#What if at the end its all pointless because the ice breaks anyway? What if Damien “life is ours to choose” Mayor makes his first choice | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

dr3amofagame · 3 years

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uhhhh ,, , hi ??

i feel bad bc i havent been here in. LITERALLY forever lmao - hope you guys r all doing good!! ive been working on some stuff but it’s been pretty slow going, and school is also A Thing, so i definitely havent been writing as much as i’d like.

as an apology, have this? really self-indulgent feel-good syndicate + c!dream centric oneshot bc i felt like writing this so u know. why not.

tws: implied torture, abuse, self-harm, disordered eating, starvation mentions, prison arc themes - overall everything’s just blink-and-you’ll-miss-it mentions, not too much angst here for once! c!sam and c!quackity critical, sorry guys but we r still in the prison arc and they still r on their “fuck human rights” arcs.

Dream leaves.

It’s a surprise - or maybe it isn’t one, Niki isn’t quite sure. She’d never grown to quite trust the man, she knows, and she can’t really tell if the bitter twist of emotion that swells up her chest when Phil comes to her city with the news is betrayal or resignation - what can she say. She’s gotten more than her fair share of broken promises. They don’t exactly faze her anymore.

None of them seem all that surprised, save Techno, who entirely fails to hide the worry that flickers over his face when he calls the Syndicate meeting to officially inform them of what’s going on. She shares quick, careful glances with the other members when his back is turned - despite how many times he’s been burned, Techno still seems so adamant at holding onto every thread, trusting all too easily those who would use and leave him behind without a second glance. He can handle himself, she knows. Still, that’s not going to stop her from slapping Dream upside the head for being yet another worthless person to betray her friend’s forgiving nature.

Nothing much changes in the next few weeks. Niki has to admit, it’s strange without Dream around - he’d not been an ally, much less a friend before dipping completely, but he had been some sort of constant - and Niki is self aware enough to know that she misses him, a little, the same sort of way you might miss an old routine once it’s gone, if only for the familiarity. She still visits Techno and Phil with various baked goods, knowing that Phil would have his hands full just keeping Techno from running himself ragged - makes sure to check on Ranboo, whose nerves have inevitably returned with Dream’s disappearance. To be honest, she doesn’t worry as much as he does - ally or not, she’s spent enough time with the Dream that had left prison to expect that he won’t exactly be able to get himself very far should he come for the four of them, and doesn’t particularly care about he might pull with the rest of the server - if things get bad, she’s sure Phil and Techno will have it handled. She asks Phil, once, what happened, and he shrugs.

“I don’t know, mate,” he heaves a chest to the side, pulling out a stack of stone blocks that Niki gladly holds for him. “One day we woke up and he was just- gone. Everything. Was like he wasn’t ever there at all.”

Niki hums. “Why’d you think he’d do something like that?”

“If I could understand half of why Dream does what he does, we wouldn’t be having this conversation now, would we?” He smiles at her from behind a crate. “Shall we bring these things upstairs and start on dinner?”

Niki laughs, knowing that the conversation about Dream is over. “Of course, Phil.”

Dinner is a welcome distraction; all of them have gotten better at cooking in recent months, between her baking and the veritable library of recipes Phil knows that she’s never even heard of, but Phil is still the only one she really trusts to hold his own behind the stove - Ranboo is still a little too nervous around water, and fire, and much of everything, and though Techno can be a perfectly capable cook, he’s been distracted as of late. She has a strong feeling that left to his own devices, he’d just grab a stack of steak and disappear for another few weeks, searching the server for information.

Honestly, she’s a little thrown off by his behavior - he’d not done anything like this with Tommy, if she remembers right, and had hardly seemed affected by Wilbur’s betrayal on the Sixteenth at all (then again, she was a little too lost in her own head to notice if he was.) She tosses her head over to ask Phil, who’s leaning over a few carrots he’s slicing to throw into the stew he’s making, and the man pauses, frowns.

“From what I know,” he starts, words slow, careful, “they’d spent three months in there together, and the conditions weren’t exactly- stellar. According to what Techno said, I’d assumed they had come to some sort of understanding.” He goes back to the carrots, expression dipping into shadow and out of sight. “Guess I was wrong.”

Niki hums. She can see it, sort of - spending months together with someone, no matter how insufferable, probably would end with some degree of attachment - she thinks back to plotting through sleepless nights with Jack, anger and grief leaving them simmering, crabs in the same pot of boiling water, remembers looking into his dead-eyed gaze and seeing her own stare back - and feels a brief pang of guilt. Besides, Techno is Techno. She’d never met someone so willing to forgive, understand, reach out despite everything that’s happened - for Dream to take advantage of that feels almost too obvious. Of course he would - what were they all thinking?

“He’s Dream,” she says as if that explains everything, flipping open the oven door and feeling a wave of heat blast her face. Phil hums lowly, understanding. “I hope Techno will be alright.”

“He’s tough,” Phil cracks a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes, “And he has us on his side. He’ll get through.”

Niki opens her mouth to reply, only to be interrupted by the front door slamming open. Outside their quaint little cottage, the wind howls - it sounds like the beginning of a blizzard out there, flurries painting the world in a thick blanket of white. In the door, Techno strides into the entrance with loud, decisive movements, shutting the door loud enough to make the walls shake. Inadvertently, Niki finds her eyes drawn to the small pile of snow that he’s tracked into the house - Techno’s usually so careful to kick it all off on the porch, never liked it much when there was a pile of melting ice and snow dampening the floorboards and soaking into his shoes. He huffs harshly, stripping off a snow-dusted scarf from his face - a long, multicolored abomination that had been the product of her attempting to teach Ranboo how to knit. Phil has reached his side, hands splayed over his upper arms, eyes soft in the corners from concern.

“Techno, mate-” his tone is chiding but his movements gentle as he brushes snow off of Techno’s signature cloak, “you’ve gotten snow everywhere. What were you doing, dueling a blizzard?”

Techno shakes his head, not meeting Phil’s banter as usual, fur sticking up from the snow melted into it. His voice is gruff and holds little humor - unconsciously, Niki feels her shoulders tense.

“Phil, call a Syndicate meeting.”

---

Phil, per usual, is unrelenting, so it’s not until a quick dinner and some hurried messages to their final member later that the Syndicate is gathered in their meeting room, Techno pacing the length of the room as they wait in their respective seats. He looks less frazzled than he did when he first entered the house, in part due to Phil’s sitting him down to eat and picking through his fur to smooth it out of its windblown spikes and tangles - Techno had grumbled at him to stop preening him, but looked a lot more relaxed by the time they were all finished with their food. Still, his ear flicks periodically, twitching toward ssome sound that Niki can’t hear, movements tighter and jerkier than she is used to. He’d always been a little flightier after the prison, but not quite like this - everything here feels like that but dialed up to eleven. Inexplicably, it reminds her of Dream.

“Techno?” Phil gestures towards his seat, prompting, and he settles into it with an obliging huff.

“Y’know, Phil, the code names are kinda pointless if we never use ‘em,” he says, words carrying no real heat - he looks back at the rest of them, lips thinning into a line. “Anyway. I called this meeting because I found a couple leads on Dream.”

“O-oh,” Ranboo stutters, tail lashing behind him.

“You don’t have to do anything that you don’t want to, mate,” Phil reminds him gently, a sentiment that Niki affirms with a determined nod.

“There’ve been some reports- rumors, really,” Techno says, calling their attention again, and they all turn towards him, “of increased activity around the prison again. The Warden spending more time on its grounds, movement seen around the walls and around the portal- so I decided to go check it out for myself.”

Niki frowns, and watches as Phil does the same beside her - Techno had seemed to avoid the prison if he could help it, save for when he went on the initial mission to break Dream out. It was no secret to them that he didn’t exactly like the place.

“We could’ve helped if you asked,” Phil reminds him, and Techno shakes his head.

“I know, Phil. It’s just- that place is bad news. I��d rather keep you guys away from there if I can-” his hand goes to his head with a poorly hidden wince. “Sorry, Chat’s a little- worked up, at the minute.”

“Sorry, we’ll stop interrupting you,” Niki says, cutting off Phil before he says anything else. “So you went to the prison?”

Techno takes a second to gather his thoughts, mumbling quietly in the way that usually means he’s telling off Chat. “Right- I decided to stake out the portal. The rumors were right- Sam has been hanging around there, entered and left the prison four times yesterday. And today-” he hesitates, expression visibly darkening. “This morning, about an hour after the Warden arrived, Quackity came to the prison and went through the portal. He left the grounds about six hours later.”

“Quackity?” Niki frowns, eyes flicking over to how Phil has stilled in his seat. “What is Quackity doing at the prison?”

Phil ignores her question, reaching towards Techno, something indiscernible in his gaze. “Mate…”

“He smelled of blood when he left,” Techno says, words sharp, and Niki feels her heart skip a beat. “Warden left about half an hour after, and I came back here.”

Ranboo clears his throat, sounding tentative. “Okay,” he drums his hand on the table when they turn towards him, eyebrows drawn, “but what, exactly, does this have to do with, uh, Dream?”

Techno and Phil trade glances, one of their bouts of unspoken conversation that Niki’s grown extremely used to. They seem strangely hesitant, she notes internally, Phil looking towards Techno with a question written clearly in the planes of his face. Techno sighs, a long puff of air through his lips as he closes his eyes and turns his face towards the table.

“You know how Dream was- injured,” he starts slowly, looking back up at them. Niki shifts uncomfortably - of course she noticed, it was impossible not to - if not the bandages that peeked under his sleeves and the cuffs of his pants, then how skinny he’d been, all skin and bones curled up uncomfortably in a pile at the corner of Techno’s couch. She’d not know the extent, by any means, and had always assumed that they’d been self-inflicted - she’d been in a bad enough place on her own before to know how your head can make you want to hurt, sometimes, how eating food can feel like choking on sawdust and the world could feel so much smaller when focused into delicate pricks of pain. Phil’s eyes are trained on Techno - on his face, then on the pinkish raised skin of a still-healing scar along his forearm, and she feels understanding settle like a rock in her gut.

“The Warden had apparently been lettin’ Quackity into the cell to torture Dream for the revive book,” Techno trails off, eyes narrowed and seemingly fixed on a random point of the opposite wall. “By the time I go there, it’d been goin’ on for months.”

“But wait,” Ranboo’s tail moves even more erratically behind him, “You mean you think he’s back- there? How?”

“He has to be back in the prison,” Techno points out. “I can’t imagine anyone besides him that the two of them are goin’ to just start torturin’- Sam had been iffy about the whole thing when Quackity started in on me. It has to be Dream in there again.”

“But how did he get in there, then?” Ranboo asks, visibly confused. “Last time it took the entire server to lock him up!”

“There were no signs of a struggle,” Niki points out, matter of fact. “I believe you, Techno, but I don’t really know how they managed to drag him back so easily. I can’t imagine he was jumping at the chance to go back in there.”

Techno shakes his head with an uneasy sigh.

“I have a feelin’ of what might’ve happened,” he says quietly. “And I really hope that I’m wrong and he’s less of an idiot than I think he is.”

---

They set out to investigate - and maybe attack - the next day, Techno and Phil taking on the bulk of preparations as Ranboo stays behind. He’d been understandably uneasy about the whole mission, so they’d left him back by the Syndicate room to set off their pearls in case anything went wrong. (“By the end of the day,” Techno had said, giving Phil a look with the corner of his lip quirked upwards, “don’t be like Phil here and think I meant the end of the month, alright?”) They’d all be supplied with armor and weapons, thanks to Phil, but she’d been handed the bulk of their potions, arranged neatly in her inventory by type in case they’d be needed. She lingers in the back of the room as Phil and Techno chat amiably over the sound of making last minute repairs on their armor, listens to Techno’s ceaseless reminders for Phil to be careful, watches as they make sure that their stasis chambers are properly prepared should they need them.

(She watches as Phil nudges Techno’s shoulder when he lingers behind a certain chair, empty as long as she’s been part of the Syndicate, the fountain behind it bubbling quietly without a pearl inside. Techno sighs, expression strange.

“Should’ve set him up with one,” he says, quiet, and Phil pats him on the back.

“You couldn’t have known, mate. We wanted to wait a little before telling him about the Syndicate, remember?”

Techno hums, noncommittal. “Still.”)

They Nether travel to the site of Techno’s lookout, which ends up being a little shambling thing with dirt walls dug into a small hill looking towards the prison portal, having hardly enough space to fit the three of them. Phil looks at it with no small amount of apprehension, and Techno shrugs lightly, wearing an expression that makes Phil turn to him with a look that makes Niki break into giggles. Techno crosses his arms- “in my defense-” and Phil looks up at the dirt ceiling with a long-suffering sigh.

“You couldn’t have made this a little roomier, mate?” Phil asks, voice dry as kindling, and Techno raises his hands by his head.

“Hey hey, it’s discreet, it gets the job done, it’s perfectly structurally sound-” the sound of the leftmost wall crumbling, along with the cloud of dust that puffs from it and fills their tiny space, undermines the tail end of his statement and leaves him sputtering, Niki falling into another fit of quiet giggles. Underneath it all, Phil sighs again, raising his wings behind him.

“...these are going to take so long to clean out.”

To his credit, Techno looks sheepish. “Sorry, Phil.”

They sober up quickly; Techno turns around to the opposite side of the hill, where he’s hidden some peepholes inside the dirt - Niki settles herself by one, leaning forwards to put her eye to it and catch a glimpse of the prison looming over the water. It’s been repaired since the breakout, she notes, the gaping hole in the roof completely gone and replaced with obsidian, as intimidating and undamaged as it had been before, if not more so. Phil makes a considering sound from behind her.

“Same plan as last time?” He asks, and Techno shakes his head.

“They’ve probably reinforced it, and Dream’s blueprints won’t include anything new the Warden’s added. I wouldn’t be surprised if they moved Dream to a different location completely. We don’t want to draw too much attention, either, we were cutting it pretty close during the breakout.” He narrows his eyes. “I was thinking we’d try something a little stealthier, this time. “

He gestures at Niki, who blinks back at him with wide eyes.

“You got a couple of invis potions for us?”

She distributes the potions among them all, one regular and two splash potions of invisibility each, and Techno points towards the prison once she’s done.

“The most important thing is to get through the portal,” he says with a grim expression. “Worst comes to worst, once we’re inside we can always blast our way through - but gettin’ through that portal is our first priority.”

Phil narrows his eyes at him. “The portal is locked, though. We’ll need to follow someone else inside- and I’m pretty sure Sam uses pearls, so he’s out.”

Techno nods. “Which is why I’m bankin’ on the prison gettin’ another visitor today. We’ll just have to wait.”

Niki swallows. “Do you mean-”

“Quackity?” Techno turns away, not quite meeting her eyes. “I’m not totally sure, but he’s not exactly the type to just give up on his goals. He’s pretty predictable- an empire needs an emperor, always needs something new to rule- you know the type,” he says, tipping his head towards Phil. “He’ll be mad at Dream for disappearin’ on him and won’t miss the opportunity to prove he has the upper hand again. I’m not sure that he’s going to come today-”

“-but you wouldn’t really be surprised, either,” Phil finishes for him, eyes steely with cold determination. “I trust your judgement, mate. Just stay safe- from what I’ve heard, Quackity has been...erratic.”

“When is he not,” Techno huffs a short laugh, shaking his head. “I’ll be fine, Phil. Just be careful, both of you. Don’t get too close. And if things get messy- which is what we’re tryin’ to avoid, by the way- then don’t do anything too risky. Our priority is gettin’ in and out alive.”

“We can handle ourselves, Techno,” Niki reminds him with a small smile. “And Ranboo is there in case anything goes wrong.”

“Alright, then. Here’s the plan.”

---

It takes quite a long time for Quackity to arrive, long minutes that Niki spends fidgeting in the corner of the room, brushing her hands over seams of the netherite plates that Phil had shoved into her hands, back at the Syndicate room. The set is inexplicably light - not weightless, by any means, as it is still netherite, but not nearly as bulky as any set of netherite armor she’s owned or seen in the past. The runes are precise, lines thin and exact, written with graceful strokes of lapis.

“Phil’s the best metalworker I’ve ever met,” Techno tells her with a small grin, catching her in the middle of tracing what she can make out as an Unbreaking rune along the metal strapped to her forearm. “But then again, he’s had the time to practice.”

“Are you calling me old again?” Phil huffs, and Techno flashes a smile her direction before looking at Phil with a slight grin.

“Well, Chat is,” he says, lips twitching when Phil glares back.

“You can’t just blame Chat every time you insult me, you little shit,” Phil groans, and Techno only grins wider.

“Phil, my ad revenue,” he complains, a dramatic lilt to his voice that has Niki stifling a snort, and Phil’s glare only grows deadlier.

“You’ll have more than your ad revenue to worry about if you keep this up,” he mumbles, going back to keep watch at one of the peepholes and stilling as he does. “Shit- Techno, Quackity’s here.”

Techno straightens up, hindered slightly by the low ceiling of their room. “Alright- we all know the plan, right?”

Niki nods in the affirmative, pulling out a splash invis and letting it settle in her hand, the glass cool beneath her fingertips. She reaches into her inventory and lets her armor fade into it, takes a deep breath and watches as the two across from her do the same. She doesn’t wear armor often, but so close to the prison, feeling mining fatigue settling deep into her bones - she’s never missed the security it offers more. Techno keeps watch, waiting- drops his arm in a signal. Now.

Niki throws the potion at their feet, flinching back at the sound of shattering glass and feeling its effects seep into her skin. When she opens her eyes, she can’t see anything but the inside of the room that they’d holed themselves in and the faintest of wisps rising from where their feet must be, curling around the grass.

(Please let this work, she begs to no one in particular as they walk towards the prison. And if you can hear me- please keep us all safe.)

She hardly breathes as they follow Quackity across the path, holding someone’s hand in her own - Phil’s, by the feel of it - careful to muffle her footsteps in the grass and stand still whenever Quackity’s eyes come a little too close. Thankfully for them, he seems focused, hardly stopping or looking around at all as he walks towards the prison’s portal, movements stiff as he walks forward. He punches the button on the wall particularly harshly, and Sam’s voice comes crackling through a speaker a second later.

“I’m here for my visit,” Quackity says, punctuating the sentence with a snort of laughter that doesn’t sound particularly sincere. Niki hasn’t seen him in a long while, not after everything that happened in Pogtopia, and she feels a chill worm down her spine - this man looks nothing like the one that had laughed and danced and sung at her birthday party what feels like an eternity ago. What happened?

Sam sighs, the sound turning into a sharp burst of static through the speakers. “Hello Quackity,” he says, voice deep and tired. “Please step into the portal after I tell you to and then wait on the other side.”

“I know the drill, Sam,” Quackity rolls his eyes. “Just because the bastard was gone for a few weeks doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten how this damn place works.”

“Just going through protocol, Quackity,” Sam replies, and something about this response has Quackity exploding into a brief fit of laughter, the sound grating against Niki’s ears. She feels her grip tighten on Phil’s hand, air caught in her throat.

“Protocol- ha. Whatever you wanna tell yourself, pal.” Quackity smiles, cold and cruel, and Niki tries not to think about how she’d seen that same grin on Wilbur, eyes sparkling from the light of the lanterns hung from the bridges and walls of their ravine, remember how she’d looked into them and realized her old friend wasn’t there, anymore. Quackity disappears into the portal, and after a second, the hand around her own pulls her inside of it too.

On the other side, Quackity taps his foot impatiently, crossing his arms and waiting- Sam’s voice comes through the speakers again, words clipped.

“Go through the portal,” he says, and Quackity does- once again, they wait for a second for his body to disappear, then go within it themselves, pressed close enough together within its frame for Niki to feel the warmth of a wing wrap around her shoulders for a quick second before they’re out of the hot, stifling air of the Nether and into a large, neatly made lobby of blackstone and quartz. They duck into a corner, watching as Quackity moves towards the front counter, the Warden waiting there with his arms crossed over his chest. He looks- tired. His movements are slow, footsteps loud against the floor, shoulders tense and back hunched. He walks around the counter, sword strapped to his belt, and Niki feels her breath hitch at the sight of dried blood still stuck to the blade in patches and splatters.

“He ready?” Quackity asks, holding his hands out - Niki catches a flash of metal as Sam drops something into them, watches as Quackity raises what ends up being a pair of shears, dangerous-looking and gleaming with enchants, to the light.

“Yes,” Sam says, side-eyeing Quackity with a small glare. “You know, it’s supposed to be your job to clean those things off when you’re done with them.”

“I told you, busy day back in Las Nevadas yesterday,” Quackity waves a hand- “I’ll do it, alright? Don’t get all pissy now. What happened to being partners?”

“You said we’d be done with this months ago, Quackity,” Sam sighs, and Niki feels a light tug on her arm as Quackity and Sam begin to walk towards the wall to the right of them, breathes in slow and deep as she follows Techno and Phil towards the others. The wall yawns open with the hiss of redstone firing and pistons pulling blocks upwards, opening into a dark hallway that feels like entering the maw of some sort of giant, insatiable beast. They step inside as one, and the door shuts behind them.

“We’ll be done soon enough,” Quackity says, and Niki feels hairs rising on the back of her neck. “Trust me.”

They stalk forwards through a labyrinth of blackstone, Niki brushing the palms of her hand against her clothes when it goes clammy from adrenaline. Halfway through, she pauses to tip back a second potion of invisibility, careful to keep her movements slow and steady as not to make a sound - the liquid is silvery, cool and light on her tongue, and she lets the effects wash over her with her breath caught in her lungs before moving forward. The tunnels are simpler than she’d expected, bearing little obstacles or checkpoints - Quackity makes a wry comment a second after (“Guard tunnels today, huh? Appreciate the hustle, pal-”) that confirms her suspicions. Despite the potion particles still whirling around their bodies and the sounds of their footsteps, too loud in her own ears, they manage to make it forwards without much trouble, entering a large room with a doorway filled completely with a curtain of lava.

“Set your spawn,” Sam says, still stoic, and Quackity rolls his eyes again before doing as told. Niki keeps looking back at the lava flowing past the wall, its heat filling the room and making her already slick palms even worse, and Sam moves to the side to flick a lever, eyes trained on the lava slowly bubbling in front of him.

“Give me your tools?” Quackity asks, and Sam sighs before doing so - Niki watches as he hands over a netherite axe, then potions, then a few raw potatoes that Quackity accepts and puts into his inventory. Sam raises an eyebrow once he’s done, hand tight around the handle of his trident.

“You bring your own sword, today?” He asks, seeming irritated, and Quackity shrugs.

“Sorry pal, I need to make a new one. Guess I’m borrowing yours again.”

Sam sighs again, louder, and hands over his sword as well, watching as Quackity swings it a few times experimentally. The blade skims a little too close to her on one swing and she can’t quite help the squeak that escapes her lips as she throws herself out of the way, feels her heart hammer in her ears as she backs up against the wall. Please don’t hear that please don’t hear that please don’t hear that please don’t hear that-

“Quackity, wait.” Sam raises a hand, ear twitching as he looks over in her direction with narrowed eyes. “I think I heard something.”

Oh fuck.

“Well, guess show’s up then,” Techno drawls, and both of them whirl towards his voice, giving Niki enough time to pull her armor back on, scrambling to get her sword and shield in her hands as Phil does the same besides her. Pieces of armor appear where Techno is standing, then a bucket of milk- oh, why must her friends be so dramatic- and Techno’s standing there, smiling sharply, with Orphan Obliterator held loosely at his side. “Let’s get this done, then.”

As one, Techno and Phil blur into action - Techno moves forward to catch the prongs of Sam’s trident on his blade as Phil parries Quackity’s blows with his own sword- they move fluidly, easily covering each other’s backs as the room devolves into chaos. Niki remembers their guidance as she flits in and out of the fight, scoring quick hits to keep the Warden and Quackity off balance while remaining out of range from their weapons, and it’s not long before both of them have fallen with a spray of items and experience orbs scattered all over the floor.

Techno moves over to block off the exposed face of the bed with a block, looking over at the two of them with an uncharacteristically severe expression. “They’ll be back soon- we have to move fast. Niki, you have those fire res, right?”

She nods as she reaches into her inventory, finding the potion’s orange-pink glow and smashing it at their feet. They dive into the lava together, Niki scrambling to keep up, her arms struggling to move through the thick lava, loses sight of both until she flails into something directly in front of her and hands are pulling her up out of the lava.

“There you go, mate,” Phil smiles down at her as hauls herself to her feet, making a face at the feeling of the lava clinging to her clothes. “Yeah, swimming through lava isn’t exactly fun. You good?” She flashes him a thumbs up, and he laughs- “Niki, you’re still invisible.” She flushes pink- right.

A few sips of milk later, she gives him a proper thumbs up, and he laughs, loud and bright. She looks past him to where Techno’s crouched over something- someone, she realizes with a start, in the corner. Dream’s back in prison clothes, ragged and ill-fitting, and he’s curled up with his back towards the front of the cell, shaking enough to be obvious even from where she’s standing. Techno speaks lowly, voice barely more than a deep rumble in the air, almost inaudible.

“You there, Dream?”

She watches as Dream turns his head, looking up with wide, bleary eyes. His hair flops in front of his face, and something within her itches to brush it out of the way. “T-Techno?”

“Yeah nerd, who else?” Techno smiles, and Dream seems to blink awake, drawing himself up with a shuddery breath.

“Techno- it’s a trap- what are you doing here?” he hisses, and Techno gives him a look, deadpan.

“Yeah, yeah, it’s a trap- come on, Dream, we’ve been over this by now, bro. You have to know that their traps aren’t goin’ to do anything to me by now,” Techno rolls his eyes, reaching forward to steady his hands on Dream’s shoulders when the other man sputters and struggles to breathe. “Easy, now. Geez, you wanted to prove me wrong about being homeless bad enough that you came back here? We could’ve just made you a house, you know. You didn’t have to go this far.”

“I- they were gonna kill you,” Dream breathes, face twisted up uncomfortably, and his eyes flick past Techno’s face to where Phil and Niki are standing at the opposite wall of the cell. “All of you- they said-”

“And that’s what I thought you’d say,” Techno groans. “Come on, you idiot, I thought you were smarter than this-”

“They were right there, Techno!” Dream fires back, eyes alight. “You- they were right there, what were you thinking, they could’ve-!”

“And my best friend is a necromancer, remember?” Techno shakes his head. “Come on, Dream- Sam and Quackity? You know we can handle them in a fight, especially when you can just revive us if anything goes wrong. You don’t have to do this whole self-sacrifice thing, bro- there’s only so many times I can break into the same prison, y’know.”

“You’re so stupid,” Dream huffs, but he leans in anyway, head just barely settling against Techno’s shoulder. “I- I can’t believe. You’re so dumb.”

“Hey, don’t be sayin’ that to the guy that’s breakin’ you out of prison,” Techno laughs, slinging Dream over his shoulder with an easy motion and laughing harder when it makes him yelp. “That’s just bein’ ungrateful. You’re making Chat sad, man, and when they’re sad they don’t subscribe-”

“I regret this entirely,” Dream says, voice muffled against Techno’s shirt, tone completely flat. “Put me down- you idiot- I’m staying here. You’re worse than Quackity.”

“Rude. Now you’ve really made Chat mad. I demand an apology-”

“Boys, boys.” Niki can’t help giggling, watching the way their gazes snap towards her, rolling her eyes as she moves forward with a few potions held loosely in her hand. “Dream, do you want a health pot?”

Dream seems to deliberate for a second, before nodding at her, expression slightly strained. “...sure.”

“You two can finish your argument after we’ve broken out of the biggest maximum security prison on the server,” Phil drawls from behind her, arms crossed at his chest. “Come on, now, before Sam gets back.”

“Isn’t this the only maximum security prison on the server?” Techno asks aloud, an amused expression on his face - one that only gets worse when Phil glares at him with one ice-blue eye.

“Shut-” he sighs, shaking his head. “You two are chaotic little shits, you know that?”

“Don’t compare me to him, Phil,” Techno complains, Dream mirroring his words with muffled protests of his own, and Phil breathes another drawn-out, long-suffering sigh as he rubs at the bridge of his nose.

“Niki, give us some fire res please?”

She finds the potion bottle between giggles, throwing it to the ground as she tries to choke down the laughter rapidly bubbling up her throat. “Of course, Phil.”

She looks back at Techno and Dream before jumping into the lava, the two of them once again lost in some sort of argument, Dream draped over Techno’s shoulder. He’s breathing easier now, she notes, and Techno looks looser too - a little less tense, leaning back with a perpetual quirk to the corner of his lip as they fire insults back and forth. This is familiar, she recognizes with a soft twist in her chest, the same way that Phil and Techno can finish each other’s sentences and look at each other with laughing eyes sharing the same memories of the past, the same way Ranboo watches Techno’s every step as he adjusts his stance and lifts his sword and Techno laughs and calls him a main character in turn, the same way she and Phil will settle together on the porch over cups of tea and sit at each other’s sides for hours. The rhythm between them is one well-established, the road well-worn - she imagines them, huddled in this dingy cell for months together, and breathes in slow and deep.

“Come on,” she smiles, making sure to keep it on her face when Dream meets her eyes with wide, startled ones of his own. Dream still isn’t an ally, and isn’t a friend.

But - she watches as he smiles back, something inexplicably warm in her chest - maybe, one day, he could be.

#tw torture #tw abuse #tw self harm #tw disordered eating #tw ed #tw sh #prison arc #pandora's vault #tw starvation #c!sam critical #c!quackity critical #my writing :D #> my writing

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skarsgard-daydreams · 3 years

Text

Know Thyself

Description: When Eric invites you to his dungeon, you get more than you bargained for.

Notes: 5,800 words of kinky Eric Northman smut. Reposted because this hellsite reordered several paragraphs for no reason.

Warnings: 18+, sexual content, bondage, spanking, orgasm control, forced orgasms

"You're not on the schedule tonight," a familiar voice drawled as you arrived at Fangtasia for your shift. Pam stood in front of the mirror in the break room applying her blood red lipstick with razor thin precision. "Boss's orders," she added, her lips curling with an amusement that was frankly disquieting.

You shoved your purse in your locker anyway and gave Pam a skeptical look. "What are you not telling me?"

Pam slid the gold lid back onto the tube of lipstick with a click. "As much as I would love to stand around and answer stupid questions all night, I still have a job to do," she said. Dark, grungy rock music began to blare in the club proper, signaling that Fangtasia would soon be open. Pam closed your locker in the blink of an eye, a wicked grin spreading across her pink lips. "You’re coming with me," she said. She gave you a little push out of the room and steered you downstairs with a firm grip on your shoulder. It would be pointless to argue, so you stumbled along in front of her as Pam’s dagger-like stilettos echoed in the stairwell.

As far as you knew, the basement of Fangtasia was little more than a crammed storage room filled with excess liquor, Halloween decorations, and old VHS tapes from its heyday as a video rental store before vampires came out of the coffin. A set of keys rattled in Pam's hand and she unlocked a metal door that you had always assumed led to the broom closet. She held it open and stared at you with cold eyes.

“Go on.”

The hard edge in Pam’s voice chilled your blood, but you swallowed your nerves and stepped into a long stone corridor dimly lit with torches. You heard nothing except your own heartbeat and the faint crackling of the torches as you stepped inside. Her hand connected with the small of your back and you both proceeded down the passage, which had several alcoves walled off with iron bars that were so dark you couldn’t tell if they were occupied or not. Pam stopped in front of a heavy wooden door at the end of the hall and produced an old-fashioned key that she had tucked into her bodice. She eyed your black Fangtasia t-shirt and pursed her lips.

“Take off your clothes.”

“Pam,” you said nervously, but the rest of your words dried up in your throat as she stared you down. You took off your top and shimmied out of your jeans, feeling the heat of embarrassment rise to your face.

No matter how many times you undressed in front of Pam, you always felt like a piece of merchandise under her scrupulous gaze. She slid her fingers under the elastic waist of your panties and snapped it against your skin. “And these,” she added. You slipped out of your panties and took off your bra as well, adding them to the pile of clothes on the floor.

“Don’t worry,” Pam said in a flat tone that was not even a little bit reassuring as she opened the door and gestured for you to go inside. “You look good enough to eat.”

You crossed the threshold into a spacious stone chamber with vaulted cathedral ceilings and arched doorways leading off in four different directions. But what caught your eye was not the architecture or the flickering candlelight in the rooms beyond. It was the ancient iron maiden that stood in the center of the room, its doors clamped shut and its strange carved face contorted with anguish as it stared wordlessly at the place where you stood.

Behind you, the heavy door creaked shut and you heard the scrape of the bolt sliding back into place, locking you within. Even though you knew this had to be orchestrated by Eric, your veins suddenly iced over with fear. You heard soft footfalls coming from one of the rooms beyond and instinctively took a step back, your heel colliding with the door behind you. A tall figure appeared in the central doorway wearing a wry smile and a plain black tank and jeans.

“Where are your clothes?” Eric asked. You furrowed your brows, realizing that you stripped down in front of Pam for no reason. “Ah,” he said. “Pam.”

“She never misses an opportunity,” you said, embarrassed by your own naiveté.

Eric chuckled and took your hand in his. “I will deal with her later,” he said. “Come with me.”

You followed him into the room to the far left, which reminded you of a Roman bath. A pool of dark water rippled below, its steaming surface scattered with purple flower petals and floating candles. The smell of incense hung in the humid air—something warm and inviting, laced with exotic spices. At the end of the chamber, a reclining skeleton was painted on the wall with two words written in Greek letters below it. Eric retrieved a short silk robe hand painted with peony blossoms from a hook on the wall and held it open while you slid your arms into the sleeves.

"What does that say?" you asked. Eric's lips brushed against your temple as he reached around and tied the robe shut with a decisive motion.

"Know thyself," he said. "It's a replica of the memento mori in the baths of Diocletian in Rome." He kept his arms around your waist and you leaned against him, enjoying how solid he seemed as he held you from behind. It wasn't often you had uninterrupted time alone with your lover. He was always being pulled in one direction or another by whoever was above him in the complicated vampire hierarchy, or he was occupied with the problems his own subordinates brought to him. But tonight you knew you would not be interrupted. You turned in his arms and looked up at Eric, trailing your fingertips over his bare muscled shoulders.

"What do you want to do with me?" you asked with shy smile as Eric inhaled the scent of your hair like a sommelier using all of his senses to sample a fine wine.

"Possess you utterly," Eric murmured. His voice was gravelly and full of desire, and his candor surprised you. He tangled his fingers in your hair and captured your mouth in a languid kiss. You swayed a little, but he held you steady as he tilted your head back and dragged his lips down your throat, savoring your taste. He sucked lightly on your pulse, which seemed to be directly connected to your center. You hummed softly in encouragement and reached for his belt, but he pulled away.

Candlelight reflected in the dark water below, dancing to the syncopated rhythm of your heart. Worry itched at the back of your mind as you watched Eric walk away, his bare feet slapping against the stone floor. Perhaps you had done something wrong. He retrieved a black gift box from a hammered metal table and stood before you again in an instant.

“I have something for you.” Though Eric seemed to possess an endless store of confidence, there was a hint of uncertainty in his voice. He was trying to be careful, you realized, fearing he might scare you away. You summoned a reassuring smile and traced your fingers along the edge of the box.

“You spoil me.”

A slight smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth. “That’s what Pam keeps saying,” Eric said. He took the lid off the box, revealing a solid metal choker. It was thin but surprisingly sturdy, with a small keyhole on the clasp at the back. A delicate spray of flowers and vines swirled across its surface, carved with such care that they created a sense of motion. You lifted it out of the box and studied the pattern quietly, aware that you were being studied as well.

“It’s beautiful,” you said sincerely. You lifted your eyes and offered it back to Eric, gathering your hair away from the nape of your neck. He turned you to face away from him and opened the clasp on the necklace. After a moment, smooth metal circled your throat. It felt cool against your warm skin and fit snugly into place without being too tight. You heard a tiny click at the back of your neck and realized it had locked when he closed it. Your breath hitched in your chest. Eric’s lips brushed against your ear as he spoke.

“Is this okay?” he asked.

Your mouth felt dry, but you nodded, reaching up to brush your fingers over the floral inlay of the necklace.

“What will you say if it’s not okay?” Eric asked. He placed his large hands on your shoulders and turned you to face him again. You pressed your lips together in thought for a moment. You had never needed a safe word with him before.

“Clementine,” you answered.

“Good.” He trailed his fingers along the edge of your jaw, drawing you closer. “And if you can’t speak, what will you hum?”

Your eyes widened and you forgot every song you’d ever known. “Um...” you said. “Yankee Doodle?”

Eric’s eyes crinkled with amusement, but he made no comment about your song choice. He leaned down and pressed a tender kiss to your lips. “Are you ready, pet?” he asked.

“I think so,” you said, but your voice sounded shaky and small. You weren’t sure what lay in the rooms beyond or what he had in store for the night. The torture device in the foyer had frightened you, but you trusted Eric. You chewed on your lip and tried to summon a playful smile. “Are you going to put me on a leash?”

The arched brow on your lover’s face told you he was now considering it. “Would you like me to?” he asked, always willing to up the ante.

“I...” you stammered. The thought filled you with horror and excitement in equal measure, and you weren’t sure how to answer. But Eric’s blue eyes were full of mischief as he approached a mahogany apothecary cabinet and opened one of the drawers.

“I hadn’t exactly planned on that.” He rifled through the drawer for a moment and took out a fine metal chain. “But I can oblige.”

Eric returned to you and attached the chain to the choker around your throat, testing it with a small tug. The solid metal acted as a collar, and you found yourself stumbling forward, forced to follow his lead. A toothy grin spread across Eric’s face. You wanted to be mad at him, but you were breathless with anticipation. He wrapped the chain around his hand and you trailed after him without resistance as he led you from the room.

“I could get used to this,” he quipped, entering the foyer.

“I’m sure you could.”

Your eyes met the gaze of the iron maiden again, and you were relieved when Eric walked past it without a second glance. “What is that for?” you asked.

Eric looked at the torture device. “Pam liberated it from a museum in Spain, but I doubt it was ever used before she got her claws in it,” he said. “It's more ornamental than practical.”

“So, you’ve never used it.”

“I didn’t say that,” Eric said with an air of mystery. He tugged on the chain, urging you to follow him into a rounded chamber with a circular dais in the center. Thick shackles hung from the walls on massive chains that looked strong enough to secure a vampire, and several human shaped cages were suspended from the ceiling. Your heart leapt into your throat.

“What are those?” you peeped nervously as Eric removed the chain from your choker and untied your robe. His eyes followed yours toward the ceiling.

“Another of Pam’s acquisitions,” he said, pushing the robe off your shoulders. The fabric pooled at your feet and his gaze swept over your naked flesh approvingly. “The English used to hang the corpses of criminals in them after execution as a warning to others.”

You weren’t sure if you wanted to know the answer to your next question, but you blurted it out anyway. “What does Pam use them for?”

Eric shrugged. “I don’t ask.” He took you by the hand and led you to the dais, holding you steady as you stepped onto it. “Stand here,” he said. “I want to get a good look at you.”

You shifted your weight from one foot to the other and watched as Eric circled you slowly like a predator stalking its prey. The surface beneath you was rough and uncomfortable to stand on with bare feet. Something told you that was by design. Eric appeared in front of you again, considering you with a steely gaze.

“Kneel,” he commanded in a firm voice.

You lowered yourself to your knees and realized you were trembling slightly. The uneven surface of the dais below you dug into your knees as you sat back on your heels and cast an uncertain glance at your lover. He had never spoken to you in that tone of voice before, and you weren’t sure what it meant.

Eric studied your face with hooded eyes and tucked your hair behind your ear. “You look so lovely on your knees,” he said as though it was a thought he had not intended to say out loud. You tilted your head toward his hand, craving his touch, but he withdrew it and looked at you with a stony expression. “Lift both of your hands as high as you can.”

You did as he instructed and he gave you a small nod of approval. “Good,” he said. “Now, don’t move,” he added. “I will return in a moment.”

In the blink of an eye, he was gone. You sat alone in the strange circular room with your arms stretched above you and the floor digging painfully into your knees. Though you heard no sound from the other rooms, you had the unmistakable feeling that you were being watched. You shifted a little, trying to find a position that was comfortable, but moving only seemed to make your knees hurt even more.

You had no way of knowing how long you waited. Soon the muscles in your shoulders began to ache, but Eric did not return. You wondered if you should call for him. Maybe he had lost track of time.

“Eric?” you called softly. In the empty room, you received no reply. Your knees were stinging now and the muscles in your arms burned with the continued effort to keep them lifted in the air. You knew you would not last much longer. A whimper escaped your lips and you wobbled a little, lowering one of your hands. Eric appeared in front of you instantly, his expression stormy.

“What did I tell you to do?” he asked. His voice was quiet but keen like the blade of a knife.

You looked at him with wide eyes, your heart hammering in your chest. “Keep my hands in the air,” you said.

“And what did you do?”

“I... I lowered them,” you answered. You furrowed your brows together, feeling it was deeply unfair for him to blame you for something you couldn’t help. “But you weren’t here, and I couldn’t do it any longer.”

Eric’s brow arched in warning and his icy blue eyes hardened. Silence fell over you like a spell and you knew it had been a mistake to argue. “I’m sorry,” you mumbled. You lowered your gaze to the floor and took several deep breaths, waiting for him to speak.

“I know you are,” Eric said. “And I will forgive you after you’ve been punished.”

He grabbed both of your wrists and dragged you to your feet. You wobbled as he pulled you off the dais, hauling you out of the room without giving you a chance to catch your balance.

“Eric!” you yelped, staggering after him through the foyer and into another room. He stopped abruptly in front of a wall where countless whips, floggers, canes, paddles, and riding crops were hung.

“Pick one,” Eric said. He released his grip on your arms and sat on the foot of a black four-poster bed covered with a dark velvet quilt, waiting for you to make your selection.

You stared at the array of instruments before you. Some of them looked like the sort of thing you could pick up at any average sex shop, while others seemed to be custom-made or possibly the real thing. You swallowed your fear and reached for a leather riding crop with a narrow tip and a flexible handle. It seemed small enough that it might not inflict too much damage. You approached the foot of the bed and placed it in Eric’s hands. He whipped his open palm with the riding crop and shook his head.

“This one will sting too much,” he said. “Pick one that’s more rigid.”

He waited with patience while you tested several others in search of one that would meet his specifications. The anger that radiated from him before had now dissipated and he seemed set on administering your punishment based on principle rather than wrath. You had the distinct sense that everything was going exactly as planned—that you had been thrust into a labyrinth of impossible choices, and he was the minotaur that would delight in making you suffer. You had half a mind to throw the riding crop in Eric’s face and tell him you were going home, but you had enough faith in him to trust that he would be good to you.

Eric rose to his feet as you held out another riding crop. He tested it on his hand and nodded in approval. You thought he might draw his hand back and strike you at any moment, but he set it on the bed and picked up a silky blindfold, securing it over your eyes.

“Lay on your stomach,” he said in your ear. He grasped the nape of your neck in his hand and guided you down onto the bed so that you were folded over the foot of it with your ass prominently displayed. You turned your head to the side and took a few nervous breaths. The dull ache of desire throbbed in your center even though you had to fight off the urge to bolt. Eric squeezed the rounded flesh of your ass, caressing it appreciatively. “I want you to count for me when I strike you,” he instructed. “I’ll start with my hand, and then switch to the crop. We’ll do five of each.”

“Okay,” you said, your voice barely a whisper.

“Do you remember what to say if it’s not okay, pet?”

You considered the possibility of cashing in your get out of jail free card, but his hand slipped between your legs and stroked the length of your slit, offering you the promise of even greater reward if you played his game. A small gasp escaped from your lips and you pressed yourself into his touch, but his hand was gone. “I remember,” you said breathlessly. “I’m okay.”

“Then count for me,” Eric said. He drew back his open hand and delivered a stinging blow across your ass.

“One,” you managed to say.

“Good girl,” Eric purred. He massaged the sore spot for a moment and then struck you even harder, making you yelp in surprise. Your hips jerked and Eric pressed his left hand into the small of your back, pinning you in place as you gasped for breath. “Count,” he reminded you.

“Two.”

The third blow followed quickly, but Eric’s firm hand held you still. A stinging warmth was spreading over your ass and felt arousal pooling between your legs.

“Three,” you whimpered.

Eric struck you again and kneaded your ass, producing a low moan from your lips.

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” he asked, his own enjoyment evident in his voice. “What number was that?”

“Four.”

The fifth blow landed harder than the rest. You forgot to count, but Eric didn’t seem to care. He let you lay there panting softly, trying to catch your breath while he massaged your tender skin and teased you between your legs. The adrenaline in your system dulled the pain until it mingled with the sensation of Eric’s fingers stroking you, making your entire bottom radiate with pleasure. You whined needfully and rolled your hips into his touch.

“Oh, we’re not done yet,” Eric said. He withdrew his hand and sucked your arousal off his fingers. “Cross your wrists behind you,” he said. “I don’t want your hands to get in the way.”

You wanted to tell him he could punish you any time he liked if he would just fuck you then and there, but you knew you weren’t in a position to negotiate. You closed your mouth instead and did what you were told. Eric wrapped his hand around both of your wrists, pinning them against your lower back. You always knew he was strong, but you were stunned to realize he could immobilize you completely with just one of his hands. The riding crop made a whooshing sound as he swung it in the air experimentally, making you flinch with anticipation.

“Five more,” Eric reminded you. “Count for me.”

The sharp bite of the riding crop against your flesh stole the air from your lungs. The pain was much more concentrated than before, and the shaft of the instrument seemed to gather momentum easier than a bare hand.

“Breathe for me, pet,” you heard Eric saying. “That was one.”

You inhaled and exhaled, speaking in a shaky voice. “One.”

“Very good,” Eric murmured. “Focus on your breathing.”

He struck you again and dragged the tip of the riding crop over your dripping cunt, making you shiver.

“Two,” you moaned.

“That’s my girl,” he said. “Three more.”

Tears began to sting your eyes with the third blow, wetting the silk fabric that covered them.

“Three,” you whimpered.

“That’s right.”

The fourth blow struck even harder, and Eric held you steady as you bucked your hips. You were crying in earnest now, your tears leaking from the blindfold.

“You’re doing so well, my love,” he said softly. “Just one more.”

“Okay,” you sobbed.

You cried out when he struck you one last time, but an overwhelming sense of relief flooded your body as you realized that was the end. You were shaking all over and you could feel your pulse throbbing between your legs.

“F-five,” you stammered.

Eric released your wrists and trailed his hand over the marks on your ass, massaging it with care. Your hands fell limp at your sides, feeling leaden.

“Do you promise not to disobey me again?” Eric asked. He swirled his fingers around your swollen clit, drawing a low moan from your throat.

“I promise.”

“Then you are forgiven.” His melodic voice filled you with warmth and a moment later his fingers thrusted inside you. A long, breathy gasp escaped your lips and you felt your insides beginning to clench, but he pulled away.

“Don’t,” you pleaded. “Don’t stop.”

“Patience,” Eric said. “The night is young.”

He rolled you over and pulled you to your feet. Your legs felt weak, but he let you lean your full weight against him and bury your face against his chest as he untied the blindfold. It felt good to press yourself against something cool and familiar. A few stray tears leaked from your eyes. Eric wiped them away with the soft pad of his thumb and licked the salty liquid from his finger.

“How are you, pet?” he asked.

“I’m okay,” you mumbled into his shirt. And it was true. Even though the punishment Eric doled out had been painful, he had helped you through each moment. The fear that coursed through your veins earlier in the evening had been released in a kind of catharsis, and you now felt strangely at ease with whatever might happen next.

“Good,” Eric said. There was a hint of pride in his voice as he stroked your hair. “You’re very brave, for a human.”

You pressed a soft kiss against his throat and felt Eric’s hand tighten in your hair. “You’re very tender, for a vampire.”

“Only with you,” he mused. He took you by the hand and kissed your fingers, leading you out of the room. “Come.”

The last room was outfitted with several strange pieces of furniture that you suspected were part of Pam’s collection of authentic medieval torture devices. You recognized a rack in one corner and a set of stocks in another, but what caught your eye was the wooden frame in the shape of an X in the center of the room. It was covered in soft leather and had thick padded cuffs at the end of each arm.

Before you could ask Eric what it was, he spun you around and pinned you against it with his hips, giving you a bruising kiss. You moaned against his mouth as he secured your wrists to the frame. He kicked your feet apart and trailed his hands over the smooth curves of your body, scratching you lightly with his nails. Then he bound your ankles as well.

Your face felt flushed and your pulse roared in your ears as he stepped back and raked his gaze over your body. You knew you were utterly helpless, and every part of you was on display. Your legs were spread wide and your breasts heaved with each panting breath you took, trying to regain control of yourself. A smirk spread across Eric’s face. This was what he had been waiting for all night.

“In all my years, I don't think I've ever seen something so exquisite as you, pet.” He took a step closer and grabbed a fistful of your hair, kissing your throat as he spoke. “You're beautiful,” he said. “And you're mine.”

His words made your whole body resonate with satisfaction. Eric’s fangs scraped against your throat, but he did not bite you. Not yet. He wanted to savor every inch of you before deciding where to sink his teeth in. His tongue licked your throat while his hands roamed your body, pausing when he felt your heart begin to beat faster to lavish attention on the places where you were sensitive.

He smoothed his hand over your stomach and caught your nipples lightly between his teeth, enjoying each whine and whimper that came from your lips. He teased you with agonizing patience. Your body felt like a spring compressed under an enormous amount of pressure, and you were desperate for release. It would not take much now for you to come undone, but each time you were close, Eric ceased his ministrations.

“No, no, no,” Eric murmured against your breast as he stopped circling your clit with his thumb. “I haven't given you permission to come yet.”

You were about to protest when he took hold of a handle on the side of the X and suddenly rotated it upside down. Blood rushed into your face as you hung from your ankles, your arousal on full display. Eric made a small sound of satisfaction at the sight and sank his teeth into the soft flesh of your inner thigh. He thrust his fingers inside of you while he drank, stilling his hand whenever he felt your muscles begin to contract.

“Please,” you begged. “Please, Eric, I want you to fuck me.”

He withdrew his hand and dragged his tongue along the length of your slit. “Do you?” he asked with a surprised inflection. “Hmmm, I don't remember asking what you want, my love.”

Eric pulled away and righted the X before too much blood could rush to your head. Your heart was beating rapidly and your breathing was ragged. You watched his tall form shift out of view and heard him rifling through a drawer to the side as you caught your breath.

“Please,” you whined when he reappeared in front of you. “I need you inside me.”

“I know,” Eric said with mock sympathy. “But it gives me such pleasure to hear you beg.”

You heard the familiar buzz of a vibrator before you felt it. Eric pressed the powerful toy against your sensitive mound and produced a low, guttural moan from your throat. “You're not allowed to come yet, sweet girl,” he reminded you.

“You’re gonna make me,” you panted. “Eric, please.”

Eric lubricated the vibrator with your arousal and guided it over your clit. “I’m warning you,” he said, a slight smile playing at the corner of his lips. “Do not disobey me again.”

“I-I can’t help it,” you whimpered.

He increased the intensity and kissed your throat roughly. “Don’t you dare do it,” he growled in your ear, but you couldn’t hold back anymore. You cried out as your release overwhelmed you, sending shockwaves from your head to your toes. Your sensitive nerves were flooded with a blissful warmth, and you fell limp in the restraints after a moment, breathing shallowly. Eric turned off the vibrator and nipped your ear with his teeth.

“Oh, you’re in so much trouble now, you wicked little thing,” he said in your ear. But he let you recover for a moment while he returned to the cabinet against the wall and searched in another drawer.

Soon he stood in front of you again. He grasped your chin and opened your mouth, pushing a rubber ball gag between your teeth. The surprised sound that came from your throat was muffled by its presence as Eric secured it behind your head. He framed your face with his hands and forced you to look into his intense blue eyes.

“I’ve got you,” he said. “Remember what I said about humming?”

“Mmhmm,” you managed to hum, but you didn’t want him to stop. You felt perfectly at ease, caught in a strange liminal state between dreaming and waking. Eric stroked your hair and studied your face.

“Good,” he said. And then the tenderness in his voice was replaced with a hard edge as he curled his fingers around your throat. “Now you're going to come until I decide you can stop,” he growled, switching the vibrator to its highest setting and pressing it ruthlessly against the oversensitive bundle of nerves at your center.

The intense vibration sent sharp rippling aftershocks through your body. You moaned into the gag and felt yourself tensing painfully, but you were too weak to struggle. Eric was telling you to relax. You squeezed your eyes shut and tried to focus on his words, allowing the tension to melt from your body. Soon you felt yourself building to another climax far more intense than the one before.

“That’s right,” Eric said. “Take it like a good girl. Let’s see how many we can get out of you.”

You weren’t sure how much time had passed or how many times Eric had pushed you over the edge before the vibrator finally switched off. The ball gag was removed from your mouth, but you couldn’t formulate the words to ask for what you wanted. You let out a small needy whine instead, begging for him.

Eric captured your lips in a kiss and thrust his length inside you, filling you with what you needed most. He rolled his hips at a slow pace, making sure you felt every movement as he fucked you. You moaned weakly and soon you were clenching around him, pulling him to the edge with you. “Come for me,” Eric said, his voice low and gravelly. “Now.”

You gave a small cry as you came undone again, soaking his cock with your release. Eric groaned against your neck and followed you swiftly, one hand fisted in your hair and the other clutching the side of your face as his hips stuttered to a stop.

He remained inside you for a few moments as you took a few ragged breaths. Then he reached up and released the restraints circling your wrists. You sagged against him, too exhausted to hold yourself up. Your legs felt like they were made of rubber and your head felt woozy, but you were at ease, knowing he would take care of you.

You were vaguely aware of the warm scent of Eric’s cologne as you pressed your face into his chest. Soothing words poured over your consciousness in a language you didn’t understand. You tasted blood on your lips and felt the bruises on your wrists and backside simply melt away.

When you woke again, you were laying between fresh sheets in your own bed. Your hair was still damp from a bath and your legs were tangled with Eric’s as he slept beside you, one arm outstretched so you could lay your head on his chest. The light tight shutters had been sealed over the windows in your bedroom, blotting out the midday sun. Eric had them installed ages ago, but he still was hesitant to sleep above ground. You trailed your fingers over one of the ancient scars on his bare chest and relished the rare treat of waking up beside him.

The alarm clock rolled over to noon, and something reflective glinted on your nightstand. You stretched out your hand and picked up the elegant metal choker. In the darkness, you ran your thumb over the floral inlay and found that the clasp was open. You had forgotten about it by the time the night was over, but Eric had not. You glanced at your lover’s face. He was always eerily still when he slept. You drew your hair over your shoulder and closed the choker around your throat, listening to the soft click as the lock snapped shut.

You laid back down and tucked your head under Eric’s chin, listening to the sound of your own heartbeat. He stirred slightly, circling his arms around you and drawing you to his chest. His fingertips traveled along your spine and paused when they reached the cool metal at the back of your neck. After a moment, he cradled your head in his hand and pressed his lips to your forehead.

“You were so good for me, pet,” he mumbled sleepily.

You hummed in contentment and kissed his chest. “I like being yours,” you whispered.

“That’s good,” Eric said, playing with the ends of your hair. “Because I have no intention of ever giving you up.”

#eric northman #eric northman smut

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katnissmellarkkk · 3 years

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Hiiii, so I decided to continue my combing through the books for random specific Everlark related content series. This one is Katniss and Peeta taking care of each other. This is Part One and only includes stuff from the first book because it was getting too long. 😭😅. Anyways, hope y’all enjoy.

I gently unzip his jacket, unbutton his shirt and ease them off him. His undershirt is so plastered into his wounds I have to cut it away with my knife and drench him again to work it loose. He’s badly bruised with a long burn across his chest and four tracker jacker stings, if you count the one under his ear. But I feel a bit better. This much I can fix. I decide to take care of his upper body first, to alleviate some pain, before I tackle whatever damage Cato did to his leg.

Since treating his wounds seems pointless when he’s lying in what’s become a mud puddle, I manage to prop him up against a boulder. He sits there, uncomplaining, while I wash away all the traces of dirt from his hair and skin. His flesh is very pale in the sunlight and he no longer looks strong and stocky. I have to dig the stingers out of his tracker jacker lumps, which causes him to wince, but the minute I apply the leaves he sighs in relief. While he dries in the sun, I wash his filthy shirt and jacket and spread them over boulders. Then I apply the burn cream to his chest. This is when I notice how hot his skin is becoming. The layer of mud and the bottles of water have disguised the fact that he’s burning with fever. I dig through the first-aid kit I got from the boy from District 1 and find pills that reduce your temperature.

“Swallow these,” I tell him, and he obediently takes the medicine. “You must be hungry.”

“Not really. It’s funny, I haven’t been hungry for days,” says Peeta. In fact, when I offer him groosling, he wrinkles his nose at it and turns away. That’s when I know how sick he is.

“Peeta, we need to get some food in you,” I insist.

“It’ll just come right back up,” he says. The best I can do is to get him to eat a few bits of dried apple. “Thanks. I’m much better, really. Can I sleep now, Katniss?” he asks.

“Soon,” I promise. “I need to look at your leg first.” Trying to be as gentle as I can, I remove his boots, his socks, and then very slowly inch his pants off of him.

I scoot my square of plastic under him so I can wash down the rest of him. With each bottle I pour over him, the worse the wound looks. The rest of his lower body has fared pretty well, just one tracker jacker sting and a few small burns that I treat quickly. But the gash on his leg . . . what on earth can I do for that?

I know the tracker jacker leaves draw out infection, so I start with those. Within minutes of pressing the handful of chewed-up green stuff into the wound, pus begins running down the side of his leg.

“What next, Dr. Everdeen?” he asks.

“Maybe I’ll put some of the burn ointment on it. I think it helps with infection anyway. And wrap it up?” I say. I do and the whole thing seems a lot more manageable, covered in clean white cotton.

I help him dress, leaving his feet bare so we can walk in the water, and pull him upright. His face drains of color the moment he puts weight on his leg. “Come on. You can do this.”

But he can’t. Not for long anyway. We make it about fifty yards downstream, with him propped up by my shoulder, and I can tell he’s going to black out. I sit him on the bank, push his head between his knees, and pat his back awkwardly as I survey the area.

When Peeta’s able to stand, I half-guide, half-carry him up to the cave. Really, I’d like to look around for a better place, but this one will have to do because my ally is shot. Paper white, panting, and, even though it’s only just cooling off, he’s shivering.

I cover the floor of the cave with a layer of pine needles, unroll my sleeping bag, and tuck him into it. I get a couple of pills and some water into him when he’s not noticing, but he refuses to eat even the fruit. Then he just lies there, his eyes trained on my face as I build a sort of blind out of vines to conceal the mouth of the cave.

I check his forehead and find it burning and dry. I don’t know what to do. Leave him in the bag and hope the excessive heat breaks the fever? Take him out and hope the night air cools him off? I end up just dampening a strip of bandage and placing it on his forehead.

I spend the night half-sitting, half-lying next to Peeta, refreshing the bandage.

Peeta sits beside me, leaning against the wall, his bad leg stretched out before him, his eyes trained on the world outside. “Go to sleep,” he says softly. His hand brushes the loose strands of my hair off my forehead. Unlike the staged kisses and caresses so far, this gesture seems natural and comforting. I don’t want him to stop and he doesn’t. He’s still stroking my hair when I fall asleep.

I give him more fever pills and stand over him while he drinks first one, then a second quart of water. Then I tend to his minor wounds, the burns, the stings, which are showing improvement.

Peeta’s stretched out on top of the sleeping bag in the shade of the rocks. Although he brightens a bit when I come in, it’s clear he feels miserable. I put cool cloths on his head, but they warm up almost as soon as they touch his skin.

I sit back on my heels and look at him with a mixture of sadness and satisfaction. A stray berry stains his chin and I wipe it away. “Who can’t lie, Peeta?” I say, even though he can’t hear me.

I gingerly lift my hand to my head and find it bandaged. This simple gesture leaves me weak and dizzy. Peeta holds a bottle to my lips and I drink thirstily.

He doesn’t seem angry about my tricking him, drugging him, and running off to the feast. Maybe I’m just too beat-up and I’ll hear about it later when I’m stronger. But for the moment, he’s all gentleness.

“You need to eat. I’ll go hunting soon,” I say.

“Not too soon, all right?” he says. “You just let me take care of you for a while.”

Peeta feeds me bites of groosling and raisins and makes me drink plenty of water. He rubs some warmth back into my feet and wraps them in his jacket before tucking the sleeping bag back up around my chin.

Rain drips through several holes in the ceiling, but Peeta has built a sort of canopy over my head and upper body by wedging the square of plastic into the rocks above me.

“I think your wound is bleeding again. Come on, lie down, it’s bedtime anyway,” he says.

My socks are dry enough to wear now. I make Peeta put his jacket back on. The damp cold seems to cut right down to my bones, so he must be half frozen. I insist on taking the first watch, too, although neither of us think it’s likely anyone will come in this weather. But he won’t agree unless I’m in the bag, too, and I’m shivering so hard that it’s pointless to object. In stark contrast to two nights ago, when I felt Peeta was a million miles away, I’m struck by his immediacy now. As we settle in, he pulls my head down to use his arm as a pillow; the other rests protectively over me even when he goes to sleep. No one has held me like this in such a long time. Since my father died and I stopped trusting my mother, no one else’s arms have made me feel this safe.

I set a good dinner out, but halfway through Peeta begins to nod off. After days of inactivity, the hunt has taken its toll. I order him into the sleeping bag and set aside the rest of his food for when he wakes. He drops off immediately. I pull the sleeping bag up to his chin and kiss his forehead, not for the audience, but for me. Because I’m so grateful that he’s still here, not dead by the stream as I’d thought.

Although I’m shaking in the biting wind, I rip off my jacket, remove my shirt, and zip back into the jacket as swiftly as possible. That brief exposure sets my teeth chattering beyond control.

Peeta’s face is gray in the pale moonlight. I make him lie down before I probe his wound. Warm, slippery blood runs over my fingers. A bandage will not be enough. I’ve seen my mother tie a tourniquet a handful of times and try to replicate it. I cut free a sleeve from my shirt, wrap it twice around his leg just under his knee, and tie a half knot. I don’t have a stick, so I take my remaining arrow and insert it in the knot, twisting it as tightly as I dare. It’s risky business — Peeta may end up losing his leg — but when I weigh this against him losing his life, what alternative do I have? I bandage the wound in the rest of my shirt and lie down with him.

“Are you cold?” he asks. He unzips his jacket and I press against him as he fastens it around me. It’s a bit warmer, sharing our body heat inside my double layer of jackets, but the night is young. The temperature will continue to drop. Even now I can feel the Cornucopia, which burned so when I first climbed it, slowly turning to ice.

“Cato may win this thing yet,” I whisper to Peeta.

“Don’t you believe it,” he says, pulling up my hood, but he’s shaking harder than I am.

Somehow, we make it back to the lake. I scoop up a handful of the cold water for Peeta and bring a second to my lips.

The hovercraft materializes overhead and two ladders drop, only there’s no way I’m letting go of Peeta. I keep one arm around him as I help him up, and we each place a foot on the first rung of the ladder.

“It’s my fault,” I say. “Because I used that tourniquet.”

“Yes, it’s your fault I’m alive,” says Peeta.

“He’s right,” says Caesar. “He’d have bled to death for sure without it.”

I guess this is true, but I can’t help feeling upset about it to the extent that I’m afraid I might cry and then I remember everyone in the country is watching me so I just bury my face in Peeta’s shirt. It takes them a couple of minutes to coax me back out because it’s better in the shirt, where no one can see me, and when I do come out, Caesar backs off questioning me so I can recover.

#everlark #thg #hunger games #Peeta mellark #katniss everdeen #the hunger games #honestly they’re so cute both little caretakers #also love that Katniss is just constantly like let me feed you more medicine and food #and Peeta is concerned with wrapping her up and keeping her warm #hmmm wonder if that has any individual character significance for each other them #each of them I meant #sorry long post y’all #I tried to cut it down I did I just didn’t wanna miss anything which i doubtlessly did anyway #also this whole thing is making me wonder where is their toilet???? where are they peeing all this water they’re making each other drink????#bookcomb ♥️🔎

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bambeptin · 3 years

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the map of infinity was wild as hell: an analysis

ok, let's get this out of the way first: there's no reason why Professor Paradox had to make the Map of Infinity other than "for fun".

which makes sense! he’s immortal, he’s been travelling for a while, and he’s likely very, very, very bored. anything he does is probably to chase new stimuli. his sense of morality is off, from human standards.

it's the complete space-time map of 17 different dimensions, which Paradox doesn't technically need, since he has the Chrononavigator and his own innate time powers. he doesn't even need it to reach the Forge of Creation, since he can literally just like, walk there whenever. Paradox was the person that made the barrier between the Forge and the rest of the Universe in the first place. was it even always outside of the universe? did he send it out there? I imagine it sort of went like this:

"boy, am I bored today!"

"let's see if I can make an in-depth map of a bunch of different dimensions"

fought Celestialsapiens when he reached the Forge of Creation, K6BD-style. they can't kill him (his powerset matches up well against theirs) and he can't kill them all (and they’re starting to mess with his time plans), so eventually they agree to a treaty. he found the war sorta fun

bored again

"what do I do with this map I made? destroy it? no, that would be pointless..."

"oh! I know!"

"split it into 4 parts, 2 of which are keystones to a world and 2 of which are in death trap temples, because that would be 1. fun to make and 2. could lead to fun situations in the future"

let's go over them all!

Map Piece 1. Mykdl'dy

gesundheit. if you don’t remember this planet, it’s the half hot/half cold one that Paradox made a death trap temple on, which is now guarded by Necrofriggian cultists.

"welcome to my crib....... I enjoyed creating brutalism-inspired shapes of dark grey prisms against the ever-changing backdrop of ice and fire. in front are two statues of a mysterious person in robes, because I thought it would look cool. within are some dastardly traps that I designed myself, so watch out! the Necrofriggian colonists making a religion out of it wasn't my intention though. it's just a coincidence that they're the same species as the statues! I felt like the high point of this temple is dragon-wyrm that I created! the acid is a fantastic extra touch.”

“dungeon design is my passion.”

it seems like he decorated the inner parts the most, lovingly, with his shade of blue, used a bunch of magical spells (presumably; elaborated on later) for that part too, then realized that it would be a bit of a pain decorating the rest of the place and made the rest plainer. I wonder if he made it all himself, or like, hired some dudes

Map Piece 2. Piscciss

it’s hidden as the anti-gravity multiplier that holds Piscciss together.

“huh?” you might ask. “why would that piece have that power?”

I don’t know, maybe they all had that power or something. maybe if Aggregor just took one and started blasting everyone with anti-gravity the arc would be over way faster. maybe it’s magic. maybe Paradox is fucking with you.

“wait???” you might ask next. “it’s hidden as WHAT????”

that’s right! this is the little thing that keeps Piscciss a planet and not a bunch of water filled with dead fish floating around in space. “haha yeah this works perfectly... trust me it's not a macguffin that will be stolen and break your planet apart and someone in the future will have to sacrifice an alien to replace it lol...” - Paradox handing the anti-gravity multiplier to the Piscciss Volann when they were making an artificial water planet for them to live on

either that or the Piscciss Volann stumbled on the piece in an unseen other death trap temple, found its powers, and decided to use it, which sort of goes against the whole “Paradox hid all the pieces” thing if he simply never checked up on them

Map Piece 3. Perplexahedron

I know they went to Ledgerdomain third but that is saved for the end because it’s fucking mental. so we’re gonna talk about the Perplaxahedron. it’s the cube from Cube (1997).

if you don’t know what that is, it’s an absolutely huge artificial planet/building that’s entirely made of death traps. each new room is an exciting and fresh way to die. invigorating! while it does have a simple design, it’s efficient at what it does, and the clinical nature adds to the theme of being an unknowable deadly object. that’s what he probably describes it as anyways. again, did he build all of that himself? can I make a “Paradox construction squad” OC?

maybe Paradox made these dudes to help build the place, and kept them around as guards, because that’s efficiency.

this dude’s sole purpose in life is to wait there and hand over the Map of Infinity piece to whoever’s smart enough to get inside. I assume Paradox made him, because he disappears from reality like ten minutes after he hands it out, but Paradox has hired people to be guards in his temples before. the pay must be really good. maybe their culture is like that. maybe he didn’t disappear and actually it was an actor to squeeze the most drama out of the universe.

anyways, if he was real, Ben basically ruined his life before he died by tossing out the very important piece of the Map to Aggregor for basically no reason. oops!

Map Piece 4. Ledgerdomain

“he can reach the Forge of Creation. so obviously he can reach Ledgerdomain, a dimension of pure mana. what’s the problem?” well, there’s really no problem. it’s quite cool! no, what’s wild is that nobody really thinks about the ramifications of this piece of the Map of Infinity. for a refresher, this is what it’s hidden as:

“It is an object as old as time itself, through which all magic flows. It is the keeper of the true name of [Ledgerdomain]; source of ultimate power! And it is mine!“ - Charmcaster

the secret true name of magic. if you have it, you have power over magic itself. it can revive the dead or instantly kill people. that power corrupts its wielder easily. also, if it’s removed from Ledgerdomain, the realm loses all natural entry/exit points, destabilizes, and begins the crumble. that’s right! it’s the Alpha Rune.

Paradox is confirmed to have actually made the Alpha Rune, not just hidden a piece as the Rune. I implore you to think about what that entails.

he knows magic (3-page minicomic I made about that topic). he doesn’t just know magic, he knows the secret name of magic, automatically making him a disgustingly powerful mage. either that or it’s possible to get the secret name of magic without knowing magic, which is fine too, but just being around the Alpha Rune makes you able to cast spells. he probably ripped the Alpha Rune from the Omniverse and bound it to his will because he had nothing else better to do that day. could he make even more Alpha Runes (even if they’re weaker copies), since it knows it already? did making it into Rune form rip it from his own mind? I like to think that the reason why he can’t lie is because if he does, his latent magical abilities will automatically attempt to cast a spell to make it real.

here are three ways you can interpret “Paradox made the Alpha Rune”.

he found the secret name of magic and made the Alpha Rune out of it

he literally made the secret name of magic. i.e. he made magic itself. that would be wild as hell.

the writers didn’t really think about the ramifications of any part of the Map of Infinity past “cool artifact”, which, to be honest, fair enough.

he probably finds all the magic really useful, since it helps streamline all of his temples and stuff. all of the bright blue lines connected to Paradox’s creations might even be magic! or his time powers.

by the way, he pulls the same split-something-into-pieces-and-hide-them-with-death-traps stunt with Maltruant, so I think this is his hobby.

#human au paradox runs an escape room business #the time war is even in a closed-off time loop which is very impressive. i dont even think maltruant knows who paradox is #ben 10 #professor paradox #paradox is eldritch in my mind and you'll never take it away from me #meta #long post

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tedturneriscrazy · 3 years

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Another Saturday, another episode! Let's take a look at Keeping Up A-fear-ances!

(Good lord I'm starting to make myself sound like some sort of content creator)

Oh, okay, we're just starting at that level of intensity, huh?

Chest gem origins

Gwendolyn not being satisfied with managing the curse and determined to cure it? I'm sure this won't be a real world allegory in the slightest.

Oh, so Eda literally just stumbles upon the portal? I could call that contrived, but honestly it's not dissimilar to how Dipper found Journal 3. For that matter, the entirety of Lord of the Rings is predicated on an accidental discovery like this and nobody gave Tolkien shit about it.

Was the eye on the portal cracked in previous episodes? I don't remember.

Seems like Gwen is the "well-meaning but ultimately misguided" flavor of mom.

As an aside, I am now quite curious about how Eda's first trip to the human realm went. Maybe a future episode will cover it? At any rate, I smell a new favorite fic prompt.

The screaming alarms in the Demon Realm will never not be funny to me.

Also, that is a worrying number of hearts. Eda is straight up murdering these poor creatures.

For some reason the gold fang being removable never occurred to me as a possibility, and now I feel like a kid who's discovered that Santa isn't real.

Oh hey, the new outfit! I'm also impressed how close to symmetrical that tearing was.

I need to get a screencap of Luz sleeping on that stack of books because she is adorable.

Also, staying up all night researching? This season seems determined to completely eradicate the notion of Luz being dumb, and I am here for it.

I have a feeling the Hexside mug will be making its way to The Mystery Shack in the near future.

Lilith's first experience with transformation and she seems understandably horrified.

The curse acting stronger when stressed? That seems...important.

Ah, so the dismemberment is from the curse! A surprisingly useful side effect from what we've seen so far.

Can I just say that I appreciate how Eda's reaction to Lilith's first taste of transformation is immediate remedy, explanation, and reassurance? And doesn't make any snarky comments along the lines of "now you know what it's like?" Whatever happened in that week and a half must have been cathartic as hell.

"Always. Always curious." Luz is the TOH fandom.

(Also, Eda, you know she is, considering how much she went on about your "mysterious past" at the Covention)

"Magic bird tornado?!" Luz has a way with words that's just *chef's kiss*.

"Gwendolyn." Eda is already just fucking done.

"MOM?!?!" Jeez, Lilith, you're just now hearing all this?

I was charmed by how motherly Gwen was acting toward Eda, but then she kinda just...dismissed Lilith, and now I'm somehwat less charmed.

(Sweet flea as a term of endearment is kinda cute, though might have some unfortunate implications depending on how you want to interpret it)

"Who knows what they put in those nasty concoctions?" OH WE GOING FOR THE ANTI-VAXXERS NOW YESSSS

Luz and Lilith's reaction to that whole exchange is priceless.

Everyone's perspective here makes perfect sense for who they are and what they've been through.

Poor Lilith. Her cursing Eda is beginning to make more sense.

Ah, thus begins the collaboration.

"We'll be consulting someone very special." Why does that seem so...ominous?

Is there anyone who watched this episode for the first time whose bullshit detector didn't go off immediately when Gwen mentioned finding someone who promised a cure?

Heh, Palm Stings.

Nonbelievers will be blinded by the power of the tome? I'm sure they will be, Wartlop.

I must say, as something of a scientist myself (okay that's not true, I'm a QA tech for a food manufacturer, but I do have a chemistry degree), I am 100% here for the swings being taken at faith healing/"miracle" cures/anti-vaxxers in this episode

Oh, we Wile E. Coyote now, huh?

Also, interesting how much apple blood is being played up in this episode.

Lilith please you're projecting your mommy issues on a literal child

OH WE REALLY JUST WILE E. COYOTE HUH?

You're right, Luz, Gwen's bicep game is goals.

(Somewhat disappointed the scars are from questing and not beastkeeping, but eh)

Why do I get the feeling there's gonna be a future episode where everybody stages an intervention for Eda's apple blood problem?

"Those feathers mean we're driving the beast out" Gwen no

Hooty is holding the brain cell? Oh no...

If that ice cream came from the Night Market it would explain why Lilith sounds drunk.

(Side note: I can't be the only one getting flashbacks to Mermista's ice cream binge, right? Different context, but still)

"Abomi-berry" "Franken fruit" "Key slime pie" These are A+ flavor names.

Oh, there's the transformation...

I must say that whole segment kinda rubbed me the wrong way. The way King's opinion on his dad was changed seemed...I don't know how to describe it. I get that they needed a trigger for Lilith's transformation, but honestly if any part of the episode is contrived it's this.

"¡It really is that good!" So that's what an accent slip in written form looks like. (The upside down exclamation point is used in Spanish, in case anyone didn't know)

I keep half expecting Eda to say "Beep! Beep!" at this point.

Luz is finally asking questions. Took long enough.

Ah, the classic "moving the goal posts to extract more money from a desparate family member" technique.

Luz channeling Scorpion, we love to see it.

There is an exquisite irony in Eda's mom being scammed, I must say.

Ah, so that's where the elixirs went. Dammit, Gwen.

Luz is definitely thinking "Are you fucking kidding me right now?!"

Beast!Lilith is massive.

"Sweet flea?" Gwen just realized she done goofed.

"I can see you still need a little time." God Luz is so fucking smart.

The con revealed.

OH DAMN SCARY MAMA

(Also I am terrified of bees/wasps, so extra scary mama in my book)

The scam is revealed, goblins, getting back into the Wartlop disguise is kinda pointless.

She joined the Beast Keeping coven entirely to cure the curse? That's dedication. A shame you couldn't have spared some of that for Lilith.

Still, I do like badass scary mama Gwen. I'd be down to see more of that.

Owl Beast fight!

I am slayed by the fact that the portraits are now officially a recurring gag 😂

Aw, here's The Moment™️

"My turn to drive" Does this imply cars are a thing on the Boiling Isles after all?

Lilith crying almost immediately💔 She was holding onto a lot of pain.

Yes, King, she was trying to do her best. I mean, road to hell or whatever, but at least Gwen got there in the end.

WHAT?! YOU'RE BREAKING UP LULU AND HOOTCIFER?!?!?!?

Terrace, that's just cruel. (Worthless brownie points for whoever understands that reference)

No, seriously, you can't just give me my favorite inter-character relationship in the series after Lumity and just...take it away like that, come on! 😭😭😭😭😭😭

I know I should remark on how Lilith told Gwen about the circumstances of the curse, how Gwen rightfully accepted responsibility for the whole situation, and how Luz finds the big hair aspirational, but...NOOOO DON'T END THE ADVENTURES OF LULU AND HOOTCIFER WHYYYYYYYYY💔😭💔😭💔😭

"BUT I CAN'T HOLD A PEN!"

I will never emotionally recover from this.

Okay, I think I got that out of my system. Anyway...

Not the only human, huh? Cue the "Belos is a human" theorists going into maximum overdrive.

That said, a tantalizing lore dump.

We certainly do have a lot of garbage. Some of it even holds office. HEY-O!

Setting up the next episode, too. Continuity!

Camp's over, huh? That means it's been three months.

Way to misdirect with Camila, guys. That said, we have now seen Camila cry and I HATE it. (In the right way, I think)

WHAT THE FUCK

HOLY SHIT

CREEPY LUZ IS REAL WHAT

OWJEIWHQGIWWOPQ

(It's hard to keysmash on a phone, even with autocorrect off)

That wraps it up! The flaws in this episode seem more pronounced than any others in the season so far, but the good stuff was really good! Overall a solid episode! I know everybody's looking forward to library Lumity in the next one (so am I), but I'm personally eager to see what they do with Gus. His part is the A plot, after all.

Anyway, I'll be back at this next week! Still hard to believe this is a thing, but that's life, I guess.

#the owl house #eda clawthorne #gwendolyn clawthorne #luz noceda #lilith clawthorne #king of demons #toh king #toh s2 spoilers #the owl house s2 spoilers #the owl house season 2 spoilers #toh spoilers #the owl house spoilers

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arllenn · 3 years

Note

Hey there, I rarely check on Tumblr nowadays due to work and stuff but I've played Dragon Raja for a while now so if it's not too troubling, I would like to request a fic of MC giving Osho and the others a well deserved verbal smack down during the final showdown (the MC didn't blame the Gen siblings for what happened to them and managed to save Erii from Osho). Bonus if MC cut ties from everyone after the mission... Sorry, I'm a huge fan of angst.

Tags for this chapter: angst, violence, all bitter no sweet, respawn system gets abused for angst Tw: cannon typical violence, graphic-ish descriptions of death, blood, suicidal thoughts and almost actions, wounds and the like

You’re clutching yourself as you shake knees getting weaker by the second, hiccuping and heaving the flood of tears that decorates both your face and the street under you with the weight of your emotions are the only constant for you. You’re drowning in your own emotions, phantom pains of all of your recent deaths and revivals clawing at you demanding your attention, demanding your time. You’re hugging yourself trying to mimic the comforting action that you remember from your childhood. “Why isn’t it working.” You choke out sobbing harder as you grip your arms. It’s too tight yet not tight enough, your limbs responding to your pleas is a sign that you’re still alive yes, but, but this is, this isn’t what you want.... this isn’t what you want at all. Your nails are far sharper than you remember them they tore through the flesh of your arms lightly. You could feel Herzog’s claws ripping through your flesh as well, everything hurt, you want to go home, you want to go home, you want to go home.....

But you can’t. Everyone was dead, at one point Caesar had said that Black Swan Bay had sunken, so the actual land was probably gone too, nothing left to remember that place but you Zero and Z. God you wanted to see them right now, the area on your head that he had patted earlier seemed warm giving you a small amount of comfort but also dealing even more damage to your psyche. You wanted to go back to those warm days in your childhood when none of this was known to you. When you weren't running around matchmaking and doing everyone else's work while also getting nothing in return, not a thanks, not even a small indirect amount of appreciation or encouragement. Your legs buckled under you your arms reching out as if to grab onto something to stop you from falling. Your knees met with the ground violently scraping at the skin there. You can't breathe, you can't breathe, youcantbreatheyoucantbreatheyoucantbreatheyoucantbreathe, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, ithurtsithurtsithurtsithurtsithurts, why is he doing this to you didn't he love you? That man, Herzog, had raised you. You had spent so much time at that orphanage, you were so happy. So why. whywhywhywhywhyhwhywhy. You recalled warm winter nights spent in front of the fireplace curled up with Zero on one side and Z on the other.

You remembered one day specifically. Back then you lot were young, so, so, so, young. You chuckled choking on your tears, that day Z and you had spent a solid hour arguing over who would run over to get Zero, that day it had started raining, then the rain had turned to hail mid hide and seek game. Z had found you moments before the storm started. You two ended up huddled under the ice bridge. The orphanage in sight but seeming miles away due to the storm. Zero had been caught first and had gone back to the courtyard as per the rules so she was probably fine. You needed one of you to go and get her so that she could bring back an umbrella for the other. Then you had heard it, the sound of thunder wolves nearby. Then Z, with no hesitation had, scooped you up put your head under one of the flaps or his jacket and ran back to the cottages. All while you could hear the heavy ‘thunk thunk thunk’ of wolf paws behind you. Looking back on it now those wolves were probably the result of Herzog’s experiments and not a naturally occurring species. The souring of your childhood memory made bile rise in your throat, the thought of looking at your early life through that lens rather than just christmas day made you want to scream. Z and Zero were so different from your seniors. If you had been with any of them back then you knew for a fact that they would’ve sent you to deal with the wolves, only coming in when you were a hairs breath away from dying.

But that hadn’t save you before, you can’t count how many times you’ve died sense meeting them. From your flesh being torn from your bones by death servitors to bleeding out in some nameless alleyway after being shot by hydra’s soldiers. You had also drowned at one point, that death had been the worst. You remembered clawing at the water begging for the chance to live once again, you remembered feeling your legs tear off after the submarine had exploded, you remembered reaching your mangled arms out, out, out towards the light that came from the surface of the water. You remember feeling the water force itself down your throat and into your lungs, it burns, it hurts, it burns, it hurts. You had been seeing flashes of reality as well as the last time you ended up in cold waters like those. It didn’t matter because in the end you had died. It never matters how hard you try, how many times you die, because you always end up failing.

You lay on the sidewalk screaming, there was no one nearby nor anything that you could hear other than the pounding of rain on the sidewalk and your own sobbing. Your hand burned with the new blood that flowed inside you. Your mind burned with the scars of the past that it never got to address, your heart burned with the open wounds this mission had left you with. You wanted to die right here, sink away into nothingness. Stay in the room with the grand piano and flowing waters. No one could bother you there, no one could make you do meaningless tasks without your say, there was no matchmaking, no pointless errands, no suicide missions, there was nobody but yourself there, just you, just you. Luminous wouldn’t be there to make you do his work, he wouldn’t be there swearing to be by your side to help you while simultaneously doing nothing at best and dragging you down at worst. There wouldn’t be a Caesar there to send you on every reconnaissance mission with no backup and no direction. Johann wouldn’t be there to demand information on your past like he had even earned the right to know it, like he didn’t need to earn that right because it should just be given to him. Just you in a place where no one could hurt you.

You looked up from the ground that you had been staring at, bringing your hands up to your neck you squeezed. It wouldn’t work in terms of killing you, you knew that, but it worked as an easy substitute, feeling the pressure of your own hands on your neck, the shortness if not complete lack of breath, the light headed feeling, it served as a less drastic solution for now.

“It’s great to see you all safe and sound!” Eva’s voice cut through the momentary peace that you had found, your hands reflexively letting go of your neck.

“Safe and sound?!” You repeated in disbelief, “What part of any of me seems to be safe and sound?” It felt like she was mocking you. The memories of Herzog’s claws slicing through your spine, through every part of you, flashed then the words ‘It’s great to see you all safe and sound!’ Played over them, those words were the last thing you wanted to hear right now. Why,why,why,why,why is your pain always ignored like this? Why is it always your job to make everything right? You can’t do this anymore! You won’t do this anymore.

Bringing your fist up you smashed at your communicator, “Cassell- will...turn th-this into- into no-nothing more th-th-th-then a dream for every- every- everyone” Eva’s voice though distorted still managed to snake its way out of the thing despite all the damage you had done to it.

"AGH, SHUT UP!" You yell slamming your fist down harder and harder, each time screaming, begging for her to "JUST SHUT UP" You're crying even harder now. The glass that made up the outer layer of the screen. The rest of her words came out broken and jumbled, and even if they hadn't been due to the damage your screaming and shouting would've drowned it out anyways. "STOP. TALKING. JUST. SHUT. UP."

"Caesar helping you to-to-to destroy- criminal underworld.... true story- believe." Your fist paused midair at those words. Caesar had helped to destroy the criminal underworld? That was the story that they were going with? Not even the whole team, just Caesar what kind of absolute bullshit was that. You had done 100 times more then the supposed hero of the story, hell Luminous had done more, fucking Erii had done more. So where did they get off on this- this- you didn't even have a word for it it was so stupid, so stupidly infuriating. Herzog had said that the people from Cassell had experimented on you, and while he wasn't one to be trusted you sure do feel so fucking dumb for defending them. At least Herzog had the common decency to put up an air of kindness. These people just treated you like a convenient tool, something to be used and dealt with as they pleased. Something that didn't need thanks or praise or a break because it was an object meant to be used and thrown away as they saw fit. "Re-re-re-return to takamagahara to say-say-say-say-saysay goodbye-bye-bye to-" Your fist swung down with overwhelming strength shattering the communicator completely. Broken pieces of metal and glass embedded themselves in your hand bringing a fiery pain that slowly destroyed all of you in its wake. You fell even further onto the concrete clutching your hands one in the other relishing a bit sickly in the pain that it brought. Your right palm glowed with the same light it first had when you had accepted Erii's blood. Then it started rejecting the pieces of metal and glass in both of your hands. Slowly pushing them out and healing the cuts instantly once they were out.

Chuckling you flipped over your hands looking at both perfectly healed sides. It was like you had never been hurt in the first place. You marvled at them, twisting them over and over again, bringing them to your neck once again you smiled and closed your eyes. You had no idea what you were. Had you always been like this? An undying freak with special powers? Had Herzog's experiments done this to you? It was obvious that your new healing ability came from Erii's and the light king's combined blood but what about everything else? Had you been born this way? Was it Herzog's half baked evolution pills? Had Cassell truly experimented on you? Z said you had the capability to become a dragon lord now, but what did that mean? What did that make you? Your chuckles turned into full of peels of laughter, your cheeks stinging at the feeling of both the semi dried tear tracks being pulled at as well as the force of your laughter. The peels of laughter soon mixed with pained sobs and you were once again back to crying. You weren't going to put up with this anymore. Dropping your hands you slowly stood up like a puppet on strings. Walking at a slow pace one second in between each step you started walking.

----------------

Anjou is in one of the VIP rooms with a man dressed like a pastor. You don't care what they're talking about, stepping in front of the pastor you look over at him. He takes steps back on his own, unprompted, it's a first but then again you suppose that you probably look like the walking dead, and in a way you were, not to mention that you also felt like it. A lukewarm apathetic haze settled over your emotions as you looked down at Anjou. He's the second person you met after waking up, he's the whole reason you, a freshman at his wacky school that you hadn't even been asked if you wanted to join, were on this mission. How stupid is he? He had sent you, a person who had what he described as 'little control' over your extra skill and who had just woken up after a freeze bath in Siberia on this mission, an SS ranked one that he was hesitant to even send his best students on already. So why had he chosen you? Why did you have to die over and over for a cause you didn't understand and people you don't know. "Freshman." he nodded as though prompting you to speak. He never broke eye contact or even showed any emotions other than a laid back and relaxed expression. It pisses you off. Why is this old dingbat relaxing, kicking back and enjoying his time while your'e such a mess? He gestures for the priest to leave and he does. Leaning forward elbows on his knees he looks you up and down before going back to making eye contact. "What has you so worked up?"

You want to cry, its the closest you've gotten to an 'are you ok' sense waking up but at the same time you wanted no part of a wellness check led by the man in front of you. "Herzog said that Cassell College experimented on me. Is that true?" You can almost make out a hint of surprise in his eyes before he starts laughing. You bight your lips pulling them into your mouth in a desperate attempt to hold back your anger wanting to get your answer first before you rip him a new one.

"Goodness no, why would you ever believe anything that old snake had to say, and here I thought you were a once in a decade genius. I suppose that title still belongs to Johann then." You ball your hands into fists. Its more than obvious that he's making light of the situation. Didn't he know that you had been raised in Black Swan Bay? Didn't he know that Herzog, a man who you had trusted, had experimented on you? Is he incapable of connecting the dots between your trauma and your current situation combined with Herzog's words? No he did know, he knew and he still chose to make light of everything you had gone through. Insinuating if not blatantly saying that you were an idiot for believing that what happened to you once could happen again. Slamming your hand down on the table you levied on him the worst glare you could, the burning behind your eyes letting you know that you probably looked less menacing then you wanted to.

"Where the fuck do you get off saying something like that to me." It's phrased as a question but its really not. It's a challenge for Anjou to defend his words, one he unfortunately takes you up on.

"I understand that this whole mission and especially today has been taxing on your team but that doesn't mean you should and can snap at everyone like that freshman. Take sometime to cool off, go outside and talk to your seniors, hopefully they'll be able to reach you in ways I cannot." He's getting up to leave after his mini lecture, essentially passing you off to be someone else's problem but you wont let him leave that easily. Your hand grabs onto his forearm stopping him in his tracks. For a millisecond you consider punching him. Beating him over the head with one of the glasses on the table, but the part of your brain that still, despite everything, says that you ca't do that to him because he had pulled you out of Siberia's ice who knows how long ago says not to. And it wins.

"I'm not going to apologize for my language-" He cuts you off with a tut of his tongue, now you have no regrets for the words you planned on saying next. Letting go of his arm you continued. "I'm entitled to be angry when an asshole says asshole things. And I'm allowed to curse said asshole out however much I want." You step in front of the exit crossing your arms, you catch a momentary glimpse of your face in one of the metal outlinings of the wall as you do. You truly do look dead, eyes lifeless and lightless, face twisted into a painfully weak version of the you that you wanted to portray. You know that in this position you run the risk of your conversation leaking out of the room but honestly you don't care, like at all. At this point you want to just scream and cry your emotions out. But you can't because you don't want to, you don't want to be any weaker in front of anyone than you already are.

"Freshman-"

"I was raised by Dr. Herzog for so so many years and the whole time he was experimenting on me and everyone I knew. And-and-and you expect me to just trust you when you say that you didn't do anything. You expect me to rule that out as a possibility when you've given me no reason to, not in terms of character or proof. So why would you say that me believing that random strangers who I've known for less then a month and who I, if I'm being honest don't trust, experimenting on me is a dumb fear?" You clutch at your heart bunching up the cloth that protects it. "I just- do you see why thats dumb? Do you see why it makes no sense to me? One day I'm celebrating christmas as normal with my friends the next minute I'm smacked in the face with the fact that the man that I considered a father," you gag a bit on the word, "has been experimenting on me and everyone that I love, that he's been killing all of us as soon as we turn 18 because we wont survive to 22 because of his experiments? Finding out that he thought of us, children he had been raising for years as nothing more then science experiments who had outlived their uses. Do you have any idea how much that fucking hurt? I had to watch everyone die around me while I wasn't able to do anything! Zero even sacrificed her life to save me and I still ended up dying so many times anyways." You're clutching at yourself again, seeking comfort in the only arms that you can trust right now, your own. You're glaring down at the floor trying to blink the tears away. It doesn't work. You're basically two steps away from dry heaving and sobbing. Anjou reaches out his hand, most likely to guide you to sit down but you slap it away. "Don't fucking touch me. You sent me, a freshman who hadn't really even enrolled in your school or been given the choice to do so on a suicide mission with other students and no adult supervision from the college itself. I've died so many times sense waking up. It always hurts, it's never been painless, I've never been thanked and yet you expect me to just what- put my blind trust into you? I spent more time around Chime then I did you and he spent half of the time as Ruri Kazama."

'"Freshman you're hyperventilating you need to calm down."

"I WONT CALM DOWN" You're yelling now, its not the same kind of painful shouting that you had done earlier on the street, this is loud as well yes, but its from a frustrated sadness rather than a devastated anger. "Why did it have to be me? Weren't there other students you could've sent? Adults? Why did it have to be me? You had no reason to trust that I wouldn't kill the others. I had justwoken up and you decided that I was your best choice? You didn't tell me anything you just threw terms out and expected me to understand. You didn't even give me time alone to breathe let alone ask questions." Your chest is tight, you can feel each of your deaths, piercing pain of claws slicing through flesh, the burning heat of bullets, the singeing of fire, being torn to pieces. You can feel it all and it all hurts so much. You want it to stop, you need it to stop. You don't want to hear these people talk like they're your friends like they care anymore. It's all too much, you're almost sobbing now, curling in on yourself to try and mitigate any pain that may come.

"Newbie whats-"

You turn eyes catching onto Caesar, Johann, Luminous and Finger standing behind you. When did they get here, how much did they hear. It burns and it burns devouring everything in sight. All the memories that you have with them that you've been trying to view in a happy light, all of them crumble to the ground in front of you the moment you see them. "SHUT UP, USE MY NAME FOR ONCE WILL YOU?! NEWBIE DO THIS, FRESHMAN DO THAT, YOU HAVE NEVER EVEN ONCE USED MY NAME!" Full on sobbing you bulldoze through every thought that comes to mind yelling them out at the people surrounding you. "YOU'VE NEVER ONCE ASKED ME IF I WAS OK. YOU;VE NEVER ONCE SENT ANYONE WITH ME WHEN YOU SEND ME ON THOSE STUPID SUICIDE MISSIONS. I'M A FRESHMAN A NEWBIE YOU HAD NO REASON TO TRUST ME WITH ANY OF THIS. WHAT WOU;LD'VE HAPPENED IF I HAD DIED AND STAYED DEAD? WHAT WOULD'VE HAPPENED IF I HAD BEEN CAPTURED? WHAT THEN?" You clutch onto yourself harder, seeking even the smallest bit of comfort from the feeling. Your voice has lowered in volume, you no longer have the emotional or physical strength to do anything other than keep your voice above a whisper. "Do you lot remember when Ruri had specifically said that even two of us couldn't handle Herzog alone? And yet you still thought that it would be a good idea to send me up alone, acting like you were tough for taking care of the death servitors at the entrance." You sigh, there are so many other examples you could go through but you also don't want to be here any longer. "What about you Luminous? I get that you had to watch Erii, but making me do everything and anything you could think of by myself while knowing that Johann and Caesar were constantly sending me on missions as well? You even complained that I took too long to do things. Maybe if you did something for yourself for once instead of just saying that you will then running away and hiding like a coward these things wouldn't happen. Maybe then Erii, Chisei and Chime would still be alive and I wouldn't have to deal with- with this fucking guilt!"

"Look I'm sorry about the Erii thing but listen, we had no idea you were feeling like this. You should've come to us-" Finger is trying to mediate, trying to comfort you, but it only makes things worse.

"And how could I have," You croak out, "How could I have trusted that you would listen, that I would get a break? You never even presented the option for me to have any kind of choice in how I carried out my missions let alone not do them at all. I had nothing I still have nothing. I'm presumed dead at best and no longer exist at worst in terms of my original legal documents. And even if I had access to them I'm still 20 years younger then I'm supposed to be." With a watery chuckle you continue, "Even if I did tell you if I was thrown away I wouldn't have any papers to do anything, to get a job, to live a life, I'm completely reliant on the college for everything. Not to mention the fact that I know nothing about the world. If Cassell had deemed me" You shudder at the word "a failure, then I would've had nothing, not information on the world at current, not even an identity." You shake your head walking in between them and towards the exit. "I don't care I'm not doing this anymore. Find some other freshman to be you dog."

You walked out and onto the streets of Tokyo. You glanced back once lamenting the fact that you hadn't gotten to say goodbye to Zero. You turned away glancing in the direction of the convenience store that Luminous would always make you go to to buy Erii's milk. You trudged down the streets of Tokyo back to that place. Hopefully you can buy paper and a pen to leave her a note with what little money you have.

The bell on the store door jingled when you opened it. The man was standing behind the counter as he always was. You're experience with father figures have been lack luster this far but you've always thought that this man gave off the air of one. It made you relax, seeing someone that while familiar wasn't from the orphanage or Cassell. He looked up at you wearing that same smile that he always did. You knew it wasn't for you specifically but rather something that he probably gave all of his costumers but still it made you feel a bit warm inside.

"Hey kiddo you look a bit rough, everything ok?" You take a few steps forward and nod a bit

"I think it will be now. Or at least I hope so." He hums and nods his head at your answer deciding not to pry, a decision you appreciate.

"So then you here for the usual?" You look back at him and glance around the store, you don't see paper or pens of any sort. It's a bit of a let down but you suppose asking wouldn't hurt.

"Ah no actually," Your voice is still raw, and a bit choked up from all the crying and yelling that you did earlier, you hope you don't sound weird." "Do you sell like, um... paper and pens or something like that? I want to write a note to a friend before I leave."

He scratches at his chin mumbling under his breath as he thinks for a few seconds before getting up and going around the store coming back with a bottle of warm milk in hand. He then returns to his spot behind the counter pulling a note pad and pen out from under it. He places the milk next to the writing utensils and pushes them towards you. "Here, milks on the house, I don't sell paper or anything but feel free to use that and leave the note with me. I'll give it to your friend."

You give him a small smile. It's all that you can manage right now. Your eyes burn with tears again. "Thanks, my friends name is Zero she's blonde has blue eyes and is about," you place your hand were Zero's head is about as accurately as you can, "This tall. She has a flat affect and seems kinda emotionless but she really is a sweet girl. Um, her hairs long and she has a big black bow tying it back." The man nods his head repeating your description back to you. After gaining conformation he sticks his thumb up and takes the letter from you promising to hand it to her the moment she walks through the doors of his shop. You thank him one last time and promise to come back there if you're ever in trouble before leaving.

As you walk through Tokyo's streets aimlessly, you repeat the words in your letter, speaking them into the rain. "I hope that we can meet again in a more peaceful time, preferably away from the bay and Cassell as I don't have the best impression of them. With lots of love, your best friend..." You laugh a bit, your words were supposed to be a parody of what Z said to you. You think its fitting for a farewell letter.

You meld into the raindrops after looking back one last time.

#me when respawn #dragon raja #dragon raja mc #caesar gattuso #johann chu #luminous lu #finger von frings #fanfic #writing #major character death #but they dont stay dead #its just alluded to #angst #hurt no comfort

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anythingforakutagawa · 3 years

Text

Hollow words (Dazai x reader ⛈Angst⛈)

Dazai x reader ⛈angst⛈ 🚨spoilers for season 2 "Dark Era"🚨 ⚠mention of violence⚠

Life at the Port Mafia wasn't easy. In fact it was hell constant death, suffering, becoming everything you sworn you'd never be. Watching people lose them self and give in into the darkness.

All this at the mere age of 18. You've seen and caused countless, and pointless bloodshed. Taken with out reasoning innocent life's. And each day it was as if you where falling deeper and deeper into this life. An endless cycle of greed and power overrun with violence. You didn't defy the port mafia orders, because at this point you've grown custom to this thing you called life but, it did make you feel this almost unbearable feeling of cold you couldn't shake off. You didn't exactly desire death, but you also didn't see any value in living a life the way you do.

That was until you met him. A boy with the same pains as you. You could tell instantly through his bright yet lifeless brown eyes. But he radiated that warmth you have been seeking for as long as can remember. He shined a bright light over what your thought was never ending darkness with his cheerful and carefree nature.

You once heard one of your superiors say "When the lights too bright, you'll get burned."

But you knew it was all an act, you knew all too well all the bright smiles, carless touches, and words were an act to cover the monster waiting to break free at any given moment. Everyone in the Port Mafia was the same.

No matter what

Soft smile creped on your face when you enter Bar Lupins. You took your usual seat, right next to Dazai.

"Hey there Y/n!" Dazai said with his usual go happy tone while playing with the sphere shaped ice floating about his drink.

"Hey Dazai" you replied softly in-between ordering your usual drink you grown accustom from coming to the bar on regular bases to hang out with Oda, Ango, and Dazai.

Dazai whined while wrapping his arms around you, the warmth and affection you longed for but wasn't genuine, after all Dazai's blood was Port Mafia black, he wasn't a executive at the age of 18 for no reason.

You knew this.

You've seen it with your own eyes.

His heart can't feel love or produce it. At least that's what you believed, you even applied it to yourself. You and Dazai were just attempting to fill the emptiness you felt. Nothing else.

But you couldn't tear your self away from his embrace, it's was like a drug that couldn't temporary ease all the

So soft, so warm

"Awee, Bella donna. Dazai? What happen to Osamu?" Your ran your finger's delicately through his brown locks.

"Ah, sorry Osamu. Where are Ango and Oda today anyway?"

You corrected yourself before taking a small sip of your drink and settling it down where it once was. Dazai propped his elbow on the table and rested his cheek on the palm of his hand while giving you that signature shut eyes smiled.

"There not gonna come, I wanted time to myself with my lady love. You know tomorrow isn't guaranteed for us. so I want to makes the most of every chance I can get my hands on"

He was right, you were aware of either can die or get killed at any time. You just didn't like taking noticing because it felt so much better to cover up and ignore what you didn't like.

"Hey, Osamu, can you promise me something?"

He can hear the hint of uneasiness in your voice. He knew better to point it out and make a deal out of it.

"Of course! What ever it is i swear with on my life to keep that promise."

"Do you promise to never leave? You'll stay right?"

He laughs to hid any trace of pain in his voice "You know I can't do that, after all death is what I desire most in this world! How about, instead we compromise. As long as I'm alive, I'll stay"

You stood up and walked towards the door. He knew his words hurt, but he couldn't bring himself to give you false hope. Right before you reached the door knob you turn around and smiled at him , a soft, grateful, yet sad smile

"That's good enough for me. Good night Osamu"

You knew a person was truly honest with themselves when panic was brought among them. Of course you knew this based of other experiences, never yourself.

Until now.

You felt your stomach drop when you heard the news.

Sakunosuke Oda was dead.

Killed by Gide leader of the Mimic. The current case Oda and Dazai where on. You didn't know much but you knew where it all took down.

A million thoughts run through your head while getting to the Mimic head quarters.

Where was he now? Is he okay? Was he with Oda? Where is Oda now? Where they even still there?

You stopped your tracks when you saw the familiar figure walking in the rain you didn't notice until now.

"Osamu!" You called out while starting to run towards him as he turned around.

His bandages where gone. Both eyes uncovered. The sight was so, usual it caused you to stop all movement.

"Osamu?"

You managed above a whisper, he turned around and kept walking away. Then it hit you,

he was leaving

That's when you felt it.

That over whelming panic you seen so often that made you realizes

you loved him.

Your whole body began to shake uncontrollably, the only impulse you had was to chase after him. Your breath began to hitch, your legs didn't work like before, the rain caused you to trip countless times until you finally reached him. and threw your self at his presoaked shirt and gripping on to it with all the might you had left.

"Please, dont go, stay..."

"..."

"You promised Osamu! You said you'd stay as long as you were alive, remember?" You choked out through the sobs, in hopes, just maybe, he'll stay with you, even if its just a little longer.

Your heart beat increased when you felt familiar hands come in contact with yours.

To pull yours away.

"Sorry that all I gave you was false hope, hallow words, and leaving more empty than before. Good bye Y/n."

"W-why? Where are you going?" You tried to keep yourself composed but it was impossible, it was all too much.

"To the good side." he said with the gentlest voice he could manage. He once again started walking away from you. Dammit you should just stop, but

You took hold of his wrist and pled one last time

"Wait, you don't have to stay, I can go, I'll go with you to the good side. I, I, love you Osamu"

He harshly pulled away his wrist away and glared at you, a glare you never seen direct towards any one but people he repent.

"Can't you see? I could always tell what you thought. You never beloved that I actually loved you. You don't think am capable of loving. We just tried to fill that emptiness we both felt. And you were right."

Lies

He was lying. He loved you, more than anything. This is why he's doing this. You were the one good thing he had. You gave him a reason to live. No matter how dark and lost he was you always were the light that guide him. You filled that empty feeling that would always follow him since you first met.

It wont take long for the Mafia to find out about his betrayal. They'll surely come after his head soon after. If you came along, the same fate would await for you. It hurts, it hurts so bad to leave you. But he loved you too risk you in any way. This is something he had to do. There was no way around.

There was so much he yet wanted to say to you. He wanted to thank you, for everything. For loving him, for caring about him, for easing all the pain he held on to for so long. For being so kind to him. But now it was time to go. He won't hurt you anymore, isn't would be fair to hurt you more, after you were so good to him.

Your body finally give in, you fell on your knees. You wouldn't of thought after all your time in the Mafia, you consider a heart break the most painful thing that's happen to you. Such an agonizing feeling it made you body tremble, cold sweat run down your face along with an endless flow of tears from your eyes brimmed bright red. You felt your throat closing until it was from the hoarse yells you let out. This feeling of heartbreak was agonizing to the point you'd wish you could end it along with yourself. You didn't think think you'll ever be okay after this, you felt so shattered, beyond any repair

Maybe, if you hadn't realize too late, things could of been different, just maybe.

"The light was to bright wasn't it?"

You stared at Kouyou, your superior

"So bright, it burned till nothing was left. But then it went out just like everything it burned, reduced to nothing."

"You heard Kyouka, if you seek the light, you'll end up like her"

You stared at Kyouka, the same eyes as you, Osamu, and same as his subordinate, Akutagawa. All you could hope is they're never shown the light or filled with hope by empty promises and hollow words.

#bungou stray dog #bungou stray dogs #bungou gay dogs #bungo stray dogs chuuya #dazai x y/n #dazai #dazai oneshot #dazai osamu #dazai x #dazai angst #dazai fluff

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california-raccoon · 3 years

Text

eye’s on the sparrow

He just stares at her, like he’d been wishing for his mom but she appeared instead. This belief - in wishing, in divine intervention, in fate - is probably the reason why he chooses to believe in her. BLEACH / AU / ICHIRUKI • [← PART 1 ○ PART 2: A study of Rukia Kuchiki]

III.

Of all the things Rukia considers herself as, fortunate is not one of them. Though the echoes of fortune haunt everything she sees and touches, she considers she’d rather do without it all. When she looks in the mirror, she recognizes herself, but it’s in a vague way. She knows what she looks like, but she doesn’t actually know who she is.

It isn’t that she’s ungrateful for what she has.

Her parents love her as much as any daughter; her childhood with them is filled with memories of picnics in the park, trips to museums… the annual cherry blossom festival where she’d walk down the rows of trees, warmth on her face and always two hands to hold.

They have always been kind, giving, and extremely passionate about their work. It seeps into her blood, as if they were related, to work twice as hard, to shine twice as bright. Rukia wears her last name like a medal she’s won and lets it define her completely.

Her father is her pride. He works tirelessly at the Kuchiki enterprises, recently inheriting the company from their now-retired Uncle. She learns importance of proper etiquette and strategy from him. Her mother is her heart, working at a non-profit that finds shelter for the homeless. Rukia used to ask her why she worked, not really in need of anything given their status, but her mom just ruffles her hair, and tells her there’s more to life than money. Rukia understands, because what else had she ever wanted besides the two of them?

Adjusting the hem on her black dress with a tug, she takes one last look at herself before leaving her room.

She is thirteen when she attends her mother’s funeral.

Her mother looks asleep in the coffin, make-up caked on, her giving her an artificial glow like she’s just sleeping. Rukia thinks it’s a pointless gesture, but she appreciates it anyway. She’d like the last look of Hisana not to be the pale image she used to visit in the hospital to say goodbye. The cancer came quickly, too late when they found out. They’ve already been grieving for months.

The event is small and intimate, mostly filled with family and friends. Her grandparents and cousins hug her and keep her soft, reminding her of everything her mother was. When they share their stories of Hisana, they reveal sides of her mother that she’d never known: when she and her friends got lost traveling around Japan during their last high school summer, her first big win gaining a successful client at the office, one of her first dates with Byakuya retold by her best friend. She was adventurous, determined and loved fiercely, they say; she will be missed. Rukia cries. It’s the first time she’s cried since she’d been adopted.

Her dad takes it the worst. After the funeral he floats around like his gravity’s been taken from him, no longer tethered to Earth. To counter this, he chains himself to his desk, focusing on his work to keep himself grounded. She comes home from school to an empty house.

If this is the cost of having a family, Rukia thinks, she isn’t sure it was worth the price. The loss she feels in her chest is too heavy; six years of happiness ending so abruptly that no fortunate person could ever experience.

So Rukia lets herself float. She skips classes and spends the day in arcades, in parks, talking to homeless people and stalking cats.

It takes her back to another time, hazy infinite summers sneaking out of the orphanage and playing by the river. It gives her the idea.

On a fair winter morning, Rukia takes a train to Karakura. The ride itself doesn’t take too long, and she hides her school uniform with her coat so as not to seem suspicious.

Walking around the streets, the town is quiet and serene. It feels like a dream. The buildings don’t seem as tall as they used to, the distance of things having shrunk between her steps. The river flows beside her at a constant ebb that floods her with nostalgia.

When she reaches the hill, she takes a moment to take it all in. Overgrown foliage and forest trees surround the Torii, weathered and dulled by time. It welcomes her like the arms of the birth mother she never met, but she ignores them in favor of the off-beaten path to the side of it, leading to the gate of a traditional-style house.

The laughter she hears from the children stops her cold on her feet. Rukia hides behind the gate and stands there, watching. The boys are running, all pranks and belly laughs with one another and the girls are gathering the toys to fight back at them. They were playing house when the boys had usurped the game with a declaration of war. There’s one kid, a little too scrawny and too short, who joins in the fight anyway, scrappy and unwavering.

She watches till she realizes her cheeks are wet, tears coming undone at the sight of it all, guilty for everything she’s built up in her head. These kids are tenacious, hoping for a better life that’s out of their control as foolhardy as it is. She was once that child, until fortune smiled upon her and gave her everything she wanted. Who was she to refuse it now when it was all she had asked for?

Rukia’s family may be broken, but it doesn’t mean she can’t try to mend what she has, to be grateful. Her mother was everything to her - to them - and she doesn’t regret anything about her life with her. She thinks of her mother, her ferocity for living, and keeps the spirit close to her heart.

Stepping away from the orphanage, she walks back to the station with renewed energy. The town itself seems to come alive with her. It’s the late afternoon and there are kids playing by the river, others biking past her in their school uniforms.

She deep in thought when a glint of orange across the street that catches her eye. She knows him, she realizes. He looks a little menacing, with a crinkle between his brows and a frown that’s permanently taken residence on his face. The look doesn’t suit him, too angry for someone so young. She doesn’t think she’d recognize him if it wasn’t for his hair. It has to be him though, right?

Rukia thinks she should say something. Hey. Hi. It’s been too long. Didn’t we used to write to each other? …it’s been years. Do you even remember me? The thoughts spill into her head all at once and jumble into a pit in her stomach.

What should she say? What would he think?

She stops walking and settles for a polite wave and a firm “Hello” deciding not to yell across the street. Panic calcifies in her chest when she can’t remember his name.

In the end, he doesn’t notice her. He’s got his earbuds on and when he’s closer she swears she can hear him humming a fast tune. They cross each other on the street with little fanfare.

The moment it’s over, Rukia just laughs, the sound foreign as it escapes her lips. She thinks herself silly for even trying.

Rukia’s mind wanders as she watches the landscape from the train windows morph from open fields back to the compact buildings she’s familiar with. She wonders what happened to him. She wonders if she’s changed as much as him.

Back home, she cooks a dinner big enough for two and waits for her dad to come home. He finally arrives two hours past his usual office hours. If he’s shocked by her gesture, its marginally expressed. The stovetop ticks to a lively fire as she reheats the food while he hangs his coat in the foyer. She’s laid the dishes out onto the table into a traditional setting she knows he’d appreciate.

“We can’t do this to her,” Rukia breaks the silence during the meal, fire in her words. “She would hate what you’ve become.”

“She’d hate what you’ve become too, skipping classes all the time.” He responds with ice, eyes low. “Don’t think I didn’t know. Your school’s called me every day this week.”

“You’re right and I’m sorry, but—” She grimaces, gesturing a slight bow to apologize.

“It’s hard to lose someone, isn’t it?” He says softly. “I don’t blame you for taking some time for yourself, but tell me next time… I know your mom usually handled these sort of things better, but…”

Rukia’s eyes are wide, her heart gutted at seeing her dad this way.

“I’ll make a deal with you. No more skipping classes but you have to come home for dinner.”

“I can’t help the office has been busy lately—“

“No excuses.” Rukia interrupts, strengthening her resolve, but her voice cracks. “I hate coming home to this empty house every day.”

There’s no response from him then, but his brows lift slightly in an expression she’s not used to.

“I visited the orphanage today.” Rukia says, the implication unfolding before him. She looks at him and his brows are still raised. “I just - I just wanted to see… to remember that time. I’m grateful for everything you’ve both done and given me, but.”

She takes a breath. There’s no fire in her now, just the calmness of knowing. “I forgot what it was like. Not to have parents. Or anyone. I don’t want to lose it again.”

The chopsticks clink against the porcelain of her dad’s bowl as he puts it down. He looks at her with a warmth that she’s never seen from him.

“I’m sorry… You have a deal.”

They don’t shake on the agreement and neither really speak much after the talk, but she feels the shift in him after dinner. Over the weekend they buy a frame and candles and set up a shrine by the dinner table. They buy flowers every week for Hisana. It’s not a lot, but they’re trying, and it’s enough.

Still, sometimes, she’ll take a train every once in a while back to Karakura.

#ichiruki #ca-r-makes #am i officially a fanfic author when i have a fic that i will never finish

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lyssismagical · 4 years

Note

Could you write a prompt for Peter having a bad mental health day and Tony being there for him?

Peter doesn’t have bad days frequently. Not anymore, at least. Spider-Man has been the greatest outlet for all the dark clouds, and he rarely ever has the time to think, let alone fall into the bad.

If he doesn’t think too much, the thoughts, the bad thoughts, don’t have the time to chance to prey. They don’t have the chance to dig their claws into his chest and drag him down.

So when winter hits, worse than it normally does, and his heater breaks after he takes a tumble into the river again, Tony forbids him from patrolling for a week.

A week over winter break, without homework or Spider-Man. He can’t even use Ned as a distraction because he takes a vacation to Hawaii with his family every winter break. Even MJ, who’s notoriously unoccupied, always prepared to stitch Peter up whenever he shows up on her fire escape, even she’s busy. Her dad took her on a road trip to Florida to get away from the nasty New York snow.

And as though the universe doesn’t hate him enough, May offered to take up a bunch of shifts at the hospital to give her coworkers some time off over winter break. Meaning Peter’s at Tony’s for the whole week with just his thoughts to keep him company.

So when Tony slips into his room at nearly two in the afternoon, he’s really not surprised to find the heaviness that curls around his chest has returned, the ache behind his eyes has returned, and his throat feels clogged with apologies for ending up back here, back in this dark pit he sometimes stumbles into.

“Hey, kiddo. Friday told me you were up and I kinda figured this was some sort of teenager thing to stay in bed until the afternoon, but I was a little worried when you didn’t come down for any lab time,” Tony explains as he sits down on the edge of Peter’s bed.

Every ounce of effort has disappeared, lost somewhere in the wreckage left behind. The silence that creeps along makes the apologies swell in his throat, threatening to spill out in a mess of uncertainty and fear, he’s sure he’d be apologizing for the wrong things anyways.

“You okay?” Tony asks. He leans down to gently brush a curl off Peter’s forehead, touch careful but warm and easy. “You being quiet is never a good thing in my books.”

“I’m sorry,” Peter says. There’s a lot to be sorry for. “I’m really sorry.”

He wants to apologize for everything. Everything from the time he spilt ice cream on his mom’s pretty yellow dress to Ben’s death to failing Tony time and time again to now for not being enough.

None of that comes out. Instead, he just stares, listless and unfocused, at the wall behind Tony. It’s still grey, not having been painted a nicer color since it changed from a guest room to Peter’s room. There’s an old Iron Man poster thumbtacked to the wall, corners curling in and color fading.

Peter thinks about how he’s just like that poster, curling into himself and fading.

“What’s going on, kid? You’re not hiding any injuries from me, are you?”

Peter wonders if that would be better. If injuries, if making the internal pain external, if turning the invisible visible, if that would be better, if that would change the outcomes.

He shakes his head anyways because he can’t really feel, let alone hurt.

This, though, makes Tony’s shoulders droop a little bit, a quiet hum escaping him like this is worse.

“Bad day?” Tony guesses.

It’s like a secret code.

He remembers Ben saying that after Peter’s parents died. Ben used to lie on the couch somedays, unkempt and tired more than anything. May would brush back his hair, plant a kiss on his forehead like she had the magic touch of true love that would fix Ben up, and she’d ask Bad Day?

Peter picked it up, he supposes, because he used to do the same to May after Ben died. He was too young to carry the weight on his shoulders, but May was too tired to do it, so he wasn’t given a choice. He went out as Spider-Man and he did his homework, he’d buy takeout and do the chores, he even learned how to do the laundry to keep the weight off May’s back.

When he’d get home to find her curled up on their old couch, quilt tucked around her shoulders, and old gameshow reruns muted on the TV, he’d brush back her hair, plant a kiss on her forehead, and ask Bad Day?

Tony, on the other hand, doesn’t kiss his forehead. Peter’s too old to believe in the magic of true love’s kiss with its capabilities to fix anything, anyway.

“Yeah.” Peter’s voice is hoarse and scratchy when it comes out, and he wants to draw the word back in as soon as it’s in the air. He’s used to lying when it comes to questions like that, used to bearing the weight on his shoulders, used to asking the question not answering.

“Oh, buddy.”

Tony manages to sound sadder now than he did a few nights before when he’d fished Peter out of the Hudson.

“I’m sorry,” Peter repeats, a broken record of apologies.

Tony shakes his head, slipping into the space beside Peter, laying down with their sides touching from their shoulders to their knees.

This changes everything. It throws the entire universe of sorry’s and bad day’s and repetition offbeat. Instead of forcing him out of his safe haven, Tony’s simply joining him.

It’s not about trying to drag him out of the dark pit he’s dropped into, it’s just keeping him company in his misery.

“You wanna talk about it?” Tony says eventually, after the silence has settled and time had started to blur.

Peter blinks a few times, slowly and pointlessly, like he used to do back when he still needed glasses and wasn’t wearing them. Tony nudges him in the ribs a little bit when Peter takes too long to answer.

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Anything you want. Pepper always got me to talk about it, there was always something, you know? Once it’s off your chest, it’s easier to deal with.”

There’s so many things Peter could say, so many admissions, so many apologies. His mouth stays shut, though. There’s so many, but none of them are the right ones to pick.

On one hand, nothing causes these days, there’s no reason for Peter to have fallen again, but, on the other hand, it could easily be argued that it’s the buildup of everything that’s caused it.

Either way, words aren’t particularly easy.

“Thank you,” Peter says because it’s the last coherent thought he’s had, the only thing that bounces around his head amongst the sea of apologies. “For- For being here, for doing this. I, uh, I’m sorry.”

Tony, instead of answering or trying any of the pointless pep talks or attempting words of comfort, he takes Peter’s hand in his.

Eventually, Tony will drag Peter out of bed. They’ll go to a nearby all-day breakfast place in their pajamas at four in the afternoon. Tony will tell the corniest dad jokes he can come up and Peter will eat all the pancakes he can, movements becoming less mechanical and more subconscious, eyes sparking with light. By the time they get home, it might as well be dinnertime, but Tony puts on Lilo and Stitch instead and digs some ice cream out of the freezer, Blue Raspberry Spider-Man with his signature red and blue colors, and they’ll curl up on the couch together. Peter will talk about all the whys and they’ll properly make an attempt to fix all of it.

For now, though, it’s enough for Tony to run his thumb over Peter’s knuckles and for Peter to let his head fall onto Tony’s shoulder.

It’s enough to lay side by side in Peter’s safe haven until he’s ready to face getting up.

It’s enough to simply have company in his misery.

Taglist: @littlemissagrafina @spideygirl2003 @romeoandjulietyouwish @c-artara @shadedrose01 @likeaphoenix13 @pj-hermes-tonystark-obsessed @you-get-killed-walk-it-off @kitkatwinchester @emo-girl10

#lyss answers #lyss writes #this is kinda messy but i'm writing with a migraine at 5am so??#oops can you tell this is a vent fic #unrelated but my eye has been twitching for nearly three months and im losing my mind please #irondad #irondad fic #Irondad and Spiderson #spiderson #tony stark #peter parker #irondad fanfiction

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doorsclosingslowly · 3 years

Text

Hell is just a beat away (2/9): Keen to show you the unhappy ones below you

Despite early promise, young Maul has turned out to be a disappointment, willfully delaying his training with secret attempts to make himself friends from scrap metal. He must be properly motivated, and so Darth Sidious sends him to a slave market on an impossible mission. It backfires. (A Star Wars: Darth Maul (2017) comic AU)

Warnings: accidental underage alcohol consumption, body horror, mention of sex slavery, violence against children, minor character death.

The attendant bends gracefully, smiling as she refills fine translucent cups. The first one is in front of Master Zalandas Fyaar, so the standard diplomatic protocol of privileging the Jedi emissary and guest apparently holds true even on this tiny corrupt world, and then comes that of the twi’lek’s own employer. The man who is Zalandas and Eldra’s new charge. His name is Martrey Woobudg, a tall harried human just like Fyaar, and the upstart frontrunner candidate for mayor of the capital of the Outer Rim planet of Teth. A second passes—a wriggling suspicion in the back of her mind, and then Eldra smooths it over—and then the beautiful twi’lek looks at Master Zalandas and bows and tops up the cup in front of Eldra, too, even though that one has barely been touched.

Woobudg and Master Zalandas pick up their drinks immediately, taking a break from hurried planning to praise the olid tea within. Eldra nibbles at the porcelain edge of her cup. The twi’lek attendant does not drink. She doesn’t even have a cup. Or a biscotti. Or a seat, and when fine hot droplets of tea splatter Eldra’s padawan tunic, and she realizes she’s actually biting down hard now on her crockery.

It’s not the fear of getting poisoned that holds Eldra back from enjoying her tea, although, considering they were called here after the third assassination attempt on Woobudg… maybe a little caution should be in order. It’s a serviceable excuse should Master Zalandas ask, anyway, even if it’s not the true reason, and neither is what Eldra privately decides is the painfully obvious and pointless braggadocio inherent in Woobudg serving imported Chandrilan tea, despite the well-publicized price-hike after last year’s ruined harvest there, and the fact that it absolutely genuinely does taste like unfiltered bantha piss. He’s serving his pricey swill to a couple of Jedi, moreover: to his protectors bound by duty, who do not revel in wealth.

It’s not that, though.

It’s not even really because this is only Eldra’s second diplomatic mission, and she’s sworn she’s going to take her job more seriously this time around. She’s going to make sure no-one, not even once, peeks in unnoticed through the doors and windows. That isn’t it either, and truthfully she’s paying attention far less than she means to.

It’s something far more petty and profane: the subtle spiced fragrance of the attendant’s perfume as she bends over Eldra to reach the china. Her dress, as expensive as the tea, made from rippling opaque silk in a slightly lighter shade of blue than the woman’s skin. It’s a fairly modest cut. Barely any flash of cleavage, despite Eldra’s vantage point. Chosen expressly for this meeting, Eldra thinks sourly, and who do you think you’re fooling?

It’s the attendant’s bearing, calm and open and as serene as any Jedi Master.

It’s the fact that Eldra’s still thinking of her as ‘the attendant’ even though she’s been flitting around the room for two hours now at least. It’s that she wasn’t introduced. It’s that she doesn’t have a cup. A biscotti. A seat.

It’s her teeth.

What would happen, Eldra wonders, if I asked her to come sit and have a drink with us? Besides the obvious, of course: Master Zalandas’ abject disappointment at Eldra’s dearth of diplomatic skill. Would the attendant keep smiling? Displaying her teeth? Or would she flinch the moment the hot nasty leaf juice hits them?

Because her teeth are white-lacquered, dainty, tiny, horrifying stumps. Eldra can’t stop looking at them. They’re almost worn down to the gums. Twice-sanded at least, probably. Once, to sharpen the natural edges further—Eldra runs her tongue over the edges of her own canines, her pointy incisors, like she’s been doing ever since researching for a class project the customs of the peoples of the polar tip of the northernmost continent of Ryloth, the place where she was told she’d been born—teeth sanded once, sharpened, and then, they were ground down again mercilessly to make them blunt.

“Another biscotti, Padawan?”

Watch your feelings, Eldra. Remember that you are a Jedi. Remember your duty. That’s what Master Zalandas means, and Eldra startles, self-conscious and guilty. She must’ve lost her bearing, been grabbing attention even with the question bitten back behind her lips. She nods, a quiet thanks for the reminder. She studies the window again, on guard for any assassin. She tells herself: this meeting is important. Martrey Woobudg is a reformer, an anti-corruption juggernaut, and his rise a chance to wrest Teth from out the criminal syndicates’ control and, ultimately, bring it into the regulatory orbit of the Republic once more. If he keeps his promises after he wins, the election will spell a sea-change for the poor, who’ll finally be able to go about their lives without paying massive bribes to every single government official they have the misfortune of meeting, and it will aid the rise of a stable middle class. It’ll keep out the Hutts, too. It’ll be a triumphant sign of progress. Woobudg is important. His safety is paramount. His fate determines the future of so many people; it’s so much bigger than the life of this one attendant. Eldra knows the brief.

And still, her eyes are drawn back to his twi’lek servant.

To his slave.

That’s why you sand down someone’s teeth until there’s barely anything left. Why you keep at it long after it hurts. Why the sharpest teeth are so popular on Ryloth in the first place.

No-one wants a sex slave capable of biting their throat out.

Dutifully, she attempts to listen again, to keep watch, but looking at Woobudg’s face it’s still all she can think of. Slaver, slaver, slaver. He’s important, and Eldra must protect him, and he’s a slaver.

Looking back at the attendant, she’s met by the serene smile again, full of awful tiny teeth.

Looking at her Master, she feels her own inadequacy.

Looking down at her own hands is no escape. They’re darker than the attendant’s, callused and oil-stained and nails half-covered with flaking black nail polish. They’re the hands of someone far too slowly growing into the knowledge that her body is a shell, a vessel, that she is a luminous being of higher purpose. They’re a Jedi’s hands, or will be, and through them the force flows and shapes the galaxy. They are the hands of someone who will know no emotion, but peace. They are the hands of someone who neither covets nor disdains expensive Chandrilan tea. They are the hands of a faithful servant of the Republic. They are the hands that will protect Woobudg from his enemies and facilitate the rise of Teth, come what may, because she knows right, and she knows duty.

She forces herself to meet Woobudg’s eyes when he looks at her, feigning attention, and hopes he didn’t just ask a question.

She fidgets with her twi’lek girl fingers.

⁂

Hiding and curled and dirty under the stranger’s ship in the now-deserted hangar, two hours after he crawled down there, Maul finally realizes he’s been underestimating his Master. This mission on Nar Shaddaa is not just a chance for the apprentice to prove himself. No, Master is wise and efficient, and he wouldn’t have a single purpose for anything He does when He could, instead, have a myriad. It’s not just a test of Maul’s skill and loyalty.

It’s also a series of lessons.

Yesterday, Maul had been so sure he knew the meaning of cold.

He’d read about it, after all, memorized all the ice worlds in the galaxy and the medical texts on hypothermia and studied the schematics of atoms bouncing ever more slowly off each other. He’d looked at holos of skin blistered and sloughing off from unwise exposure, and he’d been impressed. A little scared, maybe, and very excited to progress in his studies so one day he’d have a chance to experience winter. But Maul’s been hiding under the stranger’s ship for hours now, and Nar Shaddaa is cold. It’s not flashy, the cold, like the holos of icebergs and boiling water thrown up and coming down powder implied. It’s not exciting at all. The cold of Nar Shaddaa is quiet. It’s the floor leeching into Maul’s back and legs, until he can’t tell anymore where wet dirt ends and he begins. It’s uncontrollable shivering. It’s his nose leaking, leaking, leaking. It’s making him tired.

Mustafar bubbled and smoked, and even inside the training complex with its sophisticated uncounted layers of insulation—Maul had dug into the wall once, tunneling almost a quarter-way through with a droid’s breastplate repurposed into a shovel—even inside, during some of the periods that Maul had taken to calling ‘seasons’ after researching the planet of Naboo, it was often so warm Maul wished he was allowed to tear off his tunics, and an additional layer or two of skin with it. Sweating, panting, he’d read the word cold, and he’d wanted it badly. He’d dreamt, open-eyed, for so many hours, of himself rolling around in the cold white snow and chasing ice-weasels. But back then, on Mustafar, it was hot. And Nar Shaddaa is real, and it’s now, and it’s so so cold.

Maul can’t stay down here forever, or even for another minute. He wants to sleep. He wants to run, at the same time, to fight the Jedi apprentice until he meets victory or glorious death. He wants to have completed this mission already. He wants a lightsaber of his own, so he can hold it and bask in its warmth. He wants to sleep. Force, he wants to be asleep. He wants to wake up in his small boiling cell and realize this has all been a dream.

(He wants someone to hold his hand and say, “I’ll help you,” but that’s the most impossible thought of all.)

There is no point in wishing for anything, though. There has never been. He must act. He must stop sneezing. The slave auction will be in four days now, a short strip of time he just needs to overwinter somewhere, Maul tells himself, and even if he doesn’t want to go anywhere near Master’s Star Courier now that it has killed the teenagers that could have been Maul’s friends and the mangy brachno-jag besides, there are many other options. Many other ships. He’s curled down here, in the cold, under just such a ship.

He knows how to pick locks.

It’s not hard at all to gain entry to the ship, now that he’s thought of it. He could have done it in less than thirty seconds, if his hands were shaking less and he had the proper tools, the ones he’s been meaning to build himself for years but in Master’s complex on Mustafar there was little point and then he had to construct stilts and the vocoder-mask for his mission and he forgot—Maul could have sliced the lock in under twenty-five point five seconds, he decides, with the tools, but the ten minutes he actually fiddled with it were acceptable too, because neither the training-droids nor Master himself were there to witness it, and besides, he doesn’t have much practice yet. (He should lock the door again and re-slice it, and over and over, until he’s quick enough. He should. But there’s no-one here to watch, and Nar Shaddaa is cold…)

This one looks almost exactly like Master’s ship, on the inside. Maybe all starships do: a few red-plush benches around a low table in the main travelers’ compartment, overlooked by a massive idling viewscreen, two small side rooms with pairs of sleeping berths, a refresher with a sonic shower and a kitchenette and, most interesting of all, an unlocked engine room and a cockpit with a slightly different layout than the Star Courier had. Maul shall explore them in detail, as soon as he’s warmed up and fed and made sure there are no hidden traps in here. He didn’t dare take apart his Master’s property, but this ship belongs to someone who won’t, can’t, defend his claim against Darth Maul, heir of the Sith—soon-to-be Darth Maul, he corrects quickly—and power is the only true right in the galaxy. Through power he will gain victory, and what is victory in this situation but access to a stranger’s ship’s mechanics? A fuel tank blinks enticingly, and soon Maul shall learn its secrets.

Food first, though.

He upends his satchel over the low table and picks through his haul from the ill-fated convenience store visit. Bottles, ordered by color, to the left—a toxic orange looking one the furthest away, then brown, then the two water bottles with their beautiful waxing gibbous shape when seen from the top and the yellow labels with red writing—and the crinkly chips packages to the right, joined by the sandwiches and the jaw-mask and two pairs of huge glasses with dark lenses and wide red-black frames.

The orange drink is bitter and sickly sweet and probably poisoned, and when he pushes it away it tips over and spills all over the carpet. It deserved that ending, though. It was vile. It didn’t have the right to be drunken by a Sith Lord.

Trying to rinse the taste off his tongue is unsuccessful: the fancy water is bitter, sharp, oily, and Maul shudders. At least the sandwiches smell bright and meaty through their flimsi wrapping. They’ll mask the awful water he’ll have to sip from to avoid dehydration, and so he picks one, to devour while he explores the sitting area.

Perched in an overhead nook is a flickering holo of a weequay male kissing the top of a young weequay’s head, and he turns it off as quickly as he can.

The two blankets and five little pillows are far more welcome spoils, and so is the datapad wedged underneath one of the benches. Someone’s taped a scrap of flimsi securely to the back, too, with two neat rows of handwriting. A name, and then a series of numbers.

Maul types them into the datapad, and it lights up.

“Good evening, Johen,” the pad greets him.

There are pages opened already on the datapad, a search for restaurants on Coruscant and a school’s newsletter and—two catalogues. One of them is Grakkus’ slave auction, and Johen is already logged in.

It’s… in three days?

There must be a mistake. Master said it was in eight days, four days ago, and Master is never wrong, but there’s no slave auction on that date no matter which button Maul presses and where he navigates on the catalogue, just the one in three days, and then five days after, and another five days, and another…

Master doesn’t make mistakes. He knows everything, studied the secrets of the galaxy that the Jedi would keep suppressed, and the hidden weaknesses of far-off planets’ politicians, and every single one of Maul’s minute failures except for the secret dreams, and He would know the true date of this slave auction. He would not err, not when this mission is so vital to the grand plans of the Sith that he sent his own apprentice to complete it. He would never…

He wouldn’t…

But what He would do is test Maul.

A true scion of the Sith does not trust blindly in dates and dossiers, and Master knows that. He must have told Maul the wrong date to pass on this wisdom. He must have, and He didn’t even fear the risk that this momentous mission might fail, because He trusted that Maul would understand.

And Maul did.

Master made the right choice. It’s as if someone had pumped Maul’s chest cavity full up with helium, pulling him off the upholstery and into the cool air: he found the correct date, with time to spare. He procured food and drink and shelter by himself, anticipated the need to hide his childish face under a mask. He built a vocoder. He is powerful and devilishly clever, and more prepared to serve the Sith than anyone has ever been, in all the history he knows, and Lord Sidious knew this when He sent Maul to Nar Shaddaa.

Master has never put His true pride into words; despite the considerable skill of His tongue He likely never will, but this mission is plain proof of the sort Maul never dared to yearn for.

His Master trusts Maul’s skill.

The emotion is overwhelming, and Maul wraps himself up in his blankets, to trap the acknowledgement for a while before it can dissipate.

He is victorious already. He is vengeance. He is Sith.

He’s won three days early.

After half an hour, though, basking in his glory gets boring. His face is growing warm. He’s eaten two sandwiches, too, and forced down seven gulps of awful water. He should sleep, but he isn’t tired yet.

Maul doesn’t exactly know what to do with downtime. Or: he does know. On Mustafar, he had long stretches with nothing to do. Apparently, it’s physically impossible to keep training all the time. SRT-X (or Strut, as Maul had called it in secret) once put itself in front of Maul and showed articles to Lord Sidious, about a vain bodybuilder on Corellia whose arm muscles had eventually started breaking down from overexertion, and he’d nearly poisoned himself with the waste of his own overbulged dead muscle tissue. Strut didn’t survive that confrontation, which in retrospect Maul admits was completely fair. (At the time, he’d cried his eyes out, no matter how much Master had tried to make him to stop, but that too had been a valuable lesson: the Master is always right, and contradiction suicide. Even if the frequency of lessons had tapered off somewhat after that. Lord Sidious had probably independently decided to make Maul train less. He was wise that way.)

He’s had long stretches where he didn’t even feel like tinkering with his droid projects, or meditating, because occasionally the hatred just wouldn’t come. That was before Lord Sidious showed Maul what the Jedi had done to the Sith: nowadays, it’s much easier to feel hatred. (Or what passes for hatred, anyway. Mostly it’s nothing but protective anger, but that is just another failure he cannot admit even to himself.)

During those times when there was nothing to do, Maul often researched people. Master is a politician in His spare time, of course, as Maul overheard some years ago, and He makes people dance and shiver and obey with a single word. It’s almost more impressive than being a Sith Lord. To manipulate people… to talk them into being your friends… Maul might need that skill, especially in the future when he will become the Sith Lord and teach his own apprentice—he would need the skill just to find an apprentice—and so he started his research project. Which admittedly consisted of looking at the hololessons that Master left for him. But that was the best way to observe natural behavior. Which was why Maul watched them. Over and over.

He’s not brought the hololessons with him now, but he is in someone’s ship. Johan had a picture up with his child. Maul already learnt so much today, about cold and efficiency and never trusting anybody and stealing from supermarkets, and maybe there is something additional to learn here, about people. He wobbles back over to the small holo and brings it down to his nest.

There’s nothing else on the datadrive, though, nothing but the toddler cradled in her father’s arms. No instructions. No meaning. Maul tries to imagine what it would feel like, to be that small or that big, but nothing wants to move in his head except for the water strangely threatening to blur his eyesight.

His chest hurts.

His chest hurts, and pain is a message.

Maul wishes he knew what he’s being told.

He moves closer and closer to the holodevice—there must be some power trapped in there, to make him react this way—and then his nose bumps against the plasteel.

It hits the off button, and Maul is alone again.

He tries to fall asleep.

He counts: he nearly finished his mission. He learnt about cold, and efficiency, and not trusting, and probably something about babies. He found food and water and shelter. He nearly made friends with hooded aliens and a brachno-jag. He—

Maul shoots upright and logs back in to the datapad.

He’s forgotten to search the database for the padawan.

⁂

There is one location on Teth even worse than the tea room: the stage out in the open air where Candidate Woobudg is stubbornly campaigning for freedom.

That’s what he keeps shouting.

Freedom, with the might of the Republic guarding his back and his twi’lek slave kneeling at his feet.

Freedom, the people rallying below mutter. Eldra is walking amongst them, looking for threats, while Master Fyaar is standing grimly behind Woobudge. “Optics,” Woobudg had explained and Master Fyaar had acquiesced, and Eldra didn’t understand and did: the twi’lek attendant would look too much like a person, she thinks, if she was next to a Jedi who could have been her daughter.

Freedom! Freedom! All around her, and something pulls on Eldra’s sleeve. It’s the hand of a young red twi’lek man. He’s collared and his left breast is exposed, suckling a sullustan baby. The child’s family—slavers—are a few meters ahead, and that’s what must have given him the courage to beg, wild-eyed and hoarse, “Take me with you, please!”

Freedom!

“We didn’t…” Eldra looks away. “We did not come here to free the slaves.”

⁂

No padawan is listed anywhere in the catalogue for Grakkus’ slave auction. There’s no Jedi, no witch, no force-sensitive or force-null or Sith or any thing or any being in any way remarkable. Nothing, neither in any listing for any future auction nor in the archives of successful deals stretching six decades into the past. No padawan who is not for sale but just a member of Grakkus’ personal collection except a boy who died ten years ago. No references to a Jedi sold by a third party, or even any guest who might be a Jedi when Maul cross-referenced the user lists with holonet articles about his ancestral foes. Two Jedi artifacts, but it’s not like those count.

No person that could in any way be interpreted as the mission target that Master talked about, not even after Maul exploited a weakness in the catalogue’s search field to give himself access that Johen shouldn’t have had and scoured it all over again.

Nothing. Nothing at all.

No way to succeed.

He should have been afraid all along. Maul wasted two hours basking in premature victory and safety; he wasted three days being cautiously optimistic, when he should have been swallowing down his pleas for mercy ever since the very second Master announced He’d send him to Nar Shaddaa.

Send him to failfail.

There’s no padawan here.

What does it mean, that Master wants Maul to fail the very first mission he ever had? What did Maul do wrong? Why couldn’t He just punish—?

Master might have made a mistake, perhaps, Maul’s mind offers timidly. Maybe He’s seen news of a padawan that isn’t here, but Master does not make mistakes. Master knows everything.

Besides, it being a mistake—which it isn’t—wouldn’t make a lick of a difference to Maul’s chances of surviving his Master’s wrath.

Maul swallows a gulp of the oily water, then another, and it burns. That doesn’t make his mind stop spinning, makes him even more woozy and warm and nauseous, but his growing illness won’t matter anyway if Master wants him dead. If he doesn’t find a padawan, nothing will ever matter again.

He’ll be punished. He’ll deserve it. He’ll die.

Maybe this is another lesson. Maul is training to become the Sith Lord after all, and every true Sith must learn that failure is not an option. Their mission is too important for that. Revenge is too important.

(Even if it’s not really meant as a lesson, not truly, Maul has to believe it is. Otherwise, what else is there to do but wait for death?)

Maybe this is a lesson in improvisation. In overcoming terror. In never giving in.

There must be a padawan somewhere on Nar Shaddaa. Somewhere in this quadrant, at least. Somewhere in the galaxy. Master must have meant ‘Nar Shaddaa’ in some general sense that doesn’t just refer to the planet, or maybe the padawan He talked of was moved…

The one location where there definitely are some padawans is the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, Maul knows. But there are also several thousand armed and trained Jedi Masters there, and while Darth Maul will absolutely kill them all to avenge his fallen Sith brethren and sisters and siblings, he generally assumed it would happen at least one or two years in the future. That he’d have time to build a lightsaber before fighting to the death against the Grand Master Jedi, and also grow a little taller. His battle plans always took those things for granted.

Maul will just search the rest of the galaxy first for a suitable padawan, he decides, and keep the all-out assault on the Temple as a backup plan. That’s not cowardice: he only has a few more days and travelling to Coruscant will take a lot of time. It’s just efficient to try and find a padawan somewhere else first.

Maybe even somewhere on Nar Shaddaa. Maybe the owner of this ship just wasn’t interested in Jedi padawans.

Maul could get a different result on a different ship. He has to.

⁂

It happens too quickly for Eldra to process. The rally ends and the people disperse, and then there is a sound like static—and then she’s on her back with Master Fyaar’s heavy body on top of her. The air is shivering with the heat of blaster bolts and thick with the stench of burnt flesh and hair.

“Eldra,” Zalandas Fyaar rasps out. “Eldra.”

Eldra looks up at her. Master Fyaar’s blonde locks obscure her face, but they cannot hide the stripe of cooked skin at the very top of it, flecks of bone showing through. More than anything, Eldra wishes she could see her Master’s eyes, see the clear blue serenity that reminds her that all is as the force wills it. More than anything, she wishes she could see a mouth twisted in disappointment at Eldra’s failure to notice the ambush. Freckles. Worry-wrinkles. But Master Fyaar cannot raise her head, because she shielded Eldra with it, and—

“Eldra.”

Eldra raises her hand to Fyaar’s wound. She’s good at healing, she gets far better marks there than for diplomacy or geography or sports, and this is cauterized so there won’t be an infection, she just needs manipulate a few cells, to stabilize…

“You’re strong, child. You will not fall to the dark. I know it.”

That sounds like a goodbye. It doesn’t have to be. It won’t… “Master, please—” Eldra can heal her, she is healing her, the wound is closing a little.

“Always remember you are a Jedi.”

“Master—”

“Remember yourself.“

Jedi Master Zalandas Fyaar doesn’t die because she gives up. She doesn’t die because Eldra gives up, or because Eldra fails, or because survival was impossible: the man who pulls Eldra away from her dying Master simply doesn’t care that they need to touch.

He pushes Master Fyaar to the ground—“This one’s toast!”—and pulls Eldra upright by her left lekku, and no matter how desperately she fights through the pain worse than anything she has ever thought she’d bear, like her brain is being squashed and really that’s what is happening, like every thought she has has been replaced by puke-inducing pressure and she does retch and vomit, but still she fights, because if she can just get to Master Fyaar and save her then everything will be okay.

She fights until she doesn’t see the rise-and-fall of her Master’s chest anymore, and then she screams, and then she stops.

⁂

It’s the twelfth ship now. Same procedure as the last ones. Maul’s working through the entire shipyard ship by ship. Slowly, he crawls over and stands up and waits until the world stops wobbling, and then he slices the lock of the cargo hold. He searches for datapads and tries to access any slaver database he can.

Somewhere, someone must be selling a Jedi padawan. They just have to.

⁂

Something’s being shoved in front of her. A holocam, Eldra registers, to—shoot a picture for the ransom note? But why would they… it would suffice just to contact the Temple; they know where they sent Eldra and her Master; they know they haven’t been in contact; the must know that something went wrong.

Unless they don’t know she’s a…

“How do we want her?” the man holding the holocam asks. “Sultry?”

“Nah,” someone behind her back replies. “Feisty little Jedi like her’ll fetch more as a gladiator or something.”

So they do know. The Temple will ransom her, she’ll go home and everything won’t be okay because Master Fyaar will still be dead but—

“Growl.”

But she’ll go home—

“Growl, you little piece of shit!” the one behind her shouts, and she snarls. There’s a clicking sound. “Again!” she bares her teeth and gets another click, and another, and one more. There. They got the holo they don’t need, and then soon she’ll go—

Eldra screams when a hand twists her lekku.

She screams and screams, and when she calms down, she’s alone in a cell, on the ground, covered in fresh vomit and terrified and confused. I wasn’t fighting! I snarled for the camera, she thinks. I did what they asked me to do, there’s no reason… except they could. Because I’m alone right now.

Because they killed Master Fyaar.

They killed my…

And she…

“Remember yourself,” Master Fyaar said, her last words, and here Eldra is with her fists balled and gathering strands of hate around herself like a shroud. “Remember yourself,” and Eldra could hurt these people so easily if she felt for their cells and made them boil. Eldra could make it painful, and slow. It would be so easy.

So easy to fall.

“Remember yourself.”

⁂

Maul is sweaty and hot and he feels the way he did when he wasn’t allowed to sleep for days. He’s finished one half bottle of the awful water, and it hasn’t helped: everything is spinning and blurry and he’s still thirsty on top. He’s also inside his seventeenth ship and ready to give up on Nar Shaddaa. He’s been seeing the same nine slaver auction databases on repeat, and there’s considerable overlap between the offerings, and still nothing Jedi in sight.

I can’t fail, he thinks, and hits refresh again.

I can’t just fail my Master, and he’s about to exit the database and the ship and the planet when he notices the flashing window at the bottom right.

An alert!

An alert prominently featuring a twi’lek girl baring her teeth at the holocam, but the person is almost incidental to his interest.

“Jedi padawan for sale!” the headline screams in flashing red. “Freshly captured!!!”

So this is his enemy, his target, the prize he has to fetch to fulfill his destiny: she’s young, though probably older than him, and her blue face is badly cut up. There are deep purple bruises on both her lekku, and despite the anger and toughness she’s trying to display she mostly succeeds in looking terrified.

Hah, Maul thinks to himself. I knew the Jedi were soft. I wouldn’t be this weak, if I was captured, which never would happen in the first place because I am Darth Maul, heir of the Sith Order.

He looks at the picture again, trying to find his hatred. She and hers slaughtered the Sith on Malachor; they live in pampered safety; they know nothing of the Force. They—she would just as soon kill him, hurt him, traffic him if their fortunes were reversed. She is his enemy.

Still, she looks just like a person, alone and scared.

There is no point in looking at her image any more.

Maul studies the alert carefully. She is going to be sold tomorrow—not the date Master had told him of, but Maul already established that it was a test. She is going to be sold in the palace of Xev Xrexus, but maybe Master had misheard the name or it was yet another way of probing Maul’s skill. The terror Maul felt because of these tricks was a valuable lesson, a reminder of the utmost importance this mission held for the Sith Order and how inacceptable any kind of failure would be. Maul, moreover, has seen through it: he is completely equal to the task. He will bring the padawan to his Master, and not deviate from the plan for a single second. He is much more skilled than anyone else would be, anyone who isn’t an awesome Sith and therefore, he’ll perform admirably and easily, and Master will be proud. Master will pronounce him Darth Maul, and the many years of training will have paid off. He knows this. (Thinking it really hard, over and over, is the same thing as knowing.)

She’s been captured—

Master must have foreseen it. He is, after all, gifted in the art of clairvoyance he had told Maul, always already aware of the mistakes Maul might make at any point. So it makes sense, it does, that Master sent Maul to this planet days ago on a mission to buy a padawan that was captured two hours ago.

Master is wise that way.

He planned…

And…

By now, Maul is so tired and thirsty—his brain flashing Master knew and but why in quick dizzying succession—that even the relief of having succeeded can’t boost his energy anymore. He locks the ship, overriding any key fobs, and sets an alarm for well before the padawan’s auction. He takes a bite of the awful chips he acquired in the shop, and throws up.

⁂

“Smile.” He does. “Growl.” He does. “Not like that.” There is a slap, and then he arranges his facial muscles differently. He doesn’t know whether he’s succeeded, until he sees the approving nod, and feels the lack of punishment.

There is his body and there is him, and no connection between the two. If he had a mirror, he could make it look more natural, but only an approach. There is no joy here. No anger, or not the kind they would have him display. No future. There are no brothers to watch. There have been no brothers, ever since he was selected and taken off-planet, off-home, too many days or years ago now to count. These people’s expectations are a thick leather shirt, riverdunked and allowed to dry on the body, so tight that he can hardly breathe. There is no space inside for himself, let alone dreams or brothers or rage. There is only a face to rearrange, to the approval of a master.

A different master, soon.

Maybe that master will kill Savage. Maybe they won’t. One way or the other, this will the last ever auction he is sent to. Savage will make sure of that.

#darth maul #eldra kaitis #savage opress #dimtraces makes things #hell is just a beat away #i'm awful at crossposting but i actually managed to write something again!!!

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connorswhisk · 3 years

Text

mistletoe ain’t all it’s cracked up to be

Summary: This holiday season, Bitty's devised a plan: stick mistletoe over every doorframe in the Haus.

This is fine. As long as Ransom makes sure not to walk into a room with Holster under any circumstances, it's fine.

Ugh. He hates this stupid plant.

also on my ao3

“Ok, you lost me,” Holster says. “Why haven’t you done this before?”

Bitty huffs, clearly none too happy about being interrupted. “I don’t know why you don’t want to hear about the new cookie recipe my Mama found, especially considering you’ll end up eating half of them, Adam, but fine. I didn’t put up mistletoe frog year because I wasn’t living in the Haus yet, and I didn’t put it up last year because I waited too long and the Stop ’N Shop ran out.”

“Wait, wait,” Ransom cuts in. “Murder Stop ’N Shop or Smelly Stop ’N Shop?”

Bitty sighs and gives him a Look, but Ransom just shrugs. It’s an important question.

“Murder Stop ’N Shop, who do you think I am? I don’t want my mistletoe stinkin’ like the LAX team’s locker room.”

(“Nice,” Holster says, nodding sagely. Ransom elbows him.)

“Anyway,” Bitty says. “I went ahead and got there early this month.” He lifts a sprig triumphantly. “And here we are. Pick me up.”

Holster crouches, grabs Bitty around the middle, and holds him up to the front doorframe.

(Ransom tries not to stare at the strip of skin showing as Holster’s sweatshirt rides up. It takes a lot of effort.)

“That should do it,” Bitty says once he’s back on the ground. “Thanks, y’all. I’m gonna go get baking, now.”

And he heads off to the kitchen.

“Got any plans?” Ransom asks.

Holster shrugs. “Annie’s?”

“Sure.”

They start for the door at the same time, and then Holster flings out an arm and Ransom stops.

“Oh,” he says, looking up at the cheerily green plant hanging narrowly close to directly above their heads. “Right.”

Holster steps through first, and after a beat, so does Ransom.

Holster’s smiling, eyes crinkling at the corners underneath his glasses. “With the amount of time we spend walking through doorways together, it’s bound to happen eventually,” he jokes.

Ransom snorts. “You wish,” he chirps back.

What he doesn’t say is, That’s what I’m afraid of.

— — —

It’s not like Ransom’s never kissed Holster before. They’re on a hockey team, they throw a lot of kegsters, large quantities of alcohol are consumed, it isn’t difficult to do the math. But those occasional drunken make-outs are just that: drunken make-outs. They don’t mean anything, not in the way Ransom wishes they could. They’re sloppy, and quick, and they taste like tub juice, and Holster seems to always end up spilling his beer on either himself, the floor, or Ransom, and they’re pointless, just a bit of fun, and…

And from what Ransom can remember of them, really fucking hot. When your best friend is a 6’6 Adonis with killer abs and eyes bluer than the Pacific ocean, that’s kind of unavoidable. It’s also why Ransom’s so terrified of all this mistletoe.

Kegster kisses don’t have to count, and they don’t. But under the mistletoe? A time-honored, over-done, clichéd holiday tradition? Odds are, if they get stuck under there, they won’t be drunk. And while Ransom knows that Holster will have no problem kissing him and then having a laugh about it, Ransom’s not sure how well his brain’s going to process the inevitable.

He’s in love with Adam Birkholtz, and there’s really nothing to be done about it. Ransom can’t ever tell him because it’ll ruin their carefully cultivated bromance, their fucking co-captaincy, kick everything out of sync, throw a wrench into the coral reef and eff it up entirely. Holster isn’t going to return his feelings, and Ransom still can’t come to terms with that fact.

He doesn’t know if he’ll ever be able to do that.

— — —

“Yo, you want me to bring you back some latkes after break, right?”

Ransom scoffs. “Dude, is that even a question? Of course. You’re sure your dad won’t mind?” he tacks on as an afterthought.

Holster rolls his eyes, panting a little with the effort of bench-pressing the weight across his chest. “Are you kidding me? My dad like, gets off on cooking for other people. We can’t take him to potlucks because he ends up bringing a whole buffet.”

Ransom laughs. “Nice. I’ll make sure to get my auntie to bake you some of her ginger snaps.”

Holster sets the barbell back on the hooks and sits up, grinning widely, a drop of sweat trickling its way down from his temple. “Don’t tell Bitty, but Auntie Oluransi’s ginger snaps are probably better than his.”

Ransom says, “Careful he doesn’t hear you say that, or you’ll be banned from pie-eating for a month,” and then, “Spot me?”

“Duh,” Holster says, and they trade places.

Ransom’s just about to start lifting when Holster whispers, “Dude, check it.”

Ransom pushes himself up on his elbows and glances over at where Holster’s looking. Nursey and Dex are standing in the weight room doorway, staring up at the mistletoe Bitty had stuck to the top the week before. Nursey’s eyebrows are raised and Dex’s face is starting to redden. Chowder’s standing by, looking unsure of what to do. Ransom knows they’ve got about ten seconds before the yelling starts.

“I mean,” Holster says, shaking his head as Dex shouts out an, Are you kidding me, Nursey?!?! “You’d think they’d realize that they don’t actually have to kiss. It’s just mistletoe.”

“Right,” Ransom says, lying back down to start lifting. “Just mistletoe.”

And then he starts thinking that even if he and Holster ended up in that situation, Holster might not even want to kiss him. He might just walk away.

Ransom isn’t sure which is the better alternative.

— — —

He ends up getting screwed with Jada Forrester, who usually sits near him when he’s studying in the library. Ransom’s not actually that into her - sure, she’s nice, and she’s pretty cute, and she does this thing when she’s concentrating super hard where she bites down on her lip a lot, but he’s never really considered asking her out. Holster must have gotten the sense that Ransom’s more into her than he really is.

Jada’s wearing this red Christmas dress that looks real nice on her, and she’s got a string of tinsel in her hair, and sparkly gold eyeshadow, and glitter all over her face. Ransom feels a little underdressed in his knitted sweater with the ice skates and hockey pucks on it, but his date doesn’t seem to mind, so he tries not to worry about it too much.

“This is fun,” Jada yells over the music, some bass-heavy remix of “Sleigh Ride” that’s making Ransom’s head buzz.

“Yeah,” he shouts back. “Do you want to get a drink?”

Jada nods, grabs Ransom by the hand, and pulls him over to the kitchen where the alcohol is.

“I never know what to get,” she says, staring at the table.

“Mmm,” Ransom hums, not really paying attention. He’s just noticed Holster and Pauline Fishbein making out in the hallway. It isn’t a super heartening sight.

It’s not like Holster hasn’t had his fair share of girlfriends and hookups. It’s not like Ransom hasn’t had his, either. They’re open about it with each other, give each other dating advice and consolation after bad breakups, like any friends do. It’s normal. It’s casual. It’s not a big deal.

It’s just that this is the first year that Ransom has known how he feels about Holster. And now it seems like maybe it was all a big deal, after all.

“You like him.”

Ransom nearly jumps out of his skin. “What?”

Jada hands him a snowflake-patterned solo cup of beer and takes a sip of her own. “Adam.” She nods towards the hall. “You’re into him, aren’t you?”

Ransom stares down into his drink. “Would you believe me if I said no?”

“Not really. It’s a little obvious,” Jada says, shrugging.

Ransom’s pulse quickens. “Oh,” he says, and takes a long drink of beer. God, this is awkward. “I hadn’t realized.”

“I mean, anytime I saw you in the library, he was with you,” she continues. “And half the time you were leaning on his shoulder while you worked.”

“Uh - “ Ransom is pretty sure that half of said shoulder-leaning was automatic, that he did it without thinking because he knew that Holster would let him. The realization isn’t exactly helping his case.

“It’s ok,” Jada says, nodding. “I don’t mind. I’m guessing he doesn’t know, since he set us up.”

“No.” Ransom swallows. “He doesn’t know. I don’t know how to tell him.” He looks up at Jada. “You’re not pissed off?”

“No way, dude,” she says, eyes getting big and shaking her head. “I’m honestly just here for a good time. I’m not really looking for a hook-up or a relationship or anything.”

“Oh. Ok.”

She rolls her eyes. “Man, lighten up. How likely is it that Adam’s gonna keep seeing this girl after this party?”

Ransom shrugs. “It depends. Sometimes he goes out with them afterwards, sometimes not.”

“Ok,” Jada says. “So there’s a pretty good chance he won’t. And, bro, I’ve seen the way he looks at you. I wouldn’t be surprised if he returned the feelings.”

“You’re just saying that.”

“I’m not!” she exclaims. “Seriously. Even if he isn’t into you, he’s still your best friend. I don’t think he’ll freak out if you tell him.”

“Right,” Ransom says, taking another, smaller sip. “Ok.”

Jada drains the rest of her cup. “Whatever, forget I said anything if you want. Let’s keep dancing.”

Ransom finishes off his beer, too. “Yeah, let’s keep dancing.”

They’re leaving the kitchen when Jada suddenly stops.

Ransom frowns. “What’s up?”

“Huh,” Jada says, looking up. “Mistletoe. I didn’t even notice it when we came in.”

“Oh,” Ransom says. “Oh, yeah, our teammate put them up. I kind of forgot about them.” He looks at her. “Um. You don’t want to…?”

Jada raises an eyebrow. “Shut up,” she says, gives him a quick peck on the cheek, and drags him back out to the living room.

Ransom spends the rest of the night drinking and dancing with Jada. He doesn’t catch sight of Holster and Pauline Fishbein again, and he doesn’t think much about it until he goes up to the attic at three in the morning and finds them in Holster’s bunk, asleep.

He doesn’t do anything, just turns out the light and stares into the dark for what feels like hours before finally drifting off.

— — —

Ransom manages to be in the kitchen by two. Bitty’s already in there of course, way too chipper for the morning/afternoon after Winter Screw, or any Kegster, for that matter.

“Morning, Ransom!”

Ransom winces. “Bits. Loud.”

Bitty rolls his eyes. “Oh, whatever. Not my fault you got drunk last night.”

Ransom’s about to fire something back when Bitty shoves a plate of scrambled eggs and a mug of his coffee in his hands, effectively shutting him up.

“I love you,” he says, and Bitty hums and goes back to whatever it is he’s doing at the counter.

Ransom sits down and mindlessly scrolls through his Twitter feed, shoving his face with eggs and trying to wake his brain up. He doesn’t really have much to do today, but he absolutely hates being hungover, even a little bit, so the sooner he gets out of this stage of post-Kegster blues, the better.

“Yo, are those eggs?”

Ransom glances behind him. Holster’s alone. Pauline must have left.

Good.

“Here you go,” Bitty says, swooping in and giving Holster his own plate and mug. “And that’s the last of it, so if you want more, you can make it yourself.”

“Nice.” Holster sits next to Ransom, knocks shoulders with him casually, and digs in.

“Have fun last night?” Ransom asks.

Holster shrugs, mouth full. He swallows. “Yeah, it was all right.”

Ransom looks back down at his phone. “Ok.”

“How’d things work out with Jada?”

“We just hung out,” Ransom says. “Nothing really happened.”

Holster frowns. “Oh. Shit, did I fuck up this year?”

“No,” Ransom says quickly. “It’s fine. I still had a nice time, we just…we didn’t end up doing anything.”

Holster’s quiet for a second before he nods. “Yeah, ok. Sorry, bro, I thought you were into her.”

Ransom shakes his head. “Don’t worry about it.”

Holster smiles. Ransom’s chest hurts.

“Hey,” he starts to say, though he has no idea how he’s going to finish. “I - “

He’s interrupted by Bitty blasting Beyoncé through the Bluetooth speaker, making them both wince. Nursey (who’s apparently been passed out on the couch this whole time) groans loudly, and Bitty calls, “Sorry, but it’s about time the rest of y’all got up!”

“You think Jack would let him get away with that if he were still captain?” Holster mutters.

“Dude,” Ransom says. “I think Jack would let Bitty get away with anything. That man is whipped.”

Holster snorts and knocks his shoulder against Ransom’s again. Ransom grins.

— — —

“What time is your flight?”

It’s an hour later, and they’re sitting on Holster’s bunk watching random episodes of 30 Rock. Ransom may not always get the hype, but he does enjoy watching it with Holster a lot, even if he’s not always paying attention. It’s been a pastime of their’s since at least sophomore year.

“Ugh.” Holster groans. “It’s at nine.”

Ransom shrugs. “Being at the airport at night is kinda fun.”

“Yeah, I guess. It’s just, y’know. Kegster.”

“Right,” Ransom says, smirking. “This is why I’m leaving tomorrow.”

“Shut up.” Holster watches Liz Lemon cram a sandwich down her throat, and then he says, “I’d totally wolf my Teamster sub for you, bro.”

“Dude, I still don’t really understand what that means,” Ransom says. “But thanks. And I guess I’d do the same for you?”

Holster grins and holds out his fist. “Fuck yeah, bro.”

Ransom taps it with his own. “Fuck yeah.”

And their hands don’t really stop touching even after they fist bump, but Ransom doesn’t freak out about it, he totally doesn’t freak out about it. Nope. Not at all.

It’s not like it’s never happened before.

— — —

“So. Latkes?” Ransom asks.

“Chyeah,” Holster says. “Latkes. Ginger snaps?”

“Ginger snaps,” Ransom agrees.

They’re in the living room. Holster’s about to leave for the airport. Ransom had offered to go with him and see him off there, but Holster’d told him he didn’t want to put him through the holiday season blitz a day earlier than Ransom has to, which, fair.

The Haus is uncharacteristically quiet. Everyone else seems to be packing to go home, too. Ransom hasn’t even started yet, and the fact is grating at the back of his mind, but he hasn’t packed because he spent the whole day with Holster, so it’s justified.

“Well,” Holster says, adjusting the straps of his backpack and stepping backwards onto the porch, roller bag in hand. “See you in the New Year, yeah?”

“Right. See you then.”

Ransom hugs him, long and tight and full, and when he leans back, Holster whistles and says, “Hey. Mistletoe.”

Ransom freezes. No. No way. Absolutely not.

He looks up, and that stupid green plant is smiling cheerily down at him, white berries glimmering, and Ransom silently and fiercely curses it, tradition, Bitty, the holiday season, and all plants in general because why is this happening this is not supposed to happen.

“Oh,” he says, barely able to hear himself over the rush in his ears. “Yep. Haha.”

God damn it, he’s spent all this time making absolutely sure not to walk through any doorways at the same time as Holster, always on the lookout for any mistletoe, Bitty’s or otherwise, and now, on the last day that it could possibly happen, he forgets.

Of course.

“Well.” Ransom clears his throat. “Well, we don’t have to - “

“You don’t want to?”

Ransom stops. Blinks. Holster doesn’t look embarrassed, or upset, or - or anything really. He’s just sort of looking at Ransom, shrugging. “I mean, why not, right?”

Fuck. Holster’s just standing here in his Falconers cap and his Samwell hoodie and that same stupid pair of sweatpants that he’s always wearing, and he’s about to leave for the airport to go home for two weeks, and Ransom is not going to kiss him, he isn’t, he can’t -

“Right,” Ransom says. “Why not.”

Shit.

Holster’s eyebrows knit together. “Hey, I mean, it’s totally cool if you don’t want to. We don’t have to kiss.”

“I…”

Holster breaks eye contact with him. “It’s fine, bro. I mean, I was halfway joking anyway - “

Ransom kisses him. It’s quick and messy and a little bit wet (gross), and it’s also really, really nice.

“Oh,” Holster says once Ransom leans back. “Ok then.”

“I’ll see you next year,” Ransom says. “Next year.”

“Yeah,” Holster mutters, blinking. His cheeks are dusted a rosy pink color, and Ransom can’t be sure if it’s from the cold or what. “Yeah, yeah.”

Ransom holds out a fist. Holster seems to shake himself awake. He grins and bumps it.

“Have a good time, bro,” he says.

“Have a good time,” Ransom repeats. He’s still not totally sure what just happened.

“Say hi to your sisters for me!” Holster calls out as he’s getting into his car.

“Say hi to yours!” Ransom calls back, and once Holster’s gone, he shuts the door, slides down the wall, and just sits.

He doesn’t know what’s going to happen now, but he does know that this is gonna be one hell of a New Year.

#just a cute holiday fic!! i love them #my writing #holsom #pairing: holsom #fandom: omgcp #my post #holster #ransom

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duskyskz · 4 years

Text

- Erasure - 1

Hwang Hyunjin x Female Reader

With washed out, dyed pastel hair, sea salt and acrylic clinging to his jeans, Hwang Hyunjin expected to find himself many places that night. A jail holding cell. Under the abandoned train station bridge. Maybe even his own bedroom.

Your living room wasn't on the list.

Warnings - Some angst in later chapters, suggestive/smut, minor character death mentions, Hyunjin is an eboy and a little angsty, Changbin is doing his best as a big brother, slow burn (?)

A/N - Finally! Sorry for the delays, my head just hasn’t been with me this week;; I hope you enjoy this series as much as I am excited to write it.

***

The steady buzzing of your speakers fills the living room as you watched Changbin scroll through the Netflix home page. Both of you settle deep into the sofa, balancing a bowl of popcorn and chocolate between your knees.

“Endgame? Homecoming, Nightmare on Elm Street?” Binnie flicks through the suggestions, and you shake your head in distaste. “I'm not watching that octopus documentary again!”

“You only hated it because you cried at the end.”

“She died! He had to look after her little babies! Your heart is too cold, too far gone for that level of compassion.” The last part of your brother's grumbles are cut off when you throw a burnt kernel at his forehead, barely missing his ear.

There’s nobody else home. Nobody else ever comes home, either. It's been just you and Changbin for a while, and it's not all that terrible. He’s a few years older than you, having graduated last summer and now undertaking an apprenticeship at the village police station. It doesn't pay a stellar amount, but Changbin reassures you once he passes the trainee exams he’ll treat you to a new pair of winter boots and you can finally quit the ice cream parlour to focus on college. You tell him that even if he wins the lottery tomorrow, you'll work your own job. For all the support your elder brother gives you, you like having your own thing. It makes you feel a little more involved, a little more even than jsit washing the dishes and doing his laundry on days he’s too tired to move.

The Thursday evening is reserved for you both, to catch up on the hours together you miss during the week when Changbin doesn't get back till you're fast asleep and you don't have the chance to say good morning.

He’s been doing that a lot more recently.

Sighing into his coffee, shaking his head at nobody in particular. It's easy to notice the signs of stress and overwork in his face, sunken and tired even on the weekends when he finishes early.

“Do you wanna finish Teen Wolf?” The softness in his voice when he addresses you is the same, though. “We have three episodes left of this season, if you wanna binge.”

“Sure.” You want to ask him about the circles under his eyes. What’s got him coming home later and later because nothing ever happens in this town. “I'm still waiting on Derek’s redemption arc.”

You're twenty minutes into the episode when a vibration from your coffee table catches your attention. You glance at Changbin, but he ignores his ringtone, flipping it to silent.

It rings again, no music, but harsh vibrations drumming against the polished wood.

And again.

Knowing he’s not picking up to make a point of it, you pause the show, nodding at the mobile he’s avoiding glancing at. “Go on. Pick up, it might be an emergency.”

“If it's an emergency they don't need an intern there.” Despite his words, Changbin shifts his position and you know he’s growing hesitant.

“If it's an emergency all the more reason for you to be there and learn.” You state with more force behind your tone. “Why have your grades been dropping? You're coming home so late but your exams keep getting delayed -”

“My grades are fine!” Changbin never snaps at you, but the frustration in his voice is evident. “I'm fine. There's just - Just one case we're working on and I'm nearly there, I just need time.”

You shut your mouth, letting him speak.

“There’s this kid who keeps tagging the beach houses on Dawning Lane, and that shit was expensive to put up last year. Some stupid, bored child that thinks a few cans of spraypaint and lung cancer are a good excuse for your adolescence. He’s not even that good… Just scribbles.”

His lips pout in a frustrated whine at the last phrase, and you know he’s more frustrated at the situation than he is at you or himself.

A beat of silence, interrupted by another ringtone - you almost reach for it yourself to check the caller ID and force him to pick up, before Changbin’s arm shoots out past you to snatch the device, slinking out the door and into the hallway.

You aren't surprised when a few moments later, your brother’s head pokes nervously out the door frame - He's already got his coat on, waving his phone at you as an awkward goodbye.

“I’ll see you in the morning, y/n.”

“Yeah, see ya.” You salute back, smiling to ease the tension in his shoulders, and it works a minimum. You won’t see him till the late evening at best.

The door clicks shut as soon as he turns around, leaving you surrounded by popcorn and empty space. You really aren't surprised - but it'd be pointless to deny you weren't hurt by another night alone with Teen Wolf playing idly through your TV speakers. Cold popcorn only did so much to soothe your heart, and the distance wedging itself recently between your sibling bond was hard to brush over, between missed calls and texts too often left unanswered.

You just really miss your big brother.

You commit yourself to Stiles Stilinsky instead, sighing into the blanket around your shoulders. Autumn rolls in quick by the seaside, making your calves prickle with goosebumps. It's nearing 11pm, you realise, picking up the -

Thump!

Your fingers freeze, hovering over the TV remote. Changbin wouldn’t be back yet, he never comes home the same night he leaves.

“Bin?” You try it anyway, calling tentatively into the hallway. It’s still entirely black, void of disruption.

Clang!

That definitely came from your kitchen.

Armed with a half empty popcorn bowl and nerves of steel, you tiptoe into the other room. There’s a lump of something or someone crouched behind the dining table, and your grip around the glass dish tightens marginally despite the quivering of your knees, fumbling for the lightswitch without taking your eyes off the rising dark mass as it straightens its back.

“S-Stay down! I have corn and I know how to use it!” You don’t have a fully formed plan yet, but you’re sure the sharp kernels will be of some importance. Fluorescent white light floods the kitchen, momentarily blinding both you and the intruder who now stands at full height. A steady 12 inches above you.

“Ouch! Calm down, I’m not going to rob you!” He says, sounding almost exasperated at your defense of your own property. He still has his hands raised in defense, keeping the table between himself and you, and you’re grateful he hasn’t tried to knock your legs out from under you, yet. “I’m not here to steal your stuff.”

“What are you here for, then?” You lower the popcorn bowl, but don’t let it fall out of your grasp. He doesn’t seem dangerous - He doesn’t seem like he could manage clambering through the window you always leave ajar either, but here he clearly is. There’s something sticky and pink in his blonde hair, stains following down his shoulder blades all the way down the cuffs of his jeans. If anything, he looks...a little lost.

“It’s the address on the post-it note.” Your confusion must have been plainly obvious, because the boy elaborates, pulling a crumpled neon-green paper from his jacket. “The post-it note that man gave me. That’s what Changbin gave me.”

Perhaps you lack self preservation instincts, but there’s an uncertain vibration in his voice that makes you give up your weapon and attitude.

“You know my brother?”

“He told me if I really need to go somewhere, I can come here.” You watch slim fingers tug at the sleeves of his jacket as he measures with a weight akin to a glare. “He didn’t tell me it was his house, or that somebody else was living here.”

Bold of him to accuse you of ruining his night plans.

It really did only click in your head when you looked closer at his tangled hair, dried paint clumping it together at the ends of bleached blonde strands. The artistic menace haunting your sea-side town was standing right on your tiled kitchen floor, and he looked downright miserable.

And Changbin had invited him.

Biting down the discomfort at realising how little Changbin had been telling you recently, you set the popcorn down on the table, you take in the threat currently three feet before you. A tall, lanky boy, with odd shoelaces and a sharpie sticking out of his trouser pocket. His hair hasn’t been cut in a while, and probably brushed either - it’d be generous to say he ran more than a stressed hand through it anytime recently. Though chapped, his full lips and wide eyes made him look far too innocent for his own good, and you blamed your soft heart for finding the boy kinda cute.

He did have a leaf stuck above his ear, though.

You almost reached up to remove it.

“Do you wanna watch Teen Wolf?” You break the quiet that settled, already shuffling your feet out into the living room. You sincerely hoped he’d follow. You weren’t sure what you could do apart from leaving him standing on cold tile, and he already looked freezing from the night chill.

Luckily for you, with a hesitant step, your impromptu companion takes after you to the couch where your Netflix and remove still await instruction. Changbin might grumble at you tomorrow at finishing the season without him, but you needed something to lure the boy into comfort.

“I’m y/n, by the way.” You mention. The boy sits stiffly, clasping his hands in his lap with parted lips, avoiding the decorative pillows.

“Hyunjin.” Now that he’s actually inside your house, Hyunjin’s confidence seems to have evaporated. The thrill of the break-in, if you can even call is that, has worn off, giving way to the nerves. He’s suddenly too conscious of the paint on his clothes, of sandy shoes still on his feet, of the smudges still on his cheeks. Should he take his jacket off? Or wipe his shoes?

You press resume, watching him relax after a few minutes as his brain finally has something else to focus on to let his worries ease. Hyunjin doesn't seem to mind you already being halfway through the episode, and you let yourself admit it’s nice having someone around this late at night.

“How do you know Changbin?” You ask while the topic is still fresh.

“I don’t.” Hyunjin bumps his knees together, fiddling with a loose string on his jeans as he shrugs. “I don’t really know him, he just...saw me around a few times, and I guess he figured I could use a place to crash. So he gave me your address.”

“You’re the mystery kid painting the beach houses, right? On Dawning Lane.”

At the accusation, Hyunjin’s lips part, flipping to face you with wide, blinking eyes., knowing he’s in no place to try and deny it. You blink back, observing his reactions, in case he suddenly changes his mind about staying. “Are you gonna turn me in?...”

“No.” You shake your head after a moment of thought, and he visibly untenses. “For whatever reason Changbin didn’t, so I won’t either. If he trusts you then I do too.”

You’ll never know if it was the murmurs of the TV, or if Hyunjin did whisper a thank you, and you won’t ask. There’s a lot of things you do want to ask, but a tug in your heart tells you now is not the time. Hyunjin looks exhausted, eyes drooping with every slow blink as he does his best to focus on the screen, hands previously tugging at his jeans now still and flat on his lap, slouched forward as if any moment he’ll drift off sitting on your pillows. Flurries of fluorescent light flicker on his cheeks, over barely scrubbed paint smudges and faint cuts from running too fast, you guess. In the delicate, dimmed light of your floor lamp, it’s hard to imagine Hyunjin as a bad kid. Prickly, maybe. On edge is a better word for it, tension clinging to his shoulders like stubborn dust bunnies. Curse your naive little heart, you tell yourself, building up your courage to speak.

“Hyunjin?” He hums in response, straightening his back. “Do you want to sleep here tonight?”

All you’ve been taught in life sent alarm bells through your skull when you asked a complete stranger (who just two hours ago, broke in through your kitchen window) to sleep in your living room overnight, but Hyunjin didn’t feel like a stranger. Changbin trusted him enough to lead him right to your house, so that must count for something, right? And no matter how much you tried to keep your guard up around the boy, watching him struggle to stay upright instead of letting his tall, lanky body fall backward and rest comfortably only made you worry a little about him, not the other way around.

Well, he did say he’s not going to rob you.

“You can sleep on the couch if you want, I’ll bring you some blankets.” You prompt him again when he doesn’t respond. “Changbin won’t be back for a while still.”

“Are you sure you’re okay with that?” There’s a lilt of doubt in his voice, but he sincerely hopes you’re serious. This couch is warmer than anything he’s slept on in months and he really doesn’t want to crawl outside again with the rain pattering against your roof.

“Sure, you haven’t tried to stab me yet.” You shrug, getting up to fetch a duvet and looking him over.

“Ah, you probably want to wash your hair from all...that,” Hyunjin’s hand flies to his hair, patting out the tangles as if it’s the first time he’s noticed them. “You can use the bathroom upstairs, there’s towels by the shower already.”

He nods, following your directions with a ‘thank you’. Once his footsteps disappear up the landing, you set about pulling out the couch into a flatbed, rearranging the pillows at its base. Lugging the duvet down from Changbin’s room had been a feat, but you’re determined to make the space welcoming. Satisfied with the cushioned bundle you created, you run back upstairs.

You invade your brother’s room for the second time that day, tugging open his drawers in search for something acceptably pijama-like.

“Hyunjin?” You knock tentatively on the bathroom door as the shower head turns off and the shuffling ceases. “I’m leaving some clothes for you to change into outside, okay? Come downstairs when you’re ready.”

You scroll through your timeline as you wait, catching up on the last few hours’ events from your friends until a shuffling to your left prompts you to raise your head.

Your brother’s sweats hang a little loosely around Hyunjin’s hips, ending just above his ankles, bare feet sliding over the wooden floor of your living room, sinking into the rug as he steps closer to where you sit. His own clothing cradled in his arms close to his chest, you can’t stop your thoughts drifting momentarily to the damp mess of sunshine coloured hair. With his jacket on earlier, it was hard to make out his build under layers of fabric, but now it’s proving a challenge to not focus on the lines of his arms or the curves of his large hands gripping his clothes. Luckily for your dignity, your nerves of steel allow you to drag your gaze away from the collarbones peeking out from under thin white cotton higher to meet his eyes instead and find your voice again.

“I brought down some pillows for you, these are a bit too hard to sleep on.” You note, pointing to the decorative cushions you moved onto the lounge chair. “My room is right opposite the bathroom if you need anything, I’m a light sleeper.”

“M’okay.” Hyunjin towers above you, yet you’ve never seen a boy so dainty. There really is no other way to describe the delicate line of his nose bridge or the rosy tint of his lips when his tongue pokes out to lick them as he mulls over your words, settling down on the makeshift bed.

The proximity now feels different than the air between you when Teen Wolf still blared through your speakers, warm quiet heavy on your tongue with dim golden glow tumbling over his cheekbones that’s too much for your heart to take unprepared.

“Goodnight then!” You bounce up from the couch waving Hyunjin a quick goodbye, but a soft hand wrapping around your wrist pauses you.

“Wait,” Hyunjin brushes his thumb over your palm softly, and you hope he doesn't notice the goosebumps on your skin at the contact. “Thanks for not kicking me out...or calling the police. Y’know, as most people would for a break in.”

The smile he flashes you is almost teasing, but you can tell he means the words sincerely. You lay your other hand on top of his, patting in what you hope is a reassuring motion.

“Sure, Jinnie. It’s okay.”

#skz fluff #hyunjin fluff #hyunjin scenario #hwang hyunjin #hyunjin smut #stray kids #stray kids fluff #stray kids imagine #hyunjin erasure #hyunjin angst #stray kids imagines #changbin fluff

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blushingbaka · 4 years

Text

love like summer rain;

✰ part five ✰ read part four here ✰ masterlist ✰

|| summary - bokuto was never your first pick as a co-counselor, but eight weeks is plenty of time to change your mind

pairing: bokuto x fem!reader genre: fluffy camp counselor au, slow burn, mutual pining length: 1.7k

✰ a/n: this part is more of a filler, but it gave me a chance to include some more shenanigans from kuroo and bokuto !! this took me longer to write than expected, bc i really just had an abstract idea of what i wanted it to be about. the next part, however, is already planned out by every little detail and i’m sooo excited to actually write it ! i have the optimistic goal of finishing this series this weekend, so wish me the best haha. hope you enjoy it <3

⋆week five⋆

Claps of thunder echoed through the spacious dining hall, heavy rain pounding onto its roof. A few of the campers’ shoulders lurched from the abruptness of the sound, but they were quickly able to turn their attention back to their games. Forced to take refuge in the dining hall as a storm raged outside, the counselors had found ways to entertain the kids, breaking up into various groups for activities such as hand games and charades. Akaashi was even responsible enough to carry a deck of cards with him, and you were currently losing at a game of go fish.

It was surprisingly peaceful a part from the sporadic squeaks of shoes on the hardwood and the particularly perturbed state of Bokuto.

“Bokuto stop hanging onto my shoulders” you whined, moving slightly in your seat as a poor attempt to shake off his firm grip. At your words, his grip loosened slightly but he stayed crouched behind your form, his focus never wavering from the source of his anxiety.

“What’s wrong, Bokuto? I’m just filling up my water bottle” Kuroo goaded him from across the room, his lips curving up in a sly smile.

“Yeah, and what do you plan to do with that water?” Bokuto questioned him accusingly over your shoulder, eyes narrowed suspiciously. His question caused you to roll your eyes because honestly, you were tired of this game. It never dragged on this long in prior summers.

That game was assassin, a tradition that started as a way for counselors to have their own kind of fun on the side. At the beginning of each week, you all received the name of another counselor that you then had to douse in water, taking the name they were assigned. This process continued until there was one ‘assassin’ left. This week, like all the ones prior, it had dwindled down to Kuroo and Bokuto, both of whom took the game way too seriously. Currently, it was 3:1 Bokuto, which agitated Kuroo to no end, and you were sure Bokuto would willingly run out into the pouring rain if it meant keeping that lead.

“I’m just keeping hydrated” Kuroo nonchalantly replied holding his hands up in mock innocence, but you could tell he was reveling in Bokuto’s fear. Bokuto didn’t leave your side, however, until Kuroo had sauntered back into the other hall his group was occupying.

“Okay you can relax now,” you told Bokuto, throwing your cards into the center of the table now that you had officially lost. You swiveled around to face him, but his eyes were still trained on the door Kuroo had exited through. “Don’t be so tense. It’d be hard for him to sneak up on you in here anyway” Chewing on his bottom lip worriedly it was like he didn’t even hear your words, so you stood up letting out an exaggerated sigh.

“Here you sit in for this next round” you gently grabbed his shoulders, guiding him to your seat. The feeling of your touch finally registered with him, and his eyes quickly darted to one of your hands and then up to your face.

“Where are you going?” There was a tiny frown on his face that you refused to allow yourself to read into.

“I’m going to the rec shed. It doesn’t seem like the storm is letting up, and I know there’s some more game supplies in there.” It wasn’t too far of a walk from the dining hall anyways.

“I’ll go with you!” he jumped back up, and you chuckled at his immediate response, shaking your head.

“It’s fine. You just want to go to create distance between you and Kuroo” you teasingly accused, but your words had an unintended effect. Hearing his small gasp and seeing the way his eyes widened, you had realized you had inadvertently given him an idea. An idea you agreed to for some reason. A reason you tried to not overthink as you headed to the rec shed with the reluctant company of Kuroo.

“Ah the rain is really relentless today” Kuroo groaned, ruffling his hair and splaying water across the wooden floor of the rec shed. You could barely hear him over the sound of the rain pelting the tin roof, which hopefully meant Kuroo wouldn’t be able to hear Bokuto approaching the shed. To you, it seemed pointless for Bokuto to wait outside getting drenched all for the sake of drenching Kuroo, but the prospect of their drawn out game finally ending was also enticing. Now you just had to stall a bit to make sure Bokuto had enough time to get here. It was completely dark inside the shed, so you pretended to fumble for your flashlight.

“I’m surprised you didn’t bring Bokuto with you,” Kuroo thought aloud into the darkness. You clicked your flashlight on, attempting to seem nonchalant as you used it to illuminate the cluttered shelves.

“Hmmm, it’s not that surprising. I told you it’d be better to bring a counselor from a different group, and you are my friend after all.” You looked back at him pointedly. His face was half shrouded in shadow, making his smirk seem more impish as he delivered his next question.

“And what is Bokuto?” You could faintly make out the cocked nature of his stance, as he placed his hand on his hip. You faltered under his expectant gaze, forcing your attention back to the shelves. You pretended to be intently focused on finding the box you had mentioned previously, and focused on maintaining an even tone with your reply.

“I mean I guess I would consider him a friend too. He’s definitely more than someone I just know through you now.” Even above the pounding of the rain, you felt as if you could hear the pounding of your heart.

“Just a friend? I feel like you’re a bit nicer to him than you are to me” Kuroo retorted effortlessly.

“Because you’re annoying.” you deadpanned, pulling out the plastic box that you were looking for. You realized it was heavier than you anticipated as you dragged it across the floor.

“Like that owl isn’t” Kuroo replied huffily, finally moving closer to help you. “Here, I’ll get it. You just go out first, and hold the door open for me” You hoped that meant he was dropping the conversation. You moved quickly towards the door, only feeling slightly guilty about what waited for Kuroo on the other side. It’s not like he wasn’t going to get wet from the rain anyway. You pushed open the door readying yourself again for the onslaught of rain, but you were not prepared for the whole bucket of ice water that was suddenly poured over your head.

-------

“Y/N, I’m so sorry. I had really expected Kuroo to be the first one out, and didn’t even pay attention!” Bokuto had apologized to you for the hundredth time, a look of genuine regret on his face.

“That doesn’t really warm me up does it.” Even now when you were sitting back in the dining hall, partly dried off, you couldn’t stop shaking, your arms tightly wrapped around your form. “Was a whole bucket of ice water really necessary?” you narrowed your eyes sourly at him. You had assumed he’d just dump his water bottle over Kuroo. But you had also assumed he would look at who he was dumping water on.

“I thought it’d annoy Kuroo more” Bokuto admitted poking his bottom lip out. In the background, you could still hear Kuroo wheezing. His laughter had been so uncontrollable that Bokuto had to carry the box of games back to the dining hall, Kuroo being unable to stop clutching his stomach.

Bokuto hovered over you, looking unsure of what he should do, but then you saw with dread that he got an idea. “I’ll be right back” he promised you, dashing off before you could protest. Kuroo took this opportunity to saunter over to you, a smug expression on his face.

“You kind of deserved it,” he told you cockily. “Told you that you were nicer to him” Quickly glancing around to make sure none of the campers were eyeing you, you flipped him off, which only caused him to chuckle.

“I just got annoyed by the way you two were dragging out the game” you muttered, but it was obvious Kuroo wasn’t buying it.

“I don’t think so” he taunted, a mischievous glint in his hazel eyes, but instead of teasing further, he left you with your thoughts, giving you a parting pat on your shoulder.

“Y/N here’s something to keep you warm!” your thoughts were interrupted by Bokuto shoving a sweatshirt into your face, his eyes bright with excitement.

“Whose is it?” you inquired, already slipping the soft material over your head.

“It’s mine. Akaashi suggested that I carry one around with me, and honestly, it kind of seemed pointless with it being summer and all, but I guess it ended up being useful.” He was beaming down at you, and you couldn’t help but reciporicate a small grin, your earlier frustration melting away.

“So…” Bokuto drawled after a couple of seconds. “You’re not mad anymore?” He asked hesitantly with his eyebrows drawn together and his cheeks slightly puffed out. You were still slightly shivering in your seat, but with your hands toying with the hem of his sweatshirt you softly shook your head. It was strangely endearing how your smallest actions could elicit such an exaggerated smile from Bokuto. You longed for that smile more than you’d care to admit. And if you were really honest with yourself, the desire to see that smile might just be the simple reason behind a lot of your actions recently.

“I’ll go see if I can find you something warm to drink from the kitchen” Bokuto gave you a little wink that made your heart skip a beat. As you looked down at your lap, where your fingers were still fiddling with the fabric of his sweatshirt, you realized you couldn’t fight the giddy smile that came onto your face. You supposed his small actions had quite an effect on you too.

✰ continue reading… part six ✰

#bokuto x reader #bokuto koutarou #bokuto fluff #haikyuu x reader #haikyuu bokuto #slow burn #mutual pining #Bokuto Koutarou x reader #haikyuu reader insert #bokuto series #bokuto imagine #camp counselor au #haikyuu fanfiction #love like summer rain series

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secret-engima · 4 years

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Title thingy if ur still doing that, my friend. Not Everyday Is A Good Day (Live Anyway)

Ohhhhh. Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

So many things I could DO with this title. *squints*.

Did I ... ever do that ffxv naruto crossover I came up with at like 3AM?

Let’s assume I didn’t and roll with that.

It ends with dying.

It starts with waking up after dying, and finding a world gone bloody and primitive and strange.

It starts with a little boy from a village no one knows opening his eyes one day and ... remembering. Feeling the burning Light under his skin that tangles with the energy in the world around him and realizing he is alive once more ... and the world is completely different from what he remembers.

It is not a good beginning. Because the world has more than fallen apart since he was last awake, and people are superstitious and afraid of odd things.

And there are few things more odd than a little boy with too old eyes and a too sharp mind. A little child with no fear of death, with a birthmark on his front and back that looks like a blade went right through his heart, who dances in the storms with the rain beating his skin and a grin that is two shades too wild to be human.

It is not a good beginning, and there are a very many days that are even worse.

He lives anyway. He lives and he learns. Of ninja and clans, of a world where all have a fragment of magic, a tamer version of the Thing in his veins. Where the powerful wage war and technology is long, long lost (stolen, he thinks, by the paranoid, or perhaps forbidden by them out of fear of another Niflheim).

He lives, and when he is only eleven, he takes what few things he has to call his own and he leaves the village behind. No one misses him.

He walks and walks and walks, deeper and deeper into the wilds. At one point, he meets a giant orange fox who burns with old anger and simmering indifference. Their eyes meet, an old King and a newborn Astral, and the fox dips his head in silent, surprised acknowledgment of the truth men have forgotten. He keeps walking. Living off the wilds like he has done a thousand times in memories not his own, unafraid of the beasts, for they are not daemons, and nothing is scary after facing down daemons.

He finds a nice little nook in an unassuming wood, and there he builds himself a home. There is a village a few days walk away, and after growing bored with making too many potions to place even in his massive armiger, he goes to the village and sells them as herbal remedies. They taste terrible to drink instead of crush against skin, but they work just as well when swallowed.

The people of this village are superstitious too, but they do not know him as a boy turned suddenly too old, only as a mysterious wood hermit who looks too young for his eyes and sells miracle medicine for a pittance, who will save lives from incurable fates with a touch of green hands and a flicker of burning feathers and ask nothing in return.

It takes him a long time to realize the little house they’ve built him for when he comes to visit is actually a shrine.

Yoru, they call him. Night. For his hair and his quiet, for the shadows that walk in his steps. He thinks it’s funny, that even now, in another life, he still ends up with a name that means Night.

And it is a very lonely life, to be held as a friendly, if strange spirit of the woods by other humans, to be alone in his memories and his ghosts in a world that remembers his sacrifice when the humans there do not. The Astrals he has always known are deep in slumber, and for all he is lonely he is reluctant to wake them. Not everyday is a good day.

He lives anyway.

He is thirteen, he thinks, maybe fourteen, when she finds him. She is only his age, and she is so very, very pretty. A rarity with hair the color of pale gold and eyes as blue as the sky.

Funny how they look the same as they did in their last life.

She is a noble’s daughter, and she is too young to be out of her family’s care, but she is not the daughter of the nobleman’s wife, and the son who IS is deathly ill.

Heal my son, says her father with desperate eyes, and I will give you my daughter.

He is angry at the thought of it. At seeing her, who has saved the world and holds his heart even now, being used as a bargaining chip with what these people think is a wayward forest spirit. He could do anything to her in their minds.

And they do not care.

The son matters more.

He accepts and he heals the son they have brought of his illness (something simple, something the non-magical medicine of his era could have healed).

The nobleman, his son, and his escort depart. They leave her behind.

She takes his hands in hers and whispers that she is glad, they touch lips, brief and chaste, and she laughs when he names her Tsuki. His Moon.

Maybe it is a good day after all.

The locals acclimate to her quickly, whisper over the powers they think she has gained by becoming his bride. He does not care, he has his Moon and his little forest home. If his brothers find him ... then life would be perfect, but until then, he is content.

And then a ninja sets his house on fire.

Well, the village shrine really, but it’s the same thing now after Luna talked him into moving in permanently so as to better treat the villagers.

There are five of them, three with black hair and fire licking their bones and two with brown hair and magic like water or earth. They are fighting, and while one of the black hairs sets the shrine on fire, it is one with brown hair that knocks down the lovely Tori gate he’d grown rather fond of.

His magic unfurls, heavy and displeased, and all five drop to their knees with gasps of shock and fear. Two struggle to their feet, collapse again when he presses downward with his magic. They have more magic than the villagers, but compared to him and his Moon, they are raindrops in an ocean.

“Leave this place,” he snarls, his voice layered with a hundred others, and the ninja blanch as they flee.

Except one. The brown haired one who knocked over his Tori gate and is apparently bleeding very badly from his torso, struggles to stand and then collapses.

The other brunette leaves him behind.

He sighs as his magic curls inward and it’s the work of a moment to drag the man inside the crispy house and see what’s wrong. A few potions set the man to rights, and when he wakes up hours later, stupefied and wary, his Moon laughs as he sends the ninja on his way with a scowl.

Three days later, two ninja arrive in the village. All the villagers glare, they are still trying to figure out how to fix the gate on such short notice, but the ninja make no trouble as they approach the shrine home.

“I am Hashirama, leader of the Senju Clan,” the elder says with a low bow, so low his long brown hair touches the ground, “and I came to offer thanks and apologies for my clansmen.”

The white haired one just scowls, skeptical as he stares at the shrine and its inhabitants.

“I am Yoru,” he answers, all of maybe seventeen now, “and this is Tsuki. Your ninja knocked my gate down. And three more set my house on fire.”

Hashirama winces, “I am sorry for the gate, I can fix it if you like.” Yoru tilts his head and Hashirama takes it as an agreement.

Tsuki makes a noise of surprised delight when a new gate grows up from the ground, living wood in the desired shape. Yoru makes a pleased noise, his magic couldn’t do that. He looks back down at the Senju in interest, “I’ve never seen a ninja do that before,” he muses, and the man laughs a touch nervously.

They have come to make amends, but as far as Yoru is concerned, the gate has paid their tab. Even so, he asks questions and when he learns of the Senju’s war with the Uchiha, he frowns.

“Leave my village and my forest alone,” he says, “So long as you are within twelve miles of the village, you are not to fight.” The white-haired one protests, but Yoru will not budge.

It doesn’t take long for him to have to enforce that rule.

He hears the burning of wood and the feels the flare of magic and sighs as he warps over there. A glance proves it’s the brunettes and the black hairs again.

He lets his magic surge out and flatten them in their surprise, snuffs the flames with an ice spell, and glares, “I said,” he intones darkly, “no fighting near my home.”

“You dare-!” snarls the leader of the black haired ones, only to falter when Yoru turns his gaze on him. Speechless under the weight of the gaze.

Most people are when facing eyes the color of age and blood.

“I don’t know what war you fight,” he says slowly, “but you will not fight it here. If you do this again, there will be consequences.”

He looks over at the Senju, silent warning that his message applies to them too. Then he sighs and folds his arms over his chest, “Are you even fighting for a cause? Why are you so determined to kill each other?”

Both sides break out in shouting, accusations of death and vengeance that makes him feel weary. Tsuki touches his shoulder from where she has caught up, her eyes solemn, and Yoru scoffs, “What a pointless reason to fight.”

“And what would you know?” Snarls one of the Uchiha as he stalks forward, moving under the weight of Yoru’s magic only because Yoru is not projecting it all. The sword lashes out for Yoru’s neck, and his armiger flairs to life, blocking the blade and pointing four more at the man’s throat.

The leader of the Uchiha hisses a name, it sounds like “Izuna”.

Yoru looks into red eyes with black marks and crushes the attempt at an illusion (so pathetic compared to Ardyn’s a lifetime ago) with barely a thought, “What would I know?” he muses softly. “What. Would I. Know?”

His magic begins to rise, shifting into visible spectrum, crystalline shares and licking blue fire, an armiger of dancing blades risking in ghostly white. He can feel his skin cracking open and gleaming, mortal skin fracturing under the pressure of angry magic, he lets it form, lets his skin turn grey and terrible, lets his magic coat the summer field with ice and his shoulders with ghostly blue fire.

He watches as the Uchiha who lashed out at him pales, eyes flickering frantically, trying to see through a trick that does not exist.

“Do not presume to know me,” Yoru growls, “do not presume to know my heart or my ways. I have seen what vengeance wreaks. I have walked through its graveyards, I have stood beneath its blackened skies and tasted its ash as the world rots beneath the endless night. Vengeance will eat you alive and hunger for more, it will demand more blood than the world contains and at the end of the day, the dead you claim to be avenging Will. Not. Care. Vengeance is not a reason to fight. It is a reason to die. And if it is death you want, then I will give it to you. I will burn your home to as he and stand upon the bones, and when I am done and the world goes quiet, there will be none who look upon them and will be able to tell your bones from those of the Senju you despise. Is that what you want, little ninja? To paint the world brown with your dried blood? To rouse what lies sleeping and destroy what yet breathes?” All the ninja have gone dead white and Yoru snarls, old, tired fury in his blood, memories of Conqueror-Fierce-Warrior-Mystic stirring him toward violence, “Well? SPEAK and it will be so. Speak and I will SHOW YOU what vengeance is-.”

Tsuki’s- Luna’s- arms rest on his bicep, unflinching from the heat, and she whispers, “Peace, my love.”

His anger cools. His skin heals over. His armiger fades.

Yoru steps back from the white-faced ninja, those who have heard of the supposed healer guardian of the forest but not believed it until this moment, and he warns with dark exhaustion, “Leave. Leave and think about what it is you really want. For your world to burn? Or for your children to be able to grow old rather than lie forgotten in shallow graves and crows’ bellies. Fight here again, fight anywhere with in fifty miles of my home, and I will end your blood feud for you, and neither side will celebrate my intervention.” Yoru turns away, ignoring the wide-eyed Hashirama, the spinning red eyes of the Uchiha, “go away and cease playing at war.”

Tsuki leads him home and he lies on the floor for a long time. Letting the cool of the wood leach into his bones, letting his magic curl lazy patterns in the air as his Moon and his Love curls patiently against his chest, waiting for him to rise out of the memories howling in his head.

Today is not a good day.

Tomorrow might be better, when it comes, but even if it isn’t ... well.

Not every day is a good day.

He lives anyway.

And he will never forget what a blessing that is.

#SE asks #oliverslewty asks #title prompt #Melodies and Manuscripts #Secret Engima Rambles #Not Everyday is a Good Day (Live Anyway) verse #naruto #ffxv #i have a thing #for making noctis the most freaking powerful person in the room okay?#tired secret bamf is a fav trope #that you can pry out of my cold dead claws

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