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tennessoui · 3 years

Note

1. Soulmates AU please! It is definitely my guilty pleasure trope

hello im only three months ish late maybe four but this is also 3.4k long and it's just wild i mean we're talking soul mates, superheroes, rushed world building, superhero names this is a trip this is something i wrote after waking up from a four hour nap this ever had a chance and also it's sad

1. Soul Mates (+ 42. Star Crossed Lovers)

“You shouldn’t have come,” Obi-Wan says harshly, pulling the children--they’re just goddamn children--into his apartment and slamming the door behind them. “Did anyone see you?”

The children--all four of them--stay quiet. Obi-Wan wants to wring their necks. He knows why they’re here. He’d rather them die on the streets than suffer through what they’re obviously here about.

But if that were really true, he would have just left them on his doorstep.

“Did anyone see you?” he asks again.

“Not that we noticed,” one of the girls in the middle says. Shili, dressed in a blue and white striped sensible jumpsuit and sporty cape. The leader of the new generation of superheroes and she sounds like she hasn’t even hit puberty yet.

Obi-Wan is suddenly very, very tired.

“Kam,” Shili gestures to the person next to her and a little behind, a tall boy with a helmet covering his face and white and blue armor covering the rest of him, “says he didn’t pick up anything with his sensors. We were safe. We’re not trying to get you caught, sir. We just need to talk to you.”

“You could kick us out,” the other girl points out, crossing her arms over her chest. She’s not even bothering to wear a domino mask, but Obi-Wan doubts very much he’s looking at her real appearance. She’s Mirial, of course.

Which makes the other boy in a padded white and orange suit Mando. Four of the fifty or so remaining Jedi superheroes are in his house.

Obi-Wan sighs and turns to pad down the hallway. “Shoes off,” he calls behind his shoulder. “And does anyone want any tea?”

“No thank you,” Shili responds politely, falling into step behind him.

“Sit,” he tells them roughly when he notices the four of them standing awkwardly in his cramped dining room. “Sit down.”

He puts the kettle on anyway, and bangs around the cabinets for a few seconds to find an unopened bag of chips and a sleeve of probably stale cookies.

He doesn’t have much else to offer them though. Not now.

Weren’t you the one always telling me to eat my vegetables? A laughing voice murmurs into his ear. Look at you now.

Obi-Wan has to stand for a second in his small and dirty kitchen, chips clutched in one hand and cookies in the other, and breathe for an impossibly long moment.

This is why he had not wanted to ever see another Jedi in his life. All they brought with them were questions and ghosts.

Obi-Wan has enough of those as it is.

The kettle goes off and he pours the hot water into his mug. The cowardly part of him that hasn’t faced a fight in ten years now wants to wait here until the tea has finished steeping and then think of a thousand other excuses to not ever leave the kitchen again. He's good at thinking of excuses. He calls them reasons and lives his life with them.

But he has always known someone would eventually come looking for answers. That had always been one of the prices he knew he would eventually have to pay.

He notices immediately upon entering the dining room that they’ve saved him a seat, if it counts as saving someone a seat when they’ve rearranged the chairs so one is on one side of the table and the other two are squeezed opposite it.

“I hope you don’t mind that I’ve brought snacks to my own interrogation,” he says blithely, depositing them onto the table in front of the children.

Kamino stares intently at them for a second, and then nods once to Shili, who reaches out to open the bag of chips. In a show of good faith, she takes one and eats it. Obi-Wan can’t see her eyes underneath the white lenses of her domino mask, but he’s quite sure she hasn’t stopped looking at him once.

“Are you sure you do not want tea, now we have established I am not going to poison you?” he asks, crossing his ankles and taking a sip from his own mug.

“It’s a bit too warm out there for hot tea,” Mirial says disdainfully, looking at her nails. “You know, what with the world on fire.”

“But I’d take an iced one, if you have it,” Shili leans forward.

Obi-Wan pauses, drink halfway to his mouth.

He sets it down gently on the wood of his table. “Ah. Going straight in, aren’t we?”

“There’s not much time for anything else,” Mando says, and at least he sounds a bit apologetic.

“A weighty statement from someone who can manipulate time itself,” Obi-Wan hums.

“Only for a few seconds,” Mando mutters behind his helmet, rubbing at the back of his neck.

“That’s because you don’t have much in the way of training, young man,” Obi-Wan tells him gently with a hint of steel behind it “Back in my day--”

He cuts himself off. He doesn’t know why. Clearly, they know who he used to be. Otherwise they wouldn’t be here. He’s really just delaying the inevitable, but his throat feels tight. This truth, so long unspoken, is hard to drag into his mouth. And yet, every second he doesn’t speak it, it’s bashing itself to death against the backs of his teeth.

“Would you like us to tell you what we’ve found out about your days?” Mirial asks, looking up from her nails. “Would that make it easier for you, Ilum?”

“Meer--” Shili starts to say, reaching out to touch the girl’s arm, rein her in, but it’s too late.

The planes of Mirial’s face change and shift and suddenly for the first time in ten years, Anakin Skywalker is sitting across from him. “Would you like to talk about the old days, or would you like me to talk about the old days?” Mirial in Anakin’s smooth baritone asks.

It’s cruel. It’s so cruel that for a second Obi-Wan wishes his heart could just stop from the pain of it all. “Please put that away,” he tells the tabletop coldly. “And please. Do not call me that.”

“Meer,” Shili murmurs, and there’s a shift in the air.

When Obi-Wan looks back up, Mirial is back to the way she always appears in press releases, green skin and all. “That was a decent impression,” he tells her. She bristles at the perceived slight, but he holds up his hand. “But when I knew him, his eyes weren’t gold. They were blue.”

“Mustafar has had golden eyes since he joined the Imps,” Mirial argues back in a way that reminds Obi-Wan of another young teenager, who never could learn how to take criticism well.

“And he was someone else before then,” he tells the girl. “He had another name and he had a mother and he had a soulmate and a--fiancee and everything.”

His hands have started to shake, so he clasps the mug tightly, though it burns him.

“Tell us,” Shili insists forcefully but compassionately. Obi-Wan had wondered before why they had chosen to make the girl whose only ability is to fly the leader of the newest Jedi team, but it must be that. It must be her compassion. “Please. You’re the only one who can.”

“Yes,” Obi-Wan says. “I know. I’m the only one who is left. But if I am to demask myself, I will not do it to a table of strangers.”

The children turn to look at each other. Kamino cocks his head at Shili, who inclines her own head. Mirial shrugs. Mando shakes his head once, but Shili seems to override him, because she turns back to Obi-Wan and takes off her domino mask.

“My name is Ahsoka Tano,” she says, stumbling over the name. Obi-Wan wonders how many times she’s unmasked herself before. “Or Shili.”

She nudges Mirial, who sighs. “I’m Barriss,” she tells him grudgingly.

Kamino takes off his helmet to reveal a strong-jawed boy with a blond buzzcut. “His name is Rex,” Ahsoka says. “He can’t speak except through minds.”

Obi-Wan blinks in surprise at this. He had known that Kamino had an advanced sense of the senses, could tell something’s molecular makeup just by looking at it, could smell a gas leak from two miles away, etcetera, etcetera, but he hadn’t known the boy could communicate telepathically as well.

“And I’m his twin,” Mando sighs, taking off his own helmet and revealing a startlingly similar face, marred by a scar just across his temple. “Cody.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you all,” Obi-Wan tells them, drumming his fingers on the table. “You know already. I fought under the name Ilum. I could--”

He searches for words to describe his own powers, and settles instead on a demonstration. With a flick of his hand, the liquid in the mug rises and freezes into a miniature wave, suspended in the air.

He lets the ice drop into the mug, and inclines his head to Ahsoka. “Iced tea?” he asks wryly.

“Tell us about Mustafar,” Mando demands. What a heavy thing to carry, Obi-Wan finds himself thinking. The knowledge of all that time.

What Obi-Wan wouldn’t give to be ten years younger again. Not to even change anything, though he would be stupid to not try to. But to just enjoy the moment for what it had been in the end: just a moment.

“We didn’t call him that then,” Obi-Wan sighs and rubs a hand over his face. “We called him Iego in uniform, and Anakin in civvies.

“He was...radiant. In battle and off the field. I was the leader of our team for six years until Anakin came along. And I just knew as soon as I saw him that he would take everything from me. But he wouldn’t have had to take it. I would have given it to him right then.”

“I didn’t think he was that attractive,” Ahsoka mumbles, and then slaps a hand over her mouth as if afraid she’s spoken out of turn and ruined the story so completely that Obi-Wan won’t say anything else.

Instead, Obi-Wan laughs but it doesn’t sound much like a laugh at all. “Well, to each is his own, of course,” he says when he thinks the hysteria has worn off. “And finding out he carried my soul mark certainly helped.”

The room is blissfully silent, which Obi-Wan is beyond thankful for. He just wants to let those never-before admitted truths hang in the air, just for a few more seconds. He almost wants to say them again actually. Anakin Skywalker is my soulmate. Anakin Skywalker carries the same mark I carry, and he always has.

“But…” Barriss says slowly, “But Mustafar’s soulmark is on his neck.”

“It’s not,” Obi-Wan murmurs, staring at the wall behind their heads. “What he has on his neck is an ice burn scar in the shape of a hand. In the shape of my hand. His actual soul mark is on his mid-back, right over his spine.”

“You tried to kill your soulmate?” Ahsoka gasps, looking horrified.

Obi-Wan smiles with no joy behind it. “I tried to save the world,” he corrects her gently.

“You said earlier…” Cody speaks up. “That Mustafar--that Anakin had a fiancee. It wasn’t you, was it?”

“No,” Obi-Wan admits. “I never told him. I...couldn’t. I wanted to wait I suppose. I. Well. My soulmark is identical to his, but it’s on my thigh. And. You know what they say about a soulmatch whose marks aren’t in the same spot.” “Star crossed,” Ahsoka whispers.

“Yes,” Obi-Wan confirms. “I decided to wait. I was a few years older than him, he had so much to learn, he needed a friend more than he needed a soulmate. I had a long list of reasons, all as iron-clad as the next. But they were excuses. I was afraid. This man, my soulmate, could control fire and sunlight itself. He burned with passion, shone with power. And I...I was cold. Too pragmatic, too quick to criticize when he needed praise. The marks were just marks. Maybe they fit together, maybe they matched. But I was terrified that we wouldn’t.

“And by the time I thought to tell him, he came to find me instead. He was in love, he said. He had been seeing a girl for months and was going to ask her to marry him. And I suppose I must have asked about his soulmate, because he told me he would rather never know his soulmate, if knowing meant losing her.”

So. So Obi-Wan had let him go, though that part doesn’t make for a good story. He had distanced himself as much as he could get away with, which is not much really, seeing as how Iego and Ilum fought best when they fought together.

But in the end, his heartbreak had been too much, even for someone as cold as Obi-Wan had been known to be. He’d put in for a temporary transfer. A remedial medical leave, a Jedi-sanctioned sabbatical so he could ostensibly connect with himself and his powers. Nothing longer than a year.

You’ll miss the wedding, Anakin had told him, heartbreak shining in his own eyes.

But his heartbreak had been nothing compared to Obi-Wan’s, and so he had left. He had needed to. It had felt like rending his soul in two, but he had.

Two weeks into his stay at a different Jedi training base, Obi-Wan had died in an explosion. “That hadn’t been Jedi sanctioned,” he tells the children in front of him wryly. “We thought it was an accident at the time, but there were too many coincidences. Too many casualties.” But Obi-Wan’s death had been the only casualty Anakin had felt. It hadn’t mattered that someone had managed to restart his heart only a few minutes later. He had died. He had died and Anakin had felt his soulmate die. He had burned his fiancee in his own uncontrollable agony. She had not survived Obi-Wan’s death, even though Obi-Wan himself had.

“I...I don’t know what happened. Still. It’s been years and I have thought of little else. She may have been standing too close to him when it happened. Or...the house may have caught on fire and she was trapped inside. Or...I don’t know. I don’t know,” he spreads his hands palm up on the table and looks at the faces of the children.

He sighs and continues. There is so little left in the story now. “The Jedi Order decided to tell the press that there had been no survivors, though there had been a few. We couldn’t know if the Imperials were behind the attack or not, so we had to be careful. The survivor’s families were told, and their soulmates. Officially, I had no family. I had...no soulmate. They didn’t tell anyone I had survived. Ilum died in that explosion. Still to this day, he's dead.

“Anakin had always been absurdly powerful...and dangerous. He’d killed the love of his life, had felt his soulmate dying, and then...heard that I too had died. The first two had destabilized him, but my death and the Jedi Order’s staunch rejection of his request to see my body, to give me a funeral...it made him even more vulnerable to outside manipulation.”

“The Imperials….” Cody murmurs.

Obi-Wan nods, lip curling up. “The Imperials,” he agrees. “The timeline is fuzzy. I spent a good part of these weeks partially dead, one foot in both worlds. I didn’t know what was going on. When I was well enough to watch the news, the Jedi told me there was a new super villain working with the Imperials, going by the name Mustafar. I trained to kill him as he was helping the Imps decimate the Jedi. All of my old team was dead. Anakin was missing. I didn’t--”

He cuts himself off and runs a hand down his face. The children are waiting on his words. He’s telling them why they’re fighting wars adults should be fighting. He’s telling them why they’re out in the field after only a month or less of training. He’s trying to tell them why he isn’t out there fighting with them, but he knows already they won’t accept his excuses.

They shouldn’t have to.

“They gave me a new uniform and a new name,” Obi-Wan picks up the story. “Hoth. And I went off to kill my soulmate.”

“But you didn’t,” Barriss says, and she sounds vaguely confused and vaguely accusatory.

“I almost did,” Obi-Wan admits, like it’s a sin, like it's salvation. “Everything about him was different. He was not the passionate but warm boy I had known. He was a forest fire. A volcano. And Mustafar’s fighting style was completely different from Iego’s. I only realized it was Anakin--my Anakin--when I managed to knock his mask off. I had my hand around his throat, but when I realized who I was fighting...I let go. I couldn’t kill him. Even after everything he did. Even knowing...knowing Iego was gone.”

The dining room is silent for a second, before three voices burst out angrily at once.

“Why aren’t you helping the Jedi?” Ahsoka asks the loudest. “Hoth--Ilum, Obi-Wan. We need you. Mustafar--the Imperials...they’re not going to stop. They’ve killed so many Jedi. We need you to help us.”

“I’m sorry,” Obi-Wan says. “I cannot.”

“You used to be a hero,” Barriss accuses. “Now what are you? A hollowed out, sad man.”

“I was never a hero,” he snaps. “I followed orders. Anyone can do that.”

“You were the best,” Cody says quietly, cutting Obi-Wan to the bone. “You led the Geonosis team for six years. I studied you in class. You were...the best.”

“I wasn’t,” Obi-Wan disagrees just as quietly. “But perhaps you all are.”

“You haven’t even told us any weakness we could use against him in battle!” Barriss shouts, standing up suddenly, which causes the chair to clatter over. “You’ve been no help at all! I’m leaving, this is a waste of time!”

“Barriss--!” Ahsoka cries after the girl, grabbing her discarded mask and taking after her.

Cody opens his mouth and then closes it. He jams the helmet back onto his head. “The soulmark. You said it’s on his hip?”

Obi-Wan smiles mirthlessly. Cody is trying to see if he can catch him in a lie, if this is actually good tactical information or not. “It’s a few inches below his shoulder blades, right over his spine.”

Cody nods once and then files out, leaving Obi-Wan alone in the room with the silent, still helmetless Rex.

“I just told him how to kill my supervillain soulmate,” Obi-Wan tells Rex, even though he’s really talking to himself. “Soulmarks, even dead ones, are extremely sensitive. If Anakin had hit me with his fire on my other thigh, I would be dead. Not just crippled. Muscle, young man, doesn’t grow back easily.”

He rubs a hand over the leg in question, staring down at the uneven way his pants lay over the old injury. It aches from the walking he’s forced it to do today, from trying to walk normally im front of these powerful strangers.

Rex taps the table to get him to look up, and then gestures to his own eyes.

“I?” Obi-Wan asks, confused.

Rex rolls his eyes and then mimes writing something.

“Ah, there should be a pen and pad in the kitchen?” he trails off as the teenager goes to retrieve the aforementioned things.

It takes a second longer than it should, and he comes out carrying just a slip of paper with his helmet forced back onto his head.

With a flick of his fingers, the paper’s lying on the table and Rex is following his teammates out the door and out of Obi-Wan’s apartment and hopefully out of his life forever.

Curious, Obi-Wan grabs the note and unfolds it to read.

We thought Musta. had yel. eyes because all the top Imps have yel. eyes. But if Ankn had blue eyes, then mybe none of the imps should have yel eyes.

No one knows what sidious power is -> what if it’s mind control?

Obi-Wan puts the note down onto the table with shaking hands. He wishes desperately he had never read it.

Because those words plant a seed of hope in his chest he isn’t sure he’ll be able to live without now.

What if Anakin--his Anakin--what if he’s in there still? What if Obi-Wan had abandoned him to ten years of brainwashing and mind control with not much of a fight at all?

But more pressingly, what if there’s hope for him? For both of them? Still, after all this time?

#asks #my fics #look i did another prompt #obikin #superheroes au #i was thinkin of the robert frost fire and ice poem when i went to sleep #and this was the result lmao #obviously they end up together #idk what to tell you #probably big moment for anakin who still thinks obi-wan is dead #for him to show up ten years older than he ever thought he'd see him #limping and being called hoth #i liked the superhero names being after the planets they're from (i mean mostly #iego is cause of the angels thing and obi-wan is like oof hes radiant hes great hes an angel)#hes a mass murderer (again) is what he is #god i hope this fic makes sense its 4:41 #prompt fill

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soclonely · 3 years

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My Trash Inventory

Hello and welcome to the mixed dumpsterfire that is my page of Star Wars appreciation. So feel free to browse around, check out some of the finest products of my brain, hit the recycle button if you see something ya like, and have a good day!

Writings

1. Strategy-

a short story about Palpatine and his love of a good game of chess with a padawan.

2. Check-

A sequel to strategy. An emperor and a memory

3. Follow My Advice-

A medic so hellbent on others listening to his suggestions, he forgets to take care of himself

4. Pest Control-

Even the barracks need a professional to clean up the mice. Wolfpack short.

5. When We Survive

-The Domino Twins take some time to chat before an important mission.

6. Quiet-

A small Bad Batch piece

7. The Collection-

Hunter’s way of unwinding after a long mission

8. Teardrops-

A short story on Tup’s tattoo and post Umbara feelings

9. The Tangled Tooka-

a new business opens up in Coruscant

10. The Bad Batch’s First Day of Autumn-

Hunters blade is missing and Hardcase is cooking up a meal!

11. The 501st’s First Day of Autumn-

Fives and Hardcase are on leaf raking duty

12. Twas the Night Before Space Thanksgiving

13. Hardcase’s Pipe Dream-

A flooding in the Barracks

14. The Stylist-

Tup makes a new friend

15. The Petting Zoo-

Tup and Fives and a day at a petting zoo .

16. The Petting Zoo Part 2: Electric bogaloo

-Maybe people just shouldn’t go to petting zoos with Fives

17. Cody and His Fear Of Ferrets 18. Something Else-

Jesse x reader and a night out gone a little too astray.

19. Dogma Doing Your Dishes

20. Texas Roadhouse Rolls

Dont Recognize Me(Complete)-

an 8 part series where everyones favorite 501st captain travels back in time to the clone wars to try and change the outcome of the war and warn the Jedi of the chips in the brains of their comrades

1.Raptor

2.The Commander

3.The Domino Duo

4.The Medbay

5.Guilt

6.A Shiny Opportunity

7.The Order

8.Brothers

A Life Day Carol-

Commander Cody empire era (final few chapters in the works I swear)

1.The Unwelcome Visitor

2.The General

Life Day Moments

- Small acts of kindness throughout the Galaxy, even in times of turmoil

1.Echo and Fives

2.Cody and Rex

3.Padme and JarJar

4.Boba Fett

5.Jabba and Rotta

6.The Bad Batch

7.The Organas

8.Battle Droids

9..Skywalker and Kenobi

10.Palpatine and Mas Amedda

11.Small Acts

Crossing Over

- Crosshair and his bizarre adventure to the underworld

1.Where there is hell...

2.There’s Lucy

3.Stab to The Heart...

The Clones As

****These are just a few of my favorites, most of them can be found on my page under the tag “khai come get ya juice”. There are a ton if you are into that nonsense.****

1.The Clones As Kitchen Messes

2.The Clones as Science Experiments

3.The Clones as The Circus

4.The Clones as Target Shoppers

5.The Clones as Middle Aged Suburb Moms

6.The Clones and Their Top Internet Searches

7.The Clones as Inspirational Quotes

8.The Clones as Preschoolers

9.The Clones as The People You See On Tumblr

10.The Clones as My Impulsive Quarantine Purchases

11.The Clones as Inconveniences and Annoyances Part I

12.The Clones as Inconveniences and Annoyances Part II

13.The Clones as Inconveniences and Annoyances Part III

14.The Clones as My Inner Excuse For Missing Social Events

15.The Clones as Gordon Ramsey Insults

16.The Clones as What R2D2 Thinks About Them

17.The Clones as Tropes

18.The Clones as Things I Do To Avoid Family At Thanksgiving Get Togethers

other fun tags to check out on my page:

parenting clones pointless posts sw headcanons incorrect clone wars quotes

#pinned post #my master list

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greenninjagal-blog · 3 years

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Deja Vu pt6

Hey guys! Surprise!! Have twenty pages of Dee picking a fight on TV. For those who are new around, [here’s] the first chapter and for those who need a refresher [here’s] the previous chapter!

Summary: Remus and Dee confront The Prince on live TV. Things go downhill rather quickly.

Word Count: 10447

TW: temporary character death, blood,

Read on Ao3 || My General Writing Masterlist

Remus is twenty-one and he thinks that people might not actually be worth saving at all.

There’s an electricity in the air, a buzzing so loud that he can almost taste it as he shifts his weight between his feet. There are so many people around him, nearly too many, packed together like sardines in all the crevices that they can fit. Remus wants so badly to kick his leg out just to see if with one nudge he could toppled the human domino train down all the way, but Dee gives his hand a small, gentle squeeze.

His hand is warm, his touch intoxicating in a way that no drug could ever hope to be. Remus has felt it before, in futures that never happened, but it still feels unreal as it's going on. He thinks maybe, possibly that he’s stuck right now, right this second and that his real body is somewhere else bleeding out on the ground.

But he also thinks, traitorously, stupidly, suicidally, that he doesn’t mind as long as he gets to keep feeling Dee’s hand in his right now.

Dee’s touch is featherlight, but Remus is hyperaware of every atom in his body at these moments: Dee goes on to talk about so many things, but Remus’s brain only hears touch, warmth, Dee, Dee, Dee. And the Shapeshifter has to say his name at least four times before Remus realizes that time is passing and he’s not passing with it.

It should be annoying-- Remus thinks that Roman would have tried throttling him by now--but Dee just gives him a wispy, honeyed smile and does it again, like seeing Remus short circuit is somehow the best sight in the world.

Which is sweet, sugary, splendid. It might even mean that Dee intends to stick around after those feelings fade away to the bitter acquired taste that is Remus’s company after a year. So very few people ever got past that: the kids at school had flocked to Roman’s cotton candy exterior and had eaten him all up and then got burned when they mistakenly thought that Remus was anything like his twin outside his face.

(He wonders even now if Roman still shares that face with him. Did he dye his hair? Get piercings? Or did he cover his mirrors so he wouldn’t have to remember Remus existed at all? Does Roman think about Remus nearly as much as Remus thinks about Roman?)

Oh wait, Remus knows the answer to that last one.

Dee squeezes his hand again, even without looking. He insisted on dressing presentably today: shining shoes and one of his new suits tailored to his exact size and a flattering face that just screams trust me with all your finances, I won’t rob you blind, Grannie! When they were getting their coffees, the woman in front of them had called him a gentleman and Remus almost choked on his drink at that. A pretty face, a kind gesture, a mask and Dee wore his like a skin walking alien and no one was any wiser about it. Except Remus.

He reaches over and steals Dee’s latte from his hand. Dee tenses, then relaxes and watches with an amused smile as Remus sniffs it.

“Not nearly enough vodka in this,” he decides and Dee laughs.

“Ah, yes, because the girl at the counter is surely old enough to be serving alcohol,” Dee says. “And the last thing I want to do is be on TV drunk.”

His nose scrunches up at the detestable thought, but Remus thinks it’s the exact opposite of what they should be doing. Dee? On TV? With no inhibitions? Remus listened to his late-night rambles on the flaws of society when there was nothing but sleep deprivation weighing on their souls and Remus was moved enough to find himself here today. There was something about his honesty, his psychological approaches, his confidence, that made him so trustworthy. He was a leader at heart and Remus was happy to follow him, even if it meant going right off a cliff.

(Not like he hadn’t done that a time or fifty before. And besides, Dee could grow wings if he wanted. He’d catch both of them and fly them to safety.)

“A dash of vodka is just liquid courage,” Remus says.

Dee turns his green eyes on him, the light through the window making sparkles in his irises, or maybe that’s just Dee doing subtle magic of his own. Whatever it was Remus decides he doesn’t ever want to look away again. Dee's eyes are priceless; Remus wouldn’t be surprised if Dee had stolen a hundred jadeite stones and shoved them in his eyes for safekeeping.

“Who needs liquid courage--” Dee says “--when I have you?”

Remus tips back Dee’s latte and slurps it so that his tongue burns right out of his mouth, because then at least there’s a reason for the mortifying smoldering all over his face. Dee reaches up and rubs the pad of his thumb over Remus’s cheek, tickling his mustache ever so slightly and laughs again.

“Darling,” he says. “You’re too easy.”

“You going to do something about it?” Remus challenges. “I wouldn’t be opposed to it right here, over this table, you know. Might wanna make sure little Timmy over there is covering his eyes first though. He doesn’t need his awakening until a few more years down the line.”

They’re close enough to the other customers that an elder woman with a pocket dog in her purse gives him a glare and a teenage girl in a sweater turns bright pink and stares out the window just a bit too hard. There’s a good chance that Remus could get both of them to do something more, but before he can open his mouth again, Dee is leaning in.

He’s using his usual height today, which means that Remus is just a bit taller, but Dee makes those three inches feel like hairbreadths. His breath is warm on Remus’s neck, and it sends shivers down his back when the phantom feeling brushes over his skin. He smells like cardamom, and Remus’s mouth freezes, his words long lost and forgotten in the prospect of Dee saying literally anything at all.

But in the end Dee just wordlessly hums and drops back to his flat foot.

It takes Remus a whole second to remember how to breathe. And another to realize that Dee took back his latte and was drinking it like he was entirely unaware of what he had just done to Remus, except that his lips slip off the rim on his cup and they’re curled upwards in that absolutely sensual smirk of his.

“It’s almost time,” the shapeshifter says moving on casually while Remus tries not to let his brain melt right out of his ears. “I should go get into place.” He peeks at Remus and glances away just as quickly. “You…you’re sure that you’re alright to do this, Remus? You don’t have to if it will hurt you.”

Remus wonders vainly if Dee was aware that the term “Martyr” was engraved on his ribcage, imprinted on his heart, seared into his soul. If there was ever a choice between himself and someone else getting hurt, Remus wouldn’t hesitate, and he never had. If Roman had ever looked, like truly looked, he might have noticed that, and then maybe things would have turned out even marginally different. But this time around, Remus nods at Dee and squeezes his hand back so hard that his fingers lose their blood flow.

“It’s not gonna hurt me,” Remus says, which might be a lie and not even a believable one, but they both pretend. “Besides, this means something to you, doesn’t it?”

Dee’s shoulders tense, and resettle, as if he’s reminding himself that Remus is not a threat. He licks his lips, chasing after the taste of espresso. “It does,” he says and it shouldn’t feel like Dee is telling him some big surprise secret, because they spent the past three days planning this whole thing out on the floor of their hotel room while Remus rolled that casino coin between his fingers and thought about how Dee’s hair looks soft and fluffy when he’s just waking up.

“Remus…” Dee starts. “There’s something I haven’t told you yet. About me. And… this.”

Whatever this is. He’s hesitating again, hovering like he’s on top of a fence topped with barbed wire and he knows that he needs to pick a side but can’t quite decide which side will hurt less: the spikes or the lava? Remus shakes away the unneeded thoughts to focus in on the trepidation in Dee’s expression, but as soon as he zeroes in on it, Dee smooths it out.

“Timing,” he says almost as if to himself. Then, “I’ll tell you after we do this. I owe… I owe you that much.”

Remus doesn’t think there’s a single thing that Dee could ever owe him at all. Not when Dee pulled his bleeding body off the balcony, not when Dee kissed him with all the tenderness in the world, not when Dee stayed with him in the face of literally everything. Dee can’t possibly owe him anything when Remus is the one standing here with a power that’s not even helpful unless it’s killing Remus, and Dee is out here trying to save lives with what he has.

But Remus is decently sure that if he opens his mouth to say any of that, what will come out will be something undoubtedly more emotional than they have time for and will probably scare Dee away entirely: a love confession, a proposal, matching headstones for their graves that they’ll probably be in much sooner than either of them would like.

“And Remus?” Dee says, like he doesn’t notice that he’s literally the only thing that matters in Remus’s little world. He gives Remus’s hand another meaningful squeeze. Then he pops up on his toes to brush a kiss to his cheek in a way that makes Remus feel like a middle school girl in a catholic school discovering how attractive boys are for the first time.

His heart beats so hard he thinks he can taste it around the coffee and whatever the hell it is that Dee tastes like.

“Thank you,” Dee says with sincerity.

“If we were characters in a book, this is the part where right before the author kills you off for dramatic effect.” Remus reaches out and clinks his cup with Dee’s. “Don’t make it that easy.”

Dee snorts in that very dignified way of his. “Of course, what was I thinking? My apologies. Here I was, assuming that the soothsayer might be able to help me to cheat Death but apparently I was mistaken.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be right there in your ear, Despacito,” Remus says pointing towards the earpiece he’s wearing. “You won’t be able to get me out of your mind even if you wanted me to!”

Dee smiles, quick and wonderful and Remus drinks in the sight like it’s the newest liquid craze, better than the latte in Dee’s hands, or the ice coffee in his own, or fresh drinking water in the middle of the desert. Dee’s hand drip, drip, drips right out of Remus’s, although the atoms in his fingers don’t stop tingling with sensation.

“I look forward to it,” Dee says as final parting and then he weaves his way out of the café. Remus bites his plastic straw and follows with his eyes until he can’t anymore. The people around them move out of the way for him because Dee gives off that aura of someone important and no one wants to be caught dead getting dirt on his freshly polished oxfords.

For all their planning, Remus still feels a little nervous with everything going on. They gathered as much information as they could about the day: the new registration office was being set up in a public library as a temporary location and it was closed for activity outside of the registration. Remus took particular pleasure in reading the heartwarming amount of public backlash about that from regular people who just really liked the library for some reason. The building is a lucky four stories tall-- which Remus thinks is nice. The library back in his hometown was two, poorly funded, and he’d been banned from visiting when he was ten because he’d seen the old librarian fall off a ladder and tried to help her by grabbing which did not go over remotely well.

The street is casual: a bunch of modern buildings with local shops and boutiques. Dee got sidetracked two days ago picking out new shoes from a window display and chatting with the owner who surprisingly was very informative.

“The Prince? My niece thinks he’s the greatest thing since sliced bread,” the older woman said while packing up a pair of single strap monks.

“Oh?” Dee said conversationally which made Remus look up from where he was flicking through a rack of sun dresses.

“I think he has a few screws loose,” the woman said. “No child his age should be running around in a costume like that. He’s just inviting danger to himself, not to mention those around him. In fact, Linda-- you know Linda right? She owns the chocolatiering place on fourth street? It’s got lovely chocolate strawberries-- Linda said over our weekly tea that if she got the chance, she would punch him in the face!" the woman chuckled. "But I don't blame her at all. All this nonsense about super powers and abilities and someone might start looking twice at how her baby girl can get any animal to eat out of her hand."

Dee raised an eyebrow. And the lady waved off his unasked question.

"Magic ability or pure coincidence! I don't care about any of that! If that FBE comes knocking on Linda's door the whole group of us shop owners are ready to stand up against them. Linda’s little girl belongs right here with her family and not anywhere near some secret government building or on some watchlist like a criminal!"

They left after that and paid a visit to the chocolate shop on fourth street. And what do you know, the little shop received a generous cash award from a lesser known chocolate secret society group thing. Remus doesn't remember the actual name Dee used, but he does remember that they were selling dinosaur shaped chocolates and he bought a box just so he could bite the heads off all of them.

The main street leading to the library-turned-registration office was closed off completely and marked that way with crowd control fences, which might have been for the best. In just the two days leading up to the grand opening, the city’s population seemed to have doubled. Remus was moderately amused by it, watching from the window of their hotel room: people came from the woodwork, springing into the city with the rigour of a bunch of busy ants who were so completely unaware of the exterminator coming.

Dee didn’t let him try looking to the future more than a few times and to be very ridiculously honest, Remus is kinda grateful for it. Every time he looks he feels something off about himself, something he can’t put a name to, something he can’t put a finger on. It just seems that one minute he’s fine and the next he’s hacking up blood.

Which by the way, means he’s dying according to WebMD and Google. Remus doesn’t let Dee see the worst of it, but the nosebleeds are stronger, and Dee’s not exactly stupid. He can tell that Remus is using more tissues, that he’s holding them to his face longer, that he’s pale and tired and his hands are colder to the touch.

They don’t talk about it. Not really.

They should.

But if there’s one thing that Remus’s mother taught him, it’s that if you avoid talking about something for long enough it will disappear and you’ll forget about it.

Perhaps the biggest thorn in their sides-- both of their sides and their lungs and the back of their necks right through the medulas killing them instantly-- is the charming Prince himself! The character seems to be everywhere and nowhere all at once: the news has him stopping burglaries and home invasions up and down the east coast, calming down violent criminals, and helping little old ladies cross the street, and flashing his award-winning, crowd-hypnotising smile at the cameras. And yet for all the several hours worth of footage that Dee and him had scoured through, neither of them can quite figure out what The Prince’s power is.

It’s mental, at least. Something to do with information based on what Remus can come up with. He can tell from the way that the guy reacts in the middle of any confrontation: there’s a moment where green lights flash in his eyes, flickering so quickly it might have been a trick of the camera if Remus hadn’t caught it so many times on so many different occasions. One moment he’s acting one way, the next he’s changing course entirely, moving or stopping or avoiding. Like he knows what’s going to happen.

Like he can see the future.

But somehow he avoided all the fun nosebleeds and the feeling of death over his shoulder. Like maybe when his power manifested people actually believed him! Like maybe his friends didn’t shove him away and maybe his mother loved him and maybe he stayed home and watched Disney movies with his brother all night when they were seventeen instead of letting him go to a party where everything went wrong.

Remus’s hands shook far more than they had any right to when he first made the connection, first made the comment, first made the joke out loud for Dee to laugh at without pay attention to what he was actually saying. Then he dry heaved into a trash can for fifteen minutes while Dee rubbed his back and pointedly waited for an explanation that Remus didn’t give him because Roman is nothing and no one and he doesn’t matter when Remus has Dee.

“Perhaps he’s a mind reader,” Dee suggested.

Whatever he ends up being, Remus decides that The Prince better hope he figures out some shit with Dee. Because if Remus has to enter the ring, he doesn’t think the Prince will be leaving it in anything other than a body bag.

“You seem very… invested in him,” Dee said when Remus told him as much over a breakfast of french toast and eggs at a dinner where the waitress didn’t tell them to stop making out in any flickers of the future he blinked at. Dee was choosing his words carefully. Too carefully.

“His face is very punchable,” Remus said, squeezing ketchup in his orange juice. “I’m surprised no one else sees it! Don’t you just get filled with rage when you look at him?”

The way Dee blinked said a lot, but Remus pretended not to notice as he used a straw to stir his drink and poured a bit of syrup in too. For flavor and fun. Dee doesn’t say anything more on the topic, and Remus doesn’t ask because he gets the feeling Dee will tell him the truth if he does.

And Remus doesn’t think that this is a truth that Dee wants to tell right now.

Maybe later. After Dee’s dragged the Propaganda Prince from his golden pedestal and Remus has had his fun in the mix. After they stop the FBE from their nefarious plans. After.

Remus tastes the word in his mouth and he’s not sure why it feels so foreign to him. It’s a strange mixture of bitter and unforgettable, of sweet and strange, of something he’s never tried before and might never get to taste again.

It’s better than blood. Less red too.

Remus taps his foot as he watches out the window of the coffee shop. There are a lot of people inside here and he’s not sure how many of them are regulars compared to how many of them want to just watch the possible freaks that have to walk down the street and enter the building pretending like they can’t feel all the world watching them do it.

Remus isn’t even one of the suckers doing it, but he can understand how it might make someone queasy. The number of eyes looking, watching, remembering them is something of a curse; the cameras are blatantly obvious and the gawking of the other people is unignorable. If things were different, Remus wonders if he might have been nervous about this, about entering the building, about taking a step out of line and telling the whole world what he could do.

It was supposed to be a secret, right? At least that’s what his mother had always encouraged him to believe. She told him to stop talking, to stop crying, to shut up and pretend nothing was happening, smile at the cashier, Remus, but don’t tell her that you can see her tripping over her shoe laces and cracking her head on the floor. When people asked his mother how her children were, she never had enough to say about Roman’s achievements.

Remus sticks his straw all the way in his mouth until it pokes his uvula and his eyes water.

She tried.

And in the end it wasn’t enough, isn’t enough, because now she talked so much about Roman that she didn’t even remember that he existed anymore. He’s grown up and she’s still the same.

He wonders if she would even recognize him if they passed each other on the street.

Something to think about. Perhaps he can convince Dee to take a trip with him to the other side of the country, to his hometown, to his old neighborhood. He’s sure that by now they have enough cash for a couple dozen eggs that belong on the outside of his old two story suburban house. After all this, after they save the day, after they put Princey boy in his place. After.

The clock on his phone ticks down, and Remus feels like his chest is going to explode if his heart gets any faster. The FBE registration office opens at ten a.m. and he’s not entirely certain the world will still be standing by ten oh five, but that’s what makes everything fun, isn’t it?

The coffee shop customers shuffle and move like a complex organism trying to rip itself apart but never quite managing it. Outside there are more people, pressed together, close enough to be touching, to be talking, to be nervous and excited and emotional. Camera flashes go off, news crews stand in the middle of the street with microphones interviewing the normal people who are treating this like a festival or a parade rather than the thinly veiled death threat it is.

They’re packed so closely together that Remus has a hard time seeing over their heads, and peeking at the temporary stage that’s been set up in front of the entrance to the library. There’s a podium on it, though, and decorations of a brilliant red, white, and blue, along with speakers and microphones being tested for the brilliant speech that the Prince is going to give for his adoring fans. There’s security and police patrolling everywhere, news crews and reporters and civilians watching with bated breath as the time draws near.

Part of Remus wants to wonder why here, why now, why did the Prince choose to come cross country out of the blue like this? Surely he could get just as much adoration from his fans in New York.

There must have been something that happened on the East Coast that drove him out here. Bad publicity that might make him look bad-- for a moment Remus entertains the idea that the Superhero managed to kill someone and now the FBE was graciously covering it up and sending him to Oregon so that he stays out of the way, stays out of trouble.

Too bad for him; Remus and Dee had claimed this part of the country as their own playground and they brought nothing but trouble with them.

Dee would take extra special delight in taking a bat to the Prince’s glass house reputation if the man let him. Remus would take extra special delight in watching Dee do it.

Remus tapped the screen of his phone again, checking the time. Dee should be in place by now, hiding among the normal people, slipping between the patrolling law enforcers, and plotting the best place to be in order to make his grand entrance.

((It was adorable watching Dee figure out what he wanted it to be: the man curled up in a sweatshirt with hair still wet from his shower and chewing the end of a pencil in between spitballing ideas at Remus. His eyes seemed to glow when he got excited, and they were hypnotizing to look at, swirling with all the colors: grey blue, jade, hazel, silver. Whenever he liked an idea he scribbled it down on a piece of paper and smiled with his fangs out and Remus had to resist the urge to kiss him again, lest they fall behind in their planning phase due to an excessive make out session.))

In the end, planning this whole thing wasn’t all that much different from their other heists: the casino where they met, the fancy banks, the jewelry stores, a privately owned winery. There was less of Remus looking at the future, true, but that just meant that they spent more time lying next to each other scouring the internet on their individual phones for relevant information and eating chocolate dinosaurs.

The clock strikes thirty-till ten and the whole world seems to hold its breath. Remus can feel it, the way the air holds itself and suddenly the whole coffeeshop, the patrons, the cashiers and the machines go quiet with anticipation.

“There!” yells a kid from a window seat, covered in chocolate from a partially devoured muffin and bouncing on the cushion. He presses both his hands to the cleaned window, as if he can phase right through it if he pushes himself hard enough. “There! It’s a car!”

“Where? I wanna see!”

“Is it The Prince?”

“The Prince! Move I want to see!”

Remus barely has time to brace himself before there are people pressing up against him, strangers shoving and pushing and yelling and trying to get to the window to see exactly what is going on. Remus himself leaves a nice face print to the glass that he suspects the long suffering employees are going to have blast cleaning later.

Assuming that the shop is still standing after all this.

Someone’s elbow goes into Remus’s spine and for a second Remus blinks and there’s a guy standing over him, pressing a hand to his pulse, and the manager at the front desk of their hotel is screaming again. Remus hisses out a harsh breath that fogs up the window and scrubs the thought, the concept, the memory from his mind. Because he’s not dead, he’s not dying, he’s not on the hood of a car. And the last thing he needs is to forget that.

The car that the kid had pointed out was actually a caravan of cars: black nondescript SUVs with tinted windows and tires thick enough to be bulletproof. The type of cars celebrities and CEOs and politicians ride around in when their limos are being deep cleaned. The crowd blockers leave more than enough room for the cars to parade through the street right to the stage. Someone outside even sets off a confetti cannon so it rains red and gold and white paper through the air.

Remus grinds his morals together and shoves himself backwards, knocking into about six more people who are swarming for his spot so quickly, so frantically, so vehemently, that Remus doesn’t actually make out any of their faces or forms or bodies. The whole shop was swarmed with people, but now all the bodies were pressed against the street windows and Remus thinks if they were on a boat, they would have capsized. He tugs the front of his leather jacket to straighten it and elbows his way through the front doors and out into the street.

Outside it’s not much easier to see anything. The cheering crowd is the most annoying thing ever. Although the hand made signs people are waving are a close second. Remus fights the urge to knock several of them out of people’s hands because the crowd control are watching like hawks and--

-- “HEY! HEY!” one of the uniformed guys yells at him. Remus flips him the bird, and because he’s so busy laughing at the guy he misses the sign holder’s left fist coming for his face.--

-- “HEY! HEY!” one of the uniformed guys yells at him. Remus flips him the bird, and because Remus knows better now he manages to dodge the incoming fist and drive his elbow up under his attacker’s guard and right into his diaphragm. There’s an exhilarating feeling flowing through him as the crowd around him jostles and shouts and falls to chaos in a way that completely derails the plan Dee worked so hard to put together.--

--Remus tears himself back to the present, stumbling slightly over a swaying ground. He coughs into his fist as his body is checked by a passerby into the outside wall of the coffee shop. There are flecks of red, so small Remus wouldn’t have noticed if he weren’t looking for them. That’s good, that’s great, that’s fine.

He’s fine.

The crowd pulses and the volume of dissonant cheering increases tenfold. Remus wipes his hand on his thigh and looks up to see over through the crowd for what was happening, although he already has a good idea. The cars must have completed their slow circuit and the doors of one of them must have popped open for the guest of honor to step out.

Another burst of confetti shoots out filling the air with white pieces of paper that almost look like snow. Remus ignores them mostly as he slips through the crowd in ways that his body probably shouldn’t be able to move: under an elbow here, passing a shoulder there, winking at the college student his face is three inches from as he scoots between him and an older woman with a crying child on her hip. He feels his spine crack more than he hears it as he moves.

He makes it to the crowd barriers with an impressive number of bruises, a bit of coffee from an off balanced teenager, and a scrap where someone hit him with one of those stupid signs. He’s close enough to the stage that his skin itches, that his throat burns, that his toes curl; the Prince isn’t even looking his way but Remus thinks that the white of his super suit would look excellent covered in his blood. There’s a rapier at his side that glistens in the sunlight, silver and shining and ready for use although Remus has yet to see him actually use it as a weapon rather than a fancy prop.

The Prince is an actor on a stage waving to his fans, a red herring meant to distract everyone from the implications of the FBE headquarters right behind him. He blows a kiss to the crowd and Remus gets the urge to punch his face again.

Instead he presses up against the barrier wall, hooking his arms around the metal bars to hold himself in place and watches with his tongue in his cheek. He nods at the techie standing on the other side: a guy with hefty headphones, bright purple hair, and a mouth mask with an anime character on it from a show Remus vaguely recognizes. The guy squints at him suspiciously for a moment but ultimately just shrugs and goes back to writing something in a pocket notebook and leaning against the side of a News Crew van he presumably works for.

On stage, The Prince approaches the podium waving still and smiling twice as broadly as before. Remus isn’t sure how anyone can look at him and think “safety” when his charming show of teeth also makes it look like his mouth was going to split his entire head open. A police line-up stands along the wings of the stage, like he’s a real prince about to address a nation.

Someone Remus doesn’t recognize is also on the stage in a suit. The Prince grins and shakes the guys hand like they’re old friends. They pose for a camera flash for a moment, sharing a laugh that can’t possibly be that funny, and the new techie rolls his eyes so hard his head shakes. Another person from the crew joins him standing side-by-side and they share a short conversation that leaves the one with the headphones glaring.

The guy on stage claps The Prince on the back and offers him the podium with microphones before stepping back clapping enthusiastically.

Remus thinks boredly that it would have been funnier if Dee were up there, dressed up in a stranger’s skin and stepping back only so that The Prince never gets to see the knife Dee shoves in his neck. But Remus knows Dee better than that; he’d never kill, and he'd definitely never deliver a fatal blow when his victim didn’t know his name.

(Remus wonders distantly, when he realized how much names meant to Dee. Was it before Dee offered up his name at that casino? Or later when Dee was breathing into Remus’s mouth and Remus was trying to figure out what was wrong with himself? Dee wanted people to know his name, wanted people to remember him when he left, wanted them to recognize him-- but he also didn’t and Remus isn’t sure how to solve that puzzle yet so he sticks it in the back of his mind to work on when its just the two of them alone in a hotel room in the dark.)

The Prince winks to someone in the crowd and finishes his last wave. Remus glances back at the line of SUVs but no one else comes out of them-- which isn’t that weird? Remus seems to recall the Prince being very specific that he had a team and a partner and yet he’s up there all alone receiving all the glory.

Of course they could just be shy, but based on how little information there actually is about the team and partner existing, Remus thinks that maybe it’s a farce meant to placate children’s dreams of being on a super team with their super hero!

(Remus is not alone in this thinking either. Dee’s favorite website called AnxiTEA has several dozen articles written about how The Prince sucks and that he’s just doing all this for publicity and recognition-- along with a carefully worded warning that if The Prince begins losing either of those things, he’s most likely going to become feral and turn on them all.)

Remus adjusts the earpiece in his ear just as The Prince opens his mouth to start off that particularly exciting, bold, inspiring speech of his. But before he gets more than a syllable out, a shadow floods from overhead.

The crowd collectively gasps and screams, spreading apart in every which direction; Remus lets out a hefty groan as the guy next to him bowls into his shoulder and he nearly flings over the fence. The techie on the other side drops his little notebook in shock, and his friend pulls out a phone immediately.

The shadow sweeps downward through the air like the largest bird in history. Remus laughs as he watches, Dee’s wings glisten with black wings that glisten yellow when the sun reflects off them. In fact just watching him, Remus has a hard time believing that Dee didn’t grow up with wings attached to his back. He makes floating and flying and landing look graceful, ethereal, easy and breathless and exhilarating. Dee lands on the stage due left of The Prince, safely with his knees bent to absorb the shock. When he stands back up, his blond hair flows slightly in the kickback wind and his trustable dark eyes sparkle.

(He went with the black and yellow color scheme. That had been Remus’s favorite option. The black of his suit makes the shimmers of gold look expensive, dangerous, and untouchable. Although, Remus is a little biased on the front that he always thinks Dee looks dangerous and untouchable. He’s a caution sign, a warning, and Remus can’t wait for The Prince to ignore it.)

“Hello,” Dee says and Remus thinks he can hear his barely concealed laughter over all the crowd's confused chaos. The police line behind The Prince lurch into movement at the sound of his voice, but the hero himself throws out an arm and stops them where they stand with hands on their tasers.

Dee raises an eyebrow, a polite expression on his face. And the Prince mirrors him.

“Oh wonderful!” the hero says in a confident tone, in a reassuring tone, in a placating tone that tells the audiences watching that there’s nothing to fear from the black winged Angel that just descended down on them like a herald of Death. Dee’s eyes shine with amusement that Remus can pick out even from over here. “Another friend like me!”

The Prince offers a hand to Dee, a handshake. Remus digs his teeth into his tongue as he watches Dee take it from above, like he’s royalty allowing the poor publicity prince to greet him.

“Not quite like you, my dear Prince,” Dee says. “If the wings weren’t a dead give away already.”

The Prince’s lips tighten. Remus thinks that his expression screams “calculating”. He looks at Dee like he’s still trying to figure out if he’s a friend or foe, and Dee’s body language offers no hints at all.

Or well, maybe a few hints. Remus can see it, because he can see Dee: the tilt of his head is a challenge, the light in his eyes is condescending, the openness of his body facing the crowd speaks in volume of who he’s actually there for. Remus can read every bit of Dee and it sends a shiver down his back to realize.

The crowd bobs and murmurs, unsure of what to do with the surprise visitation. Several camera flashes go off like someone is trying to prove to themselves that the wings are real. The techie on the other side of the barrier reaches up and hooks a finger over his mouth mask as if he’s debating ripping it off to breathe easier. Remus digs his chin into the metal bars of the crowd barrier and wishes he had some popcorn.

“I’ve heard a lot about you, Prince,” Dee says silky smooth.

“Good things I hope,” The Prince says back. “I would love to sit down and have a conversation with a fan as elegant as yourself, but I really must be getting back on schedule. I’d be happy to sign somethin--”

Dee laughs pleasantly, although Remus thinks he should be swinging to dislodge the superheroes head from his neck.

“You are a riot!” Dee takes a few steps forward. “You think I’m up here to get your autograph?”

The Prince’s eyes narrow slightly. “Aren’t you?”

Dee flexes his wings just as slightly, letting them shimmer so beautifully for the crowd up front to see. “Oh no. I must confess I’m not much of a fan at all. I’d really much rather skip to the debate portion of this.”

“The debate,” The Prince repeats like he hasn’t ever heard the word before. Remus half expects him to snap at that guy behind him to offer up a dictionary so he can read the Webster definition before he responds. But in the end the Prince merely moves his arm back and settles his right hand on the hilt of his rapier.

“I’ve been fascinated by you, Prince,” Dee continues, gliding around him and stretching his wings so that the police line is forced to take another step back or get bumped. Dee circles the hero much like a snake starting to coil around its prey before the final strike. He’s slow and methodical and Remus doesn’t think anyone can look away from him. He knows he can’t. “They call you a superhero. The first real life one to walk the streets.”

The Prince follows Dee’s motions with his head. “I have no control over what the media says.”

Dee gives him another condescending look. Remus thinks it’s eerily similar to the ones that his teachers used to give him when Remus insisted that the other kids shoved him on the playground when he did nothing to them first.

“Of course you don’t,” Dee says. “The media can be rather misleading at times. After all they said that my way of handling an out of control child with an arbitrary grasp on fire was fallible. Incorrect. Deplorable.” Dee stops just over the Prince’s left shoulder and tilts his head. “Villainous.”

The Prince blinks, stiffening.

“Oh,” he says. “You were the one at the mall. In Idaho.”

“Yes,” Dee says. “And if I had done nothing, that child would have continued to operate under the impression that killing is an acceptable punishment for petty thievery. And yet I’ve received nothing but bad press, criticisms, insults for what I did while you get praise and recognition from your… adoring fans. I would say that’s quite unfair don’t you think?”

The Prince’s nose twitches. Remus watches his hand on his rapier tighten, but he refrains from drawing and making the first blow in front of a billion witnesses. The cameras couldn’t draw away even if they tried.

“Perhaps if you had tried talking first, rather than jumping straight to violence--”

Dee tuts and presses a hand to his chest. “I so do love how much you know about what happened there! With all the completely accurate information and that confident tone you’re wielding, my prince, one might be convinced that you had been there and watched that child nearly kill three innocent people after I attempted the talking part first.”

The Prince’s jaw set.

“Oh? Nothing to say?” Dee lowers his chin to look The Prince dead in the eyes. “The truth is that the child in question decided to attack a man robbing a previously insured jewelry store-- most likely out of desperation-- and decided to attempt to burn him alive. The action of which nearly killed me and my… partner if it hadn’t been for a spot of good luck. Then when I attempted to help preserve the criminal from the life threatening third degree burns he was suffering, the child called me a villain and demanded I and another brave bystander back away from the man so that he could die.”

Dee’s eyes flash blue and green and then a cold steel blue before they settle back on the silent superhero. “You and your original way of thinking are an inspiration to us all.”

The Prince’s face twitches again, the whole thing this time, twisting into a not-very-nice expression for just the briefest of seconds before he remembers that there’s a captive audience watching this play out. He takes a deep steadying breath and lets it out again.

“I apologize,” he says. “I jumped to a conclusion. You made an acceptable call in the face of a diffic--”

“I made the only call,” Dee inserts harshly. “And I don’t want your apology. Words mean nothing.”

“What are you here for then?” The Prince asks, and Remus can’t help the feral smile that etches across his features. He leans forward as far as he can without tipping the fence because he doesn’t want to miss a single second of this.

“Oh, that would be simple,” Dee says. “I want you to explain to the world, why you are trying to get hundreds of people killed.”

“I don’t follow.”

“I don’t suppose you would.” Dee says. “I can’t imagine that you’ve had to do a lot of critical thinking these past few weeks.”

The Prince scowls and opens his pretty little mouth, but Dee waves him off with a clandestine motion. There’s a delicious looking smirk on Dee’s lips: something that Remus thinks he can spend all day staring at. He’s having fun up there with all the attention on him, having fun with people hanging on his every word, having fun leading The Prince around like a dog on a leash. A showboat, a leader, an actor-- but Dee’s the director too, telling the cameras where to point and what to frame because this is his show, even if no one else realizes it yet.

“I’ve been following the FBE for a while now. You can imagine that as someone with an ability I tend to be interested in politics that directly affect me, as all good upstanding Americans should.” Dee flutters his wings a bit again. “However, I can’t imagine why anyone-- certainly not someone with the brains such as yourself-- would purposely align yourself to their less than noble intentions. They aim to take advantage of people like us, and you are using your… well earned celebrity status to convince the people that this is acceptable. Good, even! Surely you don’t truly believe that the FBE and Madam Secretary of Defense have your best interests at heart?”

The Prince shifts his weight around, looking for all intents and purposes like he was ready to leap across the stage and make Dee eat his own words, in the end he just settled back down.

“I do actually,” The Prince says. “I’ve been working with them for a while-- all of my team has. Madam Witchall has been a great help in getting this project on its feet so that the FBE can provide aid to--”

"I guess what it boils down to is this," Dee says, steam-rolling everything else the Prince might have wanted to say. Remus can pick the irritation out of his clipped tone, simmering under the guise of being passion rather than anger. "How much do you trust your government? How much faith do you put in people, Princeps?

"This is, after all, the same congregation that sends military recruiters to the more impoverished schools in America and hounds kids until they believe that their only option to get into college is to sign up for the military. Is that what they did to you as well? Convinced you, you were dangerous and unable to control yourself and that they could help you?"

The Prince’s jaw tightens so hard that even Remus can see it from where he’s standing. He wants to laugh, but he puts his hand in his mouth instead. The crowd is murmuring, mesmerized by the sheer audacity of this shapeshifter to show up and question the morals of their beloved hero. It would be funny, if Remus doesn’t close his eyes and see Dee’s charred corpse from that kid at the mall not so long ago whenever he tries to sleep.

Hero idealization was a dangerous thing. It needs to be nipped in its bud before it strangles everyone; luckily there’s no one better with a pair of shears than Dee.

"I do believe that’s none of your business," The Prince says.

"But it is," Dee coos just a bit too sweetly. His words come out slick with honey. "Because you are also a person of ability and I happen to care a great deal about people with abilities."

"We have a duty to those less fortunate than--"

"We--" Dee cuts him off sharply “--do not have a duty to anyone for anything."

He takes a breath, recenters himself, and when his eyes open again, they’re a piercing green that pins the hero to place on the stage for everyone to see. "In case you’ve forgotten, my dear Prince, we are mere humans, too. Not everyone wants to grow up to punch each other in the face. Some of us would like to live a normal life, without being forced into superhero dramatics."

His easy dismissal is inviting danger to come knocking. Remus likes that about him, the fearlessness. Did it come from after he had met Remus, or was it something Dee had grown up with? A symbol of faith in Remus’s abilities or a symptom of delusion? The mystery is tantalizing on Remus’s--

--tongue. Remus savors the taste of it with a grin. It’s so much better than blood, so much better than slushies, so much better than french toast and eggs and only one step down from the taste of actually kissing Dee.

Remus blinks, pressing against the barrier, his eyes catching sight of something else amongst the crowd although he isn’t sure what it is at first. A flash of a camera? A pushing shoving motion? It's something and Remus tries to follow it but it’s gone in the next half blink and he’s not sure what it was at all.

Then everyone is screaming and the crowd is in chaos and Remus gets slammed into the barrier again and shoved along it for a sharp second before he hits the ground. The noise roars over his thoughts, over his breathing, over his ability to comprehend anything that’s not how he’s being stepped on by careless bystanders fleeing the streets. Someone trips over him, someone steps on his ankle, someone kicks the back of his head and his lungs burn and his eyes itch and he knows he missed something---

--Tongue. Remus savors the taste with a hint of confusion. It’s better than blood that’s in his throat, than slushies in his memories, than french toast and eggs and only one step down from actually kissing Dee.

Remus blinks, pressing against the barrier, his eyes catching sight of something else amongst the crowd although he isn’t sure what it is at first, and doesn’t bother caring, because something else is happening and he needs to know what it is that causes the crowd to splinter apart like shattered glass. Dee is talking on stage, winding up the toy Prince to dance to his tune, and Remus is watching with his heart in his throat and unable to hear a word of it.

Then Remus blinks and Dee is not standing on stage because the shapeshifter’s body is morphing exactly the way it shouldn’t be. The crowd screams, and Dee’s eyes are empty in a way that Remus has seen a million times and abhors unlike anything else in the world.

Dee is not standing on stage because he’s actually fallen off it onto the asphalt ground below and there’s a spray of red mist in the air where he had been standing before. Remus is body-checked into the crowd barrier, and skimmed along it, until he hits the ground and feels himself get trampled over, but it doesn’t matter because he knows what he saw.

Dee is not standing on stage because he’s dead with a bullet in his head from---

---Tongue. Remus does not savor anything about the taste because whenever he closes his eyes the only thing he can see is Dee’s dead body and the only thing he can feel is copper clawing its way up his throat with the blind terror.

Remus leaps over the barrier, causing everyone around him to yell. The techie with the purple bangs in particular jumps back, but Remus ignores them in favor of watching, because Dee hasn’t seen him and doesn’t know what's coming and Remus wants to scream at the top of his lungs because watching Dee die never gets any easier to see.

It’s a bullet to the head. From the right temple through his brain at a downwards angle and Remus feels the blood sprinkle over him like sea spray straight from his darkest nightmares. He barely even notices, barely recognizes it, barely cares about it at all, because the next thing he knows Dee’s body is following it down right into Remus’s arms and unseeing blue-grey eyes stare at an empty sky.

The Prince is there too, mouth open and horrified, and even though everyone is screaming Remus can hear him start to say a phrase, a word, a syllable, “Re--”---

--Tongue. Remus’s mouth tastes like blood and absolutely nothing else because Dee is going to die from a shot through the head from a sniper, a shooter, an asshole and Remus thought maybe that Dee was over exaggerating before with his whole “the government is going to turn us all into weapons or eliminate us” rhetoric, but Remus thinks that he should have paid attention a little harder. Listened a little more. Believed a little better.

He stares at the building behind them, the library that’s being passed off as the FBE and the dark tinted windows that make the upper floors look abandoned completely. It’s like watching….it’s like…. it’s …

There’s a flash, a flicker. Then a heartbeat and then Dee is dying, dying, dead all alone and Remus feels himself body-checked back by a faceless person in the crowd and tossed to the ground to be trampled to death too.---

--tongue. Remus spits blood out of his mouth curling in on himself to stop anyone else from seeing because fuck him. He presses two fingers to his ear piece and pretends poorly that his throat doesn’t feel like someone took a pack of razor blades to it.

“Sniper shot, fourth floor, third window over,” Remus rasps. His heart pounds in his throat, in his skull, behind his eyes in a way that makes him want to tear his skin off to get the feeling to stop. Blood floods over his fingers, smearing on his chin, and across his sleeves no matter how hard he tries to get rid of it.

“One minute, forty seconds,” Remus coughs, and stares at the drips that hit the lower half of his shin, the toe of his boots, the asphalt.

Dee doesn’t react. Not at all and Remus wants to scream because he can feel time passing and he can’t stop the future from happening. He can’t, he can’t he can’t he can’t--

"You heard me, right?" Remus says maybe a little hysterically, because fuck, if they got this far and their mics weren’t even working and Remus just got the only person who ever mattered to him killed on live TV.

At this distance, Remus doesn’t know if he can make it, but even if he does, even if he tackles Dee down from the stage and the bullet misses them both it will go straight into the crowd, and there are people in this crowd-- people with lives, with families, with friends. They might have abilities, or they might not, but once that shot is fired the entire street will become a riot. Remus can hear the screams in his ears, ringing there so loudly it makes the present sound like a graveyard.

"I hear you," Dee says airily, acting like he’s talking to the superhero, but the words loosen the knot in Remus's chest, because he changed his speech, changed his stance, changed how much he knows about the future and now things will be different. The Prince eyes him rightfully warily, because Dee’s biggest weapons are knowledge and words.

"I hear you,” Dee says again directly to the hero, “I hear that you’ve been brainwashed into thinking that you owe something to the people who helped you control your ability, but the truth is… you could have done it without them, on your own. You certainly have the brains and the intuition for it."

He offers a hand out to the hero, casually, fluidly, and Remus almost laughs. He thinks if he opens his mouth again then only thing that will come out is blood and the people next to him will definitely notice that.

"Come with me, Prince of the People," Dee says right as the sniper lines up the shot. "Let’s discuss a better way to protect innocen--"

The gunshot is silent. Remus almost misses it in the collective intake of breath from every living thing in a ninety mile radius. Dee’s hand is out and the bullet catches the sunlight in a brilliant single flash.

-- through his brain at a downwards angle and Remus feels the blood sprinkle over him like sea spray straight from his darkest nightmares. He barely even notices, barely recognizes it, barely cares about it at all, because the next thing he knows Dee’s body is following it down right into Remus’s--

Dee’s skin ripples, his wings disappear. At this distance, Remus can’t tell what it turns into, what he impersonates, what he becomes that can fend off a bullet, but in the end it doesn’t matter at all because The Prince leaps forward with his sword drawn.

Remus blinks and the world feels like it tilts on its axis, spinning faster under his feet. He hugs the crowd barrier to steady himself. That… that isn’t possible. This isn’t what he saw. But there it is: The Prince wraps himself between Dee and the bullet, and draws his rapier so quickly that Remus almost misses it happening. It shouldn’t be possible-- It can’t be possible, but he’s faster than the bullet and somehow the piece of metal veers off trajectory into the stage at their feet and embeds itself there.

“That’s--” Remus’s breath catches, clumping up in a knot in the back of his throat that tastes a lot like blood.

The people in the crowd scream, the people near the front shove to move back, to get away, to find shelter and safety from bullets that were only targeting one man on stage. The police guard springs into actions that Remus can’t focus on because he’s so busy trying to remain upright when gravity is trying to drag him straight down to Hell.

“Are you alright?” The Prince asks, lowering his rapier.

“I--Dee--” Remus stutters.

“Was that... going to hit me…?” Dee asks in a tone that suggests that all the oxygen left the atmosphere.

“I don’t-- I can’t--” Remus swallows a mouth full of blood and it goes down his throat like thick, slow slugs trying to suffocate him. “I swear--”

“Have no fear,” The Prince says. “I’ll protect you. As long as I’m here, no harm will come to you. You have my word.”

“Re,” Dee says. He sounds like he’s several distant planets away. Remus’s hands are red and sticky and he swears if he closes his eyes that he can feel the misty spray of grey matter over his face when Dee falls from the stage, when his body lands in Remus’s arms, when those empty eyes stare up at him and see none of the grief in Remus’s eyes.

“I watched you,” Remus chokes.

He saw it. He knows he saw it and it was real and Dee died and Remus was left all alone like every nightmare he’s ever had. Dee died up on stage in front of the whole world and Remus saw his whole world shatter.

It happened.

“You can’t see the future, Remus!” Roman yelled four years ago and Remus has proved him wrong a hundred billion times over since then. He shouldn’t have to keep reminding himself of that.

“You died,” Remus says. “You died and I watched and I’m sorry-- I’m sorry, sor--”

“That’s all I needed to know, darling,” Dee tells him.

“Pardon?” The Prince asks, realizing maybe for the first time that Dee isn’t talking to him.

“You’re clever, Prince,” Dee says loudly, and Remus hears him so clearly in his earpiece it stabilizes him even when the world spins under his feet. Dee shoves himself out of the hero’s hold, stepping back twice, and looking downright murderous. “Far more clever than I gave you credit for! Did you just try to have me shot? Killed? All so you could look like the dashing hero on screen?”

“What?” the hero says and because he’s an actor Remus almost believes that he’s confused and not threatened.

“You just tried to kill me!” Dee snarls. “In front of all these people?! Because I dared ask a few questions about your motives?!”

The Prince stares at him, and Remus imagines his insufferable mouth is twitching into an awkward smile, like this is a joke that he doesn’t understand but doesn’t want to be rude.

“I assure you that is not the case here,” he says. “In fact I believe it’s far more likely that you arranged to have yourself attacked on this stage to emphasize a point on your part. I suspect you might have some type of protection against bullets, but even if you did I could not stand idle when there is a chance of you being hurt.”

“How noble,” Dee says. “Throwing yourself in front of everyone and asking nothing in return no matter the situation. A true hero complex.”

The Prince’s grip on his rapier tightens, but he says nothing.

“You say such pretty words, Prince,” Dee says. “Tell such convincing lies. You want people to step up and join you in a game of play pretend without realizing there are deadly consequences when abilities get out of control. You want people to follow you, to sing your praises, to believe you can do no wrong…. You’re the hero, of course! They’ll be so enamored with you, they won’t notice you leading them straight off a cliff.”

For a second the world stops turning, time stops passing, the crowd stops moving. Remus feels every atom in the air pressing up against him, itching, pulling, compressing against his skin as his heart pounds in his chest like some type of creature trying to escape his ribcage. There’s a ringing in his ears made from the silence between Dee and The Prince and it’s louder than any scream that the crowd makes, any gunshot a sniper takes, any calm Dee fakes.

“And I’m afraid I can’t let you do that.” Dee offers a complimentary shrug and then he launches across the stage, aiming for The Prince’s throat.

[Chapter Seven]

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kaminobiwan · 4 years

Text

empathy

pairing: fives x reader

summary: after the citadel, you catch him in a rare moment of vulnerability. (it’s sad i’m sorry)

a/n: the next installment of my milestone celebration! the prompt that spurred this was literally “tucking someone in bed” and I went and made it into this pain train asdlk;f anon I hope you like it still. also, this gorgeous gif was thanks to @obiwankenobiness thank you, angel, the world continues to be in your debt!

lastly, here is my taglist form. forgive me for the feels to come

You get the call just as you’re about to turn on your holoscreen to binge the latest net drama.

You don’t recognize the contact, but accept the holo regardless. A group of your friends had gone out tonight, begging you to come with them, but you’d declined in favor of a relaxing night in, telling them to let you know if they needed anything.

Maybe their comlinks had died.

Unsurprisingly, it’s a bartender from 79’s, the one your girlfriend is hooking up with. You’re about to ask if he needs help with her drunk antics when he rushes out an apology.

“Hey, sorry to bother you, but you’d better get here. We need your help.”

Your forehead furrows in concern. This doesn’t sound good. “Is everything okay with — ”

“Yeah, yeah, she’s fine. Well, she’s drunk off her ass, but I’m not talking about her. It’s Fives.”

Your eyebrows shoot up higher, curiosity piquing. “Fives?”

The handsome soldier had been off-world for a couple weeks now, and you hadn’t realized he’d returned to Coruscant. It’s not like you were together or anything, but he did tend to hit you up whenever he came home. Your friends were consistently egging you to “make it an item,” but you’d stubbornly refused. Fives wasn’t the problem, but whatever it was between you was a frustrating mystery and you weren’t going to be the one to clear it up.

If only your courage was stronger than your ego.

“He’s fucked up,” Your friend’s boy-toy explains. “And I don’t see any of his usual mates around. I didn’t know who else to call.”

You sigh, already reaching for warmer clothes as you drop the blanket that had cocooned you until now. “It’s okay. I’ll be there in a second.”

—————

By the time you reach the bar, Fives isn’t alone — another clone, bald and clad in yellow-streaked armor, is hunched over him while trying to wrestle another shot out of the ARC trooper’s hands.

“Fives?”

The two of them jump up at the same time almost comically, and a shred of amusement pulls at your lips. The bald clone blinks at you, uncertain as to who you are, but Fives erupts with enthusiasm and calls to you. Deafeningly.

“There she is!” He all but shouts, and while his companion is distracted, he gulps down the drink before anyone can stop him. “Isn’t she gorgeous, Waxer?”

Blood rushes to your face as Waxer shakes off his stupor. You approach them fully, taking in the empty bottles littering the counter. “Did you ask for me?”

Fives burps, and both you and Waxer jerk back immediately. “Said your name once or twice, you know how it is.” You didn’t, actually, but you let him continue. It’s like watching a holo on a five-second delay, his eyes turning questioning as he turns to you in slow motion. “Come to think of it, m’pretty sure I didn’t drunk call you. What’re you doing here?”

You can’t help it, but as much as you don't want to, the way he cuts himself off makes you to wonder if he had meant without me?

“Bartender commed me,” you explain, more to his friend than him. “I didn’t know you were on leave.”

His rowdiness calms a tad, and you squint at him as the smile drops off his face. “Just got back.”

“He’s pretty drunk,” Waxer speaks up, and you step forward to help him carry Fives so that both of you have an arm around each of your shoulders. “I just called a cab for him, but he’s saying he won’t go anywhere.”

As the three of you stumble towards the exit, you struggling much more than Waxer under the weight, you incline your head in understanding. “I can take him back to my place. Assuming he doesn’t have to be anywhere?”

You receive a shake of a head in answer, and an air taxi pulls up in front of your group, right on cue. “Appreciate it.” Waxer forces Fives to lean against the speeder while he opens the door. “Didn’t know Fives had a girlfriend.”

For the second time in less than ten minutes, your face heats indignantly. You shoot a quick prayer to the Maker Fives is too intoxicated to chime in. Thankfully, he’s resting his head on the roof of the taxi, seemingly enjoying the cool sensation. “I’m not his girlfriend.”

Waxer looks at you doubtfully, but says nothing. He pays the driver in advance as you commend him gratefully, but he only shrugs at you. “You’re taking the hard part. He’ll be a bitch to take care of in a couple hours, trust me.”

You murmur a sound of agreement, and go to push Fives’ limp body inside, but his arm grabs the open door and stops you from moving him further. He raises his head enough to peer at his fellow trooper, Waxer shifting uncomfortably.

“Waxer,” Fives rasps, “I’m sorry about Longshot. And the rest of ‘em.”

The other clone winces visibly, but nods in response before you manage to slide Fives into the taxi.

—————

Getting Fives out of the cab and into your apartment is a series of multiple unfortunate events, but eventually you make it. Once you’ve shut the door and locked it, you dump Fives onto your bed where your pillows are still arranged in perfect nest formation.

He’s sobered up a little, but by the way he hasn’t spoken since the bar, you’re still unconvinced to his level of sentience. As you help him with his armor, you probe him cautiously. “Rough mission?”

His face flashes with malcontent, but you’re not sure if it’s from the awkward way you pull off his pauldron or your question.

“Sorry.”

“S’okay.” Fives shakes his head quickly, then seems to regret it as his hand flies up to press against his forehead. “It was a rough mission.”

You stop in your movements, looking at him with regret. He doesn’t really talk about the war with you. Why would he, when it takes up every other facet of his life?

Before you can tell him he doesn’t have to say anything, he’s speaking again. “‘Lotta clones died.”

A thrum of contriteness reverberates in your mind, but you take his admission as an opening. Treading cautiously, you ask, “Longshot. Was he your friend?”

Fives shakes his head again, slower this time. “Well, yeah, but he’s part of the 212th. Was. We weren’t that close.”

Silence consumes the next few moments before you press on. “You lost someone close to you.”

His lack of a reaction clues you in to the accuracy of your statement, and your face twists ruefully. He waits a couple minutes, then mutters again after a few deep breaths.”

“Echo. My twin.”

“Your...?” You don’t mean to be so obvious, but your face scrunches in confusion. It wasn’t like you were an expert on biology, but you were pretty sure you knew how cloning worked. “Aren’t you all — ”

“Right, no, sorry.” Fives drags a hand down his face tiredly, and you feel bad for asking. Some job of cheering him up you were doing. “He was my squadmate. Domino Squad. It was just the two of us left.” His voice trails off, and you let him work through his silence with a sympathetic hand on his knee. For a moment, he smiles wistfully, but the look extinguishes as he’s reminded of something. “Thing is, he was the good one between us. Knew all the reg manuals by heart, had a perfect plan for everything. Always thought that out of everyone, he’d be the one to survive. That when I’d go out…” he pauses. “He’d be there with me.”

A shaky breath escapes him.

“But now he’s gone. And I’m it. The last Domino.”

His face is set in grim resignation, and your chest aches for him. You can’t imagine the pain he’s feeling — not just from the loss of his brother, but the from trauma of war that practically radiates off of him. You wonder, for a brief moment, how you’d never noticed, but soon enough it dawns on you. His usual swagger, flirtatious and carefree, was a fantastic front. It had hidden the depths of his suffering from everyone this far, but now you were finally seeing the curtain drop. And the Fives underneath it was, well.

Fives was heartbroken.

Your brain is screaming at you to do something — comfort him, hug him, anything to wipe the dull pain off his expression, but he lays his hand in his hands before you can. He gives a small groan. “Think m’feeling that hangover already.”

That spurs you to jump up and grab a cup of water for him from the kitchenette, glad to at least be of some service. When you give it to him, he takes it without looking at you, neck bowed in what seems like embarrassment — you’re not completely sure. It’s not like you’d ever seen anything close to embarrassment on Fives prior to this.

“Sorry for...all this.” He croaks out a wry laugh, but you can tell there’s no humor behind it. It’s so strange to hear, when his normal one is loud and boisterous. He’d always been the one to light up the room. “Didn’t mean to dump all that on you.”

“Fives.” You crouch next to him on the bed again, inching closer. “You have nothing to be sorry for.” The cup returns to your hand, and you place it on the table without breaking eye contact. “I’m only sorry I can’t help more.”

“You help plenty, sweetheart, with that pretty face of yours,” he tries, but you see completely through his attempt at brushing everything off. You reach out gently, exuding as much care as you can without a word.

“Fives…” He lets you touch him, pulling his head gradually to you to hold him against your chest. He freezes for a simple second, but immediately slumps in your embrace afterwards, leaning fully into you. You feel his breath falter, but his arms rest contentedly around your waist as you register just how tired he seems.

Guiding him delicately to lay down, you free one hand to pull up a cover over him. Just as you’re about to extract yourself from his hold, he spreads a beseeching hand at the small of your back. You catch his gaze, pleading and vulnerable.

“Stay. Can you…” he hiccups between his words. “It’ll help if you’re here.”

You stare at him tentatively, but eventually nod. “Sure, Fives.”

It’s only a couple minutes until you’ve changed and returned to bed, and when you slip under the covers next to him, his lids are already half closed. You brush a stray eyelash from his cheek, and lay your palm there as his eyes droop slowly. This look is new, too, but it’s a tender one as you see the strain ebb from his body for the first time in front of you. As he falls asleep, you lift yourself up to press a feather-light kiss to his temple, just below his tattoo.

If he remembers it in the morning, he doesn’t let it show.

#rini writes #arc trooper fives x reader #fives x reader #clones x reader #clone wars imagine #IT'S ANGSTY I'M SORRY #IT JUST TURNED OUT THAT WAY #I HOPE YOU STILL LIKE IT #rip echo :(#(presumably)#also feat. waxer because nuna's best dad deserved BETTER #rini reaches 175!

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kaijusplotch · 3 years

Text

Deaging clones fic wip

so this is titled "Rejuvination" and i wanna share this so...ENJOY!

Cody was glad that the latest campaign was over. It had been hell for the 212th and the 501st. While casualties had been low, it was still a blow to each battalion. They felt too much, sometimes, both Rex and himself; as well as their generals. Something heavy was hanging over The Negotiator, and he was sure that was the same over on The Resolute.

“Cody, we need to change course,” Obi-Wan said softly as they stood on the bridge.

“Sir?” Cody frowned worriedly, wondering what it was that pulled his general off of their return route to Coruscant.

Obi-Wan just smiled and patted Cody’s shoulder. “It’s nothing bad. The Force is...pulling me toward something. But it’s a good feeling.”

Cody eyed his general, raising an eyebrow before shaking his head. “Alright. Should we let The Resolute know?”

“Yes, if Anakin hasn’t sensed it as well. There’s a planet that has a strong force presence; a peaceful one. It must be a well of the Force or something like it.”

Cody hadn’t seen his general so relaxed in a long time. If this detour was going to give Obi-Wan a little more peace, then Cody was all for it. He smiled and nodded to Siren. “Send the coordinates to The Resolute. I think we’ve all earned a little detour/shore leave.”

The command center was filled with cheers from the clones, and soft laughs from the nat-born administrators. Some peace and quiet (or as much as Cody could get from some of his men) would be nice. He just hoped Waxer didn’t try to adopt any local wildlife.

The planet was uninhabited by any sentient species, which was a surprise to Cody. The air was safe, even had safe food and water if they wanted to have a snack. What seemed to be what drew the Jedi was a strange abandoned temple. What drew Cody’s, and by extension most of the exhausted 212th and 501st command structure were the hot springs.

“You should enjoy yourselves while here,” Obi-Wan said with a small smile. “The scanners are working on the shuttle; there’s no need to be on edge.”

“Are you sure, sir?” Cody watched his General carefully. He seemed already to be so much more at ease, he wanted to thank whatever deities existed.

“Very. Nothing bad will happen here.” Obi-Wan was so confident in his assessment that Cody had no choice but to have faith in him.

“All right.” Cody sighed and looked up as the sound of another shuttle breaking atmosphere broke the peaceful silence. He smiled, noticing the nose-art of the two LA/ATs settled down besides the 212th. Cody was excited to see his little brother, and hopefully catch up on the chaos that the Domino Squad was no doubt causing.

“Hey Master!” Anakin cried as he jumped from the shuttle, beaming and stretching. Behind him Ashoka was already pulling an exhausted looking Rex from where he had settled.

“Anakin, Ashoka,” Obi-Wan said with a smile as he walked to meet them.

“General, Commander, Rex’ika.” Cody grinned when Rex just glared at him.

“Really, Cody?” Rex grumbled.

“I’ve effectively been given a short term leave by Obi-Wan. I can call you whatever I want.” Cody beamed and punched his brother’s shoulder playfully. He looked up when the rest of the 501st came out, smiling as they mingled with brothers from the 212th.

“You’re right, Master. This place feels...so bright and light!” Ashoka smiled and closed her eyes as she stood with her masters.

“General Kenobi says there’s nothing here to be worried about, I have to believe him, if only for how much better he looks,” Cody said, smiling at the young Torgruta. “Although I’m more interested in the hot springs.”

“Hot springs?” Anakin and Ashoka asked with bright smiles.

“Sorry, claimed first use,” Rex joined in, looking more eager than he was before.

“I want to meditate anyway first. The old temple is this way.” Obi-Wan beckoned the other two Jedi away and toward the eroded stone ruins on top of the small hill looking over the deeper valley below them.

“I’m up for hot spring dip!” Hardcase chirped beaming and already stripping out of his armor as he hurried away.

“YES! C’mon Boil!” Waxer grabbed his twin and dragged the other ARF trooper toward the several large hot springs tucked close to the mountain side.

Cody snorted and looked to the rest of the troops who were joining in with the rush to fresh hot water. “C’mon. Maybe we can find a pool that won’t be full of chaos.” He pulled Rex along at a more sedated pace, soaking in the good feelings and bright warm sunlight filtering through the trees as they stepped under them.

Already piles of blue and orange-gold armor were on the edges of the pools, with a few piles of blacks already. hanging on low hanging branches. Cody spotted the Domino squad chatting away with Jesse, Kix, Waxer, and Boil. He was glad to see that even with Echo and Fives going off on missions with other units, they were still close with Droidbait, Hevy, and Cutup.

“This one’s small, but no one else is here,” Rex called past a small collection of small shrubs and thin seedlings.

Cody smiled, spotting the ten foot wide pool and nodded. “Brotherly bonding time it is then.” He said smirking and pulling his armor off and piling it to the side, stripping down completely.

“Oh come on, leave your briefs, I don’t want to see your junk, Cody!”

“We have the same junk.” Cody rolled his eyes and tossed his shorts over a branch before walking into the hot water. He hissed a bit before settling down and finding a rock to sit on, leaning back against the edge of the pool with a sigh. “Never knew you’d become such a prude.”

“I have a 14 year old FEMALE Padawan on the ship.” Rex grumbled, settling in next to his brother in his underclothes. “AND she’s here on planet.”

“Oh...kriff, good point.” Cody frowned and stood to turn around. “OI! Someone better be on watch to stop Ashoka from walking in on the sausage festival!” Cody cried to the loud chatter of his brothers. The answering “KRIFF!” explained all he needed, even as he heard water splashing and yelling at brothers to toss each other their shorts.

“See?” Rex tossed Cody’s shorts in his face and smirked.

Cody glared and splashed him back before putting the shorts back on. “Shit head,” he spat, although it just felt good to not be a soldier and just be an older brother.

“Shebs kisser.”

“I know you are but what am I?”

Rex burst out laughing and Cody couldn’t help but join him. It felt good; he felt younger than he had in - well - forever. He held his breath and dunked under the water, rubbing his face.

“Gods this feels so good…” Rex said with a deep sigh.

“Second that, Rex.” Cody leaned his head back, closing his eyes and letting the hot water and the peaceful energy soak into his muscles and bones.

The laughter and splashing of the sixty-some brothers in the other larger pools was a siren song and Cody slowly found himself falling into a restful drifting sleep; even as a few voices sounded slightly different. Nothing bad would happen here. His General promised him.

Obi-Wan wasn’t sure exactly how long he, Anakin, and Ashoka had been meditating, but when he finally felt the gentle caress of awareness brush his consciousness he finally allowed himself to come out of the meditation. Opening his eyes he had to hold a small chuckle at the sight of both his Padawan and grand-padawan sprawled across each other in a peaceful sleep. The lines of stress across their faces were gone; like they never happened. Even their force signatures were lighter and brighter; even the super-nova-like brightness of Anakin’s.

“Anakin, Ashoka,” Obi-Wan gently prodded, poking their feet. He was rewarded by a very classic Anakin whine and grumpy face. Obi-Wan openly laughed at that. It had been so long.

“Ugh! Master, I don’t want to get up!”

“We should, especially if we want to go to the hot springs, Master.” Ashoka slowly uncurled from where she was sleeping and stretched. She looked like a Tooka as she yawned widely and arched her back; another reminder for Obi-Wan of her carnivorous nature.

“I should make sure that the boys are at least decent.” Obi-Wan stood and stretched, feeling his aches gone and his heart lighter. “Come on, both of you up. It’s nearly sundown and we should be getting back to the ships soon.”

He left to the complaints of both of his friends, knowing well that they wouldn’t leave before everyone had had a soak. He wasn’t as cruel as he played. Besides, Obi-Wan hadn’t felt this good in years. The Force was soothing and rejuvenating; lifting the years of weight that seemed to double from the war.

The path down into the small group of trees near was clear of any stones, although the piles of armor that were peeking out from between bushes and shrubs broke up the monotony of neon green and purple. The sound of a panicked scream broke through the peaceful chatter of aves and other creatures, causing anxiety to well in Obi-Wan’s heart.

“Cody?!” Obi-Wan rushed forward, abandoning his outer cloak to the wind. He burst through the bushes that blocked the path and drew his saber, only to stare in shock.

Sixty high ranking clones were staring back at Obi-Wan with wide, slightly shocked, slightly terrified, brown eyes. Most were scrambling to hold up their too-big under clothes as they abandoned the pools, some were swimming in their blacks, some were trying to use their armor to hide their nudity. Cody and Rex were part of the first group, staring up at Obi-Wan. Every single one between the ages of ten and 12.

“Oh dear…”

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the-kings-of-games · 3 years

Text

SFW alphabet template: Kizunashipping

(slight NSFW, oops)

A = Affection (How affectionate are they? How do they show affection?)

They're very affectionate with each other, but it doesn't necessarily stands out. They like to do a lot of things quiet and/or privately. Like leaning against each other every chance they get, and always having to hold each other when sharing a bed.

B = Best friend (What would they be like as a best friend? How would the friendship start?)

It started when they were kids! Jack and Yūsei met each other first at Martha's orphanage and got close because they were both duelists and also had these rare, one-of-a-kind Synchros, and they felt that connection right when they found out about each other's dragon. Crow came a little bit after, and Jack picked picked him out for being so small, to which the bird said the equivalent of, "I'm seven, not a baby. Go away." Yūsei decided right then he liked Crow and asked to duel, and Crow was also really good too. The three of them stuck together like glue after that.

Individually, all three of them would make really good friends, though Jack might be a little more high matainence; however, like Yūsei and Crow, he highly values his friends and is grateful to them for being his life. Kizuna is very protective and supportive, and they only want to see their friends to be happy. They'd do anything they can to help.

C = Cuddles (Do they like to cuddle? How would they cuddle?)

All three of them love to cuddle. Whenever one of them feels like cuddling, he'd just come into another's room, and space would be made for him on the bed. (This in particular when it comes to nightmares.) Words don't even need to be exchanged, this is a habit they developed while growing up. They shared the bed together a lot when they were with Martha.

Jack likes to be the one holding the others when cuddling because it tells him that he has them again and that they're there. Crow and Yūsei are smaller than him, so he can reach his arms over the both of them at the same time if he wants. He also likes it when either one of them are on him because he likes feeling their weight. Crow, on the other hand, likes being held and pressing his face against his brother's body, whether it's his shoulder or chest. He also likes to hold to, gripping a shirt or a tank top. He likes being able to take in his friend's scent. Yūsei is fine with anything as long as everyone's comfortable because he just likes being together. His only thing is probably that he enjoys naked cuddling a lot.

D = Domestic (Do they want to settle down? How are they at cooking and cleaning?)

The way they settle down post-series is that Yūsei buys a big house and invites Akiza and the twins to live with him, and Crow and Jack come home in-between tournaments, trips, and competitions as pro leaguers. They all have their own rooms, and Kizuna share beds whenever they feel like it. Everyone has a fair amount to chores to do and picks up after themselves, but he'll out each other if needed. There's less to do when more people are home.

During their time in Poppo Time, Jack takes care of cleaning upstairs (past the garage) and laundry; Crow with bookkeeping, shopping, and cooking; and Yūsei with cleaning the garage, keeping track of inventory, and keeping Missus Zora happy. When Bruno moves in, he takes over inventory and some of the cleaning and cooking.

E = Ending (If they had to break up with their partner, how would they do it?)

They die. The foundation of their relationship isn't romance or lust; it's family and friendship. Even if they stop sleeping together, or if time and space are wedged between them, they'll always still be each other's friend and brother. They'll still stick together. Their love for each other doesn't run out, it's just a part of who they are and who they are together. They're together because they want to be; if someone wants to leave, he can, but he won't.

F = Fiancé(e) (How do they feel about commitment? How quick would they want to get married?)

They already are very committed and dedicated to each other, so marriage isn't exactly the next big step. It's not necessary for them. After Neo Domino and the Satellite are finally one again, Jack suggests they go into their records and have them officially recognized as adopted brothers, so that covers the family-only restrictions that some places may have. ("That's the first good idea you've made in, like, forever. Who are you, and what have you done to Jack?" —Crow)

If they ever do something like a wedding, it'd be a small and another excuse to have everyone come over and hang out. (Not they need one.)

G = Gentle (How gentle are they, both physically and emotionally?)

They all can be gentle; they adore gentle. Physically, they do things like hold hands, cuddle, and linger in their touches. Crow likes to gives kisses and loves all forms of I love you. Yūsei looks adoring eyes. Jack is the most verbal of the three and quote passages he'd read (in the original language too). Emotionally, they're there for each other and can read each other pretty easily. They know a lot of each other's habit and how they think.

H = Hugs (Do they like hugs? How often do they do it? What are their hugs like?)

They love to hug. As mentioned before, Jack loves to hold his brothers, so when he has the chance, he pulls Crow or Yūsei onto his lap and wraps an arm around their waist. Yūsei comes up from behind when Jack or Crow and wrap his arms too, pressing his cheek on their back. Crow's hugs are more of nurturing because he cradles you to his chest, his arms over your shoulders.

I = I love you (How fast do they say the L-word?)

Well, they met as kids at Martha's orphanage and got close almost immediately. I'm going to say that it took a bit of time, maybe a year or so, because that was how long it took for Kizuna to acknowledge each other as family and to finally voice it. Yūsei said it first, when another orphan asked why he was so close to Jack and Crow. He replied, "Because we're best friends. They're like my brother and sister." (My 5D's Crow is afab and masculine leaning genderfluid, he didn't do he/him until age 10 so he was their sister the first three years they met.) Yūsei was a bit surprised when he said that, and he told Jack and Crow about it later.

"That's fine with me," Jack said. "I think of us as family too."

And Crow, overwhelmed with joy, was the first one to say it. "I love you. You make me forget what it's like to be alone," she told Jack and Yūsei right there and then, trying not to cry. "I've always wanted a family."

Since then, Crow loves saying I love you, and he's the one of the three who says it the most in those exact words. Yūsei and Jack have other ways of expressing their I love you; Jack quotes passages and says things that shows how much he loves, and Yūsei tells through his eyes and expressions.

J = Jealousy (How jealous do they get? What do they do when they’re jealous?)

They're not exactly in an exclusive relationship. If they have someone else they're interested it, it's fine; again, the foundation of their relationship isn't found in romance or lust, it's family and friendship. They stay together because they want to be together, and whoever they bring into their lives won't upset the others. It's not as of they're replacing each other by having more people in their lives. Their worlds will always cross each other anyway.

Really, it's only really Crow who does things with other people. If he likes you, he'll ask to kiss you. (And he's a great kisser too. He's kissed many people.) If he wants to go any further, he will.

(There is a small amount of jealousy only when they see someone is hitting on one of them, especially Jack. He just doesn't like seeing people trying to suck up to his brothers with the intention of getting something out of them.)

K = Kisses (What are their kisses like? Where do they like to kiss you? Where do they like to be kissed?)

Jack's kisses are the one that last the longest that it's borderline making out. He doesn't want to let go sometimes, and he sinks into the moment pretty easily. He likes to kiss lips and shoulders, and likes to be kissed on the chin, cheeks, and arms.

Crow's kisses are plenty, little pecks and butterflies because he's playful. He's the least patient so he always wants to put in another kiss before you have to go or he does. He likes to kiss faces, and likes to be kissed on the back of his neck and breast.

Yūsei's kisses are light and lingering, like a ghost passing by. He is persistent but stays long enough that when he pulls away, it's like he's still there. He likes to kiss lips, inner arms and thighs, and backs, and likes to be kissed on the hands and forehead.

L = Little ones (How are they around children?)

They're really good around kids. They learned a lot while growing up at the orphanage because they took care of the younger kids and Martha taught them everything she knew. They see kids like younger brothers and sisters, so they are very much big brother figures. They each have their own way of wowing and entertaining kids, and they'd throw themselves in front of a train if it meant protecting a kid. Kizuna thinks every kid should be smiling and happy.

M = Morning (How are mornings spent with them?)

Jack's usually up at the same time every morning. (He likes routine.) But it doesn't necessarily means he gets out of bed soon after. No, the morning he wakes up after sharing the bed for the night, Jack likes to stay and watch his brothers continue to sleep. He fixes the blanket and pillows if they're out of place. Next would be Crow some time later, and he sees Jack is awake so he turns to him for a morning kiss. (Their breath might be terrible, but they don't notice.) Their kiss is soft and slow, reaching a natural pace. The little noises they make is enough to wake Yūsei up, and he pulls closer, waiting his turn.

When they are satisfied, they finally leave the bed.

N = Night (How are nights spent with them?)

Sometimes, it's quiet; sometimes, it's lively. Sometimes, they're together; sometimes, they spend it alone. It's based on their mood.

O = Open (When would they start revealing things about themselves? Do they say everything all at once or wait a while to reveal things slowly?)

Again, they met as kids, so they kind of told each other everything, mostly in the passing; however, they end up keeping their biggest insecurities from each other, like Crow only finding out about Yūsei's wish that he was never born in his duel against Roman (canon), or Crow keeping the fact that he felt so left behind when Jack and Yūsei left Satellite for the first time. I suppose it's because they try not to burden each other while saying they'd help shoulder anything the other is carrying.

P = Patience (How easily angered are they?)

Crow and Jack and rule each other up easily, and they argue together the most. Yūsei is harder to piss off, but he does get exasperated by his brothers fighting. (Pissing him off requires being a little shit that knows his weak points, and Crow is that kind of brother.)

When it comes to other people, they are bit more patient. Crow doesn't take shit lying down, but if he knows it's his fault, he'll accept the consequences. Jack is a bit more stubborn and kind acts like he can get a free pass when it comes to faux pas. Yūsei, again, it difficult to piss off, that is unless someone is hurting/insult his friends and cards. Despite his "calm and mature" nature, he's the one who holds grudges the worst.

Q = Quizzes (How much would they remember about [each other]? Do they remember every little detail [ ] mention[ed] in passing, or do they kind of forget everything?)

Jack remembers dates the best because he does best with time management and likes these kind of details. Crow remembers what they need and should have. Yūsei remembers things he'd observed and heard. Collectively, they all good at remembering, amongst other things, each other's likes and dislikes, embarrassing childhood stories, habits.

The reason they don't forget much about each other is because they grew up together, so all of this is second nature.

R = Remember (What is [one of] their favorite moment[s] in [their] relationship?)

For Crow, it's the time they first kissed. Some boy came up to her and kissed her on the lips, and so she punched him and gave him a black eye. It really upset her because kissing someone on the lips meant you liked them and wanted to have a family together. She did not want that boy. Jack said, "It doesn't have to count if your don't want it to." Hearing that, Crow decided she wanted one that counted, and Jack and Yūsei gave in quickly to cheer her up. She had them kiss too.

For Jack, it's when they finally came back together again, after he made the mistake of leaving everything he knew and loved behind for fame and glory. Majestic Star Dragon saved them from falling to their deaths and carried them back home to Satellite, and they made their dream of uniting with City come true. And Crow and Yūsei forgave him.

For Yūsei, it's the time he and Jack first met Crow because the look on Jack's face was so funny. Not many of the other kids could confront Jack back then with his mildly inflated ego and his great dueling skills, so it was a good idea to befriend the one kid who didn't tolerate being pushed around, even if you're better than her at something. Yūsei thinks he made a good choice that day.

S = Security (How protective are they? How would they protect [each other]? How would they like to be protected?)

They're pretty protective of each other, a lot of their protectiveness is shown through support. They just don't let one brother face the consequences on his own, even if it is his fault. They refuse to let each other be treated badly too; however, they understand that sometimes, one of them must face the issue head-on, but the other two will always be right behind him.

T = Try (How much effort would they put into dates, anniversaries, gifts, everyday tasks?)

Not much; it's enough to just stay home and relax in each other's presence. They'll go out too, but those are mostly impromptu or spur of the moment. They don't have to have reasons to put in effort. Dates are important (birthdays, visits, etc.), but anniversaries not so much. They've been together since they were kids so a lot of things are hard to pinpoint. Gifts are more because they thought of each other and less because they have an obligation to fulfill.

Nobody is allowed to slack off on everyday tasks because Martha raised them right.

U = Ugly (What would be some bad habits of theirs?)

Yūsei easily loses track of time and assumes he'll catch himself the next time. (He doesn't.) Jack spends like he's still being sponsored by companies. Crow tells Akiza things that should be kept in the bedroom. Yūsei sweats a lot, and grease and oil don't make it better. ("Take a shower!" —Jack) Jack spends way too much time in the bathroom. Crow sometimes forget to add spices when cooking.

V = Vanity (How concerned are they with their looks?)

Not really. Crow has a lot of confidence in himself, Yūsei doesn't care about what people think, and Jack knows he looks great.

W = Whole (Would they feel incomplete without [each other]?)

A little, yeah. They'd miss each other very much when they're apart and wish they were together again constantly. Yūsei gets really good at waiting for Jack and Crow to come home.

X = Xtra (A random headcanon for them.)

(Slightly NSFW, I don't know how to follow rules.) After their daughter, Sky (my Kizuna OC baby), Jack and Yūsei kind of has an impregnation kink (because Sky is beautiful and who would say not to more baby birds running around? Not those two). They might tease Crow about it when things get hot and heavy, and Crow calls them perverted for it. Jack wants a boy next so he can have both a princess and a prince, and he hopes that if they do have another kid, it'll look like Yūsei next. Yūsei is fine with whatever, he likes taking care of kids and a pregnant Crow.

Crow says if he gets pregnant again, he'll castrated the both of them. ("Listen, labor hurt more than real battle damage, and it lasted for tweleve hours. If you want any kid, you carry it." —Crow)

Y = Yuck (What are some things they wouldn’t like, either in general or in a partner?)

They wouldn't like someone who actively hates/dislike children, or someone who tries to take advantage of others, especially those who should be helped and protected. They wouldn't like anyone who don't respect or treat their cards well (especially Yūsei).

Jack wouldn't like it if Crow stopped nagging him or if Yūsei got hurt. Yūsei wouldn't like it if Jack decided to cut ties again or if Crow stopped saying I love you. Crow wouldn't like it if ether Jack or Yūsei stopped loving him entirely.

Z = Zzz (What [are some] sleep habits of theirs?)

Crow likes being in the middle and to cocoon in blankets. Jack produces heat the most so he doesn't really use a blanket. Yūsei mumbles in his sleep. They also end up right next to each other no matter how much space they put between each other beforehand. Crow likes to hugs pillows too. Instead of counting Scapegoats, Jack likes to count the circles he caresses into his brother's skin. Yūsei is always the last one to fall asleep for one reason or another.

#yugioh #yugioh 5ds #crow hogan #yusei fudo #jack atlas #kizunashipping #kingcrabshipping #squabbleshipping #markedshipping #i love this ship so much #doing these things really helps me flush out the ship and the characters #practice practice practice #Flame muses

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musical-in-theory · 3 years

Text

Caught in the Crossfire

Chapter 5: Setting Up Dominoes (just to watch them fall)

Previous chapter

Tommy walked through the trees in the forest surrounding Pogtopia. He made sure to keep an eye out for stray leaves or twigs like Wilbur had taught him. He used to sneak out pretty often to see Tubbo when they still lived with Phil, and Wilbur had given him tips on how to not get caught. Those lighthearted lessons were coming in handy more and more now.

The sun filtered through the trees as he made his way to the designated meeting spot. Tommy hoped he wouldn’t be alone when he arrived. He’d left a note for Tubbo the day before on their bench asking to meet up. He didn’t want to think about what it meant if Tubbo either hadn’t gotten it or ignored it.

It was nearly sunset as Tommy approached his bench again. Luckily it was already occupied by the person he’d been wanting to see the most ever since the disastrous election. Tubbo saw him out of the corner of his eye and smiled at him. Tommy sprinted the rest of the way and gave him a quick but tight hug, ignoring the alarm bells ringing in his head. Tubbo was working for Schlatt. Tubbo was meant to kill him.

Tommy broke the hug off and scoffed, “God you’re so fuckin clingy, big T.” As hard as he tried, he couldn’t completely wipe the grin off his face.

Tubbo laughed and sat back down on the bench, looking at the sunset. “Yeah, yeah. Whatever you say.” He swung his feet back and forth as Tommy took his seat next to him. It felt almost normal, which was a rare feeling these days. They both just wanted to pretend for a little while that they were back to the days before the election, before the L’manburg war, before everything. It was just the two of them together like they always should’ve been.

They wanted to pretend, and so they did. The duo talked about everything and nothing. They ignored the real reason the meeting was called. They didn’t bring up Manburg or Pogtopia or really anything to do with the pressing situation. Tubbo talked about his bees and his house and a funny joke Jack Manifold told him the other day. Tommy listened and laughed and of course made fun of how Tubbo could get excited about pretty much anything.

A few people trickled by, but if any of them saw the pair, they averted their eyes and made note to keep Schlatt and Dream away from the area. They were kids after all. They deserved a bit of time to be just that.

However, all good things must come to an end. Night fell and Tommy sighed. “Hey Tubbo?” Tommy tried to keep a brave face, but his nerves pushed through the facade.

“It’s time, isn’t it?” Tubbo sighed as well. His shoulders sagged under the pressure that suddenly pervaded the area. “Your note said you had to talk to me about Wilbur’s plan. Does that mean you guys are gonna sneak me out of here?” There was a hopeful lilt at the end of the question. Tommy was both relieved and hurt to hear it.

It meant that Tubbo didn’t really want to stay or work for Schlatt, but on the other hand that was exactly what he was about to ask him to do. “About that… you’ll be on Pogtopia’s side-”

“Pogtopia?”

“Shut the fuck up, Tubbo.” Tubbo laughed. He really had missed this.

“So you’ll be on Pogtopia’s side, but you’ll kinda have to stay in L’manburg,” Tommy continued. When he’d first heard of Wilbur’s idea, he was excited. If Tubbo agreed to it, they’d get to see each other again, and Tubbo would have a cool job. Tommy could give him a bunch of secret missions to pass the time!

Now, though, after seeing the disappointment on his best friend’s face at the idea that he would have to stay at Schlatt’s side, he realized just what being a spy meant. It meant that he’d be in danger of getting caught by the enemy at all times, even more so than either Wilbur or Tommy. It meant lying to everyone around him, even people he might’ve cared about at one point or another.

The question nearly caught in his throat. “Will you be our spy on the inside?” Tommy infused as much of his usual Innit brand of confidence into his voice as possible. As much as he didn’t like asking, this was Wilbur’s plan, and Wil was almost always right about these sorts of things.

Tubbo looked down at his hands in his lap. Tommy could almost physically see the gears turning in his head as he weighed his options. After a minute or two of deliberation, he squared his shoulders with determination lining his face. He nodded swiftly and smirked. “Schlatt won’t know what hit him.”

It was then that Tommy remembered Tubbo’s greatest strength. He was far too often underestimated. For as chaotic and brash as Tommy was, Tubbo was always there by his side more often than not finding ways to make their schemes more effective. Everyone always assumed that Tubbo was merely a sidekick, and Schlatt was no different. That would be his downfall.

They both got up from their bench and nodded at each other before heading their separate ways. Neither said goodbye. Goodbyes made everything seem final, and they knew that this was only the beginning.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Techno lifted his arm up to wipe the sweat from his brow. His mask had long been discarded to the side as he finished the final touches on his potato farm. It was nearly as impressive as the one he’d just left, but with a bit of redstone he found at least this one was self-harvesting. All he had left to do was to just make sure it worked correctly and “report back to Tommy.” Neither Tommy nor Techno really cared about the hierarchy of it, but if it put Wilbur even a little at ease then they’d go along with it.

However, based on the choppy, fast paced whistling echoing through the ravine, Techno couldn’t say for certain that the tension had dropped. Techno dropped his tools and stuck his head through the doorway of the underground farm. Sure enough, Wil was strolling down the stairs. As he got closer, Techno saw how his eyes seemed the slightest bit unfocused and the tell-tale dark spots on his lips from where he’d been biting them. If stress was a person, its name would be Wilbur Soot.

Techno took a breath and walked through the small opening. Even when he’d been little, he hated conversation. Actions always spoke louder than words in his opinion, so he didn’t understand why saying the right things was so important. Luckily he had a twin by his side that could weave his words with ease. Wil did the talking for him, and when they were alone, reassuring pats on the back or the squeeze of their hands were their language of choice.

Now that the twins were reunited, none of that was anywhere to be seen. Trying to talk to Wilbur had become like drowning in an ocean. Wil had the means to pull him to shore, but he only seemed to watch Techno sink further. He was on his own to either sink or swim, and he knew what to choose.

“Wilbur.” The other’s eyes focused on Techno and lost whatever haziness has been there previously. He could only hope this was a good sign. “I, uh. I finished the farm. Made pretty good time on it.” Techno tried not to let the tension in his body show. Conversation was a battle, and the first thing he did was trip.

Wilbur nodded his head to signal him to lead the way. Techno thought that maybe he’d see a bit of pride show on the usually expressive man’s face, but it was blank. That was one of the strangest things he’d noticed. Wilbur exuded a sort of pride and determination that fueled his own brand of charisma. It was the sort of mannerism that they both shared, something to tell others that they were in fact twins. But now that pride was seemingly gone.

They both entered the farm area once again. Techno stood back as Wilbur took the time to scan over and judge the work done. He hummed, “Well done, I suppose.” Wilbur looked back at Techno. “Tommy must’ve helped more than I expected. I didn’t actually think you two would be able to get this much done in such a short amount of time.”

Techno coughed, “Tommy didn’t really do much. He’s been off mining cobble for… well that part’s not important.” He pretended not to notice how Wil’s eyes narrowed in suspicion at that last statement.

Fortunately, it seemed Wilbur was willing to let it go for the moment in favor of a different line of questioning. “Wait, if he hasn’t been helping- how long have you been working on this?” There was a hint of surprise in his voice, like he already knew the answer but didn’t really think it to be true.

“Only about 16 hours, give or take,” Techno said bluntly.

Wilbur blinked at him. “Tech- Technoblade. You got here yesterday.” A small smirk pulled at his lips. “You didn’t sleep at all last night, did you?”

Techno couldn’t help the minute smile that found its way onto his face as well. “Me? Of course not. My sleep schedule is in peak condition.”

“Tell that to the bags under your eyes.”

“Only if you tell yours the same.”

The two both fell into muted laughter, but the echoing in the ravine made it sound just as boisterous as it had been years before. Techno wanted to just stay in this moment. It had been far too long since he’d been able to simply enjoy any of his family’s presence, and here Wilbur was, back to acting like the brother he’d grown up with.

Techno wanted to savor the moment, but too soon it turned sour. Wilbur cut off his laughter abruptly, dawning realization slowly filling his eyes. “I can’t do this.” Wil’s voice sounded clipped and like he was trying to convince himself of something.

He tried to leave, but Techno followed him out. “Did I just miss something?” Techno was starting to get an idea of what happened. He only wished that for once, he was wrong.

“Stop. I don’t… just get back to work. The farm looks operational. Go operate it.” Wilbur stated without looking back at him.

“You’re hearing it again, aren’t you?” That got him to turn around. “That’s what suddenly got your attention back there.” It wasn’t a question. Pogtopia was a land of silence. It was a place of water droplets and creaking walkways and the sound of steel against stone, and yet it was quiet with a man trapped inside who couldn’t stand to be mute. It made sense that Wilbur was filling it with sounds only he could hear.

Techno looked from the floor to his twin’s face only to find anger lining it. “I said stop. You have no idea what’s going on. How could you when you haven’t been around for the past 7 years?” Wilbur walked up to him and nearly spat in his face in rage. It was such a turn from the previous mood, Techno almost took a step back in surprise. He held his ground, though. Wilbur had always been able to bounce from one emotion to another so easily.

“You’re wrong anyways. We aren’t brothers. We aren’t family. So we shouldn’t act like it. You forfeited all of that when you walked out of mine and my little brother’s life. I let myself forget for a minute. I can promise it won’t happen again.” Wilbur glared at him.

Techno stared at him for a minute. What once was hearth in Wil’s eyes, welcoming and warming all who came near, was now a blazing wildfire, ready to burn and destroy anything that ventured too close. Techno was too close, but he didn’t dare turn back yet.

“Wil, I left for you. For the both of us! I couldn’t stand seeing you in pain when it got too loud, and I was terrified that one day my voices would make me hurt you! I left to go get answers. I wanted to find a way to get rid of it all. So don’t stand there and pretend like I left for no good reason.” Techno could feel himself start to shout, but he couldn’t stop it. Damnit, he cared. There weren’t too many things he let close enough to care about, but Wilbur, his family, there wasn’t anything they could do to get him to stop caring. And that could be a very dangerous thing.

Shouts ripped from Wilbur’s throat, “Don’t you get it yet? I don’t give a shit about why you left! You left when I needed you most, and of course Phil had to go and follow you! For 7 years I had to take care of Tommy and then Tubbo on my own. I had to live with this fucking curse. On. My. Own. At least it was fucking bearable when you were there with me. Once you were gone, the music got so loud. I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t move. Nothing.” Tears pricked at the corners of Wilbur’s eyes.

His voice dropped to a whisper. “You left me to that misery. And the worst part? I really believed you’d come back for me. I sat by the front door, everyday for a year, looking at the horizon for any sign of you. I genuinely believed that I was worth enough for you to at least visit. But after all this time, you came back just because Tommy asked.” He took a deep breath. “So fine. If you came to us under the premise of supporting the cause, then I will treat you like the soldier you joined as. I’ll only repeat myself once more. Get to work.”

Wilbur turned around and retreated back to his room with the finality of a last nail in a coffin. Techno was left to stare after him. He’d forever deny the tears that ran down his face and landed upon the rough stone beneath his feet.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The second Wilbur knew he was out of view of Techno he collapsed against the wall of his room. The bastard just had to bring up his curse. He hissed through gritted teeth as he brought his hands up to his ears. Wil knew it wouldn’t- couldn't- shut anything out, though. It was coming from inside his own head.

That was the difference between the twins. Everyone knew about the voices Technoblade possessed. He’d even gone as far as to name it, humanize his curse, almost owning it. He made no attempt to hide it. Wilbur, on the other hand, worked hard to keep his own a secret. People simply assumed he was the “normal” twin of the two.

The truth was… he heard things too. He heard the haunting music constantly, the main source of many of his sleepless nights. Not that he’d ever admit it. Repeating melodies that would go on and on forever, driving him off the deep end if he let them. He’d long since learned how to push it to the back of his mind and take control of his thoughts, much like Techno had. Although they had to learn how on their own. It was a lesson learned only after Techno left on his expedition.

However, with all the stress of recent events it had gotten much harder to keep the distracting tunes at bay. Just the mention of them a minute ago riled them up so much that Wilbur had a hard time keeping up with the words flying out of his own mouth in a cruel rhythm. He meant everything he said. Every single word. It was just that the music had flooded in, cascaded through his mind, and washed away any filter he might have had.

He hated Techno. A three word lyric to weave through the ongoing notes. He hated his twin. At least his voices were helpful sometimes. He could reason with them. Wilbur had no choice but to let the music smother him, to shatter him. If Wil was breaking, it wasn’t fair that Techno refused to crack.

Which brought him to where he was now. Merely a pathetic excuse for a leader falling against a wall and unraveling under the maddening crescendo of an unfinished symphony. The history books might later state how the exiled president went mad in the dark shadows of this ravine, but Wilbur knew better. His insanity started far, far earlier.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thanks for reading!! Sorry it took such a long time, but I had so much classwork to do. Hopefully the longer than normal chapter makes up for it haha. Anyway, I hope y’all enjoyed it. Our boys have a long way to go before anything can start to get better, but there’s a certain beauty in the fall. If you have the time, I’d love to know what you think! Reading your comments absolutely makes my day!

Once again a huge thank you to @the-ruler-of-rabbits for being such an amazing and patient beta reader. They’ve been a big help in the creation of this entire fic and I couldn’t do it without them.

Let me know if you want on or off the tag list!

Taglist: @obsidiancreates @strawberiitea @unlikelypaperwitch @corrine-370 @crazymecjc @ducklingqueen @idkhowbutimgayer @whydoilovesomanyvillians @anne-the-historian-ish @wilburs-soot @belonginthesky @coindoesstuff

#writing in theory #dream smp #dream smp fanfiction #mcyt #mcyt fanfiction #wilbur soot #villain wilbur #tommyinnit #tommy innit #technoblade #tubbo #tubbo_

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hecohansen31 · 4 years

Text

In The Garden of Evil

Borgia! Michael Langdon+Servant! Reader

(A/N): Hello there, lovelies!

I am not going to deny that I am Ari’s bitch and I write any fic that comes to her mind, but this was just TOO FUCKING GOOD TO PASS UP!

If you didn’t know I am studying th Renaissance for an exam, HENCE I FUCKING HAD TO PUT IT IN A FIC, PLEASE ENJOY THIS LITTLE SELF-SERVING SHIT AND HAVE FUN!

(Also the entire Lucretia-Cesare is only fictional, because people are pretty sure they didn’t fuck, but hey...).

As always: feedback is welcomed and ecnouraged, knowing that you like what I write is a truly beautiful things for me and make me want to write more.

WARNINGS: Male Masturbation, Voyeurism, Exhibitionism, Mention of Sex and Incest, Blasphemy and Renainssance mentions.

Attending to every little need of Lucretia Borgia was a truly magical experience.

It was such a hard work that you could barely blink without being called over by your ‘domina’ because she needed something and couldn’t wait for you to finish the previous chore.

You had learned this way to be fast and barely noticeable, guarding your steps against making any noise in order to alert the Borgias of your presence beside them.

Sometimes because you were scared by them and some other times simply because you didn’t want to be bothered with any other chores.

And because of your wonderful ability, you had been able to set yourself up in such a situation.

You had been asked by Lucretia to drop some clothes to her brother, since she had them specifically made simply for him.

And you had been drawn in the bathroom by some soft and low mewls coming from it, and expecting your ‘domino’ to be at unease, probably the water being too cold or too hot, you felt the need to help him as every servant in the Borgia residence would have, as you carefully and slowly approached the door of the room.

But as you had walked in, you hadn’t found the second eldest son of pope Alexander VI having trouble with the water.

It was quite the opposite.

He was taking pleasure from it, lazily bringing his hand up and down on himself in a vulgar movement you had seen in the streets and whenever men tried to impress you.

You had been taken aback by that.

Michael Borgia was an example of beauty and grace through the entire cardinal board, although nobody could deny that his place there was due to his infamous father, the pope.

But unlike Cesare, who was ruthless in following every plan he had, completely showing no interest in his position as a cardinal, just wanting war and power, Michele, his golden twin, although he was a bit younger, was a good cardinal, pious and just, even in the face of his family’s scandals.

So, to find him in such a… ambiguous position… it gave you much to think about.

Men were all made of flesh, in the end.

Just because Michele didn’t show his appreciation for flesh in such a visible way as Cesare did, it didn’t mean he was less involved in the throes of pleasure.

You had tried to get your body to move, to spy away from that scene, leaving him to his own… ‘hand’, but suddenly… you were stuck onto your feet as if you were suddenly pasted there with black pitch behind your feet.

You were just too much fascinated by the anatomy of his body, revealing itself to you by the elegant marmoreal bathtub he was drowning in, beautiful drawings on it, matching what the painters of that age called ‘grotesque’, although to you it was simply a mix of strong colors, staining the purity of the white marble.

You tried to move your eyes away from the sinful sight, sure that God would have soon struck you down for your curiosity.

But God didn’t seem to witness the beautiful show that cardinal Michael was putting up, almost as if it was solely for your eyes.

And quickly they shifted from the scenery mimicking a garden to the man himself.

You had never been able to properly stare at him, being more accustomed to Cesare’s antiques, the man not being shy of sending languid glances to any maid that accompanied his sister and even less when he sent those same glances to his own sister.

You tried in those moments to lower your gaze and fake of having never witnessed such an exchange.

But with Michele it wasn’t so easy to simply turn your head and look at anything else, your eyes immediately tracing the fine golden hair usually styled in perfect curls he owned, although there was no sign of such a blessed hair anywhere else, in a trait that brought his body to seem both younger and masculine, with the way it was lean but strong.

He certainly didn’t own Cesare’s brutality or roughish looks, neither he had the consuming but fascinating age of his father, but he certainly did own a beauty that was timeless in the way it shone.

Your eyes graced lower onto those plump lips he owned, and you wondered whether they would have felt heavy or light on your skin, such a thought making you shiver in your stead.

God would have seriously punished you for such thoughts

Against His own servant, even!

You could feel the flames of hell already enveloping you as a sudden warmth enveloped you, not spreading from any external source, but from inside of yourself.

More precisely your most secret part, the one between your legs, which would lightly brush against each other, making you whimper softly at the pleasure of such a small gesture created coating the inside of your thighs with a wetness that made you wonder whether it was sweat for the burning that was slowly consuming you, or something else.

Being a maid raised in a private palace of clericals made you naïve in many departments, although sometimes your older friends would mutter about the vice that sex was, the more libertines ones even whispering at each other’s ears about the beauty that being taken by a man was…

… and how many men didn’t know how to take a woman properly.

All you knew from their suggestions was that women bleed a lot on the first time was rarely pleasurable for a woman as much as it was for a man.

‘They’ll fill you with their seed and then turn back in their bed’ had once muttered Rosina who was the lover of a smaller cardinal, the distaste of such a situation evident in her tone, and you had always kept yourself away from men.

But, again, you weren’t able to take your gaze away from the elegant way Michele Borgia moved his hand onto his exposed member.

Your eyes didn’t drift there directly, although you took a sneaky look at it, making you blush at the realization that a bit of golden hair coated lightly his lower stomach, in a trail that would have brought you to the road to perdition, had you followed it.

His body was muscled in a way that was unusual for cardinals, no sign of excessive fat or laziness of any kind in a lean body but with lightly highlighted muscles, as Bramante’s creations in a way that made him seem a marmoreal statue, as if he was as marmoreal as the bathtub in which he was steaming, easing off the pression of the cardinal toga with the pleasure of flesh.

At a particular harsh thrust into his hand, his muscles contracted in an harmonic way that immediately tensed his stomach, pushing them up against the surface of his immaculate skin, but the immediately became taunt again as he let out a soft trembling breath, the sound without a doubt catching you off guard, and you admired its gentle tenderness.

A shiver of pleasure went through your body as you felt your nipples grow hard under the coarse fabric of your uniform, a sensation which quickly travelled from pleasant to unpleasant, and you wanted nothing more than relieve it, pushing the hold of the fabric away from your sensitive pebbles.

And some even dirtier thought wanted for you nothing more than to pinch them, feeling as if it would have brought you more pleasure than the way you sought friction between your legs, letting the fabric catch and pass onto a part that brough you pleasure in waves of warmth.

You wanted to run away, but your curiosity kept your eyes linked to discover more.

You promised you’d stay another minute, and then another… and then another, till your eyes reached out for more and found the barrier of the bathtub completely blocking your view, having to risk more as you stepped a bit on your toe so that you could peak in the bathtub.

And finally witness that unholy spectacle.

And it was completely worth the risk of being caught.

Michael’s hand moved onto his length, pushing and pulling on it, getting his manhood to grow and throb under his careful ministration, graceful exactly as the rest of his body which throbbed aching for more, but he kept a slow rhythm that allowed you to completely see each of his movements as he pushed and pushed onto himself, tracing his length.

And you couldn’t help but open your moth as his length was revealed to you, his big hands making a show of his true greatness, which astonished and scared you.

The sole thought of such a beast fitting inside you, made your cheeks red with embarrassment and worry, remembering Rosina’s words and thinking about bleeding onto such a strong length.

He kept on pushing between his legs, moving easily between his hands, some liquid other than water and with a sticky consistence helping in the act.

But you were again curious and shameless, maybe having been made arrogant by the thought of not having been caught yet, and part of you wanted to know cardinal Michael carnally, as the Bible said about husband and wife.

Would Michael’s length have fit inside you?

Would he have assumed a similar rhythm to the one his hands used, or would he have had you in the most ruthless way, as you had seen only animals do?

And you were inclined to believe your latter thought with the way Michael’s body suddenly spasmed, the rhythm of his hands becoming faster, in a chase and an hunt for his own pleasure that made him savage to the brink, as he buckled without even realizing it into his awaiting hands.

His hips lean and taper were the one in control of his body and allowed him to push himself a bit closer and closer, to that ecstasy that only saints knew and welcomed and as his mouth opened in a perfect ‘o’, such as the saints you had seen being pictured in the beautiful churches being tortured to bliss in the knowledge of Gods.

But what Michael had just done wasn’t godly or such.

He kept onto buckling mindlessly in his hand, as his stomach spasmed more, in a way that brought his breath to come out chaotically, as he tried to regain a rhythm, and follow the last drops of pleasure.

As your eyes kept onto following the droplets of the white liquid coming out of his member, sticky and sticking onto his hand as he made quite a mess onto his length, almost playing with it in a languid way that made you even more feverish on that infernal warmth that almost made you feel weak on your knees.

And then Michael’s eyes snapped open.

You had exposed yourself far more than you had expected and immediately tried to hide behind the door, hoping that you had been enough silent not to be caught in your quick shift.

Apparently, you hadn’t.

“… little mouse don’t get shy on me now” he mumbled, his voice being suddenly roughed up by pleasure as he slowly adjusted in the bathtub, pushing himself onto his elbow to hold himself up and stare at you, although you kept on hiding yourself behind the door “… I let you see me, you aren’t going to deny me at least to see you”.

Of course, you were!

To expose yourself would be a direct acceptance of blame.

And although you had been able to spy on the beast when he was asleep, you weren’t able to, now that he was awake and looking around the room.

“That isn’t very kind, ‘madonna’ “ he mumbled lightly, but his tone immediately moved to become more threatening and darker, something you didn’t link to the cardinal “… expose yourself or I’ll ask the guards to search for an intruder”.

You were half thinking of running away, maybe the guards wouldn’t have found you, but you were sure that, by Michael’s tone he would have put the entire palace through the pains of hell, hadn’t he found who had spied onto him.

And some part of you wanted to be caught.

You moved slowly, opening the door and trying not to face him, your eyes pointed to your feet in a desperate attempt to avoid his gaze, as if this could show your penance through the unproper act you had done (and spied upon).

Maybe cardinal Michele just wanted to make sure you wouldn’t take about his ‘fall from grace’.

But by the smart look in your eyes you spied, you knew he would ask you something more devious than to keep your mouth shut.

“My lord I just came here to leave you some clothes on your sister’s order” you spoke fast, in order for yourself to be soon out of the cardinal’s hands “… I didn’t spy on anything, my lord, I just…”.

“Don’t even try to lie, little mouse” he muttered softly, pushing himself into a seated position, which showed you much more than before, making you blush and push your gaze onto your feet again “… I heard your presence since I started”.

The admission that he had known of your presence shocked you, alongside the sequential knowledge that he had wanted to watch the scene.

What sick game was this?

“… you thought you were being so smug, didn’t you…” his question didn’t seem one, but his tone softened from the threat that had lured you out of your hideout “… a pretty mouse wandering on the finest of cheeses, isn’t it what it seems?”.

You would have wanted to argue that he was utterly insane for comparing himself to cheese, but didn’t mutter anything, in fear of the awaiting punishment you would have been subjected to, soon, for trespassing a cardinal’s privacy.

“I gave you quite the show, didn’t I?” his question demanded an immediate answer and you didn’t make him wait, nodding lightly your head, as a smug smirk appeared on his face “… then I think it is only fair that you give me something in return”.

You scrambled nervous, your eyes meeting his in a silent plead: you hadn’t anything that might interest a cardinal and you didn’t understand what he might want from you.

He must be teasing you, as a cat played with a little mouse indeed.

He seemed to love your confusion and lightly shook his head, the water that had drenched his hair leaving in it in small droplets that formed, as light hit it, a small halo.

Unproper for such a devil in disguise.

“I showed you mine, so you’ll have to show me yours”.

You were indignant, not simply scared anymore at his indecent proposal: it was true that you had been noisy and hadn’t acted properly, but what he was asking you went against any of your belief.

“I can’t…” you stuttered, rage and embarrassment clashing in you, meanwhile you tried your best to still your breath to properly speak “… it isn’t proper for you to ask me such a thing!”.

“What isn’t proper, little mouse, is you spying a high cardinal, the son of a pope” he smirked, as his eyes held some kind of angelical madness “… I could easily have you thrown out”.

The thought of such a shameful exit made you shiver and sweat, and you thought that it would be a less humiliation the thought of doing what your body secretly ached for, to satisfy the ask of the cardinal, although you couldn’t help but blush, as you lightly moved closer, Michele’s eyes upon you.

“Good girl” he praised your movements, as he pushed his chest out of the bathtub adjusting himself to properly take a good look at you “… raise that awful gown and show me”.

And you, with trembling hands, meanwhile you tried to lightly raise your skirts, as you showed him the cotton underwear you wore under it, extremely modest and enough covering that although you were blushing more for the situation, you didn’t feel at unease.

“… push away that underwear, now, little mouse” he sang to you, and almost enchanted you did as he told you, without even thinking, as your eyes met his blue ones “…I said I wanted to see what you hid all day, I can already feel the smell of your wetness”.

This was enough to break your movement, as you were made aware of an even more embarrassing situation.

You stilled in your movements, but Michael tutted his tongue and you were brought back to the knowledge you didn’t have much choice.

You tried to close your eyes, shifting them away from Michael to focus onto keeping your eyes closed in the degradation of your body the cardinal was subjecting you to.

You expected him to make fun of you, but there was simply silence and as you opened one eye to catch onto what he was doing, you found him looking intensely at you, examining both your nakedness and rest of the body, in a show that brought shivers to run down your spine.

His eyes held a devilish desire that made you hot again and your knees threatened to buckle under you.

“… you look like a fucking painting, sweetheart” he mumbled, making you blush at his course, but you weren’t unable to stop the little smile on your face at that injurious compliment “… keep that skirt up, no… actually… actually push it away, we won’t need it, anymore”.

And you did as you were told, letting the skirt push away from your legs, detaching the places where the gown was linked to your bodice, in a successful attempt not to be clumsy, meanwhile you did it.

The aroused tone of the cardinal didn’t ask for any mistake.

Or slowness.

Once also the skirt was discarded the devilish smirk had returned on top of cardinal Michele’s meaty mouth and he pushed you to come closer to him with a ‘come hither’ motion of his fingers.

And you did come closer to him, till your legs lightly brushed against the bathtub.

And there you opened your eyes lowering them upon the cardinal who looked sympathetic at you, a devious smile on him, meanwhile his eyes took you in, again and again, drinking the sight of you till he got himself drunk.

“Now touch yourself” he commanded, and a blush and shiver went through your body “… and if you are good, I’ll ask Cesare to join us, next time”.

---

@blakewaterxx @emmyrosee @1-800-bitchcraft @rocketgirl2410 @lovelylangdonx @kaetastic @frenchbread4ever @blackredrose27 @melodylangdon @duncansshephard

#Michael Langdon #Michael Langdon Reader #Michael Langdon x Reader #Michael Langdon Imagine #Michael Langdon Fic #Michael Langdon Smut #Smut #Michael Langdon Moodboard #Michael Langdon Writing #AHS writing #AHS #AHS Apocalypse #Borgia AU #AHS 8

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heaven-s-black-box · 5 months

Text

Race Against Time- Dominos chpt.3

Return to File - GI File - TR File - SW File - BSD File

Recovery date: March 7th, 2023

Description: Aether and Lumine take a commission in the Chasm and twelve years later Hinata Tachibana dies as a result of the unchecked activities of the Tokyo Manji gang— all it takes is one domino to tip and the world order will collapse. With three parties unknowingly playing hide and seek with the devil, can the scales be tipped by Takemichi and friends?

Notes: While the entry is corrupted I lost steam there are still partial records, and therefore the entry may yet be recovered. I found part of chapter seven, so I might be able to write more if not finish it

Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6

Word count: 2 042

Back to directory

Lumine and Aether sat quietly around their fire, watching their hashbrowns and eggs sizzle in the pan. The sun was just starting to rise and even after searching well into the night and leaving out lanterns, they still hadn’t found Paimon.

“We can’t leave her.”

“But the Chasm is way too big for us to look everywhere ourselves, maybe we can head back to Liyue and ask Ningguang for help.”

Aether served up a plate for them to share, and the two returned to silence while they ate. Paimon’s plate remained wrapped up in his bag.

Once they’d finished eating and doused their fire, the twins started back to the ledge they’d come up at. Lumine was right, the Chasm was too big for a search party of two, they’d have to ask Ningguang and hope the Millelith could spare some men. If not, maybe they could ask some friends.

The twins took their time getting back to the ledge, leaving notes and calling out to Paimon, but their search still came up empty. It was starting to worry them, their only consolation being that Paimon may have decided to go back alone; though her not saying anything was weird. Aether had even checked the teapot last night, finding it uninhabited aside from Tubby.

“Ready?” Lumine asked, unfolding her wind glider.

“Hm,”Aether hummed, staring at his glider for a moment, “what if I stay?”

“Aether.”

“I have supplies, and it wouldn’t take you long to get to Liyue and back-”

“I’m not leaving you out here alone,” she snapped.

Aether waved back towards the Chasm.

“I’m not alone, Dain is still here somewhere.”

“If you can tell me where Dain is-”

A golden portal opened— stopping the argument— and both twins summoned their swords, taking up defensive positions. They slowly approached it, prepared to take on whatever creature of the Abyss came out, when Dain rolled out.

He uncurled, laying on the ground, but didn’t move to stand up.

“Found him,” Aether said, before releasing his sword and stepping closer. “Dain?”

Gently, Aether nudged his side with his boot. The former knight of Khaenri’ah didn’t make a move, his chest rising and falling in shallow movements unconsciously.

Setting his foot down beside him, he heard a faint wet sound; looking down to find a small pool of blood forming on the rocks.

“Archons, Dain!” Aether dropped to his knees and Lumine Ran up beside him, bag already slung off her shoulder and half open.

“Dain?”

Lumine began to rifle through her bag for bandages and unlatched her canteen while aether removed Dain’s vest and pushed up his shirt.

“I don’t see anything, must be on his back, help me roll him.”

As carefully as possible, the twins turned Dain onto his side and found a deep stab wound in his left side. The back of his clothes were soaked in blood. He let out a faint grunt as Aether poured water on the wound before pressing the bandage pad against it. Lumine hadn’t even unrolled the bandages to secure the pad before Dain’s blood seeped through.

Both twins let out a curse.

“He needs a doctor.”

“We have to stop the bleeding before we can move him, not to mention I don’t know how to get him down.”

Lumine handed him another pad, this one covered in a paste to help with the bleeding, before helping him sit Dain up to secure it. She awkwardly held his shoulders while sitting somewhat behind him, while Aether wrapped the bandage around his waist.

“If we take the long way we can get to the east teleport point.”

Nodding, Aether secured the bandage before shifting to a crouch and wrapping one of Dain’s arms around his shoulder. He was almost completely limp, forcing Aether to take on most of his weight and making it hard to stand up.

Awkwardly, he dug his feet into the stone and slowly pushed up with Dain half slung over his pack. Lumine threw her bag back on and came up to his other side, wrapping Dain’s other arm around her shoulder and taking some of the pressure off her brother.

Once they found their footing, and cussed out Dain’s height, they started dragging him back in towards the road that cut through parts of the Chasm. It wasn’t completely clear, having been out of commission since the Chasm closed, but it was easier to navigate a few boulders than scale down a cliff; scaling the Cliff was faster though, and the twins could only hope Dain would hold out until they made it back to Liyue.

They slowly cut through a small cave system, following the symbols Yelan had scratched into some of the old posts, until they came out further in; overlooking the Chasm’s Maw. The twins dropped Dain onto a handcart, taking a moment to breath and check his wound— finding that the bleeding had slowed thanks to the medicinal paste, but still requiring a change— before taking it down to the loading dock where the main road connected.

Both twins were sweating profusely and could feel their bodies burning from the extended exertion. The sun was almost directly above them now.

“Almost there,” Lumine said, voice breathless as they sat on the edge of the cart.

Aether nodded, standing up from the cart and stumbling a bit; his sister caught his arm and stopped him from hitting the ground.

“We get a break after this one,” he said as he took a few more long breaths.

“No complaints here.”

“Alright,” Aether rounded the cart and pulled Dain up to sit, “last stretch.”

Lumine joined him, swinging Dain’s legs onto the ground before they braced him once more.

A loud blast echoed through the Chasm.

“Oh, come on!”

It was followed by a few shorter blasts and some indiscernible yelling from down the road.

After carefully laying Dain back down, the twins summoned their swords and ran to hide behind the rock wall between them and the blaster fire. Aether crouched down and Lumine leaned over him as they looked out down the road to find a shoot out taking place.

On the far side was someone or something in heavy armor, that they didn’t recognize, and closer to them was a treasure hoarder with a case leaned against the crate she was hiding behind. The stranger on the far end was looking over a fallen boulder, and the treasure hoarder looked panicked.

“Look,” a strange voice called, the treasure hoarder stiffened, “I just need the case, my employer doesn’t care what happens to you.”

“And I told you I already have a buyer set up so just tell your employer I destroyed them or something!” The treasure hoarder yelled back.

Aether turned his head slightly, not taking his eyes off the scene in front of him, and spoke to his sister.

“We should help, maybe ruin guard over there can help us with Dain.”

“Or he might try to kill us.”

“Then we knock him out first, what’s new?”

Lumine sighed, gently tugging Aether’s braid so he’d look at her; she raised her fist and he smiled, doing the same.

“Rock, paper, scissors, shoot. Aha!” He grinned as Lumine played scissors only to be crushed by his rock. “Okay,” he turned back to the valley, “let’s-”

Before he could finish his sentence Lumine darted out onto the road, making the treasure hoarder scream in surprise, and charged with her sword draw. The stranger behind the rock aimed at her and Aether felt his blood run cold as he waited for another blast, but it never came. Instead there was a grunt from Lumine as she hauled the treasure hoarder up and dragged her out of her hiding spot with her arms behind her.

Aether quickly joined her, grabbing a spool of rope and tying the hoarder's wrists together.

“You should have waited for me to tell you the plan,” Aether hissed, turning to Lumine as he stood.

She shrugged. “Now go ask,” she nodded towards the stranger, “I’ll meet you back there.”

Looking back towards the Chasm entrance, he saw the stranger had stood up and seemed to be looking at something behind the rock where he stood; then he turned to look at Aether.

“Hey kid! What were you thinking?!”

“Our friend is hurt!” Aether yelled back, ignoring the title of kid. “He needs medical attention and my sister and I are trying to get him to the teleport point outside the chasm.” He bent down and picked up the case, raising it above his head. “This your's?”

“Yes!”

Aether took a step forward and stopped, turning back to see if Lumine was on her way out. When he didn’t see her he continued forward, meeting the shooter half way and handing off the box.

“Thanks. About your friend… I have some bacta spray if you need it.”

“Bacta spray?”

Looking into the dark visor, Aether tried to read the man in front of him; at least he assumed it was a man from the voice and build.

“It’s a medical spray that makes wounds heal faster.”

“Never heard of it but, we’re just back there,” he pointed, “do you have any on you?”

Nodding, the man followed Aether back towards Lumine and Dain.

---

“Look, kid, I’m not going to give you a ride to another continent without a parent saying it’s okay.”

“Please Captain-”

“Hanagaki-kun,” he turned to the man sitting on a crate beside the Crux’s captain, “it’s no use, the Captain is very strict with her rules.”

Takemichi sighed, thanking the two for their time, and turned back along the boardwalk. He’d hoped that the Crux would finally be his ticket to Liyue, but captain Beidou had asked for a parents permission and crushed all of his hopes. But that wouldn’t stop him. He had three days to get to Liyue before changing the future would get much, much harder; the trip itself was almost three days and so he needed to leave Kanto today.

“I’ve been looking at this map,” Takemichi jumped at Chifuyu’s voice, the other boy sitting on a small wall lining the harbor, “and I think it’d be faster if we went to Ritou.”

“We still need a boat.”

“Ya but it’s only a two day trip, and it’s technically part of Teyvat which has these things called teleport points; we can instantly travel to Liyue.”

“So that gives us an extra day to find a boat.”

“Yup.”

Jumping up beside Chifuyu, Takemichi stared out at the water. He couldn’t see anything but blue, and a small speck as a boat came in.

It was different from the skyline in the future. The future he came from was chaotic, a post-apocalyptic world; the part of the northern continent currently known as Teyvat was a wasteland, the Republic was still suffering from the loss of their southern neighbors, and the Kanto region was still recovering from a massive loss of population due to unknown reasons.

“Tell me again why we need to get to Liyue,” Chifuyu asked, setting the map down.

“We’re looking for someone named Fyodor Dos-Dos… someone named Fyodor. In the next few weeks he gets his hands on some kind of special book, incites Celestia to smite Teyvat, and wipes out a chunk of Kanto’s population.”

Chifuyu nodded along.

“That’s a lot of work to save Hina-chan,” Chifuyu turned to him and smiled, “you must really love her.”

Takemichi felt his cheeks heat up.

“Dazai!”

The sudden yell startled the boys, making them turn to investigate.

A man in a brown trench coat was sitting on one of the wharfs, completely drenched, while a blond man in a suit yelled at him. Off to the side, with a sheepish look on his face, was another young man with an awkward haircut who looked like he was trying to diffuse the situation.

Even from this distance they could hear the blond man clearly.

“Stop trying to drown yourself! It is not only a great inconvenience to the dock workers, but Captain Beidou as well!”

The man in the coat said something, only incurring more rage from the blond, before standing up and wandering down the walkway.

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5-falsehoods-phonated · 4 years

Text

To Owe A Date

Request fill from AO3 I got carried away with.

@cecie-does-stuff-things I thought maybe you'd like to be tagged since it's DeSleep!

Summary: The new barista at the coffee shop Janus frequents is a shameless tease of a flirt. Janus finds he doesnt really mind.

Warnings: none

Ships: DeSleep, Janus x Remy

WC: 1,499

Rarely was Janus in a worse mood than he was that morning.

It had started off fine, his sons getting along relatively well for the most part. Remus had only stolen one shoe and hidden it the morning and Roman had only gone off on one tirade concerning some musical or another. He loved both of them dearly, chaotic as they were with their typical escapades and he loved listening to their interests and debates on those interests, but they often made for exhausting mornings that made him crave the sweet release of caffeine before he felt ready to face his clients, many of which acted less mature than his seven year olds.

As it was he gently massaged his temples as he kept a fast pace to the nearest coffe shop, which made average drinks at best but was cheap and on his way to the tattoo parlor so he really couldn't complain. Burying himself further in his caplet as he went (yes they were still in style, it was warm and kept his arms free) he stepped hurriedly inside, the small bell tinkling and alerting the worker behind the bar.

Janus' brow furrowed slightly as he took in the new cashier, styled hair swooping low over a dark set of sunglasses and an eclectic assortment of what looked like silly bands adorning his wrists. Sighing quietly he prayed that the newcomer knew how to make coffee already and wasn't a completely new trainee, otherwise this day was going to be a lot more painful than he had anticipated.

"Hey shortcake, what's your poison?"

Janus blinked, the server stood at least a head taller than him, making his comment instantly infuriating. "I have to wait until at least two before consuming alcohol. Unfortunately coffee is classier than wine before noon."

The barista laughed outright. "Ooooh, tired wine mom aesthetic! Don't worry, in this shop we love Karens."

"You won't in about five seconds if I'm still refused service, no ones too tall for a kick to the kneecaps." Janus leaned pointedly against the counter, refusing to acknowledge the others shameless flirting, if that's what it could even be called. The other whistled low and grabbed a small pad and pen, straightening and standing to attention.

"Yes sir." The sultry tone definitely didn't go over Janus head but he merely rolled his eyes and glared point blank. "Alright fine. Geez girl, you are absolutely no fun. Do you know how boring it is in here most days? Can't blame a guy for trying. I'm gonna guess...you're probably a lightweight, so decaf with lots of sugar hun?"

Janus snorted. "Fuck no. A mocha with two extra espresso shots and whipped cream. I'll pay the extra."

Raising his eyebrow the barista jotted down his order and smirked. "Love a man who can hold his espresso. It'll be just a minute...?"

"Karen."

Laughing out loud again, he just nodded and turned away forwards the various machines to go about filling the order. In no time at all it was done, his cup handed over with Karen ♡ carefully written on the side. Paying quickly, Janus turned to leave, only pausing when the man's voice called out to him.

"See ya later babes."

"Depends on how good the coffee is." Janus threw over his shoulder not bothering to look back as he left to actually go to his job. Walking briskly down the sidewalk he idly took a sip of his order while checking his phone for the time.

...well shit.

Concentration fully on his drink he realized that even if that shop wasn't already his regular coffee shop it certainly would be now.

-----

"Dad! Guess what I did today?" Roman jumped up and down excitedly clutching his backpack.

"No, his story's stupid! Guess what I did instead!" Judging from Remus' mud covered jeans Janus could definitely give a guest as to what he did. Sighing in mock exasperation, he shifted the groceries and continued to carefully step up the stairs.

"I suppose it'll be up to whoever can get the groceries over to Mrs. Gibson the fastest can tell their story first." That way too he wouldn't be tripping over them trying to unlock the door with an armload of groceries.

"RACE YOU!!" As soon as they reached the landing Remus took off, leaving a loudly protesting Roman to catch up with him.

"Quieter please, and be-!" A loud crash followed by apples skidding across wood. "-careful. Are you alright?"

His worry dispersed as Remus scrambled up and began picking everything up and shoving them back in the bags, his brother begrudgingly helping him. Smiling and shaking his head he turned to the door and attempted to reach the key while still holding the bags, a feat which he stubbornly refused to believe was impossible now that he had started.

"Do you like, need help or-?" A familiar voice had him glancing up, mouth running dry as he recognized the sunglasses wearing flirt from that morning.

"How am I supposed to be enraptured by my saviors eyes if I can't gaze into them like the star struck lover I am?" Janus drawled, still making a valiant effort to reach his pocket.

"No can do babe, fluorescents are just as bad as sunlight and I enjoy looking at your own eyes too much to risk blindness." So saying he reached over and took the groceries, smugly carrying them all one handed while holding a cup of coffee in the other.

Pretending not to notice his burning face Janus turned to finally get the door open just as the boys were running back down the hall.

"Dad Mrs. Gibson gave us candy-! Oh! Hi mister!" Roman stopped abruptedly in front of the stranger, who smiled and tipped his head.

"Sup kid." Unfortunately, Remus didn't have the luxury of paying attention, too enraptured by the bag of chocolate he had been given to bother slowing down and barreled his way straight into his twin.

Janus saw the dominos fall in slow motion; Roman stumbling forward and reaching out for something to grab, which just so happened to be the baristas arm. Coffee spilled in a waterfall on both of twins' heads and in a desperate attempt to remedy the situation the man jerked his hand up and away, getting a face full of ice and the remaining coffee in the process. For a moment time stood still, but taking in everyone's drenched appearance Janus couldn't help a small small to grow to a grin, a snort breaking the silence as he struggled to contain his laughter, apologizing through it nonetheless.

"I'm so sorry, are you-are you okay?"

Before he could answer he was cut off by Roman. "I'm so sorry I didn't mean to it was an accident-!"

"Hey kid, check this out." The man kneeled, setting the cup down before flipping his glasses up and letting chunks of ice fall from behind them. "No use crying over spilled coffee. It's chill."

Janus stared incredulously before letting loose another peal of laughter. He nudged open the door and ushered the boys inside. "Go clean up before you end up sticky. I don't care if you like it Remus go."

"Boy they took chaos twins to heart didn't they?"

Janus turned around and offered an apologetic smile. "I really am sorry about all of this-"

He waved him off. "It's cool babes. You just owe me coffee now."

Janus smirked and tugged on his groceries, taking them back. "I'd say I just owe you an offer to come in and clean up. Where's the coffee coming from?"

"Oh I might have a place in mind."

----

"This is not what I thought you meant." Janus stood with a deadpan expression as he took in the small cafe that was decidedly not the other's place of work.

"I never eat where I work babes." The man replied, reading Janus' thoughts.

"I thought I was just buying you coffee?" He sputtered following after him.

"Oh you paid me back with that yesterday when I washed my hair in the sink. This is because i owe you a date."

Who the hell- "You are really forward aren't you?"

The other tipped his glasses down slightly to wink. "You haven't told me to fuck off yet so I'm just taking it in stride."

"This is one date, to be clear."

"Sure Karen."

"Janus."

The other stopped and whirled around. "What babes?"

Janus ran his fingers through his hair in exasperation. "It's Janus."

Smiling, the man stepped forward and leaned slightly to fix his hair, making his face erupt in flames. "Call me Remy, shortstack."

Janus scowled. "I'm not that short!"

"Babes, I'm like a head taller than you. You're kids'll probs be taller than you by the time they're ten."

Bickering all the way to the door Janus couldn't help but smile. Short just meant dibs on being the little spoon, and he had every intention of taking advantage of that.

As always this work is also available on AO3!

#false writes #sanders sides #sanders sides fic #janus sanders #remy sanders #sleep sanders #desleep

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border-spam · 4 years

Text

AU Troy Character Timeline

Right, so I saw an incredible breakdown of Troy’s mental journey/state of ego last night ( that I’ll see if I can get permission to post at some point ) that really kicked my confidence into overdrive for writing out a definitive timeline for the version of him I write about in drabbles/fics etc as it was so amazingly similar. This isn’t complete, it couldn’t be because man I have a lot of stuff for this guy, but I hope it’s interesting for people maybe looking for a somewhat logical bunch of HC content that works well with the info we were given ingame.

Writing this was like doing a jigsaw puzzle. Except ten pieces are missing, and you have 2 dominos and a Mrs Cupcake card instead. If you like any of this, feel free to use it. I’ll eventually expand on it in my own works.

Pre Pandora Era - 28 years pre BL3

Severe self esteem / image issues from very early childhood. Leda’s death left Typhon both terrified of Tyreen and desperately paranoid about her safety, leaving Troy to feel far less valued and loved as he found himself constantly failing to compete for attention from his remaining parent.

Typhon never outright called Troy a freak, but he overheard plenty of discussions with his mother and with Tyreen explaining why he was so sick all the time, why he looked the way he did, why he was broken. He never discussed these, they festered in the back of his mind for the rest of his life.

Strived from an early age to be useful, being useful gave him the belief he was valued, and a “Great job kid!” from his father felt good enough that it could almost replace feeling loved.

Misses his mother intensely from the day she died, for the rest of his life. Had no one else to have platonic intimacy with bar his sister, which never felt as freely given as with his mother.

Developed an extremely crippled sense of social behavior and rules. The only people the Twins could interact with till they landed on Pandora ( which I HC was between 18 -19 ) were each other, and their Father.

Left alone on a giant empty planet with no one to tell them no, or instill an understanding of social rules to them regarding others, left them with only a feeling of personal value for each other. This is an extremely dangerous state of mind for any person who will need to function in a social structure, especially a person in power.

Had it hammered into them over and over by their father that the galaxy outside their home was filled with murderers. Animals. Bandit filth. Not like them, not like their parents, horrible, vicious things that would kill them the second they could.

Internalised that to the point where it was a crucial part of their development of self as children. The twins would genuinely struggle to comprehend any other human they met was a person, because they were told their whole developing lives that no one they would meet bar their father would be.

Pre COV - 8 years pre BL3

Lands on Pandora with Tyreen. Woefully underprepared and worried sick, didn’t want to leave Nekro but had no other choice but to go with his sister or die. Misses his father immediately, but avoids talking about it, knowing it will cause an argument.

Disliked that their father had kept them on Nekro intensely, but not enough to hate him the way Tyreen did. This never changed and the regret for leaving him only rotted inside him over the years.

Very excited to finally meet new people, but his social skills are learned through watching old echos and while he can mimic them, he doesn’t understand social intricacies as well as he’d hoped. This sabotages their first few attempts to communicate with Pandoran non bandit natives.

Comes across as weird. Stutters, not good with eye contact, awkward in body language and very unnatural in appearance. Extremely tall (6″7), very thin and sickly looking with sallow skin and dark under eyes. His missing arm and quarter of his shoulder draw far more attention than he had ever expected and he becomes instantly self conscious of the damage to his right side, strongly disliking how it’s pointed out every time they try and interact with one of these idiots.

The twins only had the clothes they had travelled in and at this point they are pretty much rags patched together over nearly 2 decades. Didn’t understand how much appearances were going to matter, Troy had been sure he’d be able to “Mingle with the locals no problem.”, and now feels like he’s letting his sister down by failing to perform the way he’d been so sure of. They move onto the bandit clans once they get laughed out of the first small town they try to impress.

Their first few interactions with bandits have very bad results. They both get mocked a lot, Troy gets insulted even more. This is the first time in his life he’s met other men bar his father and the harsh reality that he is not like other men is really starting to hit hard. He’s monstrously tall, he has no muscle, he’s bony and sick and the bandits make very clear to him that he’s a freak.

Unable to defend himself verbally to people that don’t seem to speak a coherent language, he feels impotent and emasculated. Troy’s gift with words has always been his strong point, something he was proud of, and the bandits barely even understand what he’s saying. Any interest he’d had towards them as other people gets quashed. They clearly aren’t the same as he and Ty, they are beneath them. Savages. They aren’t people after all. His dad was right.

This is the point where he fully switches to seeing almost all others as non-persons. They aren’t people, they aren’t what he and Tyreen are, or they wouldn’t act like this in response to the twins. Any possible empathy he could have developed over time is aborted at this point, and he begins to craft the God King persona he understands he will need to disguise his shortcomings under if he’s going to be in the public’s eye.

Begins to create it piece by piece. Designs their outfits, designs his tattoos and mods, his monstrous arm, their name.

The Calypso twins are born, and the COV with them.

Early COV Era - 7 years pre BL3

As he learns how to communicate with bandits and craft a persona for Tyreen that they will be drawn to, the COV starts to form. While the huge majority of their followers are people they see as not even being the same species as them, they do also begin to fill the higher ranks with people they are meeting over time that they see as having value.

People with skills in categories they don’t, engineers, media experts, accountants, are drawn to the COV for the same reasons as the bandits. Opportunity, just a different sort.

Joining in the early days means having the twin’s ears, and those who have excellent ideas, or bring talent to the upper echelon that the twin's don’t have themselves, eventually end up as high priests and Saints. Department leaders (eg: Mouthpiece ). These are the kind of people he sees as people, though still not on par with himself or his sister in value. These are the few he would be capable of having functional conversations with, building simple relationships.

He has found value in his ability to be very useful within the COV. Leading the Media and Propaganda department has given him a huge amount of power, even if he still physically feels extremely frail.

He’s settled into living in Tyreen’s shadow, she’s the star, but he’s the puppeteer, and he’s happy for it to be that way for the most part. While she can sometimes step out of line or treat him like he’s not equal, he’s quick to remind her of her place during these outbursts, and their relationship is relatively stable.

Troy is fiercely loyal and surprisingly gentle with people he has a bond with. Despite his desperation to have meaningful connections, to be cared for and liked as himself, they don’t stay around him long.

No matter how hard he tries to give them what he thinks they want, they eventually leave, and he doesn’t understand that they are distancing themself because of how he treats other people, not them.

Troy’s complete inability to view the vast majority of people as people means he has a total lack of empathy towards almost everyone else, and this is a terrifying thing to experience first hand. He doesn’t understand this is why his “friends” leave, why they stop being friendly with him, or request to be transferred to another district.

“Why did you do that to them..?” - “Huh? Ohhhh, relax haha, it’s just a bandit.” - “What do you mean, just a bandit, they felt that Troy, what’s wrong with you?’ - "The hell? No, it’s a b.a.n.d.i.t. It’s not like us, it’s not like you, it’s just.. you know, a bandit! Doesn’t matter what I do to em.” -shrug- - “-horrified silence-”

He blames himself each time this happens and damages his already fractured self esteem further. He can’t comprehend that his actions are the problem, because he simply has no way to understand his actions are bad.

Each time someone close to him leaves, it’s another hit to his already crumbling self worth. He has absolutely no strong bonds with anyone bar his sister, who at times seems to barely like him, and he is genuinely desperate for validation and care from someone who likes Troy, not Calypso, not the God he pretends to be.

Every time another one of his “friends” vanishes, another of his little connections to his own humanity breaks. He gets angrier, and sadder, the God King a little more snarling and quicker to snap. It’s a sore point Tyreen tends to dig in during arguments too.

She doesn’t need anyone else, but she’s seen the near manic excitement and happiness he has when he connects with another person over a shared interest or they show actual genuine kindness towards him and not his title. If that person then becomes upset with his lack of empathy, or scared of it and abandons him, it’s another open wound on the already dying soul inside him that’s barely still breathing.

He has a complete and defined understanding of right and wrong, but those rules only apply to people, and his social development from infant to adult left his comprehension of other people so stunted, he cannot fathom that the vast majority of others are people.

God King Calypso is a fucking nightmare to anyone bar the select view he sees as “people like him”. A feral, cackling monster, as likely to airdrop a million dollars onto a tiny village and record the reaction, as he is to rip a bandits arms off during a raid and live steam them bleeding out. All the same to him. Just background NPCs in his game. Placeholder actors in his life. They don’t matter. All that does matter is how they make him feel, or how they further his sister’s goals.

Every year that passes by leaves the God King more polished and defined, more in control a persona, while inside its impenetrable shell Troy DeLeon is slowly being suffocated by the weight of his own sins, without having the ability to understand he had been sinning at all.

God King Era - 4 years pre Bl3

By this point, Troy’s isolation is now deadly. He is a deity, worshipped by billions, with absolutely no points of human contact in his life to anchor himself to reality. No one to help him understand how to apply his sense of right and wrong to his followers, only his sister, who is even more toxic and vicious than he is.

Every day since starting the COV, he’s distanced himself further from the worshippers, the bandits, the acolytes. They are screaming war meat now, they are chips to barter with, numbers on a viewer count, flesh to tear into when he wants to feel something.

His relationship with Tyreen is crumbling. She’s quicker now to imply he’s not as important, he’s not the Siren. She’s called him a parasite in front of a merger board, a burden during a discussion with department heads. Each new crack at his inner ego only strengthens the persona further. Makes it more attention seeking, more willing to lash out at others, more vicious.

His “friends"are long gone, either fled from the behemoth the COV now is, or far away in other districts, planets, cities. The people he is close with now in working relationships are held at arms length. He doesn’t let anyone near him anymore, he’s afraid they will leave too if he does.

The isolation pushes him further into the God King persona every day. If he’s Troy Calypso, he doesn’t NEED anyone else. The further he sinks into it, the more aggressive, the more twisted his actions become, but he doesn't see it that way. This is what his followers want, so it must be fine. Why wouldn’t it be fine to ravenously tear into heretics on livestream if 8 billion people are tuning in to watch?

He’s becoming cruel, he’s becoming vicious, but the man he was before he reached Pandora is still whispering that Tyreen is treating him wrong. That this isn’t how it was meant to be, that he’s not weak or a burden.

But listening to that voice means also having to listen to the one telling him he’s warped into something disgusting that his mother would be so let down by, that his father was right about him being a broken monstrosity. He continues to ignore it, and he loses himself further every day.

The deeper he recedes into the God King, the more he starts having nightmares, the more those whispers in the back of his mind get louder. He does what he can to ignore them, but sometimes something will set him off.

An argument with Tyreen, a momentary feeling of regret for leaving his home, a pang of loneliness. He often can’t sleep, and he knows if he starts to wonder why, clarity for the horrors he’s done could crush him.

Drugs, sex, bloodlust, he tries anything to take his mind off the intrusive thoughts that grow day by day. That he’s a failure. He’s a freak. He’s a cold blooded murder, but every now and then he’ll wake up in a cold sweat and hate himself so much that he wishes he’d never been born.

The feeling passes very quickly as the God King shifts back into place and swallows it down, but while it’s there it’s horrific. He see’s himself from other people’s eyes for just a moment and god what has he turned into. What has he done. He’s a fucking monster.

The man he had been is so damaged under the mantle of this vicious God he’s wearing as a skin that it’s barely alive anymore, and it’s what begs him to kill it in those fleeting moments where he sees past his own facade, where he just for a second realises how many people he has hurt.

He tore his throat out a couple of years before the start of the game story in a moment of lucidity after being sleep deprived for days on end. Tyreen reached him in time when his implanted vitals tracker each twin keeps for the other alerted her to his condition, but it was close enough that he was bedridden for days after her energy transfer closed the wound.

She had been furious with him and made sure it was was kept hushed, the rest of the clergy believing he was on reprieve. Only the twins know the truth of what happened.

He never takes the collars off anymore now, the scars are still there. Convincing Tyreen that it had had happened during a nightmare when he’d left his prosthetic on by mistake was easy. Convincing himself to try and forget he’d been lucid and how it still feels like the right thing to do, is not.

By the point the story begins, Troy is in a constant state of exhaustion, and knows deep down everything he has been through and done to others was for nothing. Tyreen doesn’t care about him the way he does her. She may never have, or she changed, he doesn’t know anymore.

What he does know, is that he won't ever be a real God, and that the only reason he’s still alive is because he is useful.

Maybe he should never have tried so hard to be useful.

Phew.

I guess in a nutshell, my Troy’s greatest downfall is the God King persona.

As long as that shit is active, as long as it’s being worshipped, he’s never going to snap into reality. The reality that other people are there, that he’s been hurt so badly as a person, it’s all impossible long as he is being treated as, and believes, he is a God.

The manic moments of clarity he has in the later stages of the COV rule are few and far between, but they eat him alive as he can’t understand why he suddenly feels so terrible, why he’s filled with such consuming remorse.

Peel the God King off the broken man underneath it and you leave him bare, confused, scared. You make him have to deal with reality, with people, with himself. That’s when you get him to show regret, and understand what he’s done, and understand what Ty has done to him.

That’s the redemption.

When he realises the game he was playing was real for billions, and suffers for it. It ends where it ends as my Troy ain’t dyin’ :P I’ll get to my rewrite eventually. I hope to keep exploring these ideas in the future. Just desperately wish I’d as much to work with for Tyreen as I do Troy. GB YOU HEAR THAT? YOU HEAR THATTTT??

#troy calypso #tyreen calypso #borderlands #borderlands3 #borderlands 3 #bl3 #my hcs #my writing #calypso twins #leech lord

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harrowharkboygf · 4 years

Text

double trouble and the one (1) time they were good with kids

Double Trouble has never thought of themself as a “kid person”. All of the creatures they could choose to interact with on Etheria, children were certainly not at the top of the list. But for Finn, they would make an exception. read on ao3 | blm donation commissions

As they flipped through the pages of their notebook, Double Trouble became increasingly irritated. All they had wanted to do was research for their latest play—a harrowing tale of love between two First Ones—and word on the street was that Madame Razz was the only person left on Etheria who remembered what the long-gone civilization had actually been like.

But talking to her was absolutely incomprehensible. She spouted more nonsense than anyone Double Trouble had ever met, and they’d met Entrapta. How in the world were they supposed to properly act when they were incapable of understanding who their character was? They were a method actor, for fuck’s sake!

They sighed. At least the pie Razz had made had tasted good. They reclined back in their perch amongst the treetops, marking up their script with what little information they had. Worst come to worst, Double Trouble could always pay a visit to Brightmoon. Surely Adora knew something about the First Ones, being She-Ra and all that.

“I think we’re lost,” a little voice said from below them.

“We’re not lost, Luna!” a different voice declared. “I know where we’re going!”

“Suuuuuure,” said a third voice skeptically.

“We aren’t!” the second voice protested.

Double Trouble sat up and peered curiously down to the forest floor, searching for the source of this argument. To their surprise, they saw four little kids slowly making their way through the Whispering Woods.

“We’re going on an adventure,” whined the owner of the second voice, who, they realized, was Catra and Adora’s little kitten, Finn. Double Trouble wondered if the play-sword Finn was holding was one of the ones from the toy weapons set they had given them as a gift when they were born. They were particularly proud of that set—they loved being the one to bring the biggest, most expensive present to a party, and here they had certainly succeeded.

Finn hopped over a tree root with ease. “An adventure means you have to be brave, guys. ”

“I’m brave!” said one of the other kids, who they were also able to recognize by the short, poofy purple hair that popped against her dark skin; this was one of the Princesses of Brightmoon. Archie crossed her arms, looking exactly like Glimmer. “I think you don’t know where the castle is.”

Finn huffed. “Finding it is part of the adventure!”

Archie’s twin, who was nearly identical save for her hair, which was just as poofy but bright pink and pulled into two pigtails, clutched her sister’s hand nervously. “The forest is kind of scary,” she whispered.

The fourth kid—Double Trouble didn’t recognize him, but judging by the pale blonde hair, the scorpion tail and claws, and the flower tucked behind his ear, he was clearly one of Scorpia and Perfuma’s brood—took her tiny hand in his. “The forest isn’t scary, Luna,” he said earnestly. “My moms said that things are only scary if you make them that way.”

Finn grinned, triumphant. “And Archie and Luna’s dad says that all you need is your friends! We have each other, so we can do this! Let’s go!”

Archie still looked unconvinced. “Our parents are really busy today. What if we miss something fun?” she asked.

Luna’s eyes widened. “Do you think so?”

Finn poked at the ground with their toy sword. “No! Today is when all the adults do all the boring stuff, and tomorrow is when everyone else gets here and we do the fun stuff. We can spend a whole day in the castle and they won’ even miss us.”

Luna’s lip had begun to tremble. “I wanna go home,” she whimpered. She tugged at the scorpion boy’s hand. “Ol’ander, let’s go home.”

Oleander gave her a hug. “Don’t cry, Luna!” he said. “I’ll tell you a joke Uncle Sea Hawk told me! What does a seagull say to a—No, wait, I forgot it…”

Finn yanked their sword out of the ground and held it up, looking a little like a mini-Adora. “Come on! We’re on an adventure to the magic castle! We’ll be super brave and do super fun things! Then we go home and have dinner! It’ll be fun.”

The other kids exchanged looks. But then Finn tapped Archie on the nose. “Tag!” they shouted. “Race you to the castle!” They turned and ran through the bushes.

Instantly, the group dissolved into laughter. They squealed and shrieked as they chased after Finn, all worries vanishing immediately.

Double Trouble turned back to their script. A little unsupervised excursion was good for kids. Healthy, even. After all, they’d mostly been left to their own devices as a child, and they’d turned out wonderfully! These little children would be fine. And Double Trouble was not exactly tripping over themself to go spend time with a bunch of kiddies anyway.

But then they had an idea. They assumed that the “magic castle” the kids were referring to was the Crystal Castle—also known as a First Ones artifact. It could be the missing piece in the puzzle that was their script! Just one tour around the place and they could learn so much about their character. It was perfect!

Double Trouble transformed into a bird and flew towards the castle. It wasn’t hard to find, being a huge crystal structure in the middle of the wilderness. They landed in front of it and shifted back into their usual form.

The castle itself was shut tight against the outside world, with no obvious signs of entry. They could see a few tiny footprints in the grass near the front of the building, but it was unclear how—or if—the kids had gotten inside. Double Trouble sighed. The life of an actor was one of suffering.

They shifted back into a bird, flying themself to the top of the castle. Maybe they could find an entry point that way. It took some poking and prodding, but they finally managed to find a square of crystal that seemed loose enough to pry off—

The piece they were standing on shattered, sending them crashing through the roof.

Double Trouble stood up, trying to adjust to the dim light. The room was lit with tiny glowing panels along the walls; it was completely empty. They pulled out their notebook, reaching out carefully to touch the wall.

A scream split the air.

Double Trouble whirled around, searching for the source of distress. Then they remembered—the kids.

They quickly sprinted out of the room, not even bothering to transform. Double Trouble may have been a vicious mercenary, but they weren’t nearly heartless enough to let a bunch of five-year-olds die.

They turned a corner, following the sounds of shrieks. The hallways seemed to stretch on endlessly, a twisting, winding maze. After what seemed like an eternity, they came upon the source of the commotion:

A huge, angry spider was advancing on the kids, who were backed into a corner. Separating them and Double Trouble was a gaping, cavernous hole. The only way across was by a narrow, partially eroded pillar that had fallen and landed over the hole.

As the spider clicked it’s pincers, Archie shouted, “Use your magic!”

Luna, who was being clung to by Oleander and her sister, clapped her hands together frantically. “Can’t!” she wailed, tears gushing down her cheeks. “I don’t know how!”

Double Trouble began to make their way across the pillar, moving gingerly to avoid it breaking down even more. They clearly weren’t moving enough; the spider lunged at the kids, and they howled in fear, pressing closer together. All of them shrunk back, until their backs touched the wall.

All of them except Finn, who jumped forward, shielding the other children.

“For the honor of Grayskull!” they screamed, holding out their toy sword with such confidence that for a second, Double Trouble actually expected them to transform into a glowing warrior.

The spider hesitated for the briefest second, and Finn used that opportunity to thrust their sword towards its face. The blade grazed the creature’s skin harmlessly. (Next time, Double Trouble decided, they would get the kid something actually sharp).

Undeterred, Finn hurled the sword at its face as hard as they could. It bounced off its nose, knocking the toy several feet away. The spider made a horrid, grating noise of anger. Fear crossed Finn’s face for the first time.

Luckily, Double Trouble had just reached the end of the plank. They leapt off of it, tackling the spider. It hissed and thrashed under their grip. They used all their might to hurl it against the wall, before jumping off quickly and landing in front of the kids.

“Hi, Mx. Double Trouble!” said Finn cheerfully. Meanwhile, the spider managed to free itself from the wall, shaking its head. It gargled in anger. It was clearly disoriented, but for how much longer?

“Hello, little darlings!” they chirped. “Time to go!” They threw their entire weight against a nearby pillar, causing it to tip and careen into the pillar next to it. The pillars crashed into each other slowly, falling like dominoes.

Double Trouble grabbed Finn and one of the twins by the backs of their shirts and hauled them out of the way. They swept the other two children along with their tail. As the pillars fell, building a wall of stone and rubble between them and the spider, Double Trouble herded the small children out of the room. “Which way to the exit, little explorers?” they asked.

Archie pointed down a hallway. “I think…”

They immediately sprinted in that direction, their little gaggle stumbling after them, all holding each other’s hands.

The group reached a room that looked identical to the others. But Finn said, “This is where the ramp is!” And sure enough, a ramp descended from the ceiling, letting a beam of sunlight from the outside.

They all ran up the ramp and out of the castle. Once they reached the surface, the ramp closed behind them, sealing up the castle once more. The kids all collapsed onto the grass, obviously exhausted and shaking.

Oleander pulled a flower out of the ground and tucked it behind his ear, to replace the one that had fallen out during their mad dash. “We did go on an adventure,” he said, with the optimism that his family was apparently incapable of losing.

Archie poked Finn in the stomach. “How come you didn’ turn into She-Ra like your mommy does?”

Finn frowned, looking annoyed. “I dunno!”

Double Trouble laughed. They patted the kid on the head. “A bunch of scared little children are no match for one of those spiders, even if you’d had She-Ra’s sword. You’re lucky I found you in time, little one.”

Finn’s pout grew bigger. “I wasn’t scared!”

“Sure you weren’t.” They got to their feet, dusting off the grass sticking to their clothes. “Come along, children. Back to Brightmoon we go.”

“This’s one of Mommy and Daddy’s friends,” Luna explained to Oleander in a whisper as they walked. “They visit sometimes and tell Mommy things.”

“What sort of things?” asked Oleander.

“Secrets,” said Double Trouble, and winked. Being the queen’s spy was not their full time job—that would always be the theater, of course—but it was a good way to keep themself entertained in between shows. And they loved sharing the gossip around Etheria, so it worked out very well.

Finn bounced over to Double Trouble’s side. “I wasn’t scared!” they announced. “I was just pretending.”

They snorted. “Well then you’re quite the actor.”

The kid stomped their foot. “I can act! I’m the best at the pretend games we play.”

Double Trouble shook their head sagely. “True acting isn’t just pretending…” they said. They tipped their head back as they transformed, shrinking down and sprouting fur and blond hair that was thicker and lighter than their own. Finn gasped as they came face-to-face with their mirror image.

“…You gotta become your character,” Double Trouble told them, delighting in the look of awe that spread across their face, and the shock that permeated the air around the rest of the group. They lingered in that form for a minute before shifting back.

“That’s not fair,” Finn protested as they continued walking. “Not everyone can do that. You’re cheating.”

“Not cheating, darling—simply utilizing my full potential.” They winked, enjoying the way the kid got increasingly irritated with every word. Meanwhile, the other children chattered on behind them, engaged in their own conversation. Double Trouble made sure to glance back every few seconds, to make sure no other creatures had attempted to sweep them away.

Finn crossed their arms determinedly. “I can’t do that, but I can act!”

“Oh? Prove it then, why don’t you?”

Finn cocked their head, standing up straighter. Their eyes widened just slightly, their tail curling in a motion that was decidedly uncat-like. They put their right hand on their hip, which jutted out slightly, and they used their left hand to examine their nails, an air of aloofness eminenting from the young child. “Hello, little darling,” they hissed at Double Trouble.

Double Trouble gasped. That was an almost perfect imitation of their voice and mannerisms! The kid was a natural. “Well played, little one. I’m sure your mothers will love to see you reenact this dramatic tale—”

The kids all gasped in unison. “Don’t tell our parents!” Archie begged.

Double Trouble raised an eyebrow. “Are we, perhaps, going to be yelled at when we return, children?”

“Not yelled at,” said Finn. “My moms don’t yell! They say we have to use our nice words when we’re upset.”

“But…” Luna trailed off, biting her lip.

“But?” Double Trouble prompted.

“But…our parents don’t know we’re not at Brightmoon,” Oleander confessed, looking down at the ground.

“We snuck out,” Archie chimed in. “It was Finn’s idea!”

“Was not!” Finn snapped, scuffing the dirt with their feet. “You all wanted to go on an adventure! Besides, everyone’s super busy with that whole ann-verse-ree thing tomorrow.”

Ah, the yearly anniversary of the defeat of Horde Prime. It was quite a big celebration that was hosted at Brightmoon, and Double Trouble could easily see how the kids could feel ignored during the hustle and bustle of the preparations. They knew how it felt to not be the center of attention, after all.

“And,” Oleander added, a pout on his face, “my sisters won’t let us play iceball with them.”

“They said we’re too young!” Archie said indignantly. “Melody and Hope are only three years older than us!”

“Please don’t tell our parents!” Finn pleaded, putting on their sweetest face. “My moms will be so worried . They don’t let me do anything fun already. Uncle Sea Hawk was gonna show us how’t ride a flaming boat and my moms said no!”

“Gee, little one, I wonder why.”

Archie stared at them, a surprisingly calculated look on her baby face. “Aren’t you going to get in trouble, too?” she asked.

Double Trouble blinked. “Pardon?”

“No one’s s’posed to go in the castle,” Archie said, slowly. “Adora says it’s dangerous and no one’s allowed in it. Doesn’t that mean you too?”

Finn picked up on where she was going with this. “If you don’t tell on us, we won’t tell on you!” they said. “Then Glimmer won’t be mad at you.”

Double Trouble stared at the two of them incredulously. “Are you… manipulating me into deceiving your parents for your own gain?”

“I don’t know what that means,” said Finn, “but yes!”

They gave a dramatic sigh. “Alright, children, you win.”

——

Glimmer crossed her arms, glaring down at them. “Where in the world have you four been all afternoon?”

Archie blinked up at her innocently. “Playing hide ‘n’ seek right here in the gardens.”

“I won!” chirped Luna.

“I almost won,” added Oleander.

“And why didn’t you come out when we were calling for you?” Bow asked.

“Uh, ‘cause we were hiding?” Finn pointed out, with a lot of cockiness for a five-year-old.

“Riiiiiight,” said Catra, staring down at her child with a hefty amount of skepticism. “And none of Oleander’s sisters saw you guys playing, despite them also being in the gardens? What’s the reason for that, kiddo?”

Finn blanched. Perfuma knelt down in front of the kids. “You can tell us where you’ve really been, sweet ones,” she promised. “We just want your honesty.”

“We were!” insisted Finn. “We have proof! Swift Wind!”

That was their cue. Double Trouble huffed, feeling utterly humiliated at having to play the talking horse. But it wasn’t the worse role they’d had to play—being a Horde clone had been completely abhorrent.

“Did someone say… Swift Wind!” they shouted as they trotted out of the bush. At least the horse shared their passion for theatrics.

Adora perked up. “Hey, Swiftie,” she said. “Have you been playing hide-and-seek with the kids this afternoon?” It was obvious that she was not the disciplinarian.

“Indeed I have,” Double Trouble proclaimed, lifting one hoof for emphasis. “And they’re quite the good hiders, too! Isn’t that right!” They nudged Finn lightly. The kid nudged them back.

“I had the best hiding spot, Mommy!” they told Adora.

Scorpia relaxed. “Alright, we believe you!” If anyone was less thrilled than Adora about having to be the bad guy, it was her. She scooped the children up in her arms, squeezing them tightly as they giggled, squirming around in her hug. “Next time, add a rule that makes it okay to come out of your hiding spots when we call you for ice cream.”

They all perked up. “Is there still ice cream left?” Luna asked.

“You betcha!”

Adora smiled. “Come on, let’s go inside and get some,” she said. The group turned and started heading towards the castle door. The events of the day clearly hadn’t left any lasting trauma on the children—they were as bouncy and bubbly as ever, asking the adults a million questions about the anniversary celebration and the desserts they’d be serving. It was kind of cute, Double Trouble admitted. They watched Catra fondly adjust the red scarf tied around Finn’s neck, as they babbled on without taking a breath.

Adora was the last to leave. She paused, looked over her shoulder. “And for future reference, Double Trouble,” she said, a gleam in her eye, “next time, choose someone to impersonate that I don’t have a sacred magical connection with.” Then she followed after the rest of her family, leaving them gaping.

But Double Trouble wasn’t even miffed at being found out. Because they’d discovered something extraordinary—an actor with talent that could one day rival theirs. They had finally found a protégé!

#she ra #double trouble #finn #catradora #scorfuma #glimbow #spop #she ra fankids #she ra ocs #catra #adora #scorpia #perfuma #glimmer #bow #she ra fanfic #soph.txt

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coneygoil · 5 years

Text

The Home We Built Together, part 16

Two young Vikings. An arranged marriage. Hiccup always wanted to win the girl of his dreams, but not like this. Now he and Astrid must learn to live together and maybe one day, learn to love…

“Hey Gobber,” Hiccup’s voice called from the arena floor, standing by casually as a Deadly Nadder chased the other teens in training. “I noticed the book had nothing on Night Furies. Is there another book? A sequel? Maybe a Night Fury pamphlet?”

A blast suddenly scorched the wall beside him. Astrid resisted the urge to not jump down through the chained roof and shake her husband back to his senses.

“Focus, Hiccup!” Gobber yelled, “you’re not even trying!”

Hiccup seized up as the Deadly Nadder spotted him and made a mad dash his way. He looked almost comical as he sped off this way and that before choosing a path through the maze.

“How’s your hand, lass?” Gobber’s question shook Astrid from her focus on Hiccup and his lack of trying to fight the Deadly Nadder tearing through the maze.

“Better,” she replied, distantly. She flexed her right hand, the sting not as sharp as it had been. “I think I’ll be ready to return tomorrow.”

Gobber’s students raced around the maze like trapped mice with Hiccup trailing behind them. The Nadder cornered the twins, both trying to fit in its blind spot but failing. Hiccup slowed right under where Gobber and Astrid were observing.

“Hey, how would one sneak up on a Night Fury?”

Gobber did not look amused. “One has never seen a Night Fury and lived to tell the tale.” He stabbed a finger through the air. “Now get in there!”

Astrid rolled her eyes. It was strange, she mused. Ever since the whole Night Fury fiasco, Hiccup had become overly interested in the elusive dragon species. It was almost like the incident changed his perspective.

Fishleg ran by screaming as the Nadder threw spikes at him, the deadly objects penetrating his shield.

Gobber sighed in frustration and rubbed his aching head. “I fear for our tribe’s survival with this lot.” His hammer prosthetic gestured toward Astrid. “You’re the only one that has any sense around here.”

“I don’t think Hiccup will ever be ready for battle,” Astrid pointed out. She’d been adamantly against his involvement in dragon training, but the Chief had spoken and there was no going back on his order.

“None of these knuckleheads are,” Gobber flung an appendage out toward the arena floor, “so he fits right in!”

As if on cue, Snotlout threw his hammer at the Nadder missing it by a mile. “The sun was in my eyes!”

The lame excuse made Astrid roll her eyes. Gobber was right. These knuckleheads weren’t fit for battle. She itched to get in there and show them how it was done.

The Nadder hopped onto the top of the maze walls, it’s weight no match for the wooden structure and it began to topple like a domino effect.

Hiccup was back again, standing under them. “Has anyone ever seen one in person?” he asked, paying absolutely no mind to the other teens running in terror right passed him.

“Hiccup!” Gobber pointed to the Nadder practically surfing upon the wooden walls as they collapsed.

“Idiot!” Astrid hissed through gritted teeth. She ducked underneath the rails, unsheathing her axe from her back as she leapt down without a thought for her own safety.

She toppled upon Hiccup and they both hit the dusty floor. She shook the stars from her vision, her face incredibly close to her husband’s. She tried untangling herself from him, but he ramblings and struggling weren’t helping.

“Oooo…love on the battlefield,” neither was Tuffnut’s remark.

The impact of her jump had caused her axe to embed in Hiccup’s shield. She tugged with all her strength to dislodge it, but it wouldn’t budge. She gasps at the Nadder came barreling toward them. It took several yanks, but she finally dislodged the shield from Hiccup’s grip and smashed it on the Nadder’s head just in the nick of time. The dragon retreated, shaking its spiky head.

Adrenaline had taken over in that critical moment. Astrid’s hand throbbed and she curled it into itself, ignoring the sharp sting. So much for returning to training tomorrow. Her breathing began to calm, and she spun around to find her husband curled up on the ground.

“Is this some kind of joke to you?” she spat at him, pointing her axe that still had a chunk of broken shield stuck to it. “At least try to do something, Hiccup! Anything besides paying no attention to the death machine coming at you!”

Astrid pivoted toward the arena entrance and stormed off, her anger lingering in the air. She wanted so badly to keep him safe, but he was making that rather difficult when he freely put himself in the path of danger.

***

It was passed sunset when the front door creaked open. Hiccup had run off – again – and stayed gone practically the entire day. Gobber was fit to be tied that his apprentice was slacking on the job for a second day in the row.

Astrid was waiting for him, arms crossed over her chest and a scowl that could spoil milk. “Where were you this time?”

Hiccup froze still holding the door handle. He looked positively stunned and guilty. He swallowed hard then threw on a quirky attitude that was fooling no one. “I went for another walk in the forest. Had to clear my head after training.”

Astrid narrowed her eyes. “Should I be jealous of the forest? It seems you two have been spending way too much time together.”

Hiccup took her hand and rested it over his heart. “My heart only belongs to you, milady.”

Astrid huffed then gritted her teeth, trying to ignore the little tingle in her chest. She was supposed to be mad at him! For what happened in training and slacking on his duties! He’d fallen back into his irresponsible behavior ever since the dragon raid. His unexpected fascination with Night Furies was becoming a distraction.

But somehow, he’d softened her like butter sitting on a windowsill.

Astrid glared for an extended moment, causing Hiccup’s cheesy smile to droop. His hand was still atop hers over his heart, and she twisted her wrist to grab his.

“Come on.”

“Where’re we going?” nervousness tinged his voice as she dragged him out the door.

“To eat,” she replied, moving to grip his hand instead. “Gobber and the rest of the gang are eating around a fire atop the lookout pillar. We’re joining them.”

It was hard enough being in training with the other teens. “I really don’t—”

Astrid gave his arm a quick tug. “Oh, you are.”

She heard him groan. There was no escaping this time. After the last few days of screw ups, she was through treating him gently (as gentle as she could manage) as she had been the first few weeks of marriage.

They trekked along in silence for a couple minutes, their footfalls the only sound. Darkness had fallen over Berk and most individuals were either at home or in the Great Hall. She felt Hiccup finally relax in her grip. She focused on his hand in hers. They’d never held hands this long, and it was another little intimate gesture that Astrid could learn to enjoy.

“Y’know,” she cut through the quiet of the evening, her recent contemplations manifesting into words, “I bet you and Fishlegs would get along. You’re both huge geeks, and Fishlegs knows a hel of a lot about dragons.”

“I don’t know.” The hefty boy was usually projecting the stink eye at Hiccup. “He seems to look down on me.”

Astrid glanced over her shoulder, flashing a grin that was caught in the passing torch light. “That’s because he’s taller than you.”

Hiccup rolled his eyes. “Har har, Astrid.”

Astrid laugh rang out as she playfully gave his arm another yank. “But really, I think you two would make good friends.”

“Maybe—” Hiccup mumbled, unconvinced.

They arrived at the lookout tower, firelight glowing bright from the top. Astrid inwardly lamented releasing Hiccup’s hand as they began to climb the stairs. The haughty voice of Snotlout then Gobber’s knowledgeable lilt filled the night air. Already a rollicking conversation was in full swing.

“You two made it!” Gobber smiled as they approached the deck. His wrath must have been dissolved – at least, until morning – by a few drinks already in his gullet. “Grab a stick and your choice of meat.” He waved at the two buckets of raw chicken and fish.

Astrid glanced at Hiccup, noticing his posture was less than confident. His head hung and an arm was secured across his torso as if to shield himself. In training, he seemed fine around the other teens. There was (loose) structure in training and he wasn’t put on the spot to socialize with the others. In this situation though, there was more chance of interacting.

She promised him she’d take care of him in situations like this, so Astrid reached for his hand once more. Hiccup snapped up his gaze to meet her encouraging smile that she hoped to show him that they were in this together.

Astrid chose the chicken while Hiccup chose a fish. They skewered their meats on the sticks provided and sat down on the bench near the stairs.

It was a perfect night. A full moon illuminated the sea, the gentle churn of the water rippling its light. The fire’s heat was just right, driving away the night’s chill. The conversation was…lively to say the least. Fishlegs brought up an outrageous thought about if a you could still control your hand after a dragon swallows it. Snotlout, in all his thick-witted glory, proclaimed he’d chop off the legs of any dragon he found…with his face. Yep, he said that.

Astrid shook her head. No wonder why this group was doing so poorly in dragon training. She looked at Hiccup as he listlessly picked at his fish. She softly bumped his shoulder with hers grabbing his attention to exchange small smiles.

“It’s the tails and wings you want,” Gobber corrected, ripping off a wing from the whole chicken carcass he planned to eat. “A downed dragon is a dead dragon.”

A rustle beside her drew Astrid’s attention. Hiccup had gotten to his feet and was setting his half-eaten fish dinner down. “Where’re you going?”

Hiccup gestured for her to join him on the stairs so he wouldn’t have to raise his voice over the boisterous conversation taking place. “I just thought of something I really need to get done at the forge.”

“Do you want some company?”

He shook his head. “Nah, I’ll probably work late. You stay here and enjoy the nice evening and,” he glanced around her, “fascinating conversation.”

“Okay.” Astrid couldn’t help but feel a bit disappointed that she couldn’t join him, “I’ll see at home.”

Hiccup leaned up to press a kiss to her cheek. Astrid fingertips touched where his lips had just been, shook by how much a simple kiss on the cheek could affect her. She watched him disappear down the spiraling stairs then made her way back to the circle.

She felt someone’s gaze on her and looked over to find Ruffnut nodding her head and gawking. The other girl waggled her eyebrows suggestively. All Astrid could do was roll her eyes and go back to roasting her chicken leg, tucking away one more weird behavior from her husband in the past few days.

***

She’d fallen asleep with her arm draped over his pillow waiting for him to come home. Hiccup was burning the midnight oil at the forge. How Hiccup could live off a few hours of sleep was a mystery to her.

After weeks and weeks of awaking to his charcoal pencil scratching over parchment, she was in tune to listening for him. She was roused from slumber at a noise of metal thudding on wood. Astrid opened her eyes, blinking away the blur of sleep.

Hiccup had set his lantern down on his desk, his back to her. He pulled off his tunic, exposing his skinny form. Astrid watched entranced by finally catching a glimpse of the skin underneath his usually fully covered body.

She’d become comfortable removing her clothing in front of him. Though Hiccup had not seen her front half completely nude, he’d seen her bare back multiple times. During those times, she could sense his gaze upon her. It was a bit unsettling at first with a boy catching a glimpse of a state that only her mother had seen in recent years. But now that she was used to it, his gaze sent lovely little shivers along her skin without even a single touch.

She continued to watch, the fur blanket tucked under her chin, as Hiccup covered himself with his white nightshirt and removed his tights. He turned and gave a comical double take at finding her staring at him.

“Were in waiting for me?” he asked in a whisper as if speaking any louder would be wrong.

“I tried, but dozed off.”

A warm ball of contentment rested in her chest as she watched him join her in bed. It was strange how the haze of sleepiness could affect your way of thinking. All Astrid wanted right there was to be close to her husband, and that same sleepy haze gave her fortitude to be forward about it.

She sidled over to Hiccup, lifted his arm, and cuddled up against his side with her head resting on his chest. She barely noticed the hesitancy of his arm wrapping around her as she snuggled her head to find the most comfortable place on his bony chest. She finally settled on his right breast.

A comfortable warmth radiated from him that seeped into Astrid’s skin. His palm idly rubbed across her back. This was what she had been craving.

“I’m happy your home,” she murmured into his nightshirt.

She vaguely registered his cheek pressing gently onto the crown of her head. “Me too.”

Tags: @martabm90 @chiefhiccstrid @lauracalabresi

***

Writer’s note: I'd been wanting to have Hiccup and Astrid cuddle for a while now! I wasn't sure if they were at that point in their relationship, but it felt like this was a good spot to put it. AND Stef (@chiefhiccstrid) convinced me that it was time for them to cuddle :D Thank you Stef for the input!! <3

Hope yall enjoyed this chapter! It's moving along at a nice, steady pace!

#httyd fanfiction #hiccstrid #arranged marriage au #the home we built together

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