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phoenixyfriend · 3 years

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ok. karin vs anakin's genome being 50% the Force. go

Jesus fuck, okay. Uh, fair warning, I know very little about this subject, so it’s 90% bullshit. I am in no way qualified to talk about biology past the high school level.

Anakin's sixteen. He's part of a set of Jedi assigned to a weird mission regarding making contact with an isolated planet of near-humans with superpowers but no space travel. He doesn’t really have a Job here and now, he’s just there as Obi-Wan’s plus-one. There's an underlying plot about Sidious trying to acquire people from Ninja Land, but none of the Jedi are fully aware of it. Mostly they're distracted by all the ninjas and their bitching.

They call it the Shinobi Planet, because nobody can agree on a name for the planet when they ask and the last major international alliance was named after the shinobi profession, right? Good enough, you can change it later when you idiots can agree on literally anything, oh my god. The Samurai are very offended and it's a whole thing.

Anakin wanders a lot. He runs into various strange people and is mostly polite because, listen, half his friends are distinctly not human. When your immediate circle includes nautolans and besalisks and twi’leks and whatever the fuck Yoda is, you’re not gonna blink at a Hoshigaki or... uh... okay that kid just turned into a giant fox, is anybody gonna--no? That’s normal? Just him? Cool, cool, cool.

There’s a kage summit involved in the negotiations going on. IDK what’s being negotiated, probably something to get the ninjas to set up a singular spaceport so there’s somewhere to land WITHOUT ships being regularly shot down by village defense systems powered by that massive flaming purple skeleton warrior or the girl who punched down a mountain or the.. the literal desert? There’s a guy that can control the desert? Is there any way of keeping him away from Anakin?

(Gaara’s tickled pink that the reason someone wants to stay away from him has nothing to do with fear or respect for authority, and everything to do with ‘he is also from the desert and fucking hates it, so he’s staying away from the sand powers,’ because it’s very novel and kind of funny.)

ANYWAY where was I. Uh. Right, kage summit, lots of villages, they invite smaller villages to pitch in, but nobody ever ever ever wants Orochimaru anywhere near this situation, for hopefully obvious reasons, so Otogakure sends Karin.

Really, who else was it gonna be? Suigetsu? You want Suigetsu representing you on an interstellar political field? You want Juugo before he’s stabilized? You want Sasuke, master of ruining kage summits? You want these idiots representing you at the big kids’ table?

They send Karin. She’s a bitch with a temper, but at least she’s not as big of a political risk as... literally anyone else from the snakepit.

Anyway, Anakin wanders around, meeting people, trying foods, showing off when asked for demonstrations. He doesn’t have an Entire Protocol Droid, but he did cobble together a little floating helper that can do translations for him. Assume all translations are accurate and being done by the little helper bot. Bot’s name is G1-0T. Anakin calls it Glot.

He runs into Karin at one point, who’s not super into the whole situation, but at least Anakin’s interesting. She’s not interested in him, because he’s sixteen and she’s like... mid-twenties. And his hair is stupid. But! All these force-sensitive people feel weird to her, because sensor stuff, and it’s not chakra but it’s... something. Anakin is, of course, the weirdest.

(There are non-sensitives in the envoy, so she knows it’s not just a space thing.)

She strikes up a conversation about it, because hey, she hasn’t made it this far to not lean into... you know, being the kind of person who barges ahead with Weird Questions that might lead into fun science stuff.

Anakin is like. Well. This woman’s very strange, but it’s not like there’s anything against talking about midichlorians to random people. It’s easy enough to look up in the core. Not everyone knows about them, but it’s not a secret or anything.

“Wow,” Karin says, though not in so many words, “that sounds incredibly strange, and actually a lot like it functions completely differently from chakra, though maybe it intersects with nature chakra somehow. Can I take a blood sample?”

Anakin doesn’t want to give a blood sample to a stranger. Karin isn’t stupid enough to try to steal one. She’s seen what this Force Stuff can do, and this kid’s got a lot of it. She hasn’t got enough information on hand about it to know if he’d notice.

“How about I let you look at the blood of a guy that can turn into water?” Karin asks, because she’s not going to let him look at her blood. “I’ve got it with me.”

“...why?” Anakin asks, reasonably disturbed.

“He owes me,” she says, and does not elaborate.

“What, there’s nothing weird about your blood to share?” Anakin demands, like the ornery little bastard he is.

“People took my blood against my will for over a decade,” Karin says, with the kind of smile that threatens a stabbing. This is not secret information. Her healing factor is in the bingo book. Plenty of people still want her dead. “Nobody gets my blood except me.”

Anakin has no idea what to do with that answer. Most people wouldn’t know what to do with that answer. It’s not exactly a standard answer.

“So there is something weird about your--e chu ta what the fuck are those scars?”

Karin looks at her arm. She looks back at him. She raises an eyebrow.

“What do you think they are?”

He stares a little longer, and then very carefully does not say anything as she pushes her sleeve back down.

“So can I look at your blood?” she asks again.

“Uh--”

“You can look at mine under a microscope,” she wheedles. “You can’t take any, though.”

Anakin... does eventually agree. Eventually.

-----------

There is a very angry redhead yelling at a machine, and Anakin does not know what to do.

“Is something wr--”

“What the fuck is your blood?” she demands. “It’s glowing in ultraviolet. It burned the dye up. I tried to sequence your genome--”

“Woah, I did not agree to that.”

“--and look at this. Look at this!”

“I don’t know how to read your graphs. None of this is a language I know.”

“It’s garbage,” she hisses at him. Glot takes a few moments to process it. “Look at this. This is supposed to--fuck, where’s the Jiraiya file, he’s standard--this is what it’s supposed to look like for most humans with chakra. And this is a civilian, and a few bloodline users--”

“Do you just carry these around with you?”

“Shut up, you don’t exist. You have--you have more in common with summons than people. I ran a blood test on one of your human diplomats, the ones that aren’t monks--”

“When did they agree to that?”

“They didn’t, I’m just sneaky.”

“I should tell Obi-W--”

“STAY THERE, I’M NOT DONE YELLING YET. Do you see this? Do you see this shit? This is the one and only time I’ve managed to perform any kind of analysis on a bijuu. They don’t usually have blood. Shukaku is sand. Matatabi is literally just fire. This was almost impossible to make happen, but I did it because I’m a dedicated biomedical resea--”

“Because you’re unhinged.”

“--rcher, and you know what? You know what I’ve found?”

“What?”

“Your blood looks like you’re half demon,” she says, grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking, a little wild-eyed and clearly pissed at him. “Half of it’s human! Half of it looks like the non-physical chakra manifestations that were torn-apart remnants of a godlike demon. The fuckers can’t die. They also can’t breed. They don’t have reproductive organs! This isn’t just demon-tainted like a jinchuuriki, I’ve got that analyzed--”

“Why?”

“Because my cousin’s a moron, don’t change the subject. You--you shouldn’t exist. Your blood is stupid. Fuck, is this what I’d find if I analyzed the Sage of the Six Paths?”

“The what?”

She ignores him, frowning at papers. “Is--I need to call Haruno, she might still have some of Kaguya’s blood dried on her old gloves from the war, I know she kept those as a souvenir from the whole ‘punched a god’ thing.”

“I’m sorry, the what?”

“There was a thing a few years back, godlike alien demon princess who got sealed into a moon by her sons a thousand years ago, but her immortal sentient goo child brought her back with a giant tree that consumed all the tailed beasts-the flaming fox you saw earlier is one of them--and then used a giant eyeball to reflect off the moon to put everyone in a hallucination at the same time so she could eat our life-forces,” Karin dismisses. “It’s not important.”

“There is--what?”

Jedi see many things. Many of those things are very strange.

This is a little much even for Anakin.

“It’s over, if you want the actual details, talk to my idiot cousin,” she huffs. “But now I need to run comparisons between the actual nonsense that is your entire existence and the actual nonsense that is my cousin’s existence, and maybe Sasuke’s... fuck this is going to be a mess, I’m going to have to cross-reference all the clans with bloodlines we know are derived from Kaguya, she’s the only angle we have on gods like that, unless... maybe there’s still some black Zetsu goo somewhere... Orochimaru must have kept a sample...”

“Uh, can I--can I go? I’m not comfortable here.”

“I need to find Naruto so he can call the Sage of the Six Paths out of the afterlife so I can see if I can get blood from a ghost to compare to yours.”

#Anakin Skywalker #Uzumaki Karin #Karin #Karin Uzumaki #Naruto #star wars #mini fic #Phoenix Posts #Phoenix Answers Asks #this is so stupid and I have no idea what I'm talking about #bijuu don't even have blood but Anakin's has more in common with THEM than with humans

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lissacmonster · 3 years

Text

Wrong Place, Right Time

TMNT x (Gender Neutral) Reader (Non-romantic) Synopsis: Reader goes into an abandoned building to find their dog, and ends up finding a lot more than their dog. Rating: Teen Genre: Action/Thriller Pairings: None Content Warnings: The dog is in danger for some of it (but isn’t actually hurt) Other Tags: Funny, Combat, Short Story, Fanfiction, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Shredder

When you left your apartment that night, you had no way of knowing how unprepared you were for the events that would unfold. Armed with a flashlight and a roll of doggy bags you and your dog Cody had slipped out into the fresh, cool night air. You also brought a can of bear mace in case you ran into any creeps. Bear mace wouldn't have necessarily been your first choice, but it was leftover from the time you went camping and you wanted to put it to good use.

The dog was just happily sniffing around and relieving himself when he suddenly stiffened up. Following his gaze, your eyes landed on a cat. The cat was happily strutting across the street, unperturbed by the dog even as he began barking hatefully and straining against the leash. You held your grip and started pulling him back the way you had come. But he turned around, dug his heels in and managed to pull out of the collar.

The cat suddenly noticed it was in danger and darted around, looking for a place to hide. Cody followed the cat in circles around a parked car, then he chased it around the corner.

You ran after him, "Cody! Get back here!"

You were half angry, and half worried that he would run out into the street in front of a car. Instead, when you rounded the corner, he was wriggling his way into a boarded up building. His tail disappeared through the space in the boards just as you leapt forward to grab him.

"Cody! NO! Get back here, now!" You said, using your best angry parent voice.

But Cody was on a mission to find that cat. You knew that he would be single-minded until he found what he was looking for. It might have been admirable if you were coon hunting together out in the countryside, or something. Instead, it was annoying because you were on an evening walk in the middle of Manhattan.

You groaned in exasperation and looked up at the building. It was an old apartment building or something, a rough brick structure that was 5 stories high. The windows were mostly boarded up, and the ones that weren't were missing their glass. There were no lights on inside. It didn't look like anyone had been here for a long time. At least, nobody you wanted to run into...

And nobody you wanted your dog to run into either! Your protective instinct kicked in. You called through the hole to him for another 30 seconds. When he didn't reappear, you started looking around for a way in.

In the alley where you were standing, there were lots of bits of metal and you took a second to poke through them and find a good one. First you found a weird, 3-pronged dagger of some kind, which you tucked into your belt. Maybe you could use it for protection in case somebody dangerous was squatting in there. (Although, if you were being honest, you mostly kept it because you thought it looked cool.) Then you found a metal rod that seemed sturdy enough to work as a crowbar. In no time, you were squeezing through a gap you had made in the boards covering the doorway.

After clicking on your flashlight, you noticed that you were standing in an old lobby. There was a torn up spot on the floor where the front desk had obviously once been affixed. The wallpaper was peeling. The hardwood floors, which had probably been gorgeous when they were kept up, were covered in a thick layer of dust. Cobwebs were hanging in the corners and doorways, with their own gathering of dust.

You followed the sounds of Cody's feet skittering against the floors.

"Cody!" You whispered harshly, creeping towards him. If there were any questionable people around, you didn't want them hearing you guys. Luckily Cody wasn't raising hell yet, which told you that he must have lost track of the cat.

You spotted him at the end of a hallway.

"Cody, c'mere," You called, sweetly.

He looked you dead in the face and then turned and walked through a doorway into pitch black nothingness.

What. A. Brat.

Gazing down the stairway, you wanted to cry so bad. That damn dog had just run down into what must be the basement. You stood at the top, feeling sorry for yourself, trying to see down the steps. After a minute you realized that it wasn't actually pitch black. There was some kind of light that was dimly illuminating the bottom of the steps.

Gathering every last ounce of courage, you made your way down the steps. Every step creaked horribly, and with each one, you felt certain that your foot was about to sink through rotten wood. A dank smell invaded your nostrils more as you descended. How long did you have to breath black mold in before it would make you sick, anyway?

Once you reached the bottom of the stairs, you found that you were standing in a hallway. The floor here was even more dirty than the ground floor above. There was garbage piled all over the place. If anyone had ever squatted in this building, you were willing to bet that they'd done it here in this basement level.

A voice sounded from down the hallway. Your head snapped towards it in alarm, but after a few seconds it was clear it wasn't directed at you. It had come from a doorway at the very end of the hall which was slightly ajar, pale blue light spilling from it. You fought the urge to sprint back up the stairs and instead crept down the hall towards the voice. You tucked the metal rod into your belt and pulled out the strange dagger, ready to strike if someone suddenly rushed out at you. The voice was speaking again.

"...think you can defy me, turtles, but once again I've proven you wrong."

"You're not gonna get away with this, Shredder!" A second voice, female this time. She sounded scared. What were you walking into? You felt strangely numb as you continued to move forward, your heart pounding.

"I already have. Look at them! Once I have what I need, I'll dispose of you all," It was a deep, rich voice with a cold fury beneath.

"And then what? You took the mutagen out of our blood when we fought you years ago. So what could you possibly want with our blood this time?" Another male voice countered, sounding calm, but angry.

"Th-that's right! Our blood is free of mutagen, you can't use it to mutate anybody!" Another, nervous-sounding male voice agreed.

You reached the doorway and peered around the doorframe very slowly...

Within the room was some kind of makeshift laboratory. One bulb hung from the ceiling, casting the whole scene in harsh bright light. Several figures were visible in the large room. The first one that caught your attention was the huge figure in the center of the room. It looked like a man wearing a thick, heavy suit of strange armor. The armor had lots of sharp angles and spikes on it. You couldn't see anything else about him because he was silhouetted against the harshly-lit room. He was facing two figures who were lying on the floor.

One of the people on the floor was the woman. She had dark hair and eyes and was wearing a yellow jacket. Her hands were bound and she was glaring hatefully at the armored man. Next to her was another man. He wasn't talking, and he was lying very still... Was he ok? Or was he...?

You didn't finish that thought because you caught sight of four... somethings against the far wall.

They were... turtles, you guessed. But they weren't like any turtles you had ever seen. They were tall and buff with humanoid faces and bodies. Each was wearing a different colored mask, as well as various gear. They were strung up against the wall by lots and lots of chains. There was some kind of machinery connected to them, but it was hard to make out what it all was from this far away.

The spikey man- what had she called him? Shredder? He was speaking again, "I don't need to mutate anybody. All I need is your DNA, and I will have an unstoppable army."

"He's cracked, you guys," A new voice. It was gruff, and it came from the largest turtle, who was wearing a red mask.

"Oh no... I-I think I know what he's talking about!" The nervous voice was coming from the tallest one, in the purple mask, "He wants to clone us!"

"Is that true?!" The orange one finally spoke up, "Man, you can't make another Michelangelo! I'm the one and only!

"Stockman, how much longer before they're drained?" Shredder interrupted.

You nearly jumped out of your skin as an answer sounded out from very close to you.

"Another 2 hours, Mr. Shredder!"

"Why must it take so long?" Shredder asked, threateningly.

"W-well... We only had so much equipment..." Stockman defended, "I mean, there are ways of removing it faster, if you catch my drift. But if you want a clean, untainted sample, this is the best way to go!"

"Hmm... Very well." Shredder agreed after a moment.

You were now pressed against the wall just outside of the door, clutching your chest. That Stockman guy had been no more than 4 feet from you just inside the door! He was against the wall that you couldn't see, though, so you hadn't noticed him.

Stockman was talking again, more to himself, "Aw man... That cat got in again..."

A soft growling sounded from within the room. Oh god. Cody.

"What the..." Stockman started and then yelped, "HEY!"

His chair clattered to the ground as Cody's chorus of barks started up. You rushed back to the door and were frozen to the spot as you watched the scene unfold. It was utter chaos as Cody tore around the room after the cat, which was leaping around on the equipment and furniture. Cody managed to knock over 2 chairs, jump up on a table, and upset several important-looking instruments before he was caught around the neck by the monstrous man's hand. Cody's high-pitched cries snapped you out of it.

"STOP!" You hurled yourself forward. Everything in the room seemed to stop in time. All eyes settled on you and every face held surprise. Shredder's helmeted head turned towards you, observing as you sprinted toward him. You had the dagger drawn back with the intent to jam it into the metal of his stupid, shiney armor.

You didn't even feel it when he swatted you away like a fly. All you noticed was that suddenly you were flying backwards. You quickly sprung back to your feet. Your skin felt electric as adrenaline coursed through your body. There was a throbbing feeling in your face where he had struck you. The strange dagger had skittered out of your hands.

Cody was no longer in his grip, that was the good news. The bad news was that now you were getting an up close and personal look at this Shredder guy. You could see every facet of the armor from here. The most striking part was the helmet, which resembled a leering skull.

You wondered what his face looked like behind the helmet. Did he look as surprised as everyone else? His voice didn't betray any surprise, only amusement.

“Well, well, well, look what we have here... A new hero, come to save the world. Such a pity you’ll have to die."

You tried to keep your voice steady as you explained, “Look man, I don’t know what you’re talking about- I’m just here for my dog!”

"Really, turtles, is this weakling the only ally you have left?"

None of them answered. They were still staring at you and glancing at one another, like they were trying to figure out if they knew you from somewhere. This was getting awkward.

"No, really, I don't know them," You insisted.

"Is that so? Well, then, how do you explain that." He lifted one of his huge metallic arms. It took you a second to realize he was pointing at your shirt. You looked down and gasped.

Save The Turtles was emblazoned across your chest in bright green letters, complete with a cute little cartoon rendering of a turtle.

God damn it. Of course you had chosen to wear the shirt you got from that time you volunteered at the turtle sanctuary.

"Uh- that's-!"

Before you could explain it to him, Shredder cut you off, "ENOUGH! Stockman, restrain this fool."

"ME? I'm not here to be your muscle!" Stockman sounded indignant.

Shredder was just throwing out another line about how weak you looked, and that restraining you would hardly require "muscle," when you darted around him and over to the far corner where Cody was cowering. You had to climb around some equipment that seemed to be collecting blood from the turtles. You were uncomfortable being so close to them, as you had yet to discern whether they were friendly or not.

"Hey, that's my staff!"

You looked up at the turtle with the purple mask. He was peering down at you through glasses that made his eyes look 3 times bigger than they actually were.

You glared at him, "No, that's my dog!"

"No, I mean that thing on your belt!"

Was he talking about the metal rod?

"WHOA, WHOA, WHOA! DUCK, KID!" The one in the red mask was shouting.

You dropped instantly to the ground. A huge BANG! sounded from above and drywall rained down on you. There was a big piece of metal embedded in the wall where your head had just been. Cody scampered away, whimpering in fear.

"He's coming up behind you!"

You whirled around to find Shredder was advancing towards you. You glanced around for an escape, but you were boxed in by equipment.

Suddenly Shredder stopped dead in his tracks and whirled around. Stuck in his back was the dagger you had dropped. The girl in the yellow jacket was standing there, having plunged it into the battery pack on the back of his suit.

You stepped carefully out of the way of the equipment and cast around desperately for a way to help her.

"Quick! Use the staff!" The purple one called.

When you looked clueless, he clarified, "The thing on your belt!"

Oh, the rod! Great idea! You grabbed the rod, jumped on Shredder's back and started pummeling his helmeted head with the thing. This drew a chorus of complaints from the turtles.

"Aw MAN! C'mon, kid!"

"Duuuude, that's not funny! Kick his butt for real!"

Purple was fighting desperately to be heard over all the commotion. He sounded completely exasperated by this point, "No, I meant-! Press the button!"

What button? There were no buttons on the-! Oh, wait. There was a button on the rod. How had you missed that? You pressed your thumb down on small, red button. Instantly, both ends of the rod shot out, extending it by about 5 feet. In the process, it struck Shredder's helmet, launching it violently from the man's head. With a startled cry you toppled off of Shredder's back. The man rounded on you. You looked for the staff, but it had launched itself far out of reach.

"Now, I'm going to put an end to this little game," He said, and you could see the full extent of his fury on his face.

The four turtles were all shouting things and you couldn't make out any of it. All you could see was the hate in the man's eyes as he approached. His long black hair hung in his face untidily. He was panting and his lips were pulled back in an angry grimace. He looked like some kind of beast, like a lion, or like a...

"Bear!" You shouted suddenly. You tugged the bear mace out of the little pouch on your belt.

Shredder was towering over you now. He raised one of his bladed arms, poised to strike. Popping the top off, you raised the bear mace, pointed it at him, and pressed the switch.

Shredder was suddenly engulfed in a cloud of orange smoke. He roared and stumbled backwards. While he was distracted with that you scrambled to your feet. The woman was busy unlocking the chains that were trapping the turtles.

"Thanks, Angelcakes!" The one in orange said gratefully as he shrugged off all of the blood-collecting equipment.

He came over and stood next to you. You eyed him warily, but he was just looking at you with interest, "Hey, that was pretty rad how you stood up to Shredder like that! You pretty much ruled, even though you kinda-sorta... suck at fighting!"

Your pride had never been particularly tied to your fighting skills, so you just said, "Thanks. What's your name?"

"Michelangelo. But the ladies like to call me Mikey."

The two of you kept an eye on Shredder while the woman continued unlocking the turtles chains. You even sprayed a few more times in his direction when he got too close. Eventually he managed to rip the metal armor off of his hands so he could rub his burning eyes. Now he rounded on you again.

He looked truly out of his mind by this point, his blood red eyes were streaming and his face looked pinker than any face you had ever seen.

"Whoa... I think he's gonna-"

Before Mikey could finish, suddenly Shredder was charging at you. Mikey yanked you aside as someone barreled past you. The one with the red mask slammed into Shredder, colliding with him with the force of a refrigerator.

"Oh, shit! Is he ok??"

"You mean, Raphael? He's fine! He gets thrown into cars and stuff all the time," Mikey waved his hand dismissively.

Raphael rolled to his feet, pulling the dagger out of Shredder's back as he did so. He walked back to where you guys were standing, "Thanks for bringing one of my Sais, kid."

Things were kind of a blur from there. The turtles restrained the Shredder. The one with the blue mask was apparently the leader, and his name was Leonardo. He was on the phone with the chief of police. Wow... So your local police department was cool with these turtle ninjas? Who would have thought... Maybe your uncle's conspiracy theory about reptiles controlling the government wasn't totally crazy.

Donatello, the one with the purple mask, was attending to the man who had been lying on the ground when you came in. The man's name was Casey, and he wasn't dead as you had previously thought. He did have a pretty nasty concussion, though, and kept repeating the same phrases over and over (A common symptom with concussions, Donatello told you).

Don also took a look at your own injuries while he was at it. Your face was beginning to swell from where Shredder had struck you, and you would be sporting a nasty-looking bruise for a while. Other than that, you would be just fine.

After everything was said and done, and you had talked to the police, and Shredder had been loaded into an armored vehicle and hauled away, you and Cody were finally leaving to go home. You were back in the cool night air, walking your dog on his leash. You wondered if Cody would think twice about chasing a cat next time, or if the whole event had gone over his head? He definitely didn't look like he cared that he had just been in life-threatening danger.

Before you could ponder it much more, the brothers suddenly appeared around you.

"Heeeyyy, let us walk you home!" Leo offered aggressively.

"No, that's ok! You don't have to!" You really just wanted to be left alone now.

"We insist." The grin on Leo's face looked mostly threatening.

Leo threw his arm around your shoulder, as if to make sure you wouldn't run away, and started practically dragging you along.

They took you on the coolest shortcut you had ever been on. You scaled buildings and leapt across rooftops. It was just like in Assassin's Creed! Of course, they had to carry both you and Cody the whole way like a couple of carry-on bags.

When they set you down finally, you were in the alley next to your apartment building.

"Thanks guys," You said, "But how the hell did you find out where I lived?" You hadn't ever given them any directions.

"I have my ways..." Donatello said. He adjusted his glasses and they glinted dramatically like in an anime.

They were all kind of staring at you in a vaguely menacing way, "Uh... Are ya'll gonna... kill me because I know too much or something?"

"What the-! Of course not!" Donnie yelled.

"Hey, relax, buddy! We're not those kind of ninjas!" Mikey laughed, "That's not how we handle people who know too much!"

"Not any more, at least..." Raph said, narrowing his eyes at you, "The chief said it was too messy to keep covering it up."

You gulped nervously.

"Raph! Don't tell people things like that!" Leo shoved him and turned back to you, "Don't worry, he's joking. YOU'RE JOKING, RIGHT RAPH?"

"I'M JOKING. JESUS CHRIST!" Raph yelled back, "Just, don't go runnin' your mouth about us, aight?"

The leader in blue leaned in uncomfortably close to stare into your eyes, "If you say anything about us, we will come back to see you..."

"Aaaand PUNISH YOU," Mikey added, "In a gentle, non life-threatening way!"

You put up your arms defensively, "Trust me, I am not telling anyone that I fought some kind of terminator samurai to save my dog and some turtles."

You thought you saw a twitch at the corner of his mouth before he straightened up and lead his brothers away. They scaled the walls of the surrounding buildings with ease, and then they had vanished just like that.

============================

Will you ever see them again? Would you LIKE to see them again? I hope so because I have a lot of ideas for this series.

Thanks for reading, ya’ll. It’s the first story I have finished in ages and it feels good to be back.

#tmnt x reader #bayverse tmnt #tmnt donnie #tmnt raphael #tmnt donatello #tmnt mikey #tmnt leonardo #tmnt 2016 #tmnt 2014 #tmnt fanfiction #tmnt fanfic

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escapist-dreams · 3 years

Text

Fix it ~ Invincible Fanfiction

Summary: Rex's hand gets damaged in a fight. No one is willing to help him, so he helps himself.

Warnings: spoilers for both the Invincible animated show(episode 7) and comics(issue #40) concerning Rex-Splode, injuries(nothing nearly as graphic as the source material)

Word Count: 2.3k

This is my first Invincible fanfic, and one of the first fics I've written in awhile! Nonetheless, I hope you enjoy! Feel free to tell me what you think about it! Constructive criticism would be appreciated :D

"We meet yet again, Invincible!" D.A. Sinclair shouted with his usual dramatic flair. He had escaped from the government facility a couple months ago and holed up in a sewer, making more of his fucked up 'reanimen' who the new Guardians of the Globe were now fighting.

His army of cyborgs were unleashed onto the fleeing crowd, more destructive than self destructive this time. Sinclair must've taken notes from his previous failures.

While they targeted the heroes, civilians were caught in the crossfire left and right. Dupli-Kate evacuated the remaining civilians while Shrinking-Rae fought off any cyborgs coming near. The rest of the team tried to disarm the cyborgs without killing them, which Mark made them agree to do before the fight.

Invincible went through one after the other, knocking out the cyborgs, one could tell he was holding back. Monster Girl knocked out a good chunk of them, but accidentally killed one or two with the strength of her monster form. One of them slammed her against a building, sending a big crack up the wall, no doubt affecting civilians in the upper floors. Shrinking-Rae rushed to save those in the building affected by the crack, while Monster Girl slumped against the wall, down for the count.

Rex-Splode made it past the wall of reanimen defending Sinclair and shot a projectile at his torso. He stumbled as the magnet hit his side and exploded, only grazing him but doing damage all the same. He cupped a hand around the wound, and when he regained his composure, looked directly at Rex.

"You'll pay for that!" With a movement of his hand, D. A. Sinclair ordered the cyborg to target Rex-Splode.

"Sure I will, asshole!" Rex smirked and raised his hand again, aiming for Sinclair's head. The cyborg intervened, lunging towards Rex, who dodged and backed away. He couldn't kill the guy, but he really didn't want to get beat to a bloody pulp today. He made a split second decision to shoot him in the legs to slow him down. He did so, but all he received for his efforts was the sound of a small metal impact. He'd missed the human parts, the projectile only slightly slowed the cyborg.

Just as he was about to shoot again, the cyborg grabbed his hand, crushing flesh and metal alike. Rex doubled over as a wave of pain hit him like a brick. He tried to push past it after a few moments, looking up just in time to see Robot come up behind the reaniman, knocking him out with a punch. Invincible grabbed a piece of metal from a street sign that had been crushed in the wreckage of the battle and bent it tightly around Sinclair, effectively trapping him. And since the cyborgs were all either knocked out or no longer under his control, the battle was over.

"You couldnt've done that earlier?" Rex complained as Mark tied up Sinclair, wincing in pain. Several members of the team gave him a familiar look of annoyance.

"Maybe if you weren't too busy cowering we would've finished this sooner." Samson stated.

"I wasn't--!" Rex began, but he doubled over again before he could finish, another wave of pain hitting him.

The rest of the team had sustained some injuries as well, but they were able to shake it off for the most part by the time they arrived back at the guardians' base.

"Hey Robot-" Rex tried to catch him before they fully returned to the group.

"It's Rudy."

"Right. Rudy, can you uh.." he pointed to his busted up hand, the blood dried onto the metal. Rudy made a wincing sound at the sight, then looked to their friends, who were in a group celebrating the won battle.

"Hm.. That's going to take a bit to fix, if you can wait I'll fix it in a couple minutes." he decided. Rex opened his mouth to protest, but closed it and nodded in agreement. The two rejoined the group.

They spent a few minutes having conversations in small groups, some about the fight, and some about completely different things. After about half an hour passed, Mark got up from his seat, explaining that he needed to get back home, as he had some homework to finish up. Slowly the group dissolved, rejoining their everyday lives. Rex ran to catch Rudy before he and Amanda left.

"Hey Rudy, can you fix this thing before you go? If you couldn't tell, it *kinda* hurts." Rex gestured to his hand, pulling the glove up a bit to show the broken metal and bloody skin.

"Can it wait, Rex? Me and Amanda are getting lunch." he paused, conflicted, "you can join if you want." he offered politely, but judging by the looks on his and Amanda's face, it wasn't an invitation.

"I'll pass." Rex sighed, unsure if he was more angry or sad about it at this point. Rudy shrugged as if to say "your loss", and he and Amanda left the base. Rex left as well a few moments later, Kate and Rae's conversation fading behind him as he made his way to his apartment.

Rex tried to ignore it, he really did. But god, it hurt. He must've been in shock before, but now that he had time to really think about and feel the injury, the pain set in. The metal of his hand had torn into his flesh and he was afraid to move it for fear of further lodging it into his arm. After awhile of trying to ignore the injury, Rex decided he couldn't take it anymore. If no one would help him, he would help himself.

Rex knew a thing or two about robotics since he got his powers from the devices in his wrists, and had been taught a bit at the facility for use in battlefield situations. So he got some spare tools he used for small repairs on his arms and got to work fixing his hand. It took just about all night, but by the end he was fairly confident that he'd at least helped the situation.

He must've done something right because next time the guardians fought a villain, he was able to shoot the projectiles from his hand. No need to ask Rudy for help. And the next time it was damaged, and he fixed it himself again. This time his aim was slightly off. He hit several walls, the ground, and nearly a civilian before his desired target, but it was fine, right? He hit the guy eventually, he missed the civilian, and it still worked decently well.

He continued to repair it himself, using the knowledge from his previous mishaps to improve upon it. It continued to have slight malfunctions, but it worked.

Until it didn't.

He aimed, and shot, but the small explosive wouldn't budge. It wouldn't leave his hand, something blocked it. The BB lit up as he tried to shoot, but it exploded in his hand.

"Fuck!" Rex yelled, throwing a magnet from his belt with his offhand and dodging out of the way of an oncoming attack.

The team made quick work of the enemy, but not before they got a few good hits in on Dupli-Kate and Monster Girl as well. Amanda was slumped against a wall while Kate Prime nursed an injury on her side.

Back at the base, Rudy was busy being at Amanda's side. She had a minor concussion, but overall she was alright. The excessive blood from a cut on her head made the injury look more serious than it was. They were thankful that she was alright, minus a bit of blood loss and a head injury.

Rex wanted to celebrate her quick recovery longer than he did, but hesitantly left after drinks were had and the party died down a bit. He knew he would have to work on his hand for awhile to get it in working order and get any sleep that night.

It was already much later in the day by the time he arrived at his apartment. Repairs went well for the most part. He had passed out before realigning the metal, but quickly aligned it before heading to the base that morning, presumably deeming it functional, which was an achievement in Rex's opinion considering how badly it was broken and lack of materials. He got hardly any sleep, but he wasn't exactly the type to usually get a full eight hours every night anyways.

The next day after training, Rudy approached Rex unexpectedly.

"Hey Rex, I noticed your hand got busted up pretty badly yesterday. Need me to fix it?" Rudy offered, glancing at Rex's barely-together hand with a hint of what might be worry. Rex scoffed.

"Oh no it's fine," he said, half proud of his work and half bitter at Rudy. "I figured it out."

Rudy gave him a curious look, pausing for a moment before repeating, "You 'figured it out'?"

Rex nodded, taking off his glove and showing off his hand, which he'd barely been able to peice back together the night before. "I figured it out."

He'd had to patch up the hand with spare metal parts and slightly off-size bolts, but it wasn't too bad of a job. From a certain angle, it'd look fine even. A bit busted up, used for sure, but functional. Now, from the angle of someone with as much knowledge in robotics as Rudy had, the sight was returned after a long pause with a vaguely annoyed, "this is going to take awhile."

"What're you two doing?" Amanda asked, walking into the workroom with a half empty carton of disguised booze.

"Rex tried to fix his hand. By himself." Rudy explained condescendingly after a pause that made it obvious he was focused on his work. Rex scoffed at the answer.

"I think I did a great job, thank you very much." And besides being proud of his attempt at fixing it, the way he phrased it made Rex sound like an idiot, as if he hadn't asked for help several times before deciding to fix the problem himself.

"You put the metal covering back in place just off enough to block the projectile, the bolts are all the wrong size, and part of it is still jabbing into your arm. This isn't even the right kind of.." he trailed off, clicking a new bolt in place before mumbling, "how did you even fight like this-?!"

"Well it's not like you bothered to help me when I asked.." Rex answered with the tone of an upset child.

"You didn't say how bad it was."

"I showed you! You saw it!" Rex nearly shouted, frustration and anger bubbling up in his chest and out his mouth.

"I would have fixed this easily if you'd asked sooner."

"I did ask sooner!"

"You could've asked when I wasn't busy." Rudy spoke nearly absent-mindedly, focusing intently on prying part of the metal out of damaged tissue that tried to heal around it.

Rex hissed in pain before responding, "When were you not busy? I asked you like three times, you told me to wait!"

"I just told you, I was busy. Why didn't you go to Cecil for this?"

"Oh yeah, like I'm asking some creepy ass guy from the government to fix my hand- No fucking way!" Rex tried to ignore the hint of fear in his chest at the idea of some shady government operative poking and prodding at him in a blindingly white room.

"You'd rather bother me than ask someone whose job it is to fix things for help?"

"I'd rather ask my friend for help!"

"You could have asked when I wasn't busy." Rudy repeated, obviously struggling to keep his cool. "I'm not going to drop everything for you, Rex!"

"Yeah? Of course not, but I bet you'd drop everything for her." Rex pointed at Amanda, who had a front row seat to the argument standing in the doorway. The two locked eyes for a moment, then Rudy looked away to glare at Rex.

"At least she offers something to the team. She's an invaluable asset and I need to keep her safe." He didn't need to shout, his tone and words cut deeper than raw anger could.

"Well pardon me for wanting to be able to use my fucking hand--"

"Excuse me?" Amanda snapped, glaring at Rudy. "Rex is my friend, and I won't reciprocate your crush on me just because you look like him and aged down for me. I don't owe you shit. And being a dick to the guy whose face you stole doesn't make you more appealing."

"But I--" Rudy was at a loss for words; a rare occurrence. Scrambling to regain his composure, he blurted out, "But I did this for you!"

"I don't owe you shit for that." she repeated firmly. "And if how you treat Rex is any indication, I wouldn't want to be with you, if this is how you treat a long time friend who needs help."

"Exactly!" Rex agreed, relieved that Amanda stepped in. Rudy glared at him before catching himself and looking back towards Amanda, who sighed angrily.

"He couldn't have asked Cecil!?" Rudy reiterated, grasping at straws trying to 'win' the argument he'd already lost.

"He's obviously uncomfortable with that, or he would've done it already. Something you would notice if you bothered to give him a second glance." Amanda snapped back. "He came to you for help, and you lectured him for it."

"I.."

"Let's go, Rex. This asshole isn't worth our time." she decided. Rex followed her out the door to rejoin the rest of the group with a satisfied sort of pride in his chest. It felt nice to be defended by someone other than himself.

The door slammed shut.

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teentitanimals · 4 years

Text

Helena Kyle-Wayne History

The history of Helena Kyle-Wayne based on how I see her! Ties into this Events Timeline :) I might call this Batfam au Earth Never? Maybe? I’m kinda already attached to the name lol

Helena Martha Maria Wayne was born to Bruce Wayne, age 42, and Selina Kyle, age 45, on Earth Never-Two. Her grandfather Alfred Pennyworth was 67, her half-brother Damian Wayne was 13, her adopted brother Tim Drake was 21, her adopted brother and sister Jason Todd and Cassandra Cain were 24, and her adopted brother Dick Grayson was 29. Growing up she learned acrobatics from her eldest brother, how to hold a gun from Jason, how to be silent by her sister, hacking from Tim, animal taming and katana wielding from her favorite brother Damian, how to defend herself from her father, and how to be sneaky from her mother. Needless to say, from a young age, she was pretty skilled, and being raised in a house of detectives, them attempting to keep their secret lives as vigilantes from her didn’t work, as she knew about it from the age of 6 and onwards. By age 14, she became the new Robin under her father.

She was best friends with Kara Kent, aka Supergirl, who was a few years older than her, and Charles Bullock, aka Blackwing, who was also a few years older than her, and was an intern at the law firm created by her father, her eldest brother and a man named Arthur Cranston, aptly named the Cranston, Grayson and Wayne consumer research firm. The three made an excellent team, and were practically inseparable.

Aside from Kara and Charles, though, Helena greatly looked up to the woman who shared her name, Helena Bertinelli, aka the Huntress. This earned Helena the affectionate name of Little H, or Little Huntress, from Bertinelli and others. Helena as Robin often ended up shadowing Huntress more than Batman. She also got along really well with Charlotte “Charlie” Gage-Radcliffe, a young adult who was like a daughter to Bertinelli. It should be noted that the Birds of Prey never existed in this universe, and Barbara Gordon never became a superhero. In this universe, Charlie mimicked the identity of Huntress rather than Batgirl, before creating her own as Misfit. No Batgirls exist in this universe, but Stephanie Brown still became Spoiler- never Robin, Cassandra Cain simply became Black Bat and then Orphan, and Bette Kane never became a superhero, nor did Carrie Kelley, Tiffany Fox or Nell Little.

At one point, a man named Silky Cernak tried to blackmail and frame her mother for killing a cop as Catwoman, but with her and her family’s help, they cleared her name and revealed the truth, arresting Silky.

Eventually, when Helena was 16, a war against Apokoliptians, lead by Darkseid, started, which resulted in a war torn world. Batman, Wonder Woman, and Superman were all killed during the war, as well as Tim Drake and Helena Bertinelli. Her family grieves them, and Dick takes up the mantle of Batman, and Damian makes his new superhero alias Redwing, a combination of Red Robin and Nightwing in honor of his brothers. Charlie became the new Huntress. By age 18, everything had way gotten worse, and Charlie was killed, and Selina soon followed. Helena then became Huntress, while Kara became Power Girl.

At age 20, she, Kara and Charles chased after someone who they assumed was Darkseid, but they would later find out was DeSaad. The trio attacked DeSaad, but in the process Helena entered a Boom Tube while Power Girl and Blackwing fought DeSaad. Helena would never know how the battle ended, though, as the Boom Tube sent her to Earth Never-Prime. She was stranded, and alone, in a world so similar to her own, but not war torn, and just slightly off. She was a Bat though, and she was well-trained. She laid low and studied the world, learning that Batman was still Bruce Wayne here- and that Bruce Wayne was still 42. And that she had never been (or simply yet to be) born, as Bruce and Selina were not even married like they were in her world, with Selina still acting as the criminal Catwoman. In this world, Darkseid had been defeated already.

She stole money from Wayne Enterprises to get by, just for meals, hotels, clean clothes, etc. Scrounging through Wikipedias can only get you so far, so she took to spying on her family and friends and other superheroes and... finds that she can’t handle it. For the most part, they look so happy. Yeah, Jason’s an asshole, and Damian’s so young and angst-y, but... They’re a family, not split by death and war. Every night, she seems to end up in tears, jealous of this world and wanting her world back- no, her family.

Her secrecy does not last long, as she can’t stop herself from jumping in to help her family (Batman, Robin, Nightwing) when they are attacked by the Joker. She attempts to run away after the battle, but her moves and tricks are the exact same as the Batfamily’s, so it ends up impossible for her to lose them. They interrogate her, and she ends up confessing she’s not from this universe. She tells them she’s a Huntress of another world, but not much else. They’re skeptical of her, seeing as the moves she used would indicate she was close enough to train under and with the Batfamily, so why would she be ‘a’ Huntress (of which they’ve only ever had one)? She asks if they could go to the Batcave or somewhere to talk, instead of staying out in the city. They agree, and ask her to lead them to the Batcave, which she does with ease.

There, she confesses more of her story, revealing she was the daughter of Selina and Bruce, and that Darkseid was currently waging war on her world- and winning. She allows them to run a DNA test on her, and the results match up. They believe her story. They offer to help her get back to her own world and also to house her while she’s here. She thanks them, and offers to help them patrol and protect Gotham in return.

Living in Wayne Manor was... weird, and more often than not she’d end up crashing at a hotel or something instead. Damian was 13, younger than her, and still very... well, Damian. And there was a kid that had never been apart of her family too, Duke Thomas, and also allies like Harper Row, Julia Pennyworth, Barbara Gordon, etc... And it was weird living among, to her, ghosts. Zombies. Dead people. She was afraid to get attached to any of them, because they weren’t hers, and she’d go back home, where some were dead or dying, and she’d mourn them all over again. Not to mention, Tim was now only 1 year older than her, Jason and Cass 4, and Dick just 9 instead of 29.... And Dick was even married to an alien princess named Koriand’r aka Starfire- where he was Barbara’s boyfriend in Helena’s world- and they had a daughter named Mar’i. And Jason had adopted a girl named Sasha, aka Scarlet. And, also, perhaps this stung most, that her best friend was no longer the same age as Helena. Which meant that even if Helena had been born in this world, she wouldn’t have been Kara’s friend. And similar with Charles, who was a simple citizen in this world.

While talking to this world’s version of her mother, Selina reveals to her that a Helena had been born in this world, but her father was Sam Bradley Jr. (deceased), and she was born nine-ten years ago. Her name was Helena Kyle, but since Selina was under the alias Irena Dubrovna at the time, her legal name was Helena Dubrovna. She had brown hair and green eyes rather than the black hair and blue eyes Helena Wayne had. Helena is surprised to know of this universe ‘her’, although really it’s her other universe half-sister. She wants to meet her, but Selina explains to her that after the villains Film Freak and Angle Man kidnapped and harmed Helena Kyle, she, Zatanna, and Bruce faked Helena’s death (and Irena Dubrovna’s) and put her up for adoption. To make sure no one could ever find Helena via Selina, Selina choose not to know who adopted her (if she officially got adopted at all and was not still in an orphanage). Helena Wayne accepts this and understands her reasoning. Even she had been kidnapped plenty of times back in her home world, Earth Never-Two.

It’s a year of living like this. She talks with the Selina Kyle of this world, with Helena Bertinelli, with Zatanna Zatara, with everybody. She still closes herself off though, calling Bruce “Uncle Bruce” to distance him and her father in her mind. By the end of the year, a part of her realizes she’s never going back... and another part wonders why she would even want to. She could have happiness here. But, at the same time, to give up her friendships with Power Girl and Blackwing? (And what if they were dead by now?) It’s difficult, but finally, with the advice from her other universe family, she decides she wants to try making a life here, just in case she really never can go back. Of course, Bruce offers to adopt her, but Helena can’t bring herself to fully accept this world’s Bruce as her dad yet, nor could she handle being official, legal siblings with her brothers and sister. She still hasn’t adjusted to them, how they are now, how young they all are, how younger Damian is. If anything, she’s most okay with Duke Thomas, someone she had never met in her universe.

To her surprise, as they contemplate making her a fake civilian identity, Selina offers to adopt Helena. Helena, after thinking it over, accepts. She would not have as much hounding from the press, from the media, from the public, as she would if she was adopted into the Waynes. She would not have to deal with the weirdness that was her alternate universe siblings as much, living with Selina. (Not that she needed to live with Selina, she was 21, after all, but Selina had told her that she was welcome to crash in her house anytime- an offer she often took up on when the Manor was stressing her out.) Selina was still a criminal in this universe, but she only robbed banks from time to time, really, nothing major, and she was slowly becoming more hero and ally than superthief by the time Helena had come to this world. Selina had been dead for only 2 years to Helena, while Bruce had been for 4 years, and had died when Helena was young and not used to death. Bruce’s death had a bigger impact on her (alongside Tim and Bertinelli’s), but with Selina, it was easy to imagine she had simply been gone for two years.

So, Helena became Helena Martha Maria Kyle, adopted daughter of Selina Kyle. She slowly built herself a civilian life, working for a law firm under Wayne Enterprises in honor of her friend Charles and his job. And a superhero life, too, as the Huntress. Of course, since Bertilleni was also known as the Huntress, Helena often went by Little Hunt. They called her Little H and Little Huntress at first, but it reminded her too much of her old world, that she requested they use Little Hunt instead. It was similar, of course, but just different enough. Just like this world was compared to hers.

She worked solo, with Catwoman, with the Batfamily, and with the Birds of Prey mostly. It was a challenge, she would say, to adapt back into the old rules of “No Killing”... It’s a dark secret of hers that she became more ruthless ever since the death of her father, blood soaking her hands. But she was almost relieved to be back to No Killing- as, to her, it meant no war. No death. No pain.

Catwoman seemed to reform completely right alongside her, and the day Bruce proposed to Selina, Helena couldn’t be more happier. She was finally ready to be officially apart of the Waynes again. Selina married Bruce, and Helena took on the Wayne name, becoming Helena Martha Maria Kyle-Wayne, loud and proud. It was weird, but somehow she got used to Damian being younger- and boy did she discover how fun it was to tease him. And alongside that, she got two new younger sisters too, in the form of Carrie Kelley and Alina Shelley-Wayne. Her family, she will say, was much, much more bigger than it had ever been in her own world.

Eventually, as years passed, she found herself more attached to this world than her war torn world. She often wonders, if given the chance, would she still choose to go back to her old world, her old family? It’s a question she can never answer. And one she might not have too, as the Kara of Earth Never-Two would eventually find a way onto Earth Never-One.

Name: Helena Martha Marie Kyle-Wayne

Gender: Female (She/her)

Parents: Bruce Wayne (Biological father; legal step-father), Selina Kyle (Biological mother; legal adopted mother)

Adoptive Step-Siblings: Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Cassandra Cain, Tim Drake, Alina Wayne

Half-Siblings: Helena Kyle (Current name unknown), Damian Wayne

Adoptive Step-Nieces and Nephews: Sasha Todd, Mar’i Grayson, Jake Grayson, John Grayson II (on Earth Never-Two only)

Hair Color: Black

Hair Length: Long

Eye Color: Blue

Aliases: Robin, the Huntress

Nicknames: Helly, Hel, 'Lena, Hello Kitty, Little H, Little Huntress, Little Hunt

Robin Run: 4 years

Huntress Run: 4 years and ongoing

Reblogs appreciated <3

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blackevermore · 3 years

Text

x Secrets of The Lake: The Company of Misery and Pain

{ Chapter 4: Slight Nsfw }

Summary: Vladimir Masters’ family tree has always been tainted by secrets swept under the rug. From generation to generation there have been countless reasons the Masters’ family had seemed to keep private from the public. Even to this day, Vladimir was no exception. But what was one to do when a restless spirit from the settlement years finally breaks free from restraints and demands you answer for your ancestor’s crimes? Vladimir doesn’t know. However, Clockworks does.

Notes: We just having fun, rewriting some of the canon, new adventure new characters. I will apologize now for any grammar, spelling, weird sentence structuring in advance. My brain writes faster than my fingers and even when I go back through to reread it I still miss things. Sorry about that!

Word Count: 3730

P.s: the nsfw is only in the beginning but it ends in stabbing like nothing graphic. Also would anyone like to be tagged when i update?

He doesn’t remember how he got here, or even where here was but it was familiar and felt like home. It was warm by the fire that lit up the room in feverish reds and oranges. He could feel his body gaining back its energy and his core being restored the longer the warmth surrounded him. In the comfortable bliss, he didn’t notice the pair of arms snaking across his torso until they were wrapped around his neck. His eyes shot open but he was quickly buried in the shallow of someone’s neck in a strong embrace. That’s when he felt the pressure of a body on top of his pushing down. He hadn’t registered the rocking motion against his hips until he heard the broken moan in his ear. Who? It was like a siren's call that made him clasp his hands on the body atop of him. He doesn’t remember how any of this started nor did he care to stop it. The pleasure he felt was intoxicating and drowned out all of his logical senses telling him to stop. He clung to her breathlessly as he felt his chest start to burn, he was now chasing this ghostly high throughout his entire body.

“Vlad…” The voice called his name in desperation, begging him to continue and singing for all those to hear. Her voice was all he ever wanted to hear, yet he had never heard her like this at all. What? Nails dug into his shoulders and down his back leaving trails of red tracks and intricate designs. It stung like lashes but it fueled him even more as he shifted to bite her neck. Her cry sounded more surprised than pleasurable which worried him for some reason. Before he could pull away to ask if she was alright she pulled him in again and slammed down at just the right angle to distract him once more.

“Fu-fiddlesticks,” He caught himself saying and pulled her down against him as close as possible. He hadn’t felt this in god knows how long and he refused to allow it to fade away. Once again her nails found his back and circled around his left shoulder blade. It tickled a bit and he chuckled into her, daring to take another bite of her lovely dark skin.

Vlad had very much given in to this fantasy of whoever he had with him. Surely, there was no harm in enjoying a fit of passion in comfortable privacy. The hands around his neck now played in his hair combing out soft tangles. But when their hand pulled back with a few loose strands he peeked and saw how dark they were. ‘My hair hasn't been that way since-’ his thoughts were cut short as he felt the jerking motion of his body as the hilt of a blade buried itself inside him. Then followed a burning, searing heat pooling and dripping down before pain came from just under his left shoulder.

Vlad shot up from the bed choking back a scream of utter pain as his back still felt attacked. He was sweating and panting as he stumbled to get out of the bed and head towards the adjacent bathroom. He made it to the mirror and looked himself over. He looked exhausted, his long silver hair was a mess as it hung into what was left of his ponytail and his eyes were lifeless. What left him speechless was a small patch of hair towards the right that had now turned jet black. He fumbled with the strands mesmerized and very confused. He hadn’t seen the darkness of his hair in almost 24 years, yet here it was. Vlad’s head began to hurt as everything that had happened flashed across his mind. He was nearly torn apart and crumbled down to nothing, Vlad knew what it was like to be badly beaten but never to the brink of existence. He gripped onto the sink to steady himself when he felt the sudden weakness in his legs.

He knew he passed out which meant Danny was the one to drag him all the way back home. Vlad felt embarrassed having to think about the young hero having to do so. After a moment of finding the strength to stand on his own again, Vlad pushed off the sink and headed towards the door of the room. He much preferred to be in the comforts of his own bedroom than the guest room. At this moment, Vlad cursed himself for being a rich bastard, the halls seemed to almost go on for miles. He had thought about trying to turn into Plasmius to hurry the journey along but he knew his powers were still in recovery. He was stuck in his normal human form until otherwise. When he finally made it to his room he heard talking coming a few doors down where Danielle’s room was. Who in the world was in his house? That’s when it hit him he was supposed to pick up Dani from Danny’s. Had Danny brought her home? Vlad slowly made his way towards the door and slowly pushed it open. Expecting Dani to be on her bed doing whatever she liked doing. Vlad found Danny instead looking out her window on the phone.

“Yeah no, Dani has to stay with me until all this is dealt with, not that she minds it. But Vlad still hasn’t woken up and it’s been three days and when he does I don’t think he’s going to be in the best of moods.” Three days? He had been unconscious for three days? Vlad swore it felt like a couple of hours from the time he fainted to now. He gripped his head when it started to pound again. Danny's ghost sense flew from his mouth and he turned around. “Hey, I gotta go, yeah he just woke up and the last thing I need is him dying on the floor. Talk to you later guys.” Danny hung up the phone and crossed his arms.

He gave Vlad a weak smile, “Welcome back to the land of the living, feel like shit?”

“Language,” was all Vlad could retort with before he pulled back out of the room and headed towards his. Danny followed but had never actually been in Vlad’s bedroom before. He felt like he was invading privacy but if this was where they were going to talk, fine by him. Danny should have known it would be a mini apartment but he wasn’t expecting the gothic-like interior. Sam would feel like the dark goddess she was in this room and it made him snicker. Vlad sat in an armchair in front of an unlit fireplace and slumped down to get more comfortable. Danny frowned, sympathetic to the situation, he had been there before, he took the chair next to Vlad and waited for the other to speak first.

“Where do we even begin?” Vlad grumbled before dragging a hand down his face.

“Maybe with what Clockwork told you,” Danny answered. Vlad only nodded and forced himself to sit up straight and take a more proper position before he told Danny everything. Danny really wanted to crack a joke, tell Vlad that’s what he gets for all the years going after his mom, mock him for breaking a heart he knew nothing about, however, Danny kept silent and only nodded along. Vlad took long pauses between his explanations and side rambles when he felt himself getting worked up. It was just a lot to take in.

“So… do’ya know which ancestor she might be linked to?” Danny could see it on Vlad’s face the man was just as clueless as he was back at the lake.

“No idea, like I told you my family stayed in Europe the whole time then settled in Russia. I'm a second generation American, there would be no point in my family owning a servant of African descent in the German empire then losing everything and going to Russia. None of this makes sense.” Vlad’s brows knitted together and he mumbled a few curses under his breath.

“Maybe there was an ancestor that came overseas during the Mayflower or whatever and they never went back. So like now you have this distant relative that your family never kept up with and they did something bad and BAM angry ghost.” Danny could admit he was a bit dramatic with his explanation, the hands in the air waving back and forth near the end was a bit much. But he had a point, a strong point, those that went overseas tended to be forgotten by the main family if the root of the tree stayed put. Vlad had many cousins he knew nothing about simply because they lived in other European countries. This didn’t feel like a distant cousin ancestor problem though, Vlad could feel that it was heavily tied to his main bloodline.

“I would agree with you, Daniel, but something tells me this is more within my family than some twice removed cousin.” Vlad looked up at the boy weakly. Danny huffed and nodded before propping his chin upon his hand. “I have access to my complete family records,” Vlad began again which made Danny perk up a bit. “I could try to trace back and see if anyone had travelled over during that time and had maybe gone back. I heavily doubt it but right now that’s all we have.”

“Better than nothing.” Danny tried to sound optimistic but he knew it failed. Vlad only nodded in agreement before staring off into the distance once again thinking. His thoughts were clouded between checking his family records but also the dream he had earlier. Danny felt the room become uncomfortably silent and knew it was time to leave Vlad alone.

As Danny got to his feet he scratched the back of his head and asked, “So do you need anything? I’ve kinda been babysitting you while you've been out, but don’t expect me to wear some butler outfit.” Vlad lightly chuckled and it made Danny feel a bit better.

“You can’t even tie a tie without throwing a fit, but anyways no I’m fine, you may go, Daniel.”

“M’kay. Let me know what you find.” Danny turned ghost and shot through the floor to get to Vlad’s portal so he could get back home. Vlad watched him leave then sighed before snapping his fingers for a ghost maid to appear.

“Yes, Master?”

“Something heavy, no ice.” Vlad gave his order and the maid was fading away to retrieve it. A drink, a drink was what he needed even if his body was still in recovery.

#📖Ghost Stories👻#vlad masters #danny phantom #my writing #self ship community #Secrets of The Lake #dp fanfic

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todisturbtheuniverse · 3 years

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FIC: Set All Trappings Aside [8/9]

Rating: T Fandom: Dragon Age: Inquisition Pairing: f!Adaar/Josephine Montilyet Tags: Friends to Lovers, Mutual Pining, Class Differences Word Count: 5000 (this chapter) Summary: After months of flirtation, a contract on Josephine’s life brings Adaar’s feelings for her closer to the surface than ever. It highlights, too, all of their differences, all of the reasons a relationship between them would not last. But Adaar is a hopeful woman at heart; if Josephine can set all trappings aside, then so can she. Also on AO3. Notes: While the context for this story is the Of Somewhat Fallen Fortune questline, some of the conversations within it didn’t quite fit for this Inquisitor. The resulting fic is a twist on the canon romance. This Adaar and Josephine have featured in other fics, so you may miss a little context if you haven’t read Promising or Truth-Telling, which both come before this one. Chapter-specific note: All of the remaining chapters are up on AO3; they’ll be posted more slowly here on tumblr so as not to clog your dashboards.

Chapter 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

"She's late," Bull said.

Dorian rolled his eyes. "You don't say."

Cassandra, ignoring them both, continued to look toward the village through her spyglass. Josephine watched her, hands clammy. They were all awfully comfortable with the idea that something had already gone wrong. Perhaps from long practice.

Josephine, unfortunately, wasn't practiced at all.

Cassandra lowered the spyglass. "That's the last of them."

"Really," Bull said, doubtfully. "All of 'em in the tavern?"

"Or standing around outside it." She tucked the spyglass into her belt. "Ten, all told. A few in older gear, but otherwise well-equipped."

"I'd've left some men out in the field. They have enough to spare for that. Catch us off-guard when we're in the middle of cracking heads."

"I believe they hope that if they are all in one place, you can be prevented from doing that," Dorian said dryly.

"We'll see how that works out for them."

"No change to the plan, then," Josephine broke in.

They all looked to her, as if they'd forgotten she was there. Fair enough. She wasn't usually here when they did this kind of thing. And after this experience, she hoped she never would be again.

"If she wasn't fast enough to observe without being made, none of us are," Bull said. "So either she's injured or worse, and we need to ride to the rescue sooner rather than later—"

"Bull," Dorian said, not exasperated now, but sharp. Maybe Josephine's face had given away something of how she felt about this hypothetical scenario.

"—or she's just tied up, and we might as well get on with it," Bull went on, perfectly even. "We're not going to figure out more about these people by standing out here with our thumbs up our asses."

Dorian glared at Bull. "If they've gone to the trouble of luring her here, she's probably the picture of—"

"She'd rather know the score than listen to me lie," Bull interrupted.

"We don't gain anything by waiting," Cassandra said, taking over. "She is very good with those daggers, but not good enough to handle a dozen opponents at once."

"She lacks the reach," Bull agreed.

Josephine looked to Cassandra again, who looked back at her, frowning. "They're not Red Templars," she said, not reassuring—that was not Cassandra's forte—but simply conveying facts. "I'm certain of that much. Well-outfitted, but no identifying regalia."

"Professionals, then," Bull said. "Not hungry folk."

"I just imagined I would know more about them than that when I walked into this negotiation," Josephine said.

"We always knew that we would have limited information," Cassandra pointed out. "Besides, you have worked miracles before. I have watched you change the mood at many a meeting in a single blink."

"To you, it may certainly seem that way. There is a lot of groundwork before we reach that point." Josephine took a deep breath. "And the stakes here are higher."

"Nah," Bull said. "Just think—usually we have to do this part without you."

Dorian looked torn between outrage and amusement. "You are creating more and more problems for future Adaar, you know."

"She can handle it," Bull said easily, and winked at Josephine. Well, maybe he just blinked. It was hard to tell.

"Very well," Josephine said, ignoring all of this regardless. "Let's waste no more time."

They took the wagon-rutted road on foot, leaving the horses tied at the turnstile that marked the highway. Josephine took the opportunity, as they walked, to unwind the chain of office that had been packed carefully away in her saddlebags and don it again.

"If they are as well-researched as they seem," she said, to Cassandra's questioning look, "then best they know who they're dealing with from the outset."

Cassandra's mouth twitched toward a smile. "They may be so distracted by the idea of all the money they don't know that we don't have that it will all be over before opening remarks."

"You would like that," Josephine said mildly. "Given your distaste for wasting time."

"Mmm," Cassandra said, noncommittal, but still she smiled. She hadn't drawn her sword, but her hand rested on the pommel; she watched the fields, eyes seeking any sign of movement.

Josephine spoke more quietly this time. "Do you think she really could be injured?"

Cassandra's gaze flicked to her, just for a moment. She hesitated before answering. "Yes. Anything is possible. If this is a hopeful grab for money, though, they would be stupid to seriously wound her." She let out a barely-audible sigh. "As long as she keeps her mouth shut. But if these people know her...if they wish to harm her because of some personal vendetta...well, she is resilient. She will recover."

Adaar had once told Josephine a story too terrible to be false. Now she had a hard time forgetting it, the images it had evoked: the close cellar, the tortured sawing of blade against horn, the just-in-time arrival of the Valo-kas.

She'd promised Adaar that no one would do that to her, ever again. She hoped that she was not too late.

"And if it's worse?" Josephine asked, swallowing the lump in her throat.

"She would fight," Cassandra said easily. "To her dying breath. We would already have heard the ruckus." She paused, considering. "And if she got the opportunity, she would run."

Josephine held onto that through the long walk down into the valley, where the light from the Dancing Star still gleamed, brighter and brighter, resolving clearly now into firelight, not a star at all. The others didn't talk much, either, all preparing in their own way: Cassandra, steadily alert; Bull, whistling a low tune; Dorian, fingers tapping out a rhythm on his staff; and Josephine, combing over the possibilities, trying to think of what she'd missed, trying to guess at every angle this adversary might arrive from.

Five mercenaries stood just outside the tavern building, bright with nervous energy. They perked up when they saw the group. "Nice of you to finally join us," one of them—a lean woman with her hair braided tightly out of the way—called out. "No funny business means no mages." She pointed at Dorian. "Give up your staff."

"Of course, good woman." Without any apparent hesitation, Dorian threw the stick at her, maybe a touch harder than necessary. She fumbled the catch a little.

"Boss wants to talk to someone agreeable," she said. She leaned the staff against the wall behind her. "Amenable, like. Just one."

Some might call the diplomats, merchants, and nobles Josephine dealt with mercenary, but she had rarely dealt with actual mercenaries. Still, they were just people, in the end. People she wanted something from, who wanted something from her.

So she had gotten through many moments like this. She had just not been bargaining for her heart, then.

But her head took over. Like Adaar's long years of practice with a blade, Josephine had honed her craft until it was muscle memory, until it was second nature. She did not hesitate.

"Lady Josephine Montilyet," she said, stepping forward. She did not curtsy. "Chief Diplomat of the Inquisition. I believe that I will serve." Before they could get halfway through their uneasy looks to one another—maybe they hadn't bargained on quite so high an officer—she pressed ruthlessly on. "I must insist, however, that I bring some protection to the table. Cassandra will accompany me."

This was important; they would have a hard time inside, at the crucial moment, if only Adaar and Josephine were on hand to deal with the number Cassandra had marked going into the tavern—or, worse, if Adaar wasn't in there at all.

The woman said, "Boss said just one."

Josephine smiled, unthreatening, polite. "Two is not so different than one. We come in good faith; our mage has already surrendered his weapon; this is the nature of compromise."

With a scowl, the woman flung open the door to the tavern. Josephine heard the murmur of conversation through the thin walls. She listened with half an ear in case the words became discernible while she observed the others.

One of the men, standing a few feet to the right of the tavern door, had paled. His eyes flicked from Josephine's chain of office to the tall, tall points of Bull's horns. His armor was older than the rest, not as well-fitted or well-maintained. The mercenary standing beside him wore a similar outfit, but his jaw was set. He did not look at their group at all.

The woman reappeared, a sour twist to her mouth. "You two, go in." She gestured to Josephine and Cassandra. "You two, stay put." She pointed at Bull and Dorian. Bull made a display of scratching his belly and yawning.

"Thank you," Josephine said pleasantly, and led the way into the tavern.

It had been mostly cleared. There were a handful of small tables in front of the hearth, where three of the mercenaries stood; one of them broke off, following Josephine and Cassandra to the table that stood apart from the rest, where one man sat.

Adaar was on the ground behind him.

She still catalogued the rest of the room, took in all the information she could: a third mercenary near the hearth with lopsided leather armor; the old man behind the bar on the wall opposite, shoulders hunched, watching the room from beneath a furrowed brow; the man at the table, tossing one of Adaar's daggers idly as he watched them approach.

But she spared a heartbeat for Adaar, to feel the relief that she was alive, even if she couldn't allow it to show on her face.

Adaar knelt on the tavern floor, a mercenary to either side of her, their weapons already drawn, guarding. The neutral expression on her face spoke to how deeply annoyed she really was; Josephine had seen it now and then, when a visitor to Skyhold got too pushy with their demands. But her dark eyes met Josephine's, and they were steady, unafraid. There was a suspicious red shininess around one of her eyes, but she appeared otherwise unharmed.

They'd bound her hands behind her back, a problem she was likely already working on, especially now that the mercenaries were distracted by newcomers. Josephine would need to buy her time.

"Ah," Adaar said, breaking the silence. "The cavalry."

"Shut up," the man at the table said, eyeing Cassandra. "Moiraine failed to mention that your bodyguard is the bloody Hero of Orlais."

"I assure you," Cassandra said, in a tone that no one would have believed, "tales of my exploits have been greatly exaggerated."

It would be best to remove attention from her, immediately. "I don't think it's unreasonable to enlist such a chaperone," Josephine said, "considering the number of soldiers you have in this room."

Six, by her count. Just one more than Cassandra had marked. Bull and Dorian would have their hands full outside once it all began, and in these quarters, she would have a hard time keeping out of the way. It was several feet to the bar counter; she wondered if she would be fast enough to dive behind it before the mercenary standing behind her could act.

She sat. The man at the table still held one of Adaar's daggers, though he'd stopped tossing it. The other lay on the table in front of him like a trophy. She heard the mercenary behind her settle into position—no weapon drawn, and within reach of Cassandra, but the casual threat was clear.

"I assume your lieutenant already introduced me," she said. The man across from her glanced at her chain of office, as if in acknowledgment. "Who do I have the pleasure of dealing with?"

He sneered. "Ellis Koster," he replied. "Of Koster's Carvers."

The company name didn't give Josephine much confidence, but she pressed on. "I wish we'd made this acquaintance under more pleasant circumstances, but we must make the best of what we have." She folded her hands on the table in front of her. "So, to business: what do you want?"

He pulled a folded slip of paper from his breastplate, placed it on the table, and slid it across to Josephine under the point of his forefinger. There was a smug look about his face, every movement slow and exaggerated, as if he'd always dreamed of doing it—holding all the power, dictating to others.

She had been afraid, waiting for Adaar's return, realizing she wasn't coming. But now—now, seeing this foul man put a price on the head of the woman she loved, seeing him crush it beneath his insignificant finger, she was angry. She was furious.

She took the paper, unfolded it, and read the sum with a carefully schooled expression. Even had she been seriously considering the ransom, it was a preposterous amount. No one could be under any illusions that the Inquisition had such deep coffers.

She adjusted her understanding of his intelligence.

"What offense has the Inquisitor made against you to make such an amount appropriate?" she asked, looking up again.

A little surprise tugged at his features. "Against me, personally? None."

"Then I find it hard to believe that you demand this payment seriously," Josephine said, setting the folded paper delicately on the table.

"This ain't a court, Ambassador. I've got something you want; you've got something I want. I baited a trap, and this is the tax you pay to get out of it."

"I see," Josephine said. "Well, then I think you know that this is far too much to demand for one person."

A little of the lurid anticipation fell from his face. "That so."

She did not elaborate; she simply waited, keeping all eyes on her. She had learned early in her career that silence was a powerful weapon. Even now, she saw it doing its insidious work: sowing doubt, planting second thoughts—not just in Koster, but in his thugs.

One, in particular. The woman by the hearth with the ill-fitting armor. The rest of them showed discomfort in other ways, in a hardening of the brow, a shifting of weight, but this one had panic in the twist of her mouth, in the nervous flex of her fingers.

The barkeep, by contrast, had stilled. He glared—not at Koster, Josephine, or Adaar, but at the nervous woman across the room.

Interesting.

"Because it seems to me," Koster said, breaking the silence, "that there's not much of an Inquisition without an Inquisitor."

Josephine felt the flush of a minor victory. He hadn't been able to outlast her, and now, whether he understood it or not, she had reclaimed some of the power he had tried to hold over her.

"The Rift is closed," Josephine said, choosing her tone carefully. Bored, relaying outdated facts. Her attention already turned to other, more serious things. "The days of paying off common thugs so that we can retain the Inquisitor's services are past. There is the matter of Corypheus, certainly, but we will be able to make do, I believe. After all," she gestured to Cassandra, "we are among esteemed company."

She sat back, physically signalling her disengagement, ignoring the discomfort of putting herself any nearer to the thug behind her. Adaar was no longer looking at her, she saw; she was instead focused on the mercenary by the hearth, the woman the barkeep was glaring at. She avoided Adaar's eyes. Her hands had curled into fists.

The barkeep knew this woman, Josephine realized. And so did Adaar.

"That's too bad," Koster said, drawing her attention back to him. "Too bad for you, I mean."

Josephine tilted her head to the side, as if vaguely curious. "Oh? How so?"

He put the dagger down on the table and leaned forward. "You can't imagine I'll let you leave, Ambassador, if you don't give me what I want. The next person to sit in that chair might be more interested in playing ball if we have half your war table in our cellars."

Josephine allowed a beat of silence, and then she brought a hand to her mouth to cover an amused laugh.

"By all means, Messere," she said, twisting the honorific into a taunt. "Show us to our accommodations. We will see who decides to negotiate with you next. For your sake, I do hope Nightingale does not take an interest."

Finally, he betrayed a twitch of unease. She'd guessed correctly; his mercenaries had recognized her, and he had recognized Cassandra. Not a small leap to imagine he'd heard of Leliana—and some of her less savory methods of doing business.

Sometimes it was good to have questionable friends.

"Perhaps it's time for us to move on, then," Koster said, staring Josephine down. "We'll take what we need from these fine people and make ourselves scarce." He had an ugly, unkind grin. "Wouldn't do to leave anyone to tattle on us, though, would it?"

"You said no one would get hurt!" a new, shaking voice broke in.

Josephine judged it acceptable to look toward the woman. She'd taken a step forward from the hearth; the other mercenary, a few feet away from her, put his hand on the pommel of his sword, frowning.

"Vilya," Adaar said, her voice low, "don't—"

"I told you to shut up," Koster snapped over his shoulder. He pointed at Vilya. "And you—"

The situation was rapidly escalating out of her control, but Josephine had bought enough time. Adaar's gaze swept the room, cataloguing and assessing, muscles tensed on the verge of movement. She was ready.

Josephine caught Cassandra's eye and gave the tiniest of nods, one that Koster, distracted by a room of unraveling threads, wouldn't notice. Cassandra's sword made a magnificent, ominous sound as she pulled it from the sheath. All eyes went to her.

In that moment, Adaar was meant to act. Josephine was meant to dive for cover.

But Josephine wanted more than to cower in a corner while others took care of this creature. He had made it necessary to say untrue things, words that had left such a sour taste in her mouth. She would play a small part more in his demise.

She snatched up Adaar's daggers.

"Catch!" she called, and threw the blades to Adaar.

Adaar was already moving. She had one foot planted on the floor beneath her; her hands, trailing snapped rope, reached up to pluck the clumsily-thrown daggers from midair. Her rise was graceful, effortless, and as she straightened to a height taller than either mercenary flanking her, she left a dagger in each of their chests. She never took her eyes from Josephine.

"Duck," she replied.

The room erupted. Josephine scrambled under the negotiation table. She heard the whistle of a near miss above her; the mercenary standing guard over her had acted, but too late. Only a second later, his body thudded to the ground behind her. Cassandra's sword had found an opening.

Three down, she thought, pulling her knees tight to her chest, so as to present the smallest possible target.

From her vantage point, she couldn't see much. She saw Koster's boots and Adaar's bare feet, moving, in and out, back and forth; she heard the snarls of his rage and Adaar's eerie silence. When she dared glance over to her right, she saw Cassandra's greaves, the occasional flash as the firelight reflected off her sword—and her opponent's. She kept him crowded near the hearth, blocking his path to his commander.

Vilya's was the only face Josephine could see. She'd backed into the far corner, huddled on the ground behind the tables and chairs.

Josephine returned her attention to the fight in front of her. She stared at the light way Adaar's feet moved across the dirty floorboards. Her footing was so sure, so graceful. Koster lunged and hacked, and Adaar, without the benefit of armor or boots, moved fluidly out of his way—and yet, at the same time, closer. Trying to get inside the reach of his weapon. There was a yelp—she'd made contact—and then an angry bellow; her points made, Adaar slipped out of reach.

But Koster was not ready to give up. Josephine had hoped that the blood now dotting the floor would slow him down; instead, he stopped swinging so wildly, waited, focused. She heard him give a mean, breathless laugh, and her blood ran cold.

"I've heard tales of your skill," he said. "Glad you measured up to the challenge. But someone got the better of you once. Maybe I'll take the other horn, as a trophy."

Adaar didn't rise to the bait. Josephine had seen her temper, secret, boiling. But she directed it as she liked; it did not direct her.

Josephine could hear the smile in her voice. "I've been saying for years that I'm just not symmetrical anymore."

The battle rejoined. Their feet moved faster now, the movements so quick they left Josephine breathless. She clenched her fists and watched, not daring to blink.

Now and then, she saw the length of Koster's sword, just barely sweeping into view. It was after one such upswing that she heard a dull, sickening thud.

Adaar had frozen in place, her stance unbalanced, wobbling. Koster gave another nasty laugh. Josephine tossed a panicked look toward Cassandra, but she was still occupied with the other mercenary.

She cast around frantically for a weapon, found her guard's fallen sword, and snatched it up. Then she crawled toward the fight, the scene coming into view as she peered out from beneath the table.

Koster's sword was stuck in Adaar's horn. Josephine's heart seized, but Adaar was smirking, and after a second's panic, Josephine understood why: the sword was truly stuck, about a third of the blade's width trapped in the horn. Koster pulled and pulled at it, the look on his face transforming from triumph to concern, and Adaar only turned her head in a way that made pulling it free harder.

"Sorry, is the angle bad?" Adaar asked, all innocence.

The next time he pulled, she pulled too, away from his sword. The sudden release of the blade threw him off-balance; he caught himself on the backfoot, but not fast enough. Adaar had used the moment to move in, lightning-quick, daggers extended. She crashed into him, toppling them both to the floor.

For a long, terrifying moment, they both lay still. Josephine could not move, could not breathe—

Then Adaar, with a hard exhale, rolled off Koster's body. The hilts of her two daggers stuck up from his torso. One had left his breastplate askew, no longer protecting his ribs; Adaar must have cut the leather fasteners that held front to back, at his sides, on an earlier pass.

The other, she'd left in his neck. Blood was still pumping from that wound, though sluggishly. Josephine's stomach turned, but she ignored it. She scrambled out from beneath the table, around Koster's body, and to Adaar, who still lay on her back, breathing heavily, mouth twisted in a grimace of pain.

Closer now, without a sword in the way, Josephine saw why. Koster's sword had clipped the pointed tip of Adaar's ear in its doomed arc toward her horn; the wound was still bleeding.

"I don't think he understood symmetry," Adaar said, fumbling to feel at her ear. She smiled at Josephine. "Were you going to duel him?"

Josephine stared at her, uncomprehending, then remembered the sword in her hand; with a noise of disgust, she tossed it away with a clatter. She caught Adaar's hand instead, pulling it away from the wound.

Footsteps approached from behind, and Josephine tensed, but then Cassandra asked, "Are you well?"

"Fine," Adaar said. "Thanks for the rescue."

Cassandra snorted. "What will we do with this one?"

Josephine turned. Cassandra held Vilya by the shoulder. The woman stared at the ground. The other mercenary lay dead on the floor beside the hearth.

"Herah," a reedy voice said—the barkeep, shuffling toward them with the aid of a walking stick. "I mean, Your Worship—"

"Don't start with the holiness stuff, Hammond." Adaar sat up with a grunt, holding fast to Josephine's hand. "Please."

"Well." Hammond cleared his throat. "You're not going to hurt her, are you? She's been awfully stupid, but...she didn't fight."

Adaar looked at Vilya and sighed. "I don't want to. But I do want to know what's going on. What happened, Vilya?"

For a moment, Josephine was sure that Vilya would keep quiet—but then she spoke, low and fast, not looking up from the ground. "Trade's been bad. Crops didn't do well this year. Everybody says the war's coming this way, if we don't starve to death first, and when Koster came along, he said he could help us. Get the Inquisition to protect us."

"You knew he was going to lure me here," Adaar said.

"He made it sound so easy! Made it sound like you'd just pay up and be on your way. He said you wouldn't miss it. And the Inquisition wouldn't leave us vulnerable again, after that." Her voice was thick with tears. Josephine felt a pang of sympathy. Here were their desperate folk, driven to desperate things.

"Who else?" Adaar asked.

"Just Cossus and Herbert. I swear."

"They came in one night with those Carvers," Hammond said, "leading the way. No one in town's spoken to them since. They've been sleeping here." He shot a look at Vilya. "Not by my choice."

Adaar rubbed her unbloodied hand over her forehead. "Well, Vilya," she said, "you—and Cossus and Herbert, assuming they were smart enough to surrender—have two options, the way I see it. You can beg your families' forgiveness, work off your guilt here. Or, if you really want the protection of the Inquisition, you can work for it."

Vilya finally looked up. She swiped at her eyes with a fist. "Can we...can we think about it?"

"Think fast. I'm not staying long." Adaar nodded to Cassandra. "See if Bull and Dorian need help. And keep an eye on her and her friends until someone else can."

"Come," Cassandra said to Vilya, pushing at her shoulder.

"Herah," Vilya said, still tearful. Now that she'd looked up, her eyes were fixed on the blood streaking down Adaar's cheek, down her neck. "I'm—"

Adaar waved her off. "Don't say it til you mean it."

Cassandra prodded Vilya along to the door. When it opened, noise poured in: Bull in the midst of a lecture on company ethics; fire crackling beneath the occasional yelp. The door swung shut again, muffling the sound.

Adaar let out another deep, bone-weary sigh. "Sorry about the mess, Hammond."

The barkeep scoffed. "We'll set Vilya and her friends to scrubbing. The blood'll be out in no time, or we'll have them laying a new floor. I'll get you a rag for that bleeding."

"My bag—"

"They took it downstairs. I'll fetch that, too."

Hammond shuffled off behind the bar. Josephine waited until his footsteps had faded, and then she asked, quietly, "Are you all right?"

"Could have been better," Adaar said. "Could have been worse."

"That does not answer my question."

Adaar met her gaze. "I don't think I can leave this place unguarded. There are other Kosters out there." She shook her head. "And other Vilyas. I'm sorry. I know we're stretched thin."

Josephine brought her other hand to cover Adaar's and squeezed. "We will make do."

Adaar's lips quirked up on one side in a tiny, crooked smile. "You know, when you say that, no matter how impossible the task seems, I believe you. Especially after that display." Her eyes danced. "It's a pleasure to watch you work."

"Oh, that man was insufferable," Josephine said darkly. "I could have carried on for another quarter-hour and still found more ego to chip away at!"

Adaar laughed. The sound, bright and joyful, was infectious; Josephine found herself laughing, too, on the verge of hysteria, all her relief pouring out in a flood.

"That business with the little piece of paper," Adaar choked out, between gasps, "can you believe…"

"You didn't see his face," Josephine said, wiping at her eyes. "He was so sure—"

"You showed him."

"No, my dear, I think you showed him, in the end."

Adaar pulled her hand free from Josephine's grasp, but only to reach out, to sweep Josephine fully against her as their laughter died down to chuckles and hiccups. Josephine wound her arms around Adaar in return, pressing close to her welcome, living warmth, savoring it.

"You shouldn't have grabbed the daggers," Adaar admonished.

"You shouldn't have gotten caught!"

Adaar let out another chuckle. The sound rumbled pleasantly beneath Josephine's cheek. "Fine. We're even."

Adaar pulled back, just enough to look down at her. She tucked an errant strand of hair behind Josephine's ear.

"Thank you," she said softly.

Josephine's heart leapt. Gone were her old doubts; she recognized the intent in that look, the affection, and leaned a little closer—

"We can put you all up in some of the rooms, Herah," Hammond said, and they both jumped. He hoisted Adaar's pack up onto the bar counter and brandished a wet rag. "You'd better get that wound seen to."

"Right," Adaar said, and with a rueful smile at Josephine, she gently pulled away and got to her feet. She offered a hand to help Josephine up. "Getting blood everywhere."

"You ought to stay," Hammond continued. "For a few days, at least. People'll be happy to see you. You take your sweet time between visits."

"Yes, I was a little preoccupied with the giant hole in the sky for a while—"

"You been Inquisitor for ten years?" Hammond interrupted.

Adaar stared for a moment, then shook her head. "No, messere," she said, much more meekly.

"I thought not. Now, you get yourself cleaned up, and we'll have a proper homecoming." He made for the front door of the tavern. As the door swung shut, Josephine heard him barking names.

"You hear that old codger?" Adaar asked wonderingly. "I lose a piece of my ear, and he wants to have a party."

Josephine tried very hard not to burst out laughing again. She almost succeeded.

#josephine montilyet #inquisitor adaar #f!adaar x josephine #f!adaar/josephine #dragon age #inquisition #friends to lovers #class differences #mutual pining #developing relationship #universe writes

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kusunogatari · 4 years

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[ ObiRyū October | Day Six | 666 ] [ @abyssaldespair ] [ Uchiha Obito, Suigin Ryū, Hatake Kakashi, Nohara Rin, Jiraiya ] [ Verse: Ghost Among the Ghosts ]

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If there’s one thing sure to cause trouble...it’s a couple of kids with nothing to do.

Boredly scrolling through her social media, Ryū jumps at the sound of something plinking against her window. Watching the panes, she sees a little pebble bounce off the glass.

What the…?

Getting up from her desk, she peers out and spies one of her classmates on the front lawn: Obito Uchiha. A flash of pink crosses her cheeks, taking a moment before lifting the window open. “What are you doing?” she whispers. “If my dad hears you throwing stuff at the house, he’s gonna flip!”

Down below, Obito just grins, dropping the rest of his rocks back into the little decorative display at the foot of the house. “C’mere!”

She pouts. “You could have just texted me, y’know…”

“That’s not nearly as fun!”

Rolling her eyes, Ryū pulls the window shut, making her way down to the front door. On her way, she passes by her dad.

“Where are you off to?”

“Just to the yard - a friend’s outside,” she replies vaguely, pulling on her shoes.

“Well if you venture out somewhere, let me know first, okay?”

“I will Dad, don’t worry.” Tapping her sneaker into place, Ryū then makes her way out.

Obito, distracted by a squirrel tightrope-walking the power lines, turns at the sound of the door. “Hey!”

“Hey. Um...so, what’s up?” As always, Ryū tries not to get her hopes up. While she’s had a crush on Obito for a while now, nothing’s ever come from it...mostly because he in turn has had feelings for her best friend, Rin. And Rin is head over heels for Kakashi.

But she can’t help but wonder why he’s here alone…

Obito’s mouth lifts into a wide grin. “To ask if you wanna go ghost hunting, duh!”

A white brow perks. “...what?”

“There’s an old, creepy house just outside of town! Rin found out it’s gonna get torn down next week, so we were gonna go sneak in and explore before it’s gone. Everyone says the place is haunted!”

Surprise slackens Ryū’s face. “...really?”

“Yeah! You wanna come? We’re gonna go in after dark!”

“Is that...gonna get us in trouble…?”

Obito groans at her worrying. “Aw, c’mon! This is pretty much our last chance to look around! We’re not gonna break anything, we just wanna see if there’s really any ghosts in there. If no one sees us go in, there’s no way they’ll ever know.”

Unsure, Ryū nibbles her lip. It does sound fun, but...she doesn’t want to get in trouble. If her father ever found out, she’d be grounded for a month for going someplace dangerous - surely the old house is about to collapse. Besides...if it really is haunted…

“Um...why did you ask me to go…?”

Obito hesitates for a moment. “Well...Rin and Kakashi said they’d go, so...I thought you’d wanna tag along! You and Rin are best friends, right?”

In spite of herself, Ryū feels a painful pang in her stomach. “...yeah.”

“So, whaddaya say? Wanna go?”

She sighs, mulling it over. “...okay. I’ll...figure out a way to get out of the house.”

“You could just sneak out, y’know.”

Ryū pouts at her friend. “Not all of us live with a half-deaf grandma. My dad would totally notice the minute I tried it.”

“You don’t take enough risks. Kids are supposed to do stupid stuff, right?” He grins at her.

“We’re hardly kids anymore! I’m almost fifteen!”

“Yeah, yeah...and soon enough we’re all gonna be boring adults who never get to do anything fun. Come onnn, Ryū!”

“Okay, okay! I’ll...think of something.” She can probably just claim another sleepover at Rin’s - she goes over there all the time as it is. “Now get going before my dad sees you!”

“Why? Would he be mad?” Obito’s grin gets a little wider, leaning in toward her. “Gonna get in trouble talking to a boy…?”

Her face flushes pink, pushing him toward the road. “Uh, duh!” Nevermind the fact that Obito is the one boy she actually likes. “I’ll text you later, now get out of here you dork!”

“Okay, okay! See ya later!” Waving, Obito takes off back down the street, hopping astride his bike and pedaling out of sight.

Once he’s gone, Ryū can’t help a sigh. Getting out of the house shouldn’t be too hard...and she can pack any supplies she’ll need under the guise of stuff to take to her sleepover. But as excited as Obito seems to be for a bit of ghost hunting, it makes her...nervous.

Because she’s seen things before.

And it doesn’t help that her own appearance has always gotten her teased as one. She was rather soured to the notion from a very young age. But when she realized she could see things pretty much no one else did? She wondered if that was truer than her bullies thought.

And on top of her uncertainty is the notion that she’s just a tagalong - while Rin, Kakashi, and Obito have known each other throughout their school years, Ryū was a new arrival a few years later. Rin was quick to adopt her, but dynamics were mostly already settled.

When she saw Obito here by himself, she thought...well…

She cuts the thought off with a curt sigh. She’ll go. Dipping out would only make things weirder. So once she’s back inside, she starts spinning her tale.

“Who was that?” Jiraiya asks, looking up from his desk.

“Rin! She wanted to know if I could spend the night. Can I?”

“Hm...I don’t see why not. Just be back in good time tomorrow morning - I’ve got a meeting and I’d like to know you’re home safe.”

“Okay Dad!” Crossing the room, she gives his cheek a peck. “Thanks!”

“You know I can’t say no to you,” he replies with a grin, shooing her off. “I gotta finish this manuscript by tonight.”

“You’ll get it done. I’ll go start dinner, okay?”

“Thanks, kiddo.”

Juggling multiple parts of dinner, Ryū manages to get the meal done in good time. Her father takes his plate back to his desk, leaving her to take her own up to her room.

Then, it’s time to prepare.

Behind her closed door, Ryū puts together her supplies: namely a flashlight, extra batteries, a coat (the Autumn nights get cold, after all), some snacks and water, and her phone.

As the sun begins to set, she heads out, wishing her father goodnight before getting her bike from the garage and pedaling.

[ sms Obito: ] Where are we meeting?

[ sms Ryū: ] Kakashi’s, it’s closest!

Pulling up to the right house, Ryū finds Obito and Rin already arrived, the former up at the front door talking to Kakashi. “Sorry I’m late, had to make dinner before I left…”

“No worries!” Rin assures her. “Got all you need?”

“I hope so. Um...how long are we gonna stay…?”

“No idea! I guess until we get bored…? Probably not too long, I mean...I doubt there’ll be much to find. Lots of kids have been in there before.” The brunette’s shoulders shrug. “But Obito wanted to go, so…”

Ryū frowns. “I thought he said this was your idea?”

“I told him about the demolition, but yeah, he decided to go. I figured we couldn’t let him do it by himself, he might get hurt. You know how he is.”

“...yeah.”

Brow furrowing, Rin moves to say something, but is cut off as the boys make their way down to the sidewalk.

“Okay! Everyone ready to go?” Grinning once more, Obito looks psyched to get started.

“I keep telling you not to get your hopes up,” Kakashi warns, arms folding. “It’s gonna be boring. Just an empty, dusty house.”

“But you heard what Genma said! There’s totally spooks in there, Kakashi!”

“Genma was probably a little less than sober. Everyone goes there to drink and get high. He saw what he wanted to see and scared himself like an idiot.”

At that, Ryū gets awkward, having always been rather straight-laced. “We’re not, uh...gonna do that, are we?”

“Oh gosh no,” Rin cuts in. “If I came home like that I’d be grounded ‘til I died.”

“Same,” Kakashi agrees. “We’re just gonna go in, prove there’s nothing weird, and then go home so Obito can stop geeking out.”

“I’m not geeking out!” the Uchiha insists, going so far as to stomp a foot.

“You haven’t stopped talking about this since Rin told you about the demolition. You’re geeking out.”

“Let’s just...get going,” Rin then cuts in, already standing beside her bike. “It’s getting dark and we should get there before it’s pitch black out. Otherwise we’re gonna get spotted using our flashlights.”

The boys grumble but agree, and soon enough all four of them head down the street to the very edges of the suburb where it starts to bleed out into the countryside. Houses start to get further and further apart...until they find the one they’re looking for.

Ryū has to admit...it is pretty spooky looking. An old Victorian, the striking shapes and sweeping rooflines do indeed look like your classic haunted house. No wonder kids sneak in all the time.

“All right, this is it. Come on, let’s put our bikes in the bushes in case a cop drives by.” Kakashi leads the way, stashing their rides before holding open a cut in the chain link fence.

Nearby, a sign declaring the demo hangs.

Once they’re all through, they hurry to the silhouette of the house, climbing in through an unlocked window. Only then do they dare to turn on their lights.

“...whoa,” Rin murmurs.

They’ve emerged into the kitchen. Above them, the ceiling has splintered, boards hanging at striking angles and wires draping in the gap. All manner of kitchenware is scattered on the floor and countertops, everything covered in dust...save for varying levels of footprints from other, previous intruders. Beams of light streak everywhere as they take it all in.

“...okay...this is pretty cool,” Kakashi admits. “Let’s go.”

“What exactly are we...looking for?” Rin asks, following close behind him.

“I dunno. Guess we’re just gonna wander until we realize there’s nothing supernatural.”

From the kitchen they enter the belly of the house: a large foyer that opens up to the second story, a sweeping staircase leading up. Above the front door is a large window that gives a full view of the moon outside.

“Okay...now what?”

Kakashi examines the room, thinking. “...Rin and I will go upstairs. Ryū, you and Obito check the main level. Once we’ve done a sweep, we can leave.”

Obito’s cheeks puff as Kakashi assumes the lead, but Ryū nods. “Be careful, the floors might be unstable, given what we saw in the kitchen. Stay close to the walls.”

Agreeing, the other pair carefully ascend the stairs, which creak and groan in protest at the weight.

“...well, I...guess we should look around.”

Obito doesn’t reply, watching the other two with an unreadable expression.

“Hey...you okay?”

He sighs. “...yeah. C’mon, let’s go.”

Seeing the wind suddenly cut from his sails, Ryū’s brow wilts. Together, they make their way through a door under the stairs. Within is a study, books torn off the shelves and papers scattered everywhere. The windows, broken, have been boarded up.

Approaching a bookshelf built into the wall, Ryū carefully picks up a picture frame, blowing off dust to reveal a family portrait: a mother, father, and five sons.

“Hey, check this out.”

Obito peers over her shoulder. “Whoa. That looks kinda old.”

“Yeah…” Turning it over, there’s nothing written on the back to indicate a date, or names. “Darn...I wonder why they left.”

“Maybe they died, and they’re haunting this place!”

Ryū gives Obito a gentle look. “I mean, I haven’t felt anything yet.”

“What do you mean, felt?”

She jolts, realizing what she let slip. “Um...y’know, like...don’t people say they feel they’re being watched, or...they walk through a cold spot if there’s a ghost?”

Obito doesn’t look wholly convinced, but shrugs. “I guess so...let’s keep looking.”

From the study, they move across the room to another door.

This time, it’s the master bedroom. A huge four poster bed sits along the far wall, its curtains torn and moth-eaten.

“Whoa…!”

Gawking, Obito makes his way further into the room. As he does, the floor creaks...and Ryū hesitates. “Be careful!”

“Huh?”

“Hear that? It sounds like there’s empty space under the floor.”

“Really? Think there’s a basement?”

“Maybe...just...be very careful where you’re walking, it could give out.”

“I dunno, seems pretty solid to me.” Approaching the bed, Obito shines his light over it. “Huh...it’s all made up. But there’s something, like...stained on the cover. It kinda looks like…” Lifting a leg, he starts crawling atop the bed.

The floor heaves a mighty groan, and Ryū’s stomach drops.

“Obito!”

With a horrible cacophony, the floorboards give out, too much weight beared on too little material. The entire bed falls through, and a plume of dust and debris clogs the air.

Ryū lifts an arm to cover her mouth before looking back in horror. “Obito!”

Coughing cuts through the air, and she risks edging closer to the hole. “I...I’m okay! The bed caught my fall. Man, it’s super dark down here…”

“D-do you see another way down?”

“Uh…” She hears the bedsprings move as he leaves the bed just as footsteps race up behind her.

“What the hell was that?!” Rin demands.

“The bed fell through the floor, with Obito on it. He’s okay, he’s trying to find the stairs up.”

“Uh...guys…?”

The upstairs trio glance to the hole. “What is it?” Kakashi asks, tone oddly serious.

“You, uh...you should come down here…”

Exchanging a glance with the girls, Kakashi counters, “What, just...jump down?”

Obito doesn’t reply.

Something twists in Ryū’s gut. “I...have a really bad feeling about this.”

“I don’t wanna go down there,” Rin admits in a whisper. “What if we can’t get back out?”

“One of us should stay up here in case a door to the stairs is locked, or we need help. Rin, you stay. I’ll go down.”

“Me too,” Ryū insists.

“You sure?”

She nods grimly.

“...all right. I’ll go first.” Carefully shuffling to the edge, Kakashi then leaps to the splintered remains of the bed, landing with another cloud of dust. “It’s fine!”

Once he steps aside, Ryū does the same, falling to a knee with a grunt and a cough. “Ugh…”

“You guys okay?” Rin calls.

“Fine! Stay right there, just in case more of the floor collapses. Listen for creaking, okay?”

“Okay!”

Armed with their lights, Ryū and Kakashi find no trace of Obito in the room they’ve fallen to. It looks to be some kind of storage room full of crates and boxes. “...this is weird,” Kakashi murmurs. “Where the hell did he go…?”

Not having a reply, Ryū steps forward through a doorway into a hall. “...how big is this place…?”

“Too damn big. I’m gonna punch Obito when I find him for dragging us here...I only came cuz Rin asked me to.”

“Wait, what?”

“Originally Obito was going to go by himself, but Rin didn’t want him going alone. But I didn’t want them alone since Rin and I are dating, and Obito used to crush on her.”

Ryū blinks at the sudden overload of information. “Wait...you and Rin are…?”

“Yeah, three months now. But I’m pretty sure Obito caught the hint before that. So then he insisted we ask you. Probably didn’t want to third wheel it.”

At that, she wilts. “...oh.”

“...look, I know you like him Ryū, but he’s about as oblivious as a box of rocks.”

“W-what -?”

“Just warning you that if you’re waiting for him to notice, odds are you’re going to be waiting a long t-”

Kakashi, however, finds himself cut off by a scream. A high-pitched, but obviously male scream, accompanied by a rumble.

Ryū’s heart leaps to her throat. That had to be -! “Obito!”

“Ryū, wait -!”

Running through the hall, she tries to find the proper door. There’s so damn many, this basement is ridiculous! But as she shines her light into one of the rooms, she has to do a double take.

At the rear, a wall has collapsed inward, stone and rubble littering the floor. Beyond it...is a tunnel. And as she steps in to investigate, she pauses.

All over the walls is graffiti, most bearing dark-themed symbols and numbers: the mark of the beast, pentagrams, strange verses...but none of it feels active. It’s all just empty spray paint, probably from kids here before them.

“Ryū, don’t just -! Oh shit…” Coming in behind her, Kakashi looks around before grabbing her coat, pulling her back as she steps further. “Stop!”

“What?”

“Look!”

On the floor is yet another pentagram.

“It’s not real.”

“How do you -?”

“There’s nothing in it. Come on, I think he went this way. There’s a tunnel.”

“You can’t go in there!”

“Why not?”

“It’s collapsing! What if it falls on you?”

“It’s fine! Besides, Obito has to be in there, I can’t just leave him there alone - I need to get him out!”

“...well I’m not going. Sorry, but screw that.”

Ryū huffs a sigh. “Fine. Go back to Rin, see if you guys can find a place outside where this might pop up. A shed, or something.”

He nods, backtracking as she presses onward. While the room doesn’t offer a feeling of any presence...something seems to seep from the tunnel like a fog.

Wherever it leads, it can’t be good.

Peering down from the mouth, Ryū takes a steeling breath before stepping in, careful to touch as little as possible. The collapse looks fresh. More could come down at any moment, but her gut tells her he’s down here.

And if something were to happen to him…

She presses on, jaw set. Ten paces. Twenty. Fifty. Maybe it’s some kind of...root cellar. Or an escape route. Or…

Suddenly it widens, opening up into what looks like a room. But at the sight of seven stone rectangles along the middle, Ryū realizes it’s more than just a room.

It’s a crypt. Surely for the family that lived here before.

By now, the feeling of...something weighs on her chest like a stone, making it hard to breathe. But still, she sees nothing. “Obito…?” she calls, out of breath.

“Wha!”

Stumbling out of an alcove, Obito shines his light on her, eyes wide. “Jeez, you scared me! I didn’t think you guys would follow me.”

“Obito, we have to leave!”

“But this is so cool! Look, there’s coffins and -!”

“Obito -!”

A blast of cold seems to wash over them, and Ryū feels her knees give out. A feeling of anger, hate, and vengeance fills the cavern from floor to ceiling. The ground shakes like an earthquake.

But this is no quake.

Obito stumbles, catching himself on one of the stone boxes that bear a body. And just as he does, an ear-splitting crack sounds above them. The stone of the ceiling splinters, about to give way.

Every muscle tenses. She fights her body and urges it forward. Colliding with Obito, Ryū sends the pair of them sprawling aside, caught in a tangle of limbs.

Nearby, the sounds of an iron gate screech on rusted hinges. Someone’s opening the crypt. And with it, a great wind blows up and out into the night.

Everything goes quiet.

Curled up against any debris, Ryū slowly goes slack as the silence and stillness stretches on. Pushing herself up, she comes to realize that she’s lying atop Obito, who stares up at her with wide eyes and a red face.

“You...you saved -?”

“Ryū! Obito!”

They both look aside to the steps leading in, spying Rin scrambling down them but pausing at the mess. A huge pile of rubble has smashed the main parts of the crypt...including one piece the size of a small car.

Right where Obito had been standing.

Kakashi, right behind, offers a very appropriate, “Holy shit!”

Ryū and Obito both stare for a moment before looking back to each other. Heart racing, Ryū tries to get herself to move, but...to no avail.

All the while, Obito stares back.

“...don’t ever...wander off by yourself...again,” she instructs breathlessly. And then, with adrenaline still pumping through her veins, Ryū lowers herself down and kisses him.

Rin gasps before squealing, silenced by Kakashi as he snags her back with a look.

Obito stiffens, eyes round as dinner plates until Ryū retreats. “...o-okay,” is his simple reply, cheeks blazing hot.

Looking over his face, Ryū then gives in to the ringing in her head...and faints.

When she wakes up...it takes her a moment to realize she’s in Rin’s room. A trace of a headache still remains, and she’s a little sore...but otherwise fine.

And then she notices there’s daylight coming in between the curtains.

...how long has she -?!

“Oh! You’re awake!”

Turning, she spots Rin. “...how did I…?”

“Obito and Kakashi helped bring you in. After that weird earthquake, we bailed out. But no one else felt it, apparently. The boys stayed in my brother’s old room, so they’re still -”

“She’s up?”

Rin turns to Kakashi behind her. “Yeah, where’s -?”

“Does she remember anything? I mean...she passed out.”

Sitting up gingerly, Ryū winces. “...I remember the house, and...that weird tunnel. Then things got really...heavy. And the ceiling…”

“Heavy…?” Rin asks, brow furrowing.

“...yeah. Look, I dunno if you guys believe in ghosts or whatever, but...there was something down there. Something angry. But it left when you opened the gate.”

Her friend hesitates. “...Ryū...we didn’t open the gate.”

“...what?”

“It was already open when we got there.”

“But...I heard -?”

“Okay...none of us tell anybody about this,” Kakashi cuts in. “No one will believe us. I dunno what really happened, but that was way too close of a call. You and Obito could have gotten killed. So what happened last night never leaves this room...got it?”

Both girls somberly nod. “...so is that...all you remember, Ryū?”

“...well…”

“Guys?”

In the doorway, Rin and Kakashi both turn to spot Obito in the hall. “Obito! You feeling okay?”

“Yeah...my back hurts, but...I’m all right.”

An odd silence falls.

“Well, um...Kakashi, why don’t you...come downstairs with me, and we’ll make breakfast!”

“But -?” Before he can protest, Kakashi finds himself pushed toward the stairwell by a very insistent Rin.

“Take your time getting up, Ryū!” she calls before they disappear.

Having already sat up from the bed, Ryū looks to Obito just as he peers into the room.

...another strange silence.

“...you okay?”

She nods. “Yeah...my head kinda hurts, but...I’m fine.” Getting to her feet, Ryū murmurs a soft, “Oh…!” as her legs turn to jelly.

But as though he was expecting it, Obito is there to keep her upright, hugging her to his chest.

They both bloom pink.

“Er...you sure you’re okay to get up…?”

She hesitates. “I...I think so...I was just a little d-dizzy for a sec.”

“And...now?”

Realizing how close their faces are, Ryū admits, “I’m...still dizzy.” But it has nothing to do with her head.

“Oh, uh...here…” He helps her sit back on the mattress, doing the same. “...look, uh…” A hand itches at his neck, looking nervous. “...you saved my life last night. I dunno if you remember, but -?”

“I do.”

“...oh. Well...thanks. I know that’s...not really adequate, but…”

“It’s okay. I’m just glad you’re all right. That was...really scary,” Ryū replies softly.

“...yeah. Yeah it was. Uh…” Another pause. “...so...d’you -? Is there anything else -?”

“I kissed you, didn’t I?”

He jumps at the blunt question. “...er...y-yeah.”

“...I’m sorry.”

“What -?”

Shame colors Ryū’s face. “That was really thoughtless of me, I mean...you almost died, and I acted without your permission. I...I let my feelings get ahead of me. It was a really shitty thing to do. I’m sorry.”

“Ryū, I…” Clamming up for a moment, Obito seems to struggle with something. “...I didn’t say it was a...a bad thing. It surprised me, but…” His cheeks slowly flare red. “...I’m...glad you did.”

“...you…?”

“Look, I -!” He hesitates a moment, and then starts rambling. “I-I didn’t even mean for Kakashi and Rin to come! When she told me, I was so excited, I was gonna go tell you! But then she thought I was gonna go alone, so she insisted she come along, and...I couldn’t tell her what I wanted to do, so then Kakashi invited himself because he’s such a hardass, so by the time I got to ask you, it was already this big thing, and -!”

“O-Obito, slow down,” Ryū laughs. “...do you mean...you were going to ask me first…?”

“...yeah...I noticed you seemed to like spooky stuff, so...I thought it could be like...y’know, a...a -”

“Date?”

The word makes him jolt. “...y-yeah.”

Utterly surprised, Ryū just...blinks. “...Obito, I…” How to explain…? “It’s...not that I like spooky stuff, I just…”

“Is it true, then? You really do see ghosts?”

It’s her turn to flinch. “...yes.”

His eyes go wide. “...that’s so cool. But I bet it’s scary too, huh?”

“It...can be. Like last night. Nothing felt...off to you in there?”

“No.”

“I felt like I was drowning. I never saw anything, but...I sure felt it. Something in there was angry. Probably because the house has been so desecrated.”

At that, Obito’s ears go red, shrinking. “...you think I made them mad…?”

“No. We didn’t hurt anything. But we were there. I think it was just ‘wrong place, wrong time’ on our part. We got all the blame for everything that happened before we got there. But maybe once the house is gone and no one else bothers it, things will...settle down.”

“...I hope so…”

The pair fade into a thoughtful silence.

“So, uh...I know that was a total catastrophe, so...if you say no, I’ll understand, but...would you -? I mean, if we did something else, would -?”

“I’d totally go on another date with you,” Ryū replies, smiling as Obito jumps in surprise. “Just...nothing else dangerous, okay? I’ve had enough excitement for a while.”

“Uh...y-yeah, okay! Sure! Uh...cool! So…?”

“So, it’s a date.”

“Ryū! Obito! Breakfaaast!” Rin calls, making them both stiffen.

“Coming!” Standing, Obito offers a hand. “...still dizzy?”

Ryū smiles, accepting and letting him pull her to her feet. “...I think I’m okay, now.”

Sooo I know this isn’t explicitly about the mark of the beast, but...it was very briefly mentioned xD I wasn’t sure how to make a whole plot about it, so it’s mostly a minor part of this one. Instead it just adds to the atmosphere of the overall plot! ANYWAY. Spooky spooks! I don’t get to use Ryū’s medium verse very much so I thought this would be a good way to do so. Given the religious importance of the number, I kinda left it...vague? Like most people I have my own interpretations about this sort of thing and didn’t want to get too far into it, especially since I’m not very knowledgeable about it lol So instead we have a Scooby-Doo type plot with a bunch of silly teenagers running around in an actually haunted house xD I should have added one of Kakashi’s dogs and then it would be a full crossover kdfjghdgf Buuut yeah, not too much else to say on this one...? I shifted a few things mid-write and tried to go back and make it coherent so if anything’s a bit off, that’s probably why xD I’m indecisive. Or rather, the muses were and didn’t bother telling me until I was almost done. Goobers. Thanks for reading!

#obiryū october #abyssaldespair #uchiha obito #suigin ryū #hatake kakashi #nohara rin #jiraiya #ghost among the ghosts [ au ]

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thewhumperinwhite · 4 years

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FBI AU: Flashback

Previous: Rescue / Interrogation / Awkward / Painkillers / Father

...oh yeah... this is probably a good time to mention the Coven is, you know. A vampire cult

@whumpitywhumpwhump

TW for: referenced/non-explicit drug use; forced nudity; Scalpels

On the night before the end of the world, Karim Mun fell asleep with Art’s head resting on his chest, his fuzzy haircut tickling Karim’s chin, and slept without nightmares for the first time in nine years, and he really, actually believed that it was the start of many more dreamless nights to come. In actuality, of course, it wasn’t the first, it was the only.

Here is what happened, as Karim Mun remembers it. He has explained it to three different officials, now, in as much detail as he can— once to a duty officer, once to Rona Cowl, and once, staring straight ahead and speaking tonelessly without stopping, to his mother. Even if he had not recounted it he already knows he will remember it for as long as he lives.

It goes like this.

Karim falls asleep wrapped in warm sheets with Art’s comforting weight on his chest. He wakes up freezing cold, still only the boxers he had fallen asleep in, but now his hands are bound behind his back. Later he will know that Tenor was the one holding him, but in the moment Micah’s bodyguard exists only as a huge arm across his bare chest and a button-down shirt pressed against his bare back. He is kneeling on a concrete floor, and the room is lit by a single dangling lamp, which lights up the tableau Micah has carefully arranged.

Micah is kneeling too, and he is in his usual suit, though he has removed the jacket for the occasion. Art, halfway in Micah’s lap, is naked. Micah has one arm wrapped around Art’s waist, and one hand tangled in his hair. Art’s eyes are cloudy and there is duct tape over his mouth.

It’s this that makes Karim jolt upright in Tenor’s arms and try unsuccessfully to get his legs under him. Words have always been Art’s only defense, he has always been proud of how well and sharply he can speak. Micah cannot take that from him.

“There you are,” Micah says, when he sees Karim lift his head. “Karim, what is the number one rule I gave you, when I invited you into my Coven?”

“No,” Karim says. “Micah— Father— please don’t hurt him, I’ll— Father, anything— “

Art looks up at the sound of his voice. When he sees Karim his eyes clear, and he struggles against Micah’s hold, and Karim remembers that this is the first time in years that Art doesn’t want to die.

Micah doesn’t look at Art, and doesn’t have to readjust his grip— Karim can see that Art’s throat and ribs are bruised, that his left leg sits at a terrible angle; his struggles must be weaker than a child’s.

Micah frowns at Karim. “I thought you might say that,” he says. “I want you to know, I’m not angry with you, my Karim. I’m disappointed.”

“Father,” Karim says, straining against the rope around his wrists and against Tenor’s unbreakable grip on his arm and shoulder. “Father I’m— you’re right, I should never have left, I’ll— if you let him go, I’ll never— “

“Yes, my Karim, I anticipated all of this,” Micah says, impatient. Art aims an elbow at his stomach, and Micah catches his arm easily; his hand wraps almost entirely around Art’s bicep; Karim throws himself hard against Tenor’s arms but Tenor doesn’t flinch. “That’s why I’ve set up this little object lesson, so that you won’t forget the rules again.” Micah looks at Tenor over Karim’s shoulder. “Make sure he watches, please.”

Then Micah pulls his scalpel from his shirt pocket and makes a shallow cut on the side of Art’s throat. Art jerks in his arms, and makes a startled noise under the gag. Micah pulls Art’s head to one side by the hair and covers the cut with his mouth, his arm wrapping more securely around Art’s waist like a parody of a loving embrace.

“No!” Karim writhes in Tenor’s grip, but the big man’s arm only tightens around Karim’s chest until he can barely breathe. “Father— Please— “

Micah lifts his head from Art’s throat, running his tongue languidly over the cut he has made— Art twitches in his arms, tries to push Micah’s face away, and Micah takes a firm hold of Art’s narrow wrist, stretches his arm out as though Art is not fighting his grip at all, and makes a small cut over the veins in his wrist. Then he looks up into the darkness to his left, smiling with wet red lips, and Karim sees, in the darkness, the shifting shapes of his sisters, who are watching Micah murder Art.

“Charity,” Micah says warmly. “Will you join me?”

Charity steps demurely into the light and kneels beside Micah. Her eyes are already cloudy; everyone must have dosed up while they were watching Tenor tie his hands behind his back. She takes Art’s wrist in her small hands when Micah offers it to her and laps delicately at Art’s veins.

When Micah calls Venita, she slices open Art’s opposite inner elbow— Art makes a desperate harsh whine under his gag— and sucks at the wound as though she can’t hear Karim screaming at her at all, as though he isn’t there and this is a normal one of Micah’s “family dinners”-- which it is, from her perspective. The only difference is that for the first time in nine years Karim is completely sober, watching Micah give up on the first cut he made in Art’s throat and starting another, listening to Charity moan quietly with pleasure as her mouth fills with Art’s blood.

When Diana pulls Art’s legs apart to get at the vein in his inner thigh, Karim screams, kicking at Tenor wildly, and Tenor growls in his ear and seizes Karim’s chin in a bruising grip, as though Karim could ever have looked away from what his family is doing to Art, from Art’s wide eyes and bruised bare ribs.

When Venita cuts his arm for the fourth time Art’s head falls limply back against Micah’s shoulder. None of Karim’s family seem to notice.

Micah raises his head, his mouth and chin bloody, and smiles at the last of Karim’s sister, and Karim believes, believes, for a long desperate moment that Selina, at least, will see, will know that it is wrong and they have all been monsters for not seeing it, drugs or no, that they are killing him—

But Selina’s pupils are already blown wide and the scent of the blood and Micah’s soft inviting voice are making her short of breath. Venita holds out Art’s unbroken wrist and Selina takes it in her hand and cuts it open.

Karim’s sisters pull back one by one, melting back into the shadows as if grateful to have escaped Micah’s attention. Later Karim will remember the times he has done so himself— the lives he has helped take in Micah’s name— but now there is room in his head for nothing outside of Art, whose struggles slow and then stop, whose eyes go dull in Micah’s arms.

When Art is empty and still Micah finally looks back at Karim— Karim can’t breathe— and then he kisses Art on the lips, staining Art’s mouth red, and lets Art fall. Art sprawls on his side on the floor, his eyes half-lidded.

For a moment Tenor’s grip on him slackens and Karim wrenches himself free and throws himself over Art, hands still bound behind his back, screams Art’s name in his torn-up voice, but no amount of howls and tears and apologies make Art stop being dead.

“Honestly,” Micah says, getting to his feet and wiping dust from the knees of his trousers. “Tenor, get him out of here before he embarrasses himself any further.”

Tenor carries him bodily from the room, thrashing and kicking, and throws him in his old quarters without a word, slamming the door before Karim can get to his feet.

That is what Karim remembers. That is why he wasted three days refusing food and shaking through withdrawal as the final dose of Micah’s drugs left his system. Why he let himself grow so weak that he couldn’t do anything to Micah by the time he finally deigned to come to Karim’s room.

He believed it— a month out of the compound, drug-free, he still trusted Micah’s “object lesson” enough to believe that Art was dead— and left Micah three more days alone with Art by believing it.

He tells the police everything— from sneaking into the club where he met Micah nine years ago to agreeing to kill Art when he met him at the docks. He says it all, over and over; he doesn��t refuse to eat or flinch back from the doctors’ needles. He doesn’t ask for anything at all, except to see Art, because Art is sleeping two floors away, and Karim needs to see him.

Then Art wakes up, and he stops asking. It would be crazy to assume Art needs to see him.

——

Karim Mun is staring at the TV without watching it when Rona enters his room. His hands are resting loosely in his lap and the circles under his eyes are dark as bruises, and Rona can practically hear the empty static in his brain.

“Good, your awake,” she says, ignoring his immediate flinch away from her voice. “I have a proposal for you.”

Karim Mun blinks up at her, and recognition takes its sweet time to filter into his eyes. “Oh. Agent Cowl,” he says vaguely. “You’re back.”

“I’m back,” Rona agrees, leaning in the doorway to look at him. He looks shell-shocked enough to be innocent, but Rona’s met some actors in her time. It still bears a little testing. “Your doc says you’re clear for a little walk, as long as you got a spotter. Whaddaya say— “ she jerks her head toward the hallway. “You wanna take a turn with me?”

Karim Mun blinks again, clearly startled. “You— want to walk me around the hall? Don’t you— have more important work to be doing?”

“Nah,” Rona lies easily. “I could use a break. C’mon,” she says, smiling at him, always a little bit sly. “There’s somebody who’s been begging to see you.”

#whump #fbi au #original whump #blood drinking #Forced To Watch #guilt #forced nudity #(no they are not real vampires)#(…..at least not in this au)

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taiblogcomics · 4 years

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Things Are Looking Grymm

Hey there, block-pushing puzzles. Oh boy, it's that time of year again, isn't it? Where it gets hot and miserable. Alas, I'm sorry to increase your misery with more Teen Titans comics from the New 52 run~

Here's the cover:

The fight to save Kid Flash! ...is not important enough to make him the focus of the cover. Unfortunately, we have to instead look at Tim Drake bodychecking this zombie-faced idiot. I presume they're the villain of this issue, but are they interesting enough to sell this cover? Personally, I say no~

We open on a shot oddly reminiscent of that one "X-Men: Days of Future Past" cover. The one with the spotlight and the wanted posters? Picture that without the posters, and our Teen Titans here instead of Wolverine. Kid Flash announces that he's not feeling so well, Mr. Stark. He can't be feeling that bad, though, as he then next spends a few minutes pondering whether it's "good" or "well" that’s grammatically correct. This is all while they're being held at gunpoint by the police, so, you know, absolutely the time and place for this nonsense.

The detective in charge is intending to prosecute them, because even in self-defense, they still did thousands of dollars in public property damage (and that's not even including that apartment Tim blew up a few issues back). Tim's still trying to argue the self-defense angle when suddenly Skitter shows up and lifts the detective off the ground. This gives Tim the opportunity to batarang the gun out of the detective's hand, which sets Skitter off. Before Round 2 of Versus Skitter can happen, Bunker steps in and speaks to Skitter calmly. And the bonding they had on the roof gets through to her, and Skitter calls off the attack, turning it into a hug instead. Ah, just like an anime con~

It's good that this as wrapped up, because Kid Flash brings up a new problem. Remember how he was feeling sick? Well, it's getting worse, as in he's now glowing and shooting sparks off his skin. The team doesn't have any idea how to help him, but fortunately Tim knows someone who can. And who should this turn out to be but Virgil Hawkins? Yes, Static had his own self-titled series in the New 52 as well. Like a lot of New 52 titles, it only lasted eight issues. That's a little unfortunate, since that was the first series Static had to himself since he got acquired by DC. Mostly he'd been a secondary character in the Geoff Johns era of Teen Titans, which is probably why he's here.

Fortunately, not only is Virgil a cool superhero, he's also kind of a genius, as shown by his debut panel here showing him working on a robot velociraptor. As Tim introduces him to the Titans, Virgil recognises the problem with Kid Flash immediately, because he's also an expert on molecular stability. How convenient! They all dash off to an open lab to work on Kid Flash, and someone in a cell overhears them. (Why is there a padded cell in STAR Labs? Beats me.) This is our ghoulish cover villain, a fellow by the name of Grymm. If that doesn't convince you that DC was backsliding into the Dark Age of '90s comics, don't worry, future issues will only add more evidence of that~

After a brief cutaway to the detective from earlier, who turns out to not be a detective but a time traveler who recognises Kid Flash as a terrorist from her own time, we offset her worries about how bad Kid Flash really is by visiting him in the lab. Solstice is there comforting him, and generally showing what a nice character she is. She holds his hand, and he confesses that he's scared because he doesn't actually know how his powers work or how he got them. So that big rap sheet of criminal activities Detective Lure is worried about? Kid Flash actually has no idea he even committed them. Ah, more dramatic convenience~

So while Kid Flash is having his excess power drained off by a jury-rigged quantum MRI--seriously--Cassie and Bunker have a little banter. She's planning to split again, and Bunker tries persuading her to stay. She thinks it's cute if he wants her to stay just coz he has a crush, and he confesses that he's gay. Before that can get any more awkward between them, Bunker suddenly notices Skitter is missing. And the reason why she's missing is because Grymm has been reaching out with his psychic powers to find a mind that was easy to control. Animalistic little Skitter fits the bill.

While Tim and Virgil continue to put their heads together to realign Kid Flash's molecules, Bunker and Cassie follow the trail of destruction down the hall to where Grymm's cell is. It's already been torn open, as has his straitjacket, and Grymm steps forward. And oh boy, does he like to talk. He is very much the monologuing supervillain, the kind that's all "Behold my awesome powers, Titans! I bet you're wondering how I controlled your friend. Well, that is just one of the many awesome things I can do, thanks to the implants placed in my skull by the government! Let me show you some more things, such as your nightmares!" That's not word-for-word, but it's pretty close~

Cassie tries to jump in and wrap him in her lasso, but Grymm uses some more of his powers to literally channel her own anger back down the lasso and attack her. He continues to jabber on, while he also uses a power to release some sort of toxin into their skin, which lets him control their bodies while their minds remain conscious. Bunker quickly turns this back on him, because Bunker's bricks are psionic--meaning he controls them with his mind which Grymm specifically said he wasn't controlling. The bricks plow Grymm backwards into a wall, knocking him out and releasing his hold on them and Skitter. Victory by sucker punch!

So we close out the issue with a solution for Kid Flash. They've essentially built him a containment suit. It's not bulky or anything, it's actually just a cool costume for him. But it will keep his molecules aligned and stop him from tearing himself apart as long as he wears it. And given his amnesia, he doesn't really have a civilian identity for this to interfere with. Showering might be an issue, though. The other three return from their battle with Grymm, not even bothering to mention it, and the lot of them--even Cassie--agree that it's time for Round 2 with Superboy.

This comic is better than last week’s, but I still hesitate to call it any good. I do like that they establish the universe a little and tie in Static without it even having to be a superhero team-up. Relying on Static for something other than his powers is actually a really cool moment for the character.

On the other hand, we have this doofus, Grymm. His edgy design, his dumbass name, his talky personality, the fact that he takes up most of the cover... He was genuinely not interesting enough for any of that. He was a punk, and he got taken out like one. Really, his whole thing feels like they were just trying to pad out the issue and make it exciting by putting a fight scene in it.

#comics #reviews #Teen Titans #Taiblog

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exalok · 5 years

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Psst hey hey if you take kisses prompts, 48 for corvodaud?

(friend, this monster got way out of hand. have 7000 words of two dudes who’re really bad at this kissing a lotwarnings: canon-typical violence, injuries, not-quite-nsfw, and heaps of miscommunication)

—

The first time Corvo came within reach of the assassin—in Rudshore, exhaustion and the after-effects of poison cutting him at the knees, the world swinging whenever he made a movement too sharp for his aching eyes to follow—he thought everything must have tilted again, the floor slanting under his feet, for the back of the Knife’s head to be level with his nose. A stumble nearly cost him the upper hand.

The second time, there had been no urgency: only him again, waiting on the Tower rooftop. He turned when Corvo came through the door—almost expectant, as though they had agreed to meet here under silver and black. In the dark, backlit by the moon, he looked once more the hulking danger, as large as Corvo had thought he remembered through Coldridge and three more cold months.

He didn’t straighten. Hunched, eyeing Corvo’s approach. The square block of his shoulders only just crested Corvo’s sternum.

A silence grew, measured, swelling with the quiet of a city on the edge.

“Weren’t you leaving?” Corvo asked—like he had forgotten the blood on those hands, like he wasn’t going to dream of that scar and that coat whenever he next fell asleep.

A twitch, a flicker of the eyes: the Knife caught unawares. He hadn’t been expecting this.

“She’s sleeping just below,” he said, redirecting, and for a moment Corvo wondered that he would choose her to focus on, rather than what bad blood already rested between them. “Your Empress,” he added, as though anyone else could matter.

He was right. A distance below the parapet, her window stood dark and shuttered.

“She is,” Corvo answered, and knew that Daud, in his peripheral vision, was watching his hands fail to go for his sword. “I’ll go down to her when the nightmares come.”

“I might be here for her.”

“You aren’t.”

“I might— I might have a contract for her head,” he said, and faltered—not as though the idea was repulsive, no, Corvo remembered the stories people had told about the Knife and knew that at least half of them were true, but because there was a wall of certainty in that answer he hadn’t expected to run straight into.

Corvo looked him in the eye.

“You don’t.”

This time, he drew himself up: stiff, nearly stone-carved. His eyes were pale.

Below the concealing thickness of his coat, Corvo let himself relax. He really was nothing like the horror in his dreams.

“It’s no mercy, you said.” The rest of him was a little easier to see, now, picked out in dim lines instead of hidden in his own overhanging shadow. One of his sleeves hung empty, the arm tucked against his side where Corvo had run him through.

“Nor forgiveness,” Corvo added, his own words still sharp in his mind.

Daud made some low acknowledgement. “Then why?”

He was too tired, even now—now most of all, perhaps, too tired for too long to be angry at a man left alive and demanding explanations, and what did he deserve to know?—but instead of fury a distasteful wash of pity rose in the cavern of his chest.

“You were all tools, more or less. Campbell, the Pendletons, the Lady Boyle—Burrows used them.” Corvo shrugged. “But you were furthest from the crown. You had no stake.”

“My stake was coin.” The words were harsh, spat between them like broken teeth. “Some would call that worse.”

“You were one of many knives he could have used to cut her down.”

“You ruined them,” the assassin snarled, jerking forward, and instead of attacking Corvo pushed him back with a hand in the center of his chest. “But you do nothing to me?”

He was no longer pushing; Corvo let his arm drop.

“You were the knife in his hand.” Daud sneered, and turned away. “But I heard what you said, when you thought no one was listening. I saw the dead in Rudshore.” His shoulders came up like he might curl in on himself, become shadow and dust and vanish into the Void. “You wanted to be something else, by the end.” You were already a ruined man.

“What end?” he growled. “Here I am at the top of your tower and you still haven’t killed me.”

“I don’t need to.”

“What if I tell you I lied? That I’m not leaving. Killing is my trade and I made myself a name here. Why should I leave any of it behind?”

“You can’t lie to me, Daud,” Corvo said, steady, eyes unerring.

The Knife stared at him in silence. In the inside pocket of Corvo’s coat, the Heart beat twice, a cold pressure against his ribs.

A month later, Corvo would wake to the stirring of the guards, and find the escaped perpetrator of a bomb attack on a Watch outpost, left hamstrung on the Tower steps, alive.

Rooftops, and black nights. There hadn’t been sign of him for weeks, and for the last few days Corvo had wondered whether he had finally allowed himself to leave—whether by boat, or by the Void—but as he moved to shove aside the rest of his never-dwindling paperwork Jessamine’s whisper rose from his breast pocket.

He is still full of sharp things. Her voice had been fading, lately. He could barely hear her now. Though he no longer wears a blade.

The assassin was crouched in the darkest corner he could find, staring through the high wall of the throne room. Construction had started on the secret space behind what had become Emily’s bedroom; high up, at the top of the Tower, she felt a little safer. She was sleeping there now.

Daud turned to face him.

“You have a leak,” he said, without reserve. “I don’t trust your staff. Wouldn’t have come here otherwise.” His eyes caught on the heavy box under Corvo’s arm, then rose to his face again.

“I hear the Whalers are still at it,” Corvo returned, devoid of accusation.

Daud’s gaze flicked away, his lip ticking up. “They’re under new management.”

“The Overseers were disappointed to find the music no longer worked on them.”

He looked worn, even with the dark blurring the worst of it out: bruising under his eyes, a heaviness to his movements. Too much of the muddled anger and concern he felt at the news showed on his face.

“They’ve been asked to leave the gangs to the Watch,” Corvo added, and let himself smirk at Daud’s suspicious glance, “Since the rumors of heresy no longer seem to hold.”

“Doubt they appreciated it.”

“No.” Corvo set the box down. “What did you come to tell me?”

The assassin, still crouched, dug around the inside of his coat and drew out a thin sheaf of papers. Corvo couldn’t see the handwriting, but imagined it was the same spidery kind he’d found inexplicably mixed with the Watch reports for months now. “Speaking of heresy.” Then, he heaved himself up with a grunt, knees cracking, but didn’t stop for longer than a shake of his leg before he held the notes out. “Talk of moving against the Academy, now the papers are spreading word of your pet scientists being close to the cure. Some kind of cult. They think the plague is a curse from the Void and should run its course, wipe out Dunwall and its corruption.” He grimaced. “Still haven’t found a base of operations.”

Corvo tucked the package away, and before Daud could vanish off into the night he slid the box forward with a shove of his foot.

A questioning look, shot at an angle like a dog still uncertain the hand meant to touch or to strike. “What’s this?”

“Gold and silver,” Corvo answered. “Consider it backpay for your work.”

For a moment he didn’t move—then he jerked back, the words hitting, teeth bared.

“I don’t want it,” he gritted out, moving to kick the box back, but Corvo was already there, blocking it with his boot, hardly an arm’s length left between them.

“You’ll take it.” Daud had drawn himself up, teeth no longer glinting but his jaw and neck a tense series of lines, half retreating, half threatening a charge. “Pay your Whalers with it. Gathering information, courier missions—better that than petty highborn squabbles.”

“They’re no longer mine,” he rasped, eyes flicking away and back like he might see them, all the way across the city.

Corvo huffed.

“Take the money, Daud.”

They did not speak of trust—what trust could be found here, when recent history had seen betrayal rip this place apart?— but Daud delivered him the city’s secrets and Corvo followed up, chasing down leads, still the Empress’s hound though he now had a pack of spies and guards at his back. Daud didn’t show his face again, relaying information through hard-faced messengers or the trussed-up suspects he still sometimes left in the courtyard—

Not until winter came again, tearing winds and sleeting rain, and he opened Corvo’s office window and climbed in, the ends of his coat dripping grimy water. When his feet touched the ground and he turned, the hair plastered to his face not enough to hide the scar, Corvo’s hand moved away from the gun.

It was trouble in Slaughterhouse Row: protestors turned saboteurs, moving earlier than planned. Charges in one of the factories.

“They’ll be delayed back to the old schedule, maybe later,” Daud said. The puddle at his feet was beginning to grow; Corvo motioned him to the bench, but he only stepped away from the darkening edge of the carpet. “I disarmed most of the charges.”

“Good work.”

A twitch in his cheek, like he’d been about to grimace. “One of them went off.”

His breaths were too shallow. Corvo finally picked up on the rougher edge to his voice.

“You need a medic?” he asked, and Daud’s mouth tightened.

“I know one.” His eyes darted around the office. “… Here was closer. Think I left some shrapnel in.”

From the slaughterhouses to Dunwall Tower was far enough; if there was metal in him, it had already had the time it needed to shred him from the inside. Once he was sat in the desk chair, the lamp pulled close, he took off his dripping coat. Underneath, the whole of his left side was torn, the shirt black with blood.

Hesitation as his fingers hovered over the handle of a narrow knife. His eyes were strange, staring at Corvo’s work spread out over the desk. The room sinking in. The light. Corvo had closed the window and come back around.

Daud jerked at the hand that pressed into his shoulder, then settled, his back stiff.

“Do what you need to,” Corvo said.

For fifteen minutes Daud dug the shrapnel out of his side; blood welled, slow then quickening as he breathed, and fell in sheets down his side. His shirt, rolled and stuffed in his belt, bore the brunt of it. By the time he took up the needle, his hands had started shaking—the cold, the blood loss, the eyes on him—and Corvo handed him the elixir he’d taken from his desk drawer, wordless.

Neat stitches; five lines of them. Some of the blood had soaked through the shirt and onto the chair, dark trails down its legs to the floor.

“Dock it off my pay,” Daud grunted, pulling the coat back on, and the corner of Corvo’s mouth curled up despite itself. At the window, one foot on the sill, he hesitated; glanced at the unfinished letters on Corvo’s desk, and cast a dark look at the tall clock by the bookshelf. It was half past one in the morning. His eyes, when they came back to Corvo, were all strange again. “Thanks,” he said.

Then he was gone.

There were other days—evenings, rather, sometimes late nights—not all of them, not even most, ending in blood. Corvo wondered, in the hours where he couldn’t sleep, that an assassin at his window would evoke so little fear.

The visits became what could almost be called a habit. Ten pm sharp, a knock at his window. Corvo grew used to keeping it unlocked. Quiet, he watched Daud move from the sill to the floor, then out into the room, a little further every time, eyes wandering—though when Corvo crossed his gaze, he would always return to the window and stare out with all of his predator’s focus, as though impatient to be dismissed.

He came with excuses, of course—notes, intel, names—but as with the window he would also always glare at the clock and its hands inching forward, and eye the growing piles of paperwork across Corvo’s desk. (They were sorted into three: very urgent, urgent, and maybe later. He hadn’t touched the last one in weeks.)

A few months in, as Daud swung open the pane, Corvo stood, withdrew the bottle of Old Dunwall from his topmost desk drawer, and poured a finger. He held it out. Daud, a wary slant to his gaze, padded forward and took the glass.

“How’s the weather out there,” Corvo asked, and Daud huffed, the tilt of his eyebrows sardonic.

“Balmy,” he answered. The slick of frozen rain across his hair was only just beginning to melt. It hung from the tips of his hair in heavy drops, threatening the whiskey.

“You don’t drink?” Corvo poured another, this time for himself. The glass remained untouched in Daud’s hand.

Daud shrugged. “Not often,” he said, but took a sip. Corvo let his own mouthful sit on his tongue until the burn reached his nose, and swallowed; like a wave, warmth followed. He let a moment pass, the clock ticking quiet in the background. On the other side of the desk, Daud took another sip—looked down at his glass, the alcohol rolling—savored. It was good whiskey.

“Reporting in might be easier if you weren’t coming through the window,” Corvo said, and Daud glanced up to him sharp.

“I can go back to sending messengers.” The words were neutral. A suggestion.

“I meant that I have a door,” he answered, light, and Daud’s expression twisted into doubt.

“Your guards wouldn’t let a face like mine through.”

“They would if I told them to.” He drank again, but when he looked up the rest of his words stopped, curled in his tongue.

It wasn’t distrust, what overshadowed the man’s face, nor entirely anger; maybe something closer to disbelief. Daud’s gloves were pulled tight across his knuckles, his hand clenched around the glass. Corvo set his own on the edge of the desk.

“Don’t you know, by now,” he rasped, “Not to let in people who can hurt you?”

They had already had this conversation, Corvo thought, putting the bottle of Old Dunwall away, on a dark rooftop more than a year ago, and he didn’t particularly care to have it again. Daud watched him sift through the newest letters a minute, dividing them across the piles.

“How’s your Empress sleeping these days?” he asked, pointed. Corvo looked up and met the challenge in his eyes. His lips tightened. Unimpressed. It would be funny, how little threat and how much worry he could hear in those words, if the assassin didn’t know exactly where to stab.

“She’s sleeping better.”

“You always leave her alone at night?”

He was pushing; elbow propped on the desk, hip out and eyes half-lidded, the essence of a gangster. Corvo leaned forward, hands spread in the middle of the mess of paper, uncaring for what he smudged or wrinkled.

“Do you fear for her safety?” he asked, and though pride was far from his personal sin he felt a curl of it rise at the absence of strain in his voice. “Would you like to see her? Go up, and tuck her in?”

Daud stared at him, jaw loose, until the shock in his gray eyes trembled into anger and he swung away—teeth bared, making no noise—tension ratcheting in his shoulders, his head jerking with the biting back of words—

His glass cracked down on the desktop, and he was back at the window with a few long, heel-stomping strides.

Like an afterthought, he took the latest pack of intel from his vest and threw it to the bench. On the sill, he turned on his heel and, pointing, red-faced, snarled:

“Go to sleep.”

Then he was gone.

The clock ticked on. It wasn’t even eleven yet.

Corvo sat at his desk, and poured Daud’s glass into his, glancing down at the letters he’d been sorting. He took a sip, then another, thoughts turning like cogwheels just beyond his reckoning.

He went for one more draught but his glass was already empty. A glance at the clock. Just past eleven.He went to bed.

Weeks passed without word—no visits, no messengers, and only one anonymous tip about something going on in the Distillery District. Corvo had looked at it, and wondered whether the unfamiliar handwriting was a Whaler’s; then, for most of the day after, questioned why he so badly wanted it to be so. He wasn’t even certain Daud had decided to follow his advice and hire them. His only lead was how fast they had seemed to fall out of public interest.

It hailed and rained for seven days in the middle of Hearths, no end in sight. A hailstone the size of a child’s fist broke through Corvo’s office window in the night; the hole was still there, papered over to keep out the wind, when on the evening of the eighth day the window clicked open.

His hand didn’t even twitch for his sword. He looked up, and Daud, scar throwing a crooked shadow down his face, flicked a glance around the room—and met his eye.

Corvo stood from his chair. Set aside, careful, the pieces of the crossbow he’d been cleaning. Came around the desk.

Daud hadn’t moved, still crouched there on the sill—wary like something unsure of its welcome. The leather of his boots creaked as he shifted in place. Corvo came to a stop just a foot away.

“Come down from there,” he said, quiet. “You’ll leave tracks.”

His lip curled and he muttered, “I’m not a dog in from the rain,” but he unfolded himself onto the floor.

“You’re right,” Corvo said, smirking a little. “The rain was yesterday.” He took in the sight of him.

Gray eyes, face lined. A new cut in the hem of his coat, well-mended. Back straight. Thick arms crossing over his chest—and as Daud tilted back a fraction to look him in the eye Corvo found himself entertaining the thought that he might, with some effort, be short enough to fit under his chin.

Corvo turned away.

“Send word if you’re going to disappear,” he said, coming back to the desk and lining up his filing system. “I like to know you aren’t dead. You’re useful to me.”

For days, Corvo thought back to that first real conversation at the end of the interregnum. Emily sleeping sound, the city and the Tower theirs again, it had felt like an end to a year of torture—the chair, the dark of the cell, the attic and all of their frantic forward movement—

Control, again. Certainty. He was hungry, but he would eat. He was tired, but he could sleep. Nothing could touch him—and so, nothing would touch her.

Cornered animals bite, he knew—but the assassin had been left free, bleeding but alive, free to go.

Certainty. Clarity. The clarity of dreams, faded by morning. Corvo had known, to the bones of him, two things: that Daud would not hurt his daughter, and that he very badly wanted to leave.

The assassin had stayed.

(Still, searching his own heart, Corvo found no fear.)

On the twenty-fifth of Songs Corvo put Emily to bed in the safe room, kissed her forehead and held her hand for the five minutes she allowed herself now that she was twelve and too old for childish things, Corvo, though not too old to want cake for dinner. He turned the lamp low, warm oil-fire casting everything in edges of gold. The rest of the letters were still waiting in his office.

Daud was there. Waiting by the open window. Corvo knew before his fingers found the knob of the whale-light and flicked it on.

Daud said nothing, the glow reflected in his eyes.

There had been times, before, where Corvo had looked into that face and seen that exact expression: a lurking, expectant intent. Wanting to wound, and knowing it would only be inviting the knife. Fleeting, mostly—until it crystallized, the night Daud pushed where he shouldn’t.

There had been times, since, where he had gone quiet or sharp, and Corvo had seen that look in the backs of his eyes.

It was there now. Corvo walked, slow, to the middle of the room.

I didn’t expect you this early, he thought, and opened his mouth to say the words, but Daud had already crossed the rest of the distance and was looking up at him, and his hands were weaponless but the honed edge of his focus could be mistaken for nothing less than a blade. When he stopped, and a second passed, it was not hesitation.

Corvo’s breath caught like a fishbone in his throat at the touch of a hand on the back of his neck. Light-fingered, then bold, the flat of Daud’s palm a hot stamp on his skin. In the moment before Daud yanked him down he wondered whether this was another one of his idle dreams.

Their lips crushed together, Daud’s searing and stiff—

and in the next moment Corvo had a hold of Daud’s forearms and pushed him back, wide-eyed, a damp, cooling line across his mouth. Daud had locked into place as though braced for an impact, gaze fleeing; when Corvo only held him still, his eyes narrowed and flicked back—wary, confused.

“Aren’t you going to defend yourself?” he rasped into the silence. Corvo let him go.

“… What was that?” he asked.

“What was that,” Daud repeated, snide, but in the cutting of his tone there was a crack that showed the shrivelled, rotting inside. “That was a man taking what he sees, when he deserves nothing but to pay the debt he owes. You as good as called me ruined, two years ago,” he spat. “Remember?”

“Of course I do.”

“Whatever you saw, it wasn’t half of all I have coming to me.”

There was something almost frantic to how he glanced down at Corvo’s hands, so still, so very far from the handle of his sword, but Corvo was at a loss for what to say.

He had known there was a shell there, one made from necessity; it had seemed less important than the fact that Daud still showed at his window, and forgot, sometimes, to bristle or bark—all shells wore down in time.

Here it was, worn. The thing inside held all the fear he had never bothered to feel.

Faced with a searching look edging on concern, Daud took a step back.

“If it’s the killing you’re against,” he said, voice flat, “The Fugue is in three days.”

Had he shock left to feel horror, Corvo would have balked.

“What am I meant to do with—” He gestured, sharp and uncontrolled. With this. With you. Daud leaned in, eyes as close to fervent as they’d ever been.

“Finish it,” he said. “Ruin me.”

Corvo stared down into the bone gray of his eyes—took hold of his shoulders—and kissed him.

Over the long hours of the Fugue, Corvo would think only of this: Daud’s mouth, snarling at first; the rough tips of his fingers digging bruises in Corvo’s arms; how he had growled when Corvo bit his bottom lip, and said, “Fine,” through clenched teeth, and surged up to meet him, drawing his body into a taut, solid line and fisting his hands in Corvo’s hair. He would think of how terrible Daud had been at kissing, and how bitter for it, throwing himself into the act with the violence of a sword fight.

He would think of what he had imagined then. The meeting of more than their mouths. What Daud’s short, harsh breaths might turn into, when he was pulled over the edge.

(The rest—Daud breaking away, and the untender furl of his brow as he stepped back onto the sill—he put aside for later.)

Daud returned on the second day of the new year.

Corvo looked up from a considerably slowed influx of correspondence, blinked, and blurted out, “I expected you’d be gone longer.”

Daud paused in the middle of stepping down, one leg still curled on the sill. “I thought it’d be unwelcome,” he said, voice neutral in the way that meant he was carefully picking his words, and put the other foot down. “Since you find me useful.”

Corvo watched as he padded close, slow, to lean a hip against the desk. One hand came to rest on its edge. He cast barely a look at Corvo’s work before meeting his eyes with singular focus.

It was, all in all, an artless seduction. Corvo discovered he was hopeless enough to be charmed.

He stood, moved to grab the lapel of Daud’s coat—and stopped. A furrow drew itself between Daud’s eyebrows.

(He had kissed like a man expecting to be struck down, and finding no sword at his neck, looking for one to throw himself onto. Some time ago, Corvo had let himself admit to wanting him, but he refused for desire to leave him blind. What he was getting was not exactly what it seemed.)

Corvo slid fingers around his nape instead, thumb pressed to the angle of Daud’s jaw. Daud’s eyes fixed on Corvo’s mouth. Corvo kissed him, light and close-mouthed, at the apex of his upper lip.

The frown back threefold, Daud took hold of the fabric at his shoulder and pulled him in.

It was all teeth and pressure, an irritated huff as Corvo first tried to gentle the clashing of their mouths, Daud coming back at it with a vengeance like he meant one of them to bleed—an especially rough yank on Corvo’s shirt slammed his hip into the desk and he bit down on a grunt, but when Daud tensed and pulled away Corvo brought his other hand up to frame the man’s face and draw him steadily back in.

For just a moment, Daud was still enough that Corvo hoped he might have calmed—but he jerked back, tearing out of the hold, and turned away. His hand twitched up, then stopped, mid-air but steady. It dropped. His face was at too far an angle to see his expression.

“The Fugue kept me busy,” he rasped, and Corvo imagined some of the rugged to his voice was because of him.

Daud reached into his coat. Searched a little lower. Switched sides.

“Must’ve dropped my notes,” he said, irony sliced cleanly away. “I’ll ask someone to bring them in.” He looked back, just once before leaving. His eyes were flint—then, like some strange alchemy, the color softened. “The letters will keep. Go to sleep, bodyguard.”

For a while Daud kept his distance, and the messengers reappeared, their faces a little less dour when they crossed Corvo’s path—but he never went too long before showing at the window again, though he was careful not to stray more than a foot from his exit. The one time Corvo stood to move closer, he whipped out his report from an inside pocket like he might parry an attack with it.

What were a few steps back, Corvo thought, throat thick with disappointment as he sat down again.

One evening, Daud watched him in silence for a quarter-hour while he struggled through an answer to a demand regarding the restoration of Rudshore. It was late, and his sleep the night before had been uneasy.

“Don’t you have people for that?” Daud asked from where he sat on the sill, smoking a thin cigar. The wisp of silver smoke wound around him and out into the night.

“I do.”

“Why not leave it to them?”

Corvo smirked, and glanced up. “Then there’d be no reason for you to come visit.”

Daud looked him in the eye. The end of his cigar flared red-white as he pulled in a breath, and when he breathed out the smoke poured, thick billowing plumes, from his nose. He took the cigar between thumb and forefinger.

“Don’t think you’re so clever,” he said, jabbing it in Corvo’s direction—but he stayed sitting there, for half an hour more, and when Corvo looked to him again and forgot, for an excusable minute, the letter under his hand, he did not look away.

At the end of the night, Daud spoke up again.

“I have someone who could help.” The cigar had long burned out; he had squashed the stub in the palm of his glove. “Has a way with politics, and loyal to a fault.”

“Loyal to you,” Corvo answered, though it wasn’t a reproach.

Daud’s gray eyes fixed on his. “You underestimate yourself.”

Corvo didn’t know whether he meant as a leader, and a man capable of inspiring trust—or something else, infinitely more precious. Wishful thinking, he imagined. The coldest of comforts.

“Do I know him?”

“You’ve seen him. Blond, curly hair. I sent him here a couple of times.”

“I remember.” Quiet; observant, but unobtrusive. “A Whaler?”

Daud hesitated, seemed to deliberate something—then huffed a barely audible breath. “My second-in-command, actually. Is that a no?”

“That’s a maybe.” Daud’s eyes flicked up and found Corvo’s on him, steady. “Send him here. I’ll see how he does.”

He nodded, and vanished from the window.

In the morning, Corvo could not remember why it had been so easy to agree—but neither, he found as he stared at the dark slats of the ceiling, did he regret. His bed was lonely, but it was warm. The thing he could feel growing like a creeping vine around his heart might be called trust.

By the time he was lacing up his boots, he was giddy enough to think of it as faith.

Emily watched him all through breakfast, blue eyes sharp.

“Did you sleep well?” she asked.

“I always do,” Corvo answered, and in speaking realized he’d had a smile tucked into the corner of his mouth. For once, the reassurance wasn’t exactly a lie.

She hugged his side before they went on their separate ways, her to her lessons and him to convene with the Watch over patrols around Holger Square, and he held her close—too tight, like he could feel the morning’s light-headed excitement threatening to blow him away, but instead of squirming she held him tighter, too. When Callista, not seeing Emily arriving, had to come fetch her charge, she said nothing.

He managed; and when night fell, and he returned to his office, Daud was waiting. It was impossible, seeing him, not to remember another night like this, hardly a month ago.

Daud looked up at the sound of the door.

“Attano,” he said, and though his eyes held as much strength as they always had the gray in them was soft. Corvo’s hand settled on the doorjamb. He wasn’t sure whether it was to stop from going forward, or to steady himself. “Come sit with me.”

“That windowsill wasn’t made for two people,” he answered, mouth quirking.

Daud’s lips pinched, and he snorted. “We’ll fit.”

They did: hips boxed in by the frame and touching, inevitably, though not as close as Corvo had both dreaded and hoped. Daud drew a case from one of his many pockets and offered him a cigar. Corvo declined. The match he struck flashed white in the dark.

The minutes stretched; above their heads, the brightest stars were only just coming into sight.

“I came into this with the wrong idea,” Daud said, cutting deftly through the silence. The outline of his nose and chin were highlighted in gold-ochre. He flicked the cigar, ash crumbling into the wind. “For that, I’m sorry.”

Corvo observed Daud’s profile—the broken arch of his nose, his always-beetled brow, the exact shade of his eyes in this light, just in case—and carefully considered his words.

“Are you sorry you kissed me?” he asked, and saw the pause in the movement of Daud’s hand.

“Shouldn’t I be?” he returned, not looking at him, and Corvo said,

“Please,” low and strained and sounding so much more vulnerable than he expected to be, “Just answer the question.”

From here, he could see how Daud’s eyes flicked side to side, just barely touching on the shape of Corvo’s knees. His thumb tapped the cigar despite there being no ash. He swallowed.

“No,” he rasped, and Corvo reached out a hand, fingers on the cold edge of Daud’s jaw, thumb at the line of his cheekbone. He kissed him: a single tender press, and withdrew. Daud’s hand clenched in the side of his vest kept him from going far.

“I don’t understand how this happened,” Daud said. He was close enough for Corvo to feel the hot wash of his breath, and his eyes were a little wild, the cigar forgotten in his other hand.

“Do you need to?” Corvo asked, and kissed him again, just because he could. Daud made some small unwary noise; it took Corvo a time to remember the rest of what he’d meant to say. “Sometimes things happen. I’ve heard it called fate, or the work of the Outsider.”

Daud grimaced. “He doesn’t care who’s fucking who.”

Corvo’s look sharpened. When he moved to get his knees on the sill and Daud stiffened, caught between turning to him and backing away, Corvo grabbed a hold of his thigh and said, “Don’t move.” His breath caught. It was the only sound Corvo could hear. “And don’t fall out.”

Then he came in close, kneeling and arched over him, and applied himself to finding out every sound a former assassin might make under the right kind of pressure.

It was a blessing, Corvo decided, that he was allowed this.

The blond Whaler took to the job well—Thomas, though if it was his given name or a pseudonym was anyone’s guess—and though Daud did not come to his window every night, when he did—

Words like all his came to mind, but Daud was not a man to be possessed, holding inside him a distance Corvo was well-placed to recognize. It was a bittersweet reminder in many ways. Still, the knowledge never stopped him, going from searching surface kisses exchanged on the windowsill to coaxing Daud inside the office, warm even as the city went cold again, then pushing him up against the wall and distracting him from the arms around his head by kissing him deeper, opening his mouth with his tongue.

Daud breathed in short little gasps through his nose, and his hands traveled up from Corvo’s back to his shoulders and his biceps. When Corvo stretched up further to feel Daud’s body go hard against him as it strained to follow, Daud pulled like he might heave himself up by the strength of his arms.

“You like feeling tall, bodyguard?” he asked, relaxing back against the wall having bitten Corvo’s lip in retaliation.

Corvo smirked. “It doesn’t take much. You’re so short—”

“What?” Daud snarled, and his outrage was too much for Corvo not to dip down again. He got bitten a second time for his trouble.

“If it weren’t for your boots I’d have almost a head on you,” Corvo said, muffled by the hand he’d pressed against his swollen lip. Daud glanced down as his tongue flicked out to lick at the split, then looked up again, irritated by his own distraction.

“Your soles can’t be that thin.”

“I’ll show you.”

They both unlaced and stepped out of their shoes. Corvo’s feet were bare; he’d taken off his socks, too, and was stretching his toes out on the floorboards, trying not to smirk as Daud, glaring at the top of his head, was forced to acknowledge a difference in height.

He grunted. For being non-verbal, the sound was remarkably reluctant. His eyes strayed down to Corvo’s bare feet, paused, and turned away.

Corvo watched him—fox-eyed, full up with satisfaction. The delight only grew at the sight of the red starting to peak at the back of Daud’s neck. Daud glanced at him, eyes narrowed, and growled.

“Put your shoes back on.”

“Or,” Corvo returned, smile stretching and sly, “You could take off your coat.”

Later, when the open window had cooled the air and Daud lay in his bed with his breeches pulled haphazardly askew, Corvo stretched and rolled onto his side. Daud looked back at him, quiet.

He had something specific in mind, but there was too much of the man here not to distract. Corvo traced a finger down the line of his clavicle, and dipped in to swallow Daud’s answering huff.

“There’s something I want to give you,” he said once he’d surfaced.

“What more?” Daud muttered, but when Corvo made a questioning noise he shook his head, and told him to continue.

Corvo reached out an arm across Daud’s chest and propped himself up on both elbows, wideset around Daud’s broad shoulders. He had let his hair keep growing, though it was well-cared-for now; it hung like a veil around them. Concealing. He held Daud’s gaze like that might be the hook that kept him in place.

“A place,” he said, “Here, in the Tower.”

Daud stiffened—but though he could have, he did not slide out from under him. His hands rose and clenched by Corvo’s shoulders like he might want to grab on, then dropped, falsely lax, to the mattress.

“Your daughter sleeps here,” Daud said, somber but not angry.

Corvo risked a palm against Daud’s cheek, a thumb brushed under his eye. He pushed into it, but his gaze shyed away.

“Won’t she be safer with more people like us by her side?” he asked. Daud swallowed.

“How many times have you been betrayed?” he demanded, stiff-jawed and evading again, and Corvo took hold of both sides of his face then, bending, leaned their foreheads together.

“Do you plan on betraying me?” he asked, looking straight into Daud’s eyes.

His breath had gone short. “You know I don’t.”

It was strange, how ruined he sounded. Twice as much as he had, once, almost three years ago. Corvo pressed their mouths together, hungry with longing, and Daud gave himself to it entirely.

There were still nights where Corvo couldn’t sleep; where three years of relative calm were not enough to settle him, and he lay, a live wire, in sheets that felt like waiting restraints. Most times, Corvo would throw off the blankets, pull on the clothes he’d discarded and reread, feverish, the bits and pieces of correspondence that had hit him as wrong.

Once, Daud came to him.

“I saw the light on,” he said, stepping down from the sill, to Corvo’s questioning look, which meant he’d been out too late on another mission. The hypocrite. “You’re not at the letters again, are you?” Coming up to the desk, he hesitated—then came around to Corvo’s side and slid a hand in his hair, fingers digging in and scratching. Corvo leaned into him with a rumbling sigh. The coat was cold, but the solid body underneath was enough of a comfort. He squinted up at Daud’s pinched face, bleary.

“Let’s run the rooftops together,” he said, pushing into the hand. Daud would be tired, but no more than he was; certainly they could dash across the neighborhood without falling to their deaths.

“Nostalgic now?” Daud obliged him and scratched again, from the dome of his head to his nape. “How long have you spent behind this desk? You couldn’t keep up.”

Corvo glared up at him through a mess of tangling hair.

“I’ll make you eat those words,” he said. The challenge in Daud’s eyes made the blood thump through him.

It was an exhilarating race—but one where they didn’t go further than three buildings away from the block of the Tower, and one where neither was ever far from the other, whoever was ahead always taunting, the both of them flashing across the void between roofs neck and neck.

The wind stung Corvo’s face, whipped back the tails of his overcoat. Daud, always careful, didn’t laugh—but Corvo caught the flash of his grinning teeth in the moonlight. On their circle back Daud caught his sleeve and backed him up against a chimney, rising to take his mouth—

And he transversed away, Corvo confused then snarling after him.

Daud was the first to climb back through the still-lit window, and when Corvo reached the ledge below it he leaned out, hands catching Corvo by his lapels both to keep him from falling and to keep him there, chest barely clearing the sill, Daud towering above him.

He showed his teeth, panting and sharp-eyed, the smile a little nasty.

“How does it feel to have the tables turned?” he asked, and bent, slowly, at the waist, down, down, until he was close enough to brush their noses together. Corvo, still wheezing from the race, strained up on tiptoe to lip at his mouth until he deigned, magnanimous, to close the last of the distance.

When he withdrew, long enough after that Corvo’s legs were starting to hurt (never, never long enough), his lips were red from kissing and his pupils turned to deep black pits.

“Daud,” Corvo said, shoulders flexing like he might climb up to the sill, but when Daud’s hands tightened to help him up he said, “Again,” and Daud groaned somewhere deep inside his chest.

In Corvo’s bed, the lights turned off and the blankets hot around them, Daud would turn on his side and his fingers would touch, light as moths, the skin of Corvo’s shoulder.

“I think I understand now.” Daud was not a delicate man, but he could be gentle. He was gentle now. His voice echoed through his chest into Corvo’s arm.

What do you understand? Corvo might have asked, there in the dark. Wanting to be small? Wanting to enfold? Wanting, and maybe having, simply?

He asked no questions; neither those, nor others, less easy to put into words. To be understood was enough.

#dishonored #corvodaud #writins #it's got fade-to-black boning

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365daysofsasuhina · 5 years

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[ 365 Days of SasuHina || Day One Hundred Fifty-Five: Twelve Babies ] [ Uchiha Sasuke, Hyūga Hinata, Inuzuka Hana ] [ SasuHina, pregnancy ] [ Verse: Best Years of Your Life ] [ AO3 Link ]

It starts when she’s coming in with an armful of groceries. Juggling the bag and her keys, Hinata pauses as she hears a soft sound. A few glances around the front porch, however, reveal nothing...and she doesn’t hear it again. Listening a moment longer, she then mentally shrugs and heads in. There’s still several more bags to pack in, after all. And for the moment, she’s all alone with Sasuke at work. Which leaves all the grocery-carrying to her.

Once everything is put away, she changes into a pair of worn shorts and a tank top, hair pulled into a tail behind her head and a visor snug over her brow to shade her face. Gloves pulled onto her hands, she heads back out through the front door to do a bit of yard work. The flowerbeds in the front are getting a bit overrun with weeds. It’s time yet again to go to war with the unwanted flora!

Ten minutes in, she stills. There’s that noise again! Sitting back on her haunches, Hinata looks over the yard. Funny...she doesn’t see anything. The houses on either side are quiet. What on earth…?

There! Again! Head turning, she pinpoints it somewhere to her left. Is there...something under the front porch? Hesitating - what if it’s a racoon? They carry rabies! - she sidles over to the lattice that goes all the way around the underside of the porch.

Or...well, most of it. As it so happens, there’s a piece broken off along the house. Great...there is something under there, isn’t there?

Nibbling her lip, she heads in for a moment to grab a flashlight, reemerging and kneeling by the hole. A button is pressed, and the light cuts through the dark under the porch.

A few random bits of junk - must be from the previous owners - are scattered about. Old broken flower pots, some spare lattice...and a cardboard box…? Heaving a small, curt sigh, Hinata moves around to a better angle to see into said box. Peering through a hole of the lattice, she aims her light...and gasps softly.

Staring with round eyes, giving a quiet growl...is a cat.

“Aww...hey, kitty,” Hinata greets softly. “What are you doing under there…?”

Still the feline growls, Hinata angling the beam to keep from blinding them.

“It’s okay! I’m not gonna hurt you. Gosh, I thought you were a trash panda…” Shifting her weight, she tries to think of what to do. “...hold on!”

Back in she goes, fetching a can of tuna fish. Cracking it open, she forks some into a tupperware bowl...and then gets a second for some water. Placing both near the hole by the house, she calls, “Here kitty kitty! Are you hungry?”

It takes a minute, but the smell of tuna coaxes them to peer around the edge of the box, sniffing with soft snorts. Creeping along as Hinata settles herself back a ways, the cat - a little black one with a splotch of white on their chest - slowly emerges just enough to scarf down several chunks of tuna.

And it’s then Hinata notices, this is a fat cat! But...fat in a sort of...odd way. Almost like…

...oh no.

“...you’re pregnant, aren’t you?” she notes quietly. What is she supposed to do with a wild, pregnant cat?

Sasuke is going to be thrilled.

Not.

Watching her eat (and then get a long drink), Hinata nibbles her thumbnail, sat on the grass. Should she...call the pound? But surely that would be a lot of stress for a kitty that’s so clearly close to popping…

...oh! Duh!

Taking her phone out of her pocket, Hinata sends a quick text. Thankfully it only takes Kiba a few minutes to reply.

Yeah, I can see if my sis has some spare time - she helps with rescues a lot. And she can make sure the cat’s healthy. I’ll text you when I hear back.

Hinata breathes a sigh of relief. Thank you - I just want to make sure mama and babies will be okay!

Having little else to do but wait, Hinata wraps arms around her bent knees, watching her new feline friend eat her meal. “I wish you weren’t scared of me, kitty...I promise I don’t want to hurt you…!” But alas, cats can’t understand something so easily - she’ll have to earn her trust, first. Hopefully Hana will know some tips and tricks for that.

All the while, her guest keeps one wary eye on the human. It doesn’t take long to clean up every scrap of tuna.

“Gosh, you must be really hungry…! Do you...want some more?” She also just got some chicken...maybe that would be better on an empty stomach. Ever so slowly, Hinata moves to get to her feet.

In a flash, the cat disappears back under the porch.

“Oh -!” Trying to gesture, Hinata wilts. Well...she should have expected that. Setting her jaw, she picks up the dish and heads back inside.

One cut up piece of chicken later, she returns, setting it back in the same spot...and this time, sitting a little closer. As before, the kitty approaches slowly, watching Hinata with a heaping amount of suspicion.

“You’re okay,” she murmurs, trying to calm her. “I’m not gonna hurt you...it’s just m-me and you. You’re safe, pretty little kitty.”

On she goes, mostly just talking nonsense to try to adjust the cat to her voice. Reaching the dish, the soon-to-be mother heads right on in to eating.

As tempted as she is to try and pet her, Hinata refrains. Mostly because she knows that won’t work, but also because she can’t know what trouble this kitty’s gotten into: parasites, illnesses...she might not be safe to touch.

And then Sasuke’s car pulls into the driveway. Tensing, the cat - surprisingly - doesn’t flee, eyes round again and clearly scared.

“Easy! Easy…” Hinata urges. “It’s just Sasuke. He’s my husband. He loves kitties!”

“Hinata? Who are you talking to?”

She just points, Sasuke coming around and then stopping in surprise. “...oh! Is that cat...pregnant?”

“I think so. Poor thing is so hungry...I’ve been trying to make friends!”

Just as curious, Sasuke takes a seat beside her.

Torn between her appetite and her fear, the cat lingers in inaction for a while before taking another bite.

Feeling her phone vibrate, Hinata gets a text from Hana. Can be there in twenty minutes - be careful not to approach, get scratched / bit

True to her word, the vet soon arrives, a carrier and a catch pole in hand. “So, she’s under the porch?”

“Mhm...we had her out to eat, but she got nervous at your car.”

The couple stand aside as the vet gets to work, laying on her belly and fishing around for the feline. Soon there’s a startled howl as she gets ahold of her, and Hinata can’t help a flinch. Fishing her out, Hana carefully gets her into the crate.

Immediately, the cat shrinks into a corner, hair on end and pupils like dinner plates.

“...well, I’ll have to do a lot of tests, make sure she doesn’t have any mites, fleas, diseases...but if she checks out, I’ll let you know.”

“Will...will she need a foster home?”

Hana perks a brow. “...are you offering?”

Hinata looks to Sasuke, who deadpans. “...Hinata…”

“We can help find the babies homes! Haven’t you always w-wanted a cat since we moved in?”

“Yeah, one. Not a whole...troupe.”

“Kittens are pretty easy to get adopted,” Hana offers. “Everyone loves baby animals.”

“Pleaaase?”

The Uchiha sighs. “...oh, all right. But we have to make sure she’s safe and healthy first.”

“Mhm!”

A week passes as Hana does tests and cleans the cat up, doing her best to socialize her. “I think she was someone’s housecat,” she reports over the phone. “She doesn’t have a chip, but she’s actually gotten a little friendly. Still very scared, though.”

“Aww…”

“You sure you want her in your house? She didn’t have fleas, and seems clean besides some ear mites I treated her for...but who knows if she’s housebroken, or won’t go nuts and jump on everything.”

“I’m sure!”

Thankfully, the couple have a spare room in their little house: what was going to be an office, but has mostly just been storage as the project keeps getting pushed back. Hinata does her best to clean it up, investing in a large dog crate filled with second hand store blankets, water and food, and a small litter box.

Hana brings the kitty back a few days later, helping move the very round cat from one crate to another. Curling up in a corner, she stares with wary eyes.

“Hey there,” Hinata greets with a smile.

“Got a name picked out yet?”

“Hm...no, not yet.”

“She seems nice, just...very shy of people. She hasn’t bitten or scratched - very well-behaved. I’m willing to bet she’s a housecat that got pregnant, and the owner just...tossed her out rather than deal with the kittens.”

“Oh, how horrible…”

“But, she’s got a good home now. Once the kittens are born and old enough, I’ll help you find homes. Shouldn’t take much.”

“Thank you!”

Kittens, as it turns out, aren’t far off.

As a matter of fact, they only wait about a day before arriving.

Going in to check her the following morning, Hinata freezes at the sounds of soft, tiny mews. “...oh my g-gosh!”

Very carefully checking the cat’s nest of blankets, Hinata counts a whopping twelve babies. Twelve little kittens!

“Holy smokes, mama! No wonder you were so hungry, having all those little ones in there!”

Sasuke doesn’t believe her until he gets home to check himself. “...well I’ll be darned.”

Most of the kittens are shades of black or grey, but a few are tabby colored. “Well, I guess we know what the dad looked like…”

“Freeloader, not even sticking around to raise the kids.”

Hinata giggles. “I guess that falls to us, huh?”

Hana comes to check them, also amazed. “You don’t see litters this size very often! But they all look healthy...what a good mama.”

Hinata starts her new home hunt early. Everyone she knows gets a call advertising the little kitties.

Kiba’s girlfriend agrees to take one. Naruto and Sakura too, if they can get a pet deposit in their apartment. Shino politely declines, citing an allergy. Kurenai, Hinata’s favorite high school teacher, agrees to one. Ino goes in for two. Sasuke’s brother lets his wife talk him into one. Shisui agrees to one, as does his mother. Even Hanabi manages to convince Hiashi to let her have one. That leaves three unaccounted for, which Hana assures them won’t take long.

Sasuke, however...quickly becomes attached. He’s told her before of his family’s love for cats, as evident by their percentage of participation. But more than once, Hinata catches him in the spare room, letting himself be overrun by kittens.

As time goes, the mama cat quickly warms up to them both.

“How about Oreo?”

“You have any idea how overused that name is for black and white animals?”

“Cuz it fits!”

“...how about...Shadow?”

“...what was that about overused?”

Staring at her, Sasuke then brightens. “...Bowtie.”

“What?”

“Her white mark on her chest! It looks like a bowtie!”

Hinata stares...and then laughs. “It does!”

Once the kittens are old enough, they get one last checkup by Hana, and then get dispersed to their new homes.

And Bowtie gets spayed.

“I think one batch of twelve babies was enough for the poor thing,” Hinata agrees.

“Yeah...one cat is plenty. For now.”

“...for now.”

.oOo.

Me: I should keep my dailies short so I don't burn out for the Tumblr event! Me: *writes this, which is almost 2k words* ...welp xD Typically I try to average about 1200 words for these drabbles...I think last I checked the overall average was actually 1400-ish? So even then I've managed to go a bit overboard, lol - I just...really liked this prompt and had to flesh it out a bit more than usual xD Anywho, Hinata found a kitty! Which then led to MANY MORE kitties! Which I promise all ended up with good homes. And that's...really all there is to this, lol Remember folks: spay and neuter your pets! Anyway, on that note, I'm gonna go pass out! Still got a LOT of writing ahead of me for the next three days, so I need some sleep - thanks for reading!

#sasuhina #uchiha sasuke #hyūga hinata #inuzuka hana #pregnancy //#best years of your life [ au ]#365daysofsasuhina

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agl03 · 6 years

Note

Hi! Do you have any guesses as to what possible arcs we could be dealing with next season? (Sorry I know it’s early, I’m just worried that the new additional characters and potentially more of the secret warriors will take away from our mains and their own storylines. Especially since we have a shorter season)

Hi Anon,

I have ideas but I might as well be throwing darts blindfolded in the dark here. So this could be considered more of a wishlist than prediction at this point. And news from SDCC this weekend could totally blow this all out of the water.

With the shorter season they will tell a tighter story, I’m still hoping for two interconnected pods.

So this got crazy long and I need to put it under the thing. As always please do Manage Expectations.

Major Time Jump

The soft reset allows them to have gotten Fitz back, get Shield re-established/upgraded, and position the characters where they need too for the story.

Mad Science 2.0

If that casting announcement was legit I’m leaning towards a more Mad Science angle again…which I am SO HERE for.

Shield is back

After their very public appearance in the finale, I’m looking for Shield to be back out of the shadows.

With that we’ll see more the Shield of Season 1, a larger operation, more agents, and upgrades to things like the Lighthouse.

Possibly even see things like the Academy restarted for new agents. This would also allow for some team members to have left the team. IE Fitzsimmons are doing Sci-Tech and May has Operations.

Marvel Rising Connection ???

This was a tease from Chloe and it could be anything from one of the characters showing up to some of Quake’s backstory/powers showing up on Shield. I need more to go on here.

No more Hydra…really please….no more Hydra.

Those that follow me know I’d love AIM but something like the Zodiac could work too.

Get the band back together

This still is one of my favorite theories that evolved last season during the team fracture. And they can still pull it off especially if there is a decent time jump in the mix. Not everyone has to be gone but a few of the team could have left and the Shield we come back too is very different than the last time we saw them.

I can absolutely see Fitzsimmons leaving Shield once they get Fitz back. Tired of being torn apart and needing to heal. We the audience would miss the reunion, healing, and ‘honeymoon’ period but would also get to see a bit of that happy time before they are pulled back in by the mission. I would also take they’ve left to restart the Academy.

May left with Coulson, she may not have returned after his death. Either retiring or going into a new line of work.

Deke was off seeing the world so his return will be a ‘surprise’. I can see him popping in with Nana and Bobo from time to time or striking out on his own path.

No one throw things at me but I could also see Mackelena breaking up over a long jump. The last two seasons have seen them at odds for a fair chunk of eps only to poof, it’s all better in the finale. I could see the strain of Mack being Director, his overprotectiveness, and Elena’s I do what I want and stop babying me attitude leading to a split. Then they could come back together as the season progressed.

Coulson

He’ll be back…somehow. How and why will be one of the major mysteries of the season.

An arc I would personally find very interesting is if the team had to go against Coulson. They’ve never had to fight Coulson and the fighting your leader trope is a common one (see Picard in Best of Both Worlds).

May

I really enjoyed May’s arc with Robin last season but she is always a hard one for me to predict.

I think out of the gate we will see her coming to terms with Coulson’s death then if he’s back she’ll be pretty deep in the mystery of how, why, and what that means for their relationship.

Daisy

She is another tough one for me right now. Last season the leadership arc was clear but now we are in new territory. I feel the writers need to be very careful because they have almost made Daisy too powerful and as such they have to keep taking away her powers or keep her out of the mix during fights.

I would love to see Daisy in more of a right hand for Mack and mentoring new recruits. Much like May was for Coulson.

She would also quickly be drawn into the mystery of Coulson’s return.

I DON’T want them to recycle the same tropes of:

Daisy gets kidnapped

Daisy is the obsession/target of the baddie

Daisy defies orders or ignores the council of others and gets captured.

Daisy loses her powers

A love interest unless it works with the story and the chemistry works too.

Mack

I am SO HERE for Director Mack and this time we’ll get to see it for more than an episode.

His arc will be coming into his own as a leader. Finding that balance. And at some point, he will have to make some really hard choices the others don’t agree with.

They could also have him have to deal with a moral dilemma.

The Mackelena relationship no matter where they are at with it.

Elena

Like Daisy and May she is hard to predict.

As I said above I’m actually pretty down for some conflict with Mackelena (really Philinda and Fitzsimmons need a break here).

Elena is going to be doing a lot of kicking butt and taking names.

Fitzsimmons….yeah I’m putting them together

A large part of their arc will be determined by if they have Fitz back or not.

If they don’t then we’ll see Jemma healing and be stopping at nothing to get him back followed by the aftermath of reconnecting.

If they do have him…really…I’m tired I just want them together dang it. Let the freaking be together sciencing and talking about or having babies.

Baby bomb is on the table and we’ll know pretty quick if they paid that one off.

This is also the theory for me that has gone into FItznapping/Role Reversal territory and I’m afraid it’s gonna be one of those I should have been careful what I meta’d things.

If the story is more science-based it means that Fitzsimmons will have a larger role which again…here for. One of them could even be a target of the baddie. This time it could be Jemma as Fitz was AIDA’s target…but let’s not forget Fitz is their favorite red herring.

Jemma is going to be protective as all get out of Fitz.

Another round with The Doctor. The writers won’t pass up an opportunity to use The Doctor again somehow. To have to have Fitzsimmons face down their worst fear.

My hope is if they do go there again they do it right. Not as a plot device. And this time allow Fitz to defeat him.

Deke

I will be SHOCKED if he’s not back…I also suspect he’ll be promoted to regular status.

We will see what path Deke has chosen now that earth isn’t going to blow up.

More time with Nana and Bobo.

I’m clinging to the idea that when they rescue Fitz the pair really hit it off.

My personal headcanon is he has become a voracious reader and has a thirst for knowledge like his Grandparents.

We’ll see his knack for electronics again and my dream is he’s working in a lab with Fitzsimmons.

Again no one pelt me with rotten fruit but I don’t want to see him become a Shield agent.

We had that possible character tease of 2 Mercenaries, Butterfly, Professor L, and Rando Redshirt agent who will die.

JACO: A male in his 30s, with an open ethnicity, and a height of 6’4″ or taller, Jaco is described as a silent mercenary who has both brains and brawn, who sounds hyper-intelligent when he speaks.

PAX: A younger male in his 20s, who is a dangerous mercenary like Jaco but has a humorous streak to him.

My bet is these two are a duo and all sorts of trouble.

They will either be after the team, act as a foil for the team, or uneasy allies.

Won’t be at all shocked if they are tied to Professor L.

BUTTERFLY: A female in her 20s, described as unpredictable, aloof, spacey, but nonetheless lethal. Like Jaco and Pax, Butterfly is slated to be a recurring guest star throughout the season.

Suspect she will be Inhuman or have some sort of powers.

Maybe allied with Jaco and Pax.

This is where I can see Daisy being a mentor coming into play and she wants to help Butterfly or take her under her wing.

PROFESSOR L: a brilliant teacher in his 60s who has a positive outlook on humanity but at the same time is disgruntled, bitter, and a mess of a person outside. Professor L will be a recurring guest star as well.

I know I’m not the only one totally attached to the idea that he’s a former teacher or mentor of Fitzsimmons or somehow connected to them.

I have a feeling this guy is going to make me miss Dadcliffe big time.

Why he is so bitter will be a major factor in how things play out.

He likely has a plan that he thinks will make things better that is either way evil or going to backfire badly.

AGENT DAMON: A new SHIELD soldier who is described as being handsome, likable, cool, and funny, but unlike the rest of the characters in this breakdown, and like most SHIELD agents that appear on the show, Agent Damon is only slated to appear for one episode.

Redshirt, RIP

Hopefully, we pick up some more hints over the next couple of days!

#aos spoilers #aos speculation #ask agl03 #me shooting into the dark here

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strangershield · 6 years

Text

Stay with me

Pairings: Lincoln Campbell x reader

Request:

Warnings: lots of fluff and angst (like a lot), blood, very mild violence. I got carried away so it’s pretty long

A/N: (Y/N/N) means your nickname. Requests are open so please send me a prompt or idea! Thank you to whoever requested this, I hope it’s what you had in mind!

As soon as Coulson gave you the mission you knew that Lincoln wouldn’t approve. After getting injured in the field you had only been given the green light last week. To be fair, it was a simple mission: go in, get intel, leave. It wasn’t a solo one either and you knew that Daisy and Hunter would never let anything bad happen to you. Besides, you were one of SHIELD’s best agents despite being one of the newest members. You accepted the mission and took the file, knowing that you need to get back out there. For once you had actually listened to Jemma and had taken the month off you needed.

“I know you’re ready to get back in the field (Y/N) and frankly, I’m surprised you didn’t disobey the doctor’s orders.” Coulson said as if he could read your thoughts.

You laugh at him. “I guess SHIELD has made me a better listener sir.”

This time he laughs and dismisses you. You smile and leave his office. There is 24 hours until the mission, which means you have 23 to tell Lincoln.

“No.”

“No? You can’t make me not go.”

Anger starts to boil in the pit of your stomach as Lincoln scans the documents Coulson gave you. You knew he wouldn’t agree easily yet you didn’t expect him to say no.

“Lincoln, I need this. I need to get out there, to feel useful again.”

“I agree, but not this mission. It’s dangerous. Did you read these? What if Ward or whatever his name is these days is there?”

You shrug and cross your arms, moving to stand facing him. He keeps his focus on the documents.

“Hm, I don’t know what I’d do. Oh wait, Daisy will be there. And Hunter. And me. I’m more than capable of defending myself.”

“Trust me I know that (Y/N). Remember how we first met?”

Finally he puts the file down to look at you as you smile at the memory. He was on a mission with Daisy that required them to go undercover in a dodgy neighborhood. You were in the same area, walking home after a long day at work. Some men decided that they’d rob you right then and there. One of them even had a gun. Yet they didn’t expect you. Lincoln and Daisy had watched as your eyes turned stormy and your powers began to work. Mind control was something you hated to use but was handy in certain situations. After discovering your powers and lots of practice you found out how to put a person in agony without inflicting pain: their mind. You discovered shorty after gaining powers that you could manipulate the mind into thinking it was in pain when really it was fine. It was a nasty trick but a handy one. Lincoln and Daisy then approach you because you were: 1) an inhuman and 2) powerful. It was the beginning of everything good in your life. Sighing you let your arms drop and drape them around Lincoln’s neck. Instinctively he puts his around your waist and stares into your eyes.

“Please?” You plead, your voice barely above a whisper. “I need this Lincoln. I need you to believe in me.”

You watch his eyes as he becomes physically torn as he debates the two sides of the argument, stuck between your safety and your trust. Finally he sighs. “Okay, go. I’ll support you. I always have so why stop now?”

Smiling you let a small laugh escape and close the gap between you, kissing him softly. He smiles and kisses you back.

“Promise me you’ll be safe.”

You extend your pinky finger to him. “Pinky promise.”

He laughs at your childish ways but extends his own and links it with yours. You both laugh and let go before he lies down on his bed. Grabbing the file you join him, the two of you cuddling as you read it thoroughly. Lincoln kisses your forehead as you read, thinking about how lucky he is to have you and how much he needs you.

“Be safe (Y/N/N). Be safe.”

May lands the quinjet as you try to regulate your breathing, your leg bouncing at rapid speed.

“Whoa relax mate,” Hunter says as he looks over to see your panicked state. “It might be your first mission back but you’re better than me and probably even Daisy. Don’t sweat it.”

Daisy looks over at him with an eyebrow raised and he holds his hands up in surrender. “Just trying to be helpful.”

The quinjet lands successfully and the three of you quickly undo your seatbelts. Your nerves get worse.

“Hey, (Y/N),” Daisy puts her hand on your moving leg. “It’ll be okay.”

You smile. “I know, it’s just been so long.”

She tells you that she understands before you both gather what you need. Coulson held another briefing that morning to remind everyone of the mission and the objective. He had also decided to send May as the pilot and emergency back up. You recheck your gun and suit as Hunter and Daisy do the same. Like Daisy you don’t really need a gun but you feel better to have one just in case. Besides, it feels natural. Soon you’re all ready to go and leave the quinjet.

“Okay I’m going through the front,” Daisy says as you approach the old HYDRA base. “Hunter, take the left. (Y/N), right.”

Hunter and yourself agree before parting ways. Slowly you approach the door on the right and take your gun out of the holster. Before you enter your mind wanders to Lincoln and for a moment you regret coming on the mission. The thought is gone as quickly as it came. Lincoln believes in you and that’s all that matters.

“Shit!”

Gunshots fire from everywhere when you meet Hunter in what appears to be the main controls room. The two of you duck and take cover as shots fire from every angle and you both desperately try to find the shooters.

“Bloody HYDRA,” Hunter mutters as he shoots two of the soldiers. “That’s two.”

“Three.” You say, shooting another. A few minutes pass but the bullets don’t stop. Hunter tries to call Daisy but she can’t be reached. You try only to discover that your earpiece was hit by a bullet when you took it off a few minutes ago. “Great, just great.” You mutter. As you sit in your crouched position waiting for the gunshots to slow you see it, directly opposite from you. The files that SHIELD so vitally needs.

“I found them! The files!” You shout over the shots. Hunter looks at you, bewildered.

“What?” He yells back.

“The files!”

His eyes go wide with understanding as you look at him. Hunter fires another couple of bullets while your eyes shift, now glued to the files. If you get them you can all leave. Those files are what stand between mission failure and success, SHIELD vs HYDRA. You glance around the room and spot a sniper trained on Hunter. Eyeing the man you focus on your powers and find your way into his mind. Before he can take the shot he screams in pain and staggers backwards. Some soldiers look at him, confused, giving you a chance to shoot them. Hunter shoots one and looks at you. “Thanks.”

“Don’t sweat it.”

Despite the deaths you both have caused you are still greatly outnumbered. You curse when you run out of bullets, left to your powers. Hunter reloads his own gun and swears, cursing Daisy for not answering. As if he developed a sixth sense three soldiers are forced backwards and are knocked unconscious as Daisy enters. You sigh in relief and look at the files again before making eye contact with Hunter. He gets the message and shakes his head furiously ‘no’. You decide to ignore him and mouth ‘sorry’. Taking a breath and a final glance around, you leap up and run towards the files. You make it. Quickly you take them and prepare to find shelter when you spot a USB with the HYDRA symbol on it. You hesitate before grabbing that too. Who knows what could be on it. Before you can turn to run Hunter yells out your name. You take the hint and run but are stopped mid stride. The world stops and starts running in slow motion. You feel the bullet pierce your suit before your skin, slowly entering your stomach. The ground awaits your fall, the files already sliding across it. Distantly you hear a scream which might have been your own. You make contact with the concrete, landing awkwardly on your right arm which makes an awful snapping sound. The scream continues. Then time returns to its normal self. Hot pain paralyzes you as it spread from your stomach to every cell in your body. Breathing makes it worse. Your arm is no better. Just thinking about moving it makes you want to throw up. You only notice that the shooting has stopped when Hunter rushes over to you. He got the last one. He drags you into his lap, which causes you to groan, as Daisy runs to you. With the pain you can hardly comprehend what is happening.

“May, (Y/N)’s been hit. We need to quinjet now. Yes now. Hurry!” Hunter yells into his earpiece as Daisy tries to inspect your bullet wound. She talks to you but you don’t understand anything. Hunter turns pale when he spots your broken arm. From there everything blends into one. Daisy and Hunter exchange words while you remain oblivious to them. You begin to feel light headed, a side effect from the pain and blood loss. With your non-broken arm you press your hand to your stomach and instantly retreat, the pain too much. You move your arm to the side but you can feel the liquid coating your fingers. Suddenly you feel the need to see it. Your own blood. Apart of you thinks this isn’t real, so maybe seeing the blood will make it real. You raise your hand and get distracted by your fingers, which are coated crimson red as expected. They’re covered in your blood. It’s real. You must’ve passed out for a moment because when you open your eyes you’re in the quinjet, Daisy attempting to help. She tells you to stay awake and apologizes. She needs to apply pressure to the wound. The world burns in a white light of pain as you pass out again.

Lincoln rushes over to you as soon as you’re wheeled in. He looks at your pale body and starts to lose control. The SHIELD medical team start prepping you for immediate surgery and eventually Jemma guides Lincoln away.

“I know you love her but she needs surgery. She needs space.”

“She’s my girlfriend. She needs me.”

Jemma shakes her head. “I’m so sorry Lincoln, but you need to leave.”

She turns and wipes her eyes before turning to you. Daisy comes and eases Lincoln away, helping him out of the room. “I’m sorry Lincoln. I’m so, so sorry.” She cries as he cries too, both of them watching as your body is swallowed by swarms of doctors.

Your coma had lasted for three weeks so far and Lincoln never left your side. No one seemed to know why you’re in one. You had lost blood but not enough to induce a coma and the bullet didn’t hit any vital organs. Technically you should be awake and recovering by now. Jemma suspected it was to do with your powers but couldn’t figure out how it was connected. It didn’t matter to Lincoln. He just needed you awake. He only left you in those weeks if he was forced out by the doctors. Otherwise, he stayed. He had meals brought to him at the appropriate times and slept in the chair next to your bed. When you showed no signs of waking up Jemma arranged an extra bed next to you as she knew that Lincoln wouldn’t leave your side. Other members of the team came to visit you but to also check up on him. Daisy was the most frequent visitor. When she first saw you after the surgery she cried and couldn’t stop apologizing to Lincoln. She felt like it was her fault. He didn’t blame her though and he told her that countless times. He blamed himself for letting you go. Hunter also felt guilty but was forced to leave on another mission during the second week. Bobbi left with him but before visited as frequently as Daisy. They all came and went at least once a day to see if you had improved but Lincoln never left. He refused. Currently he was sitting next to you and watching you breath. It calms him because it means that you are alive. Besides, he had nothing else to do. His phone had died, nothing was on TV and he had finished the papers Coulson had given him. He watched you intently, the one he loved, when it happened. Your eyes fluttered. Lincoln’s heart skipped a beat, wondering if his mind was playing tricks on him or if you really did move your eyes. He wasn’t imagining. It happened again and you slowly gained consciousness. He knew that he should call for Jemma but he didn’t care. You were awake. Alive. He needed you. You glance around your surroundings and try to remember what happened. You hear the beeping machines before you see them and soon smell disinfectant. Were you in a hospital? You keep looking around until you spot him.

“Lincoln.” You breath, struggling to find your voice. It comes out breathy and hoarse but Lincoln doesn’t care. It’s you. You’re alive. He smiles at you as you frown.

“What happened?”

“You were injured on the mission,” he explains, eyes shining. “You were shot in the stomach but it didn’t hit anything major. You also broke your arm in two places and...” Lincoln breaks off, unsure how to continue. Should he tell you that it’s been three weeks? Yes, but now? You watch him intently as he glances around the room, looking anywhere but you.

“And what?” You ask.

“And...you’ve been out for three weeks.”

Your veins turn to ice as it sinks in. Three weeks? That’s a long time. A very long time. You glance over at Lincoln and see it clearly on his face. Cursing inside your head you now see the dark circles under his eyes, his slightly red eyes and messy hair. Dread turns to guilt.

“Lincoln, have you been here this entire time?”

He nods. You burst into tears, despite the pain it causes. Shocked Lincoln stands and moves closer to you. “Baby, what’s wrong?”

Your tears keep flowing as you reply. “You shouldn’t have done that. Why did you do that? You’re a mess and it’s all my fault.”

“Don’t say that. It’s not your fault and you know it. You want to know why I stayed?”

“Because you’re an idiot!” You yell. It comes out as a loud whisper but he understands.

“So now I’m an idiot? Well I didn’t get shot now did I?”

“How dare you.”

Neither of you know why you’re fighting. It’s certainly not the reunion either of you wanted. Yet here you both were, tearing each other apart. You look away but the tears don’t stop. His heavy breathing and the beeping machines fill the silence. You keep your sobs quiet. Finally he takes your hand. You let him but don’t look at him.

“(Y/N), I stayed because I care about you. I was worried about you. Hell I love you. I felt so guilty and I...I couldn’t leave you.”

Your mouth goes dry and slowly you look at his hand in yours, your brain on overload. You both stay silent for a while until you speak up. “You felt guilty?”

Slowly you look up at him to see him staring intently at the floor. He may not be looking at you but you still see his tears.

“Yes,” he whispers, “I felt guilty. I let you go and you got injured.”

You squeeze his hand. “Okay you did, but you trusted me. You’re right. You let me go. Lincoln, it’s what I wanted and you believed in me.”

He wipes his tears away and looks at you. So many emotions cloud his eyes it’s confronting: love, guilt, worry, relief and hope. You smile at him, trying to tell him that it’s okay, you’re okay, without using words. He gets the message and smiles back. You both let out a delirious laugh as tears fill each of your eyes again. He quickly stands and joins you on your bed. You laugh but move over to give him some room. It hurts but you don’t mind. He sees you grimace and concern floods his features but you quickly reassure him that you’re okay. Lincoln nods and puts his arm around you, the both of you somehow fitting on the small bed. You tell that he should get Jemma or another doctor but he refuses, saying they can wait. Shaking your head you snuggle into him, already feeling better. “You’re an idiot.” You mutter as you listen to the familiar sound of his heartbeat. He laughs and you feel his body vibrate. “I may be, but I’m your idiot.”

“That you are.”

Eventually you both fall asleep, both exhausted from the past hour. Jemma finds you both soon after, asleep in each other’s arms. She sees you stir as you sleep and smiles, knowing you’re awake and okay. You both are okay.

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sarkastically · 6 years

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(Oh, hey, look, it’s some kinda weird IT fanfiction that’s a mesh of all the canon while still not completely following any of them. It’s pretty safe for work, but maybe full of spoilers. And angst because, um, IT. Anyway. It’s also kinda Richie/Eddie but only vaguely.)

When they're seven, it's following Stan from one end of the neighborhood to the other, chatting happily while he points excitedly from one tree to another, binoculars around his neck, bird book being passed back and forth between Eddie, Bill, and Stan because Richie isn't allowed to hold it. Richie isn't allowed to hold anything delicate, anything fragile, anything special. Richie is all big motions and running full tilt at every opportunity. Richie finds mud puddles on dry days. Richie's face is always dirty, his glasses are held together with tape, his clothes are always torn.

Richie isn't allowed to hold anything. Except for their hands when he gets too wild, when they remind him that he is a boy in a body and not the wind. Then it's their hands on his arms, shoulders, back. It's tight hugs even from Eddie and Stan who know they'll be covered in dirt when they let go. They hold him until he settles enough to come back to them instead of being whatever else he goes. When they ask he can never say.

They stop asking.

When they're eleven, it's Richie dancing in the middle of the floor in Bill's garage, yelling at them to join him. It's Bill smiling while Stan rolls his eyes and Eddie just stares. It's Georgie who finally pushes past them to join Richie who lifts him high, spins him, gives him piggyback rides, dancing all the while.

Richie dances until Georgie is exhausted. Until he is exhausted.

They all pull their sleeping bags out onto the grass in Bill's backyard. It's not even night, but Richie whispers ghost stories that have them all laughing. When Bill takes over, they all shiver. Richie holds hands with Eddie, with Georgie, reaches for Stan all in turn, for comfort, for remembrance. They hold onto each other to remind themselves that they are safe, that it is just a story.

They doze off, Richie's hands still reached out for his connections.

When they're thirteen, the world ends and begins again. It's Bill drawing a line in the sand and practically dragging the rest of them across it because it's the right thing to do, for Derry if not necessarily them. It might go beyond that even. Might be better for the world, the universe, life itself, but while they are seven in number now, they are still only thirteen so it is hard to think beyond Derry, the bounds of their current world.

They're thirteen and Eddie falls through a floor, Richie tugs his arm into place without anyone even questioning how he knows what to do. Those of them that were there remember Richie scaling a tree quick and then tumbling out, the weird angle his arm took, the way he fixed it, himself. At ten. Those who were not there just seem to know, the way that they all just know each other without anyone having to say anything.

They all have something. Richie is contact, communication even if he doesn't always know what to do. His hands on Eddie's arms will never hurt him. Richie puts him back together in the way that he knows how, and it's quick and probably ill-advised, but it's what he has to offer.

It's Stan weeping in the dark of the sewers, terrified while they clutch him. It's his shrill voice denying them, that they aren't his friends. It's something in the bricks and mortar between them shaking while they reach for him, hands and words and souls, to calm, to comfort. And it's Richie moved to tears himself by the admonition that he could ever not care about one of them, that he could ever look the other way.

He cares so much he rends in two. He cares so much he pretends not to so he won't drown. It's dangerous to care in Derry.

It's after everything, standing in a circle, blood falling onto the ground, hands clenched that the crowbar starts to pry them apart. And it's Richie who, in the months following, reaches out hands to hold, to clasp, to stay. They all need each other.

At sixteen, there are fewer of them. There are too few of them, and memories are strange things, full of holes like Swiss cheese, just another danger of living in Derry. Richie smiles like cigarettes and wine coolers and weed, but he still clings to everyone near him. Sometimes he calls the numbers they got before the ones who left forgot them. Richie, and Mike, and Eddie sitting in a tense circle in Richie’s room while he dials, one after another. They have learned that you do not stop Richie when he is trying to make contact. They have learned that you simply touch him afterward and bring him home because he drifts, he gets away from himself the way he used to do when he was very small.

It’s calls that connect but voices that never do. It’s Richie pacing his room, brushing things off his desk and his dresser, ranting, hands in his hair, tugging, tugging like if he pulls hard enough he can get all the memories back, his own and the ones for the others, too. Mike says that this is just the way it is in Derry, with Derry. It’s difficult to remember.

Richie cries so hard it scares Eddie who holds his hand, who remembers a day when they were young and Richie danced with Georgie on his back.

It’s a sewer in the dark where Richie cried because Stan accused them of not loving him. It’s how flat Richie’s eyes get when he calls Stan, and the boy no longer knows him, no longer knows that Richie loves him, that they all love him, that they are all incomplete together. It’s the way that Bev will scoff when she answers and mutter “perv” when it takes Richie too long to try and say something, such that only his breathing echoes across the line. It’s Ben. Who never answers at all because they must have the number wrong but Richie still calls every time. And it’s Bill. Who doesn’t stutter and is always polite. But who doesn’t know them.

Bill who started it all.

At sixteen and a half, Richie is moving away. Finally, finally he says in the middle of his room while Mike folds his arms across his chest and looks forlorn, and Eddie looks annoyed and on the edge of breaking. It’s Richie playing music too loud but no one yelling at him because this is the last moment that Richie will be Richie. They all know you change outside of Derry, you lose something. Eddie does not remind them how sometimes they would lose Richie inside of Derry, lose Richie to himself, to wherever his mind would take him.

A turtle, Richie had said once, and Mike had agreed with him. But Eddie couldn’t breathe the smoke so Eddie never saw.

Richie’s hands are in their shirts when they try to say goodbye, clinging, clenching, singing along with the records, words that will stick in Eddie’s mind. Don’t you want me, baby? Don’t you want me, oh? It’s all three of them with arms wound around each other, crying, until Mike pries Richie’s hands away, until Mike leads Eddie out of the house, Richie’s voice loud and shrill. Eddie remembers Richie screaming his name when they were thirteen, when he hurt his arm. He doesn’t remember how.

It’s a long stretch of years without anything but success. Lonely, alone, adult success. Empty places in hearts that they can’t even recognize because how do you miss something you never knew was there in the first place. There are snatches that drift across the divide, ways in which their souls seem to be trying to reconnect without their bodies knowing.

Ben and Stan wear suits from the Bev Marsh line for men. Bill’s horror stories feature a penchant for childhood friendships that are strong, the power of friendship itself and how it can best evil. Several of his main characters have names that echo those of the friends he has forgotten, but they are common names; it is so easy to write off circumstances. Eddie, who typically listens to only classical, will pause on radio stations playing the hits of the 80s and smile. Richie clutches at his hair like he is in pain and shrieks to release the strange nervous tension that builds on him, but he prefers the company of people who can calm him. He touches them constantly. He touches people like they can hold him down and keep him grounded.

When they are forty, thrust back to Derry, thrust back with each other, thrust back into their memories, which rend and howl even louder than what Richie is capable of, Richie’s hands grip and hold them each in turn. They open and close restlessly, futilely when they find out about Stan. Eddie remembers, suddenly, sixteen and Richie on the phone sobbing because Stanley didn’t remember him.

“Stan the man!” Richie had said and then a pause, a choked noise. “It’s Richie. Richie Tozier.” More silence. “From Derry.”

Richie hanging his head like someone had died. “Yeah. Trashmouth.” Pause. “Yeah. It’s a prank.” A sniffle. “Yeah. Surprise.”

The click of the receiver, the fall of tears.

In the here and now, Eddie curls a hand around the back of Richie’s neck when he looks down and spots a bit of ink. “Richie, what’s that?”

“What?” The almost tell-tale winding of gears in Richie’s head as he tries to get back to the present instead of drowning in the past. “A turtle.”

“Why?” Eddie doesn’t remember the turtle. He couldn’t manage the smoke.

“Seemed right.” Richie takes a long, shuddering breath that sounds like it is full of tears to come. “Maybe it should have been a bird.”

Eddie has no doubt that Richie will have a bird tattoo once this is all over. If they survive. If he remembers.

“We could all get birds,” Bev’s voice is soft from where she is standing, bracketed by Ben and Bill.

“He thought we didn’t love him,” Richie says as though it is the bigger tragedy of the universe, even greater than the monster they will have to face, walks away, and they do not follow.

Later that night it’s Richie’s knuckles at Eddie’s door, and Richie with round, wet eyes that are even larger without his glasses than anything Eddie could ever have imagined. The moon. Richie’s eyes are the moon. He holds a bottle of wine that is only half full, and he is swaying slightly, gently. Eddie only wants to take the bottle away and stroke his hair. With a hiccuping sigh, Richie reaches his fingers out to pluck at the hem of Eddie’s shirt.

“Don’t you want me, baby?” he sings, and his voice is nice like it always was even though it’s sad.

Eddie thinks of Richie all those years ago. He remembers now. He remembers a little more each minute and all the crashing and resounding of things resurfacing has made it difficult for him to sleep. Every time he blinks, there’s something new. And they are not all bad. They are not all bad at all.

Like Richie at fifteen, sleepy with his hair tousled standing outside looking up at the moon, Eddie next to him, leaning into him, Richie’s arm around his shoulders, singing, “Don’t you want me, baby? Don’t you want me, oh?” Richie’s strange version of a love song. Eddie clicking his tongue and huffing but melting. Richie soft. Richie quiet. Richie free from all the insane energy coursing through his veins. Richie happy.

Richie.

“Don’t you want me oh?” Eddie sings back, and Richie smiles as big as he used to when he was young.

Then it’s Richie’s arms tight around him, clinging everywhere he can, and Eddie murmuring his name over and over, trying to calm him, trying to collect him while Richie runs rampant, still young and hurt at heart like all of them. Still desperately afraid of losing connection.

The world ends again, this world, the Derry world. It chews them up and spits them out and leaves them worse for wear. It takes everything. Until they tear it apart and crawl up out of the dark.

Richie will not leave him. He knows the danger, but he carries Eddie’s body out, back into the light. Eddie never liked the dark, he knows, he knew, he remembers. He cries. They all cry. Like broken, lost children even as they clench hands around each other, even as things start to break off and fade into nothing again.

There is a moment in the mind of Richie Tozier that is untouchable, that is golden, that is pristine. There is a shrine in the back of his memory that kicks and starts and hums. It is blissful and it is pure and it is good. It never fades now, no matter how far he is from Derry, no matter the years.

This is what it looks like:

They are forever thirteen, arms looped around each other’s shoulders even Stan and Eddie who so rarely want to touch or be touched. They are a pile of happy, smiling children. And there is Georgie. Who has never been hurt. Who has never been killed. His arms intact to wrap around Richie’s neck as he gives him piggyback rides, both of them laughing, Richie dancing in a basement that is also a backyard. And there are trees and stars and music.

Don’t you want me, baby?

Everyone sings along. Eddie smiles. There is a turtle.

Don’t you want me, oh?

#sara writes #it fanfiction #the losers club #reddie kinda #spoilers possible

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planetsam · 6 years

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I love everything you're writing!! Could you write one where El is telling Mike about what happened with her mother, and what happened in Chicago with Kali? I feel like she would kind of be wrestling with the dark side of her that brought out. Also them just catching up on what's been happening in general.

“Jane.”

Mike looks down at the girl in his arms, still in complete disbelief that they’re actually at the Snow Ball. They’re rocking to the music, her arms around his neck and his around her waist. No-one really knows how to dance at these things but Nancy is beaming at him so he must be doing something right. His focus is on Eleven. She lifts her head up and looks at him.

“What?” he asks.

“Me,” she says, “I’m Jane.”

Logically he knows she’s got a name, a proper name. But he didn’t know she was going to know it. He feels her fingers curl into the hair at the nape of his neck and he flattens his hands against her back, letting her know that he’s there. She licks her lips and looks down at her shoes. Mike can see she’s nervous again and he opens his mouth to tell her not to be. That she doesn’t ever have a reason to be nervous with him. But she squares her shoulders and looks up at him.

“My mom’s name is Terry, she lives with her sister. My aunt. She’s a snitch,” she continues, “I have a sister, Kali,” she frowns, “I stole Eggos. I was bad. Bitchin but bad. I ran away too. I used my mind on Hop. Everyone’s still mad at me.”

He stares down at her, trying to process everything she’s saying, but her name just keeps repeating in his head. Jane. He doesn’t know anyone with that name. He didn’t know anyone with the name Eleven either. Something crosses her eyes and she chews on her bottom lip. He feels the moment she starts to pull away and that kicks him out of his stupor.

“Sorry,” he blurts out, “I just–” he knows his ears are red and it’s only getting worse, “Jane’s a really pretty name.”

She blinks up at him, regarding him warily. Like she still might run and he’ll go another three hundred and fifty four days without seeing her. Mike’s heart aches at the thought.

“I stole eggos,” she repeats, “I ran away, Hop said I should be grounded.”

“I had to give away all my toys,” he says, “the principal says it’s a phase. That we’re not bad, it’s just a phase.”

She considers this and then nods.

“I’m supposed to be grounded starting tomorrow.”

“Me too,” she says.

His throat tightens but he tries to smile all the same. They weren’t even sure she’d come here. His mother had called him selfish after the twelfth chance. Maybe he is. But he doesn’t want to go through another three hundred fifty days without her. She looks down again, as if she’s arranging her thoughts and then looks up at him.

“Are you mad at me?” She asks finally.

Mike shakes his head.

“Why did you keep running away?” he asks finally.

She looks up at him with wide eyes and he swallows, fighting not to hold her closer in case he scares her away.

“You were at the school. My house too. There-there. Not just listening. I kept running after you—“

“You weren’t supposed to see me,” she mumbles and he’s torn between feeling bad and wanting to be angry.

“Why not?” he asks.

“It wasn’t safe,” she says shaking her head, “you had to be safe.”

“So you went to someone else?!”

She stares at him, surprise written all over her face. Mike knows it’s dumb that he’s jealous of the police chief, but the idea of El going to someone else for help makes him feel like he swallowed bugs. It’s not even one of the other guys either. Though he’s not sure if that would make it better or worse. Eleven tilts her head to the side, her eyes taking in his appearance and Mike pauses.

“Are you jealous?” she asks. There’s a funny roaring in his ears as he realizes that, ok, he might be a little jealous. All he can do is nod. Eleven positively beams at him and he wonders if that’s a good or a bad thing in her book. “I was jealous too,” she continues, “I saw you with Max at the school.”

“I wanted her to be you,” he blurts out and she nods, looking wise beyond her years.

“I wanted to go to you,” she says.

He can’t help but smile at that, even though he wishes that she had. He gets why she didn’t he really does. But that doesn’t make this any easier. For right now though, all they can do is hold each other and sway in time with the song, not looking anything like the other middle schoolers Mike sees looking at them curiously. He doesn’t care though, not at all. They’re at the Snow Ball and nothing else really matters.

They spend the whole night dancing.

“My aunt called me Janey,” she tells him during one slow song, “nicknames are supposed to make your name shorter.”

He thinks of what she said about her aunt snitching and nods in solidarity.

“She sounds like a real mouth breather.”

Eleven agrees.

“You, uh, you said you had a sister?” Mike tries.

“She’s not like Nancy,” Eleven says, looking over at his sister. Mike isn’t sure if it’s because Nancy seems to be the first girl around her age she’s interacted with or what, but she has a tendency to glorify his sister. “She wanted to hurt people.”

Mike knows Elven would be more than within her rights to hurt more people. He has seen her kill hallways full of people, so he can’t say he never has. But all of those people were trying to hurt her first, so some part of him thinks she was justified. He tightens his arms around her, his thumb on the skin exposed by the neck of her dress. She sighs and burrows into his chest, like she can hide there. He wishes that she could. He wishes that they could stay like this always.

“Your name’s really pretty,” he says, he can feel her nose crinkle.

“It doesn’t feel like mine,” she admits.

“Well you just got it,” he explains, “it’s brand new. Maybe one day it will?” she glances up at him, “if it doesn’t we can keep calling you El,” he adds quickly, “we can say it’s your middle name.”

“Middle name?” she repeats.

For a second the look on her face is completely familiar and he’s somehow a foot shorter huddled in a blanket fort explaining something in every way he can think of until he sees that flash of recognition in her eyes. Back when he’d spent hours thinking up the way to tell her what the Snow Ball was and if there was a way to ask her without it being odd. Or her feeling bad if she didn’t want to go with him. It never occurred to him how things would be. How it would take a full year for them to get there.

“Yeah, sometimes people have middle names. And if you and someone else have the same name, sometimes they’ll use the middle name to tell you apart.”

Eleven considers this and looks at him.

“Do you have a middle name?” She asks.

“It’s Theodore, but I’m the only Mike in our grade so no-one needs to use it.”

“So you’re Michael Theodore Wheeler and I’m Jane Eleven Hopper.”

“Yeah, that’s us,” Mike says with an easy smile.

Eleven beams and wraps her arms around him tighter. Every second that she’s really and tactile he feels better. Like someone’s fitting him back together. It’s overwhelming but he wouldn’t trade it. Not for anything. There’s no more voids to scream into, no more empty spaces or sharp edges that reflect his anger back at him. There’s no more echoes that make everything so much worse. He doesn’t realize how tight he’s holding her until she taps the back of his neck.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, feeling his cheeks go red.

Eleven shakes her head, she gets it. He knows she does. She waivers only for a second before she pushes herself up on her toes and presses her lips to the corner of his mouth. He turns and their noses bump, sending them back. He’s surprised because every kiss so far, he’s initiated. He’s all set to apologize but something determined sparks in her eyes and his head turns slightly like it’s being angled by an invisible set of hands before she tries again.

He cups her cheek this time, exploring more as fireworks go off behind his eyes. Her arms tighten around his neck. He gets the feeling of something brushing across his cheek though her arms don’t move. He realizes that she’s doing the same thing, but while he has his hands she has her power. It’s an odd but not unpleasant sensation as it skims down his neck, picking a spot to stop that makes him shiver. She pulls back quickly, looking up at him.

“Okay?” She asks, unsure and he nods.

“Yeah, definitely okay,” he says, “I’m ticklish there.”

Her eyebrows draw together and invisible fingers wiggle on the spot, making him struggle not to laugh. Eleven gives him a grin that makes it all worth it before he reaches with his fingers to the spot. He half expects to encounter something. The sensation retreats immediately and he looks at her.

“Sorry, is that bad?” He asks.

“Not bad,” she shakes her head, “different.”

She furrows her brow and he opens his mouth to tell her to stop when something wraps around his fingers. He looks down to see if the air is any different but it isn’t. The feeling is unmistakable as his fingers are lightly tugged back to her waist and his hand is settled there, right before the other is briefly squeeze. She looks up at him to see if he’s okay and he nods, right before her nose starts to bleed. He grabs the tissues from his back pocket that he put there on a whim and tugs her off the dance floor, taking her under the bleachers and pressing the tissues to her nose.

“Are you okay?” He asks and she nods quickly.

“I’m okay. Still tired from closing the gate,” she shrugs, “but I wanted to do that,” she adds quickly.

“I brought them for you,” he tells her, suddenly finding it important that she knows, “the tissues, I didn’t want you to have blood on your nose.”

“Thank you,” she says, taking the tissue down. He tilts her head up and he appraises her nose, “it’s stopped.”

“You’re good,” he says.

“I’m great,” she corrects, “can we go dance again?”

It feels like the final piece of whatever’s been missing slots back into place and he nods. He’s spent the last year slowly becoming the kind of kid who hides under the bleachers and sulks during dances. Now though Eleven grabs his hand and pulls him out of there and back onto the dance floor. As long as she’s there, as long as they’re together, Mike doesn’t think either of them will have a reason to hide in the shadows again.

#mike wheeler #eleven #mileven #mike x eleven #Jane Hopper #stranger things fanfic #stranger things fanfiction #prompts

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