a character, but it’s still damn good. 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Part 1: The Best Part of Waking Up
One eye opened a crack and took stock of the situation around me. Snoring, mostly naked kin, not unexpected.  Didn’t look like my living space, which was good, since it smelled like cleanup would be quite the task. Pretty sure the clothes dangling from the fan are mine, though. Lucky they wound up somewhere easy to find!
Oh, Khaine, my head hurts. Should not have taken Adrenalight for that fight. Then again, it was fun, easy to get hold of, and the side-effects weren’t much of a problem in the arena. Plus, I won. Okay, poor life decisions rationalized, what’s next? I groggily pawed around at my left thigh (christ, can’t feel a thing, it’s gone numb). Should be a pouch there, all manner of delightful concoctions, one of them’s sure to make aching skull feel better.
“Hrnnngha?” The grunt came from somewhere underneath my shoulders. Shit, that’s not my thigh. One to the left maybe? Ah, there we go, not as numb as I thought. The pouch!!  Aaaand fan-fucking-tastic. Empty. At least, empty of the trance-inducing narcotics I had been looking for. I’ve never tried taking a dose of Psychon for a hangover, but I doubt it would end well. Okay, some charming piece of shit talked me into sharing my stash,  if I’d taken that much I’d be waking up in a rejuvenation pod, not a pleasantly bloody pile of sleepy Eldar.
Ups-a-daisy, girl-  fuck, my scalp!! OW!. Damnit, my gloriously (yet inconveniently) long hair’s caught in the armor of some dead-asleep warrior. But, upon further consideration, my hair is absolved of guilt, since, glory of glories, he’s got my half-full narcotic needle stuck in his arm!
A series of mixed grunts rises from those around and underneath me as I crawl over and and yank the needle from his limp arm, jamming it into my own and sighing as I depressed the plunger, a tingle of euphoria through my poor, dazed skull. I glanced down at the hair tangled through his armor, tugging to get it free.
Wait, is this tied on?!
Damn, it is. Looks like I got kinky* last night. Huh, this guy must have been pretty smooth. Should probably leave my contact.
*Translator’s note: The Dark Eldar lexicon has 1,227 words that can be approximately translated to English as “kinky”, each of which has subtly-different-yet-critically-significant connotations. The rune used here is one of the milder forms, and is best read as “activities outside of my normal range”, rather than “particularly extreme”.
I flipped him over and found a spot on his chest mostly free of tattoos. As full as narcotics as he was, I don’t think he even noticed. I grabbed a knife from my hip and pursed my lips slightly while I went to work.
Of course I had a knife handy when my pants (okay, black fiendleather panty-thing) were currently dangling from a ceiling fan. Why would I disarm myself just to having sex?? Aside from being boring, acting like you’re sure that your partner won’t kill you mid-sex-act implies a lot of emotional commitment, and I’m not ready for that.
Anyway, I dug the tip of my knife through flesh, scarring a message, feeling the trickle of pain into my soul as I did so:
“Srry bout scars- c me outside the Pit? Ask 4 Tamephela, <3!”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Part 2: Danse Macabre
The gloom of Commorragh settled around my shoulders as I stepped out the door of wherever it was I had wound up after the previous night’s debauchery. Buncha marks around it, what are they?
Ah, I recognize the sigils. Hellion gangsign, the Gutrip Claws, specifically. Not a huge gang, but they had a reputation for seriously fucking up people that started shit at their parties. Good for business when you run a string of drug-dens. 
My head twinged a bit, a reminder of just how enticing those drug-dens could be. Ought to get home. Where the hell is my bike?
A quick glance around showed no sign of it. Damnit. Why weren’t things ever easy? Well, aside from living in a city of complete bastards. No matter- I kept track of my shit. I checked the tracking-screen built into my dagger’s handle- aaaand groaned. Loudly.
Why did I leave the fucking thing on a roof half a click away and a hundred meters up? ...Probably because somebody dared you to climb down the wall, dumbass. Ah well. There’s more than one way to get airborne in Low Commorragh.
I slipped into a low, loping stalk and set out. A bit of work later and I had turned up what I was looking for.
The hellion was gliding down the street confidently, but his eyes darted crazily across those who walked the streets beneath him- a sure sign of too many drugs. Or possibly a gambit meant to lure me in- but no, the faint wrinkles around exposed pectorals suggested the Thirst was getting to him. 
Prey.
Could go after him with my agoniser- but nah, whipping that around would invite someone to steal it. Plus, if I just kill the little shit, his friends- or at least, co-gang-members’ll probably come up behind me in an alley at some point to have a few sharp words. So that’s out- let’s put on a performance instead, make ‘em think twice.
Think. Plan. Wait for the moment- move. 
Dash up the wall. Feel it’s sharp protrusions rip a long gash in my left palm. Spring off in a lightning fast arc. Cast my left arm before me, sending a long arc of blinding blood into his eyes. His mouth opens in a warcry, but my hand is already at my pistol. I feel a surge of terrible glee as I send a splinter right down his open mouth into the back of his throat a moment before I strike the ground, rolling.
He descends upon me, howling, his glaive out, dropping towards my head as he shoots forward.  A smile, as I feel his pain begin with a burning along his throat- no need to move quite yet.
His howl turns into a horrible, hacking cough as the splinter-toxins I selected take hold. Blood first, then his partially-liquified stomach, pour out of his mouth, his glaive falling from his grip as he feels the acids of his own digestive tract start to burn up his vital organs.
Leap forward once more, the ecstatic electricity of his suffering galvanizing my legs, and land in front of him upon his skyboard. As his essence bursts out of him, wrap a leg around him, setting the skyboard spinning, and extend one arm- a bloody mockery of a dance, sending showers of his internal fluids spraying across the street and onto onlookers. 
Slow, as I feel his pain slow and his death begin. Bring the skyboard to a slow, final twirl. Hold him close, bend him forwards, and share a kiss as the last of his lungs spews forth, coating my face in sweet-smelling blood and gore. How beautiful, the light fading from his eyes, the exquisite agony as he feels his torso collapse in upon itself.
End the performance- cast him over my shoulder, a sprinkle of blood from my palm following him, his ejection sending the skyboard into a graceful, tumbling flip. Sketch a bow, bringing myself to a halt.
  A human slave on the end of a chain looks on in wide-eyed horror- the light musk of his terror adds a delightful bit of ambience. The kinsfolk on the street grin wildly, and begin a short round of applause- excluding, I note, a couple with similar tattoos to the fresh corpse. Them, I can feel their surprise, anger- and yes, just a hint of fear. Good. They’ll think twice about trying for revenge. 
I love it when I can send just the message I want!
16 notes · View notes
clansayeed · 4 years
Text
Bound by Circumstance ― Chapter 15: The House on Prytania Street
PAIRING: Nik Ryder x trans*M!MC (Taylor Hunter) RATING: Mature
⥼ MASTERLIST ⥽
⥼ Bound by Circumstance ⥽
Taylor Hunter (MC) has made it good for himself in New Orleans; turns out moving to a new city fresh out of college to reinvent yourself isn’t as hard as people make it out to be. Things only start to get confusing when he finds himself the target of a malevolent wraith. Good thing someone’s looking out for him though — because without Nighthunter Nik Ryder as his bodyguard he definitely won’t survive long in the twisting darkness of the supernatural underworld he’s tripped into.
Bound by Circumstance and the rest of the Oblivion Bound series is an ongoing dramatic retelling project of the book Nightbound and the rest of the Bloodbound series. Find out more [HERE].
Note: Circumstance only loosely follows the events and plotline of Nightbound, and features a separate antagonist, different character motivations, and further worldbuilding.
*Let me know if you would like to be added to the Circumstance/series tag list!
⥼ Chapter Summary ⥽
The gang heads to Prytania Street to meet with the last power left untouched in New Orleans; the Garden District Coven. Taylor starts to experience the side effects of being a fae halfling.
[READ IT ON AO3]
Tumblr media
The sun’s heat is blistering on the back of his neck.
It feels unnatural in a way; conducting their business with the darker side of the world in the daylight. They’ve been running between the worlds that exist between sunset and sunrise for so long that he almost forgot what the sun even looks like.
He likes looking at the moon. But looking at the sun? Ouch.
Still it feels strange not to have Cadence’s towering presence hovering somewhere at his back. Looking over at Katherine — he can’t imagine what it must feel like to her.
“Hey — nope, eyes here.”
Taylor winces at the backhand to his arm but Ryder definitely isn’t in the mood. He’s been tense ever since they left the hospital with a time and place to address the Garden Coven. Like he didn’t know that was the plan, or something.
“I’m listening,” promises Taylor. But listening for Nik at that very moment requires eyes as well as ears.
“Really? Then what’d I just say?”
He blames his hesitation on the fact its taking forever for the coffee to hit his nervous system. Looks to Cal beside him for some kind of help but the werewolf gives him a look of you’re on your own.
“Uh —”
“Right, thought so.”
“I get the gist, Nik. Don’t be rude, don’t make eye contact, probably best just not to open my mouth.”
Cal snorts. “Actually that’s scarily close to verbatim.”
“Did I ask you?” snarks Ryder, but the bait remains abandoned in the cracks on the sidewalk.
The Upper Garden District is like most wealthy neighborhoods; nice to look at for a time but not much for entertainment value without a place to actually go. And sure Taylor has entertained the thought of owning one of the many million-dollar mansions lined with black iron gates and enough bedrooms to sleep in a different one every night for a week or more.
But its like the streets know. They know what Taylor and the rest have seen — what some of them have done. They know what creature hunts them and close their entrances off with hanging willow branches and high brick walls.
Claiming innocence, refusing to be witnesses like covering their eyes in cupped palms absolves them of the duty placed upon survivors to recount tragedy when it is over.
Because they might be the only ones left to do so.
Taylor drags his fingertips along the winding bars of an iron gate. Wonders if the prickling he feels under his touch is static, his imagination, or something more.
Nothing about 937 Prytania Street sets it apart from the houses on either side of it, or across the street for that matter. If Katherine hadn’t stopped in front of it he might not have even guessed it was their final destination.
Wasn’t a witches’ home supposed to be covered in sigils or guarded by spirits from another world? At least adhere to the aesthetic, people.
Thank god, though, he’s not the only one underwhelmed by the obviously-new shiny coat of eggshell-white or the lack of shutters creaking in the mid- morning breeze.
“You sure this is the place, Kathy?” asks Cal with his head slightly raised, nostrils flared to try and pick up whatever scent witches carry. “It smells pretty ordinary.”
She doesn’t answer. Just presses the buzzer and waits patiently for the gate to open.
It does and without so much as an ominous creak.
Maybe its his paranoia kicking in but with every step they take towards the house the feeling of unease in Taylor’s stomach grows, and grows, until it sloshes around — doesn’t sit well with his coffee. Everything his eyes take in seems too normal. A lawn too well-manicured, a set of metal golden numbers too polished. Makes him want to grab a fistful of soil from a too vibrant pot of Easter lilies and throw it somewhere, anywhere to make the place a little less picturesque.
Lamrian was beautiful in its perfection.
The House on Prytania Street is perfect the way a staged corpse is perfect.
A stiff gentleman in a three-piece suit opens the door before Katherine can use the knocker. Looks the four of them over with a condescending air about him and there’s a half-second where it looks like he’s ready to close the door in their faces on principle.
He doesn’t, instead steps aside.
The problem with most of the houses in the area is that, beauty aside, most of them stand empty. Not on the material front — they are always filled with collections of things and with more places to sit than is realistically necessary. But whether its the shitty housing market or the fact that they’re just owned like another piece of a collection, rarely are they lived-in.
The Garden Coven house is no different.
While the Suit leads them to a parlor off the right of the house Taylor tries his best to try and find some evidence of life being lived; on the walls, the carpet, even in smudges in the dust that lines various and seemingly unrelated objects on display.
There are none. Not one single fingerprint.
Though the Suit gestures to a matching array of chaise lounges and high-backed chairs for them to wait in, they stay standing because Katherine stays standing.
“You will be collected shortly,” is all the Suit says before returning the way they had come; though this time he pulls the double doors closed behind him. Leaves them all feeling trapped despite the open windows and sunlight pouring through.
“Random question here,” Taylor breaks the silence because it might actually drive him up the wall, “but do we have a plan for if this goes badly?”
He looks to Ryder, who looks at Katherine, who has suddenly taken up an interest in the antique carpet underfoot.
Of course they don’t have a plan. Why would they have a plan for their last resort? The same wonder team that practically broke into Persephone without so much as an escape route on the brain.
Historically things have worked out in their favor, though. Is it wrong of him to hope this time, too, might not be so terrible?
The glowing yellow eyes that bore into his soul from across the room say yes, yes it is wrong of him. Say how dare he imagine that things might not turn out so bad. They blame him for bringing hellfire and brimstone down on this house, on this city.
“— ly shit, Taylor. You okay?”
Its like an out-of-body experience in reverse. Feeling too deep and too trapped within himself to answer the concern on Ryder’s face. Like he’s drowning inside his own mind — or inside someone else’s.
Nothing about her is stable — pinpointing what she looks like beyond the startling gaze with which she holds him captive is about as easy as finding a single raindrop in a stormy sea.
One moment there are wrinkles around her eyes. Lines at her mouth pursed with thin lips in a frown of disappointment. Then youthful candor in aching regret. Grey hair healthy and full then withered, curling like the rumors that hair and nails continue to grow long after you’re buried in the ground.
He doesn’t realize it until the tear burn at his eyes and make him choke, but he’s crying.
“Taylor — Taylor!”
It’s back-breaking to pull away from the vortex he’s been ensnared in. Both the sun and moon in each of her eyes. Glassy and knowing at the same time.
But he blinks. Feels those same tears run down his cheeks and tickle his chin. Looks at the concerned faces of his friends with utter confusion because how in the world could they be staring at him when he’s facing judgment at the metaphorical pearly gates, here?
Even he’s aware of how foolish he sounds when all he can let out is a dumb “What?”
Nik takes him by the shoulders; looks him up and down for any signs of physical harm like it all isn’t in his head. Remains the most tried and true validation of his experiences to this day.
“You — what the hell happened to you?”
Taylor looks to Cal’s frown of concern, to Katherine’s violet curls like whips lashing around her face as she tries to pinpoint what, where.
“You look like you jus’ saw a damn ghost,” Cal sees the confusion in his eyes and thinks he’s helping. He isn’t.
So he cranes his neck back, away from Nik, to the point where it feels like he might snap his own spine.
She’s still there — in the doorway to a shadowy corridor. Both young and old and there and not. Then she isn’t her at all and the elderly man standing in her place reminds him of his grandfather a bit — which does nothing but unsettle him further.
“You… you don’t see her — hi— it?”
No, of course they don’t. Why would they?
He’s used to this — defaults into the old habit of trying to pretend the thing he’s looking at doesn’t exist. Already with denial on the tip of his tongue burning like a sour candy left forgotten.
But this was supposed to have stopped. No more headaches, no more hallucinations. The things he’s seen and accepted… so why is this different? Why now of all the rotten times is he seeing something no one else can?
Sure Nik tries; Cal too. They look in the doorway where the figure hovers like a bad trip on acid. They try, but they don’t see.
“Rook,” — is this where he pulls a Hermione, tells Taylor that seeing things no one else can see isn’t normal even in their freaky lives? — “there’s no one there.”
Only he doesn’t sound his usual level of confidence. Sounds more like he’s trying to convince himself right alongside.
Katherine scoffs under her breath; shakes her head and sits because there’s nothing else to do with her arms folded so tightly across her chest its undeniably a measure of self-comfort. Of keeping herself grounded.
When Cal tries to sniff the air his nose crinkles. “There’s too many different scents. Ritual burnings, smudges — I can’t get a read on shit.”
“I swear,” mutters Nik so low Taylor wouldn’t hear it if he weren’t as close as he is, “if these bastards are messin’ with you —”
For a guy who spent the entire journey warning against this exact type of frustration, anger, Taylor’s pretty sure it doesn’t matter if the Coven — wherever they may be — can’t hear him.
“Stop, it’s fine.”
“It ain’t —”
“You’re gonna get yourself in trouble.”
“Like I give a damn?!”
“Lower your voice!”
“A-hem.”
At some point the Suit had returned without their notice. Taylor would like to hope it was after his little freak-out but, time to face facts; he’s just not that lucky.
The way he looks them over — he might very well have some sort of magic-witchy x-ray vision. How the fuck someone can have a gaze that feels something like being scored at the top of his head and having his very being pulled back layer by layer is a mystery and, unlike the others, its one Taylor has no desire to solve.
“The Garden Elders will see you now.”
He wants to ask for a second to catch his breath; regain his composure. But why ask for it when he already knows the answer he’ll get?
Like before Suit doesn’t wait for them to speak an agreement. Just turns and begins walking deeper into the old house with purpose. Cal follows close behind — for all his bravado there’s unmistakable gooseflesh riddling his forearms.
Taylor reaches out to Katherine without a second thought; offering like he can help her up when they both know she could very well launch him over the chair and out the window like a rag doll.
Just another thing to distract him from the unrelenting stare digging knives into his back, probably.
Only Katherine takes his hand; surprises them both by doing so.
“You still see them, don’t you?”
The way Kathy’s eyes roam the space behind him, Taylor can tell she’s searching for the smallest speck of something to assuage his worries. But if you see something you don’t look for it.
So Taylor just nods. Follows with her at Nik’s back where he acts like a wall to keep their whispers private.
“Its not the Coven.” She says it so matter-of-factly.
The figure, now a young girl in the same pale grey shroud as the other faces had been, keeps staring even as they leave the parlor behind.
“Then what is it?” Nik throws back through gritted teeth.
“Something much more powerful.”
Taylor squeaks. “Not helping.”
“I recognize that look — I’ve seen it in the mirror,” and when they approach another set of double doors, stalled behind the Suit and his glower, her breath is hot in his ear.
“Keep an eye out. If The Fate is watching then there’s far more at stake than we assumed.”
Tumblr media
His first thought is there have to be more witches in New Orleans than this, closely followed by please stop inviting trouble into your life, Taylor.
But even Katherine looks confused at the emptiness of the solarium they’re led into. How unassuming the three occupants look taking their tea with a pristine porcelain pot at a table out of Home and Garden magazine.
The same kinds of lilies, white petals large and curling under the sunlight, occupy every planter and pot in sight. Some of them are accompanied by flowers he’s only ever seen in books or movies — others look like they might be more at home in Lamrian taking root than here; to be appreciated but ultimately with a finite lifespan.
The solarium is a half-circle of heat and glass. Even the door leading out to a back garden path is see-through; the handle made of crystal. Everything catches on the sun and it makes Taylor quite literally hot under the collar.
He wipes a bit of sweat away from his chin uncomfortably.
They aren’t greeted when they enter. There are no chairs for them to take up. The Suit departs with the same wordless condescension with which he arrived and they’re just left there, taking up space on pristine marble, watching the so-called Garden Elders take their tea.
Only one of them actually looks the title ‘elder.’ The cotton on his robes looks scratchy, makes Taylor want to itch along his arms even at a distance. The locs that obscure his withered face fall back when he lifts his head up to the sun — casting shadows in the lines and creases of age he wears not just well but with a sort of pride.
With a delicate two-fingered touch he pushes his cup and saucer to the woman to his left. She refills his cup without looking away from the newspaper folded in front of her setting. The air around her seems to hold back as if afraid to touch — reverent of her existence but willing only to observe. The way the light illuminates her dark skin is practically golden. Makes her shine with some ethereal grace more at home with fae-kind than mortal witches, but the glow is undoubtedly hers.
The third Elder takes Taylor by surprise — he’s seen her before. Can still smell the sour cling of sweat to copper talismans and commercial incense on the ever-crowded floor of the House of Voodoo shop on Bourbon Street. Takes hiding in plain sight to a whole new level.
Would the Taylor from before all of this have felt the power that radiates around them? Would he have understood there was something to be feared about this particular trio; something he couldn’t possibly understand yet could feel in a place deeper than in the marrow of his bones?
I guess we’ll never know.
The polite thing to do would be to wait for them to finish their morning repast.
They don’t have time for politeness.
“Thank you for agreeing to meet with us on such short notice, Elders.” Katherine gives a respectful nod of her head when she steps forward. Based on the look she throws at Ryder that’s what they should all be doing — but he doesn’t. And Taylor just doesn’t want to look like an idiot.
Something rattles hollow around the old man’s neck and when he turns Taylor really hopes those aren’t real bones strung together with twine. His eyes are a milky, clouded white but he looks at Katherine with no trouble.
“Despite what rumor may have you believe we care a great deal of our ties to the community.”
Kathy opens her mouth to speak but because Nik is Nik he scoffs “yeah, sure,” loud enough to drag the focus of all three Elders onto him.
“If you’ve something to say, boy, say it,” says the House of Voodoo employee, and Taylor will never hear a customer service voice the same way again with the shiver it sends running down his spine.
“Elder Millet —”
It isn’t politeness that cuts Kathy off when Millet raises her hand. Not with the purpling of her face or the way she seems to gasp around unspoken words.
“Excuses are as bad as lies, Miss Lopez,” she gives a flippant wave to her peers that breaks her unspoken spell; leaves Katherine on the verge of clawing at her throat for fragrant lily-scented air, “if Mister Ryder here has something to say who are we to force him into silence?” Ironic, much?
Now he’s done it — Nik can tell, too. If they want to continue he’s going to have to finish his thought and accept the consequences that come with it.
But he is Nik; so he squares his shoulders and stands his ground despite the unease that Taylor feels emanating from him.
“I mean no blatant disrespect Elder Millet,” —to the old man— “Elder Vion,” —and to the woman still yet to look up from the paper— “Elder Daniels; but if any of you three gave a damn about the community we wouldn’t’a needed to come get you in the first place. You’d have shown your faces at the Beau-Keyes with the rest of ‘em.”
“And look what happened to them,” drawls Elder Daniels as she flips the paper  to the financial section, “almost killed due to reckless stupidity and an inability to see beyond the moment.”
The private laugh the three of them share isn’t lost on anyone. In fact it makes Cal bristle and go red in the face.
“You—You knew we’d be attacked? You knew and you did nothing?!”
Pack blood still runs deep.
Elder Vion adds a pink sugar cube to his tea. “‘Doing nothing’ was the ideal course of action.”
And his fellow Elders agree; “It followed the plan precisely.”
“And leaves us with an opening.”
“Though the guests will have to be taken care of first.”
“They won’t be here for long.”
“Hey—Hey! Now ain’t the time to dissolve into crazy!”
Nik’s clapping isn’t just loud — it makes the room tremble. Glass walls, the glass panels on the ceiling all somehow stunned by the weight of his audacity. That he would dare call attention to himself, this small, insignificant creature—
Taylor hastily shoves his palms into the front pockets of his jeans. Like that will somehow stop the feeling prickling at his palms like a thousand tiny needles. Different than anxiety; something borderline painful. Like if he thinks about it too much it will start to hurt, but pushing it out of the forefront of his mind will keep it at bay.
He recognizes the feeling easily enough — still doesn’t know what it means or what’s causing it but there’s one answer he didn’t have before. It has something to do with being a fae.
“So you all know what’s out… there.” Taylor jerks his chin to the garden, to the French Quarter beyond and the rest of New Orleans with it.
Given everything they’ve seen when it comes to the bloodwraith so far it’s almost laughable to think such a gruesome creature could exist—let alone appear—on a day like this.
Elder Millet looks Taylor over like she’s peeling back each and every layer of him with her eyes. Maybe she is — he wouldn’t put it past magic itself. Let alone past the magic that told the Coven Elders how terrible the attack at the Beau-Keyes would be and convinced them to do fuck-all about it.
“We do.”
But they knew that. “And you know what it’s after.”
“We’ve drawn our own conclusions.”
“Do those conclusions tell you how close you’re getting to the top of the list?” It sounds an awful lot like a threat. Good — he wants it to be.
“Do they tell you its only a matter of time until it comes after you — after the entire Coven?”
Nik agrees; “Whose to say it’ll stop with the Elders? Someone takes your place eventually — it can go after them, and the ones that follow, and the ones after that —”
Vion scoffs around his tea. “Preposterous!”
“Actually no; not in the slightest.” Wariness, distrust hangs over Katherine in an aura of thunderclouds. And its growing. “It’s logical.”
The word, the very implication of it makes Millet’s fingers twitch towards something partially obscured by the teapot. At first Taylor wrote them off as napkins but now the shape and size rings familiar.
Her deck of tarot cards doesn’t like being questioned.
“Logic is the predilection of the mundane.” When Elder Daniels finally looks up from her paper its to stare directly at Katherine. Hard and unyielding. Its a look of power; a silent demand for surrender.
And she almost does. Taylor knows without a doubt that she’d deny it with her last breath but words mean nothing when he can see the flash of her soul behind stormy skies — hear the rolling thunder not far behind.
“There are a thousand and one ways to interpret any given reading. And you chose the one that would keep you out of the crossfire.
“Even if it meant turning your backs on the Accords.”
Outside the walls of the sunroom nothing has changed. The clouds have continued to drift lazily by and the sun still beats down upon them. But when they entered the room felt as transparent as it looked.
Now they may as well be trapped in a dense fog. It threatens to block out the sun; to take pleasure in wringing out their last choking breaths.
“You overstep, insolent little Nighthunter.”
Elder Daniels stands and waves her hand. Probably takes a sick sense of satisfaction in the smallest flinch Katherine fails to hold back — but instead the witches’ spread vanishes as though it was never there.
There is no gaping absence of it — they could just as easily have been standing the entire time and had Taylor’s eyes not seen the table and chairs, had he not smelled the brewing tea or heard the clinking of cup against saucer, he would have a hard time explaining why he thought any of it was there in the first place.
Millet’s fingertips hover just above the surface of her tarot deck. The only physical thing to have remained. As much a member of the Elders as anything.
And the wrinkles on Vion’s leathery face have sunken deep like canyons. His movements are ancient and slow as he stands beside his fellow Elders in defiance of some unknown.
The sides are becoming glaringly obvious.
Small as it was Daniels’ display of power served its purpose; reminded them of who—what—they were dealing with. A power strong enough to entice the bloodwraith and prove its worth by remaining untouched.
The continued existence of them was a claim to power that the likes of Carlo de la Rosa and Denna the Shifter could never have dreamed of.
Taylor knows he’s not the only one of them having this fact hammered home inside him. Not solely because it takes some big and important shit to keep Ryder silent for this long but definitely highlighted by it.
“Perhaps,” Millet drags the word out solely to fuck with them, “we are the ones to be blamed. Blamed for our naivete in agreeing to this meeting disguised as an attempt to point fingers.”
And because its Katherine on the line — more than her name or reputation, but her life — she remains the sensible one. She tries to smooth-talk her way out. “With respect, Elder Millet, no one’s pointing fingers—”
“Save your arguments,” barks Vion, “though I’m sure they were well-rehearsed. Even blind to this physical plane as I am, I can see your true intentions for coming here.”
“Well there weren’t any, so —”
“We open our doors to you in this hour of need and yet you seek to accuse us of that which you cannot even begin to understand. Do you deny?”
It’s beginning to feel an awful lot like a trial and Taylor isn’t the only one who can feel it. He knows what the tension in Cal means — the way Nik shifts to the foot he favors standing his ground on.
But something just isn’t right. It’s echoing hollow in his bones; in the air around them. It fills him up, keeps filling him until he’s not sure he can stand it anymore. Until it wants to pour from his mouth or leak from his ears.
“Then why even agree to meet with us at all?” he blurts out to the surprise of the room; to himself.
And all that pressuring weight shifts from Katherine to him. Now he’s deep in it. Way to effing go.
Only its the first time the Elders don’t have a remark ready to be snapped at their heels. A fact that isn’t lost on them — and isn’t lost on his friends either.
And since its the only silence they might be getting any time soon he tries to roll with it in his usual word-vomit way.
“If you can see so much of the future in your cards or whatever — why agree to meet with us at all? Wouldn’t you know what we think of you? What everyone thinks of you? And you guys don’t seem like the type to entertain stupid people for the sake of a laugh.”
Nik gives him a very specific ‘Did you just call us stupid?’ look. Yeah, yeah he did.
But its rambling, and Taylor is good at rambling. Rambling is what he does best — rambling and improv monologues.
“You guys —” he drags an accusatory finger across the spread of them, “— are the ones accusing anyone, here. Which I get, you know, because there’s a lot going on. And everyone’s scared and everyone’s got their walls up because this is—like—ten thousand leagues away from normal even for your crazy world.
“But if we keep pointing fingers and we keep not helping everyone then what’s gonna happen? Right — the bloodwraith is gonna win. Because we’re gonna do its job for it!”
He drops his finger, then, because he’s making a point and leading by example. “Whatever reasons you may think we have for coming here are bullshit. No one wants to help, everyone’s just in it for themselves! And seeing as literally everyone in the city is a target right now that’s a really really stupid way of thinking!”
Like — he’s making sense, isn’t he? He feels almost compelled to look around not just at the Elders but at his friends, too. How many stories about good versus evil demand that everyone band together in spite of their differences for their own survival; for everyone’s survival?
They had been so close at the Beau-Keyes. If they’d all been given more time who knows what they could have accomplished. Maybe Kristof would be more willing to help. Maybe Lady Smoke wouldn’t have gotten hurt.
Maybe Elric would stop hiding behind his wards like a coward.
Taylor sighs and it comes out a ragged thing — takes every last bit of air in his lungs and tries to wring a choked noise from his lips but he’s just too tired.
“If you had already made up your minds about us — about helping everyone — then why bother letting us come here to ask?”
Over Elder Daniels’ shoulder, across the room and through the spotless glass wall he sees the same figure as before. Knows its them by the glint of their golden eyes. The young woman’s face is forlorn; almost weeping. Flickers like a heat mirage from young to old to young again.
The Fate, Katherine had called them.
Why here?
Why now?
Why won’t they do something?
“Such a rousing call to action…” says Millet with the vestiges of praise — yet it looks bitter on her tongue.
Daniels agrees; “And from the unseen complication, no less.”
“Perhaps we underestimated him.”
“What difference would it make? Everything has gone as predicted so far.”
“One wrong move can turn the tide.”
“Yes — but this…”
Again they fall into whispered confidences — as though the others aren’t even there.
Ryder almost growls. More unwilling to call them out on it than before but just as impatient. “This was useless…” he hisses through gritted teeth back in Kathy’s direction.
A small movement draws Taylor’s attention to Elder Vion. To the empty space beside him.
Where The Fate — as a child, making it all the more eerie — reaches up and takes the witch’s hand in theirs. Blood soaks through their grey sleeve; drips down onto the pristine white floor. One droplet becomes two, becomes three and more. A puddle forming at their feet and spreading out of its own will.
He knows it isn’t real — that none of it is really there. There is no child and no blood not only because no one else is freaking out about it but because of the way the blood moves. Spiraling tendrils seeking to consume but only at the Elders’ feet.
The meaning of the whole disturbing sight is clear.
There is blood on the Elders’ hands. They’re drowning in it.
“You didn’t answer his question.”
Katherine cuts Daniels and Millet off mid-word. All that cool calculation hidden behind her pretty face; the perfect mask to hide behind. “Why’d you agree to this? What do you gain?”
Daniels’ upper lip curls. “There is nothing you could offer worth our time.”
“Still doesn’t answer the question.”
“Do you forget you called upon us?”
“Yeah,” she scoffs, “when I thought you’d be useful. But we’re just talking in circles here!”
They are. What more do they know now compared to before?
Nothing is making any freakin’ sense. Nothing except for the sickening feeling growing inside. The blood spreads — devours. Leaves the witches draped in a dark veil thicker than a fog at night and the solarium, once filled with the light breeze of lilies, reeking of rot and the sour tang of open wounds.
A scent he’s becoming all too familiar with — something Taylor never thought would ever cross his mind.
Again there’s a prickling at his palms but this time he reaches for Ryder — a port in the gathering storm. Clasps their hands together tightly; desperately.
Nik who does a double-take when he catches the hollow light of fear in his eyes.
We need to leave.
What do you know?
Too much.
Too much. He knows too much. The Fate knows it and that’s why their figure has vanished but the blood seeping into the hems of the Elders’ clothes remains. The world knows it too, somehow. Keeps that damp and musty smell of molding decay stuck in his lungs and makes him choke on it. Makes his eyes water and an itching pain climb up from the inside of him begging to be let free.
He knows too much. Can’t even begin to understand the how or the why and maybe even a little bit of the what but he does.
He knows without a shadow of a doubt that the darkness that gathers around the Coven Elders and the one hanging as a fatal noose around the bloodwraith are one in the same.
We need to leave.
“It doesn’t matter Kathy,” Nik interrupts — keeps his eyes on Taylor like a grounding point; the only solid ground to stand on, “whether they answer or not it’s clear as day they don’t plan on helping anyone but themselves.
“We oughta get goin’.”
To their credit the Elders don’t deny it.
But the sudden change is a bit too much for Katherine. “Are you—Nik what the hell?”
“Kathy —” Taylor’s wavering voice almost breaks at just her name. Its enough; enough to drag her away from frustrating thoughts building to the fact that he’s white as a sheet and on the verge of unconsciousness. “Please.”
She doesn’t get the chance to argue. Not when the room turns to shadows upon shadows; very real and very not-in-his-head clouds blooming across the sun over their heads.
Even when Elder Vion lowers his hand the spell continues; grows and takes hold of the sky above until the sun is nothing but a distant memory, until the shadows are only a darkness unending.
He tuts and clicks his tongue — such a normal act in contrast to the way he leans on the gnarled handle of his cane. “Finally the consequences reveal themselves.” He bites out, though his scorn is quickly directed to the Elders at his side. “Had you not wished to speed the process this wouldn’t be an issue.”
“Had we?” Millet snaps; gestures with her hands so wide that one of the cards slips from her deck and flutters to the ground face-up.
The Wheel of Fortune stares lifelessly upwards.
“You insisted the Council could not be allowed to congregate, Vion.”
“Indeed we acted on faith of your vision,” agrees Daniels.
Vion, though, is adamant; “The consequences outweighed the risk.”
“And what of that,” Daniels thrusts a finger at Taylor, “little consequence? Was it worth the knowledge he now possesses?”
The energy directed his way makes Taylor double over — from pain or pressure he doesn’t know. But Nik isn’t having it.
“What the hell are you crazy people talkin’ about?!”
“Silence!”
There’s a loud and resistant groan over their heads. They look up just in time to see the metal framework stop — now twisted, coiled like a spring ready to snap and send the ceiling panels hurtling down in what would surely be a painful death for all but the Elders.
“You dare interrupt your betters; dare demand of those who hold absolute power over your mortal lives?!” She’s practically shrieking now; and with each crack of her voice comes a crack in the glass surrounding them. “That you continue to live is a testament to our generosity despite your wretched meddling!
“But a Nighthunter never learns. Not until he is forced into submission!”
The bones around Elder Vion’s neck rattle on a nonexistent breeze. “To give this cur the same punishment would be my pleasure.”
“Why bother prolonging it?” adds Millet in a ravenous growl, “Kill him now and we have a second soul to cut from the veil. A second soldier to finish the task at hand.”
Cal goes rigid; taken by surprise. Now he knows. “Holy shit. It’s you.”
And now Katherine knows too; forces down the oncoming waves of revelation — keeps herself afloat with a strength well-hidden.
“You’re the ones controlling the bloodwraith.”
3 notes · View notes
talyn-the-warlock · 4 years
Text
(Hey, Guardians! Ready for some angst? I wrote this some time ago when I was very, very upset as a vent piece, but now that I read it, I think it's good enough to post!
Also, for flavor- this is fanonically what happens in this scene for Talyn. Soooo..keep that in mind going forward.
Trigger warnings included for gun violence and canon character death.)
Nothing Left to Say
“The line between Light and Dark is so very thin…do you know which side you’re on?”
The forsaken Prince leered defiance through his wounds, glaring mad hatred into the Guardian before him. Talyn Maj caught his eyes only through the sights of her lost friend’s gun. They didn’t intimidate her. There was no way this shadow of a man could have made her back down now. Not after what he’d done. Not after all he’d stolen from her. Even without his sins considered, Uldren was on his last legs. With the state he was in, staggering and bleeding and wasting his fading strength on soliloquy, he certainly couldn’t fight back. If she left him, he wouldn’t last more than a few minutes. He would be refused the honor of a duel, or the mercy of her Light. Rage churned through her mind in words left unspoken. Murdering bastard. Deranged psycho. Self-righteous prick. This bitterness was her truth as much as it was the woman to her left. Petra’s sidearm was trained on Uldren the same as Cayde’s cannon, her drawn face reserving all the same disdain her friend was unabashedly radiating. If the Guardian didn’t end this herself, his sins would be repaid by the Queen’s Wrath. It wouldn’t come to that. The choice had been made the moment this would-be Prince turned the Ace of Spades on its rightful owner. Anger so vitriolic poised on the tip of Talyn’s tongue felt like a mouthful of acid. With a deep gulp, she swallowed it and ignored how it burned her throat. He wasn’t worth acknowledging, let alone debating. A bullet would be the only repartee that mattered now. The Ace of Spades felt so heavy, so full of a symmetrically horrid emotion. Vengeance sat chambered in steel, waiting to be unleashed. This half-baked conversation was over.
Talyn had nothing left to say.
She closed the distance until she was almost on top of him, slow strides quaking with an unrelenting fury. What had happened to Cayde replayed in the Warlock’s mind ad nauseum as she scoured the Tangled Shore for mark after mark. One after another, unmatched bloodlust had broken them. It was savagery she didn’t know she was capable of, furious violence that made even her best friends slink back in surprise and fear. Slaughtering Uldren’s pawns hadn’t sated her. Painting the Reef in Scorn blood wasn’t enough. Talyn knew she’d never be satisfied until the man who stole from her knew what it felt like to be destroyed from the inside out. It was no secret Mara’s sacrifice had driven him to this, turned him from dutiful brother to unhinged menace. He thought he knew loss. He thought he understood pain. Talyn’s jaw clenched at the mere thought, the barrel of that borrowed cannon trembling in time with her arm. Uldren didn’t know a damn thing about what it meant to suffer. Not yet. It would be no cut to black that put the exclamation point on his story, no ambiguous gunshot that sent him tumbling into the void. This moment would be hers alone, hanging suspended in her racing, fury-addled mind. Cayde’s last breath flashed across her imagination again, encouraging her to make the final push. Talyn didn’t hesitate. She couldn’t.
The instant she stopped, Talyn let her finger close in a white-knuckled fist. The Ace of Spades bucked in her hand, barked its rage in lead and fire where her tongue couldn’t. She’d hovered the dot sight directly over Uldren’s creased forehead, right between his furious, exhaustion-ringed eyes. At point-blank, it was impossible to miss. His head snapping backward spared her a good look at the wound, the way he sprawled across the polished floor uncanny and wrong. Crimson pooled beneath him in the same shade as his killer’s vision. She was still infuriated beyond her ability to express, still wired with homicidal lust alien to her. Taking his life wasn’t enough. Talyn thought this would be what calmed her, but it wasn’t enough. The gun shook so hard she almost couldn’t aim it anymore. It was making her arm hurt to hold it aloft like this, a steady ache forming in her bicep and her tightly-clenched hand. It was still so damned heavy, just as unsatisfied as the heart threatening to pound through her chest. Letting herself of this boiling blood was the only thing that could help her now, but she couldn’t have known. The fire overcame her all at once, a hiss passing her teeth as her face twisted in unbridled emotion. He deserved worse. He deserved more. There was no convincing her not to see the debt repaid in full.
Cayde’s gun screamed itself hoarse. High-caliber bullets embedded themselves one after another in Uldren's chest, making his lifeless body jerk from the repeated impacts. Blood blossomed from the Prince anew, holes punched in his tattered garbs staining the floor with yet more red. It wasn’t as cathartic as it should’ve been. All it did was stoke the feelings inside her, coax them into new disgusting shapes. A tornado-force maelstrom of darkness tore her insides to pieces, threatening to consume her in its unstoppable wake. Her rage was a spigot that could never be dammed, gushing fountains of cold brutality that made her sick to drink from. It was seductive. Painful. Infinite. A hand cannon’s magazine wasn’t. The Ace of Spades said all it had to and went silent, save for the rhythmic click of it’s hammer striking nothing. It was satisfied, more than content with the display it had shown this worthless murderer. A terrible jealousy rose in Talyn when she couldn’t find that peace herself. Her mind hadn’t quieted an iota, the violence in her still roiling like a storm-tossed sea. Freezing salt-water overtook her prow again and again as the waves crested all the higher. No, damnit, no! There must be more ammunition, there had to be new ways to tear his broken body asunder. Talyn searched for them with every futile pull of a useless trigger. The dull report of an empty chamber begged to differ. No, no, no. It wasn’t fair. She wasn’t done killing this son of a bitch, and it wasn’t fair.
The Warlock’s breath came heavier as panic dug talons into her neck. Revenge was all she had, her sole motivation to carry on as grief laid her low. Finally sighting the bastard up and snuffing him had become her hyperfixation, and she’d done much to convince herself it was her only reason to fight anymore. This was supposed to make her whole again. Wasted and pathetic, a gun she hadn’t earned balled in her fist, Talyn could only feel more broken. Why hadn’t it worked? Why hadn’t her heart changed? Why was the night inside her no less implacable and asphyxiating? There was no delusion that could have convinced her this would bring Cayde back, but it should have at least laid him to rest. It should have mattered as much as she wished it could. As her epiphanies filled the Awoken’s most sacred halls, Talyn wished like a child that she hadn’t killed Uldren for nothing. She begged the stars for something, anything to assure her this was the right path. That wherever Cayde was, he was proud of all she’d done. That this outburst was warranted, and her wrath was for once directed as it should be. In spite of all her wishing, no answer came to her. No being heard what she so deeply desired. Nobody cared. The silence of this sleeping place was an insult beyond any she could abide.
Shrieking her discontent, Talyn stalked away from the lifeless Prince and snapped her cramping gun-arm to the side. Heat behind her eyes clouded her vision just as it did her judgment. It seemed she’d never be finished making mistakes. As she whirled on the spot, petulance twisted her actions into those of a reverent yet again. She felt the Ace of Spades leave her hand, heard it clatter across marble and ding unceremoniously into a pillar. The noise drew her eyes just as they widened with regret. Even through a mist of tears, Talyn could see the worn frame of the precious revolver discarded like an empty bottle, spinning lazily in place as the kinetic force of her blind rage ebbed from it. She hadn’t meant to throw it. She wasn’t thinking. There was no way Talyn would have consciously disregarded her only memento mori of her dear lost friend. Intention didn’t matter. Not to her. Not to Cayde. No share of guilt would absolve her from the act itself. This was the highest disrespect, wrought solely by the hand of someone who claimed to love all the Ace of Spades now represented. How could she? Why was she yet still incapable of staying her fury? Of preventing all she cherished from becoming detritus in a gutter? Of being normal? The weight of these questions brought Talyn to her knees, arms wrapping around herself in some simulacrum of a friend’s comfort. The clouds in her starlight eyes gathered tightly, a storm choking the whole world before her. Now-quiet halls were the amphitheater in which sorrow was to be spoken, and with no reservations a Guardian made her choked anguish heard. It rained in the Dreaming City. Torrential. Unending. A flood that would sweep away all things, a disaster that would spell the doom of everything she thought she believed in. Nothing could save her from drowning now. Nothing, except-
“Talyn…?”
She didn’t lift her head to acknowledge the voice, but it was enough to mute her broken sobbing. There was no mistaking it. Petra. She’d faded into the background as Talyn’s vision tunneled, her friend secondary to the righteous murder unfolding before her. Now there was no ignoring the Queen’s Wrath, all her own opinions and emotions brought back into sharp focus as Talyn cried the red away. Petra must hate her now. The Warlock’s true colors had been painted in fat, uncoordinated strokes across the whole of her queenless domain. Destruction following the wake of a hot-blooded feud dropped squarely in her lap. She couldn’t have believed Talyn wanted to help, not after watching her butcher a man for the sin of slighting her. Like so many friends before her, Petra must be afraid. Shocked that such a display could come from a woman like her, that she was even capable of this bestial horror. Surely she would never see her the same. The world continued to turn around her as she tortured herself with the thinking. No matter how Talyn had convinced herself, reality was so much kinder. Petra proved her wrong.
Dropped on one knee, pistol holstered, she braved a hand on the Guardian’s slumped shoulder. An even squeeze debunked every anxiety. She couldn’t possibly understand, but she was there regardless. Reliable as always, courageous in spite of it all. A pillar, just as undeserved as the hand cannon she’d tossed aside. Talyn didn’t consider how little she’d done to earn it. She leaned on her friend, face buried in fieldweave as her lamentations redoubled. Petra couldn’t fix her. She didn’t have to. She would consolidate the pieces with her steady arms, gently gathering a broken woman into a dustpan with a whisper on her lips. It wasn’t enough. But for now, it was what Talyn needed.
“It’s over,” she candidly said. “Let’s get you home.”
18 notes · View notes
Text
I Can’t Let Her Die Ch 4
A/N: Sorry for the wait for chapters but hopefully what I have plan for this story will make your patience worth it and secondly, I don't care about the time-space continuum stuff. This is fanfiction for a reason.
                                                 ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ 
Oliver entered the foundry and froze immediately as he heard the familiar haunting sound of fingers typing away on a keyboard.
He ran down the stairs taking two at a time and came to a halt. The sound was echoing in his head, but the bunker was otherwise empty. Felicity’s computers untouched by her for weeks.
He walked forward slowly and gripped the back of his chair, his chest aching with loss. The bunker was darker without Felicity's light brightening it up, without her warming the place with her smile and her belief in him and what they were doing.
The mission to protect the city felt lost without her. He struggled to find the point in saving a city of strangers when he hadn't been able to keep the woman he loved safe.
Oliver turned her chair and lowered himself into the seat, sometimes when he closed his eyes, he could see Felicity right in front of him smiling, her eyes shining with life and purpose. He could smell that light floral scent with a hint of raspberries.
And sometimes he could hear her voice before he hit the streets asking him to come back to her. The way she stood close to him, the way she looked at him, pleading with her eyes for him to stay.
He always came back. He asked Felicity to stay with him, and she couldn’t.
Oliver bent forward, burying his face in his hands.
It’s gonna be okay, Oliver. You will get through this.
Even now, he could hear her voice, but he knew it was his subconscious's way of dealing with his grief.
“No, no, I won’t.” he raised his head tears in his eyes, and he swore he could see Felicity standing in front of him, her glasses perched on her nose, hair in a high ponytail, lips painted pink, in a green blouse and one of her patented short skirts. “I need you here. I have always needed you here. With me.”
The image of Felicity reaching her hand out, cupping his cheek nearly broke him. Her hand was cupping his jaw, but he couldn’t feel it. Couldn’t feel her warmth or the sense of home she always provided.
He was so lost in his hallucination, he never even heard Laurel enter the bunker or her heels on the steps. “Ollie, who are you talking to?”
As Laurel came into view, the image of Felicity faded.
Oliver washed a hand down his face. “What are you doing here?”
“I know you’re having a hard time and I just thought we could get dinner, maybe talk. I mean, if there’s anyone who can relate what you’re going through, it’s me.”
Oliver pushed from Felicity’s chair. “How could you possibly understand what I’m feeling?”
“I know what it’s like to lose someone you loved.” She reminded, her tone cajoling. “I lost Tommy.”
Oliver gave a harsh, brittle laugh. “You wanted to move on from his death before he was even in the ground.”
“It wasn’t like that.” Laurel protested with a look of hurt in her eyes, stepping closer. “You know things were complicated between all of us before he died. However, that doesn’t change the fact that I lost someone I loved.”
“You didn’t love Tommy the way he loved you. He died because of you. He wouldn’t have been in the Glades if it weren’t for you. He would still be here if he hadn't gone to CNRI to save you when you had already been told it wasn't safe. You got him killed.”
The rounding smack of her hand, striking him across the face echoed through the foundry.
Oliver glared, unmoved by the fresh sheen of tears in her eyes. “The truth hurts, doesn’t it? You did not love him the way I love Felicity, so you couldn’t possibly understand how I’m feeling.”
“I know you’re hurting and you’re lashing out. I know you’re being sucked into darkness, your grief is threatening to consume you.” Laurel's voice shook. “I know you are being mean and cruel because it’s easier to blame everyone around you then to accept you are never going to see Felicity again. And I know this person you’re being right now, hurting the people closest to you is not what Felicity would want. If you want to honor her, be the man she believed in.”
Oliver took a step back; her words effecting him more than a hit ever could. He turned away as she headed back up the stairs. “I’m trying,” he whispered, clutching the back of Felicity’s chair.
And that’s what matters.
He felt a coldness sweep over him, and Felicity's scent filled his senses.
Oliver haunched forward and allowed the grief he felt every minute to take over, his failure to be the man Felicity believed in never more pronounced.   
Or so he thought.
Two nights later, he came upon a scene that set his blood to boil.
A girl with honey blonde hair was pinned to the wet asphalt, struggling beneath the man straddling her waist. He was pulling at her clothes, as she pushed at him fruitlessly with her arms, her legs trapped beneath his weight, screaming for help, pleading for him to let her go, begging him to stop. A pair of spectacles laid cracked on the ground.
And for a flash of a moment, it was Felicity he saw fighting, struggling to get away.
It was Felicity he heard crying out for help.
A moment of seeing her in danger was all it took. Oliver wouldn’t fail Felicity again.
He moved forward, yanking the man from her by his arm, so hard and quick there was a sickening pop as the man’s arm tore from its socket.  
The would-be rapist gave a cry of pain as the blonde girl grabbed at her torn shirt with one hand and searched the ground for her glasses with the other, the rain pouring down making her fingers slip.
“What the fu-”
Oliver cut him off, throwing him head first into a steel dumpster.
He didn’t care that the man was dazed after as he crouched over him and slammed his fist again and again into the scumbag's face.
He could hear Digg’s voice on comms, telling him the man was down but it was like it was distorted, coming through a long tunnel and barely reaching him.
He felt his skin break with every punch, felt the pain in his knuckles, the burn in his arms, the man’s groans of pain growing quieter with every strike, the crunch of bone doing nothing to absolve his anger.
“Arrow! That’s enough!” he felt large hands hauling him back.
“I said that’s enough!” John’s face appeared in his vision, and his anger slowly ebbed. He glanced down at the bloody unmoving man and then to the girl who was struggling to find her glasses in the oncoming slaught of rain pouring down in a torrent, the high gust of wind doing nothing to help matters.
He moved toward her and grabbed her glasses, he reached his hand out, touching her shoulder, and she jerked back with a cry, terrified as she scrambled away.
“Hey, hey, I’m not going to hurt you,” Oliver said softly. “I just want to help you.” he gently placed the cracked frames in her hand.
The girl hurriedly slipped them on and held her shirt together. “You're the Arrow. You saved me.” she looked past him, tears in her eyes, body shaking. “He was going to...”
“It’s okay. He’s not going to hurt you anymore.” Oliver looked behind him to John, who crouched over the bastard. “Give me your jacket.”
John looked up at him with a grim frown as he shrugged out of his jacket, tossing it to Oliver who caught it with ease, and gently draped it over the girl and quickly closed it around her. “You’re going to be okay,” Oliver promised.
“Thank you,” she murmured shakily, voice full of gratitude and relief.
For a moment, he saw Felicity staring up at him, telling him she believed in him.
“We got a problem,” John said, his tone grave.
Oliver looked at him. “What?”
John was silent for a moment, his next words heavy. “He’s dead.”
Oliver’s eyes shot to the man, and he didn’t feel remorse. Honestly, he couldn’t feel anything for the man, but he felt like he failed Felicity again.
What would she say if she knew he killed when he didn’t need to? When it wasn’t necessary?
Would she still have believed in him? Would she have still seen him as a hero?
Would she have been able to still love him when he was no longer the man she saw in him? When he was a murderer once again instead of the hero, she had believed him to be.
                                                  ~*~ ~*~ ~*~
Oliver leaned on his right elbow, a sheet resting low on his hips, watching as Felicity put on earrings in front of a floor length mirror. She wore a green dress the same color as his hood.
It had a primal urge building inside of him that was proud and possessive. “Are you sure you need to go to the office today?”
“Yes, I have a meeting with the HR department.”
He caught sight of the gold glinting on her hand, and he smiled at the sight of her wedding band, he glanced at his hand that adorned his own golden wedding band.
He smiled, tossing the sheet away and climbed out of bed, walking up behind her he pressed his chest to her back and rested one hand on her hip and the other over her slightly rounded stomach, feeling their baby kick beneath his palm.
“I’m sure I have ways of convincing you to stay home with me. Naked. In bed.”
Felicity chuckled tilting her head back against his chest as his lips pressed just beneath her ear and traveled down her neck. “Tempting, but I have to be there and don’t forget, we have a doctor’s appointment at two o'clock.”
Oliver smiled against her neck. “I can’t wait to meet her.”
Felicity turned in his arms, draping hers around his neck. “Me neither. When you showed up in my cubicle with a laptop full of bullet holes, I never thought we end up here. Married with a baby on the way. Did you?”
“No, I thought I would save the city alone and die alone, and now, I’m still fighting for my city, but I am not alone I have you and as shocking as it is I’m happy.”
Felicity smiled. “Me too.” she pressed her lips to his.
The kiss started out sweet but quickly turned heated as Oliver nipped at her bottom lip. Felicity opened to him and moaned as he licked into her mouth, her stomach pressing lightly against his hard abs, his thumbs massaging slow circles in her lower back.
Oliver loved the taste of her mouth, her body pressed against his.
Felicity jerked suddenly, ripping her mouth from his. Blood slipped out the corner of her lips, dripping down her chin, her eyes wide with pain.
Oliver stumbled back in shock, seeing the arrow sticking through her chest. “Felicity!”
Felicity stumbled forward dropping to her knees, and Oliver was there catching her, one hand around her waist the other lacing with her fingers that curved around her stomach, their child protectively.
“Oliver.” Felicity choked out more blood coating her mouth. “Why didn’t you save me?”
Oliver's chest felt like he was being pried open by a pair of rib spreaders, he gasped painfully. “I wanted to. If I could save you, I would you have to know that.”
“If you had, we could've had all this.” Felicity struggled to get the words out, lifting a bloody hand to his cheek and cupping it gently. “We could have had everything. Helping the city, each other, a family. I could have been more than just one happy story. I could have given you more happy stories than you believed were possible.”
“I’m sorry.” Oliver felt like his heart was being shredded into tiny bits, and he was never going to be able to pick up all the pieces.
How had he gone from being happier than he believed was possible to wishing he was dead? Wishing he was the one who had an arrow in his chest.
“Felicity, I’m so sorry!” he wiped at the blood on her mouth. “Please, just stay here with me!”
His pleas fell on death ears as Felicity gave one last breath, eyes glazing over with nothing as her chest stilled completely.
“Felicity!” Oliver cried in anguish, clutching her to his chest. “Please, don’t leave me. Not again.” A cry of a wounded animal escaped him as he bent over her covering with his body, wishing it had been him.
Oliver jolted up, Felicity's name leaving his mouth on a hoarse shout, his breath came in fast and quick pants, sweat making his clothes stick to his skin and his chest pounded painfully against his ribcage.  
He swung his legs over the couch, sitting on the edge, burying his face in his hands.
It’s okay. It was just a dream.
Oliver’s head shot up, and he stared across at the image that had haunted been haunting him for weeks.
Felicity stood in front of the coffee table, looking as beautiful as the day he met her, black pencil skirt, pink buttoned up blouse, hair pulled back into a ponytail, glasses perched on her nose.
But she wasn’t real. Oliver knew that. His heart and his mind were playing tricks on him. Torturing him.
“It wasn’t just a dream. You died. That part is real.” Oliver wiped a hand down his face tiredly. “You’re not really here. You're dead.”
But you’re not, and you're going to be okay.
“No, I’m not. I’m never going to be okay again as long as your gone,” God, he was going insane. He was talking to a ghost.
Professionals would really have a field day with him.
Felicity’s ghost smiled sadly.
You can’t change what happened to me, Oliver. You have to move on.
Oliver sucked in a sharp breath, her words echoing in his head.
You can’t change what happened to me, Oliver.
But what if he could?
What if he could go back and stop it?
What if he could save her?
He shot up from the couch, reaching for his phone he tossed on the coffee table.
There was someone he had to call.
He dialed a number he never had before. He didn’t care that it was barely 4 in the morning. He didn’t care what time it was wherever the man was.
If he could change what happened, that was all that mattered.
He waited with bated breath, pressing the phone to his ear, listing it to ring, one, two, three, four times, finally on the fifth ring. “Hello, Mate.” A British voice answered.
“I need your help, Constantine.”
                                                    ~*~ ~*~ ~*~
Almost 24 hours later, Oliver was letting Constantine into Felicity's apartment.
“You look like Hell spat you out.” Constantine greeted, brushing past him.
“I lost someone I care about very deeply.” Oliver turned to face him. “I was hoping you could help me with that. You do spells and magic and all that weird shit. There has to be something I can to do to save her.”
Constantine regarded him closely. “Your talking about changing what has already happened.”
“It is possible?”
“Is it possible? Yes.” Constantine answered. “Is it recommended? No. Time traveling. Changing the past. It has ramifications.”
“I don’t care. If there’s a spell that would help me save her, then do it. You owe me that much at least.”
Constantine was silent for a moment before finally speaking. “If I do this I can’t guarantee everything's going to work out the way you want it to that part will be up to you. There’s is a spell for sending someone back in time. I can send you back to save your friend; however, by doing so, you would be changing things, causing a disturbance in the timeline. you won’t have any way of knowing if you made things worse.”
“If you want to do this, you need to move forward with caution. There’s no telling what consequences you may face for changing something that has already happened.”  Constantine warned.  
“I don’t care about the consequences.” Saving Felicity was worth the risk. Felicity was worth any risk.
“Okay, then,” Constantine would do the spell. He did owe Oliver one, after all. “Once I do the spell, you can only return back to your time once your task is finished. Once the life you went back to save is no longer in danger of being cut short.”
Oliver nodded if he saved Felicity, then she would be alive when he returned. That was his priority.
                                                   ~*~ ~*~ ~*~
Oliver watched as Constantine drew a large symbol onto the floor, he placed five candles around it in a circle.
“Step into the circle,” Constantine instructed.
Oliver stepped through the circle and onto the symbol, turning to face Constantine as he mixed something into a bowl, whatever it was smelled.
“Last chance to rethink this, Mate,” Constantine warned.
“Finish the spell,” Oliver said sharply.
Constantine's eyes narrowed, and he started chanting.
Oliver didn’t try to understand the words he spoke, though he knew it was Latin.
Suddenly, Constantine lit a match and threw it in the bowl, a loud popping sound followed with smoke billowing, and suddenly he felt like he was being pulled, yanked through time.
He shut eyes against the feeling.
“How the hell did you get here?!”
He snapped his eyes open at the demanding voice.
His voice and the familiar sound of an arrow being drawn.
Standing across from him was himself, eyes hard and unflinching, arrow knocked back, ready to shoot. “I will not ask again. What the fuck just happened?!”
                                                 ~*~ ~*~ ~*~
A/N: Okay, so I went a different route than a speedster time traveling or the Waverider. Now, I'll admit I don't know much about Constantine and I don't know if he has the power to send someone back with a spell but for this story, I'm going with that.
I hope you enjoyed the chapter.
Tags: @erika-amber @msbeccieboo @faegal04 @eloiselili @jendiaz69 @omglovechrissie @icannotbelieveiamhere @hope-for-olicity @lageniuswannabe @keabbs @it-was-a-red-heeler
If you want to be tagged let me know!
Also if you hadn’t read the previous chapters you can read them here, https://archiveofourown.org/works/18196577/chapters/43043615.
31 notes · View notes
twistedsinews · 5 years
Text
Saints Row; GatBoss Week, Day 7; Faith/Gat; M (More Murder, More Makeouts)
A thread of unease wound itself around the card table.  His eyes flicked to his compatriots, one by one, as he went over the plan.  They were loyal, they had that at least, but they hadn’t even gotten to the hard part and there seemed to be a unanimous, unspoken sentiment that something had gone horribly wrong.
The lights flickered overhead.  Flimsy wiring, but it did nothing to relieve the tension eating away at already shaky morale.
There was a thud against the warehouse doors, and a shout as they swung inward, one more so than the other, under the weight of a young man.  His hand slipped, leaving a bloody print as he crumpled to the floor.
His men rushed to their wounded friend’s side.  He trailed behind.  Standing above, he watched the wounded man’s wide, wild gaze, and a sickly feeling pooled in his stomach.
The lights flickered again.
And went out.
Panic gripped them where they huddled in the dark – four men around a dying fifth.  There was soft sound behind him, and he turned, reaching for his gun.
It went clattering across the cement floor, somewhere in the darkness.  A swift crack to the face sent him tumbling over the others.  Someone else managed to stand.
The blast of a shotgun echoed through the warehouse, followed closely by another.
In the end, he was still alive.  He couldn’t breathe right.  Everything hurt.
Strong hands rolled one of the bodies off of him; the stock of a shotgun shoved the other out of the way. An arm hooked around his ankle, and he was dragged along the concrete floor.
His leg thudded limply to the floor.  He was kicked over onto his back, and the man stepped away, circling him in an outward spiral.  He was left under a circle of light cast by a single incandescent bulb that dangled overhead. Entranced, the moths fluttering around its dim ambience paid them no mind at all, but cast little shadows that flickered softly across the face that appeared in his field of vision.
“Help...”
His voice scratched in his throat, barely audible.  He wasn’t even sure he’d spoken, but the woman tsked.  
“You’re beyond earthly help.”
She might have been right. His vision blurred as she knelt above him, and he coughed.  Gently, her hands pressed against the sides of his face, bringing his focus back to her, and she smiled.
“I can absolve you of all your sins,” she promised him.  “All you have to do for me in return is tell me what I want to know.”
He coughed again, choking on the words and his own blood.  Her eyebrows raised, but she waited patiently for the fit to pass.
Taking a deep, rattling breath, he wheezed, “Go to Hell.”
Her smile grew darker. “Fair enough.”
She drew one leg under her to push herself to her feet, and glanced off into the shadows.  “Gat.”
There was a click of a switchblade being opened.
Faith stepped out of the light.
By the time the screaming stopped, she had burned through most of a cigarette.  She flicked ash off the tip, watching the ember cool.
Gat scuffed to a stop behind her at the shutter door, and her gaze flicked back out to the city skyline. Shotgun cradled in the crook of the opposite arm, he slid his fingers along her hip.  Faith hissed as he scraped his teeth along the skin under her ear.
“Am I paranoid, or is this the third little rebellion we’ve had to deal with in two months?”
“What’s it matter?”
“I don’t know, it’s just...”
A feeling.  A suspicion.  Paranoia.
“You thinkin’ someone’s behind it.”
Gat reached to leaned the shotgun against the wall.  The hand on her hip slid under the waistband of her jeans; his other hand came to rest against the base of her throat, and she swallowed.
“You’re right,” she admitted.  “It doesn’t matter.”
She took one last drag off the cigarette, and flicked it into the scraggly grass.  The puff of smoke on her breath was carried off in the summer breeze.
Faith turned to slide into his arms, and slipped hers up around his neck.  She stretched up high enough to kiss him, and a warm, appreciative hum rumbled in his chest.  Johnny caught her knee where it pressed against his thigh, drawing it up higher.  She took the hint, dragging herself high enough off the ground to lock her legs over his hips.
Sliding his hand against her back, Gat braced her against him, and, making a controlled fall, pulled her down to the ground.  Catching their weight one hand, he shifted to fold his legs beneath him.  Getting a grip behind her knees, he jerked her snug against him, earning a breathless little gasp against his ear.
As he started on the buttons of her vest, Faith tangled her fingers in his hair, getting enough of a hold to angle his face towards her.  Johnny blinked at her expression, then smirked as she leaned in to kiss him again.
21 notes · View notes
lyndsaybones · 5 years
Text
All These Years, Part 5
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
2001, Georgetown, Washington, D.C.
The apartment smells like stale cigarettes. Natural light streams in through the wooden blinds, but not another light burns. Her home has become a dark, quiet thing, an empty husk.
She tried, she really did. But there is a bitterness, a boiling wave of indignant rage that bubbles like a layer of hot magma just under her polished veneer. Careful what you wish for, you just may get it. Want Mulder? Sure, but only for a while. Want a baby? No problem, but you can’t keep him. Everything you ever wanted in the worst possible way. The smiles are forced, the pleasantries feigned and she just can’t do it anymore.
Time keeps...disappearing. She’ll go to bed on a Friday night and wake on a Sunday afternoon, unsure of what’s happened and what they’ve done to her this time. She can guess though.
As far as anyone knows, William was found lifeless in his crib at just a week old. SIDS, she’d told everyone, including her own mother. That’s a lie that can never be absolved. Mulder, overwrought with grief and guilt, fled. Everyone who needed to, believed it completely.
The death certificate was easy enough to forge, given her background. A tiny urn was interred at a nearby cemetery.  Anyone who came poking would only find ashes, a small handful of incinerated medical waste.
She never had to fake the haze of grief and postpartum hormones. Milk with no baby to feed, love with no-one to receive it. And Mulder, reaching out from some nameless distance, telling her that the boy sleeps well, doesn’t like the pacifier, seems to prefer classic rock in the car, can move things with his mind.
There is peace in knowing that her son is well loved and cared for. But there will come a day when her computer is hacked or her nondescript email address is traced and then this will have been all for naught. Whoever keeps stealing her away for days at a time will eventually put the pieces together, quit trying to make another William and just go get the real McCoy.
She has to cut their access, to her and to her son.
Mulder had turned to the Gunmen to disappear. She’s chosen to turn to Skinner. It'll be like their own witness protection program. He's secured all the documents and certifications she’ll need to vanish and start over. She's done the hard part, drawing pints of her own blood over these last few months and storing them away in her fridge, right next to the milk and eggs.
He knocks quietly and she lets him in.
“Are you sure?” he asks, the hesitation heavy in his voice.
She nods simply and he follows her.
She stands in front of the bathroom mirror, blindly locating the scar on her neck with the pads of her fingers. She grits her teeth and presses her scalpel into the flesh. Skinner closes his eyes and turns his head. The chip doesn’t even make a sound when she drops it into the porcelain basin. She runs the water and it disappears down the drain. She doesn’t even bother to tamp the wound as she walks to her son’s room.
He helps her to the floor and squeezes the bags of blood onto the blond hardwood where each of her wrists lie. He dabs a scalpel in one of the pools and then places it in her hand.  
She stares with doll’s eyes as he snaps the “crime scene” photos.
Frohike has always watched over her, in his own little way. When Mulder came back from the dead and treated his girl like an afterthought, Frohike didn’t hesitate to step in and let him know what a colossal piece of shit he was.
When Mulder left with the baby, he helped her get everything together to fake little William’s tragic passing. Between her medical know how and his hacking skills, it was simple enough. They even managed a dubious recorded 911 call.
She thanked him, kissed his cheek and never spoke to him again. In the months after Mulder went underground, she wasted. He saw it with his own eyes. She got skinny, like she did with the cancer. She took up smoking. He saw, through the lens of camera, saw her dying in slow motion. When the call to her address comes over the scanner, he feels like throwing up.
He arrives in time to see a body bag rolled out of the Georgetown building, Walter Skinner follows the stretcher, hands shoved in his pockets. He catches sight of him across the street, standing on the curb and looking utterly heartbroken.
He crosses and meets him there.
“Is it true?” he asks, eyes wide.
“She resigned this morning and I went over to try and talk her out of it,” he says, drawing a deep breath. “She’d already...she was gone by the time I got here.”
“You’re saying she did this to herself?” Frohike asks, eyes wide and pained.
Skinner’s eyes dart and his jaw tightens. He seems to be wrestling for control of his emotions. Frohike has never been so blind as to think he was the only one who carried a torch for her.
Skinner nods solemnly. “I’ll get you the pictures and the autopsy report. Make sure he knows what happened here.”
The coroner’s van rumbles down the street and its driver peers into the rear view mirror expectantly. The bag in the back begins to crinkle and rustle and a slender hand, caked with dried blood, parts the zipper and opens it.
“Got about an hour or so,” Doggett says, gripping the steering wheel with blanched knuckles. 
She does not turn around, but nods solemnly. There is a trail of blood down the back of her shirt and she reaches to gently prod the wound there. 
“There’s a bag back there with your clothes and...everything else,” he says. 
 “Thank you, John,” she says, her voice rougher than it used to be. “For everything.”
They ride in silence for a long time, until the lights of the city are a glow on the horizon behind them.
She’s changed out of her bloody clothes and tucked her hair into the baseball cap. A black turtle neck sweater covers the wound on her cervical spine. 
When they come to a stop, she climbs into the front seat next to him, but does not avert her gaze from the beaten up car sitting on the side of the road. She holds out her hand to offer him something. He cups his palm to receive her cross. 
“Make sure that gets to my mother, please,” she whispers. 
He nods, stares at her sharp profile. 
“Take care of yourself, Dana,” he says. 
She finally looks at him, offers a weak, tight lipped smile and nods. She leaves him there and climbs into the nondescript sedan waiting for her on the shoulder.
He waits until her tail lights disappear into the night and leaves Dana Scully in his past.
159 notes · View notes
doppelgangerjoelle · 5 years
Text
Of Gods and Men
I got an idea last night and ended up writing 2K words but then I didn’t want to write a whole long fanfic leading up to it (this is basically the end) so I’m just gonna give you a quick synopsis and what I wrote. The summary spoils the writing so read it before or after, I don’t care. I don’t have time to make this a whole fic at the moment. it’s soukoku and get’s slightly naughty at the end but not too much
Context: Chuuya is contacted by the gods asking him to return to their realm as a calamity deity required to complete the cycle of life. They offer to return the power to it’s full glory. Chuuya learns the god that humans named Arahabaki was sent to Earth to bring destruction as part of a ‘divine plan’ until it was captured and sealed by humans. Dazai gets wrapped up in it because he has a ‘divine gift’, being the only one in this generation who can control the power of a god when sealed in a vessel, something humans took advantage of when capturing Arahabaki the first time. Essentially Dazai’s ancestor is the one who sealed it in the first place and the gods recognize the soul having reincarnated into him. The gods summon them to the celestial plane where Chuuya points at the void and yells at the gods. Dazai, who is still very much mortal, suffers under the power of the celestial plane and can barely stand the whole time. In the end it turns out Arahabaki willingly submitted to the ancestor and was sealed away so they didn’t have to hurt anyone anymore until the seal was broken. Arahabaki chose it’s vessel because he was a scared and lonely child. The Chuuya we know is really just Arahabaki without his memories (because Rimbaud had stolen then when he stole part of his power) and raised as a human, he was never separate from him. Making them realize gods and humans weren’t so different after all.
“What will happen if I accept your offer? I become a god again?” Chuuya shouted into the void. The ‘land’ beneath his feet did not move even as he stomped with his ability. The bluish white glow around them only shined a little brighter as his power.
“You will regain your true form, leaving your mortal vessel behind.” The voice responded, from everywhere and nowhere at once.
“Right here? On Earth?! Where billions of people are living?! There’s a giant hole in the city where Arahabaki stood for mere minutes! And it was weakened from being sealed. Just how much fucking damage would happen if that came back at full power?!”
“The entire land where you stand would be destroyed, but it is necessary.”
“How much land?! The city? The whole prefecture?!”
“The resurrection of the calamity deity would likely return your island to the depths from whence it came.”
The color drained from the man’s face as his eyes widened as far as they could, jaw going slack. The man on the ground behind him shook, just as shocked as he.
“That’s almost two hundred million people.” He barely heard himself say, only speaking just above a whisper.
“On a cosmic scale, humans are nothing but specks of dust. Insignificant.”
“You’re comparing humans to dust?! Living, breathing people?!”
“Do you miss every rock you kick on the road? Do you mourn every insect you step upon? Do you feel guilt for each blade of grass cut?”
“If I were once one of them, yes, I would. And even if I didn’t, I know they exist so they are important.”
“You do not comprehend the scale in which we exist in. We are gods, humans’ lives are but a blink compared to ours.”
“Do you, too, not look small compared to something greater than you?”
The voice did not answer.
“Even the smallest insect has it’s own life. It knows the world is so much greater than it will ever know but it does not stop it from living. Just because we are bigger we do not deserve to live any more than it does.”
“You are one who has slain his own kind out of a lust for power and greed, and yet you speak of respecting the life of something less than you?”
“Yea, I know how it sounds. And I know what I’ve done is terrible, and nothing I do will ever make up for it. But there’s stuff I can do now to make people’s lives better and I want to do it. I don’t want to leave them behind when I know I can help them. I don’t want to leave people that need me.”
“Even when you will be helping the greater good of all existence?”
“You want me to be a harbinger of destruction of a cosmic scale, that’s not exactly the kind of job I’m looking for.”
“Creation needs destruction. As life needs death. The cycle must continue.”
“You want me to murder innocent people, including all other living beings, just to join your almighty party.”
“We are only asking you to do as you always have. Just because you are trapped within a vessel of flesh does not absolve you of the actions of the god within. Of the memories you have lost.”
“Will I get all those memories back? Who fucking knows how long of destroying everything so you all can rearrange it again however you damn well please? And what about my life as a human?”
“You will likely forget such useless memories. As we will forget this whole discussion. In the grand scheme of things, it is pointless.”
Chuuya scoffed, giving a half crazed, half defeated laugh.
“Do gods even have feelings? Do they know love? Do they feel pain?”
“We have no such need for them. We only feel pain through vessels when we walk the Earth, but we do not usually feel their emotions.”
“Then you could never understand. You could never comprehend humans, and hell, I’m sure bugs have more fucking compassion and empathy than you’re capable of! You say you created created us then why did you give us such “useless” things, huh?! Why let us have feelings at all?”
“We did not give them to you. You developed them on your own.”
“Then why didn’t you? In all your infinite years why did you never learn to care about anything? Is it because if you cared then you know you couldn’t just keep resetting all of creation? You couldn’t keep killing everything you ever made when it started to fall apart? Because you knew it was your fault.”
Once again, the voice was silent.
“Did you ever consider the ones that made you took all those feelings away so you wouldn’t make the same mistake they did? That even when you became corrupt and flawed they couldn’t destroy you.”
When no response came Chuuya inhaled a deep breath, air burning in his chest. When he exhaled smoke followed. When he continued he sounded surprisingly calm.
“You never told me why Arahabaki was on Earth in the first place. How does a god get captured and sealed by humans? Why, of all things, did he choose me as a vessel? I was just a child.”
Chuuya growled when the voice remained silent, but before he could speak again it finally answered.
“Pity. Perhaps even... mercy.”
“Are you telling me the god responsible for destroying things felt bad for the things it had to destroy? One of the beings with supposedly no feelings.”
“We were not given feelings. But neither were you humans. It is... anomalous.”
This time his laugh really did sound unhinged.
“Yea, most people get second thoughts when they have to stare into the eyes of something begging for its life. Especially when that something doesn’t understand that there’s a ‘big picture.’ I’m not even so heartless to feel nothing. There’s no joy to be had in murder, a fight, I understand. But death, no. There’s no meaning in death. You say life can’t exist without death but why should it be rushed? Why should someone decide when it comes? Why can’t it just happen? Just like how learned to feel, why can’t we just let death come when it does?”
Chuuya could feel a long explanation coming, so with a sigh he continued before the voice could answer.
“Look, say I agree and give up my mortal body. What happens if Arahabaki comes back, looks what has happened after sitting pretty in my body for 15 years and decides it wants nothing to do with you gods anymore?”
“The being you call Arahabaki is not something separate from you. The flesh may be your vessel but you are one in the same. You assimilated with the human child whose body you chose, losing all memory in the process. Shedding the vessel will simply return your previous power and memories.”
“Wait...” Chuuya looked down at his bare palms. “Are you telling me I’m what happens if one of you is stripped of all your power and stuck in mortal flesh?”
“A crude way of putting it, but that is correct.”
“But I’m human. Don’t you understand that? I’m human!”
“We explained before that you-”
“No you don’t get it. You said you don’t have emotions, you weren’t given them. But I am one of you and I have them. We’re the same. We’re exactly the same but that almighty power or whatever just goes to your head!”
Watching Chuuya point to the nothingness, Dazai couldn’t help but smile. What did it even mean to be human, he wondered. What separated us from insects or gods? The strength of our bodies? The scope of our understanding? If gods could love as humans, then what really made us so different?
If a god raised as a human could feel anger and fear and jealous and love, then why would all the beings in all the cosmos be incapable?
Maybe they just didn’t want to. Because with all those feelings came pain. Pain and suffering, and on a scale unimaginable. In a life so long they would hurt so much they would become numb. And perhaps they would forget what it felt like to feel anything different. Perhaps they would make themselves feel nothing.
But then, perhaps, one day they would feel again, sparked by something so small, so seemingly insignificant, than they would remember it all again. They would look into their heart and soul and it would all come flooding back. And they would try to stop the cycle they once helped continue only to remember why they let it in the first place.
They would feel anger and fear again. And there would come the pain. And then one day everything stopped.
Nothingness. No emotion, no pain, no thoughts. A void. Only to be thrust again amidst panic and fear. The small things hurting one another. Their screams. And the pain, the pain came again. It roared inside and it roared outside and everything was covered in a black flame. But just as soon as it started it stopped.
Bright blue eyes opened as the sun shined above. The dust had settled, the damage done. Alone and empty, he woke at the bottom of a pit. Such a small thing, so fragile. Driven by nothing but instinct he stood on his feet, wobbling. Not knowing the vastness of the universe, the creature who he was, nor the person who he would be become.
All he knew was that the sky was such an utterly captivating blue.
And he smiled.
“I can’t believe you just yelled at a god.” Dazai said, stretching his arms above his head.
“Well, I’m a god, too.” Chuuya huffed. “It’s only fair.”
“Ah yes, what a wonderfully powerful being you are. So utterly ethereal.”
Chuuya scoffed. “Yea! I’m a god so you should start respecting me! I should be worshiped!”
“Oh yes, my almighty Lord Chuuya.” Dazai grasped Chuuya’s hand as he bowed. He kissed up the back of his hand. “I will worship you how you deserve to be worshiped.”
He only made it halfway up Chuuya’s arm before his head was pushed away, grip still firm on his wrist.
“I will worship you ever day and every night.” He brought Chuuya’s palm to his lips. “I will devote myself to you.”
The ginger simply rolled his eyes.
“Will it please you if I give my body to you?”  His tongue slipped between his lips to the slender fingers. “Will you accept me as your devote servant?”
Heat rose in Chuuya’s cheeks as well as his belly. He blocked his face with his free hand as the other was taken into Dazai’s mouth. He licked and sucked on each one.
“These hands are capable of so much destruction.” His tongue ran along one of his fingers. “I’ve seen you kill a man with your bare hands.” He took one finger into his mouth and slowly dragged it back out. “You could easily kill me. But you won’t.”
“I s-should...” Chuuya stuttered from behind his hand. His knees were shaking and he couldn’t help but notice the growing problem below.
“I would let you.” He kissed the palm once more. “I would be your willing sacrifice. Take my life as your own.”
“Can’t I just... do that while you’re alive?” He avoided Dazai’s eyes, unable to stand the heat in them. He felt the gasp against his palm.
“Chuuya!” He grasped Chuuya’s hand with both hands. “Is Chuuya proposing to me?!”
The red on Chuuya’s face spread as he gaped at the other, mouth hanging wide open.
“M-Maybe!” He desperately tried to pull his hand away. “If you get life insurance!”  
“Chuuuuuyaaaaaaaa!!!!!!”
paypal me $30 and I will finish this [email protected] (it will probably be a 15K fanfic)
6 notes · View notes