#It intimidates me so much but also as someone who's read the first few installments I love it | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

youwontlikethisblog · 3 years

Text

Don't Yell At Her! Don't You Yell At Her!

"Did you call me, Sir?"

"Yes, could you tell Marcela at what time I arrived to Eco Moda this morning?"

"Yes sir. Ms. Marcela our prestigious President arrive to the Eco Moda installation at the time of eight in the morning." Marcela smiles at that and turns to look at Armando who returns the smile. "For more details; he arrived minutes after you did ma'am. I'll take the opportunity now Ma'am, to give you the anti-depressants you asked me to get you." Marcela snatches them out of his hand.

"But we almost ran into each other, my love!" Armando smiles and says confidently. "What a coincidence, no?" he smiles even more.

"In effect Sir!" Freddy smiles.

"I mean of course, but what did you do last night my love? Why did you arrive so late?"

"I don't have to stand for your jokes."

"Freddy one last question."

"Yes."

"Right after I got here, what did I do?"

"Yes, as soon as the Mister arrived he reported to production where he was required by Mister. Mario Calderon." Marcela groans.

"So I arrived to this office at eight in the morning like I always do, my dear Marcela. Then I went to production for a couple of minutes when I decided to head here."

"Freddy one more question."

"Yesyes."

"Did I force you to say something? Did I intimidate you, bribe you so you would say all of this in front of Marcela? Yes or no?"

"Never, Mister. That can't be because it can never be."

"Freddy thank you so much. You can leave now." He smiles at him.

"Thank you, Sir. Excuse me." Freddy now leaves his office and shuts the door behind him.

Marcela now feels embarrassed or defeated but because of her ego she won't back down. She's still pissed. Betty has been listening to Freddy, often looking at him when he speaks and then turning to Armando and then Marcela.

In this scene Betty is just on panic mode.

She's witnessing a woman go crazy and grasp at straws to prove her man's infidelity, while he is trying to prove his "innocence" and suffering the consequences of a night out with his other girlfriend i.e, her. Though Betty believes that Marcela is doing so out of love and wanting to fight for Armando, we understand that Marcela's drive to fight for Armando isn't love but possessiveness. Not only that as Betty believes she is the reason why Armando is facing these consequences because she's the other woman in his life and to top it off the only thing that Marcela can actually use as evidence of Armando's infidelity is on his desk for her to see.

Armando now feels confident that he has the upper hand, a trick up his sleeve and is the winning team. However, the odds are not in his favor, like literally.

"and so you don't think that I schemed with Freddy; call production, Beatriz." Betty now takes advantage of the opportunity and moves the poem away from the front of the desk and picks up the phone. "I have hundreds of witnesses that saw me arrive, or what? Do you also think that I blackmailed them?" he asks in disbelief.

"You're not calling anywhere." Marcela grabs the phone out of Betty's hand and hangs it up. "and you're not going to make a ridicule out of me in front of the entire employees!"

"In ridicule?" He once again asks but amazed at Marcela now. "In ridicule? Who called Colorink today to ask if I was missing? Who! Marcela, Who?" he now yells at her.

"Yes! But you left there at ten at night and I called you at ten thirty and you told me a lie and then you disappeared!"

"The point is: what time dId I leave Colorink? It's really easy, Marcela." he hisses. "Lets call Carlos Mantilla, he saw me leave." He yells at her. "Call Mantilla at Colorink." He tells Betty.

Betty goes to grab the phone but Marcela shoves her away and turns to her.

"I said you're not calling anywhere." She orders between clenched teeth. Betty takes a few steps back and honestly she looks like she wants to run out of there and I would too.

"Well then Marcale, by God, how do we find out what time I left if ten or ten thirty?" He now is pleading angrily at her. "Call Mantilla, please" He also pleads.

Betty once again goes to grab the phone and this time Marcela shoves her and grabs the poem and turns to her and yells "I told you you're not calling anywhere!" She raises her hands with the poem in her fist. Betty takes steps back. "Do you not understand!"

"Don't yell at her! Don't you yell at her!" Armando screams at Marcela.

I see many people misinterpret this or not translate it correctly. Armando here yells "No me la grites! No me la grites Marcela!"(I know colombian's have different us of words in spanish so this is like based off my hispanic background, that is not colombian.) What he is saying here is in turn a personal and possessive term.

"Don't yell at my! Don't yell at my!" which in English that translation doesn't make much sense but again we know what he implies "Don't yell at My Betty."

Now Armando has already gotten mad at Marcela when she insults or yells at Betty but never to this degree.

Betty looks like she wants to cry and honestly, same sis.

"You don't yell at me!" Marcela says and behaves like a little girl throwing a tantrum. "and you can you not leave us alone? Do you always have to be in our intimate life? Or what do you also control his intimate life(oh honey you got a big storm comin')?"

As she says those final words we only get a frame of Armando. His eyes are fixated on Betty's entire existence in front of him. His eyes dance and glisten, he looks tense and guilty.

It just hit me that it isn't only because of what Marcela is saying to Betty and how she is treating her but because he also feels guilty for it all.

He feels guilty that Marcela is pissed off and hurt. He feels guilty that Betty is paying the price for it. He feels guilty that all of that is happening because of him and I think or believe that it hurts him deeply that because of his mistakes, Betty is now paying the price as well and that hurts him most of all and it's this moment where he can't deny or rationalize why he feels hurt over it.

However this foreshadows future events as well.

"Excuse me." Betty speaks softly and walks towards her office. Marcela, furious turns back towards Armando.

Now Armando's entire demeanor changes, seconds ago it was sadden and guilty but now it's back to anger however he is trying to deescalate the situation.

"Look Marcela if you're not capable of accepting the respective calls I won't accept your yellinging, nor your hysteria or your claims!" he yells the ending at her.

"Why didn't you answer the phone last night?"

"For a very simple reason, my love." He hisses. "Because I fell deeply[asleep]." he says is now leaning against the wall that connects the window to Betty's office. "Or what? Can I not? Or is it so suspicious to not hear the phone? Did you not hear the door man? He said it perfectly that I left my apartment at seven in the morning alone! Or what? Did I have to leave with a woman?" He yells. "Or what? My love do you have any more doubts?"

"Nonono, don't worry. As always you think that because you can erase all of the proof and all of the evidence I have to believe you? Cause you always leave the scene of the crime impeccable like this desk, which today it isn't. You know Amrando I didn't know you liked candy bars." She waves the chocolate bar wrapper that Betty had given him. He looks at it in Marcela's hand who scrunches it. "Can I throw it away?"

"Throw it away, do what ever you want." He says annoyed, then tugs his ear(self-soothing).

"Huh but there's more." She grabs the poem again and pulls the red ribbon. "I can throw this one out too?"

Her behavior here reminds me of a spoiled child who goes around the room of someone they don't like and starts to knock things off their shelves to show dislike and arrogance.

"Yeah, whatever." He is now blading but only slightly that you can't really take notice of it.

Marcela then reads the poem.

Betty covers her face and closes her eyes inside her office. Armando arches his brow and sits back against his chair, while Marcela reads he glances to Betty's office. His eyes are narrow and he has his fingers over his mouth, touching it lightly, as if her were thinking.

When Marcela reads :

"Hoy rió si tu ríes y canto su tu cantas (Today I laugh if you laugh and I sing if you sing)"

Armando is sitting on his chair behind his desk. He has his fingers interlaced together and in front of him, his expression is fear. His eyebrows are furrowed, corners of his lips slightly downturned, nostrils slightly flared and eyes narrowed.

In spanish there's a word used for babies, who after crying a lot, and they fall asleep they do this: suspiro but it isn't just a sigh. It's like a sob without tears.

Ever since I first saw this episode that reaction from him has caught my attention. Why does he react that way to Marcela reading that poem? Sure it's a sweet poem but like not enough to get that reaction.

He's terrified and anguished in this scene. It's funny that the next day the secs. believe that because of that same fight Marcela beat Armando but it isn't surprising for them to assume this. Marcela walks with an arrogance she confuses for dignity. She walks with an air of superiority to the rest and she confuses this for self-respect. She lacks all of this and it isn't because she "loves" Armando. She does so because she thinks more of herself than she does of others. In this scene she doesn't allow Armando to speak, the very few times he does it's to defend himself or yell at her. Marcela holds the power in the relationship and she's fully aware of this and uses it to her advantage. The thing Marcela and Armando have in common is that when they see red, damned be the rest.

"Delmira Agustini" he throws his head back, tired, he looks done. "and who is she?" She marches to his desk.

"How am I going to know who Delmira chuchui is. I don't even know her." he looks away from her and for a tiny little second he looks like he's running through his memory.

"You have no idea who the woman who wrote you this poem is?"

Armando, shielding his eyes looks up at her and shakes his head eagerly. It's important to note his expression because it is the same one he had the night of the drag party when Marcela was interrogating him in his bedroom; fear and honesty.

"So it grew magic legs and walked over here to your desk."

"I have no idea who that is, believe me, I really don't know." He yells defensively and quickly turns to Betty's office. His subconscious here speaks for him.

"Tell me who it is." She orders.

"I don't know." he yells.

"Ha you don't know, with such a dedication?[...]" He stands up and walks again to the same wall, hands in his pockets and shrugs and looks to the opposite direction. "You sang to each other?" Armando looks terrified as he shrugs, with his hand he points towards his chest but Marcela interrupts him before he can even speak she chuckles "ha what did you sing to her? Armando please you have the nerve, the nerve to tell me you don't know her when she made the effort to write this for you? and to recreate what you both have lived in a poem and you don't have the courtesy to remember her name!"

"Nonono it's-I-just- I don't even know the name. Delmira who? I don't know." he stumbles and stutters.

"I am going to remind you." She whispers kindly. "Delmira Agustini. Anyway that is the typical name that you like. Like Silva Marileni, Karina Larson, Claudia Boche and now it's Delmira Agustini. Must be another model."

"Nono. With this you-you have to believe me. I don't know how that paper got there[my desk]. I don't know what's going on here!" he turns to Betty's door. "I don't know! I don't know!"

"I do! and you know what? I totally agree with her when she says that she liked your insolence!" She throws the paper at him.

"Mar-mar-Marcela!" He yells and goes after her. She puts on her shades and walks out o his office, he runs out but stops in front of his office and turns to look at Bertha and Sofia who are sitting at their desks.

One could simply chuck Armando's behavior at the end of this scene as simply being about fear that he got caught. However Armando stands far away from Marcela, he stutters, he stumbles with his words, and he is on high alert. This isn't him getting caught and trying to cover his tracks, we've seen him get caught before and we've seen him escape the consequences before. He's always managed to make Marcela drop the whole thing(he gaslights her or tells her he's leaving her apartment and she says she'll drop it) but this time he doesn't. This time Armando is defenseless.

He often switches from standing near Betty's office or behind his desk or glances towards her office as well.

It isn't only because they are arguing because whenever Betty and him were arguing the previous day he didn't do that. He didn't stand by her door, he stood by her. He didn't glance at her door, he just stared at her.

The fact that Jorge Enrique and Fernando Gaitan did this so naturally and wrote such a small detail boggles me. JEA's acting is so natural and fluid that you get lost in it. It doesn't look like acting. It looks like a genuine reaction, just as Natalia's acting. It is phenomenal!

Armando was defending himself both to Marcela so she wouldn't end things therefore destroy him and Betty because he didn't want her to believe that he had somebody else.

The constant glancing to her office when he is defending himself allows us to see this.. While his constant standing by her office allows us to understand that he wants to bel close to her when he is under distress.

"Betty. Betty!" He yells for her.

A very timid Betty exits her office and walks towards his desk.

"Yes sir?" She speaks low.

"Tell me one thing, do you know who placed this poem on my desk?" he's pissed.

Betty, standing on the exact wall Armando had been standing by, nods her head slightly with wide eyes and a furrowed eyebrow(...s?)

"I placed it there, sir." she confesses. Armando furious stands up, he takes a step or two towards the meeting room and then turns towards Betty. His lips are pursed and he looks furious.

"Betty!" He yells. "Do you not realize the problem you just put me in?" Betty's truly feeling awful as her eyes are wide and full of fear. "Do you not realize! Tell me now how am I going to get it out that woman's head that I don't have a lover. Did you not measure the consequences, huh? How do you come up with the idea of putting a poem on my desk!"

Betty is standing tightly against the wall while he yells at her and she pulls slightly away from it to respond.

"Don Armando I only wanted to give you a surprise. To have a gesture like the letter you left on my desk." Armando does his classic angry italian chef hand gesture. "Sir, I'm really sorry. I think the best thing is that we end with this love." Armando had his back to her but as soon as she said those final words he turns to her surprised.

"What?" He asks shocked and angry. "What!" he looks at her in disbelief.

Betty looks away from him and looks down. She shakes her head and begins to speak "Sir I can't with this anymore. You're stuck in a grave problem with Ms. Marcela for going out with me and now the poem. I feel really bad."

Armando now has calmed down. He went from being furious to shocked and mad and now carefully paying attention to what Betty is saying. He stands still with arms around himself.

"No but Betty. No-No let's calm down." He takes a step towards her. "Lets calm down. You perfectly know how Marcela is." His eyes are wide and eyebrows arched. He is trying to fix this and is worried. "She is always suspicious of me. She always causes a scene of anything. No, think this through really well. Think it over."

"I know, Sir but that was with other women, not with me." Armando is intently paying attention to her again. His eyes are fixated on her. "I can't do this to her. I can't destroy a relationship like this-"

"Nonono, Beatriz. Destroy what? Do you think that what I have with Marcela is so harmonic?" He says panicked. "Harmonic is what we have." He says peacefully.

"What's happening is that she loves you, Sir.(NO, BETTY, SHE DOESN'T) and she suffers for you." Armando is now holding the rolled poem in his hands, to his face. "she wants to take care of you, she doesn't want someone to steal you away and because of that she behaves that way." He now looks at her, his fingers are interlaced as he stares at betty with softness and shakes his head, he takes in a deep breath "and I understand her. I'm not good for this. I can't be the other one or how many would say, the lover. For my father, for family, for my work, for your, your family, for the company, for Ms. Marcela. The best thing is for us to end this." Betty doesn't look at him as she speaks those final words, her head is down and she looks like she's in the brink of tears but is trying to hold herself together.

Armando stares at her this whole time and speaks "Nono but Betty lets calm down, for real-" Betty looks up and walks towards him and holds his hands in hers.

"Don Armando, what we lived was so very beautiful. These past nights have been the best ones of my life and I will always conserve them deeply in me." Armando now stares at her with his eyebrows slightly furrowed and slightly wide eyes. "From now on we will go back to being what we've always been. The president of Eco Moda and his assistant." Betty lets go of his hands and turns away to go to her office.

"Betty, come here, Be..tty." he speaks low.

Now Betty shuts the door to her office and leans against it and begins to cry.

Betty has been a witnesses to previous fights of these kinds. She's heard Marcela's yelling and all that. She's even helped cover Armando's tracks herself. However this time, just like she says it, it's different.

Does this justify Betty's actions? No.

Betty has been an accomplice to Armando's infidelities and she has been as well a willing participant to helping him. Like when she knew that Armando had a thing for Ms. Colombia and she worked her magic to secure that they did business with them so Armando had an excuse to see her since he was so excited about it. The fact that she covered his track with Marcela. She's always been a willing participator in the downfall of that relationship the only difference now is that unlike those model's who knew and didn't care about the relationship, who wanted Armando to end his relationship with Marcela(Albeit that they expected this because Armando always pretended that what he had with Morch wasn't serious) and felt no guilt over it, better yet had no problem causing a whole scene over it, Betty can't be the person who is actively inflicting this pain onto Marcela and she can not be the person who is in the middle of their romantic quarles.

Is this any different from the other women? Yes and no. With the other woman she just kept her mouth shut, helped him out when he needed the help and that was that. She couldn't force the woman not to go after Armando or stop them and at the time she was still keeping everything very professional so it's not like she could have told her boss "Hey you cheating scumbag stop cheating on your fiance." so instead for the sake of keeping a job and proving her worthiness at her job she became his accomplice. This time though she does have control over the other woman of Armando. This time she does decide whether she continues to go after a man who is engaged or if she decides to end it. Betty now has true control over the situation and she decides that she won't be the reason a woman goes crazy, even if that woman has treated her so unfairly and unkindly.

Betty can't let her father down nor anyone else simply because she's in love with Armando.

This takes him by surprise. Mario has told him that Betty would never give up a man such as himself, that she is lucky he[Armando] has even paid attention to her so therefore she should be grateful to god for him. However Betty doesn't behave this way. She places everyone else's needs before her own and she doesn't want to be like all the other woman who only cared about one thing: Possessing Armando.

He knows this and it affects him as well.

Betty is giving him up. Betty is renouncing to him and the relationship because unlike Marcela, she actually has dignity and proves to Armando over and over again that to him he isn't just an object to have but an actual human being. In her understanding what Marcela does is for love, however, Armando knows otherwise and the fact Betty is willing to give up their relationship if it means it's for his best interest and she doesn't cause harm to a woman who has done nothing but belittle her and treat her like the scum of the earth, gives him more reason to not want to end the relationship because he truly didn't want to.

This was all in the heat of the moment. The conversation was all being lead by only feelings so he didn't have time to manipulate Betty for the sake of the company. He was being forced within himself to face the reality of it and that is that he didn't want the relationship with Betty to end.

He tries to get her to take some deep breaths and rethink her decision and that doesn't help.

Betty avoids making eye contact with him as it pains her to see him while she is breaking up with him but Armando doesn't remove his eyes from her.

In this scene you two different contrast. While with Marcela all they did was yell and be at each other's throat's and Marcela showed to be the one with power in the relationship and that she likes it that way, Armando was fearful of her, controlling his anger, and exhausted but with Betty even when he did escalate in his anger he calmed down and listened to her, concentrated in what she was saying and tried to work it out. He asked for a breather, he asked for them to calm down and think things through clearly but he didn't even do that with Marcela.

In one he was willing to fight for the relationship even though he himself says he doesn't want to be in it, yet as he gets dumped he looks like he just hit the gutters, and in the other he doesn't even bother to fix it. He just hears her complain and then responds to her.

We can clearly see which is a toxic relationship and which is not. Even if Betty is the lover, even if Armando is cheating, it doesn't warrant or grant the excuse of behaving the way Marcela does.

Armando then goes to production and pulls Mario aside and tells him he needs to speak to him.

"What happened? What is it?" Mario asks concerned. Armando hols him from the shoulders and with a pain expressions breaks the news.

"Betty dumped me."

"What? He asks shocked. Armando drops his hands and looks away and walks towards the railing of the second floor of the building and leans against it.

He throws his arms in the air shrugging.

In a tone I'd described as pained and holding back tears he says "The worst is she doesn't want to know anything from me!" He wraps his arms around himself.

"Wh-but why? or what?"

Armando, while pouting and looking at the opposite direction, shrugs.

Armando is sad that Betty dumped and it isn't because of his ego. When Mario tells him that he needs to win her back because it would be terrible for his resume as a ladies man Armando tells him that things got out of his control, that he yelled so much at her when he found out about the poem that she cried.

He isn't worried about his ego, he is worried about the pain he caused Betty by not controlling himself.

Armando is steady moving towards figuring out his feelings or some of his feelings.

Do to his guilt of harming Betty he does want the relationship to end but he also doesn't want it to end because he'd truly miss Betty. It isn't only the people pleasing quality he has that motivates him to win her back but truly the fact that he can't live without her and he knows this, however he doesn't know or understand why that is.

While one can sympathize with Marcela we shouldn't neglect to call out her terrible toxic behavior while at the same time neglect to call out Armando's. In this scene what we saw was most certain reaction to abuse, not abuse itself from his part(though he has shown that in the past) and we can't ignore Betty's part in this either as she willinging entered a relationship with a man who is engaged, however what sets these two people from Marcela is that they recognize the pain they are inflicting in others and instead of ignoring it or not caring they feel guilty over it and one decides to remove herself from the situation.

'Til next time!

#armando ysblf #don armando #armando mendoza #analysis of ysblf #beatriz pinzon solano #beatriz pinzón solano #betty pinzón solano #betty #betty la fea #betty ysblf #yo soy betty la fea #marcela ysblf #marcela valencia #morch

24 notes · View notes

thedumpsterqueen · 4 years

Text

Standards of Performance, Chapter 10: Accommodations

From the Beginning, Previous Chapter

AO3 Link

Thank you guys again for being so kind about the new posting schedule (or lack thereof). Your comments and messages and rbs always make me laugh and cry (in a a good way).This is just a lil chapter about them being awkward and cute after The Kiss, and introducing some bigger plot stuff. You'll wanna buckle up for the next one ;)

Summary: You’re the BAU’s newest intern, desperate to prove yourself amongst an established team of much more experienced profilers. Agent Hotchner, the seemingly infallible team leader, sets strict expectations for your performance. He commands your respect without even trying, but is there something more to your relationship than a simple desire to impress your stony-faced boss?

Chapter Summary: Some creep is stalking the team and all you can think about is kissing Hotch.

Words: 2059

Rating: Explicit, 18+. Warnings on AO3.

Pairings: Hotch x Reader, Hotch x You

The BAU had a stalker.

To put it in a way more relevant to your views on the matter: the BAU’s stalker was interfering with the (hopefully) budding spark between you and Hotch.

It wasn’t that you didn’t care that there was potentially unhinged maniac apparently obsessed with the team, it’s just that when you got the slightly panicked phone call from JJ that Morgan, Reid, Garcia, and herself had all found letters on their doorstep professing an alarming fascination with the members of the team, you couldn’t help but feel a bit irritated that the ordeal was bound to put a pause on the progress you two had made.

That is, until you went to leave your apartment in the morning and found an unassuming envelope shoved under the door. You opened it with shaking fingers to a note written on thick cardstock, scrawled in black, seeping ink as if written by an old-fashioned quill.

I’ve been paying attention to your team for some time - quite the impact you’ve made on the world of crime. The heroes of the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit! I’m sure the world wishes they had you during Bundy or BTK, hm?

Anyways, I had to see for myself. I must admit, finding you was much easier than I would have anticipated given your ‘status.’ I thought I’d drop you this note to say hi and propose a deal. A Game, of sorts.

The Game goes like this: I leave you notes, and you try to catch me! Easy, yes? This is day 1. How many days until you find me?

Xoxo Talk soon,

You put the note in your bag and, after double checking your door was locked (not that the flimsy deadbolt the landlord had installed would have done much to keep an intruder out anyways), you rushed to the office. You dropped your note on the table in the conference room where the team had gathered and pointed at it tremulously.

“I got one too. I touched it, I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking -”

“Don’t worry about it,” Rossi interrupted. “We dusted the others; there was nothing. I doubt yours was any different.”

Hotch plucked your letter up and scanned it quickly before tossing it back on the table. “It’s exactly the same as the others. Nothing identifiable.”

“Why didn’t we get them?” asked Prentiss.

“Access,” said Garcia, notably less cheery than usual. The team turned to her for clarification.

“You three are hard to get to,” she explained. “Hotch and Prentiss live in secure apartment buildings. Rossi has a gated property with security that can rival the President’s. Those of us who don’t live the high life are just... out in the open.”

“So that’s encouraging, right? That the unsub either couldn’t or wouldn’t go through the extra trouble of getting to all of us?” JJ asked, hopeful.

Morgan shook his head. “I dunno if you can interpret any part of what this creep is doing to intimidate us as ‘encouraging.’”

“Does it read as intimidation, though?” mused Reid.

“I don’t know, you tell me,” Morgan responded. “What’s your take on the language?”

Reid took a millisecond to reread the letter and pursed his lips. “Though the language isn’t directly threatening, the concept of a game implies either winning or losing. He - it’s almost certainly a he - doesn’t mention the consequences for either situation, which could imply that there are none, but that seems unlikely. There’s also the matter of separating himself from others in line three - ‘I’m sure the world wishes they had you during Bundy or BTK,’ not we. He’s trying to distinguish himself to us in some way, which means he wants to be noticed, and I don’t think there’s anything in this language that excludes the possibility of him doing something drastic in order to be.”

“So not encouraging,” said Prentiss dryly. “The question is, why us? Is this personal; did we put someone close to him away?”

“It could be, but the language in the opening seems sarcastic almost, like he’s mocking us,” noted Rossi.

Morgan nodded in agreement. “It’s a challenge. He’s trying to tell us we’re not all we’re cracked up to be.”

The analysis worried you, because you felt you were the only member of the team for whom that statement might have been true.

“So, what then?” you asked. “Review security footage and see if we can find anything?”

“Already did!” chirped Garcia. “Hotch had me up all night reviewing the tapes.”

For the first time, you noticed the dark circles under her standard coat of heavy makeup. You looked at Hotch, expecting to find some shame in his expression, but found none.

“If there was anyone weird creeping around your dwellings last night, I didn’t see ‘em. I even looked through the street cameras in the area. Granted, none of you have a security camera pointed directly at your door, which might not be a bad idea after this -”

“Hold on,” Morgan interrupted, “you didn’t check her apartment though, right?” referring to you. “Cuz she just found it this morning?”

Garcia perked up, but you shot her down with a shake of your head. “Sorry guys, my place isn’t nearly nice enough to have security cameras.”

The team looked unperturbed by that, except for Hotch, who met your eyes with a look you couldn’t quite place.

“What do we do, then? Wait for another letter?” JJ asked.

“That’s all we can do until we have more evidence,” said Hotch, visibly frustrated. He hated waiting, you knew that. You all hated it. It felt like watching a car without its parking brake on slowly start to roll down a hill.

“If that’s all, sir…”

Hotch nodded at Garcia. “You’re all dismissed. Business as usual for now. If he craves acknowledgement, best not to give it to him unless we have to.”

The team filtered out, and you made to follow them, but before making it through the doorway, Hotch called you back. He shifted feet, cleared his throat, and looked at you.

“About the comment you made earlier,” he started.

What comment? You wracked your brain trying to remember if you’d said something rude, or something that hinted at what happened between you two, but came up short.

He noticed the puzzled look on your face and clarified. “When you said your apartment complex wasn’t nice enough to have security cameras. I wanted to say that -” he ran his hand across his jaw, clearly uncomfortable, “- I know the internship salary isn’t impressive, and if you feel you’re unable to afford safe accommodation, I’d be more than happy to talk to Strauss about -”

“Oh, God, no.” You felt as if your face was on fire. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it that way, my apartment is fine - I mean of course there’s things that could be improved - but in no way do I feel unsafe.”

“Well, good. Okay then.”

Before you could make your exit and spare you both from the residual awkwardness of the interaction, he spoke again. “There’s one more thing. Given that whoever wrote this note has displayed his willingness to come to our doorsteps, JJ is staying with Emily for the time being, Reid with Rossi, and Garcia with Morgan.”

You smirked at the last pairing. Leave it to those two to capitalize on a stalker to bunk up together.

“I was going to have the Bureau get you a hotel in the meantime, since he did come to your apartment, but Garcia suggested that since we live so close, you could just… stay with me.”

Holy shit.

There was a pained look on his face as he finished the sentence as if he recognized what an utterly bad idea it was, but hadn’t had the good sense to reject it himself. He looked at you, expecting an answer despite the lack of a question mark at the end of that statement, and you struggled mightily to compose yourself to deliver an acceptance that didn’t appear uncomfortably enthusiastic.

You must have taken too long, because he immediately started to retract his offer. “I already told her it was completely inappropriate; the rest of the team is used to staying together for cases but given you just started, and after the last few days I completely understand -”

“No!” You cut him off. “Sorry, no, that’s not what I was going to say at all. I’d love to. I mean, I think it’s a good idea. I’d feel a lot safer…”

‘With you around?’ Is that too much?

Fuck it.

“... with you around,” you finished, and you swear you saw him push back a smile.

“Alright, then. I’ll let Garcia know.”

You made a mental note to send that woman a thank-you card.

***

As the workday wound down, you were surprised to Hotch turn out his office light and walk out at the same time as you did.

“Early night?” you teased as you walked to your cars in the parking garage, despite it being 7 pm.

He chuckled. “It would have been rude of me to keep you hanging around until I decided to leave.”

Right. You were leaving together. Because you were going back to his apartment. Together. The undeniable domesticity of the moment put a skip in your step, and you couldn’t help but wish this was happening under different circumstances.

“So I’ll just stop by my apartment and grab my things?”

“What? No,” Hotch responded, frowning. “I’m coming with you. The whole point of all of this is to avoid being alone.”

And that’s how you ended up speeding down the highway like a madwoman, leaving Hotch in your dust, taking the stairs two at a time, and frantically scrambling to get your apartment in order. It wasn’t terrible; not as if you had rotting food sitting out or something (probably because you didn’t actually cook enough for that), but the recent caseload and spending so much time with Hotch in the mornings had certainly pushed general organization to the wayside. You shoved the growing pile of dirty laundry into your closet, straightened up the coffee table, and were in the middle of packing your suitcase when you heard a knock at the door.

Giving the apartment a quick once-over to make sure you hadn’t missed something utterly humiliating, you opened the door to an unimpressed Hotch.

“I could have pulled you over for speeding, you know,” he said as he strode into your living room.

“Yeah, sorry,” you said sheepishly, “I wanted to make sure this place wasn’t a mess the first time you saw it.”

He cocked an eyebrow and you realized how that came out - the first time, as if there were going to be many more - and you coughed and looked away.

“Anyways. I’m almost done packing, just gotta grab a couple more things.”

He nodded and you hurried to it, wanting to get him out of your apartment as quickly as possible. Normally you’d have jumped at the chance to be alone in a quiet place with him, but the way his eyes were scanning the room made you nervous that he was learning more about you in a very short amount of time than you felt entirely comfortable with.

***

You walked into Hotch’s apartment for the second time ever to find it just as clinically neat as before, except for a set of sheets and blankets laid out on the couch. Grinning, you gestured to them.

“Thought you said you were sure I would say no?”

It was his turn to be shamefaced. “Just in case. Besides,” he shot back, grabbing your bags from where you’d deposited them by the couch, “You’re taking the bed.”

“Like hell I am!” you scoffed, forgoing propriety. “I’m not making my boss sleep on the couch in his own apartment.”

“Considering I, as you mentioned, am your boss,” he responded, “I will be making that decision.”

You plopped down on the couch. “Unless I just refuse to move.”

He stood a few paces away and glared, but gave up and dropped your bags all the same.

You could have sworn you heard him mutter “brat” under his breath, but that didn’t sound like something Aaron Hotchner would say, did it?

Taglist (I got a bunch of new ones so message me if I forgot to add you!): @stop-drop-and-drumroll @criminalmindzjunkie @xoprincessmel @cevanswhre @addie5264 @klinenovakwinchester @honeyshores @violentvulgarvolatile @masumiyetimziyanoldu @violetclifford @pipersaccomplice @itsmytimetoodream @groovygoob @captainhyenafan @thebadassbitchqueen

253 notes · View notes

five-rivers · 3 years

Text

Long Night in the Valley Chapter 13

The car didn’t seem more crowded, but it was. Spinner had the dubious honor and privilege of being in one of Mr. Compress’s marbles, along with the doctor. Midoriya Inko sat in his recently vacated seat.

She was, without a single doubt, the most dangerous person in the vehicle. Mostly because she was completely insane. She had spent the first few minutes of driving detailing how she could blow up the car with her quirk and making sure that they knew she’d do it if she thought she had to.

What would make her think she ‘had to’ was a mystery Tomura didn’t particularly want solved.

He could totally see what Sensei saw in her, and he didn’t like it. He wished he could go back to ignorance. This questline was insane. The whole game was going to wind up broken. Had he killed an essential NPC at some point?

Eyeballs were small objects. So were most organs.

Midoriya Inko was someone Tomura could respect.

Would Midoriya Izuku be like this, if Tomura had an actual conversation with him? Their conversation at the mall hadn’t exactly been… normal. Tomura could admit he’d been using his intimidation skill to move the conversation along. Of course, Midoriya had struck him as a two-dimensional All Might fanboy at that point. Limited dialogue options. Killed in the next encounter. A hidden miniboss, yes, but just a miniboss. Not terribly important to the main campaign. Forgotten by disc two.

Clearly, he’d been wrong.

Which he shouldn’t have had mixed feelings about, but definitely did.

“Dear,” said Midoriya Inko, making everyone in the car stiffen, “do you have eczema?”

“The what?” asked Tomura, his tone too subdued to be considered snapping, because he wasn’t about to snap at someone who had convincingly demonstrated her ability to crush his organs against the inside of his abdominal cavity.

“Oh!” said Toga. “I know this one, Mom! It’s a skin condition.”

Tomura pulled his hand away from where it had been scratching at his neck. “I don’t have a skin condition. It just itches sometimes.”

Midoriya Inko nodded. “Yes, that sounds like eczema, I—” She stopped, blinking. “Did you just call me ‘Mom?’”

“Yeah, is that okay? Izu-kun and I are dating, after all!”

“No, she isn’t!” shouted Twice, the car swerving a little. “She is not! Only in her dreams!”

“Ah,” said Midoriya Inko. “I see. Well, I don’t mind you calling me that, but I think you really need to ask Izuku before you say that you’re dating. Make sure you’re on the same page, dear.”

Toga pouted.

“Now, where was I? Eczema. Izuku used to have eczema, but he grew out of it, mostly. I still carry some cream with me. Do you want some?”

Would refusing be dangerous?

Was the cream secretly poison?

Was this a complex scheme to get under his skin?

“Oh, Izuku mutters like that, too,” said Midoriya Inko, happily. “You remind me quite a bit of when he was going through his antisocial phase, actually. It would be funny if it turned out that you were related, wouldn’t it? Quite a coincidence, hm? One I’ll have to talk to my husband about.” The last sentence was as hard as diamonds and as poisonous as cyanide.

Tomura once again decided that he regretted everything.

“This is terrible,” whispered Tsuyu for the fifth or sixth time.

“Tres mal,” agreed Aoyama.

“Is it bad that I can completely believe All Might wrote this?” asked Satou.

“Why would it be bad?” asked Shouji.

“Because it’s so… bad.”

“And yet,” said Yaoyorozu, “oddly compelling.”

“Why does he use so much English?” grumbled Mineta.

“What a mad banquet of darkness,” said Fumikage, who was, nevertheless, also reading the fanfic on his phone.

“But, like, it makes it pretty obvious that All Might thinks the world of Midoriya,” said Kaminari. “Do you think he knew that other people could read this?”

“I mean,” said Jiro. “He had to, right? It wasn’t like he was born in the nineteen hundreds.”

“I don’t know, sometimes you’ve got to wonder. Like… sometimes it’s as if he was grown in a lab to be the perfect hero, you know?”

“Kaminari, stop trying to be Todoroki, please,” said Fumikage. “You do not need to dip yourself into the darkness.”

“I’m just saying,” said Kaminari. “And it isn’t as if we don’t know that there are a bunch of mad scientist types that would do just that, plus the Hero Commission is psychotic—”

“That’s unkind to psychotic people,” said Fumikage, glowering. “You know, most psychotic people never hurt anyone. The incidence of villainy among people who experience psychosis isn’t significantly higher than among the general population.”

“Sorry, man, just a figure of speech.”

The bus slowly came to a stop outside UA’s gates.

“My switch isn’t working,” said Green Light as he repeatedly pressed a button on his dash. “I guess they’re still on lockdown. We’ll have to wait for Nezu to come let us in.”

“Still?” asked Midnight. “Midoriya isn’t even in the city anymore, as far as we know.”

“Not that he was ever a threat to the school,” mumbled Present Mic, his quirk making him loud enough to be heard regardless.

Fumikage, having finished the fanfic some time ago, looked out the window and spotted two people in suits loitering near the gate. “Yamada-sensei, Kayama-sensei, who are those people?”

Everyone rushed over to Fumikage’s side of the bus to look out the window, rocking the vehicle.

“Ohh,” said Present Mic. “Yeah. That makes sense. Those guys are with the commission. Yep. Good ol’ Nezu, keeping them out.”

“Wait,” said Jiro, “does this mean we’re stuck out here, too?”

“No, no,” said Present Mic. “He’ll have to let us in… But then they’ll come in, too.”

“Midoriya’s room,” said Fumikage. “They’ll want to search it.”

“Can we do something?” asked Kouda, timidly.

“Should we do anything?” asked Tsuyu, bluntly. “We don’t want to incriminate Midoriya even more by making it look like he’s hiding things.”

Fumikage turned to Kaminari. “Anything new from Principal Nezu?”

“Why are you looking at me?”

“You’re the one he emailed last time.”

“Hey, Fumikage,” said Jiro, “do you think you can fly over the wall? Maybe you can get a head start on… well, whatever, I guess.”

“I don’t think we should do anything suspicious while they’re watching,” reiterated Tsuyu.

“Yeah, plus we really revamped campus security. And this is Nezu we’re talking about.”

“The Rat God,” someone whispered, reverently.

(Was that Shouji?)

“Exactly, exactly,” said Present Mic. “So, everyone, just, please, calm down. Just sit back down, and we’ll ride the bus to the dorms. Like normal.”

“Yamada-sensei, nothing about this is normal,” said Tsuyu, flatly.

“Well,” said Present Mic, “yeaaaah, okay, you got me there, listeners.”

“Nezu’s coming up,” said Green Light. “Aw, he has Eri with him. They’re so short together.”

“Green Light,” crackled the radio in Nezu’s voice. “Did you forget that I have cameras and microphones installed on all our buses?”

“That’s how he knew I was the one putting together the compilation!” said Kaminari.

Fumikage peered out the window and furtively opened it, so they could hear what was going on. Eri was definitely there. She was also sporting the deepest, most dismal, aura of darkness Fumikage had ever laid eyes on. Luckily, it seemed to be aimed at the commission lackeys in the form of a smile and dead, dead eyes.

“Good afternoon, gentlemen!” said Nezu, cheerily. “I apologize for the long wait! As Lunch Rush indubitably told you, we had a small emergency.”

“We’ve been out here for hours. What kind of emergency could have kept you for hours under these circumstances?”

Eri’s smile grew both broader and deader. “Me,” she said. “I’m the emergenny.”

“Emergency,” corrected Nezu, gently.

“Emergency,” repeated Eri.

“I’m sorry?” said the shorter of the two investigators.

“I’m the emergency. I hada—” she paused, and her face pinched slightly in concentration. “I had an emergency, because, because, you’re being mean to Deku.”

“We—”

“You’re mean,” insisted Eri. “You’re bad guys. Deku is the good guy, because he saved me. Only bad guys are mean to good guys.”

“Excuse me, is this Chisaki Eri?”

Eri hissed.

“Perhaps I could ask you to refrain from using that family name. We’ve been trying to get past what her form did to her, you understand. Teach her morality.”

“I’ll bite you,” said Eri, malevolently.

“Self-defense, as well,” continued Nezu. “It’s very important for children to be able to feel safe and confident in themselves, don’t you think? And the recent news dealt a serious blow to that. You understand, then why I felt that it was more important to take care of my ward and other students than to greet you here. Especially given that you wished to interview Eri-chan as well.”

“I’ll bite you,” repeated Eri. “A lot.”

“We’ll… need a look at Midoriya’s room, first.”

“Way to go, Eri,” whispered Shinsou.

“Very well! You’ll have to come around to the front office to fill out some paperwork. We’ll need a physical copy of your badges, as well as a copy of your warrant, for our records…”

The gate opened, distracting Fumikage from whatever else Nezu had said. Green Light quickly drove through, making straight to the dorms. Fumikage snapped the window shut.

“So, uh,” said Kaminari. “What’re we going to do about Midoriya’s All Might shrine of a room?”

“Should we even do anything?” asked Jiro. “If stuff is disturbed, that’s going to be suspicious. I don’t want to get him into more trouble.”

“It’s a teenage boy’s bedroom,” said Mineta. “The stuff in there is already disturbed.”

“Mineta, I don’t know how to tell you this,” said Kaminari, “but your experiences are not universal.”

“None of you are disturbing Midoriya’s room at all,” said Midnight, standing. “You didn’t forget that we were here, did you? If you say yes, we’ll have to take some time to work on your situational awareness~”

Nemuri hadn’t quite known what to expect from the words ‘All Might shrine.’ In her experiences, the word ‘shrine’ could, especially when applied to a person’s hobby or area of interest, could cover a vast array of displays of varying intensity.

But Midoriya really went Plus Ultra on everything, didn’t he?

“Okay, kiddos,” said Midnight, “what would you say was the most incriminating thing in this room?”

She and Present Mic were the only ones actually in the room, but the students were gathered right outside the door.

“Notebooks.”

Midnight nodded. They’d get those first, then search for other places Midoriya may have put evidence of less-than-entirely-morally-upright behavior. Not that Midnight really expected to find any.

“Where does he keep them?” she asked.

“He has a shelf above his desk he usually keeps them on, kero.”

Midnight looked at the shelf above Midoriya’s desk.

It looked back at her.

This was because it was a void. As in, void of any notebooks. An abyss of sorts. Empty.

There were no notebooks in evidence.

“This will be a problem.”

“G-Gigantomachia?” asked Izuku, turning up the sweetness in his tone despite his nerves. And pain. Yep, there was a whole lot of pain, everywhere. Now that he was no longer actively running for his life, it felt like he’d pulled every muscle in his body.

“Yes, Little Lord?” asked Gigantomachia, happily.

He was like a giant dog. Izuku almost felt bad tricking him like this, but he reminded himself that Gigantomachia was a giant, evil dog. So.

“Will you do something for me?”

“Of course, Little Lord!”

“Well,” said Izuku, “you remember how I said that Shigaraki Tomura and I don’t get along?”

“Yes, Little Lord! My memory is very good!”

Izuku blinked. “Is that a—” He cut himself off with a shake of his head. Not the time. “Well, I think that it might be a good idea if, ah, we established that he can’t attack me anymore.”

Gigantomachia stood up, shaking the earth and almost sending Izuku tumbling down. “HE ATTACKED YOU?”

Maybe this would be easier than he thought. “Yeah. A couple times. I’m okay, though!” He waved his hands. “I just think that it might be a good idea if we established a, uh, a pecking order. Sort of.”

“I’M GOING TO PECK HIM TO DEATH.”

“Please do not actually kill him.”

“I’M GOING TO PECK HIM MOSTLY TO DEATH.”

“That’s the spirit,” said Izuku.

“I’LL SHOW HIM YOU’RE IN CHARGE. YOU’RE MUCH BETTER THAN HE IS. MUCH MORE LIKE LORD.”

Wow. That was… certainly a statement. That Izuku was going to try his best to forget forever.

“Right. So. If you see him, do that,” said Izuku, nodding.

“OF COURSE, LITTLE LORD.”

“And, this is just a reminder, but don’t go into towns.”

“I WILL REMEMBER!”

“Great,” said Izuku. “I’m going to go back in and, uh…” He couldn’t say ‘plot my escape with Toshinori.’ “Rest,” he settled on.

“Oh!” Gigantomachia crouched down, his voice suddenly whisper-soft. Assuming rocks could be described as whispering. “Sleep well, Little Lord!”

“Thanks,” said Izuku, beating a hasty retreat.

“Stop the car!”

“But you said-!”

“Just stop the car, Twice.”

There was a not-at-all hidden ‘or else’ in those words. Twice, once again, stopped the car.

“Oh, my,” said Midoriya Inko, leaning forward. “That man up there looks remarkably like the sitter Hisashi hired for Izuku.”

“Oh, god,” said Tomura, dragging his hands down the sides of his face in lieu of looking out the window. “We aren’t prepared for this level.”

Midoriya Inko suddenly disappeared. Tomura made a noise in the back of his throat that wasn’t at all a scream.

Mr. Compress raised his hands defensively. “I thought it best to marble her while she was distracted. We wouldn’t want her to get injured in ”

“Wow! Way to go, Mr. Compress!” said Toga, giving the other villain a hug. “Good thinking!”

“Yeah!” agreed Twice. “Now she can’t hurt us—But she sure can when you let her out!”

“Which is why I propose we bring her to Giran at the first feasible opportunity. Between him and the doctor, I’m sure they can make arrangements for her that we need not be involved in. And I will make sure we are all far, far away when I let her out.”

There was a series of sighs of relief.

“Good idea,” croaked Tomura. “But what are we going to do about—” He swore vehemently. “He’s seen us, he’s seen us we’ve got aggro! Reverse!”

“Is that Vlad-sensei’s car?”

“Unfortunately,” said Toshinori, “I think it is. Oh, dear, the man’s one to hold a grudge. I think I’ll have a new nemesis by the end of this.”

Today had been a very annoying day in general for Vlad King, but for some reason, his sense of annoyance suddenly doubled. This made his hands clench and thereby tear the piece of paper he was holding.

Scratch that. His sense of annoyance had tripled.

“Yagi,” he muttered, “I am going to sue you so much.”

“What was that?” asked Hound Dog, looking away from the video feed displaying Eri-chan scarring Hero Commission agents for life in her undeniably cute way.

“Nothing,” muttered Vlad.

All for One paused in his assault of the vault door. He couldn’t help but feel like someone somewhere had said something unusually aggravating.

Ah, well. He had other things to worry about.

“Ah,” said Toshinori as one of Gigantomachia’s fists tore off the bumper of the rapidly reversing car. “Hm,” he continued as Shigaraki climbed out on the hood, grinning. “I think we should go, now.”

Izuku nodded. They could only hope to get far away enough away for Gigantomachia to be unable to hunt them down.

If they ran into any other problems…

Dabi paused as he heard quite a lot of noise from up ahead and rolled his eyes, ignoring how the movement pulled at his staples. The idiots had already started fighting Gigantomachia. Well. He didn’t want any part of that.

He changed directions. Hanging out in the woods it was, then.

Eh. It was good for him. Fresh (cold) air. Sunshine (sort of). Readily available reminders of why he hated his father.

Nature was great. If only he could burn it all down without blowing cover.

“Oh, no,” said a hapless technician.

“What?” asked the commission supervisor who’d brough the sample to the lab. “What is it? Is he related to the Scourge of Kamino?”

“Well,” squeaked the woman, her mousy ears twitching. “Yes. But I ran him through a few other databases as well, and…” she trailed off. “Well… The number of cross references in the hero database is staggering, but, of course, if he’s related to them, and to the other, well…”

The commission supervisor grabbed the edge of her monitor and twisted it around to face him. She watched the blood drain from his face and refrained from calling him out on his rudeness.

“Why,” he asked, “didn’t they run the Scourge of Kamino’s DNA through these databases?”

“I guess they didn’t think it was necessary?”

“Excuse me,” he said, “I have to make a few calls.”

“You want us to attack the League of Villains now?” asked Hawks, frowning. “You’ve had me following them around for weeks, and you want us to go in now, with next to no preparation? We don’t even know if the rest of the League is with Dabi.”

What had they found out from Midoriya’s blood sample? Had it turned out the way Dabi had expected.

Was Midoriya Izuku the son of All for One?

“Alright, alright,” he said in response to his handler. He sighed deeply, leaning back to better look at the sky. “But even I’m going to need a couple hours to get everything together and start coordinating with other heroes. I’m—Sir, I really don’t think I’m going to be able to take them all on just with myself and my sidekicks. Midoriya probably isn’t with them to begin with—I’m not questioning you, sir. I just don’t understand our objective in attacking them now. Why are we rushing? It seems counterpro—Yes, sir.” The line beeped loudly as it disconnected.

Well. All this had been a monumental waste of time.

It also boded ill for Midoriya. It sounded as if he’d become an even greater target than before, and considering that the commission had been labeling him a villain even before testing his DNA… Something bigger than being related to All for One must have come out. Something that had scared the commission. Something they would scrap their stealth- and intelligence-based plan for dealing with the League for. Something they wanted gone. Locked away with Midoriya.

Hawks couldn’t imagine what that could be. Maybe he was related to All Might? Or Endeavor? All Might wouldn’t be bad, he was never publicly in a relationship, but then he’d always been private about his personal life. But Endeavor… that’d be a scandal and a half.

But, if either of those were the case, why were they so sure he’d be with the League of Villains? It didn’t make sense. Unless… Unless Midoriya wasn’t the only one related to All for One.

At least they weren’t asking him to kill the kid. The mission was capture.

Which meant that Hawks had to come up with some way of letting an injured and probably exhausted teenager and a severely disabled old man escape without looking like he was letting them escape. Or looking like an incompetent idiot. Again. Because he wasn’t about to bring Midoriya in under circumstances this shady. Maybe before, when he thought it was just trumped-up kidnapping charges, but with this uncertainty…

Commission lackey or not, Hawks was still a hero. Sometimes that meant he put aside personal feelings for the good of society, and sometimes it meant that he ignored orders so a minor wouldn’t be indefinitely imprisoned at a commission black site.

Fun times.

He sighed and gathered in his feathers, angling down into a dive. Time to get to work.

Ochako kept seeing things out of the corners of her eye. Shadow in the shape of people, in the shape of children. Stains on the walls.

The hallways were scrupulously clean. Spotless. Empty. Brightly lit.

Todoroki had mentioned smelling smoke a few times and had started gagging for no reason once or twice. Iida kept twitching as if he had heard something. Aizawa appeared unaffected, but Ochako could see the way he gripped his capture weapon and the rigidness of his spine.

Izuku looked resigned.

“Did they really—” started Iida.

“Yes,” said Izuku. “Almost certainly.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Todoroki.

“You’re only getting fragments of Three’s memories, since she’s suppressing this,” said Izuku. “But…” He twitched, slightly. “It’s going to get worse the farther we go. The places she was in…” His voice was soft, sing-song, not quite entirely there.

“Izuku?”

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I’m focusing on something else outside.”

“Please tell me you aren’t fighting pro heroes again,” said Aizawa.

“No, I’m escaping from the League of Villains right now.”

“How?”

“Mm. Great question. I’ll tell you how it goes later, if it works.”

“That’s not what I—”

An ear-splitting, bone-chilling scream filled the air, making everyone flinch and clench. Something crackled overhead.

“Incident response team to hallway C. Code Blue.”

More screaming. This time, Ochako had a better idea of where it was coming from, and it seemed like everyone else, did, too.

They ran past classrooms that were alternately empty and full of shadow people, past soulless dormitory rooms stuffed with bunk beds, past cells and rooms Ochako didn’t even want to think about.

A pair of dark-skinned girls stood in the hallway, one holding a bloody hand to her throat, the other baring her teeth. The lights flickered. Dimmed.

The girls were gone by the time the lights came back on.

The hallway they were in was full of operating theaters, complete with lights over the door. Ochako felt sick.

But she was used to dealing with nausea. She took a deep breath and swallowed.

“What now?” she asked. The quaver in her voice was barely audible.

“Now…” Aizawa turned slowly in place. “We’re trying to find where they met Ryuji.”

“Two,” said Izuku, nodding.

“So, the most likely place for that…” He trailed off. “The most likely place for that is in the… residential areas.” He sounded disgusted with himself for referring to a prison with such bland terms.

“We passed something like that,” said Todoroki, quietly.

“Right,” said Aizawa. “Let’s go.”

The way back was much more… crowded. The memories were more tangible. Ochako quickly taught herself not to look in any of the rooms. Not that it helped much with what they saw in the halls themselves.

Izuku’s distraction only grew worse as they went further. He kept trying to follow, or sometimes fight, the memory ghosts.

“Sorry,” he mumbled. “Focusing on something else.”

“Just don’t die on us, problem child.”

“We’re doing okay,” said Izuku.

This was, of course, when the facility’s alarm went off.

“Intruder alert. Intruder alert. Intruder alert.”

Izuku couldn’t hear the sound of the fight between the League and Machia anymore. This meant that either the fighting had stopped, or they had moved out of earshot.

Despite the League having a car (Vlad-sensei’s car) Izuku doubted that the fight had gotten all that far away.

Next to him, Toshinori winced. Izuku looked at him with concern, but Toshinori waved it off.

Izuku took a shaky breath.

They just had to keep going.

Twice had, perhaps predictably, backed the car up into a ditch, where, despite the amount of pressure he put on the accelerator, it stayed. Stuck. Perhaps forever.

All members of the League of Villains that were not crazy enough to crawl onto the outside of a moving car to fight a homicidal giant climbed out. All members, meaning a single member. A single member, ironically, being Twice.

At least he hadn’t been going very fast when he ran into the ditch.

“Everyone okay? –Of course, they’re not! You were in a car crash, idiots!”

“Come help us fight!” ordered Shigaraki. “We were in the middle of something, you know, stupid level boss! Keep having to save scum I hate you aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”

Well, that wasn’t a good sign.

“Where’s Himiko?” he shouted.

“Over here, silly!” said the second Shigaraki, because, yeah. Twice had forgotten he hadn’t duplicated Shigaraki.

Man, he was dumb sometimes. It was great he had friends to help him with that!

He dove into the fight which, ever so slightly, ever so slowly, began to move away from the car.

Izuku’s head throbbed sharply, and he stumbled, Toshinori just managing to catch him before he faceplanted. Four and the other past users hissed at him from the back of his mind.

Someone’s coming. Hide.

They were in no condition for another fight.

Toshinori nodded sharply, and pulled Izuku aside, into some bushes. Izuku tried to breathe quietly but was painfully aware that both he and Toshinori were out of breath and raspy. Ragged. They’d been aiming for speed, not stealth, counting on the sounds of combat to cover them.

But if someone was out here—

Izuku smelled smoke. A branch snapped. He held his breath, despite the way his lungs longed for more oxygen. Had Dabi been in the car? Izuku hadn’t seen him. He hadn’t seen any blue fire. It wasn’t like Dabi to hold back.

A pair of black booted feet came into view.

“Well, well, what do we have here?”

They found Two standing in a hallway, surrounded by the bodies of soldiers. A small horde of shadow children clung to his legs.

When he laid eyes on Izuku, he sighed.

“Does the world ever give you a break?” he asked.

“Not that I’ve noticed,” said Izuku.

#bnha #boku no hero academia #fic #fanfic #long night in the valley

29 notes · View notes

fandom-smut-shots · 2 years

Note

Hello!! I was wondering if i could get a matchup for Voltron, Mha (or Haikyuu) and Naruto?

Im a 5'6 latina

My zodiac is Leo♌

Im straight

I have near black eyes and waist length brown hair. I have freckles splattered around my nose and eyes and im pretty tan

I love working out

My love language is quality time

Im a pretty quiet person and avoid speaking unless i have to

I have major trust issues

I have a huge sweet tooth and will not be stopped from eating sweets, especially if im on my period

I have a few friends who i do stupid stuff with like parkouring around a kids playground or doung a contest to see who ladts longer in a handstand

I love reading and writing

Silence gives me anxiety do i tend to be around loud people even if its not exactly on purpose

Dont relate much with many other girls my age cause I hate dresses, heels, flats, makeup, kpop and social interactions (i know uts not the same everywherw but where I'm from its mostly the only things i see)

I love fighting videogames (my faves are Gaara in ninja storm and Takeda in Mortal Kombat)

As I mentioned before, i hate social interactions and get anxiety in crowded spaces

I like feeling included in social situations because otherwise id probably be in a corner just looking around and feeling miserable

I love basketball, volleyball and dancing and im pretty good but my parents think ots a waste of time so i dont play competitively

Im studying mechanical engineering focused on aerospace

Im good at math and science, so people think im smart but I suck at every other subject

I get anxiety mostly at night cause of nightmares and well the quietness

My favorite songs are "She used to be mine", "Not another song about love", "King for a day" and "The way you make me feel"

Im protective of my friends and im not afraid to beat someone up for them

Ive been told im intimidating because of how quiet i am, apparently if youte quiet and from Puerto Rico, it means something along the lines of "calm before the storm"

Im probably found in the gym playong volleyball, basketball, or just on a rooftop reading on my own while listening to music

I love baking but hate cooking

Im pretty goofy around my friends but switch back to being quiet when im in a crowded room

Favorite superhero is Iron Man and Batman

Would probably be a speedster in any of those worlds

Imma stop now

I have answered this so. Many. Times and I get through the whole first matchup and then Tumblr reloads or my laptop crashes or, in the case of my brand new laptop, restarts to install updates and ughhhhh.

So I've fallen out of the Naruto fandom, I love it but I'm just not sure I'm comfortable writing it outside of a few select characters, so I answered both MHA and Haikyuu in place of Naruto. I hope that's okay.

Voltron

I ship you with...

Lance McClain!

Lance is totally not my go-to when the requester is Latina.

Loverboy Lance knows all about quality time. His loud personality is perfect for curbing your silence anxiety. He loves to surprise you with gifts, so when he finds out about your sweet tooth, he's bribing Hunk to teach him how to bake your favorite treats. Video game dates? He would absolutely not destroy you at Mortal Kombat. Once he finds out you can dance, you're never getting off your feet. And he's always down to play basketball or volleyball with you. Also be prepared for debates about Iron Man vs Batman.

Haikyuu

I ship you with...

Satori Tendou!

Being athletic obviously gave you plenty of options from Haikyuu, but not many of them are great at quality time, which landed us here. Tendou doesn't have many friends, so he'd absolutely adore having a partner that wants to spend time with him. And you know he understands trust issues. You have a sweet tooth? Baby boy's favorite food is literally chocolate ice cream. He's definitely loud enough to help with your anxiety, and if anybody understands mental health, it's our loveable lizard boy. And baby boy LOVES video games, so video game dates are absolutely a thing. A partner that will play volleyball with him? Sign him the fuck up!

My Hero Academia

I ship you with...

Eijirou Kirishima!

"Working out" and "fighting games" immediately sent me to Kirishima. He would fucking melt if you had workout dates together. And quality time is perfect for him - all of his free time would be spent with you. He would also bribe Sato to bake you some desserts. And unwinding after workouts and homework with some Mortal Kombat? Fuck yeah! He's got a big personality, and he has a lot of loud friends, so he's probably usually louder than he means to be. He may not be the best dancer, but he's friends with Mina, so you're definitely getting invited to dance parties. Also, he's definitely down to binge Iron Man or Batman movies with you.

4 notes · View notes

olivia-anderson-fanfic · 3 years

Text

Another One?!, Part 5

First > Previous > Next

It turns out that people with access to military-grade equipment are not the type of people you want to dislike you.

Really, the only reason she was still alive was because being Ladybug made her marginally more lucky than the average person.

From people in holding randomly getting out from time to time and somehow managing to get their hands on a weapon, to getting shot by ‘malfunctioning’ firearms, to constant bomb threats, to the one time someone actually tried to drop an anvil on her head, things were just not looking good for Marinette.

And, it turns out, being a boss is just a hard thing in general. When they weren’t attempting to kill her, they were coming to her with questions. She spent most of her day in the office, scanning through manual after manual. She got basically zero breaks, because even when she had a sign on her door saying she was eating lunch they still came in to ask her things.

And then, at the end of the day, she’d get home… things weren’t great there, either.

Barbara had moved in after a year of dating Dick (Marinette had been stunned to learn that their relationship was actually real but that had quickly been dropped when she realized that Barbara was actually a responsible adult that could take care of herself). She had banned caffeine in the house when she’d seen Marinette and Tim’s coffee habits and, unfortunately, everyone else had been perfectly happy to enforce this for her.

This meant that she only had about four hours when she got home to patrol before her exhaustion caught up with her and she’d be forced to go home and collapse on the couch.

On top of that, tensions in the house were high. It turns out that one of the biggest problems with avoiding your problems for years is that emotions get pent up inside and it gets harder and harder to ignore. No one had completely snapped yet, but even the densest person in the world would have been able to recognize that it was coming.

It didn’t help that she no longer had time for baking, which was her normal way of relieving stress…

And let’s just say they were lucky none of them were going on patrols together, those kinds of high-stress situations do not help.

Adrien needed sleep.

He worked ten hours a day, which isn’t that much longer than average but was still emotionally taxing considering his job was teaching.

Then, he’d go on patrol for a few hours. He liked patrol, beating up random people is great for stress, but it was physically exhausting.

Then, he’d come home.

And he’d have two kids and an adult to keep alive.

(Barbara had the night shift, which meant that Adrien was alone for this. He swore it was on purpose.)

He’d go to his room and find Dick swinging around on the indoor gym they’d had installed (they were getting tired of him breaking light fixtures and had given in and put little hand and footholds on the ceiling for him to climb around on).

And then Dick would fall asleep, often hanging from the ceiling still, and Adrien would pick him up and take him to his room and tuck him in.

He’d rush back to his room, desperate to get there for just a second of sleep, only to find that, no matter how quick he was, Jason would already be on the bed. You would think that Adrien would be able to sleep. After all, Jason would be reading a book... that’s supposed to be a quiet thing…

Well, you see, the problem is that Jason reads books like people watch soap operas. He’d curse out characters and call them stupid, tell Adrien contextless jokes, and occasionally close his book to vent about what was going on.

And, eventually Jason would sleep. Adrien wouldn’t move him because a) it would wake him up and b) on the very small chance it didn’t wake him, Jason sometimes half-joked that when he woke up alone he feared that they’d left him behind…

So, yeah, Jason got to stay in the room.

Adrien would blink and then he’d find Tim in the door with his computer.

Tim, it seemed, would actually wait to see if Adrien was okay with it if he came in. He always stood in the door, hugging his laptop to his chest, and wouldn’t dare come inside until Adrien said he could.

Of course Adrien would sigh and nod his head yes, making a joke about how his kids were sleeping in shifts to annoy him, and move over on the bed a bit to let Tim on.

And then Tim would do homework or play games on his computer.

Adrien hated the sound of clicky keyboards. He’d had no clue he was alone in this until one day he complained about it and everyone in the room had stared at him like he was crazy.

But, yeah, the keyboard made him want to die. He just wanted to sleep...

And then Barbara would poke her head in after a long night’s work to tell Adrien that it was time for him to get ready for work.

Sprinkle in one or two probably life-threatening accidents and you’d have a typical night for him.

Now, you might be thinking, why doesn’t he just fall asleep on the couch?

Beyond the fact that the kids would just… follow him there, Adrien was also a rich kid growing up. He couldn’t sleep on couches. They’re uncomfortable.

No, now his only saving grace was the fact that Barbara didn’t have a way to monitor the coffee machine at his work.

… Oh kwami, he had become what he’d hated.

She dropped onto the bed -- she’d had enough energy to make it all the way there for once -- and glared at the mostly empty bulletin board on Antony Agoura. The man was smart, unfortunately, opting to keep his identity a secret as much as possible. He used a fake name. He wore gloves no matter what. He used solely cash…

And it wasn’t like she was going to be able to lure him out again. That had been an intimidation tactic, a way of saying ‘leave it alone or you’ll see exactly what I can do’.

And, as much as she hated to admit it even to herself, she was a little bit scared of him. For the first time since Zucco, the person she was facing knew who she was as a civilian, and she hated that she’d lost that advantage. Even if her family was better trained in self-defense than most, they weren’t invulnerable and they couldn’t be careful every second of the day.

Part of her was tempted to pack up and go on the run like they had done with Zucco… but the situations were different. With Zucco they knew they would eventually be able to catch him but with Agoura...

She closed her eyes, unable to look at it any longer.

Fuck. She was really screwed this time, huh?

She felt someone sink into the bed next to her and reached out for them. She didn’t really care who it was as she buried her face in their shoulder.

Sleep…

Less than a minute later, her phone buzzed to tell her that it was time to start cooking everyone’s meals for the day and she mumbled a curse before peeling herself away from the person. She squinted a little bit in the dark to see who it was. Tim.

She yawned and pressed a kiss to the top of his head. “Want to cook with me?”

“I’d burn the house down.”

“Probably. Want to stand nearby and make sure I don’t fall asleep while cooking so nothing burns?”

He shrugged a little bit. “Don’t see why not.”

They both crawled out of bed and she used him for support as they made their way down to the kitchen.

Adrien had been on patrol when she’d appeared.

And ‘appeared’ was definitely the way to describe it. He’d been relaxing on a rooftop, giving himself a few second break to just breathe in silence for once… and then he’d felt a hand shaking his shoulder.

He fought the urge to jump or lash out, his head whipping around to look at the person who was shaking him.

It was… a girl?

Actually, she looked about Jason’s age, so maybe a woman?

It didn’t matter. She looked terrified. Her eyes were so wide it looked almost exaggerated, her lips drawn into a deep frown.

The more he took in about her appearance the more concerned he was. Her stance was wide, which likely meant she fought often. Her clothes were ratty and torn. The little parts of her skin that weren’t caked in dirt were split with cuts that were either infected or about to be infected.

He rested a hand over hers as gently as he could and looked at her. “How are you up here? Actually, that doesn’t matter. What’s wrong? Are you okay? Are you hurt? Is your family hurt?”

She waved her free hand around frantically. Wordlessly.

He raised his eyebrows.

“Do you not speak English? Or are you mute? Deaf?”

He realized all these questions weren’t going to get answers and he sighed. Crap, what could he do?

He mulled it over for a second before snapping his fingers. He held up a finger for one minute, then held up his hands and made a tiny ‘stay’ motion with them just in case, and then ran to the nearest convenience store.

He didn’t care enough to detransform. It got him through the line quickly, at least.

He found a pen and a pad of paper and returned to the rooftop…

She wasn’t there anymore.

He sighed, a mix of frustration and concern coursing through him. He closed his eyes and shook his head. He should get back to patrol. Maybe he’d find her and/or whatever situation she was trying to get his attention for…

He opened his eyes and actually did jump this time. She was right in front of him. What? He hadn’t heard her…

He shook off his growing unease and handed her the notepad and pen.

She frowned, her face a little more than confused. Had she never seen a pen and paper before? Surely that couldn’t be right…

Still, he gently took the paper and pen back and wrote a tiny question mark.

He handed it over again and she looked at the mark like she’d never seen it before. Maybe her language didn’t have question marks…?

Then she started doodling.

Well, his plan had been for her to write whatever it was down and he would see if his phone would translate it, but he guessed this would work, too.

The first drawing explained some of the girl’s problems with communication. It was a little doodle where the mouth and ears had been X-ed out. She couldn’t speak or hear… or, at least, that’s what he’d figured.

He searched his memory for his old sign language lessons. Unfortunately, though, sign language is something that has to be practiced. All he could do is fingerspell “U O-K?”

She didn’t seem to understand.

Fair enough. He was pretty sure he was using LSF, anyways, and he didn’t exactly know for sure how close that was to ASL… or whatever other language she could have known. He couldn’t really tell much about where she was from, her skin was covered in dirt, okay?

She started doodling the rest of her life story and he nearly punched something. Probably would have if he hadn’t been scared he’d startle her or scare her off.

Whoever her dad was, he was committed to killing him if he wasn’t dead already.

He smiled at her and tried to think of a solution. He couldn’t take her to the police. Even with Marinette in charge, there was only so much she could do to keep the kid safe. An orphanage wouldn’t accept her because he doubted she was a legal US citizen.

He sighed. Marinette was going to kill him…

He reached out a hand to her to tell her to follow and blinked in surprise when she actually took it. Wow. He trusted her.

He tried not to feel proud as he led her home. He probably should have been scared that she was a spy or lying, but he found himself trusting her…

Weird, but he had bigger problems.

He detransformed a little bit outside the house and slowly walked to the door. He pushed it open and cringed when it creaked. Please don’t be home…

Marinette shifted under her blanket and opened an eye to look at him.

He quickly pushed the girl behind himself and smiled at his wife. “Wow, it’s you. You’re home. Wow.”

“Yeah, amazing, right?” She rubbed her eyes and gave him a tired smile. “How was patrols?”

“Great. Uneventful. Definitely good.”

Her smile dropped into a frown. “You’re acting weird.”

“What? Me? Acting weird?”

“Yeah… are you coming inside?”

“Uh… no. Actually, I think I’ll go back on patrols.”

She clicked her tongue. “You’re hiding something. I’m too tired for this, Adrien. Fess up.”

He cringed a little bit and slowly led the new adoptee inside.

The girl clutched Adrien’s shirt sleeve anxiously. He did not think this was a good thing.

Marinette stared at the girl in front of her for a while before a way too wide smile crossed her face. “Adrien…” She began slowly, before shaking her head. Her smile widened, somehow. She looked up, her voice sickly sweet: “Hey! Sweeties! Come down here.”

The reaction was instantaneous. There was a mad scrambling noise and they appeared in the doorway, expressions frazzled.

“Whatever happened, it was Dick!” Said Tim before anyone could speak.

Dick gasped. “No! It wasn’t!”

Marinette gave a pleasant laugh. “You’re not in trouble. Boys, could you help her get cleaned up for me, please?”

“Why is there another kid? Why does he have another one?” Said Jason incredulously.

When neither parent answered, they started ushering the girl away.

She grabbed Adrien’s arm when he tried to disappear through the door with them. “Not. You. Transform, we’re going out.”

He tried not to look too scared as they both transformed. She kept a way too tight grip on Adrien as they made their way through the town, as if she thought he was going to suddenly run away.

Fair enough. He was absolutely considering it.

But he didn’t. That would only make things worse.

They stopped at a relatively abandoned part of town and she turned to him, letting go to cross her arms over her chest.

“Explain.”

Did she feel bad for the kid that Adrien had adopted? Sure. No one deserves that kind of life…

But that didn’t calm her down in the slightest.

She was trying to relax herself. Her lips pressed into a thin line as she heard him out to keep herself from yelling or interrupting, her nails dug into the skin of her palms to keep her grounded…

Adrien finished with a sigh and a “I don’t regret it, she was in trouble and it’s our job to protect civilians.”

She didn’t know why those words made her anger worsen. There was some sense in them, and yet she had to strain to keep her voice level when she spoke: “Just once, could you actually just own up to a mistake you make?”

“I’ll own up to a mistake when I actually think it’s a mistake!”

“Whatever.” She thrummed her foot on the floor. “We can’t keep adopting random kids, Chat, there’s only so much we can do!”

“They need our help!”

“Bullshit! You need them more than they need you! Newsflash! Helping a bunch of kids isn’t going to make your own childhood any better!”

Adrien flinched and she felt a twinge of guilt finally poke through the anger, but before she could apologize he was jabbing his finger in her chest.

“At least my terrible coping mechanism helps people! You want to pull trauma into this? What about the fact that we still can’t say Lila’s name? What about the fact that you refuse to make friends with people our age because you fear them leaving you?”

She winced and her face reddened. “Okay, but does that inconvenience you? No! At least mine is only self-destructive! Yours is going to drag the entire family down with you! We’ve already fucked up these kids for sure, but you just keep making it worse and worse by spreading our limited time thinner!”

“Shut up! What do you know? You hardly ever talk to them anyways! You’re always at work or asleep!”

“Really? And whose fault is that? If you’d just stuck to the actual plan B instead of going out and attacking all the cops in the GCPD there wouldn’t have been as much attention on what had happened!”

He rolled his eyes. “I’VE ALREADY TOLD YOU THAT I HAD TO DO THAT! IT WAS TO KEEP EVERYONE AWAY FROM THE SECURITY ROOM TO KEEP PEGASUS SAFE!”

“PLEASE! NO ONE WAS GOING TOWARDS THE SECURITY ROOM! YOU’RE JUST AN IMPULSIVE DICK!”

“ARE YOU REALLY CALLING ME IMPULSIVE?!”

“YOU ADOPT KIDS LIKE THEY’RE POKEMON! OF COURSE I’M GOING TO CALL YOU IMPULSIVE!”

“YOU’RE THE ONE WHO ALWAYS GETS IN RANDOM FIGHTS BECAUSE YOU’RE NEVER CAREFUL!”

She groaned and fought to make herself relax enough to speak without yelling. They were in a relatively abandoned part of Gotham but that didn’t mean that there was no one around. The last thing they needed on top of everything going on was to have their fight end up in the papers.

Adrien was clearly doing the same, because he was quiet for a long time before he spoke in little more than a whisper:

“Do you not want to be a part of the family anymore?”

She opened her mouth to say ‘of course I want to be a part of the family’, but no sound came out. She wasn’t sure why she was even hesitating. She cared about them, obviously. She wouldn’t be working so hard if she didn’t…

But it was definitely a lot.

She could only handle so much at once. Beyond the powers she was just a human, and supporting that many other people is hard. Especially considering she essentially had two jobs to keep up with, as well…

The longer she went without answering the more tears spilled over his mask. Still, he was waiting for her answer. He was waiting for some kind of verbal confirmation that she couldn’t do it anymore.

She reached up and gently cupped his cheeks, wiping his tears away with her thumb.

“Chat, I…” She swallowed thickly. “I don’t know how much more we can do.”

He hesitantly brought his hands up to rest over hers. “I know. I just… I can’t just leave them. They always look so sad.”

She’d fallen in love with Adrien for his kindness and now it was the thing that was threatening to tear their marriage apart.

But he’d fallen for her because of her problem solving skills. And she was determined to not let this be the one problem she failed to solve.

The problem wasn’t exactly that he was getting more kids. Marinette loved kids.

The problem was that they didn’t know if they could raise kids without messing them up too badly.

Part of it was that everyone in the family had had one or more big events that had traumatized them, and it looked like it was finally time that they started getting past it.

Could they even get past it at this point? It had been over two decades since Marinette and Adrien had originally gotten their traumas, what if it was too late? What would happen if they somehow did get over it? It had been a part of them for such a long time, what would they be without it?

And then there was the kids. Could they even get them to go?

It was worth a shot, at least...

And the other change they needed to make was to make more time for their kids.

Neither of them were going to give up their day jobs (Adrien wouldn’t and Marinette, unfortunately, couldn’t just yet). That meant that they either needed to get caffeine in the house or give up vigilantism…

Well, cross of the giving up vigilantism thing automatically. On top of just not being able to give up on the city they were in when there was still so much to fix, they knew it would only be temporary. They’d already tried to give up vigilantism. They simply couldn’t bring themselves to.

So that left trying to get caffeine past Barbara. The kids (outside of Tim) were very much against caffeine and they worked very hard to make sure neither Marinette or Tim ever managed to get their hands on it. From purposefully making sure Marinette and Tim couldn’t go anywhere without one of them to monitoring the break room camera at her work to make sure she didn’t drink any, the kids were determined to make sure Marinette couldn’t get her hands on anything.

But Adrien could. No one would suspect him.

She bit her lip. This wasn’t going to go over well. Getting Adrien to therapy AND make him get caffeine? Man, this was going to suck.

“Chaton… I might have an idea… but you’re going to have to hear me out…”

He and Marinette were arguing again, though this was far more light-hearted.

“We are not opening another portal. We’re already lucky enough that this dimension hasn’t collapsed on us, we aren’t testing it.”

He rolled his eyes and stopped scratching runes into the wall to glare at her. “Would you rather we let a girl-woman-female-you-know-what-I-mean room with a guy?”

“What about we give her Jason’s room and let Jason sleep with us? He comes into our room to sleep either way.”

“Jason still uses his room to store things.”

“This is a bad idea, Chaton…”

He grinned. “Mhmm.”

“This is what I meant when you said you’re stupidly impulsive.”

“Would you rather do it?”

“Sure.”

He rolled his eyes. “And that’s what I meant when I said you don’t care about your own health. It’ll be fine.”

She clicked her tongue and motioned for him to go on.

He finished scratching the last rune and sighed when he saw some weird tentacle monster slowly unfurling itself on the other side. He got to his feet quickly and raised his staff to fight it, only to cringe when he heard Dick and Jason scream downstairs.

“I’ll deal with that, do you have this taken care of?”

She winced. “Sure. Where exactly is the portal, to be sure?”

He pointed it out and then ran downstairs.

Jason was currently not having a good time, it seemed. The bottom half of his body had been swallowed by a hole in the floor and he was struggling to get a hold on the slick floors.

Dick was also there, screaming incoherently from one of the ceiling lights.

Adrien ran over and grabbed one of Jason’s arms and started slowly pulling him out of the portal. After a bit Dick snapped out of it and scrambled to help.

The three were panting by the time they managed to get him all the way out.

“What the heck what the heck what the heck what the heck --,” Dick mumbled, holding his heart.

Jason, though just as shaken, seemed to be getting over it quickly. “How do we fix that?”

“Don’t remember, ask your mom,” mumbled Adrien as he crawled over to the portal on the floor and peered down.

It was a tiny group of people crowded around a computer.

Wait, what the heck were they wearing? Were they cosplaying as vigilantes? They definitely had the tacky outfits down if they were but Adrien didn’t know who they could be. Well, it had been a long time since they’d visited the Justice League, maybe he just didn’t know them…

He cleared his throat awkwardly and flashed them a blinding smile.

“Um… sorry about this, we’ll fix it as quickly as possible.”

“Was that… was that Dick Grayson?” Said the tallest of them.

Was he dressed as a bat? Why was he dressed as a bat? Dressing up like animals wasn’t technically their thing but on the other hand it was absolutely their thing. Adrien was almost offended.

Wait, he’d said something. He tried not to go pale when his brain finally processed it. This wasn’t exactly how he’d wanted the world to find out their identities…

“What kind of name is Dick Grayson? Ha! Lame!”

Dick sent him an affronted look from where he was on the floor. Adrien gave him an apologetic smile and a shrug.

Jason came back down with a baking pan. “Mom said to drop something through, so…”

“What’s that?”

“Brownies.”

“You’re dropping our brownies down there? Are you trying to kill them?” Asked Dick.

Adrien blinked once then sighed. “It could have worked for once. Be nice.”

Jason scoffed. “It didn’t. She forgot sugar. That’s why we’ll give it to them.”

“Sorry about this!” Said Adrien as Jason dropped the pan through the portal.

As promised, it closed now that something had been sacrificed.

The three looked at each other for a few seconds before Dick looked away and said, “So… pretend this never happened?”

“Yep.”

She cursed as she fell back on the couch, never mind the fact that Adrien was already laying there. Her husband made a quiet ‘oof’ sound as she dropped on top of him. She was hopped up on caffeine and ready to bond with her kids but the problem was that the kids, in fact, had lives.

The little time that Marinette and Adrien didn’t have work was taken up by patrols, by Jason’s homework, by Tim’s extracurriculars, by Dick’s job...

“There’s still not enough time.”

“We might have to stop being vigilantes for a bit…” He said, though he sounded reluctant. “Or rotate off by day…”

She didn’t like the idea either, but it didn’t seem like they had much choice in this if they wanted to be better for their kids. They’d already had to cut back on vigilantism because of their jobs and need for sleep, could they really cut it out of their lives entirely? Just like that?

No, there had to be something they could do. The city was still the most crime ridden city in the world. They couldn’t give up on it.

But then what to do…?

She watched Tim stumble in with a dislocated shoulder and squeaked, pushing herself off of her husband and rushing over.

“Shit! What happened?”

“I… might have messed up a boomerang-horseshoe-thingy catch and it might have hit me in the shoulder.”

She clicked her tongue. “Right. I’m going to reset it on three. One, two --.”

Tim gave a grunt of pain as she pushed his shoulder back into place.

“You should have told someone, how long were you fighting with a dislocated shoulder?”

“A little while…”

She shook her head and glanced at Adrien to give him the ‘kids, right?’ look, only to find him lost in thought.

He snapped out of it and flashed her a grin.

“I think I have an idea. How do you feel about going back on patrols with partners?”

He stretched across his family’s lap as they waited.

Adrien, Marinette, Dick, Jason, and Tim all sat in a therapist’s office for family counseling. They would have invited Cass but the whole ‘not speaking’ thing made therapy difficult. They actually had invited Barbara, only to get shut down because apparently she didn’t want to ‘deal with all that mess’.

So, it was just them.

Well, I say ‘just’ like five people isn’t a lot of people to have in a single therapy session. The poor therapist looked like she was going to have a heart attack when she saw all of them waiting for her.

Good thing they'd chosen the shortest session...

“Um… Agreste?”

“Yep!” Said Dick, far too brightly for a therapy session but whatever.

“Cool… right this way!”

His family glanced at each other before shrugging and pushing Adrien off of their laps in unison. He pouted up at them from his new place on the floor, but no one seemed all that guilty about it.

Marinette did reach out and pull him to his feet by the back of his shirt, though, so there was at least that.

They filed into the therapist’s room and took a seat on yet another couch.

Dr. Quinzel smiled at all of them. “Okay, does anyone have anything they’d like to start us off with?”

The family eyed each other warily. They were here as civilians, so they had to make sure not to slip up and talk too in depth about most things…

“Jason keeps calling me ‘Replacement’!” Said Tim, finally.

Marinette and Adrien frowned at Jason, who was attempting to sink into his hoodie.

“Well, we definitely didn’t know about that…” said Marinette.

“Of course you didn’t!” Said Jason. “You’re hardly ever around!”

Tim sighed. “They’re just busy.”

Adrien flinched. That was way too close to the excuse he used to make for his own father for his liking. Were they really that bad? Sure, he and Marinette were definitely not around as much as they’d like to be, but they were making an effort… did that really matter, though?

“No, Jay is right. We’ll try and do more. We’ve talked about how we’re going to free up time for you guys recently, actually. We’re hoping to include you more in our...” He glanced at Dr. Quinzel. “... hobby. Do more things with you in general, really.”

Marinette nodded her agreement.

She glanced at the boy’s faces and then clicked her tongue. “Anyone have problems they want to share?”

“No, our family is perfect how it is!” Said Dick brightly, his gaze fixed on the window.

Adrien followed his gaze to make sure nothing bad was going down on the streets and then sighed. “Dick, there has to be something. You’ve been just as tense as the rest of us recently.”

“Nope! Everything’s great!”

Everyone else exchanged skeptical looks but they couldn’t really feel comfortable pushing --.

Dr. Quinzel frowned a little bit. “Okay. We’ll come back to you when everyone else has had their say, then. Hopefully you’ll be more comfortable then.”

Dick gave a charming smile. Dr. Quinzel didn’t seem all that perturbed as she turned to look at Marinette.

His wife pursed her lips tightly as everyone else’s eyes went to her and she smoothed out the front of her dress. “We’ve already talked about this one-on-one, but… I think Adrien could maybe think a bit more before doing things. Or, at least, he should tell me when he makes major decisions like adopting kids.”

Dick’s smile dropped instantly. “Are you really complaining about not being told things? You guys tell me nothing! I have to figure everything out myself!”

Everyone startled a little at the sudden change of heart and gave each other wary glances before finding their way back to Dick.

The man in question had pushed himself to his feet (Adrien whined a little bit about losing the person to lean against) and started pacing. “You even ask Barbara things before me! It’s like you think I’m stupid!”

“Sweetie --.”

“Dont!” Dick sighed and came to a stop. He shoved his hands into his pockets. “It’s fine, it’s just… don’t you trust me?”

Marinette and Adrien looked at each other before nodding.

“Of course we do,” he said gently. “We’ll talk more about this at home, okay? When we’re not in the present company?” He looked at Tim and Jason, but he meant Dr. Quinzel. That was a hard subject to tiptoe around.

Dick took a seat on the armrest, likely so he could get up again without disturbing anyone.

Dr. Quinzel nodded. She looked at Adrien, and he fought the urge to try and hide behind Jason. She looked way too smart for his liking, it felt like she knew just by looking at him exactly what was wrong with him...

“I…” He struggled to find the words in French, let alone in English. “... think I try and get a lot of people in the house so I never have to be alone for long. I used to be alone all the time. I can’t do that again.”

Dr. Quinzel nodded thoughtfully. “It seems that all of you feel excluded or lonely in some way. Thankfully, that means all of you are the solution to each other’s problems. But, also, I suggest branching out some. Family is good, but so are friends. Everyone understand?”

They all gave each other wary looks, but they smiled all the same.

“Great, we can have a session again in a month or two to check your progress. That’ll be $7000 --.”

Marinette met her husband’s eyes and they exchanged nervous looks before walking into their room. As expected, Jason was already there. He was ready for bed, it seemed, with his pajamas on and his book out.

They took seats on either side of him and each took a hand.

“Jay…” Began Adrien. “We don’t love you any less because you’re not the newest kid anymore.”

“I know…”

Marinette bit her lip and pressed a tiny kiss to his forehead. “We’re not lying. And you don’t have to, either, just tell us why you think that.”

Jason looked at both of them warily before sinking into his shirt. It didn’t work as much as it did when he was wearing a hoodie or turtleneck, but it still worked surprisingly well.

She looked at Adrien nervously and he took the lead again:

“The reason we tend to focus on the newest the most is because they usually have the freshest problems. When we first got you we focused on you more than Dick because you were still struggling with old habits you picked up while homeless, and he was mostly over what had happened with his original parents.”

Marinette nodded. “And when Tim came in we focused on him because he was dealing with realizing his parents weren’t great and adjusting to a family who loved him. Now we have Cass, who… will definitely need some extra care…”

Jason sniffled a little and nodded his understanding. “I know you have to, I just… it feels like you don’t want me as much anymore...”

“No way!” Marinette said, squeezing his hand tighter. “We love you, sweetie, you’re just as much our kid as any of the others.”

Adrien smiled. “Exactly. You’re stuck with us, whether you want to be or not.”

Jason gave a wobbly laugh before slowly drawing them in for a hug.

“I love you, too, guys.”

They hugged him back.

“... and I’ll go easier on Tim.”

“Thank kwami, I didn’t want to ruin the moment by bringing it up, but… yeah, be nicer to Tim, please,” said Adrien half jokingly.

Marinette grinned. “Maybe give him a nicer nickname, at least?”

“How about Timbers?”

“Uh…”

“Timberly?”

She clicked her tongue. “How about just Timmy? Or Tim?”

“No, no, I think I’m on to something.”

Adrien stared in disbelief.

“You… you did what?”

Dick fiddled with a Rubix cube. Adrien wasn’t sure if that was just to help stay concentrated on the conversation or so he could more easily avoid eye contact.

“I joined the mob two years ago because I wanted to be more in the loop…”

Adrien and Marinette exchanged exhausted looks.

“Don’t be mad! I’ve been rising in the ranks for years now, eventually I’ll be close enough to Agoura to help you guys!”

Marinette sighed lightly and shook her head. “Sweetie, we aren’t mad.”

Adrien raised his eyebrows. “Yes we are.”

“You’re right. We’re mad. But we’re going to let this one slide.”

“No, we aren’t.”

“I can’t read minds!” She said, then she shook her head again. “Look, we just want you to be safe.”

Adrien nodded. “The reason we don’t tell you much isn’t because we don’t trust you, it’s because we don’t like involving you guys in dangerous things when we can avoid it.”

“But Barbara --!”

“We asked her about her opinion on one thing. She actually gave the same answer as you, and we turned her down, too. We’re sorry that you felt like we didn’t trust you, though, that wasn’t ever our intent.”

“And, besides,” added Marinette. “You have a tendency to snoop. We always figured you’d learn everything on your own.”

They took a seat on either side of Dick on the couch and wrapped him in a hug.

Dick beamed as he hugged back.

“... you’re still in trouble, though. That was stupid and dangerous and neither you nor your siblings can never do that again,” said Adrien.

Dick started whining.

Marinette bit her lip anxiously as she looked at her phone. All it would take was one click to call, but…

Adrien sighed beside her and reached over. He took the phone and pressed to call, then tossed it back at her.

She panicked, juggling the phone in her hands as it dialled. Nononononononono don’t pick up don’t pick up --

“Hello?” Said Nygma.

Fuck!

She looked at her husband anxiously.

“This or the Justice League,” mouthed Adrien.

She squeaked and brought the phone to her ear. “Nygma! Hi!”

“... Hello?”

“Hey! I’m a bit bored, so… I was just wondering if, um, you want to do something as…” she wheezed. “... as um… as…”

“I don’t really have anything prepared right now, I’m still waiting on that shipment of penguins...” The Riddler seemed confused, which was a first.

Was she a little concerned about whatever Riddler was doing with penguins? Sure. Then again, this is Riddler she was talking about. What was he going to do? Steal one of her ninja kids and then tell her exactly where they were? Whatever.

“No no! Like um…”

“Friends?”

“Yes! That!”

Adrien rested his head in his hands with a deep sigh. She flipped him off despite knowing he couldn't see it.

“I guess my schedule is free until the penguins come in... Sure! Want to go try an escape room?”

“No, I do an escape room every time I see you. I’m making you a new outfit.”

Adrien and Riddler both groaned.

She smiled.

He hesitated, messing with the strap of the bag over his shoulder.

“The city might need me --.”

“The city will be fine for a week,” said Marinette.

“The kids might need me --,” he tried, only to get silenced by a kiss.

She pulled back a little bit later. “It’s one week. Besides, we’re all doing what Dr. Quinzel said, and you’ve stalled long enough.”

He sighed. “For good reason! It’s a week alone! I’m going to go insane.”

“Chaton, we’re murderers. I think we crossed over that line a while ago.”

He cracked a grin, weak as it was, and pressed another kiss to her lips. “Are you sure --?”

“Yes! Oh my kwami! Now go!” She gave him a playful shove.

He raised his eyebrows and crossed his arms over his chest. “It almost feels like you’re trying to get rid of me.”

“And it almost feels like you’re stalling.”

She waved down a taxi for him and he couldn’t help but cringe as they took the bags from him. It made it feel much more real…

“I love you, Chaton, I’ll see you in a week.”

“I love you, too, M’lady.”

He waved at the kids long after they had disappeared over the horizon and he sighed as he sunk back in his seat. He knew it was for the best, he needed to learn how to function as a person on his own, but…

It was only a week. Only a week.

Besides…

He looked down at the coordinates of the last known location of David Cain (it was amazing what Tim, Barbrara, and Marinette could do when angry enough).

He wasn’t going to be bored, at least.

She turned away from the cake she’d been decorating and nearly screamed when her eyes landed on Cass. She hadn’t even noticed her walk in.

Marinette forced herself to relax.

She glanced over the tiny girl in front of her and bit her lip. She was wearing a mix of different shades of black which…

She suppressed a shudder. The outfit was okay, if she was being honest, but it definitely needed a splash of color.

“Right, that’s it, we’re finding you some new clothes.”

Cass looked at her blankly.

Right. She didn’t speak language. Marinette pursed her lips as she tried to think of some sort of movement that would convey what was going on, then settled for reaching out a hand for Cass.

She couldn’t help the smile that broke across her face when the girl took her hand. She trusted her! Score!

She hesitated for a minute before yelling: “SWEETIE! I mean… JASON! COME ON WE’RE GOING SHOPPING YOUR CLOTHES ARE GETTING SMALL FOR YOU!”

There was a few seconds’ pause before Jason poked his head in. He glanced at the two of them and frowned, sinking a little bit into his hoodie. “You noticed?”

“I… don’t even know how to respond to that. I’m a designer, of course I noticed. If you want to keep going for the grunge look that’s fine but you need to up your size.”

Jason nodded.

She rested her arm around his shoulders (something that was very hard for her to do now that he was both taller and wider than she was) and pulled the two kids out to the mall.

Jason was getting used to buying things for himself. He still resisted a little bit when people spent money on him or asked what he wanted, but he was making progress.

She pressed a kiss to his cheek and handed him a credit card. “Buy what you want. Remember the PIN?”

“Mhmm…” said Jason. He sent a wave over his shoulder as he made his way over to the men’s section.

She hummed lightly as she walked through the girl’s section to look for things for Cass. The girl was short and skinny for her age -- she was determined not to think about it for too long -- and she could easily fit in kid’s clothes…

But no kid of Marinette’s would have a shirt with the words ‘Girl Power!’ or ‘I love tacos!’ on it.

She helped pick out different shades of black shirts and jeans for the girl, mulling over the different colors she should give her. Yellow and red matched her skin tone but she doubted the kid wanted anything bright…

Marinette settled for giving Cass a blue scarf and some gold accessories.

She smiled and offered them to Cass, only to pale when the girl burst into tears. Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck --

Cass hugged Marinette around the middle and buried her face in her chest and Marinette was just very confused.

Jason came back with two bags of new clothes and he blinked a few times as he took in the new situation.

“What the fuck happened?”

“I don’t know!” She hissed back, waving her hands vaguely. “She’s crying and I can’t even ask what’s wrong!”

“We need to teach her a language,” mumbled Jason.

“No shit, Sherlock!”

“Fuck off, Watson!”

She was getting judgemental looks from fellow shoppers now. Great. Amazing, even. She rested an arm around Cass and then used the other hand to flip them off. How dare they judge how she parented her kid she just met.

She waited until Cass was done to pull away and lean down to check her face. Even if she couldn’t really speak, her expression should be a good gauge of what was wrong --.

Cass gently took the items from Marinette and flashed her a blinding smile.

Damn it. Now Marinette was going to cry. This kid was so cute.

She leaned over and gently pressed a kiss to Cass’s forehead.

HER kid was so cute, she reminded herself as she led her along to .

She helped her wrap the scarf around her neck. Was it kind of hot out? Yes. Was Cass super cute with her mouth hidden behind the fabric? Also yes.

She glanced at Jason, who was also smiling a little bit despite not having all the attention.

His smile dropped at her next words, though:

“I know you still have my card. Hand it over.”

“Fuck.”

It turns out ASL is hard.

It also turns out that teaching ASL, while you’re still learning it yourself, to a person who doesn’t even comprehend language is even harder.

Weird how that works out.

They started with simpler things. Everyday objects, basic emotions, the first letters of their names so she could say who she was talking about. It was a slow process, especially because they often would take two days per lesson because of everyone’s conflicting schedules.

But it was a process.

And he thought the family was doing pretty well, too. It probably helped that Cass was, at least so far, the nicest person in the house and none of them wanted her to be sad or lonely.

Look at that. They were working on making her not feel excluded. Progress! Dr. Quinzel would be proud.

Marinette paused her walk to the kitchen when she saw blonde hair. Adrien had blond hair, but he was still out on patrols with Dick so…

She turned and looked at the person on the couch with Tim. “Please, kwami, tell me he didn’t get another one when we just started making progress.”

Tim barely even looked up from his computer. “No, just my friend, Steph. She’s here because she thinks I’m sad my parents died.”

“Oh, oka --.” Marinette took a step back. “Hold up, what?”

“Yeah, they were killed by this guy in Haiti. I was sad about it for a while but then I was like ‘wait a minute! I can just kill him back!’ Anyways, it’s all good now.”

Steph didn’t seem all that perturbed about the murder thing, so she brushed past worrying about their identities or, y’know, her kid getting prosecuted...

Marinette pulled out her phone. “Yeah, Dr. Quinzel? I’m going to need to schedule another appointment…”

Tim frowned. “I’m fine, Mari.”

“Oh! Yeah! This isn’t for you… but, Steph, he doesn’t have anything going on Friday night, right?”

“I’ll make sure he’s free.”

She nodded. “Thanks, sweetie. Want anything to eat?”

“Guys! I’m fine! I got my revenge! I feel great!”

“Of course, you do, Timmy. And… waffles?”

She continued her walk to the kitchen to finish up scheduling and make Steph waffles.

Listen, at this point Cass having a miraculous was a given.

He might as well make sure it was a good one that would come in useful. And, it kind of matched her fighting style of predicting people’s moves to have one that allowed her to go five minutes into the past. She’d be even better at predicting people’s movements if she’d seen them before!

Besides, she liked the color blue. Perfect fit.

Marinette had agreed to train her, but Adrien was the one to take her out on patrols with him.

It was good to have people with different fight styles together, it made solving problems easier. Adrien paired with Dick and Cass, Marinette tended to pair with Jason, and Tim would tag in on either side since he had no real consistent fight style (he liked to change based on his opponent).

Besides, with group patrols they got to spend more time with their kids! They were nothing if not efficient people.

He and Cass sat on the rooftop across from the building Agoura had asked to meet Dick in. There was a low chance it was going to get violent, there should be no way that he’d know anything was off (Marinette and Dick had been publicly fighting for the past year to make it seem like they were on opposite sides), but it was better safe than sorry.

He watched Dick wave to Agoura and head off. Adrien and Cass watched carefully for any sign that they were suspicious, that they were going to do something underhanded, but Agoura just turned and started heading off into the night.

When his oldest son came up to sit with them, he had a thought. He glanced at Cass and made a swiping motion on his wrist.

She nodded her understanding.

They waited for Dick to transform before following Agoura and his goons. Five people were with him, but that wasn’t actually that bad by Agoura standards, so...

“Y’know, if he gets suspicious of me because of this, I’m never going to forgive you,” said Dick.

He shrugged absently, then broke into a wide grin when Agoura turned down an alley. “Living hotel to hotel wasn’t that bad back in the day.”

“Hm. I disagree, but…” The three of them exchanged grins as Cass activated her power. “Let’s do this.”

Dick brought his flute to his lips and played a high-pitched note that made Agoura and his goons stop in their tracks. Duplicates of each vigilante slowly spread out over the rooftops, as well as a replica of Dick.

The vigilantes and their fakes dropped down to surround the group and Cass suddenly reached out and jerked Adrien’s hand. He almost complained but then a bullet soared past where his head had just been and he went pale.

He squeezed her hand once as thanks and then pulled away so he could activate his Cataclysm.

Doubles went after the goons while Cass went to work disarming people. It was kind of creepy how she disappeared into the shadows without any help from Dick, but no one said anything because it was useful. She would pop out of shadows and break arms and legs to put goons out of commission.

Dick was giving himself an alibi. The fake lawyer ran into the action, only to get taken out by a fake Cass.

Agoura was making a run for it. Too bad, really, that he couldn’t exactly see anything that was going on. The world in front of Agoura was a mess of dumpsters and trash bags that he was struggling to run around. Adrien, who knew for a fact that everything was either fake or light enough to brush away with his staff, followed after him at a calm pace.

He grabbed Agoura by the back of his tailored suit and smiled at him.

“Agoura! Buddy! Where are you going? I just want to chat!”

“Nice one!” Yelled Dick from somewhere in the chaos.

“Thanks, Robin!”

He tipped his head to the side and regarded the man in his grip. It was clear he didn’t really know that much self-defense, but he must have some kind of weapon hidden on him…

Cass seemingly materialized out of the wall nearby and threw herself at Agoura, a blur of blue and black, and the man was nearly knocked out of Adrien’s grip by the force. Then she pulled away with a gun and a few knives.

Adrien raised his eyebrows a little bit before sending her a smile. Yeah. It was definitely a good thing that he’d given her that specific miraculous...

He turned his attention back on the mobster, who was beginning to look a little pale.

“Don’t worry about it, I’m not here to kill you. You deserve way worse,” he said brightly.

He pressed his hand to the man’s wrist. He closed his eyes and forced himself to concentrate on just dissolving the wrist. It was kind of hard to do with the mobster screaming his head off. Kwami, you’d think he’d be quiet so Adrien wouldn’t dissolve him into nothing but apparently not…

The hand popped off and he let go instantly. He looked down and winced at the black webbing its way under the glove.

He glanced at the mobster nearby, who was still screaming, and rolled his eyes. He punched him as hard as he could and smiled when he fell to the ground in a heap by the hand. Good, now that that was dealt with...

He scrunched up his nose a little bit as he slowly peeled the glove off of the hand and then his face split into a wide smile. Thank kwami, he hadn’t ruined the prints.

He turned to his kids and found them waiting for him amidst a pile of bodies. He didn’t know if the henchmen were alive or not, but when he saw the tiny scrape on Cass’s cheek he decided he didn’t care.

He waved the hand at them.

“We got him!”

Listen, Marinette had considered staying commissioner…

For approximately two seconds.

The vigilantes had made their point in getting Agoura arrested (they gave him about four days before he ‘mysteriously committed suicide’ in jail thanks to either underpaid henchmen or old victims). They were done. It had been way too hard to even think about doing it consistently. No, murder was definitely the way to go.

She glanced over at Nygma. “Thanks for helping me pack up.”

“Well, I figured it would be nice to visit again.”

She nodded slowly and looked around her old office. Tomorrow there would be someone else in that chair, someone likely far more corrupt…

“Got a knife on you?”

“Obviously, but why?”

She shrugged and took it from his outstretched hand. She knelt down by the chair and sawed on one of the legs until she had taken off a tiny piece of it. She pushed on the chair and giggled a little when it wobbled. Yes. Perfect. That would be so annoying.

She tossed the piece of chair leg in the air and then caught it, sending Nygma a wink. “The budget here is terrible, it’ll take at least a few months to get a new chair.”

Nygma rolled his eyes and took his knife back from her. “Hm. And they say I’m the evil one.”

They each grabbed a box. His was full of personal items, hers was full of files on every person currently in the GCPD and every mobster and goon she could think of the name of.

“You owe me one escape room.”

She groaned as they slipped out into the halls. “Why? Wasn’t it enough to spit on the floor?”

“Nope! Spitting on the floor was payment for me showing up, you’re making me do manual labor so I get one hour of escape rooms with you.”

“Don’t you know every solution already?”

“A new one opened up across town!”

She clicked her tongue irritably but shrugged. “Fine. But only because I owe you, not because we’re friends.”

He rolled his eyes and then looked down at the box he was carrying. “Wow, it sure would suck if all these pictures of your kids just… fell.”

Her eyes widened. “You ARE the evil one!”

He raised his eyebrows.

“And… you’re also my friend.” She made a retching noise. “Kwami, I’m going to die.”

“What?! No! Only one of my traps is allowed to kill you!”

“Too late! I’m dying. I’ll never recover…”

“Nooooo…!”

He raised an eyebrow at the girl on his couch. He was pretty sure she was Tim’s friend but… she was definitely around a lot…

Whatever, he might as well at this point.

“Hey, how many parents you got?”

Steph didn’t even glance up. “Zero, thanks to you.”

He went still. Wait, was she saying this in the ‘my parent(s) was evil and you killed them’ way or the ‘they were civilians and they got caught in the crossfire and I blame you’ way?

“Um… did you like them?”

“No, he was a dick.”

He allowed himself to breathe. Cool. Great. That would have made everything difficult…

“Want to be adopted?”

Steph laughed a little and shrugged. “Do I get to be a vigilante, too?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Then... yeah, whatever.”

~~~

Taglist

@i-am-ironic @nathleigh @mialuvscats @golden-promises @sassakitty @deathwishy @toodaloo-kangaroo @ladythugs @moonlightstar64 @dahjokester @jjmjjktth

#another one?!#maribat #adrienette #marinette dupain cheng #ladybug #adrien agreste #chat noir #dick grayson #nightwing #jason todd #red hood #tim drake #red robin #cassandra cain #orphan #damian wayne #robin

71 notes · View notes

blueorangemusic · 3 years

Note

Hi!!! I love your ATLA music, I found you and just fell in love. May I ask for some advice? Iwrite a lot of poetry and want to turn them into music but I don’t know how as I’m not a natural music person the way words come to me as a writer, and I don’t play any instruments, and it may be silly but I feel I’m too old to learn. Do you have any tips to start?

(Well this turned into a whole “how to get started with music” post. I hope you don’t mind 💜)

Oh my god oh my god oh my god, I love your ask so much! I love all the art I see in fandom, but we don’t have a lot of songwriters yet, and if I can help even one person get started with music this blr has not been in vain.

Now is actually a very good time to get started with songwriting without having to pick up a lot of music background upfront. And despite being a former choir kid and piano student, I had to learn songwriting from scratch in a similar way, since the way I was taught music focused very much on performing your part to perfection rather than understanding how the parts all fit together. So the advice below is part experience (and part best-guess as to what might work in your case).

Since you say you don’t play music I’m going to recommend you start with pre-made instrumental tracks (I’ll explain below). Now, it can feel a bit weird using an instrumental someone else made in your own creations, so think of them as basically pose references for your music. Music is tricky largely because - as with any art - you need to finish a few pieces in order to start developing your ear, but - unlike with writing or pencil drawing - you need to frontload comparatively more skill (and gear) acquisition if doing it all from scratch: where do I get instruments from? how do I use this audio software? what are chords? what all goes into making the music sound laid-back (upbeat, dramatic)? how to make the bridge sound different from the verse? We’re gonna circumvent all that - at first.

So the following writing prompt is for quickly getting to a finished piece - I hope it will help you get a feeling for how your poetry can sound when set to music, the process of turning your poetry into lyrics, and help you understand the direction you want to take your songwriting. And if you (or anyone else reading this) decide to follow the choose-your-own-adventure steps at the end and get stuck, drop me another ask - once you have an idea of what you want to do the answers get much shorter!

Writing prompt below the cut! Thanks again for the ask! If you or anyone else found this helpful and got started on some songwriting, I would love to see your completed songs or WIPs whenever you feel ready to share them 💜.

Writing Prompt: Song-ifying an existing poem

Pick one of your poems! Go to https://app.sessions.blue/ - it’s just one of many many sites offering prerecorded instrumental loops and tracks (theirs are free if used for non-commercial purposes), but the cool thing about it for this writing prompt is that their website makes it easy to browse and play the tracks without having to register, and that they offer a wider variety of genres than most.

Set a timer for 15 minutes max and browse through the tracks until you found one you like that you think can work as a song (if you don’t know where to start, set the “Tags” filter to “Indie” - it seems to have a good quantity of tracks that are song-shaped). Grab your poem, let your chosen track run, and launch into speaking or singing the words over it. You can do a single phrase, repeating it over the music, or you can run through the whole poem.

You can start with speaking or half-singing/half-speaking if making up a melody sounds a bit too intimidating at this point, but speaking can be a cool thing in its own right. Here’s a track for inspiration - Dessa’s Talking Business (lyrics here) - she used to be a poetry slam regular before she became a singer, and this song is basically a short story told in verse. Note how she is telling it in a soft voice, and though she’s half-singing, most of the musicality and impact of the song comes from the variation in the rhythm. If that sounds appealing to you, it’s something you can easily explore and practice at this step. (Don’t worry if this track doesn’t speak to you, I have more examples from different genres below).

Here’s another track that can be softly half-sung/half-spoken - Octave by Half Waif (lyrics here) - Nandi Rose, the singer, also writes poetry and this track always felt to me like a poem set to music. Note how it leaves a lot of air between each line, unlike the lyrically dense previous track. Here, a lot of the musicality comes from the echoing, etherial vocal effects that create a moody soundscape. If that sounds appealing to you, earmark it for later - you’d need to install some software and spend a few hours figuring out how to use it. (This concludes the more electronic-driven examples, onwards to other genres!)

Or you can start with a melody in a more conventional sense. Check these two tracks - Blue Caravan by Vienna Teng (lyrics here) and Empire by Dar Williams (lyrics here). Empire is an example of introducing song structure - it has distinct melodies for the verse, second part of the verse (or pre-chorus), chorus, and post-chorus. This is something you can pay attention to at this stage if it appeals to you. Or you can use the same melody throughout, like Blue Caravan does.

Uff! That was a lot of examples! But I wanted to give some inspiration of the possibilities in laying out your own words over the instrumental track you picked, and possibly help you out if you got stuck. Anyway, set your timer to 30 minutes (or 45 minutes, or an hour), keep replaying your track and singing or speaking over it. Grab a recording app (any free one you download to your phone is fine) and record yourself, phrase by phrase as you go. Listen back often, note parts that you vibe with and parts that don’t work for you. Don’t hesitate to plain out copy melodies and rhythms from songs you like at this stage, it’s all good. You might find you want to drop or repeat some of the words and phrases in your poem - experiment with that. In the end, record your best version start-to-finish so that you can listen to it again in a week’s time.

Repeat for a couple more tracks, a couple more poems.

Where to next?

Well that was a lot of words! Your next steps will depend on what appeals to you about the songmaking process.

If you listened to the instrumental tracks and thought, wow, I wish I could learn how to make my own - you’re in luck! There’s a whole world of loops and samples (small audio files used as building blocks in songs), and instead of spending time learning an instrument you would spend time developing a good ear and learning a music software where you put those building blocks together into a song. If you ever used a graphics software, the learning curve for a music software will look about the same, and same as graphics software there is a whole spread of music software from easy-to-learn to complex and from free-to-use to expensive. The examples you find online skew towards electro genres, but any genre is possible, even if you want to make acoustic guitar songs without playing acoustic guitar.

If you listened to the instrumental tracks and thought, cool, where can I get more of them? - you’re in luck too! There are a lot of people out there who make and share instrumental tracks, and most audio companies offer some of their pre-made tracks for free. Where to find them will depend on what genres you’re interested in.

If you listened to the instrumental tracks and thought, actually, all I want to sing my songs to is that cheeky ukulele sound, or those clean piano chords, or those chunky synth soundscapes - what I mean to say is, if you fell in love with a specific type of sound - well, as it happens we live in a time where inexpensive great-sounding instruments are widely available, and it doesn’t take that much time to learn the basics.

#asks #this is a creative process blr #THANK YOU for giving me the opportunity to nerd out about making music #poetry #stardust-steel

5 notes · View notes

xddaengx · 4 years

Text

Welcome Home: Safety

⚬ Pairings: Hoseok x Reader ft Jimin

⚬ Genre: Hybrid AU | Romance | Angst |

⚬ Warnings: Mentions of Trauma | Nightmares | PTSD | Mentions of Domestic Abuse |

⚬ Word Count: 4.4k

⚬ Summary: Adopting Hobi was a complete accident - well maybe not an accident - but you definitely did not expect to walk home from the adoption fundraiser with a ex-police dog in tow. But maybe having Hoseok around was going to be a blessing in disguise.

⚬ Author’s Note: This is apart of the Welcome Home Series. This is the first instalment - and there will be many more to come! Let me know what you thought and who you think will be next. (it should be pretty obvious)

“We’d like to welcome all the participants in todays fundraiser. All of the hybrids that are up for adoption today have been rescued and rehabilitated over the past two years, and have finally decided they wanted to find new families.” The old woman says into her microphone, the hybrids standing around the stage waving to the audience - some definitely more excited that others.

You look over each of the hybrids, some cat and dog hybrids as well as some exotics standing on the sides of the stage interacting with the people that approach them to ask about adoption.

“You look a little lost.” A voice whispers from besides you as you look down at your handout with a photo and small description of each of the hybrids up for adoption.

“Yeah…A little bit. I really didn’t think I was going to come today but my doctor thinks adopting a hybrid could be really beneficial for me.” You say back glancing at the older man besides you quickly before turning back to the handout. “I don’t even know what kind of hybrid I’m looking for.” You whisper more to yourself than anyone, sighing as you drop your hand holding the handout.

“Well it sounds like you need more of an active hybrid, but not one that is overly excitable - oh and one that isn’t too standoff-ish.” He says taking the handout from your hand looking over it quickly before letting out a big grin. “And I know just the one.”

The man moves quickly, waving for you to follow him. He shuffles over to a small tent at the back of the fundraiser, two straight faced hybrids standing underneath it.

“Hoseok. Jackson. Meet…” You quickly give the man your name, and he repeats it softly, giving the two hybrids an encouraging smile as they both introduce themselves back.

“Our lovey friend here is interested in adopting a hybrid - and judging by what she was saying she needs someone just like you, Hoseok.” The old man can’t help but nudge the black haired hybrid towards you, the two of you quickly taking steps apart.

“Hobi here is one of my old partners - we spent most of our days stuck in that ragged old police car, but we still managed to have fun. Didn’t we?” The man chides, Hoseok nodding along as he continues to look over your appearance.

“You were in the police force?” You question, the old man nodding quickly.

“I still am - but our hybrids tend to get worn down quicker, it’s a tough job for them - most of them retire by the age of twenty five. Hobi, here was one of our best. I wanted to make sure he got the best home possible, so I thought I would bring him here - see what kind of family he was looking for.” You nod along to the mans answer, looking over to the large scar running from the bottom of the hybrids chin, disappearing under his collar.

“That’s understandab—“

“I like her.” The hybrid cut you off, looking over to the man standing besides the two of you. “She has a good smell.” He adds, though he could smell something mixed in - a smell he was very familiar with - Anxiety.

“Ok - well maybe we should leave the two of you alone for a moment…to discuss things.” The man and the second hybrid scuttle away the two of them sending you an encouraging smile distracting you as hoseok takes a few steps closer, inhaling deeply.

“What are you doing?” You shriek, jumping away from the hybrid - his own reflexes making his jump back as well, straightening his back.

“Sorry…I just needed to make sure.” He says quickly, putting his hands up in defence turning to grab some papers off of the table. “You smell like sunflowers and honey.” He says handing you the papers and a pen, before adding, “Though, I can smell some fear - you don’t like being in public places, do you?”

“No, not particularly. What are these?” You look down to the papers in your hand taking the pen from Hoseok.

“They’re expressions of interest. If you are interested in adopting me, you need to fill one out. Mr Bang will look through all the forms at the end of the evening picking the top three and then let us decide who we want to be with more.” Hoseok explains, pointing to the pile on the table - the pages already covered in ink. “Most of those people are inadequate - they either want the status or the skills of an ex police hybrid. But you…You are much better. I like you much better.” He adds quietly, watching expectantly as you read through everything on the paper clicking the end of the pen a few times before looking back to him.

“It’s only if you want to though…I understand if you don’t want to - we can be a bit intimidating.” You sigh and give him a small smile before beginning to fill out the forms, taking notice of the small smile that blooms on Hoseok’s face as you focus on the forms, his smile disappearing as you lift your head to look back at him as you hand him the forms - completed.

“We will be in touch very soon.” Hoseok says leaving you in the dust as he rushes to the old man standing across the grass oval, handing him the forms with hurried words - the old man sending you a big smile in response.

It’s been three days since the adoption fundraiser and you haven’t heard anything about the ex police hybrid and the happy old man. To be completely honest - you were disappointed.

Hoseok - as weird as he was - left quite a nice impression on you. He left you with a feeling of warmth you hadn’t felt in years. His smile haunted you as you wondered what went wrong.

Maybe they just chose someone more qualified?

Even Hoseok said ex police animals can be intimidating.

Your phone ringing from the lounge makes you spring up from the chair at the dinner table - rushing to grab the phone and answer the call.

“Hello?”

“Hi…This is Hoseok from the adoption fundraiser, is this the number for Y/N?” The voice cuts through you like a knife, and you can’t help but smile.

“Yes, this is Y/N.” You answer quickly. What if he’s giving you bad news? The boy on the other line seems to pause for a moment before spitting out.

“Would you be able to meet me at the coffee shop next to the Incheon Police Station? I was hoping you were still interested in finishing off those adoption papers.” You can’t help but let out a deep breath - this was everything you had been thinking about the past few days.

“Yes. Yes, I’d love to.” You say quickly, cringing slightly before you add, “I could probably drop in, in about half an hour,” in a softer tone. The boys on the other line seems just as excited, his voice cracking slightly as he confirms with a ‘see you soon’ before hanging up the phone.

You rush to get ready, tidying what you could, of your crowded apartment, just in case. You pull on a large cardigan, grabbing your bright yellow handbag from the door before rushing down the stairs to your car parked on the street - the drive to the cafe passing quickly.

It’s easy to spot the hybrid and his previous owner sitting in the corner of the cafe - teenage girls gawking and whispering about the cute hybrid, the sound seeming to annoy Hoseok by the twitching of his ears. His gaze moves from the group of teenager over to you standing by the door, his facing lighting up as he pokes his owner motioning to where you stand.

You hurry over to the two smiling men, ignoring the way the teenage girls scoff as you pull up a seat, giving Hoseok a small smile as his tail smack against the chair besides him.

“Y/N, we’re so glad you could make it. Hobi here has been talking about you non-stop. He refused every potential owner I showed him.” The man laughs as you take a seat, the hybrid flushing as his secret is revealed.

“Well, I’m glad. I was really disappointed for a moment, I thought you had chosen someone else.”

“Never.” Hoseok gasps at your sentence. You stare at him for a second, surprised at his dramatic reaction.

“He’s always been one to bond quickly. There are many people he doesn’t like but when he finds someone he does like - he doesn’t let them go.” The man explains, looking at Hoseok with a fond smile. “Well, I guess we should get on with it.”

Filling out all the paperwork take the three of you almost two hours.

Apparently owning a hybrid comes with quite a lot of paperwork.

“Ok, well I’ll go send these to the registration office and they should send you and hobi your new licenses in a few days.” The older man says. He had briefly explained to you that hybrids and owners must carry a license that shows their status. Yours will have a picture of Hoseok and his details on it as well as your own to show that you're his rightful owner, whiles Hoseok’s will have a picture of you and your details as well as his own to show others that he has been adopted.

“It saves everyone a lot of trouble - a clear way to show that they are owned and cannot be taken without consent. It also gives them a bit more freedom.” The older man had said after explaining everything to you. You nodded as he collected all the papers sliding them into a yellow envelope before tucking it under his arm.

“Well, we better get your stuff out of my car.” He says and Hoseok jumps up to help grab all of his belongings, moving them from the mans sleek black car, into your run down silver jeep. The two men embrace each other quickly - the older man whispering something into Hoseok’s ear that has him nodding and stepping towards you, as the old man slides into his car pulling away from the curb shortly after.

“We should probably get some groceries before we go home.” You mumble, fumbling with your car keys - motioning for Hoseok to get in the passenger seat.

Your trip to the store is quick, Hoseok’s face was straight as he watched all the people mull around - but his tail wagged like crazy, hitting against your hip every few seconds as you pick out some of his favourite foods, and treats, deciding tonight was going to be a celebration and you would both order pizza for dinner.

Hoseok carries all the groceries for you, rejecting your attempts to take one of the bags from him, he follows behind you closely as you make your way to your apartment, his tail now smacking against the wall as you walk down the hall.

“Look what we have here?” A voice hisses from outside your apartment door. You smile at the spoilt hybrid, jumping at the way Hoseok growls from behind you.

“Be nice, Jimin. This is Hoseok, my new hybrid. We just finalised the paperwork today.” You say quietly opening the door to your apartment, ushering Hoseok inside as you turn back towards the feline hybrid.

“Oh…You got a hybrid?” Jimin asks, the surprise evident on his face. You had known Jimin for four years now, since your first moved into your apartment - his owner an elderly woman that lived down the hall - used to spoil him rotten. He was her prized possession. Recently she had gotten weaker and Jimin had turned to getting his attention from you.

You had mentioned to Jimin in the past the your were thinking of getting a hybrid, and that your doctor had recommended one. He had joked with you, saying you should just adopt him. You laughed and waved off the idea never taking notice of the way his face dropped.

“Well, I guess that means I can’t hang around anymore.” He shrugs going to walk to his own house but you stop him, a small hand on his wrist.

“You know your welcome anytime, Jimin. I’m sure Hoseok wouldn’t mind the company either.” Jimin nods at your words, a deflated smile on his face, as he lightly pulls his wrist from your hand before sauntering to his apartment.

“I don’t like that cat.” Hoseok says as you close the front door, You sigh leading him to your kitchen to start putting the groceries away. “He had a weird smell when he saw me…Like he was angry about me being here.” He adds, helping you unpack the groceries onto the bench so you could put them away.

“Well, you’re going to have to like him. He’s a good person - he can just come off as a little snobbish.” You say, pulling your phone out of your pocket as everything is put away.

“Let’s order some pizza and then I can show your new room.” Hoseok’s tail begins wagging once more.

The first two months of having Hoseok live with you were fairly uneventful - you were quick to take him shopping to get anything he wanted to decorate his new room. Jimin had yet to come inside while the dog hybrid was in the house, preferring to talk to you in the hallway - still craving your attention, even if he wouldn’t admit it to himself.

The first set of problems seemed to arise three months after Hoseok had joined you as your new companion. He was usually very quiet, preferring to just sit and watch you do things - read, work, cook, he watched you do anything with such amazement. He would on occasion have stage bursts of energy where he would pull you from your spot in the house demanding you go on a walk with him, or if you were busy it usually meant he would sulk in his room for the rest of the night.

The first time you noticed the whimpers coming from the room besides yours, you though it was a trick your mind was playing on you. It was so quiet, that you shook it off quickly.

Maybe it was the couple next door. They tended to get quite vocal.

The second time you heard it, a low growl followed and you knew it had to be coming from the black hair hybrid who slept in the room next door. You sprung up from your bed, leaving your room as quietly as possible, slowly opening the hybrids bedroom door.

“Hobi?” You questioned, walking further into the bedroom so you could see the boy clearly. His hair was a mess as his head thrashed about on the pillow, incoherent mumbles falling from his mouth as he let out another low growl.

“Let her go.” He growled, his teeth baring. You would’ve thought he was awake if your couldn’t see his eyes squeezed shut. “I said let her go…She’s just a child.” He continues, as your breath catches in your throat - you take a few more steps towards him, sitting on the bed besides him and his thrashing continues, his growls getting louder.

“Hobi.” You say one more time, a little louder as you reach out towards his sweat covered body.

“No.” He yelps, jumping up from his spot in the bed crouching besides it with a low growl. You jump up from the bed, throwing your hands up in defence as you look towards the shaking hybrid.

“Hobi, it’s just me. I just wanted to make sure you were ok.” You say quickly, putting your hands by your side as you look over his appearance. The hybrid was obviously frazzled and covered in shining drops of sweat as he watches you walk around the bed until you stand besides him, unable to mask your concern for his demeanour.

“You’re ok. You’re safe.” You whisper quietly, dropping to the floor as tear well in the hybrids eyes.

“I couldn’t save her…She was just a child, and I couldn’t save her.” He cries, dropping his posture as a sob finally escapes him. You waste no time in latching your arms around his shoulders, using one hand to stroke his head softly, sharing soft whispers as he continues to cry on your shoulder - his hand wrapped tightly around your waist.

You’re not sure when he fell asleep again, but you remember pulling his blanket off the bed, draping it over the two of you as you lean back against the wall, stoking the hybrids head, that was placed lightly in your lap. You couldn’t leave him like this alone. So you sat with your back against the wall patting his soft hair until you eventually drifted off to sleep as well.

“What was all the ruckus last night?” Jimin questions you, as you sit outside your apartment building, a cup of tea clutched tightly in your hand, a large jacket around your shoulders. You look at him surprised, not knowing how he could’ve heard the two of you in your apartment. The nightmare had been continuing to get worse over the past few weeks and didn’t show any sign of stopping.

“You know Hoseok used to be a police hybrid?” You say softly, noticing the way Jimin grimaces. It was a job - though one Hobi loved - that no hybrid envied. The canine hybrids were usually used for tracking, in most cases tracking people, who unfortunately were rarely still alive. “He was used for body retrievals.” You add, letting out a shaky sigh, as Jimin scoots closer to you, draping the yellow blanket from around his shoulders, around your own.

“I can’t imagine what he had to go through.” Jimin whispers, and you nod pulling the blanket tighter, giving him a small smile.

“His previous owner warned me that there would probably be some signs of PTSD, but the last few weeks it’s just gotten worse. He barely sleeps anymore.” You say to the feline, who just sighs besides you, it’s not like he knows how to help.

“Why don’t you do what I used to do, when you had nightmares?” Jimin suggests, the bright smile on his face bringing one to your own.

“You’re a genius, Jimin.” You say quickly, springing up from your spot on the steps, pulling the blanket off your shoulders and draping it back over Jimin’s. “Thank you.” You add giving jimin’s ears a small scratch, his purring starting quickly, before you pull away to rush back to your apartment.

“Anytime.” He whispers as he watches you rush off - though he knows you didn’t hear him.

“Hobi, would you mind come helping me with something?” You call down the hall finishing putting the cupcakes on the plate, bringing them over to the large blanket fort in the middle of the lounge room. Hoseok shuffles down the hallways pausing as he catches sight of the large piles of blankets on the floor, one sheet hanging over the T.V and the back of the lounge, to create a tent.

“What is this?”

“Well, when I used to have a lot of nightmares, Jimin used to come over and build a small fort with me. We would spend all day just watching movies, or reading and we would pig out on all the junk food we could think of.” You explain motioning to the coffee table covered in snacks and treats.

“Why are you doing all of this?” He questions quietly taking a few steps towards your set up, looking at it hesitantly.

“Because sometimes all we need is to feel safe. And sometimes being in small, comfy spaces can do that for people.” You answer, watching as his gaze moves between you and the fort a small smile blooming on his face, his tail wagging slowly. “Hobi, I know things in your past aren’t just going to disappear overnight, but whenever you need a little extra safety, just let me know.” You barely have time to finish your sentence before the canine bowls into you, wrapping you in his arms as tight as he can, letting out a shaky breath into your hair.

“Thank you…Thank you for everything.” He mumbles on your skin, as you reach up to pat his head lightly, scratching behind his ears a little bit.

“Should we start with Jurassic park?” You question, not moving to let go of the boy until he doesn’t first.

“I hope your not watching my favourite movie without me.” You and Hoseok both turn to look at the cat hybrid standing in the door way. Looking at the two of you with a small smile.

“I knew you would come.” You cheer, letting go of Hoseok to pull Jimin over to your set up, ushering Hoseok under the fort first, before you and Jimin follow. You set up the movie, the three of huddled under one big blanket as the nostalgia kicks in.

All three of you were starting to drift of nearing the end of the first movie. You were tucked up against Hoseok, your breathing even, as you slept peacefully. Hoseok lets out a sigh before turning towards Jimin, not knowing how to phrase what he was going to say.

“She said you used to help her with her nightmares?” Hoseok begins, catching Jimin’s attention instantly. Jimin’s eyes look down at you sleeping before looking back at Hoseok giving him a quick nod. “Her nightmares…What were they about?” He questions, taking Jimin by surprise.

“It’s not really my place to tell you…just know she moved here to get away from her past.” Jimin answers looking back down at your with a sad smile. “It was always heartbreaking to see such a gentle person, so terrified of something. I would do anything to help her never feel that again.”

“Me too.” Hoseok agrees, the two hybrids finally having something in common. It doesn’t take long for the two of them to give in to exhaustion, the two following closely behind you into a deep slumber.

You wake surprised to hear Jimin purring in your ear, as Hoseok hold onto your waist with a vice like grip. You smile quickly trying to stifle a laugh as Jimin’s tail twitches, falling over your waist, tickling Hoseok. You barely manage to slip out from between the two of them, without waking them out - but somehow, by the grace of god, you make it out. You make yourself a cup of tea before making your way over to the large window to the side of the lounge room, watching as people make their way to work.

“Y/N? Do you think we could talk for a moment?” Hoseok’s sleepy voice makes you turn away from your people watching, you look down at the still sleeping Jimin and motion for Hoseok to follow you down the hall into your bedroom.

“You mentioned that you had nightmares last night, and I couldn’t help but wonder…Why?” Hoseok’s question surprises you, but you just give him a small smile.

“I was engaged, once upon a time.” You say with a small chuckle, trying to lighten the mood as you take a seat on the bed, Hoseok copying you movements, his attention only on you. You let out a small sigh before continuing.

“Things started off well between us - he was kind, and gentle and so, so charming. But once he had proposed things started to go badly. He started drinking a lot and most nights he would come home and just fall asleep on the lounge, but sometimes he would be so angry, so full of hatred.” You take a few deep breaths, watching a Hoseok scoots closer to you taking your hands in his.

“The first time he hit me, he told me he made a mistake. But it just kept happening. Eventually he stopped apologising for it - start blaming me, made me think I was the reason he was beating me. Sometimes instead of beating me, he would hold me down and…” You pause for a moment, swallowing the lump in your throat.

“He would have his way with me…I gave up fighting after two years, and just let him do whatever he wanted, just praying that maybe he would kill me - or maybe he would accidentally kill himself. “ You pause again, Hoseok’s eye brimming with his own tears.

“One night he hit my head against the table and I lost consciousness, he still somehow had enough humanity to panic and call an ambulance. A hybrid - like you actually - could smell the fear on me whenever he was in the room, and when he took my statement he was quick to piece everything together…God, I’m a mess.” You laugh as you wipe the tears off your cheeks.

“You’d think after five years of therapy, it wouldn’t still affect me this much…Anyway, they found enough evidence and prosecuted him. He’s in jail for the next twenty years and hopefully by the time he gets out, he’ll have no idea where to find me.” You finish looking down at Hoseok’s hand gripping yours tightly as small droplets fall from his eyes. You pull your hands out of his own, wiping the tears of his cheeks softly giving him a smile.

“When I moved here, I was still struggling - one night I was having a nightmare, and Jimin had managed to slip into my apartment and woke me up. He could hear me from down the hall, and was concerned. Every night for a month after that we slept in the lounge room, in a little fort just like last night…He helped me a lot in my recovery from what happened, so he can get a little protective sometimes.” You explain, Hoseok nodding along to your words.

“Anyway, why don’t we wake up Jimin, and we can go to the cafe down the road, and get some pancakes for breakfast.” You say quietly standing up from the bed, wiping your face one more time, not noticing as Hoseok stands up as well, wrapping you in a hug from behind.

“I’m never going to let anyone hurt you, Y/N…Never.” He whispers, his warmth seeping into your chest, making you feel safer than you ever have.

459 notes · View notes

concealeddarkness13 · 3 years

Text

WHG 15 Post-Games Imposter Syndrome Part 18

The day after part 17! Warning if you don’t want to read about this: there’s kissing. Tagging: @sparkles-and-hens, @knmartinshouldbewriting, @maple-writes, @pen-of-roses (also thanks for Conor!), @thoughts-of-nora, and @ratracechronicler!

I triumphantly sent the video to Indigo as some Peacekeepers installed some cameras in my room. They were trying to intimidate me, but it wasn’t going to work. I’d just have to figure out how to smash them.

As the Peacekeepers left, the District 9 escort, “affectionately” nicknamed Bystander slipped in. This time, he went for fancy but not garish, and he was holding a purple iris. Oh joy. What was he up to now?

I just eyed him, not bothering to get up from my bed, as I set my phone down. He spoke first. “My, you’ve already caused quite the stir here.”

Well, at least he hadn’t openly threatened my crew, and he didn’t seem to want to start with that, so I relaxed a slight bit. I didn’t have to be openly hostile back, at least not yet. I smiled. “Oh? And I was hoping to remain inconspicuous.”

“Forgive me if I don’t quite believe that little thief. I have already found myself applauding your performance though, such a shame they felt the need to put a tighter leash on you.” He glanced over at the cameras. So, what was he even talking about? The incident where I beat up Indigo might have slipped out, but the whole slipping out, stealing from Aurora, getting a video while burning what I stole, and getting caught shouldn’t have. And I hadn’t done anything special other than that. The citizens of the Capitol wouldn’t even know I was alive yet. “I’m sure you’ll find a way around it of course and I, for one, am thrilled to watch as always. Tell me, were you truly thinking it would work?”

What, beating up Indigo or stealing, which both did work? Or did he not know exactly what I had done? I cocked my head. Better to not give him anything. “What would work?”

He grinned and winked. “But of course. Still, for your efforts.” He held out the iris elegantly. “Forgive me, but I find roses to be horribly overdone.”

True. I took it and set it down, ready to crush it if that would actually hurt his feelings. “So, what is Bystander really here for?”

“Ah yes, I suppose you have earned the right to my name. After all it simply wouldn’t do for you not to when we appear together. It’s Conor.” How…normal. But what did he mean by “appear together”? He bowed and walked to the other side of the room. Casually. Nonchalantly. But I could tell he was enjoying drawing this out. “There is no last name to worry about. You’ll forgive if my manners on this are a little out of date, but it’s been a while since I’ve hoped to win someone’s affections. The flower might not be appropriate still, though I did try to find a pomegranate to offer with the news of us becoming a couple in the public’s eyes.” He winked.

What the fuck? That didn’t even make any sense! It wasn’t as if he was a celebrity too. Why would anyone care? Fucking ridiculous. But there was nothing I could do about it. I had already agreed to cooperate on TV. I had to feign a different surprise so he wouldn’t see my real surprise. “Oh, dear me. So fast? We haven’t even shared a life-threatening scene together where you confess your undying love for me even though you’ve only known me for a day.”

“We didn’t?” He pretended like I had stabbed him in the chest. “Though I suppose in your version my life would have to be in danger as well, instead of the tale of seeing you and falling for you before the Games, after all you did wear my signature stars, but then, alas, I worried so much that you would die in the Games and had to profess as soon as we were able to meet up again. Though, if you would like to present another life threatening scene for yourself before the cameras for it to go your way, I’m sure it could be arranged.”

Well, that story was even flimsier than mine. But the citizens of the Capitol might just eat it up, especially if we were both entertaining enough. Oh joy. I laughed. “So, it’s to be a fake relationship? I’m wounded.”

His grin turned sharper, more dangerous. And I felt pinned down by his stare. “Oh I know you better than to fall for someone who could easily be your enemy and clearly has ulterior motives. But imagine the spectacle all of this will cause, the idea that not only have tributes survived, but for the possibility of love afterwards? The Capitol thinks they’re in charge of all, but maybe the people worry that they’ve grown soft? Allowing people to survive the Games after all? What are they covering up?”

Another flimsy story. Why would this be what the Capitol relied on? “They don’t have to use love with a random nobody Bystander to do that. They have a million other ways at their disposal.”

He laughed. “No, if anything the idea of love or even allowing me to do this shows that the precious Capitol isn’t as wise as they hope. But us? We can use it to exploit that foolishness and cause the people more concerns and doubts about all that power and maybe cause some trouble and mischief for added fun, little thief. Don’t tell me you don’t enjoy this to some degree?”

If he had come to me with this before I had agreed to cooperate, that manipulation might have worked. However, I had to cooperate on TV, at least, so I wouldn’t be causing any mischief there. Not when it could mean that my crew would be killed. I just decided to ignore that. “Well, I’m afraid I won’t live up to your expectations. Or you won’t live up to mine.” My smile turned into a smirk. Since I wouldn’t gain anything else from this, I might as well have some fun. “Are you a good kisser? If not, I don’t think I’ll be able to pretend to your satisfaction.”

“I have never lived up to an expectation a day in my life, it’s what makes it so exciting. And oh? Here you accused me of going too fast, but well,” he smirked as well. “Practice makes perfect after all.”

As if this would be anything but a distraction. Possibly a dangerous distraction if he was more than he seemed, which was becoming more and more likely. “Who said anything about love in this?” I stood up and crossed my arms, the smirk still playing on my lips. “It’s a mutually beneficial relationship. One that we have to sell as if it was real.” Even if there was nothing for me to gain, really.

He quirked an eyebrow and stepped forward. “You claim that and yet you don’t truly know yet what you’ll gain, still seeing me on the Capitol’s side in all this? You truly are fascinating my little thief. If this is to appear real though, I’ll have to know more of what you like and I can’t wait to learn more of your wit.”

I laughed lightly. I should be able to get a good time out of this, at least. “Isn’t having a good time enough to gain from a relationship like this?” I stepped forward, within arm’s reach of him and placed a hand lightly on his chest. I lowered my voice to a whisper. “So, the Bystander takes his turn on stage.”

“Hard to stand by when the lead is just so interesting, after all, sometimes the best view is right in the center of everything.”

I laughed. So close, his eyes almost looked otherworldly. Kind of like how his eyes had changed color a few days ago. If he was older than he looked, I wouldn’t be able to one-up him, but it would be fun to try. “I’m flattered. Now, let’s see if he can play the lead.”

He closed the distance, and damn. He was actually a good kisser. Held me so that there was no space in between us, buried one hand in my hair, while the other skirted along the edge of my shirt, touching the skin underneath. Kissed with such “passion” and intensity that I barely had time to breathe. My thoughts swam and got all jumbled, which I just blamed on the lack of oxygen. But that was kind of the point, I supposed. When I finally had to pull back to gasp in some breaths, he kissed my neck, holding me tighter, hand slipping under my shirt. Shit. I would gain at least something from this, even if it was just a good time. Once I had regained my breath, he brushed his lips up my neck until he kissed me on the lips again and my thoughts muddled. Still totally because of lack of oxygen. And he backed me up until my legs hit the bed, and I almost lost my balance, and he made me lose my balance, and we were laying on the bed. Shit. He stopped and smiled down at me. “What do you think now little thief?”

He was so close. It was hard to breathe still. I hated how my voice wavered. “6/10.”

“Still need to work on your acting if you want me to believe that. Though, I did already mention practice making perfect didn’t I?” He raised an eyebrow and kissed me on the forehead. Okay, okay 7/10.

I could barely find my voice, so I whispered instead. Trying to pry again. “With that performance, you should be the main character. I’m nothing compared to you.”

“Don’t sell yourself so short, anyone would fall for you, and I know that I wouldn’t be the first. Everyone’s eyes have been on you since you entered the Capitol.”

Huh. Deflecting. Well, there were other ways to figure out more about a person. I slipped one hand under his shirt to distract from my other hand that was slipping into his pockets. “You’ve fallen for me? I’m flattered.”

There was a piece of paper that could be important. “My attention is what flatters you? Not that of the rest of the Capitol, or even those who were your fellow tributes?”

I laughed and snagged the paper, bringing it to my pockets. “You’re certainly the most intriguing. Despite how much you say you’re just a member of the audience, you are possibly the most mysterious one I’ve met.”

“Would you prefer me to call myself the devil on your shoulder?” Huh. That sounded pretty applicable. “Encouraging what are likely ideas that will lead to trouble to watch it all play out but doing nothing more? It certainly wouldn’t be the first time someone has accused me of such things.”

And I had a way to make a small victory. “I rest my case as to why I focus on your attention over anyone else’s.”

He grinned. “Oh, I like you my little thief. The devil has always been far more interesting to listen to I’ve found. Very well, I will admit getting closer to you is not the only fun I am hoping to have from all of this, though I assure you it is definitely a part of it. I do love unique things after all. But I am hoping to help catch someone’s attention even more than you already have for a bit of personal fun. I do wonder how close you are to figuring out the puzzle from the pieces now.”

My thoughts snapped to Reine. He had been mentioning her too much, especially last time I saw him. Why was he trying to get her attention? And I had to admit, the promise of information was tantalizing. I smirked. “And what’s the prize for piecing the puzzle together?”

He pretended to think. “A favor perhaps, anything short of getting you out of this predicament you’ve found yourself in because then where would my fun go? Maybe a gift, a message…Though I do hope you choose wisely because you would be trusting the devil here.”

Something to think about. “Noted.” I laughed and winked. “I think we should practice more before they think we’re plotting something.” I pointedly glanced at the cameras.

He laughed too. “Very well my dear thief.” I pulled him into the kiss this time, but he kissed with the same intensity, not giving me enough time to breathe. Shit. I had to admit, he was charming and intriguing. I had to be careful around him.

He broke off fairly quickly and stood up. I sat up and smirked at him as he spoke. “Sadly, you are correct in assuming they might think we are plotting something if I stay too long, but I will look forward to seeing you again, I promise.”

I bowed a little and channeled my best sarcasm. “And I’ll be counting the seconds.”

He just laughed and left. I frowned and immediately looked at the paper I had taken from him. It was filled with letters that seemed to be from the same language that Reine had shown me. So, they probably were connected. But the way Reine had talked about him when I had wanted to steal from him made me think they weren’t on the best of terms. So, what did he want to do? Especially because she was captured. She might not even be able to watch the TV. Was there anything I could do with this information? Probably not.

#writeblr hunger games #writeblr #I love Triel and Conor's dynamic!#thanks for collaborating!

4 notes · View notes

weasleydream · 4 years

Text

Their girl

Here it is!! I have to admit I’m proud of this one (that’s why I even made a teaser) and I really hope you will love it too!

Just for information, a part is based on HBP movie and I’ve used a citation from Dr. Seuss (Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.)

I really hope you enjoyed as much as I did, and don’t hesitate to give me feedbacks and to comment, like or reblog!

Masterlist

(gif not mine)

Teaser

The trail was narrow, so narrow that the brambles growing on each side hurt my legs through the torn fabric of my jeans. I held my wand as tight as possible with my right hand while I constantly wiped my sweat from my forehead with my left one. My breath was jerky and my lungs were burning, along with my legs, but I couldn’t take the risk to stop now. I had to reach the cavern as soon as possible; I had to tell Sirius he was caught. The screams were getting louder and louder behind me. I didn’t have to turn around to see they were catching up with me. Suddenly, the somber entrance of the cavern appeared in front of me.

Something was wrong. When I had left, the ivy was arranged so that it could hide the cavern, but now it was on the ground. Fearing that Sirius had already been found, I used my last strengths and ran in the cavern. Sirius was nowhere to be seen, but George was here. He was standing a few meters away from me, looking at me with the same look full of hatred than my pursuers.

“You lied to me.”

His voice was hoarse, and I heard all the venom he probably wished he could have spit. His hands were clenched in fists and he took a few steps forward. I feared him. What if he hit me? The George I knew would have never done it, but the boy in front of me wasn’t really him. It was a copy, just a copy whose goal was to destroy me at all costs.

Absorbed by George, I hadn’t realized the screams were louder than ever. I suddenly felt their presence behind me and I slowly turned around, deciding giving my back to George was less dangerous than ignoring what was behind. When I saw their bodies, I gasped loudly and my weak knees stopped supporting me. They were both dead, their faces covered in blood as it seemed like they had been severely beaten. Crimson drops fell regularly from a strand of Sirius’ hair. Remus’ scars were completely invisible underneath the bruises. My loud cry echoed in the stone and I clasped my hands on my mouth.

The crowd in front of me opened, people stepping backward with a sort of silent respect emanating from them. He walked slowly toward me, his snake eyes fixed on mine and his smile more terrifying than anything else.

“They are dead because of you, Y/N. You are the responsible of their death. They are dead because of you.”

Lord Voldemort took his wand and pointed it on me. In a last attempt to stay alive, I jumped on my feet even though I was too desperate to find a way to escape. It was useless, though, because George’s arms were maintaining me firmly in front of my death.

“They are dead because of you, Y/N. They are dead because of you. Because of you. Because of you..”

I suddenly woke up, tangled in the sheets that were now soaked with my sweat. I sat and pushed furiously with my legs until the wet fabric fell on the floor and I threw my pillow against the wall, for good measure. I had felt my tears on it, and the salty drops were still rolling on my cheeks. I tried my best to calm my breath, but the terror that had taken over me was too strong. I abruptly got up and hit the nearest wall. Once, twice. I only stopped when my breath became less shaky and I felt the blood flooding from my knuckles. I decided I didn’t care and sat on the floor, the back resting against the wall, and like absolutely every night since I had to stay with Sirius, I thought about both my life and my nightmares.

I was an orphan. I had spent all my childhood in a muggle orphanage, not understanding why strange things happened around me and not around the others. One day, I had received Professor Dumbledore’s visit and he had explained me everything. The magical world, Hogwarts, he had even given me some informations about the first wizarding war that had killed both my parents. A few weeks later, I had sat on a stool with the Sorting Hat on the head and ended in Gryffindor. During my first years, I had made a lot of friends, I had played Quidditch… I wasn’t in the team, but my two best friends, Fred and George Weasley, had taught me everything about their favourite sport and whenever they invited me to their house, we would play during hours. Everything had changed during my sixth year, when I had met Sirius Black, who had escaped Azkaban the previous year. It was the very first breakout, and he was known as a dangerous murderer. But one day, as I was walking alone in Hogsmeade, three older men had attacked me and dragged me behind an empty shop. I didn’t know what would have happened if a huge black dog hadn’t showed up at this moment. Saying I was surprised when I saw the dog turning into Sirius Black and when I had understood he had saved me would be an understatement. However, I hadn’t been afraid. Something in his eyes, the desperation he showed me was enough for me to trust everything he had said. The following weeks, I had brought him food and blankets to make sure he would survive, even if I was obviously not the only one. I had always been careful not to be seen, but one day, two kids had followed me and seen Sirius. We had both seen them, and we knew they would denounce me. From this day, I hid with Sirius and no one never had any new of me, except Remus Lupin who was the only one to know where we were along with Dumbledore. The only thing I truly regretted was my bond with the twins, and even a bit more with George, who I liked very very much.

From this day, the nightmares haunted my nights, and I always had one solution. I eventually decided to get my ass up and left my room in the 12, Grimmauld Place. I came downstairs, hoping I would find Sirius in the living-room. A fire was burning in the chimney, which obviously wasn’t for the temperature, because since the beginning of the summer, London was a burning hell. No, I knew the cracklings of the fire were something quite reassuring for Sirius when he was woken up by his own nightmares. I found him lying on the couch. His eyes were closed but there was no snore escaping from his mouth.

“Sirius,” I whispered. “Please, groan if you’re awake.”

Indeed, he groaned loudly and opened his eyes after an ostensible yawn intended to make me understand how he wanted to sleep.

“Come on, make me some room.”

Sirius rolled his eyes and sat, letting me enough space to sit next to him.

“You want to talk about it?” He asked with a hoarse voice.

I knew he was looking at me, probably as worried as each night. And like every night, I shook my head, he sighed, passed an arm around my shoulders and recalled a funny story of his Hogwarts years. And as usual, I thought of how lucky I was to be with him, and how he and Remus were the closest things to a family I had ever had.

Remus arrived soon in the next morning to announce us we would have some visit. It was quite unexpected: in fact, since the end of June, Sirius, Remus and I had been the only ones in this scary house. When I recognized Dumbledore’s half-moon spectacles, my mouth fell wide open.

“I’m glad to see you too, miss Y/L/N.” He said with a smile. “I have to admit I would have been curious to see the results you would have obtained with your NEWTs but, what do you want, I guess it wasn’t meant for you.”

I shrugged, not really knowing what to answer. Even if I wasn’t an Hogwarts student anymore - and this thought always made my heart sting a bit - Albus Dumbledore was the kind of person who was intimidating, the kind you didn’t want to say stupid stuff in front of.

“But I’m not here to embarrass you with school problems. According to the situation we are facing, I want to inform the three of you that from now, the Order of the Phoenix rises from the ashes.”

I knew perfectly well what the Order of the Phoenix was. Dumbledore himself had told me about it a few years ago, back in the orphanage, and Sirius and Remus had also told me plenty of stories about it. But that wasn’t really a shock; after all, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named was back and someone had to stop him. What shocked me was what Dumbledore told us after, with his piercing eyes fixed on me as if he knew how affected I would be.

“The Order has already found new members. Before the end of the week, the Weasleys will install here and help with the meetings. Molly and Arthur want to participate, and they will bring five of their children.”

After that, I was too taken aback to listen to their discussion. I caught a glimpse of Remus’ eyes on me before I stormed out of the kitchen where we had been and joined my room. Although I desperately wanted it to be a joke, a voice in my head whispered viciously I would have to face the twins in less than a week. My best friends, my first crush, whose several letters had always been ignored because I couldn’t take the risk to answer them… In the last one I had received, they had written they thought maybe I was dead. Maybe someone had kidnapped me, and when they had looked for me, they were too late. It was painful to read that, to know how pained they had been whereas I was alive, just unable to give them any information.

And they were going to live in this house for an entire summer.

“Bloody hell!” I shouted.

The door opened and Remus’ head appeared. He had obviously understood what was going in my mind as he sat next to me and ruffled softly my hair. I had noticed it was his way to show me some affection, because he was way more timid than Sirius who never hesitated to hug me if he wanted to.

“I know it will be difficult for you, Y/N, but it will be okay.” He said.

Something in his voice was reassuring, it was a true gift he had. No wonder why he had been every Hogwarts student’s favourite professor, me included. Despite his terrible condition, this guy had the biggest heart I had even seen.

“What if they hate me?” I whispered, looking up to him with teary eyes. “I haven’t shown any sign of life, they think I’m dead. What if they hate me for lying to them?”

“Technically, you didn’t lie, you just hid a part of the truth.” It was Sirius, whose shoulder was resting against the doorframe.

“Thank you, Sirius.” I narrowed my eyes at him and he grinned. Without even looking, I knew Remus had rolled his eyes.

“But Remus is right. Don’t worry, it will be okay. And if it isn’t, this house is big enough for you to avoid them.”

Sirius quickly dodged the pillow I had thrown to him and left with a laugh. Remus patted my shoulder and followed him, letting me alone with my thoughts.

I thought I was prepared. Hell, I had learned a speech to explain my situation, and to apologize. I should have known I would froze as soon as I would see them. And Merlin, it didn’t miss. The first ones to enter the house were Molly and Arthur. I recognized their voices, unable to see them because I was hidden in the kitchen. They had been like my parents, they had welcomed me in their house, and all of sudden, I felt the urge to jump in Molly’s comforting embrace. I had to remind myself I wanted to see the twins first. They immediately followed their parents and my heart skipped a beat when I heard them for the first time in months.

“I didn’t think I could visit a place dirtier than Filch’s office.”

I was pretty sure it was Fred. I couldn’t help but smile genuinely. George said something I couldn’t understand, and I heard Sirius describing them the way to the kitchen, asking them to grab something for him. Apparently, one of them wanted to use his wand - I suddenly remember they were now allowed to use magic outside school - but Sirius dissuaded them by showing the lovely portrait of his mother. A few seconds later, the door opened, and the twins stepped in the kitchen.

The only noise was the one of the door closing as Fred and George looked at me with round eyes and wide open mouth. I stood in front of them with what was probably the dumbest look ever seen on my face but unable to remember a bloody word of my speech. The first one to react was George, and before I could even process the fact that he had blinked, he was engulfing me in a bone crushing hug. Fred soon followed and I found myself in the middle of a Weasley sandwich in no time. I had imagined plenty of scenarios for this moment, but me bawling my eyes out in their arms wasn’t really what I expected. If anything, I would have thought the contrary would happen.

I would be unable to say how long we stayed like this, but no one interrupted us. I supposed Sirius and Remus had explained the situation to everyone by now, and they wanted us to sort things out.

“Why?” That was Fred’s first words for me. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“What the hell even happened?” continued George. “Y/N, we thought you were dead. Dead! You just disappeared, like this and... “

“And we’ve felt so fucking guilty!” exclaimed Fred. “We thought it was our fault, that we shouldn’t have let you alone and -”

“Stop.” I had murmured but they both shut up, obviously waiting for an explanation.

And I gave it to them, without omitting any detail (except my crush on George), I told them everything from the day Sirius had saved me until the previous week when I had freaked out when learning they would come. I told them about my nightmares and how badly I had wanted to send them an owl, how guilty I had felt when I had read their last letter. They listened to me without saying anything, the same look in the eyes. I was unable to read them right now, their faces were closed and they weren’t even looking at me. When I finally finished, a heavy silent took place.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” I felt something like anger boiling in my veins, even though I knew I shouldn’t be the angry one.

“It’s a lot to process.” Fred said quietly.

“Y/N, I don’t think you understand…” If I didn’t know him better, I would have thought George was on the verge of crying. “We’ve hoped you were alive, somewhere… They have told us you were probably gone on your own, but we knew better than that. Then they have told us maybe you had been kidnapped, and you were probably dead. They… They wanted us to let go of you, to forget you, and we have.” I felt my heart stinging. “We have because it was too painful to think you had given up on us, and it was even worse to think you were dead. You can’t blame us for not knowing what to think. You just can’t.”

With that, he turned the heels and left, followed by Fred. None of them even looked at me, and if they had done so, they would have seen the most broken expression I had even shown. I knew it would be difficult but I had hoped they could understand they weren’t the only ones suffering in this. I had been forced to give up on my life, on the only place that had been home for me. I had lost my first real family.

I decided to avoid everyone and hid in my room for the rest of the day. When the diner approached, my stomach started to rumble but I refused to go downstairs and risk to run into Fred and George. I wanted to see Molly and Arthur along with Ron and Ginny and the mysterious fifth sibling accompanying them. However, I feared the same reaction than the twins, and I didn’t think I could handle that.

A soft knock on the door interrupted my thought. I ignored it, hoping that whoever was here would understand and leave me alone.

“Hey, groan if you’re awake.”

I chuckled despite myself and dragged my tired body to the door to let Sirius in. I immediately came back to my bed and dramatically threw myself on it.

“I guess it didn’t happen like you wanted.”

I shook my head, my face still hidden in the pillow. I felt his hand on my shoulder.

“I understand it’s hard but it will be okay, Y/N. Remus and I have explained everything to Molly and Arthur. Molly told us she would talk to Fred and George but only if you bring your ass downstairs. I think she wants to know if we feed you correctly.” I laughed.

“We’re lucky she wasn’t with us in this cavern then.”

Sirius faked an horrified expression.

“Merlin, you’re right. She would have killed me and fed you with more mashed potatoes than a normal human being could ever eat.”

“Or killed you too for scaring her like that.” Remus passed his head through the door and smiled at me. “The dinner is ready, prepared by no one else than Molly. Come on Y/N, you can’t miss that.” He added when I shook my head.

I gave up and followed Remus and Sirius downstairs. They went directly in the kitchen and I timidly followed them. The conversations suddenly stopped and a loud noise echoed. Molly had dropped the dish she was holding and rushed toward me, her arms wide open. Without thinking about it, I threw mine around her neck.

“Y/N, I’m so happy to see you! Oh, dear, you have no idea how worried we’ve been!” She lowered her voice and murmured in my ear: “Don’t worry for Fred and George. They are quite surprised, but they have missed you so much…”

I smiled weakly and Molly returned to her dish. I saw Arthur conversing with Remus, but the twins were nowhere to be seen. On the other hand, Bill’s presence was a pleasant surprise. I had always gotten along with all the Weasley family, even Percy who would always want to play chess with me, even if he always lost. I also saw Ron and Ginny, the latter sending be a broad smile before hugging me. I suddenly realized how much I had missed them and I felt my heart swelling with joy. It would have been a perfect dinner if the twins had been there.

Later that night, another nightmare woke me up. I straightened in my bed, my shoulders shaking in the rhythm of my sobs. The look of hatred the Fred of my nightmare had thrown me was engraved in my memory, and the voice of his brother saying he hated me echoed in my ears. A shiver ran down my spine, and I caught myself fearing the dark around me. Suddenly unable to stay here, I rushed out of my room, not really bothering to be silent as I ran downstairs. I needed more than ever to see Sirius, to hear one of his stories or literally anything that would make me forget my nightmare. According to the crackling of the flames I heard, he was there. I found him sitting on the usual couch with a wooden box on the knees. His shaky hands were holding a letter. I stopped, fearing he wouldn’t accept my presence tonight, but Sirius looked up to me and a sad smile appeared on his face.

“Another nightmare?”

I just nodded, a huge lump in my throat preventing me from saying anything. I sat next to him and waited patiently for him to tell me what he was reading.

“It’s one of the last letters Lily Potter has sent to me. This,” he said while handing me a photo, “is the photo she has sent with the letter. It’s Harry, it was his first birthday.” He pointed at baby Harry, whose forehead was still free from any scar. “And this is James.” Sirius stifled a sad laugh while looking at his friend’s legs. It was the only part of his body we could see, and I could tell he was running behind Harry. “I wish I could have been here…” murmured Sirius.

I didn’t know what to say. Quite fortunately for me, Sirius sighed and put the letter and the photo back in the box. He delicately carried the latter to the table and came back next to me.

During the following days, I spent a lot of time with Ginny and Ron. They told me everything that had happened in my absence, carefully omitting all twins-related subjects. I also talked a lot with Molly, mostly about futile things as cooking and Charlie’s work in Romania. Arthur and Bill weren’t here often. We also received Nymphadora Tonks’ visit a few times, along with Alastor Moody’s one. However, despite the several persons surveying the corridors of this house, I felt more alone than ever.

My second proper conversation with Fred and George happened almost a week after the first one. I had done my best to avoid the cleaning of the house. When Sirius and I were alone here, the dust and the spiders weren’t a problem, but Molly wanted the place to be as livable as possible. I had pretended I was sick, which had earned me narrowed eyes from Remus, and I was now alone in my room. I was curled up on the threadbare seat in front of the window, looking at those who had the chance to be able to walk in the street. The door opened so slowly it didn’t make any noise. What warned me was the squeak of the floor and I turned vividly the head to see George closing the door.

“I heard you were sick.” His voice was quiet and it was the first time in a week he actually looked at me in the eyes. A little smile appeared on his face. “You don’t seem at death’s door, though.”

“I just didn’t feel like cleaning all day… I swear if I see one more dead rat I’m gonna explode.”

We both laugh, two shy laughters that filled my heart with something I had missed a lot: the bliss of being with one of my best friends. George walked toward me and raised an eyebrow, asking me silently if he was allowed to sit. In response, I made him some room. He sat in front of me, in the same position and his gaze drifted for awhile.

“It’s kind of funny, when you think about it.”

George looked at me, probably alarmed by my nostalgic tone. I hadn’t realized I had spoken, but when I caught his look, I continued.

“Everyone blames everyone for what happened but in the end… It’s no one’s fault.”

“What do you mean?”

“Fred and you blame me for disappearing, and probably Sirius for showing me who he was.” He didn’t deny. “You also blame yourselves because I was alone this day. I blame myself because I was the one deciding to help Sirius, and he blames himself for involving me in this. But in fact, none of us is really responsible, you know? We couldn’t know how this would turn out…”

“You’re right, we couldn’t.” It was Fred, who had obviously succeeded in avoiding his mother too. I hadn’t heard him arrive either. “And we don’t really blame you. You shouldn’t think that, Y/N.”

“Do you think one day you’ll stop hating me?”

I sounded so pathetic but it was maybe my worst fear. If they couldn’t forgive me…

“We don’t hate you, Y/N. We have never hated you.”

George had stood up and grabbed my hand. He pulled me toward him, tightening me against his chest.

“We don’t hate you…” he repeated.

At this very moment, my heart could have stopped beating and it wouldn’t have mattered. I was happier than I had ever been, knowing that my two best friends were here with me. And my laughters were more genuine than it had been in a long time when Fred exclaimed:

“You’re adorable, but I’m starving. I’m sure it’s time for a snack.”

From this point, what was going to be a living hell became the best summer I ever had. I spent my days cleaning with Fred, George, Ron, Ginny and when they arrived, Harry and Hermione and my nights talking with the twins. Sometimes, Molly caught us three still awake at unholy hours and sent me in my room, but it was quite rare. I was pretty sure most of the time, she let me with her sons on purpose. These nights, my nightmares were worse than usual.

Fred and George’s absence during the school year worsened considerably my state. By June, I was barely able to close my eyes more than three or four hours per night and I had to admit I was a pitiful sight to see.

“Y/N, have you seen the bags under your eyes?” exclaimed Remus one evening in the middle of June.

He and Sirius had called me in the living-room and were lecturing me.

“You need to tell us what’s happening.” Whereas Remus was getting angry, which was very unusual and quite worrying, Sirius’ voice was softer and his eyes were fixing me. “You worry us Y/N. You don’t sleep enough anymore and… It seems to be worse.”

“We thought maybe you need some fresh air.” Added Remus. “We have asked Molly if you can stay at the Burrow a few days. Would you like it?”

“I don’t want to disturb.” I mumbled.

“You won’t, don’t worry. Plus, she’s asked for weeks to see you.” said softly Sirius.

No sooner said than done, I was immediately sent to pack my things in my room while Remus warned Molly I would arrive the next day. And it didn’t fail: a few hours later, I was desperately trying to escape her hug. Plus, I hadn’t eaten anything since the previous evening and a delicious smell was arriving in my nostrils from the kitchen. My stomach started to rumble and I was quite surprised I wasn’t drooling yet. Molly dragged me toward the table and put in front of me a plate with an unknown meat covered in sauce. It took the best of myself for me not to swallow everything in one bite. Molly was somewhere outside, she had warned me she was going to get some vegetables in the garden. The silence here was different from the one in Grimmauld Place. Back in there, it was heavy, charged with all the awful things said and done in this house when Sirius was younger. His constant melancholy seemed to impregnate the walls. But at the Burrow, the walls weren’t blank, they were covered in pictures and drawings. Everything in the house, from the chess board that was on the chimney to the blanket always laying on the couch during the coldest days of winter, everything here sent whoever stepped in this fabulous house a pleasant feeling of being home. Maybe Remus and Sirius weren’t wrong after all, maybe things would get better for me after staying here.

The following day was the most normal one I had in years. I woke up in Bill’s old room, joined Molly in the kitchen for the breakfast - Arthur was already at work - and spent the morning helping her with different chores. The sun being high in the sky, we decided the garden could use a bit of weeding and after the lunch, Molly handed me a pair of gloves. Taking a well deserved break, two hours or so later, I sat on a bench.

“Oh, I have forgotten to tell you!” Molly stopped in her tracks and turned toward me, smiling at me. “I’ve sent an owl to Fred and George. They are very busy with their shop but they’ll come to say hello, probably tomorrow.”

I grinned excitedly, already eager to see my best friends. I couldn’t visit them, still wanted for helping Sirius, and that was bothering me a much as them. I couldn’t help but notice Molly’s smile faltering when she mentioned the shop, and according to the look she was arbouring, I knew I was in for an entire discussion about it.

“I can’t believe they left school!” Molly exploded, making me jump. I got up and approached her. “I mean I knew they thought it was a waste of time but what if their shop doesn’t work? What are they going to do?”

“Molly, they are smart. If they left, that’s because they are confident. From what I know, they already have a lot of fans, and even if it doesn’t work as expected - which I highly doubt, everything seems always fine with these two! - they’ll find something else. Don’t worry for them.”

My answer obviously wasn’t what Molly wanted to hear, but that was what I thought. I had seen a few inventions, had barely avoided testing some others, and I knew the boys were motivated.

We gardened in silence another hour and when the heat became too much to bear, we retreated in the welcome freshness of the house. I let myself fall on a chair, completely exhausted.

“I would never have thought gardening was that physical!”

Molly laughed and replied something, but a loud noise from the chimney covered the sound of her voice. We both rushed in the living-room to see Remus barely standing on his feet. His face showed more tiredness than I had ever seen on him, more desperation too. The tears flooding from his eyes created shining trails on his cheeks.

I froze, simply unable to make my brain work long enough to ask him what was happening. Unconsciously, I kept glancing at the chimney to see Sirius appear.

Little did I know what Remus had to tell me.

“Remus, Remus tell me what’s happening!”

Molly was fussing around him, checking some injuries I hadn’t even noticed. His eyes were fixed on his knees and mine on him, and the more time passed, the more the fear crept on me. Slowly, I was understanding what had happened but when Remus finally told it, his shaky voice so different from his usual calm one, it didn’t prevent my heart from almost stopping after a few painful beats.

“Sirius is dead.”

Honestly, I didn’t think three words could be that painful. No nightmare, no I hate you from anyone could hurt that much. I never thought one day, I would feel my heart slowly cracking before exploding under the weight of my loss. He’s gone. Dead. He’s not here anymore.

I felt like I was drowning, but in the same time, I became more aware of the two pairs of eyes on me. Molly’s mouth was opened in shock, her hand was stopped in the air, as if she had wanted to put it on my shoulder, and Remus was looking at me like he was trying his best not to break down. He had just lost his best friend, one of the only people who had ever understood him, and I knew how distraught he was, but the hole in my heart was filling with anger and I found myself clenching my fists to contain it. Remus choked out a few words, trying his best to explain what had happened. It took all my will to stay calm, but when I understood Sirius had left the house to fight a stupid battle, I lost it.

“Why did he leave the house?”

My voice was quiet, muffled by the lump of pain in my throat. I was trembling as a wave of rage hit me.

“He should have never left! It was Dumbledore’s order! Why did he leave? WHY DID YOU LET HIM LEAVE?”

I was screaming non senses the loudest possible. Without realizing it, I found myself in the kitchen, enveloped in Molly’s embrace. But I wasn’t done, I needed to get whatever I was feeling out, I couldn’t let it suffocate me. I was still yelling, struggling to make Molly let go of me. She finally loosened her grip, but her eyes were still worried when she saw Remus entering in the kitchen. Understanding the silent message of his pleading eyes, she left in the living-room, letting us alone.

“Y/N, please, let me -”

“Explain? Are you gonna tell me how he’s- how he’s dead, or are you gonna find an excuse on why he left this bloody house?”

Ignoring my provocation, Remus forced himself to adopt a calmer attitude and explained everything. The Ministry, the arch. A deafening silence took place as soon as he finished, a silence I couldn’t bring myself to break because I feared I would explode once more. But hell, I couldn’t clench my fists harder, blood was already straining my skin as my nails were deep on my flesh, and I was trembling more and more. Without any warning sign, I screamed and hit abruptly the table. I didn’t even see Remus flinching when I grabbed a bowl containing fruits and threw it toward him. I missed him and frantically looked for something else. My tears were blinding me and my throat sore from screaming that much, and the floor was littered with broken glasses and scattered food.

From what I was able to see through the veil of tears covering my eyes, Remus was standing in front of me, trembling with all his being and not doing anything to stop me. He was accepting all my unfair accusations, all my hurtful words spat with venom. He didn’t say anything, obviously beating himself up with his guilt. Among my screams and my tears, I didn’t even notice Molly sneaking in the kitchen, followed by Fred and George. I only realized they were here when a pair of arms gripped me tightly and dragged me outside.

The air had considerably freshened, contrasting with the emotions boiling inside me. I found myself being hugged once more, and the feeling of two bodies pressed against mine finally got me out of the abyss. I just stayed here, my face hidden in George’s neck, sobbing and repeating I didn’t want him gone.

“My parents and now… Am I not enough? Why does no one stay?”

Fred’s arms tightened around my waist and George tensed, and I sobbed with renewed vigour. I couldn’t tell how much time passed while I was wrapped in this comforting embrace, but when I finally lifted my head, I noticed Fred was gone. George was looking at me, an hand on my lower back and the other cupping my cheek. When another tear rolled down on my face, he gently wiped it with his thumb and pressed me against his chest. He didn’t say he was sorry, he didn’t say it would be okay, he just showed me he was with me.

The sun was on the verge of going down when I considered the thought of getting inside. George’s arm was still around me, acting like a protective blanket against the cold air of the evening and the pain threatening to drown me. The sound of steps behind us made me jump, and I turned my head to see Fred watching us with a sad smile. He sat next to me and put his hand on my back.

“The kitchen was a mess, I don’t think Peeves could have done better.” He laughed softly when I let out a watery chuckle. “Don’t worry though, Mum, R- and I have fixed it.”

“You don’t need to be careful of what you’re saying around me. I need you both to be… To be just you, or else I won’t been able to do it.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll be as annoying as usual.” assured George with a smirk.

“You’ll want to get rid of us in an hour.” added Fred.

“Never.” I murmured before being engulfed in another Weasley sandwich.

What got me to bring my ass in the living-room was a loud sob echoing in the house. I knew who it was, and my unfair anger immediately vanished when I heard for the very first time Remus crying. I rushed in the room and jumped on him, throwing my arms around his neck and tightening him like my life depended on it. Remus was doing the same thing, and this hug was painful, both physically and mentally. We didn’t say anything, but we both knew what it meant.

Now, it was just the both of us.

I didn’t sleep this night, nor did I even close my eyes the following one. I had to hear everyone arguing around me about what they would do with me. Molly wanted me to stay at the Burrow, Remus refused and said he would take care of me while Fred and George thought I should live with them, their main point being that I had to see their shop.

“She could help us!” had proposed George.

Only at this moment did I realize I was now free to go wherever I wanted. And it seemed like the others had understood it as well because Molly came up with the idea of sending me back to Hogwarts.

“No. I stay with Remus.”

I didn’t really recognize my voice. It was hoarse, my throat being sore from the hours I had spent crying the last two days. I felt plenty of worried eyes on me and suddenly felt oppressed. I turned the heels and escaped the overcrowded kitchen of the Burrow, preferring the silence in the garden.

I immediately recognized the hand on my shoulder, and didn’t hesitate before resting my head on his shoulder.

“I promise I’ll come to your shop soon.” I murmured. “I just don’t feel like it right now.”

“I know, love.” answered George. “Don’t worry.”

My heart fluttered when I heard the nickname he had always given me, remembering me the pain wasn’t the only thing I was allowed to feel. I caught myself hoping he would kiss me for the first time in months before mentally scolding my stupid feelings. Sirius was dead and I thought of kissing George? What was wrong with me?

I had decided to stick with Remus without thinking about what it implied. I had to go back to Grimmauld Place. Remus had been reluctant to tell me, fearing I would freak out or throw him another bowl in the face, but also because he knew how painful it would be for the both of us. “I don’t want you to suffer more than you already are.” he had told me. I knew he wanted badly to find another solution, but Dumbledore had ordered him to stay there until he figured out what to do with the house.

So here I was, unable to push this stupid door and enter this stupid house. Remus was patiently waiting behind me, but I suspected him to have a hard time too. Finally, the hand I had put on the handle five minutes ago pushed the door and I took a few steps in the dark hall. I thought I would break down and scream, the pain and the anger taking over me, but I certainly didn’t expect the numbness I was currently feeling. It was like I wasn’t controlling my own body as I climbed the stairs to reach my room, not really paying attention to what Remus had told me or to Kreacher looking down on me.

The main reason I hadn’t slept since Sirius’ death was the fear. I knew what would come as soon as my eyes would close: the nightmares would be more terrifying than ever.

“You can’t stay awake forever, Y/N.” had said George when I had confessed him my fear.

And I knew he was right, of course he was, but that didn’t prevent me from freaking out each time my eyelids closed against my will. However, in the middle of this night, as I was lulled by the crickets chirpings, I fell asleep.

The cavern was empty. I was curled up in a corner, hidden in the shadows as people kept walking in front of the entrance without coming in. I couldn’t understand their whispers, but I was pretty sure they were talking about me. Some were hissing my name with venom while metallic noises echoed against the stone. Weapons. My breath was shaky, and my arms, which were wrapped around my knees, kept trembling. Suddenly, something happened outside.

The people at the entrance seemed to panic as someone shouted among them. Rushed steps noises blurred the voices for a moment, and soon the shadow of a man appeared on the floor. His voice hadn’t this reassuring tone it used to have.

“Y/N, where are you? Come say hello… Y/N, I know you miss me. Why don’t you show yourself?”

Sirius’ voice was creepy. He seemed totally insane, yet I was so desperate to see him that I looked up. I was still hidden in the shadows and he couldn’t see me, but I could see perfectly well his knotted hair surrounding his gaunt face. He had a faint smile, but the most terrifying about him was the gleam of insanity in his eyes. I let out a gasp and Sirius pointed directly his wand on me.

“Here you are, Y/N. Come say hello, come say hello to me…”

Without realizing it, I had jumped out of bed as soon as I had opened my eyes and slammed the door open. My bare feets made no noise on the dusty floor as I rushed in the living-room.

“Sirius where are you?”

Only after my desperate call did I realize I was alone here. No cracklings from the fire, no bottle of wine on the table, no story to tell, no one to comfort me. Sirius was gone. Despite these last two days of mourning, it was the first time I completely understood what death meant, and the pain brought by this realization was too painful. I was barely aware of the screams escaping my mouth, of the tears covering my cheeks, of the blood on my knuckles as I hit the wall. I didn’t hear Remus arriving, didn’t feel his arms around me or processed the words he was saying to me. The only thing I knew was that Sirius was really gone, and he would never come back.

I opened my eyes in a room I had never seen before. I gasped loudly and practically jumped off the bed. It took me a few seconds to recognize Remus, uncomfortably sleeping on a chair on a corner of the room. His face should have been relaxed, yet I still could see little wrinkles around his eyes and on his forehead. While looking at him, I also remembered the previous night. The nightmare, the living-room, Sirius. Just thinking of him was incredibly painful and I let out a sob. Remus immediately woke up and was next to me in a split second. He engulfed me in a hug, pressing my shaking body against his chest.

“You were screaming.” he murmured. “And crying. Just before passing out in exhaustion, you said you didn’t want to see this place… I thought I could bring you here. We’re at my house.”

“Thank you.” My voice was so muffled by his neck, where I had hidden my face, that I wasn’t even sure he could hear me. “But Dumbledore -”

“It doesn’t matter.” Remus interrupted me with a very soft voice. “You matter.”

“How did he die?”

My question seemed to shock him as I felt him tensing. He slowly pushed me away to look at me in the eyes, probably expecting to see tears. And he was totally right: my sight was blurry and my cheeks wet, but I needed to know how it had happened, or else I knew I wouldn’t find peace. Remus understood that and told me everything, from Harry’s connexion with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named to the fight in front of the ark. When he finished, the silence seemed to last for hours before I eventually found something to say.

“He was laughing… He was in the middle of a fight with Death Eaters and he was laughing…”

“Yeah, we know how he is…” answered Remus with a nostalgic tone.

None of us bothered to correct what he had said. Maybe because deep down, we knew Sirius would always be there.

I was so drown in my own grief that I hadn’t really realized I wouldn’t be the only one suffering. There was Remus, of course, even though he was always hiding his feelings in front of me so that I could focus on mine, but there was also Harry.

Remus had told me a few members of the Order would accompany the Weasleys to welcome Harry and Ron back at King’s Cross. He had insisted that I should go with them, that it would be nice to get out of the house, which I hadn’t done once. When the day of their return arrived, Remus and I met Tonks, Mad-Eye, Molly, Arthur, Fred and George. The twins both hugged me but they didn’t say anything about Sirius, which I appreciated. I didn’t want to talk about it, about my pain and my sadness, but when I saw Harry appearing after walking through the barrier and the look he sent me, I realized I had to tell him something. Anything. Sirius had been his godfather, after all.

Once Harry and Ron were done with the traditional welcoming, our group moved toward the Dursley family and I took this opportunity to grab Harry’s arm. He immediately stopped, letting everyone take a short advance before turning toward me.

“I’m sorry.” I whispered before scolding myself.

He had probably heard that a thousand timed and that was certainly not what he needed to hear now. However, much to my surprise, he nodded and put an hand on my shoulder.

“I’m sorry too… It’s my fault.” My heart ached when I heard the desperation in his voice.

“No.” He looked at me, obviously surprised to hear my harsh tone. “It’s not your fault Harry, it has never been.”

He choose to ignore what I had just said.

“You’re the only one who understands me.” He murmured. “They are all saying they are sorry, that he was someone good, but no one didn’t really know him, you know? We’re the only ones and I… I appreciate what you did, Y/N.”

He left without explaining what he meant and joined the Dursleys. After one last hug, Fred and George left too, saying they were busy and their family and Mad-Eye followed them. Tonks decided to stay with us a bit longer, and Remus invited her for the tea. I caught them exchanging a knowing glance, but I knew I would find out about what it was. Indeed, half an hour later all three of us were sitting in the living-room, drinking our tea in a comfortable silence. Remus suddenly stood up and patted my shoulder, announcing he had something to do, and left me alone with Tonks. She immediately moved next to me.

“I won’t say I’m sorry because I feel like that’s not what you want to hear.” She said. I nodded gratefully. “But I wanted to give you that.”

She handed me a photography she had taken a few months ago, when she had insisted she wanted to have photos of all the Order members. On this one, I was sitting between Remus and Sirius, the latter holding high a glass of wine and ruffling my hair. Remus looked like he was trying to disappear, but his smile was genuine as he was glancing on us. My arms were wrapped around their shoulders, and my grin was so large that anyone could feel their cheeks hurt just by looking at it.

Seeing it reminded me of how happy I had been with them, and it made the unfairness of Sirius’ death more painful, if it was possible. But a little voice in my head whispered something I had heard a few years ago, back in the muggle orphanage. Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened. And that’s what I did: I forced my lips in a smile, first weak then genuine, and I felt a weight getting off my shoulders.

“Thank you Tonks. Thank you.”

From this day, tears stopped being a daily thing. Slowly but surely, I learned how to keep my pain under control and, most importantly, I learned to open myself. Remus had always known when I was feeling down but, during the following months, it happened more and more often when he would ask me if I was okay and I would answer no instead of lying. The only thing I hadn’t really told him was this part of shadow hidden in me, the one still causing nightmares every night and remembering me Sirius was gone. I had made progresses on ignoring it, but sometimes, it was too strong for me and I broke down. That’s what happened on Christmas, six months after Sirius’ death.

All this time, I had stayed with Remus, visiting occasionally Molly at the Burrow. I had only seen the twins once, their shop occupying them to the point that they didn’t have a free day. That’s why Molly had thought she could reunite us at Christmas, and she had invited Remus and I.

It wasn’t the first time I stayed there for Christmas, and I had always loved the festive atmosphere that reigned in the house. This year wasn’t an exception, and laughters and good food filled our night. I was now sitting between Fred and George, telling Ginny funny stories about Hogwarts. I had taken off my jacket an hour ago and it was on the table in front of me, the corner of the photo Tonks had given me sticking out of the pocket. I always had it with me, it was the most precious thing I had.

We were all so caught in the peaceful ambience that none of us heard the first alarming noise. Molly was the only one to hear the second as she suddenly froze in the middle of the living-room, her eyes fixed on the outside. Our conversations stopped and we all looked at Molly.

“Mum, what’s happening?” asked Ron while he approached the window.

“Nothing.” She mumbled. “I thought I heard -”

All of sudden, Ron jumped backward to move away from the window, his skin strangely pale. Only a second later, we understood why.

I had never heard a laughter as psychotic as this one. It was high pitched, and the insanity it revealed was simply terrifying. We were all shocked, as hypnotised by the woman outside. We only reacted when two more people apparated in the garden. Without saying anything, I saw Arthur and Remus jumping on their feet and rushing outside, followed by everyone else, me included. The freezing air hit me and the tears suddenly brought in my eyes prevented me from seeing the three Death Eaters. I quickly blinked them away only to see Harry rushing behind Bellatrix Lestrange - she had killed Sirius. The shadow in me, the one I was always trying to hide, took over me and I jumped after Harry. However, someone behind me had anticipated my actions as they firmly wrapped their arms around my waist. I screamed, trying to get rid of George and hitting his face in the process, and my anger increased when Remus followed Harry.

“Let me go! GEORGE LET ME GO!”

But he didn’t. Instead, he pulled me against him and murmured in my ear Remus and Harry would be okay.

“No you don’t understand, I need to -”

Suddenly, a wave of almost unbearable heat hit us all. The Burrow was burning. A sob died in Molly’s throat as she witnessed her home disappearing in front of her. My heart stung when I thought of all the memories everyone had here, Molly’s kitchen, Fred and George’s prototypes. I felt like another person was in my body when I thought that my jacket was still in there -

My jacket. With the photo inside. Maybe I was totally crazy, maybe the shadow I feared was real, in fact I didn’t know why I did this, but I suddenly escaped George’s embrace and ran in the burning house. I immediately felt the pain in my lungs as my mouth and my throat were dried with the heat. The smoke made my eyes sting with hot tears. A part of the kitchen ceiling was slowly consuming itself. I desperately reached for my jacket and as soon as it was clenched in my hands, I threw myself on the floor, hoping I could breath. The air was more breathable down there, and my sight stopped being blurred because of the tears.

I could vaguely hear people calling for me, but the cracklings of the fire were way too loud for me to hear correctly or simply answer, as I didn’t trust my voice on this very moment. Instead, I closed my eyes, I curled up in a tight ball, and listened the sounds around me, remembering the nights spent with Sirius near the chimney. I fell asleep.

After this day, Remus became more reluctant than ever when it came to letting me alone, even for five minutes. At first, he had been quite angry, every occasion being perfect for remembering me how reckless I had been and how he had thought he could trust me. I was too proud to tell him why I had done this, and to tell George and Fred too, but one day, Remus had thrown in my face Sirius would have been disappointed and I had lost it.

I had literally exploded, my loud voice echoing in all the house as I tried to tell him how important this simple photo was. At some point, my angry monologue had given way to a sob festival, the only coherent sentence I had been able to form being “I know you’re disappointed too but I love you both too much… I couldn’t let it disappear.” or something like that. From this day, Remus had stopped being angry and became more protective than he had ever been.

The twins had needed less time to forgive me, even though they just couldn’t understand why a photo seemed more important than my own life. They had been so afraid that the first thing George had told me when I had woken up at St-Mungo’s was that the next time I tried to disappear, he would tie me to a chair and keep me there for the rest of my life. Fred had added that I would never be alone anymore, them keeping an eye on me even when I would shower. Unfortunately for me, a nurse had arrived at this moment and I couldn’t hide my burning cheeks, no pun intended.

I had to admit this constant protectiveness was annoying, but it reached its peak a few months later when Remus received a letter from Dumbledore, asking him to come to Hogwarts as soon as possible, for he had to leave and wanted the school to be protected. Remus hurriedly grabbed his wand and turned toward me. He stopped dead in his tracks when he saw me right behind him, my wand firmly held in my hand.

“What are you doing?” he asked me suspiciously.

“Coming with you. What do you think I’m doing?” I replied. I wouldn’t miss this perfect occasion to go back to Hogwarts.

“You’re staying here. It’s too dangerous.” Remus had used his autoritary father’s voice.

“No way. Where are the I’m not letting you alone and You stay right next to me? I come with you.”

Remus was obviously torn between the urgency of the situation and the fact he wanted to convince me to stay here. But he knew how stubborn I could be and he sighed.

“You better stay safe, Y/N.”

The true happiness I had felt when I had seen the castle had disappeared for a long time as I was running near the Astronomy tower on Bill’s tail. Dumbledore wasn’t here, gone Merlin knew where, leaving three members of the Order, a few professors and a bunch of kids, me included, to protect the school against the Death Eaters. In the fire of the battle, I had been separated from Remus but Bill had made sure I was always next to him.

We had just passed the tower and were ready to turn on the next corridor when we both stopped. A Death Eater was waiting right in front of us, an evil grin revealing sharp fangs. Fenrir Greyback, the werewolf.

“Be careful Y/N, he’s dangerous!” shouted Bill.

An instant later, Greyback was literally jumping on us. Bill quickly dodged him while I threw myself on the floor. I immediately stood up only to see him savagely hitting Bill. The impact made the latter dropping his wand, and as I felt the danger arriving and lifted my wand, Greyback attacked. I was too late. Bill’s face was covered in a sea of blood and he fell unconscious. I screamed his name, barely aware that it wouldn’t help. Ensued a few attacks I barely countered, only managing to cast protective spells around Bill and I. He still didn’t move, and I was sure he was dead. This thought was what distracted me for a second, just a second, but it was a second too much. George’s face when he would see his brother dead because of me was the last thing I imagined before feeling my skin being torn apart.

I woke up in a room I had never seen before. This impression of being lost was familiar, and I turned my head, expecting to see Remus asleep on a chair next to the bed, probably waiting for me to wake up before scolding me, but he was nowhere to be seen. I put my head back on the pillow before it hit me. He’s dead. They are dead. Even with my eyelids closed, I still could see Bill lying lifeless on the floor, a pool of blood slowly growing around him. And Remus… If he wasn’t there, it had to mean that…

Suddenly, I heard a laughter coming from where I thought was downstairs. The confusion soon became relief as I thought If people are laughing, then everyone is okay. Remus is still alive, along with Bill, and I can see everyone. It’s okay. A true happiness invaded me as I quickly stood up. I wiggled my toes against the soft carpet when the feeling that something was not right hit me. I wasn’t in any kind of pain, yet I perfectly remembered feeling Greyback’s claws in my flesh, I remembered the sensation that my body was being torn apart. I hesitantly lifted my shirt - had I really put on this one the previous morning? - and saw my skin as good as new. No injury, nothing. The feeling of discomfort became more persistent and I heard new laughters. I decided to head downstairs.

The room I was in was at the end of a corridor. The walls were naked, painted in a soft beige tone. The same white carpet gave it a cosy aspect. I made my way toward the wooden stairs, passing in front of a plant and a teddy bear thrown on the floor. Once downstairs, I caught a glimpse of the sun high in the blue sky behind a big window. Other toys were strewing the floor. I followed the sound of a man’s voice I didn’t recognized and entered in a little living-room.

It’s impossible.

I was seeing him from the side and he was younger, but it was him. I had seen enough photos to recognize his curly hair and mischievous smile. Sirius was in front of me.

He turned his head, maybe because he had felt my presence, and his smile froze. His face dropped and he slowly got up, still looking at me.

“Y/N…”

His voice was still the same, hoarse and reassuring. Hearing it convinced me it was real enough for me and I ran straight in his arms. I hid my face in his neck and tightened him as much as I could, afraid to let him go and lose him once more.

“Sirius… Sirius you’re here…”

I was unable to say something else but it didn’t really matter. Maybe it was a dream, I mean it was obviously a dream, it was impossible, but it felt so good to see him. After a while, Sirius gently pushed me and looked at me.

“Y/N, what are you doing here?”

I had never seen such a sadness in his eyes, except maybe that night when he had read Lily’s letter.

“Glad to see you too.” I mumbled.

His hand reached my hair and he ruffled it, remembering me of Remus’ habit. He smiled, but it was a bitter smile, and I had the impression he wanted me to understand something because he couldn’t tell me.

“Of course I’m glad to see you Y/N. I’ve missed you so much… So much.” He repeated while grabbing my hands. “But you shouldn’t be here. You can’t be here. It would mean that you’re -”

“Dead.” I interrupted him with a blank voice.

I was dead. Greyback had killed me. Now, Remus was alone. Well, he had Tonks, she really liked him and he really liked her, but still. Then I thought about George, about Fred, about Molly and I felt like crying. However, nothing came. No tears, nothing.

“Crying here is impossible.” murmured Sirius. “We’ve suffered enough in our lives, don’t you think?”

“But it hurts…” I whispered.

“I know.”

And he engulfed me in another hug. I breathed his scent, trying my best not to succumb to the panic I felt invading me. Sirius’ hand was gently stroking my back and we stayed like this for a while before the presence of two other persons hit me. I lifted my head just enough for me to see above Sirius’ shoulder.

“You… You look like Harry.”

The man smiled. He was young, maybe four or five years older than me, but I understood why everyone said to Harry he looked like his father. James Potter seemed to be the man I had always imagined, the cool guy of the school, the Quidditch star, always up for some pranks in the school.

“I know,” he replied. “Harry’s lucky, he took the good genes if you want my opinion.”

Lily Potter hit playfully his shoulder as Sirius chuckled. She was a beautiful woman, her fiery hair bringing out her eyes. She was as pretty as everyone said.

“Sirius has talked about you a lot.” she said. “Said you’ve helped him whereas everyone thought he was a criminal. You’re brave, Y/N.”

I didn’t know what to say and choose to smile. The situation was just so surreal… I was talking with Lily and James Potter, next to Sirius who was dead a year ago, and I was dead too.

“I think you’d like to sit.” offered kindly James.

I nodded and sat next to Sirius on the comfortable couch, removing a fluffy pillow to make myself some room.

“Where are we?”

My eyes were wandering around the living-room. It was almost as comfy as the Burrow’s. Thinking about this house I would never see again was particularly painful and I pushed the thought aside when Lily spoke up.

“You’re in our house. I guess you’re here because of Sirius.” Seeing my interrogative look, she continued. “When we died, James and I woke up here, probably because it was the happiest days of our lives…” Her voice was nostalgic, but she smiled.

“I came here because the best period of my life was when James and Lily were still here.” said Sirius. “And you came here because I did.”

A silence took place as the three old friends were looking at me. Maybe they were expecting anger, or panic, or amazement, but all I could think about was how unfair all of this was. I didn’t want to die, Sirius, James and Lily shouldn’t have died, I shouldn’t be with them whereas Harry was so desperate to have his family around him.

“Your son is a hero.”

I saw James flexing his muscles and Lily flipping her hair above her shoulder, both exaggerating in their reactions, but I could tell they were really proud.

“Yeah, and involved in Dumbledore’s personal stuff, this kid is really awesome.” said James.

“How do you know this?” I asked curiously.

All of sudden, the atmosphere was no longer relaxed but tense as ever. James’ face dropped, Lily glared at him and Sirius was fixing his knees.

“No way…” he mumbled. “You can’t… No. No way.”

“No way what?” I eyed him suspiciously. “What are you hiding from me?”

“You’re still stubborn as hell, aren’t you?” Sirius was annoyed but, from the look in his eyes, I knew I had won. “Listen, I’ll tell you but there’s no way you’ll do it. Got it?” I nodded. Sirius sent a harsh look to James before sighing. “You can go back and see your loved ones but -”

“I want to go.” I had jumped on my feet and grabbed Sirius’ hand to force him standing up. “Bring me to Hogwarts. I want to see Remus and George and -”

“I said no. You won’t go see them, not right now anyway.” Sirius’ voice was firm but he looked sad.

“Why?” My voice was high-pitched as I was getting angry. “I want to see Remus! I need to tell him -”

“That’s the point! You can’t talk to them. In fact, they won’t even see you and trust me, it’s more painful than not seeing them at all.”

“You came…” I murmured. “You came to see Remus and I…”

“As soon as I woke up here. I was here when Remus told you. Molly’s kitchen hadn’t done anything to you, you know.” He added with a sad chuckle.

I stayed silent. I wanted to see Remus, to see the twins, to see Molly and Arthur but… Would I be able to just see them? To witness their pain as they wouldn’t know I’m next to them? How would it feel if I saw Remus losing it, like when he had told me Sirius was gone?

“I want to go.” I said.

Sirius sighed and extended an hand.

“Then follow me.”

Just a split second later I found myself in front of the infirmary door. It was open and, from what I could see, only one bed was occupied. I rushed toward it only to see the damages on Bill’s face. He was totally unrecognizable, as if he was wearing grotesque Halloween mask like the muggles like. The blood had been cleaned, and each wound was perfectly visible. Madam Pomfrey was busy next to the bed, manipulating deftly three vials. She was mumbling to herself while pouring the potions in a big recipe, sometimes waving her wand and pronouncing a complex formula.

“He’s okay.” said Sirius.

I jumped, having completely forgotten his presence. I was more than relieved to know that Bill was alive, that he would be okay, even if a small voice in my head whispered it wouldn’t be completely true. He had been hurt by a werewolf, and he was the one who survived the battle. He would probably feel awfully guilty, and maybe even feel like a monster if he became a werewolf.

Hurried steps echoed in the infirmary and I turned my eyes from Bill the very same moment Remus entered the room. Madam Pomfrey’s reaction was immediate. She almost dropped her vials, mumbling she never thought she would have to do this one day, and made her way to Remus. The latter was looking frantically in the room, and I knew he was looking for me.

“Remus, I’m sorry.” said the nurse.

If Sirius hadn’t grabbed my shoulder, I would have run to Remus. His face had dropped and his eyes were fixing blankly the hidden bed Madam Pomfrey had spotted. I looked powerlessly as Remus took hesitant steps, fearing whatever he would see. None of us was aware that the infirmary was slowly filling with friends of mine and members of the Order. As soon as Remus passed in front of us, Sirius followed him behind the curtain hiding the bed where my body was lying. However, I felt strangely disconnected, like unable to process the situation. I wanted nothing more than to hug Remus, tell him I would be okay because I wasn’t alone, I wanted to describe him James and Lily’s house and I wanted him to know we would wait for him all together…

My name had never sounded like a cry of agony before, and it was the most heartbreaking thing I had ever heard. Slowly, the shocked gasps escaping Remus’ mouth became screams more and more loud and painful. I took the last steps separating me from him.

The first thing I saw was Remus’ back. He was leaned over my body - it was so strange to think this - gently stroking my cheek. Only my face was visible, the rest of my body being hidden by a thick blanket. My skin was white.

“I’m sorry… Y/N I’m so sorry…” Remus voice came shaky. His hand was cupping my cheek and he lightly kissed my forehead. “It’s all my fault… I’ve lost you because I was an idiot… First Sirius then you… I love you Y/N… I love you like you were my own daughter… I’m sorry…”

He started crying and grabbed my shoulders to pull me against him. The blanket slipped in the process, showing my wounds. If Remus hadn’t seen it, Sirius had certainly and he was looking at my stomach. The bleeding had stopped for a while, but my shirt was still soaked in blood. The wound was extended from just above my brim to my ribs. The five traces of the claws were so deep that on a dozen of centimeters, the flesh was visible. No wonder why I died on the spot, I thought bitterly.

I would have done anything in my power to be able to remove the blanket so that Remus wouldn’t see the wound, but I was obviously not powerful enough. When he put my body back in its initial position with an infinite delicacy, the blanket was still on my legs, and he saw everything.

The most heart-wrenching cry I had ever heard echoed in the silent infirmary, and knowing I was the cause of his pain, he who was one of the two men I would always love like my fathers, millions of tears would have rolled on my cheeks if I could have cried.

After what felt like hours, Sirius and I were still next to my body. None of us could stop looking at it, at this awful wound and at my blood. Someone had dragged Remus away, probably back at Bill’s bed to know if he would become a werewolf, but from what I could hear his voice was distant. I knew him, and I knew how he would deal with this: by making as if nothing had ever happened, as if he wasn’t suffering, and by throwing himself in the battle to come. Suddenly, I heard the noise of several persons arriving in the infirmary and my heart almost hurt when I recognized Molly’s terrified scream. I would have definitely broken down when I heard George asking where I was. An heavy silence took place during which someone probably showed the bed still hidden by the curtain and a few seconds later, George discovered my body, soon followed by Fred. I had always thought they were tough guys, and I would have thought losing me after all that had happened wouldn’t be as hard as the first time, but when I saw George falling on his knees, I understood I was wrong. Fred froze behind him, and their eyes were both fixed on my face. I was going to make my way toward them when I felt Sirius grabbing my wrist.

“I think it’s time to go.” he murmured.

I nodded weakly and threw one last glance to George. He had gotten up and was next to me, my hand firmly tightened in his own. For a second, I wished I could feel his warm touch, I wished I could hug him and Fred, but the hand I felt enveloping mine wasn’t George’s and in a blink of the eyes I was back at the Potter’s.

James and Lily weren’t in the living-room anymore. The laughters I had heard here were long gone, the atmosphere being now tense as I fixed a glass on the table.

“I shouldn’t have let you see this.” said Sirius. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to. I needed to see them… Even if it was more painful than I thought.”

Sirius nodded, probably having felt the same thing when he had died.

“You’re back?”

James had passed his head through the opening of a door and his face immediately softened.

“I’ll ask Lily to make some tea.”

The couple came back five minutes later, Lily holding a tray with four cups and some biscuits on it. I was shocked to realize I was no longer sad, even though Remus and the twins’ faces were still engraved in my mind. I remembered what Sirius had told me earlier: Crying here is impossible. We’ve suffered enough in our lives, don’t you think? As selfish as it sounded, I agreed with this. I wanted to live a peaceful life (if we could call whatever I was experiencing a life) and to feel only happiness. Lily interrupted my thought when she handed me a cup of tea and the plate with the biscuits. I took one of them, ate it and exclaimed:

“That’s delicious!”

She laughed at my surprised tone.

“Why do you seem so surprised?”

“I didn’t think the afterlife was like living in a pretty house and drinking tea with who we want.” I said.

“You know,” said Sirius, “even if sometimes it can get boring, being here is pretty cool. The only thing you miss is your family but one day, they’ll be with you.”

“Let’s hope it won’t be before many years…” I sighed.

Slowly but surely, I understood what Sirius meant when he said it could get boring. Our days were always the same, drinking tea, watching the TV, sometimes walking outside, but there were no such things as places to work or school. Idleness was probably the goal of whoever had created this place. Some days, I was so bored that I wanted nothing more than to clean the house and storing Harry’s old toys. However, I had never done so as Sirius had told me Harry’s absence was more easy to bear for James and Lily this way.

If it wasn’t for my several visits to the ones I loved, namely mainly Remus, George and Fred, I would totally lose the sense of time, and very probably my mind too. In a way, it was always as painful as it had been the first time. That was how I found out about what George had kept secret from me all these years.

It was a few weeks after Bill’s wedding - which I had been to, of course. At the time, George had seemed a bit off to me and I was worried. I wanted to stay more with him, helplessly hoping that he would eventually see me, but Sirius didn’t agree. He was afraid I would become totally crazy. That’s why I had came to the apartment he shared with his brother as soon as Sirius had allowed me and after paying a visit to Remus. I arrived while Fred was comforting George, obviously really upset.

“Listen mate, you need to tell me whatever you won’t let me know.” said Fred. “I’m worried for you Georgie, and Mum is too. Pretty much everyone is, in fact. Come on, what’s wrong?”

“You know perfectly what’s wrong.” mumbled George.

Fred stayed silent and looked at his brother. He had probably never seen him as sad and it was really worrying. I took a few steps, wanting to be sure I could hear what would come.

“You loved her.” whispered Fred.

George lifted his head, his watery eyes fixed on the ceiling. A single tear rolled down his cheek and he didn’t bother to wipe it away. He didn’t bother to answer either, Fred already knew he was right. And I was there, looking at George who had just admitted he loved me, unable to think correctly.

How many hours had I spent alone with him while Fred was gone for pranking someone with Lee? How many times one of us had fallen asleep with their head resting on the other’s lap? How many nights had I dreamt of what I had just heard? But it was too late. We weren’t brave enough to face our feelings, and now I was dead. George couldn’t see me and I couldn’t talk to him. We would be apart for dozens of years and there was nothing we could do about it. It was too late.

After that, several months defiled without me going back in the world of the livings. I didn’t really know if it was because of what I had heard about George or because of this weight in my stomach every time I had to look away from him, Fred, Remus or Molly. Maybe I wasn’t strong enough to face this. But I knew for a fact that Sirius went regularly down there to see Harry and Remus, and I still remembered the day he came back with the largest smile I had ever seen on his face.

“The last time you made this face was when we told you Lily was pregnant.” had said James with a small grin. I had admired his bond with Sirius since day one, and at the moment I could tell he was happy to see his friend like this.

“That’s the point, my dear Prongs.”

Lily had furrowed her eyebrows.

“Well, spill the beans Sirius.”

“Moony is gonna have a baby!” he had exclaimed.

Sirius hadn’t even let us time to react before he had begun explaining everything he had heard. I was genuinely happy for Remus, knowing that he would never be alone. However, I didn’t feel like going back to the living world. In fact, the only thing that changed my mind was when Sirius arrived one day way sooner than usual announcing us the new.

“The baby is arriving!”

In no time, Sirius, James, Lily and I were outside the room where Tonks was giving birth. It appeared that we had arrived when Teddy Lupin was almost here because roughly five minutes later, a baby cry echoed in the house. We followed the sound and found ourselves in front of the most emotional sight we could witness. Tonks was lying in her bed, obviously exhausted but amazed. Teddy was in Remus’ arms, and the father was looking at his son with an almost childish fascination.

“He’s so tiny…” he whispered.

Teddy was wrapped in a blanket as blue as his hair, and only his chubby little face was visible. Remus was holding him carefully yet tenderly against him. His eyes were filled with joyful tears and he was arbouring the most genuine smile I had ever seen on him.

“I’m so proud of him.”

I turned to see James grinning and looking at his friend. His arm was wrapped around Lily’s waist and his other hand was on Sirius’ shoulder.

“He’s gonna be okay.” added the latter. “Maybe we should let them some privacy.”

James and Lily nodded and disappeared a split second later.

“Go, I follow you.” I said.

As Sirius disappeared too, I made my way to Remus and put my hand on his shoulder. I saw him slightly tensing and I could have sworn he had felt my touch.

“You’ll be an incredible father to him, Remus.” I murmured. “You’ve always been.”

All these months, we had been aware of the war preparing against Voldemort and not being able to help was really frustrating. We had decided, all four of us, that we wouldn’t try to have informations about it as we couldn’t do anything to help our friends. We didn’t know that the fight was more imminent than ever. We didn’t know that soon we wouldn’t be four anymore.

It was the very beginning of May. As every friday, we had organized a movie night and James had been a true child, insisting he absolutely wanted to watch a movie with cars in it. After a quite ridiculous argument about it, I finally gave up my idea of horror movie. Lily came back a few minutes later with popcorn and we installed on the couch. We were a bit tight but I found a very comfortable position snuggled against Sirius with my head resting on his shoulder.

The TV was playing an awfully sexist scene where a half-naked girl was washing the car of the main character - what kind of movie is it? I wondered while eyeing James - when a noise echoed from upstairs. Immediately, James and Sirius jumped on their feets and Lily grabbed my hand. I knew we all had thought the same thing - the war made another victim. According to what I could hear, two persons were upstairs. However, I didn’t perceived any hesitations in their steps and I was slowly coming to the conclusion that at least one of them knew the house when they appeared in the door frame.

“Remus!”

My mouth had been more rapid than my brain and in no time I had jumped in his arms. I felt him hugging me tightly, and his chest began to rise with a more steady pace.

“Y/N… Y/N I thought I’d never see you again…”

Then he slowly pulled me to look at me and I met his eyes.

“I missed you so much Remus…”

I saw the exact moment Remus realized we weren’t alone and who was here. His eyes widened and his mouth fell open. He had compulsively tightened his grip around my arms and he was now looking frantically alternately Lily, James and Sirius. He seemed to be unable to say something or even to move, and I gently pushed him toward his friends. It seemed to be all he needed and he rushed toward them, engulfing all three of them in a desperately needed hug.

“I’m sorry for Teddy…”

I had turned toward Tonks who was looking at her husband with a bright smile.

“I am too,” she answered. “But I know he’s in good hands and, as much as I would have wanted to live with him, I’m glad we’ve helped offering him a better world to live in.” I nodded, showing her I understood. “Wait a minute!” she exclaimed. “You know about Teddy?”

Remus froze.

“How is it possible? How do you know about him?”

In a few words, Sirius explained how we could travel from this world to the livings’ one. He warned them too, telling them it was really hard to see your loved ones without them knowing it. However, just looking at Sirius indicated me he knew Remus wouldn’t care and would go back to his son as soon as possible. And he was right: five minutes later, Remus and Tonks had disappeared.

After their departure, a short silence took place before being broken by James saying he wondered how Tonks had reacted when she had learnt about Remus’ furry little problem. Sirius answered her hair had standed on end and the two friends began an hilarious competition based on the jokes about hairs. I was laughing so hard that I didn’t hear the noises from upstairs, and only Lily’s interrogative face warned me.

“Who are you?” she asked gently.

I turned around and my wide opened mouth matched Fred’s one. I instinctively began to look for George because Fred without George was just impossible but… He was alone. I was so shocked that I just couldn’t react and this time, it was Fred who didn’t give a second thought and wrapped me in a strong embrace. He didn’t say anything and I didn’t either. I felt his reluctance to let go of me and I pulled him just enough to see his face.

“He’ll be alone…” he murmured.

I didn’t say anything. No word could have eased his pain, nothing I could say would make it all better or fairer. Instead, I decided to offer him the best goodbye I could give him, and grabbed his hand. A split second later, he was kneeled next to George, who was crying on his twin’s body, Fred’s hand suspended in the air, as if he was afraid to disturb his family. When he decided he couldn’t bear it anymore, he finally found the courage to put his hand on George’s shoulder.

“Don’t cry,” he murmured, “and carry on. You have to carry on for me, Georgie.”

He got up, murmured I love you Mum in Molly’s ear, passed his hand in Ginny’s hair like he used to when they were younger and joined me.

“Ready to support me? Can’t wait to discover the kind of pranks the afterlife offers!”

°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°

“Move James, we’ll be late!”

“Wait a minute, I’m hungry!”

“Fuck Prongs, we’ll miss him! I don’t care, we’ll go without -”

“Calm down Moony, I’m here!”

The animation in the house was at its peak. It had been the only subject of conversation Remus had had the last few months, and he couldn’t help but show how proud he was. Tonks was running everywhere, trying to gather everyone for she wanted us all to be there. Lily was nowhere to be found, and Fred, Sirius and I were patiently waiting in the living-room.

“Remus is going to explode!” I exclaimed when he crossed the room fuming against his bloody idiotic and blind friend and threatening to shove his antlers where the sun didn’t shine if he didn’t speed up.

“I’d like to see him try!” laughed Sirius.

“Sirius, it’s Teddy! This is so important!”

“Yeah I know but… He should know nothing happens like it should when Prongs is involved.”

Eventually, after a few threats who even scared me but only made James laugh, all our little blended family appeared on Platform 9 ¾.

“Where is he?”

Tonks was tip toeing in an attempt to spot her son in the crowd. She was holding tight Remus’ hand and she seemed so excited it even was a bit painful to see. Suddenly her face lit up and she literally dragged Remus through the various groups of parents and students. Just behind them, James had his hand resting on Lily’s back as they walked quite happily too and I was following Sirius and Fred who were busy walking through every single person they could.

We finally joined them and I glanced at Remus who was looking at his son with the same childish fascination he had always had.

“He’s a big boy now…” Remus’ voice was melancholic as Teddy was waving goodbye at Harry and Ginny.

The boy eventually went in the Hogwarts Express, finding quickly an empty compartment. A hissing warned us the train would go and he waved more excitedly to Harry and Ginny, completely unaware of the fact that his parents were here too, waving and thanking the skies they could stay by his side, always.

Living wasn’t easy. I lost my friends, I lost Sirius, I lost my life. I suffered, I cried, I hated and I loved more than I could have imagined.

But when, many years later, another ginger boy woke up at the Potter’s, when he found his twin running after me, when he hugged us, when he kissed me, I knew.

I knew that, despite the darkness, I had found happiness.

Tags: @summer-writes @coffee-wihtout-caffeine

#Harry Potter #harry potter imagines #harry potter imagine #angst #my writing #george weasley #george x reader #george weasley x reader #george weasley x y/n #george weasley x you #fred weasley #Remus Lupin #sirius black

90 notes · View notes