#but by seeing everyone's testimonies about their own feelings it looks like I dodged something even worse

[mllenugget]

"But when does a comet become a meteor ?

When does the reason become the blame ?

When does a man become a monster ?"

During Purgatory q!Cellbit was an absolute dickhead as well as the most unsufferable lesbophobic (/j) twin brother ever

He bullied the characters I usually follow and I had an absolute blast watching every second of it

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Don't forget to support the admins that were wronged, and also women, and also do your daily click

ooo,, me duele la cabeza

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[Flashing imagery & bright colours warning under the cut !]

[alt txt : video compiling different wips of the drawing above along with the song "Just a Man" by Jorge Rivera-Herrans playing- end]

#qsmp #q!cellbit #qsmp cellbit #qsmp purgatory #cellbit fanart #my art #qsmp bolas #blood #scar #me : hey i wanna try my hands at painting again :D #also me : *two seconds in suddenly remembering why I dont like painting* #i only recently realized i had a different experience as a viewer watching Purgatory because I had the tag blocked to avoid spoilers #so apart from seeing occasional fanarts i didnt interact with the fandom at all during the whole thing #but by seeing everyone's testimonies about their own feelings it looks like I dodged something even worse #I am sssooo so sorry for everyone jc #wip #art process #mcyt

[jiminniethemarshmallow]

Thank You For Your Service III (M)

Pairing: Jimin x royal!reader

Genre: Smut, fluff, angst (if you can call it that)

Word Count: 24k

Warnings: Brief descriptions of a panic attack!, light bondage, over stimulation, squirting, impreg kink, all that stuff

Part 1~ Part 2~ Part 3~ Part 4

The voices in the room are deafening. People shout out in shock, panic, confusion, asking questions from where they have all stood up in order to see their fallen queen. The eyes that aren’t on you are steadfastly watching your father’s reaction and Jimin as he holds onto your dangling body.

“I have her.” His mother informs, knowing that the General in him is telling him to hurry to find the culprit before they escape, and those are the only words she can get out before Jimin reluctantly lets go of you to hunt for your poisoner.

“Doctor!” Just then, a medic arrives with a small bag, immediately ordering your mother-in-law to move you to the floor and give her space to work. She is a stern lady, not much for manners, but no one minds in the interest of saving your life. The look on her face is solid as she checks your vitals, flashing light in your eyes and grunting to herself quietly. One more sharp bark from her and everyone retreats, your father ushering your guests out of the Grand Hall with reassurances and comforting words. But the people don’t buy it and demand to know if you are well, to which he can offer no more aside from a shaky sigh before closing the doors and returning to you.

“As I suspected, she’s ingested some kind of poison. I need a pale.” The older woman states, looking up at your parents-in-law expectantly.

“A pale?”

“Yes, a bucket! Quickly!” They scramble towards the kitchen, ignoring whatever commotion is happening near the far wall of the room and return as quickly as they can, thrusting the bucket into her arms as she positions you onto your knees above it. “She’ll need water, too. And a rag.” The woman mumbles, already in the process of inserting a long wooden stick down your throat. Jimin’s mother rushes to bring all that is necessary, bursting into the kitchen once again and meeting Lilian, who is on her way out.

“What does she need?” Your loyal servant is quick to help, the worry in her eyes almost enough to bring tears to the old woman’s, but they are quickly blinked away.

“Water and a rag.” They search.

“Will this do?” Lilian holds up a pitcher of ice water and a dry dish towel, neither of them bothering to grab a glass, and run back to where you are now leaned on your side, the bucket heavy and pushed several feet away. “Here!”

They watch as the doctor checks your heartbeat from your back, pressing her fingers into your wrist and checking your breathing. Then she grabs a clean glass from the table and pours some water, squeezing in a mysterious solution before nursing it to you, using more of the icy water to dump onto the rag and fasten to your forehead.

“Well?” The King asks nervously, watching his daughter’s whitening complexion and blue lips.

“Her breathing is shallow and her pulse is getting weaker. As we can see by the color of her lips, she is not taking oxygen properly, most likely due to the poison still in her system. Pale!” Lilian grabs the bucket and drops it right in front of your face before you soil the floors, everyone looking away except for the doctor who struggles to hold your heaving body in place.

The moment Jimin leaves you in the care of his mother, his eyes are on the room. Everyone is standing now, trying to crowd around your table, and he knows he must work fast if he is to identify the villain. There is one person in mind, the servant that stood a little too close and waited on you hand and foot from the moment you sat down, and he curses himself when he thinks about it.

This is his worst fear. Everything he has been dreading for the past couple of days. He has been terrified of the thought that the two of you would be put in harms way once you were wed, but he hadn’t cared much for his own wellbeing. He only cared that he would be able to serve and protect you, something that he has succeeded in thus far from a distance, but worried that his ability to do so would be impaired by becoming a King. Choosing between two lives is a hard thing to do— especially when one of those lives, which has been a secret for so long, suddenly is joined with the other. He has never had any trouble watching out for any threats to you as a General of your armies, working from the outside and from afar. And he has never had an issue with advising you and keeping you safe as your lover. But he realizes now that presenting himself as your lover and your guardian is tougher than he could imagine. He got so caught up in being your King and entertaining you and your people that he couldn’t focus enough to assess the possible dangers or suspicious characters around you. And despite having amazing accuracy when it comes to his gut feelings, he chose to ignore it this one time and allowed himself to relax— to become careless— and now you have paid the price for it.

Jimin’s eyes move quickly as they scour the room for the man, hoping that he hasn’t already disappeared into the crowd yet, but then he spots someone with a ducked head weaving his way through the droves of noblemen on his way back to the kitchen. The only person, guest or servant, who is not curious to see what has happened. Immediately his heart jumps, blood pumping as his body moves into action, pushing past nosy nobles far more effectively than the lowly servant, and soon his fellow friends and soldiers catch sight of where he is looking, moving into position to cut him off on his way to the kitchen.

The man looks back to see the new king’s angry expression, skin bristling with fear, and it feels as if the room has gotten exponentially hotter. Like the fires of Hell closing in on him. The noise in the room gets even louder, people being ushered to the door as Jimin makes large strides toward the sure culprit, a path seeming to clear out for him, and the man scrambles to shove his way through, head on a swivel to keep his eye on his pursuer. The kitchen is only a few steps away, the swinging door inches from his fingertips, and Jimin is still a sizable distance from capturing him. Eyes locked on freedom, all he can think about is his escape through those doors and the ease he will have slipping through all of the shortcuts he’s become so acquainted with, losing the guards and the King who only know the paths of the main hallways.

The last person is pushed out of the way and the servant makes a run for it, dodging the hands of the soldiers who reach for him in a last ditch effort to capture him, and then he is through the doors and out of sight. Jimin’s heart falls when he sees this, sprinting faster to close the distance, but just as he is reaching to open the doors, they swing open and a bulky servant, a chef, walks out holding the man by his shoulders.

Grabbing the back of the villain’s neck, your husband grips him tight, yanking him away from his escape to the wall on the farthest side of the room, his soldiers in tow with the scrawny man’s arms locked in their grip. Jimin has tunnel vision now, rage fogging everything but the sight of your offender, and he wants nothing more than to hurt this man. Shoved against the hard polished walls, the criminal now begins to beg and claim innocence, stuttering over his words in an attempt to find a proper explanation.

“I-I haven’t done anything! You have the w-wrong person!” He shrieks, struggling uselessly against the strong hands that incapacitate him.

“Really? Then why was it that you were the only person fleeing?” Jimin sneers, using his forearm to press him harder into the wall.

“He has a weapon.” The guard on the right side of the man reveals, pulling a sharp peeling knife from the man’s waistband, probably a plan B if he ever got into a risky situation during his escape.

“It- That is not what you think. See, I work in the kitchen and I need-“

“You have not been to the kitchen all afternoon, do not try to play me for a fool!” Jimin hisses, muscles bulging with the force he uses to pin him down.

“Okay! Okay! But I would never hurt the Queen. I never intended to harm her!” The servant cries, tears springing from his eyes to add to his testimony as he shakes his head animatedly, and it makes the King sick. He growls deep in his chest, teeth gritting together with hatred, and this time his army-men are reaching to hold him back.

“General Park— Your Highness, you mustn’t cause intentional harm to this man before his questioning. It is the law.” His subordinate reminds gently, prepared to intervene. He watches the tick in Jimin’s jaw, well aware that he probably feels upset that he— of all people— needs to be reminded of the law, but the King’s eyes never leave his captive’s face.

“Yes, please, do not hurt me. I am sure the Queen would not approve of it.” He wavers, shaky and desperate to be free of the piercing eyes burning through him. The mention of you snaps your husband out of his trance, and he growls because how the hell would he know if you’d approve or not, but he still allows the arm digging into your servant’s chest to drop slowly to his side.

“Get him out of my sight.” The two soldiers pull the man away, hastily dragging him out of the Grand Hall to a holding cell, and Jimin follows them with his eyes until they disappear through the exit. Tunnel vision dissipating, he relocates your family on the other side of the room, standing over you with worried looks on their faces. “How is she?” He asks, panting slightly from jogging over, his heart never slowing down and instead speeding up to an unhealthy rate once he sees your ghostly complexion. Everyone remains silent to his question, staring down at you and the doctor.

“She’s been poisoned.” His mother finally answers when the woman tending to you ignores him. His frown deepens.

“Yes, but how is she now?” He tries his best to keep his voice stable, lowering his volume in the sudden quietness of the room. The doctor says nothing for several moments, checking your vitals thoroughly and listening for a heartbeat for a long time. It almost gets to the point where Jimin’s tolerance wears thin at her silence, but your father stops him from speaking. After what seems like an eternity, she looks up and sighs.

“Her pulse is very faint and it was difficult to find, but it is there.” Everyone lets out a breath, but Jimin cannot breathe comfortably yet. “Yes, she was poisoned, but I gave her a solution to expel as much of the poison as possible. For now, we can only hope and wait for her body to take care of whatever was already absorbed into her blood; and her chances look good considering how little she ingested.” Two sips. Just two sips of champagne and you are in such terrible condition. He does not want to think about what would have happened if you were to drink even a sip more.

“When-“ He swallows, almost afraid to ask. “When will she awake?”

“It is difficult to tell, it all depends on her body and how much poison was in her drink. All we can do for her now is get her out of this dress to help her breathe easier and take her up to rest.”

He volunteers to carry you, picking you up bridal style and taking you gently to your bedroom. This is not how he imagined it happening, and though the situation shows similarities to how he has always pictured taking you from your wedding, dress and all, everything is completely wrong.

It is a serene and quiet day at the castle, the only sounds audible being the subsiding rain knocking at your window. The rain brings a coolness that makes you want to burrow in your sheets, but there is a warmth at your back that keeps the chill away, which you gladly welcome. The first thing you see when you open your eyes is a plain wall, painted in your favorite shade of sunset orange, the color made dull by the haziness in your eyes. Like a fog sitting over your head, you can barely see, taking several long minutes to focus your eyes. Once it clears, you slowly turn your head—wincing at the crick in your neck— and gradually scan the room, finding your mother-in-law at the foot of your bed reading a book in the comfortable seat that is usually in the corner of your room. Redirecting your eyes to that corner, you spot boxes of belongings— Jimin’s belongings— still unopened and packed neatly aside for his relocation into your bedroom. You smile at the thought: he can finally share this space with you, sleep in the same bed without worry of being caught, keep you company on rough nights where the loneliness is overwhelming and you simply need a hand to hold to get you through the night. Turning a bit further, you locate the source of the heat behind you, finding the love of your life napping with a protective arm around your midsection, hand just under your shirt to feel the warmth of your skin.

How lucky you are to have married him, to have the luxury of being able to spend your life with this man and start a family with him. King and Queen. You and Jimin. Thoughts of your wedding light up your heart as you recall the lovely reception, the beautiful décor, your unique wedding dress, the wonderful guests that came to support you and offer their love and congratulations, the wedding night you cannot seem to remember. In fact, you don’t remember anything after your father made his toast to the two of you. You remember the gifts, the food, the toast, but nothing about your first night as a married couple, nothing about spending the rest of the evening in Jimin’s arms, not even how you ending up in bed in the first place. You think hard, watching your husband’s face as if the answers were written there, and it is then that you notice the bags draped under his eyes, the pale color of his skin likely from not eating, the restless look on his face even as he sleeps.

As if your body had somehow remembered what happened on its own, you are suddenly alerted to the extreme dryness in your throat, so dry that when you try to swallow, you instead fall into a sudden coughing spell that catches the attention of everyone in the room. In the blink of an eye Jimin jolts awake, rubbing at your back as his mother runs to your side with a glass of cool water, putting it to your lips and helping you drink as you fight the mini convulsions in your chest.

“Lilian, send for the doctor!” Jimin calls when the servant rushes to your door, immediately turning on her heel to follow his orders. “Drink slowly, my love, you need to breathe.” By now he has helped you into a proper sitting position, hands never leaving you as you alternate between drinking and deep breaths, his mother refilling your glass when you have emptied it.

“It is such a relief to see that you are awake, dear.” The older woman says quietly, giving you her fondest smile when your breathing seems to calm down a bit. “You had us worried sick.”

The stern doctor from before strolls into your room just after you have finished your second glass, followed by an anxious looking Lilian who hesitates to rush the woman. “I see you are awake,” is all she says as she takes her time opening the bag she carries and removing a few instruments. Jimin watches her with a sharp eye, already irritated by her relaxed demeanor when he feels she should treat this situation with a little more urgency. But he says nothing the entire time she examines you, checking your eyes, reflexes, mouth and tongue, and pulse. At least she seems thorough. She nods to herself when she is finished, once again not speaking until prompted as if she intended to keep the information to herself.

“Is she well?” Lilian asks impatiently, looking just as annoyed as Jimin. The doctor ignores her, talking directly to you.

“Your health has improved significantly, I am almost surprised.” She says with a flat face and voice. “It looks like the poison has run its course and is mostly out of your system now, so there is no need to worry.” Poison?

“Thank the heavens.” Your mother-in-law whispers, letting out a sigh of relief.

“So... she is alright?” You husband nearly whispers as if afraid his voice could change her answer. For the first time, the lady looks him in the eyes, confirming that you are alright in a mockingly sweet voice that makes his blood boil.

“Yes, Your Highness. As I have just said, your wife is quite alright.” Despite her insolence, she does not get reprimanded, the good news enough to hold the general’s temper, and you feel his arms hug you tighter.

“I knew she would be alright, I could tell she was strong from the moment I met her.” Your second mother says aloud to no one in particular, her soothing smile relaxing both you and Jimin.

“I knew it too, I prayed as often as possible for her health. I am so happy things worked out.” Lilian gushes as she holds back tears.

“Am I allowed to walk around?” You ask, feeling an ache in your back and hips. The woman looks at you as if you have just put a hex on her entire family, showing the only expression Jimin has seen from her thus far. Her hand lands on your leg from her spot on the edge of your bed and she leans in with seriousness, squinting at you.

“Absolutely not. Do not even leave this bed without consulting me first.” She leans away slightly, loosening her grip on your thigh. “I prescribe bedrest and plenty of food and water. You are still very weak and you need time for your body to regain its strength after working so hard to rid itself of the poison. You were unconscious for nearly 5 days, your recovery should not be rushed.” It has been five days since your wedding? This detail shocks you so much that you can’t even speak at first, looking at her dumbly with wide eyes. You want to ask what exactly happened, but you fear that the woman will tell you in a way that distresses you, so you hold your tongue for now.

“Oh! That reminds me!” Lilian exclaims, scurrying out of your quarters toward the kitchen.

“Could I at least move to use the toilet?” You say meekly, looking over toward your bathroom area with a blush as you realize Lilian has probably had to take care of you while you were out. You can imagine Jimin wanting to help, but having to fake hot cheeks and shyness as if he has never seen you naked before and wants to be courteous of your privacy. The thought is almost funny considering just how intimately he knows your body— certainly better than Lilian does.

“You should not walk, you legs are too feeble. Instead, you should be lifted there and helped the entire time. Your husband seems capable, he behaves like a servant anyway.” Your eyebrows raise at her rude comment toward her new king, seemingly having no regard for his position of power, and you squeeze his hand in yours when you feel him take a breath to speak. He is used to dealing with insubordination as a general in the military, handling it as the King would be no different. But your touch restricts him.

“Is that all?” Jimin inquires, visibly trying his best not to sound too harsh when he asks the doctor to leave. She gives you a quick look up and down then nods, already packing up her things and standing from your bedside. “Then you are dismissed.” The curt tone in his voice goes over the woman’s head as she walks out, bidding you a good evening before shutting the door.

With just the three of you left in the room again, Jimin’s mother senses oncoming awkwardness. She can sense the way her son drops his guard and seems to sink, how his eyes begin to twinkle with the beginnings of wetness, and she knows she will ruin the moment if she does not leave now. With her watch duty being over upon your waking, she no longer has business in your room and she exits swiftly, mumbling something about helping Lilian in the kitchen, grabbing her book on her way out.

As soon as the door shuts behind her, you are pulled into strong arms. He lays back until you are both comfortable in bed, your face in his chest and his in your hair as he holds you in silence for a while. It feels good to be in his arms, neither of you saying anything but simply basking in each other’s warmth.

“I am so sorry.” Your King finally breathes, the shaky quality of his voice surprising you. He rarely lets you see the emotional side of him and you appreciate his transparency in this moment as tears slide down onto your shoulder. “It is all my fault.”

“Do not say that. There is no way you could have known something like this would happen, Jimin.” You try to reassure him, but you still don’t know what happened yourself.

“But it is my duty to protect you and I failed. I failed you just hours after you became my wife.” He squeezes you tighter and you rub his back, weak arms wrapped loosely around him.

“Tell me everything that happened. I want to know.” You mumble into his chest quietly, waiting for his response. He seems to tense at the realization that you have no idea what happened to you or what went on after you collapsed, and he takes a deep breath as the past few days replay in his mind.

“During our reception, my champagne glass was poisoned by a servant, and when you switched our glasses, you accidentally drank the poison and went unconscious.” He pulls back to watch your eyes widen at the news that the poison was intended for him.

“Do you... do you know who did it?” You ask, afraid that his attempted assassin may still be on the loose.

“Do not worry, I caught him before he could even escape the room and he was arrested promptly.”

“Yes, but who was it?” Your mind races to all of the names and faces of your servants, wondering who would have a motive to kill Jimin. Jimin is loved by nearly everyone in the kingdom, your servants were especially thrilled to hear that you were getting married to him, so it comes as a shock to you that anyone would go as far as attempting to poison him. You wait with bated breaths as you anticipate the name of your poisoner, heart thumping loudly in your chest with dread.

“His name is Jang Jinwoo.” Your heart stops. Not Jinwoo, the sweet man who worked in the kitchen and greeted you every time he had a chance. There have been many occasions where you had snuck away from your duties to roam the many rooms of your home and you found yourself stopping to chat with him as he completed his work. Despite being almost 10 years older than you, you got along very well with him. He was always kind, smiling brightly at you, easy to talk to. You can’t imagine that he was the one to do such a thing.

“Jinwoo? A-Are you sure?” You stutter out, not believing your ears.

“(Y/n), he has already confessed.”

“Are you absolutely certain? He could have been pressured to say something like that. Maybe he was only following orders from someone else, or maybe he was being paid to do it.” You continue to make up excuses for the man, looking at Jimin as he solemnly shakes his head at you.

“No, none of that is true. I heard it from his own mouth, (Y/n), I was the one who interrogated him.” At this you stop, looking down at your sheets. There is anger present when Jimin speaks, though it is not directed at you. He is enraged by the memory of the interrogation, having to sit there and listen to the whimpering of a coward who tried desperately to explain his case. Trying to weasel his way out of punishment. “He told me everything.”

The room is musty and dank when Jimin enters, the darkness of the cell only alleviated by a few lanterns hanging toward the back of the small space. Jinwoo sits uncomfortably on a stool at the back wall, hands bound and feet shackled to his seat with chains. Two guards stand on either side of Jimin, there as backup in case anything should happen, but they know Jimin is versed in the art of interrogation from his many years in military service. He sits on a much more comfortable chair than the prisoner, one that has taller legs and a back where he can rest comfortably, and he takes his time looking the prisoner up and down with steel eyes, leaning into his seat as if he owned the room.

“As stated by law, I am not allowed to touch you, but as a prisoner who has committed the highest treason, I am sure I would be excused for my action should you give me any reason to engage you.” The intimidation has already begun and it works beautifully, Jinwoo sinking lower on his stool under the heavy gaze of the king. “Now, things would be a lot easier if you confessed to your crimes right now, but we already know that you are the one who did it. We found the poison in a tube in your coats and seized the weapon you carried in your waistband, which is enough to incriminate you. However,” Jimin leans in menacingly, cold eyes pressing the prisoner back. “I want to know why you did it. The only reason I have left my wife’s bedside to come down here and face such filth as you is to hear from your own mouth what would possibly push you to do such a thing.”

The man says nothing, bags forming under his eyes as he looks away, sadness overtaking his features. “Is she alive?”

“You would like to know the status of the Queen?” Jimin states quietly, earning a meek nod from the prisoner. There is a pause of stillness before a guard steps in front of Jimin just as he seems like he will lunge at the man, standing and growling out how he has no right to ask questions like that. The shackled man cowers.

“Your Highness.” The other guard calls sharply, his hand on his shoulder to guide him back into his seat. “Yes, the Queen is alive.” He answers, much to Jimin’s displeasure.

“Oh God,” Jinwoo breaks down, hands coming up to his face as tears start to stream down his cheeks. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this, I never meant to hurt her!” He weeps into his palms, barely mumbling loud enough for the others to hear.

“Why did you do it, then? Why would you try to assassinate her?”

“Not her, you!” The servant suddenly shouts, looking Jimin dead in the eyes for the first time. “You were the one whose glass was poisoned, not hers. But no one could have known she would switch them at the last second— I did not even have time to react.” He is reduced to tears again and the three men watching him ponder his words. Guilt washes over Jimin like a bucket of ice water and he starts to feel weak. This is exceptionally worse. It was he who was meant to fall ill to the poison; his life that should be hanging on a thread instead of yours. It feels like a jab to the gut knowing that not only did he fail to protect you, but that he is the one who indirectly put you in this situation to begin with.

It is silent for the next few minutes, Jimin watching the man sob at his own misfortune with no other thoughts running through his head but those of self-deprecation. But he must press on. He waits until Jinwoo calms down enough to speak before resuming his questioning. “Why did you aim to kill me?” His voice is softer now, though still commanding, and his face is genuinely curious.

Jinwoo stares down at his knees before speaking, his voice now void of emotion. “I would have to start from the beginning for you to be able to understand that.”

“That is why I have appeared before you today. I want to know the whole story.” The men stare at each other for a long while, tension swelling between them as Jinwoo takes on a stubborn attitude, almost as if he felt that the King was not fit to know his story. When Jimin does not back down from his narrowed gaze, he sighs, contemplating for a moment before opening his mouth to speak.

“Well, it all seems quite silly now.” He chuckles humorlessly, eyes dropping to the floor.

“What is?” Jimin implores, becoming impatient.

“Well, I have been a servant here for more than half of my life. My mother had me hired when I was barely 15 to make earnings to support my family, and I did just that, working for nobles I had never even seen before. I lived in the background, feeling unimportant as I cleaned dishes and emptied trash in that godawful backroom for years, no direction in life, just a workhorse for the family I never got to see. Then, my family home was consumed by fire in the night and everyone I worked so hard to support perished; the only people that gave me a purpose in live, vanished into thin air.

“I had no home and nowhere to go, a man in his early twenties with no skills in life but dishwashing and table setting, and I was so lost— depressed, lonely, homeless— but the King was generous enough to let me stay here and work, offering me quarters in the lower levels.”

“Does this story have a point?” Jimin interrupts, bored already with the autobiography that seemingly had nothing to do with him becoming an attempted murderer.

“You asked for me to tell you everything, Your Highness.” He mocks just to see Jimin’s blood boil. “The King’s generosity was appreciated, but I still had no purpose or reason to live. But then one day, I stumbled upon his young daughter walking the halls, dressed in her formal attire and obviously meant to be elsewhere. She looked so beautiful then, with her curious doe eyes and rosy cheeks, and when she stopped to talk to me I felt as if the world had stopped around me.” He says dreamily, remembering how you looked in your early teens, just beginning puberty and showing your defiance by skipping etiquette classes and sneaking snacks from the kitchen. “We quickly became friends and over the years I watched her mature into a gorgeous young woman with a heart of gold, one that she showed only to me. I rarely saw her even talk to other servants, I was the only one. We had something special. She went missing for a short while when her mother passed, but when she returned to me she was more radiant than ever, a queen that I had grown to love— and I could tell she loved me as well. I realized then that this was my purpose in life. She was my purpose, and I was meant to be with her no matter what.”

Jimin’s eyebrows scrunch at this. Never had you even mentioned Jinwoo to him, and it was his understanding that you had a good relationship with most of the servants of your castle, not just him. A sick feeling settles in his stomach when he imagines it: a grown man pining after a naïve preteen who had simply showed him a little kindness in passing. He watches as the man becomes increasingly more impassioned as he continues.

“If I had the chance, I would have proposed to her as soon as I found out that she was looking to marry. I saw men from all over attempt to court her, but none of them succeeded because she only had eyes for me. She loved me!” His outburst causes him to pause and regather himself, closing his eyes and grumbling quietly to himself before speaking up again. “I was confident that they would all fail— and they did— and then I would have my chance to be with My Queen forever. She disliked everyone, no one could ever compare to me in her heart, I knew this. I knew she was reserving a place for me. So you can imagine my disgust when it was announced that you were the one who would become her king. It was impossible, I thought that she only accepted you for your riches, but then I discovered that you were not wealthy. I do not know what deception you used or empty promises you made to trick her into marrying you, but I was sure she was not doing it for love.”

“That is where you are wrong.” Jimin sighs easily, watching the prisoner frown. “I did not court her like the others. I never appeared before her or the King with gifts and a proposal promising wealth or anything else of the sort. She came to me, if only by chance, and she fell in love on her own terms. I even encouraged her to find someone else, but she insisted that her heart lies with me and that there would be no other. In fact, she was the one who proposed that we be wed, and she spent weeks begging her father on my behalf. So, contrary to your beliefs, she was only doing it for love.”

Jinwoo scoffs, but does not refute it, beginning again quietly. “I thought that the engagement was strictly business and I paid you no mind for the three weeks leading up to your wedding. I was sure that her heart was mine, hopeful that she would come back for me and profess her love. I was willing to keep our relationship a secret for as long as necessary just so I could have her, but I was wrong. Everyday last week there was an event, and the two of you were inseparable. I thought she was just an amazing actress and could pretend to love you in front of crowds, but even when you were alone, I saw her holding your hand, kissing you, being in love with you. It made me sick to witness it, but I held onto hope that it was all fake, that the woman who had given me purpose and a will to live would return to me.

“The last straw was when I saw you just two nights ago, while I was washing dishes in a back room. It was almost like I could feel her near me, sense her presence, and when I turned around, there she was, illuminated by the light like an angel, passing slowly by the doorway. There was no reason for her to be on that side of the castle, especially on a night like that, and for once I believed that the heavens had finally shined down upon me and granted me my wish. But then I saw you behind her, holding her hand.” He looks up at the King slowly, hatred flooding his irises, and it is almost enough to make a shiver crawl down his spine despite having encountered greater evils than this. “I could not contain my anger, I wanted to attack you right then and there, but I quickly remembered that you are an army man who could easily overpower me, so I held back. My hands were shaking so much that I dropped the plates I was cleaning, and my heart was aching so much that I did not care.

“That is what was so silly, General. My life is the punchline!” He chuckles again, answering Jimin’s question from earlier. “She does not love me, she was never going to come back for me to begin with! What I thought was the meaning of my life was all a lie. And it is all because of you!” A deranged look enters his face as he continues to laugh, tears spilling out of his eyes as he does so. The two guards look at each other nervously over Jimin’s head, wondering if they should do something about him, but Jimin seems composed so they wait it out with him. Jinwoo’s laughter dies down quickly, replaced by an empty look in his eyes. “It was then that I decided I wanted to kill you. You must understand, I did this out of love. It is all because I love her so very much that I could not stand to see her be with someone else. Not even if that person makes her smile more brilliantly than I have ever seen. She belongs with me and I would be a fool to just give her away to someone else.”

“So where did you get the poison?” Jimin ponders, wanting to finish this quickly after hearing how delusional this man really was.

“A street vendor sold it to me. I bought it that same night I saw the two of you together. I was still hesitant about going through with my plan during the reception, but when I saw you kiss her and the love in her eyes when she looked at you, I knew that I had no choice but to do it. It is a potent mixture, strong enough to put down a bull, and I poisoned your champagne with nearly half the vile. I did not expect it to be so fast acting, I hoped you would not feel the effects until after you had gone through the entire glass, but I suppose I am thankful that was not the case or else my beloved would not still be living.” He shows shame then, his eyes back on the ground, and seeing him look remorseful throws fuel into Jimin’s fire again. “As I said, I never meant to harm her, she is the entire world to me. When you see her, please tell (Y/n) I’m-“

“Do not say her name.” Your husband hisses with an aggression that even startles his fellow guards. “I do not owe you any favors- in fact, you are lucky I am letting you live now. If it were up to me, you would have been beheaded before the sun went down tonight. But soon you will be sentenced by the High Court and you will be punished justly.” He makes his exit hastily, followed by his comrades that unshackle Jinwoo and lock him in his cell securely.

“So you see, he did this because of me. And I had a gut feeling that something would happen and I did nothing about it. I was not cautious enough and it is because of that that you drank poison from my glass and nearly died.” Jimin practically whispers, holding back more tears. You take in all that he has told you, thinking hard for a moment before smiling gently.

“Then, it is my understanding that I saved your life, correct?” You state proudly, looking into his widened eyes.

“W-What?” He’s confused by your sudden conclusion, not sure what he expected you to say.

“You love champagne and have a tendency to drink quickly. Had I not taken the glass from you, you would have gulped down the poison and perished right before my eyes, therefore, I saved your life. If two tiny sips had the ability to do this to me, I do not even want to think of what would have happened to you if I had not come to the rescue.” You’re grinning cockily now, watching your lover mull over your words.

“Yes, but... had I been more vigilant, this would not have happened. I was an ignorant fool for letting my guard down and I do not deserve to-“

“Stop insulting my husband. You have no right to say such things about him.” You interrupt, giving him a stern look and watching as his eyebrows smooth out with surprise. “You know better than to spew nonsense from that handsome mouth of yours. You are a King, not a superhuman; there is no way you could have known things would end up this way.”

“My love,” He sniffles, eyes welling with tears again. “I cannot help but feel guilty. My top priority as a King is to protect my Queen. I have devoted my life to serving and protecting you from harm, yet I was the one who nearly got you killed.” Your hand raises to his cheek, wiping away a tear as it hesitantly makes its way down to his chin.

“And I thank you for your service, but as a married couple, we must protect each other. I know how important it is for you to be there to save everyone, but it is okay to let me watch over you too sometimes. Let me be your hero for once. It, too, is my duty to look out for you and save you from harm, even if I must save you from yourself at times.” His bottom lip quivers and you can’t help but reach up and kiss it, admiring how soft they are even in their chapped state. “And look, I am fine. I am still here with you, breathing and alive, am I not? I think this is the best way this situation could have turned out.”

He says nothing after this, eyes roaming your face and the happy smile that scrunches your features, taking in every single centimeter of your expression to burn it into his memory. He’s seen it countless times— your smile, that is— yet he feels as if he’d taken each one of those times for granted. Seeing you lay expressionless for the past 5 days without knowing if you would regain consciousness was terrifying for him and the one thing that kept running through his head was the thought of not being able to see you smile again. Oh, how he missed it. Now, he appreciates your grin even more, overjoyed to be able to see it once more, but he does not understand how you can smile after learning the circumstances that landed you here. But, he has always known you to be optimistic.

After holding each other for a little while longer, you feel as though you should try to return to normalcy to relieve some of the tension in the air. Looking up at him, you take in his tired face and drooping eyes, frowning at the sight. “You look terrible.” You mumble, eyebrows knit together.

“You do not look so glamorous yourself, My Queen.” He shoots back with a playful raise of his eyebrow, although he thinks you still look absolutely gorgeous for someone who has just been in a coma.

Lilian reenters with a knock holding a tray of food, announcing that there is a plate for Jimin, who has refused to eat while you were recovering. She takes her time setting up, helping you sit against your headboard and sitting down your plates.

“As your wife,” You proudly proclaim, feeling bubbles of joy build in your chest at the realization. “It is also my duty to worry about your health. Have you been taking care of yourself, My King?” At the squint of your eyes, Jimin blushes. Whether from the term of endearment or the adorable look on your face, he does not know.

“Hardly.” Lilian replies under her breath with a snicker, recalling how she nagged Jimin to take care of his own needs and even offering to help as his own servant now, but being flatly rejected and sent away each time. He glares at her from the side of his eye at her chuckling, silencing her quickly.

“As of late, no. I have been too busy looking after you.”

“Unacceptable. How do you expect to look after me if your own body is not taken care of, hm? Have you eaten? You look pale.”

“I have not had the stomach to eat these few days.” He admits, assuring you that he is fine, but at the mention of food his stomach growls loudly, causing you to giggle.

“Well, I am awake and well now, so you have no more excuses. Heavens, if I did not know better, I would think it were me who has to nurse you back to health.” You laugh, Lilian joining in with a shake of her head as she situates food in front of both of you. The atmosphere is amazingly light, you cracking jokes and doting on Jimin whenever you get the chance, and he has to say that this is very different from what he expected. He thought that you would be a little more upset with everything that went on, but you seem fine. As if nothing happened and everything is as it should be. But he understands that you may not want to stress yourself out at this moment, so he plays along while keeping a watchful eye on you.

Visitors began appearing in your room the next day after news of your awakening spread throughout the land. Your father spent almost the entire afternoon with you for the first time since your mother’s death, and though he never said it, you know he was terrified of losing you too. Other visitors included your closest servants, each of them bringing with them gifts and promises to take care of your every need while you are recovering, both of Jimin’s parents (his father shedding more happy tears when he sees you are okay), a few family friends that lived nearby, and your best friend Seokjin. Slowly, they began to fill you in on the happenings of your kingdom, informing you that everything remains stable despite you and Jimin’s absence since your father has taken up some of the responsibilities that needed immediate attention.

Upon hearing that Jimin had missed nearly all of his first meetings as a royal because of you, you start to feel guilty and urge him to leave you to take care of his duties. Becoming a King takes training, and you don’t want him to slack off just because you are ill.

“It is fine, My love. Everything can be postponed.”

“But these are important attendances that will set up the rest of your rule over this land. You must meet with neighboring nations and the powerful nobles of our own kingdom, go to your classes to learn law and etiquette, address our people-“

“Do not concern yourself with such trifles. Everything is taken care of.” Jimin whispers, kissing your knuckles when he takes you by the hand. He can sense how useless you feel, wanting to live vicariously through him by listening to him explaining his first errands as a King, but instead he has been with you whenever he can, both of you becoming bored in your room.

“I am the one who is bedridden, not you.”

You begin looking for anything to do that is of importance, noticing how everyone seems to keep you out of the loop on bigger issues that may cause you any stress. The doctor said to avoid anything that may cause your blood pressure to rise, but being ignored as if you were not the queen of this nation is having the opposite effect. Not even Jimin will tell you things that he knows, and you know he is kept up-to-date on any and all drama within your borders because of his new title, and you are starting to feel betrayed because of the secrecy surrounding you. But you know who to get information out of, and that is exactly who you aim for once you are left alone with him.

“Seokjin,” You call sweetly in between his exaggerated stories about something shiny he has acquired from a neighboring nation. “What is the status of Jinwoo’s trial?” You know to present it as if you already know something about it, though you aren’t even sure if he has stood trial yet, but Seokjin’s answer confirms this.

“His trial? That ended yesterday, if I am correct.” He replies without even looking up from the jewelry he seems obsessed with that hangs from his neck.

“Has the High Court made a decision yet?” He looks up at you then, and you get nervous, fidgeting in your spot on your bed. “It’s just that I have not been caught up fully on the proceedings. Everyone has seemed so busy lately.”

“Hmm, yes. Then you must not have heard. The High Court has made the decision to convict him of high treason for the attempted murder of the King, but they have not sentenced him yet.” He stops playing with his accessories, looking seriously at you in a way that makes your heart speed up. “They have agreed that since you are the Queen, and also a victim, they will leave it up to you to sentence the criminal to a punishment. You may discuss it with them, but the decision is ultimately yours.”

Your heart skips a beat at this, the weight of the words settling in your chest, and you sigh. This is what you wanted, right? To have something meaningful to do instead of rotting away in this bed, correct? But this is almost overwhelming. Jinwoo’s sentencing is easily the most important thing happening in your kingdom right now, and it makes sense for it to be decided so soon— they can’t keep him in a holding cell forever— but you are not completely sure you are ready for it. This is probably why no one has told you about it yet.

“Oh,” Is all you can say, unable to keep your face straight in front of your friend. He sees the furrow of your eyebrows and realizes his mistake, moving closer to you to put a gentle hand on your shoulder.

“But do not worry, (Y/n), the High Court is willing to wait until you are healthy again before they make the public announcement. That means you have time to think about it, so please try not to stress yourself out too much over this.” His words are reassuring, but you’re beginning to feel like a burden, so you put on a brave face and make up your mind.

“No, I must do it quickly,” You declare, although your words to him are nothing official. “A trial such as this one should be quick and final, yet it has already been almost a week. I should make my decision within the next few days.”

“With respect, Your Highness, but do not be rash. Take the time that has been given to you, there is no need to rush.”

“Then do you think I should wait another week before this man knows his fate? To put the biggest case in this kingdom’s recent history on hold just because I will not be able to appear in full health?” You challenge.

“I think it would be unnecessary and quite impulsive to rush into such a big decision. The man is a criminal who tried to kill your husband and you are worried about the amount of suspense and anxiety he will feel after waiting in his cell for a week?” He scoffs. “All I am willing to say is that the most important person here is you, and your health and needs take top priority over all else. It is entirely your decision, but do not be afraid to be selfish. Take it from me, the most narcissistic person you know.”

Leave it to Seokjin to give you an honest answer. You do not discuss the topic any further, thinking of his words even after he leaves, and you keep everything to yourself when Jimin returns from his meeting with your father. He is unaware that you now know the weight of your responsibility, but he can see it pulling on your face, tired lines appearing under your eyes, so he makes sure you receive no more visitors before tending to you and helping you to bed early.

It is not until the third day after waking up that you are formally told about the sentencing, two days since Seokjin had informed you of it, and you announce to the members of the High Court that you are ready with your judgment. The older men seem surprised when you say this, staring at your frail body in your wheelchair as you confidently state that you want to address Jinwoo as soon as possible. Jimin is just as shocked as the others when he hears this, trying to convince you to take time to think about it, just as Seokjin had, but in the end you remained steadfast in your words. That night, you discussed your options and made a final decision that you were confident in. It was settled, you would sentence Jinwoo publicly tomorrow afternoon.

Despite wanting to support you, Jimin was concerned. You seemed happy as always, as if nothing was wrong, but he knew that you must be hiding your true emotions. As a General, he has brought in many prisoners and seen many trials, and the sentencing is never easy. The person who makes the final decision is never happy, even if the person deserves what is coming to them, and even he could feel the heaviness of holding that power every time he witnessed it. This was not supposed to be easy on you, especially since the punishment would almost certainly be one of the harshest ones you could give, but you showed zero signs of dread. At least not outwardly. He kept a close watch on you, giving you many opportunities to talk to him about what you may be feeling, but you repeatedly told him that you were fine, the same smile crossing your lips every time. But at night, he could tell you could not sleep, and he held you extra tight in silent comfort.

Silver lighting streams into the courtroom from the high windows, almost like a spotlight illuminating the platform on which your offender will stand. People sit in rows on all sides of the room, watching the proceedings from their mahogany benches as if this were a theatre performance. The members of the High Court enter first, taking their seats behind a raised panel on the north facing wall of the room, looming over the people like vultures. Jinwoo is the next to enter the packed room, walking with tiny steps and a lowered head as the people around him begin to murmur, all with cold eyes following him all the way to his stand. There is a long pause as guards begin to line the entrance, commanding all of your people to rise before a trumpeter begins blowing out the short royal tune.

“All rise, for the entrance of His and Her Majesty.” You cannot help the flood of anxiety that washes over you when the door opens for you. This is your first time appearing in front of your people as King and Queen, and although you have stood before your kingdom on many occasions, the spotlight has never been on you like it is now. A guard pushes your wheelchair forward and into the courtroom, and immediately the temperature feels stifling. Your palms sweat when you come into view, your eyes landing on the man standing at the center of the room— the man you believed was a sweet servant with not a single bad intention in his heart, your friend of many years— and you begin to feel sick. Not from guilt, but from disgust. Facing him for the first time after the incident is harder than you thought it would be. Anger builds up in your throat when he looks at you with pleading eyes, as if he could appeal to a more sensitive side of you, but all it does is make you want to be all the more ruthless.

“Are you okay, my love?” Jimin whispers from where he walks beside you. He has noticed the way you have been staring down the culprit and how tightly you grip the arms of your chair, and it worries him just slightly. His own rage has not subsided toward the man, but he is more concerned about you in this moment. You nod, eyes finally shifting to the faces in the crowd, and even though the room is quiet, you can see people whispering to each other, a look of pity on their faces as they gaze upon you. This is one of the reasons you wanted to rush this appearance— to face your people while you were still fragile and in need of assistance. Traditionally, a royal is encouraged to put on the strongest image possible when confronting the kingdom, but you wanted them to see how you truly looked and empathize with you and your king. Not that they were not already on your side.

Taking one of your hands, the two of you complete your journey to your designated spots, looking down at the room with unreadable eyes. The air is tense surrounding you, the heat remaining stationary instead of its usual swirling, and you can tell by the sweat on his brow that it feels like the 9th circle of Hell for Jinwoo.

“As it is quite hot here, we will proceed quickly for Her Majesty’s good health.” The old man seated next to you declares with a projecting voice that startles you. It has begun. “After concluding the trial this week, the punishment for the crimes of Jang Jinwoo have been determined. He has been imprisoned following his confession to the attempted murder of King Park Jimin and the accidental poisoning of the Queen, as well as the unauthorized possession of a weapon around royalty during a public event. The consequences of his crimes have been discussed and finalized by the Queen herself, who will now announce her decision.”

All eyes fall onto you, and the anxiety in your chest dissolves almost instantly as you lock gazes with the man in the center of the room again. His chest heaves as he looks at you, seeming so incredibly nervous that it’s almost laughable, and you fight the scowl that inches onto your lips. Unable to stand properly, you sit up straighter, taking a moment to gather your thoughts and hold suspense, everyone watching you with wrapt attention. Jimin’s hand covers your own as it rests on your knee, and it gives you the strength to speak.

“Jang Jinwoo, you are the most wretched human being I have ever encountered on this earth.” The room is taken aback by your words, never having heard you speak in such a hateful way. “You claim to have acted over the influence of love, but the choices you have made in this life are solely of your own will. Not only have you physically harmed me, but you have scarred this nation and the people I hold dearest to my heart. You turned what would have been the happiest day of my life thus far into a day that my husband and I will look at forever as a day of uneasiness and terror. A day where the kingdom almost lost its matriarch before her rule had even begun. As for the physical aspect of your actions, I believe you should know the struggles I have been forced to endure this past week. First, I slipped into a coma that lasted for nearly five days and nights, during which my other faithful servants were forced to care for me as if I were a newborn baby. After awaking, I found myself weak and unable to care for myself still, bound to the confines of my bed like a prisoner chained within a cell— the only times I was allowed to leave being when I was carried to the toilet or bath where I had to be helped without pause.” The tears start to flow over Jinwoo’s cheeks at the mention of your struggles, the only other emotion he has shown in days aside from the embarrassment of being displayed in a courtroom. “In these days I lost my dignity as a self-assured Queen, one who always was too proud to use her servants and instead did everything on my own will. Because of you, I must swallow pills and vitamins several times a day to rid myself of the effects of your poison. Because of you, my husband nor I could complete the duties expected of a new King and Queen. And because of you, I could not spend my first days as a married woman happily like I had so dreamed of.”

He is openly sobbing now, shame and guilt sitting heavy on his shoulders as his tears drip to the floor. You wished he would stop pretending like he is sorry for what he did because you know he is not; he is only sorry about the effect his actions had on you. If he had succeeded in his plans and killed Jimin, you have no doubt that you would not have seen a shred of guilt on his face as he stood before you. His eyes drop to the ground as you go on, listing the hardships you have gone through and how hurt you were to see your family look so scared and worried on your behalf, but you want him to look into your eyes and truly hear what you are saying to him.

“Look at me!” You command, a bass coming into your voice that surprises even you. All of the spectators have tears in their eyes from listening to your story, and you know you have their support. But when Jinwoo looks up at you, you hesitate a little. He looks so genuinely sorry for you just like everyone else, and your mind flashes back to the man you befriended all those years ago. An empathetic, sensitive man who was so good at listening to your problems even when he could not relate. But then his eyes move ever so slightly to the man sitting next to you with his hand in yours and his eyes turn icy again. He and Jimin stare at each other for what feels like an eternity before you repeat your command, and all hesitance drains from your body once again. “Although your right to speak has been stripped from you, I will give you one more chance to appeal to me. I would like to hear the words from your own mouth before I give you your final sentencing.”

The members of the High Court and Jimin all turn to you, shocked that you would do such a thing at the last moment. The rules state that a criminal facing sentencing is not allowed to address superiors in any way while on the stand, especially not before his punishment is announce, yet you have just given him the grounds to do exactly that.

“Your Highness, you must not let him appeal-“ The old man immediately to your right begins, but you stop him.

“There is no way in Hell that he could ever change my mind, no matter what he says. You can be sure of that.” You whisper, giving Jimin’s hand a squeeze when his eyes linger on your profile, your straight face telling him that you are completely certain. “Speak.”

“I never held any intentions of hurting you and my mistake is the biggest regret of my life, you must know that. My love for you is greater than anything else in this world and I would do anything for you. This is why I beg of you,” Spectators murmur words of disgust at his words, their faces wrinkled in hate and disbelief, but yours remains plain. “My Queen,” The pitiful man snivels with a tremor in his voice, “please execute me. What I have done is unforgivable and I cannot live in good conscience with my deeds. Please.”

His twinkling eyes search yours, hoping that you could feel his sincerity through the thick air. It is quiet for a while before you let out a long sigh.

“That is exactly why I cannot pardon you from this earth. That would be far too easy. I sentence you 100 years in prison to reflect upon your choices and relive the guilt you feel now everyday for the rest of your life.” Your face remains blank, but a tornado of emotions rages behind the mask. If he had aimed to take your life instead, maybe you would have been more lenient. But since he intended to take from you the person that means the most to you in this world, damning you to a life of sorrow and loneliness, you cannot let him off so easily. You need him to understand that what he attempted to do would have caused much more damage than he’d realize, and now he had all the time in the world to think about it.

His face falls at the sudden news, none of what you have said sinking in until it is announced that your word is final and that he will serve his time beginning immediately after he leaves the court. People around the room gasp and sigh, some of them cheering at his punishment and others complaining that you should have put him to death. You look at Jimin and he immediately reads the exhaustion in your expression, motioning to a guard that it is time to make your exit.

“No. No! My Queen, please! I do not deserve it. I do not deserve to live on this earth with you! Have mercy! Take my life!” He begins to shout, guards holding him back as he struggles against his shackles desperately like a caged animal.

“You do not deserve my mercy.” You say calmly, finally allowing your guard to roll you out of the room, Jinwoo’s voice still echoing behind the door amidst the chaos slowly engulfing the sweltering room.

Everything seems to happen quickly after that, and before you know it, you are back in your bedroom where the doctor awaits. She checks your health and feeds you your pills, instructing you to rest in bed and try to get some sleep after having such an eventful afternoon, and then she and the guard make their departures, leaving you and Jimin alone.

He watches you for a few minutes after helping you get changed and making sure you are comfortable in your sheets, and the longer your face remains blank, the more he worries. Your expression is familiar to him and it brings him back to one instance in particular: where your father had ordered him to gather his troops and investigate the group of soldiers nearing your kingdom’s borders— and to engage in battle if they seemed to have dangerous intentions. You felt as though it was unnecessary to start battles with soldiers from another nation, fearing that it would lead to war if everything turned out to be a misunderstanding, and most of all, fearing for the life of your lover. Since he would only be taking a relatively small group of men, you knew he might be at a disadvantage and you begged your father not to send him out on the mission. That was the first time you had ever challenged your father while he was giving orders, and Jimin was impressed by your courage and professionalism as you kept it together long enough to get your points across. In the end, your father denied your requests and sent him to the borders anyway, and your face fell back into the same blank expression you hold now. It’s the expression you make when you want to seem unaffected in front of others as you hide the pain away in your heart.

“My love,” He calls softly as you stare into space. “(Y/n).”

“Yes?” When you turn to him, your eyes still appear unfocused.

“I must return downstairs to oversee the transfer of the prisoner, but Lilian will be nearby if you need anything while I am gone. How are you?” He leaves the question open ended for you to respond in whichever way you see fit, either about your physical or mental status, but you give him an equally vague answer.

“I am fine.” And that same forced smile. He stares for a while longer before sighing and standing up, promising to hurry back as fast as he can.

A claustrophobic feeling settles in the room once he leaves, almost imperceptible at first, the walls closing in on you little by little with every breath you take. It’s quiet here, a stark contrast to the noise of the courtroom, but the silence is almost deafening behind the increasing rhythm of your heart and breathing. Your fingers fumble a bit when they reach up to undo the clasp in your hair, taking a few moments to properly squeeze the clip and release it from your locks enough for you to pull it away, and it is only when a few of the strands snag that you realize that your hands are trembling. Not just your hands, but your whole body seems to shake like a leaf in the breeze.

Looking around the room, you try to ground yourself, taking deep breaths and attempting to focus on an object in the corner, but suddenly your eyes aren’t as clear as you expected and the room seems to sway in a nauseating swirl that makes you feel sick. A droplet of sweat skims down your neck and absorbs into your collar, the humidity from the room making it harder to breathe even when you are panting like this, eyes flickering back and forth from the wrinkles on your bedsheets to the tightening warm colored walls that close in on you steadily— the orange glow seeming to actually emit heat like the summer sun as they near, aiming to cook you inside your sweaty, shaking shell.

Your bed turns hard beneath your legs, the smooth silk like hot metal sheets against your skin, but you can’t move away from the burn because the heavy weight of them traps your legs in like a vice. Scenes from a few minutes ago are fresh in your brain, playing over and over again until it feels like it is happening all over again right in front of you and the noise is in this very room, the wrinkles of the blankets the rows of people in seats, the shadows the eyes of everyone who watched you give the sentencing coldly, the chill of your words sending a shiver down your spine and you can feel your chest start to hurt with the thudding, thumping, banging, pounding of your heart in its cage and the numbness in your fingertips and toes starting to spread throughout your limbs, and Oh God you feel like you are going to die if you do not leave this room Right Now. Either die or vomit, but you do not want to stick around long enough to find out.

Despite your muscles from being weak from over a week of disuse, you are carried onto your feet by the surge of adrenaline that came when the four corners of your room began to squeeze at your sides menacingly, forcing you out of bed and out of the room faster than you could think. The guard that usually stands watch at your door is startled when it flies open, revealing your disheveled appearance as you pull at the sticky material of your gown that chokes around your neck. He opens his mouth and speaks to you, but you can’t hear a word over the panic in your head, telling you to move far away from this place, and you smack his hands away when he reaches to help you on your unsteady legs.

“Do not follow me.” You snap, stumbling along the hall, vaguely hearing his steps behind you before you stop once more. “That is an order!” You have no idea how your voice sounds, or whether or not it came out at all, but he does not follow you any further as you turn the corner and begin to run on autopilot.

Not even 5 minutes have gone by before Jimin is notified about your disappearance. He had just about wrapped up all he needed to supervise in regards to Jinwoo— which he made sure went absolutely flawlessly because of how closely everyone was being watched by him— so there was not a second of hesitation when he received word of your episode.

“What do you mean she is gone?” He asks the guard, already speeding back in the direction of your room.

“She seemed quite disoriented when she walked out but would accept none of my help or advise.” The man muttered, out of breath from running to find the king and keeping up with his fast walking pace.

“You did not follow her?”

“She ordered me not to.”

“Even so-“ Jimin holds his tongue as he climbs the stairs to the second floor, knowing that a castle soldier would never disobey direct orders from the Queen herself. He is worried about you for a number of reasons, but he knows that being irrational will not help matters. Lilian is the first person he sees when he turns down your corridor, her thin form leaping to stand before him.

“She still has not returned, but I did not want to search for her yet without your permission.” She blurts, eyes round and nervous as she fiddles with her apron. “Where could she have gone? The castle is so large!”

Where would you possibly go? Jimin thinks for a moment before turning on his heel, starting down the hall suddenly. When Lilian calls after him, he responds with orders for her and the guard to take the rest of the night off because you will likely not want to be around people when you return. They take this as a sign that he knows where you are and leave it up to him, watching his back as he rushes away.

It all happened so quickly the first time you brought him here, he was barely paying attention to his surroundings as you pulled him along giddily, but now he feels confident as he follows his gut and navigates the twist and turns of the palace. His feet lead him past the cleaning room where you both encountered Jinwoo on the eve of your wedding and he forces himself to keep walking when a brief flashback almost brings him to a halt. Jimin breaks into a jog the nearer he gets to the room, his heart pounding with worry for your health, but the fact that he has not found you collapsed along the way means that you made it there okay. Or that he is completely wrong about your whereabouts and you are truly lost to him in the maze of your home. He dispels the second thought with a shake of his head.

“My Queen,” His relief is immediate when he spots you, your hands and head pressing into the aged wood of the giant doors to your secret library. Jimin approaches cautiously when you do not respond to his initial call to you, but that changes when he notices the shaking of your arms and legs as you struggle your weight against the barrier to no avail. “Please do not push yourself like this, I beg of you.” His hands wrap around your waist to steady you. “What are you doing here?”

“I-I-I felt s-so trapped in that damned room, I could not take it anymore! I w-wanted to- to come here but I am too weak to open these fucking doors! I keep pushing and pushing but they just will not budge!!” The emotion and shakiness of your voice breaks Jimin’s heart, but what really crushes him is the fact that you keep smacking his hands away when he tries to stabilize you. He isn’t sure if you even recognize that it is him yet because of the way you are too busy looking up at the doors with frantic eyes and frantic breathing, never once looking up at him.

“Let me help you.” He says softly, continuing to reach for your midsection despite you slapping at his arms. You keep rambling about the door and how it must be stuck or something, your sweat soaked skin making prints on the dark wood as you lean against it. “I am here to help you, let me help you open the door.” He repeats as gently as possible until you finally hear him and nod, your body remaining in its position. Making sure you are okay with it, he slowly pushes the doors open, and once they are cracked wide enough, you fall into the room and onto your knees, sucking in deep gulps of the dusty air to catch your breath.

He slowly lowers himself to the ground next to you, testing your comfort level with a hand on your shoulder before moving it to rub against your back. It takes several minutes for your breathing to calm down while he watches you, remembering how you told him this was the safest place in the world to you. You think back to the time when you first discovered this room and your mother helped you open these heavy doors all those years ago. She was so kind back then, smiling at you and teaching you all about this room with her hand on your back. Jimin’s touch reminds you of that, and you use the feeling to calm yourself down, breathing as if this was the only place in the palace that contained breathable air. Your mind clears after some time, and you finally look up to see your husband looking at you with a gentle smile, trying to hide the anxiety in his eyes, and you fall apart.

“Jimin,” You whimper. Launching yourself into his arms, you begin to cry with body racking sobs, the tears feeling hot on your cheeks. He says nothing as he holds you, only shushing you and rubbing your hair, accepting his place as your rock as you melt against him; but he’s sure you can feel how hard his heart is beating in his chest from seeing you in this condition. You have never shown him this side of you, never needed to, so he isn’t completely sure how to handle the situation. He has always known you to be the positive thinker, the one who cheers him up when all he can think of is gloom, and he supposes he just assumed you never had moments like these. But even the sun is shadowed with clouds at times. There must be a million emotions floating around in your head, and by trying to suppress them, they’ve only collected before spilling out all at once.

“What is the matter, beautiful?” Jimin asks when you seem to be at a point where you can speak. He ignores the front of his shirt as it sticks to him with wetness.

“I know I should not feel guilty, but I feel like such a terrible person.” You hiccup into the fabric, resting your forehead against his chest. It is obvious what you are referring to, he needs no context.

“You have done nothing wrong, Love.”

“Then why do I feel this way? Not that I am insensitive to the attempt on your life, but I cannot help but feel as if I have committed a crime by giving a man a life sentence of confinement and self-torture. Is this what justice is supposed to feel like?” You sniffle. He sighs into your hair, arms tight around you.

“I cannot tell you how to feel, but I would not expect you to be joyful after making such a heavy decision. Even if he deserves it, it never feels good to end a life, figuratively or literally.” He pulls you away from his chest by the shoulders to look you in the eyes, but you attempt to cover your face with your hands. You hate when people see you cry, it’s embarrassing. But Jimin has seen more of you than anyone else, so you don’t fight it when he takes your hands in his and moves them away. “Everyone copes with their emotions differently, but I will always be here for you when you need me. Someone wise and beautiful once told me that, as a married couple, we must protect and watch over each other, and also that we sometimes need to be saved from ourselves; however, I am beginning to realize that it is you who saves me more often than not. I have never done anything significant for you compared to all that you do for me, so as your husband I am making a vow to always be there to save you from yourself and come to your aid, even when you pretend that everything is okay.”

“I am sorry I lied when you asked me if I was okay. I am obviously not fine.” You apologize bowing your head. “Did I at least appear stable in front of the court?”

“As stable as a horse.” He grins at his pun. “I am very proud of the way you kept yourself so composed in the courtroom in front of your people like a true Queen. I only wish you were not so good at hiding how you feel from me.”

“Your presence next to me during the sentencing was the only thing that helped me through it. I wanted to fall into your arms the moment we entered our bedroom, but I thought it inappropriate to cry in sympathy for the man who tried to hurt you and force you to console me. You did not know him personally and I know how angry you were after questioning him, so it would be unfair to show sympathy toward him in front of you.”

“Regardless of my personal feelings, I will always be willing to hear your woes and pains. I was only hurt by your inability to trust that.”

A shame falls over you, though it was not his intention, and your head lowers. “In hindsight, I would be upset with you if you kept your pain from me, too.” There is a period of quiet where you let your words soak in. He knows you understand his viewpoint, there is no need to dwell on it further.

“From this point forward, let us both be completely truthful and open with everything. Just as you confided in me with the knowledge of this room, we will keep no secrets between us. Promise me.” Jimin stares into your damp eyes until you relent, promising him your honesty and trust in him, and you know your words have been heard by the walls and etched into the details of each bookcase, an unbreakable swear that you will both hold true to. This place, this room, is yours to share, and at the very least you will confide in him here, where only his ears may hear your whispers.

You’ve calmed significantly since he first found you, and the way you softly look back at him in this moment makes him ache. He loves you so much that it hurts, and despite it being a week since your wedding, he still cannot believe you officially belong to each other. With your puffy, red eyes decorated by dewy lashes clumped together, pouty pink lips, and stained cheeks, you still look gorgeous as ever, and he admires just how wonderful you are on the inside, too. You have the biggest heart of anyone he knows and he doesn’t blame Jinwoo for falling in love with you, it isn’t difficult. Jimin would truly do anything for you. And he knows you would do the same for him.

“Do not ever doubt my love for you, My Queen, I will forever remain at your side.”

“And I, at yours.” You reply in a whisper, closing your eyes to savor the kiss he presses to your brow. You shift in your seated position, the hardwood cutting into your knees uncomfortably, and Jimin is reminded of your current health.

“Come, My Love, I must return you to bed. You need to res-“

“No!” You protest quickly, though it comes as a gasp. “My health is fine. I do not- must I return so hastily? I am not yet ready to be confined again.” The frightened look and quickening of your breaths gives Jimin pause and he recalls the words you spoke to your prisoner. He had no idea you thought of your bedroom as a jail cell during your recovery. He did not notice how uncomfortable you seemed at all hours, not resting well at night and remaining fidgety throughout the day, and he sympathizes with you.

“We could stay here if you so please. I understand that this is your safe place and I am willing to stay with you for as long as you wish.”

“Jimin,” You say, raising a hand to his cheek. “You are my safe place. As long as we are together...” There’s no need for you to finish your sentence, he already knows what you mean.

“Then I would follow you to the ends of the earth if your heart so desired. It is all up to you.” He smiles at the thoughtful look on your face that morphs into a smirk.

“What a coincidence, I was planning to journey there in the coming week.” You joke. “But for now, my heart desires to travel somewhere more local.”

“Such as?”

“The flower garden. I would like to visit our bench.” For some reason, your cheeks begin to heat. Maybe it is from the way Jimin has hearts in his eyes when you say this. Or maybe it is from the flashes of memory you experience from your first time with him atop the white painted wood.

“Then, to the gardens we shall go. Allow me to escort you, My Queen.” He’s just as formal as ever, kneeling in front of you and motioning for you to climb onto his muscular back, his strength never ceasing to amaze you when he stands with ease as though you weigh nothing. Your arms drape over his shoulders as he walks, your chin pressed tiredly to the muscle, and you can’t help but breathe in his scent. Jimin smells of sweat and musk due to the heat and stress of the day, but there is a hint of sweet hidden there that is distinctly him. The smell is woven into his expensive clothes and every strand of his sleek hair, and you melt into it all, feeling totally at ease as he bears your weight through the palace. It’s not as if your grievances have just disappeared into thin air, but being with him doesn’t offer some relief to your internal suffering.

The air outside isn’t much less humid than inside, but the slight breeze that whispers past occasionally is nice. It’s a beautiful day and it takes your mind off of today’s events, even if just for a moment. Your walk through the flower paths is a slow one, neither of you saying much, simply enjoying the nature and each other’s company, and it gets to the point where you’ve forgotten your destination. But Jimin hasn’t and you arrive at your favorite white bench before you realize.

“Mother?” The surprised tone in your lover’s voice brings your attention to the woman a few meters ahead, crouching down to smell orchids lining the path. She smiles at a butterfly before turning to the two of you, the crinkle in her eyes endearing.

“Your Highnesses.” She bows politely, making you giggle. “I did not expect to see you out of your room so soon, (Y/n), but this certainly is a pleasant surprise.”

“I went a tad stir crazy from being in bed for so long, I just needed a break from it all.” You smile, nestling your head in the crook of Jimin’s neck comfortably.

“If it is for your health, then I approve. And it is quite noble of you to offer your back to her, my son. But, oh dear, Lilian would throw a fit if she saw you carrying the Queen through the gardens in your public attire.” She steps closer to fret with the hem of Jimin’s blazer, the precious woman, smoothing the wrinkles and fixing your dress over your knees for you.

“What brings you here, mother?”

“Oh, I simply wanted to explore the gardens before your father and I made our departures later tonight. I’ve heard so much about them and this is the first I’ve had any free time since our arrival.” She returns to looking into the fields.

“You are leaving?” You inquire.

“Yes, for my duties are complete. I cared for you while you recovered those 5 dark days and made sure you were comfortable, but now you are awake and well and in good hands, so I can leave in peace. Lilian and Jimin seem to have everything handled well.” You’re shocked to find that she had been the one taking care of you while you were in a coma. You assumed Lilian to be responsible for everything, but it seems you were incorrect. Your mother-in-law watched over you the entire time and made sure your needs were taken care of, which explains why she was sitting at the foot of your bed when you awoke, and a warm feeling wells up in you. Just like she had promised, she has protected you and stayed by your side through sickness just as your own mother would. Which is to be expected, because she too is your mother now and you have come to accept that.

“Thank you for all that you have done. I cannot express how much I appreciate it. There is no way that I will ever be able to repay you for your kindness.” You gush, hoping to communicate your sincerity through your eyes.

“There is one way to repay me— and it is my last request before I go.” You both look at her, anticipating her next words. “I would kindly like to request that you bear me grandchildren that I can dote upon and love for all eternity. That is the only thing I want in this entire world and the only thing I have to look forward to in this stage in my life, so please. You owe me nothing, (Y/n), but if you must grant me something, grant me this.” You find it precious how she pleads with you like a child in a candy store, eyes lighting up at the mention of future grandkids, and blush a little when Jimin’s grip on your legs gets a little tighter.

“Gifting you grandchildren and our kingdom’s next heir shall be the top priority on our list.” He answers for you, smiling in a way that you know his mother can read. But she says nothing in regards to it and claps happily at the promise.

“I am returning back home for now, but do not be afraid to write to me if you need help with anything. Conception can be tricky and I know all about-“

“Mother!” Jimin gasps, face turning as bright as the roses behind him. As if he didn’t just insinuate something just as bad moments ago.

“Oh, do not act as if we are not all adults here, boy. All I am suggesting is that I am willing to offer help and advise on anything regarding pregnancy and children, so do not be hesitant to contact me. I wish the two of you luck and a swift recovery, my dear. Now, I must be on my way before his father gets anxious of my whereabouts. Goodbye, my loves.” She plants a kiss to your cheek and then her son’s, making her way back toward the castle without another word.

“This is the second time she has mentioned grandchildren to me. I’m beginning to believe she wants them more than we do.” Jimin can feel the lift of your cheek against his skin, shaking his head before easing you onto the bench nearby, taking a seat next to you.

“I can assure you that no one is more excited about the prospect of our children than me. I cannot wait to start a family with you, it was the complete truth when I said that it is now our top priority. As soon as you are well, love.” His hand rests gently on your stomach in a loving way, but instead the touch sends heat spiraling down to your core. You subtly squeeze your legs tighter together in an effort to ignore the throbbing between them.

His hand pulls away all too quickly to grasp onto yours, and you sigh at the release of tension, falling into an easy silence as you simply sit and observe the nature around you. Conversation isn’t necessary, but it appears sparsely whenever anything crosses your mind, and you can say this is the closest thing to a date that you’ve had with Jimin in a while. This is the closest you’ve felt to him. With your head on his shoulder and your fingers intertwined in his lap, this is the feeling of romance and closeness that you lacked in the days you have been confined to your bed, and looking down at the gorgeous wedding rings adorning both of your fingers, you finally feel like a real married couple. He’s been here for you through sickness and health and you are so incredibly grateful that his love and perception of you hasn’t changed for the worst after witnessing your meltdown today. But yours certainly has. You didn’t think it was possible to love him even more than you already do.

Jimin stares at you as you nap with your head on his thigh, him having moved you there when he noticed you starting to dose off. He knows you’re probably exhausted from the emotional (and physical) energy it took to get through today, yet he’s glad that you are finally sleeping peacefully now. It’s odd, he feels more like a knight to you now than he did when he first confessed his love for you here as one of your soldiers. He’s a king, this he knows, but it doesn’t feel like the weight of the kingdom is on his shoulders like he expected— in fact, he feels less responsible for the welfare of the population now than he did as a General. That sense of impending doom he felt before your marriage is nowhere to be found and in its place sits an ease that makes him believe for the first time that everything will be alright. You’ve gone through Hell this past week and he prays that this is the worst it will ever get, but you’ve survived it despite everything and he knows that this will only make the two of you stronger as a pair.

The temperature dips slightly when the sun begins to set, the breeze turning a bit more persistent to aid the cooling, and your body is completely lax against him as you sleep. You do not even wake when he lifts you onto his back again, taking you back to the castle with slow steps to wash your body with a warm rag. He takes his time cleaning you, dragging the cloth and bubbles over your skin as gently as possible and making sure to clean every inch. You’re calm as he takes care of you, but goosebumps raise to the surface whenever he nears your chest or thighs. But he’s focused and devoted so he doesn’t take notice, dressing you in a satin robe and placing you against the soft sheets of your bed when he’s finished.

“Mm,” You groan quietly, shifting in your sleep when your husband runs his hand through your hair, yet you still do not awaken. He smiles at you, deciding to take the opportunity to change into more comfortable clothes for the evening, first stripping himself until his upper body is bare, then reaching down to unclasp his belt. You hum again, wiggling your hips and rubbing your legs together ever so slightly, a small furrow on your brow, and Jimin pauses to watch you for a moment. Were you feeling alright? You look to be in discomfort and a sweat builds on your temples despite the cooler temperatures, but then you lick your lips and let out a shaky sigh that clues him into what is happening.

Slowly unbuckling his belt, he feels the material of his pants pull tighter when he imagines what you could be dreaming about. Perhaps you were dreaming about the last time you had him to yourself, where he pleasured you until your legs shook. Or maybe you’re thinking about that fantasy of yours, the one where he ties your wrists and makes you beg for him to touch you properly, to let you feel him. But it is also possible that you are thinking exactly what he is imagining right this moment: him inside of you, fucking you relentlessly until you both reach your highs and he cums inside your tight, hot pussy, filling you with his seed over and over again until he’s sure you’re pregnant with his child.

He doesn’t even realize when his hand slips into his own briefs, the acute pleasure of his hand squeezing at his base enough to set him alight. The bed dips as he prowls slowly toward you, sliding your robe from your body and grabbing the container of oil perched on the bedside table that he prepared earlier to moisturize you with. Your chest rises and falls rapidly, a slick forming between your legs from your dream, and he simply smiles as he pours warm oil over your front, his soft hands following swiftly. It starts down your stomach, back up around your breasts— avoiding your nipples— around your shoulders and along your arms. The feeling alone isn’t enough to wake you, but the sound of your own voice when you moan aloud is.

“Hello there,” Jimin grins when your eyes open to meet his bare chest, then his eyes. “Sleep well?”

“I-“ You’re panting as he rubs oil into your upper body, tingles shooting down your nerves and straight to your core. “Yes.” You swallow.

“It appears so,” He chuckles, moving on to pour the liquid onto each of your thighs, catching the drips with his fingers before they can stain your sheets. Feeling his fingers on your upper thighs makes your muscles tense, and it is then that you feel the soreness from exerting yourself today. He notices a small wince when he presses into the muscles there, experimentally adding pressure to see your reaction. “Are you sore, my love?”

“Y-Yes.” You stutter out again, breath hitching at the way he lifts one of your legs suddenly to rest against his shoulder, settling himself between them, and the position alone is enough to have you pooling between the legs.

“Here?” He whispers, pressing into the muscles of your inner thighs. You groan, partly from the soreness, and partly from how close his slippery fingers glide toward your wet lips, the ache inside you increasing tenfold. “You are so tense, darling. Is this because you took your first steps out of this room today? Or could it be you are filled with tension from something else, hm? Have you been waiting for me to help you release all of this pressure? To rub out all of the stress you are holding deep inside you, wound up so, so tightly that you cannot wait to let it unravel all over me? Is that it?” You nod wordlessly.

He rubs circles into an especially tender spot and watches as you bite your lip, looking at him with such a needy expression that he almost can’t contain himself. You have the prettiest eyes he has ever seen, looking at him as if he holds the entire world in his palms, and he wants to give you everything he has to offer. Pulling you closer, he makes sure you can feel his bulge against your ass as he moves on to your other leg to work out the knots there.

“My love- I want you.” You whimper when he bucks into you a little, kissing your ankle softly.

“What is it that you desire, My Queen?”

“I want you to make love to me until I am numb and claim me as your Queen. I missed having you inside of me, I do not know if I can wait another day.” You plead, the throbbing between your legs beginning to feel unbearable.

“Fuck,” Your legs fall from his shoulders when Jimin leans forward to place his hands beside your head, bending to rest his forehead against yours. “I know I have told you that we would wait until you were well again, but I do not think I have enough willpower to deny you of your request.”

“How long must we wait, then, to consummate our love, My King? I am well, just weak, but I am certain that I can handle whatever you give to me. You will not hurt me.” To further break his resolve, you scratch your nails lightly against his scalp and watch as he shivers, grabbing onto the locks as you pull him down for a passionate kiss. His lips seem softer than ever as you press them into yours, biting on the flesh briefly before slipping your tongue into his mouth, and he lets you lead the encounter until you are both breathless and hot. The next place his lips land is on the side of your neck, kissing along the ticklish underside of your jawline to your favorite spot above your pulse. He nips you there, still fearful of leaving a visible mark, and you groan with an arch of your chest, sensitive nipples grazing his.

“I will do all of the work, then. You need not move a single muscle, my love.” Jimin trails his lips between the valley of your breasts, kissing the underside of each one but avoiding the taut peaks. You squirm beneath him and fist his hair, whining out as he makes his way lower and slower. “Allow me to take care of you. I only wish to make your fantasies come true.” At this, he stops at the tuft of hair above your pubic bone, locking eyes with you before suddenly lunging up to grab hold of your wrists, the two of you giggling when he moves them above your head.

“You startled me!” You flush red at the way he stares down at you, looking so loving yet so dominant at the same time.

“I do recall a time where you disclosed to me that you often fantasized about me bounding your hands and having my way with you... is that something you still want?” He inquires, his eyes never wavering from yours.

“Yes, very much.” You breathe, lost in the way his thumbs caress your skin.

“Very well,” He reaches over to pull the long satin ribbon from your discarded robe, bringing the material up to tie your hands to a post. It’s tighter than what is completely comfortable but he can tell you like the slight discomfort, and you tell him it’s perfect because you know he knows just how much you enjoy this. Hands immobilized now, there is no escape from the onslaught of pleasure you know Jimin will inflict on you, and the anticipation eats you alive and makes you weep between the legs. His fingertips skim over you ever so lightly, starting from your shoulders, over your chest and stomach, down the length of your legs, bringing them back up the inside of your calves and thighs until he splays his palms against them and pushes your legs apart. The sigh he releases fans over your wetness and you whine. “It feels like it has been an eternity since I’ve last had you. Your beauty astounds me every time.”

Leaning forward, he connects his lips with yours for only a moment, before scattering them across your clavicle and dipping down to lick at your left nipple. Preoccupied with watching him suck at your chest with his luscious lips, you jolt a bit when his fingers come up to caress your core and play with your opening, gathering the leaking droplets of your arousal to bring them up to your clit. The first circle is sparks, the second lightening, and you do not even attempt to conceal the loud moan that falls from you.

“Jimin,” You gasp, already feeling out of breath. His tongue flicks, teasing the bud as his fingers move in a similar fashion below, and you feel the need to have him closer, locking your legs around his torso as he rests between them.

“That’s it, moan as loud as you want, darling. I want to hear how good you feel.” He mumbles, lowering his mouth onto your other breast and treating it with the same care. Your chest has never been very sensitive, but tonight it feels as if your body has been ignited in flames, each touch against your nerves sending a tingle straight down to your core. You could cum just like this, with his fingers on your pussy and lips around your nipples, his free hand warm as it holds up your breast for his mouth to ravish. He pulls away from your chest with a pop, letting his teeth skim the sensitive bud just to watch you arch for him.

“I n-need more,” Your voice cracks with frustration, his fingertips against you no longer enough and he knows it.

“You need more of what, my love?” He asks coyly, sinking one finger in halfway before pulling it away.

“Of you. Please, taste how badly I desire you.” Your hips lift off the bed into his hips, shocked to find how hard he is beneath his trousers. He is doing an amazing job at ignoring his own painful arousal, while you are slowly being reduced to nothing simply from the prospect of being taken by him.

“So greedy, darling, were my fingers not enough for you? Do you need my mouth to satisfy you instead?” You nod vigorously at him, gasping at the way he forcefully parts your thighs and pushes them to the bed. His dark chuckle sounds through the room, his voice dripping with lust and bass as he positions himself face-to-face with your sex. He needs little more than the fragrant scent of you to know just how fertile you are, and how sweet you will taste on his tongue, and his mouth waters at the thought. “I love how impatient you are for me, love, but we have the entire night to ourselves and I intend to take my time loving Every. Single. Inch of you.”

He punctuates his words with kisses to your center, ending with one long lick that causes your teeth to sink down on your bottom lip. Jimin’s tongue moves expertly against your slick folds, using flat licks to collect your essence that seems almost like a drug to him. It starts off gentle, the glide of his tongue, but it is the best feeling you’ve felt in what feels like ages. Pulling on your restraints, you try your hardest to keep still, hands and legs immobilized by your husband as he devours your pussy with devotion, swirling around your clit and dragging his plump lips through your wetness in the messiest way possible, but your pelvis curls up into him in delight with every sensation he delivers.

If you were to compare yourself to anything, it would be a waterfall— gushing and fast paced, heart pounding like the deafening noise of rushing water that almost drowns out the sound of him lapping up your wetness. And every time you think you have a stable foothold, he switches his pattern and sucks, causing you to slip right off the edge with the current. The feeling alone isn’t what makes you run, however; it is the way he looks up at you with his sexy, smoldering eyes as if to communicate that he knows just how amazingly talented he is with his mouth. You love when he gazes into your eyes during sex, it shows how attentive he is to your body, how fascinated he is with every reaction you produce for him as he continues to tease your pink button until your eyes roll.

“Jimin, please,” You moan, breaking eye contact with him to throw your head back into the fluffed pillows. It feels as if your toes are stuck in a curled position, muscles tense with the oncoming orgasm that he promises with every kiss. His eyebrow raises questioningly at you, almost mockingly, and you know he can feel how your clit swallows and pulses in his mouth, a clear sign that your high is near. But with three more circles, he pulls back and grins at you, waiting for your eyes to reopen and meet with his. “Why~” You whine, flexing your hips uselessly.

“You must be mistaken, darling, I am in charge tonight. I have already expressed to you that I intend to take my time pleasuring you, so why am I being rushed?” His steely gaze freezes you where you lay, bound arms relaxing once again.

“I-I was going to cum.” You reply meekly, hoping that he will resume soon before your high fades away. His thumbs play idly with your lower lips, spreading the slick smeared around from his messy eating.

“Then cum if you must, but I will not stop until I have had my fill of you. Now, be a good girl and sit still for me.” It’s worded nicely, but you know this is a warning. You haven’t been punished by him in a long while, deciding that you prefer kind yet strict Jimin to angry and cruel Jimin, but you still huff in frustration.

“To think you would treat me like this...” You pout, trying a cute tactic to appeal to his softer side. “I am the Queen, you know.”

“Oh, I am well aware of that, My Queen. But I am also your King now so I am responsible for all of your pleasure, and it is my duty and mission to give to you as much as possible. Though, admittedly, tasting your delectable flavor is mainly for my own enjoyment.” He gives a cheeky smile, one that crinkles his eyes but in a more mischievous way than normal.

“Is denying me a high also part of your plan?” You snap, earning a click of his tongue.

“If you allow me to work, you will find that we both will get what we desire.” With that he reconnects his mouth to your pussy, the return of his warmth throwing you back into the river. He works you with a slow tongue, targeting where you’re most sensitive for only a few seconds at a time before straying down your slit to prod at your hole, barely giving you enough time to catch your breath before returning to tend to your bud. It is extremely difficult to keep still, and at this rate you will reach your first high quicker than you expected. He is so good with his mouth that you can hardly do more than moan, straining your arms above your head as not to move your lower body, but you cannot stop the tremble of your thighs when he licks you so well.

His pace increases, diving in rough to push you over the edge with a squeal of his name, and suddenly you are falling off the endless rapids of an explosive orgasm. You have thought many times how your first orgasm as a married woman would be given to you, but you could never have guessed it would be this intense. The silk of your restrains dig into your wrists, but you feel nothing aside from the deep pulsing inside you, clenching and squeezing around nothing as he eases you through the bliss. You can hear a faint hum sound from the man between your legs as you begin to come back down, your juices shining on his cheeks as he drinks from the source, eyes closed and face tinted pink from your heat. But just when your body relaxes again, he drags his way back up, surprising you with the shock it sends to your toes.

“Ah!” You squeak, attempting to close your legs, but his strength is many times more than yours and you hold little power as he holds you open, eyes back on yours with a curious glint. He runs his wet muscle up and down the length of your pussy, watching you buck and jump from the sensitivity, barely able to whine out his name to tell him it’s too much. However, you already know this was his plan from the start, so you force yourself to endure it.

He’s grinning now, simply adoring the response he gets from you with every movement against you, and his cock screams for relief at how sexy you look as you lay there bound and sweaty, a flush of red overtaking your complexion and an uncontrollable shaking that is almost laughable. If he can hold on a little longer he is sure you will feel so wet and soft around him once he finally slips inside. It’s painful to wait, but the beautiful agony you reflect on your face is more than a worthy distraction. Locking his arms around your hips, Jimin uses his fingers to spread your lips and expose your shy clit as it hides from the stimulation. As soon as the air touches it you shiver, immediately replaced by a warmth that spreads up your spine with every quick flick against it. Your body protests at once, trying hard to slip from his grasp, but then your whimpering turns to moaning and you once again feel that building sensation in your abdomen.

Once your muscles finally relax and your legs part farther in invitation, Jimin sneaks in two of his chubby digits to satisfy the emptiness you craved to be filled. It is amazing how easily he finds your spot, curled and pressed right into the rough patch that holds the key to your second release. He doesn’t pump in and out like usual— no, it’s more like he’s rubbing you from the inside— and the combination of this alongside his tongue sends you into a cursing frenzy.

“Shit- Ah! So fucking-“ A deep groan sounds from your throat when he increases pressure against your walls. “Right like that... I’ll-“ Your words come in broken intervals as you struggle to catch a breath, the voluntary control of your body slipping away the more your mind clouds with hazy pleasure that speeds through you. A numbness takes over your body to the point where you barely feel anything, and then you feel everything all at once. It’s a beautiful brilliance that blindsides you once it hits, the feeling ascending you from the mix of sensations that never let up between your legs, and it’s almost an out-of-body experience. Jimin can feel the harsh clenching of your walls around his thick fingers, wetness spilling out around the digits as the intensity of your spasms magnify with every drag of his tongue. Your back is contorted and arched off the sheets, no sound escaping you as you look to be in total bliss, focused completely on the incredible rush of endorphins that only lasts seconds, but feels like hours. He’s captivated once again by the sight of you, pulling his mouth away to catch the end of your euphoric trip, your hips bucking in waves to chase the feeling.

The hand within you stills, but you continue to react, shaking and clamping your thighs shut when he moves from the gap between them. Staggering breaths are all you can manage for a minute, eyes shut tight and still lost in the wonderland that his mouth and fingers brought you. You can feel his eyes lingering on you, his fingers pulled from your hole, and you can just imagine the smile that’s on his lips. One that he wears only when he is feeling especially good about himself, his ego big enough to fill the entire palace. But when you finally look to him, all you see is wild hunger in his eyes.

“I have never seen you look so enraptured before. For a moment I feared that I had broken you,” He laughs, completely amazed, making a mental note to improve his technique just so he can make you cum like that every time. You swallow hard and shake your head at him, reaching to pull him down for a kiss but being met with the rattle of your headboard. With quick hands, he unties you and dives in to meet your lips with his, groaning at the way you lead aggressively and push at his trousers.

“Off. Need you.” You mumble into the kiss, barely pulling away enough to speak as you taste the intoxicating flavor of his mouth and your cum. He gently bites your lip to slow your frenzy, pulling the flesh along with him before releasing and staring into your eyes like they hold the galaxy. It lasts only a second, but it is enough to cause your heart to skip a beat as you realize the magnitude of the moment. You are now married to the love of your life. He is King and you are the Queen. There are no limitations surrounding your love now, meaning everything that happens from this point forward has been given the official approval of the kingdom— it is encouraged, even. This is what you have waited for.

Shoving down his pants, Jimin makes haste in exposing himself, rid of his last garment and ready to begin. You look up at him with innocent eyes as he pulls you toward him and rubs himself between your folds, cock scalding with the pulsating need to fill you to the brim and fuck it’s heavy load deep into you. Due to the stress of your recovery and handling the affairs of the kingdom, Jimin has not been relieved since the night before your wedding and his balls are tense and weighted with a week of unreleased pressure. Once covered in the arousal from your previous orgasms, he wastes no time pressing the head of him into your entrance, pushing in as slowly as he can manage so you feel every bit of his cock as it gently spreads you open around him.

“Look at me.” He whispers to you, grip tightening on your hips when you find his gaze once again. When he’s all the way inside he only pauses for a few seconds, pulling out halfway and slowly inserting himself back in, both of you groaning in delight. He can feel how swollen you are from your first two orgasms, the fit tighter than usual, and he finds himself short of breath just from the shallow strokes he’s given you so far. Reaching up, you loop your arms around his neck to bring him closer, his palms resting next to your head so he can hold himself above you. “I hope our children inherit your eyes.” He confesses, and you clench at this, heart fluttering.

“Well, there will not be any children of ours unless you fuck me properly.” You shoot back with a smile, tired of the slow rolling of his hips and wishing he would just get to it already.

“I also wish for them to inherit your smile— but hopefully not your vulgar tongue.” Jimin snickers when you roll your eyes at him, his thrusts increasing in power just slightly before he pulls out completely. “Turn over, raise your ass high for me.” You hastily follow his instructions, facing the headboard and dropping your upper half onto the pillows so he has the perfect view from behind.

“Like this?” You coo, wiggling to tease. His hands grope at your globes, pulling them apart slightly to eye the string of wetness that drips down from you, catching it with his length before it can stain your sheets. The way he fits inside you when he re-enters halts your playfulness instantly, the slide feeling so much better in this position.

“Is this what you wanted of me, My Queen? Is this enough?” The slap of his hips against your ass is so loud that it echoes throughout the room, accompanied by the squelch of your walls and your muffled whimpers into the pillow beneath you.

The speed he chooses is quick, sharp and deep thrusts that aim pointedly at your engorged frontal wall, and your back hollows initially out of surprise, but he easily guides you into your previous arched position with a hand between your shoulder blades. From his perspective, you look like a succubus enticing him to succumb to his deepest desires and chase his high selfishly with the goal of impregnating you. He nearly drools at the dip of your back and waist, the roundness of your ass on display for no one but him, each cheek jiggling giddily with the contact of his skin. He can see the tiny sweat droplets beginning to bead on the surface of your shoulders and neck, stray strands of hair getting stuck there the more you are jostled into the pillows, the color of your ears and neck turning a lovely red color from the blood rush. Raking his nails up and down your back, Jimin watches with rapt attention as goosebumps appear, prickling up in beautiful response to his touch as he fucks you harder.

You feel his hands begin to play with your ass, pulling your cheeks apart to get a view of his cock sliding in and out, slowing for a few strokes just to see how you grip him on the way out and suck him back in until his balls rest against your lips. He pulls you into him, encouraging your movement, and it isn’t long before you pick up his rhythm, rocking yourself into him to the best of your ability in your weakened state. But even with the little power you manage, Jimin still touches so much deeper, so much stronger into you, and your moans turn almost crazed. His cock isn’t incredibly long, but God, does he fit perfectly against all of your favorite places. Like two pieces of a puzzle. You’ve experienced his cock on many occasions, yet you never grow tired of it or get used to the feeling that makes you feel light in the head and numb in your body. He could say the same for your pussy, the feeling even more satisfying every time he’s had the pleasure of exploring it. Today is different though— this feels different— and maybe it is supposed to. Maybe this is what it feels like to know that you are all his. To have security in your relationship, which is something that had been missing when your relationship was still in secret. It’s a new feeling and it feels amazingly wet and tight and perfect, he could easily become very comfortable with the idea of having you and only you for the rest of his days.

Pushing you down flat, Jimin moves your legs together to straddle the back of your thighs, slipping in once again with a groan of your name. His front lowers to rest against your back, lips already starting a trail up your shoulders and neck. It’s a bit ticklish when he kisses you there and you smile, turning your head to meet him and slip your tongue into his mouth. His hips are fluid like waves on a beach, rocking into you slowly once more so you can cherish the moment and the closeness. If he doesn’t slow down now, Jimin is certain he will cum very soon and he wants this to last so much longer than that.

“I missed this with you.” He whispers, returning his lips to suck at your jaw. “I missed being intimate with you and having you like this. To think I almost lost you, fuck,” A shakiness enters his voice that you do not expect. “To think I would never get to love or touch you again... I never want to let you go now. I just want to hold you.”

“Then hold me. I am yours now.” You reassure him, finding one of his hands and holding on tight. You have shared those same thoughts: the possibility that— had you not been so lucky— one of you could have died and you would never be able to experience this love ever again. Having him be here in the moment with you means so much more now, and you feel so incredibly blessed to be able to express your love to each other again.

“I will do so much more than hold you, My love. I want to satisfy every craving and desire you have, your wish is my command.” His rolling turns into rougher grinding, the friction and his words sending a flash of heat through your body.

“Faster,” You breathe, squeezing his hand a little tighter. The fragrant candles lit across the room do a poor job at covering the scent of sex that wafts from your bodies when he picks up speed, raising onto his hands to gain leverage. You grip the sheets when he starts fucking you in earnest, bouncing off your ass and aiming for long strokes. You wish you could say the smack of his hips was the lewdest sound in the room, but you cannot control your voice, moaning even louder now with reckless abandon. There is no doubt in your mind that everyone on the second floor of your palace can hear you, Jimin’s own grunts joining yours when you squeeze so nicely around him.

His hand snakes up your side, winding around to grab hold of one of your breasts, and his expert fingers twist and pinch at your sensitive nipples, earning moan after moan from you as he continues to increase in speed and power.

“It is so good,” Jimin huffs, crouching over you to move his hand higher until it has a light grasp around your neck. His fingertips press to your pulse point, not enough to cut off your airflow, but enough to have you lightheaded and dripping from the sensation. “Talk to me, My Queen. Tell me how much you love my cock.”

Your husband has always been a sucker for praise, yours in specific, and you have never been one to deny him of it. Twisting as far as you can, you look back at him to express your words and are met with a sight that makes your walls flutter. The orange dim lighting of the room flickers shadows all over his body, defining the cuts of muscle and glow of perspiration covering him. His abs flex with every forward movement, peck muscles bulging to hold his weight, only the tops of his thighs visible over the horizon of your ass. He plows into you with magnificent form, focused on giving you the utmost pleasure amidst his own. “I love... everything about you.” You pant, unable to tear your eyes from his body or the sight of his cock moving languidly in and out of you. “I love how fucking deep you reach, I love how I can feel your balls pressing against me with every stroke, I love how I can feel you throbbing inside- god, Jimin, I am so close.”

“Will you cum for me once more, darling? Let me feel you pull me in and milk my cum with your sweet little pussy.” His fingers press harder to your throat, your core tightening in tandem, and you can feel your whole body quiver with the beginnings of your orgasm. He’s dripping sweat by now, his hair wet and flopping about his forehead, and you do not think he has ever looked so sexy. The dark look in his eyes is deadly, his own high fast approaching, and butterflies of excitement explode in your belly.

“I will not let go until you do.” You confess, though you are not entirely certain that is true with the way he’s making you feel right now. “I want to feel you spill your seed within me, that is my desire. Please.” Your begging receives a growl in response, a sudden emptiness filling you when he pulls away and flips you back around to face him, throwing your ankles over his shoulders unceremoniously. His hands wrap around to grip the front of your thighs, fingertips digging in as he pounds into you with his strength.

“Fuck, I want that too.” He pants, eyes locking between your legs before they shut in ecstasy, his cursing revealing just how unraveled he is becoming. “I want to cum so deep in this pussy that you will be leaking for days. Need to mark you with my love so the whole fucking kingdom knows you are mine. I have waited for so long, I can’t wait to see you heavy with my child, so swollen and beautiful and all mine. No one else’s.”

His words affect you almost as much as the angle his tip touches inside you, pulling gasps and drawn out whimpers from your lips. There’s as sting where your thighs meet his skin repeatedly, and you know you will probably have bruises all over tomorrow, but you can’t seem to care when it feels this amazing. More than that, his face is scrunched up in desperate agony, each push into your sopping walls dragging him down into a sea of bliss, hoping to fill you with his own salty semen as you continue to gush around him.

“Jimin,” You couldn’t speak if you wanted to, every word being replaced by shuddering gasps because of the magic he performs with his hips. You know he is usually adamant about making you cum first, but you honestly do not think he can hold out that long if the lovely shade of pink that flushes over his face and chest are any indication. You tighten purposefully, snagging your bottom lip with your teeth to stifle your own noises in favor of listening to his, his resulting moan like music to your ears.

“I- shit, I’m gonna-“ His head leans against your ankle, eyebrows furrowed intensely as sweat pools down from his temples.

“Cum inside me, Jimin, I want it so badly. Please. Make me yours.”

All restraint leaves his body at once and he becomes frantic, raising to his knees to deliver devastating thrusts that force you up the bed in increments. Your hands cover his when they move to your waist, craving to feel more of him. His moans become pornographic and you swear you could listen to him getting lost in you forever. They make your core clench as his volume gets louder, and that is all it takes to send him over the edge, unrhythmic, stuttering bucks all he can manage when you feel the first contraction of his balls. With a cry of your name, Jimin pushes in as far as he will go and grinds against you, his head thrown back to expose his bobbing Adam’s apple and the veins straining at the surface of his skin as his eyes roll at the satisfaction of finally being able to finish inside you. This is what you have wanted for so long, to feel each pulse of his groin when he reaches the height of his pleasure, to feel the sensation of him swelling ever so slightly inside of you as he paints your walls white with his release, but neither of you expected for it to feel this incredible. You feel like this is an entirely new level of intimacy that you have reached with your lover, being able to have him splatter his love deep within your womb and milk himself dry with your warm walls.

You can’t help but moan at the experience, never having seen him cum so hard before, and it takes several seconds for the twitching in his balls to stop before he is coherent again. What you do not expect is for his hips to start moving not a moment later, gently at first while he leans over you to press your knees to your chest and his forehead to yours. But his pace then resumes to the relentless one he held before, though not as powerful, and you instantly tense up.

“It feels so much better like this— so so wet.” Jimin groans, fighting through his own sensitivity to help you find bliss as well. You never knew you needed this in your life— him fucking you with his overly sensitive cock, using his own cum as lube to get you to your peak— but now that it’s happening, you don’t know how you’ve lived your whole life without it. Already close to the edge, you can hardly function with all of the new sensations you are experiencing, nails raking at Jimin’s toned back until they land on his muscular ass. “Mmm, I can feel how close you are,” His breath hitches. “Are you aroused by the feeling of me fucking my cum into your womb? It feels good, doesn’t it— being pleased and claimed by your King?”

You can only nod at him, sealing your lips out of cautious habit, but he opens your mouth with his to swallow your moans instead, grabbing hold of your ass to pull you deeper along his shaft, making sure to hit that one spot that makes your toes curl and legs go numb. Not that you mind at all, you can barely walk anyway. When he pulls away for air you find him gazing at you, eyes glazed over with the need to see you fall apart for him, his stamina depleting rapidly. Luckily, you can already feel the mind-numbing feeling climbing up your spine with every pull of his length.

“You take me so well, my love, I cannot wait to feel you let go around me. Come on, darling, let me feel you pulse and pull all my cum back inside you.” Upon his command, you release the spring that has been coiling inside you and let yourself fall.

This orgasm is far different than the one’s you have had before. It starts off softly, your body relaxing to the point where you think you’ll sink right through the mattress, but then a flame courses through you and singes all of your nerves until all of your muscles lock and you are caught in a silent scream. Jimin is the one who curses when your core begins to swallow around him, the spasms almost harsh enough to knock the wind out of both of you as he continues lifting you over his length. He keeps fucking you through it, staring at the dazed expression on your face as you arch your back under him, the contractions at your center getting unbearably stronger until you are nearly pushing him out, a pressure forcing against his thrusts that he has never felt before. The wetness between you magnifies tenfold as liquid begins to spurt from you every time he pulls out, splashing against his abdomen and dripping down your ass. It isn’t buckets, but it is enough to make a mess as both of your cum mixes, his cock lathered to the point where it’s hard for him not to slip out.

When you finally take a breath it comes out as a shout, followed by a jumble of words when your hands shoot to his arms just as the trembles in your body take hold. With two more strokes, he pulls out, thumb rubbing at your clit quickly to force out more liquid with how strong your empty hole squeezes. He smiles at the sounds you make, pulling his hand away when you beg, watching you curl up instantly, still thrashing with the ongoing surge of pleasure. Gentle fingers move your fringe from your eyes, calming you with a warm hand caressing your side.

“Wow.” Is all your husband can say, also taking his time recovering and allowing his length to soften fully. He collapses onto the bed behind you, pulling your body to his and attacking you with kisses all over your shoulders and neck, twisting you onto your back until he can reach your face and peck his way to your lips. He cradles your head in his hands as he slows, savoring the taste of your mouth and the smile he can feel against his lips.

Your mind is blank when you look at him again, completely blissed out and unable to have any thoughts. You lay there for several minutes, just cuddling each other and smiling, not knowing what to say. Jimin is the first to break the silence.

“Your servants are going to be livid with you.” He chuckles, referring to the ruined bedsheets.

“No, our servants are going to be livid with us. Do not exclude yourself from this, My King.” He shivers at the name, not yet used to it, but it bring a pride to his chest when he hears it from your lips.

“Are you completely satisfied with our first night together, my love?”

“Our first night? It is far from it.” You scoff, closing your eyes.

“Do not let anyone else in the kingdom hear that, our rule would surely be doomed if word were to get out.” He reminds you lightheartedly, though he is correct.

“Ah, yes. In that case: our first night together was delightful, more than I could have ever hoped for. If, for some reason, I had sexual relations with you before our marriage— which I certainly have not— I would go as far as to say that it was the best time I have ever had.” You grin cheekily, pecking him on the nose with a laugh.

“I feel the same.” He replies honestly, capturing your lips in a lazy kiss that tangles your limbs and makes your stomach do backflips. “I discovered a few things about you tonight, Love, and a new talent. I cannot wait to explore it more.” Jimin stands to begin his cleanup job, grabbing a cloth and wetting it before strolling back over to where you lay motionlessly. If you were weak before, you are now totally drained, your legs and toes still tingling from your bent position and the extreme orgasms he forced out of you. It’s almost laughable how exhausted you look.

“I suppose next time we will know what to expect.” You yawn, sighing when the warm cloth touches your skin.

“Next time? Who says we are finished for tonight?” He inquires, opening your legs to peer at his own cum dripping out of your opening. “If we are seriously attempting to get you pregnant, should we not try more than once a day?”

“I do not know if I can handle more.” You complain, squirming even when he wipes between your legs until you are clean.

“Do not worry, dinner should be here soon and then we can nap, but it is far too early to go to sleep. As I said before, we have all night, there is no need to rush.”

Lilian enters nearly an hour later with steaming trays of food, busy as always and barely paying attention.

“Oh it smells horrendous in here, maybe I should replace these candles.” She mumbles to herself, cracking open a window after placing your plates in front of you and Jimin. It is only after she mindlessly starts tidying up does she notice your sleepy forms, taking in your droopy eyes and Jimin’s smug face. “I see you appear to be in better condition, Your Majesty. I trust that everything has been resolved?”

“Yes, Lilian, I am doing much better. Just a little sore.” One look at her narrowed eyes tells you that she knows exactly what transpired between you and the King.

“The King seems to be very adept at taking care of you. You may soon not need me at all.” She grins, picking up clothing from the carpet.

“Not to worry, I do not aim to steal your occupation. There are just certain things that I am more suited to care for in regards to our Queen.” He is far too smug for your liking and you frown, elbowing him in the side as he and Lilian share giggles. She is probably the only servant he will get this close to, but it still makes you uncomfortable how they talk so freely about your private matters.

“Thank you, Lilian, that will be all.” You say with a tight smile. Her eyes flick down to the wet spot on the center of the bed, eyebrows shooting up as she makes her exit.

“Shall I order new sheets, Your Highnesses?”

“THAT WILL BE ALL, LILIAN.”

#Jimin smut #ksmutclub #bts smut #jimin scenario #tyfys #ficswithluv

[jenovahh]

The Honey Pot - Ch. 29 - A Love Just as Sweet

“You’re sure you don’t need me to come help? No furniture you need to move?”

“I think you’re just looking for an excuse to ditch work, Ardbert.”

“You’re half right. I’m also looking for an excuse to come see my godchild as well.”

“Your godchild is at home with the babysitter, waiting for me to return from the grocery store.” You can’t help but giggle into the phone at Ardbert’s dramatic groan as you pick up a few rolanberries to put in your shopping cart. “You know you’re more than free to visit, Ardbert.” you grin, even if he cannot see it.

“I know, I know. But it’s hard work now being in charge of an entire luxury chauffeur service now that Varis is gone! I may be the boss, but I have employees to manage. Paychecks to write. Won’t you have pity on your poor friend? Won’t you pay for my ticket to Eorzea?” Ardbert bemoans, and already you can envision his melodramatic flare, unable to stop yourself from snorting at his antics.

“Maybe in a few years I’ll be ready to come back to Kugane.” you murmur softly, rolling an apple around in your hand.

“Always at your own pace, Honey.” Ardbert adds warmly, and it’s times like these you do miss your closest friend. “Even if you feel you can never return, I’ll never fault you for it. I’ll always do my best to come see you.”

You prepare to say something back when your phone beeps in your ear. Pulling it from your face, you see you have an incoming call. “Hey Ardbert, I’ll call back later. I’ve got an important call coming in.”

“No problem, talk to you later, Honey.”

Tapping on the screen, you transfer the call over, bringing your phone to your ear again as you continue to amble around the grocery store. “And what do you want?”

“Is that any way to greet a friend?” Cid scoffs, just as, if not more dramatic than Ardbert.

“It’s a way to greet this friend.” You laugh, nabbing some chips off the shelf. You were getting pretty low on snacks.

“I called to check in on you and also deliver some news. Are you busy?”

“I’m a full time mother, Cid. When am I not busy?” you joke, making your way to the meat department. “After all, my days are filled with diaper changes and games of peekaboo. Exciting stuff.”

“Boring, but peaceful.” Cid supplies, giving out his sage wisdom as usual. “But on a more serious note, is all well?”

Was all well?

It had been a year since your coming to Eorzea, landing yourself a fairly decent sized house in the Gridanian countryside. While off the grid, you were still afforded modern amenities, such as high speed internet and cable TV. Every so often you would have to work your way into the city to run a few errands, just like you are today. You would usually call up one of your trusted neighbors to come over and babysit to put some spare change in their pocket.

You had woken up in the hospital alone, feeling as if you had been hit by a truck while getting ran over by a train, and somehow managed to live. Merlwyb and Cid were the first to barge in your room at news you had woken from your sleep, having feared you would fall into a coma from the damage to your body, or even the damage to your mind.

There was hardly a day that either of them wasn’t at your side, working in shifts almost until Ardbert had even managed to convince them to squeeze in on the rotation. Ardbert’s presence helped break down the walls you had immediately put up upon waking, spending an entire night sobbing into his arms, finally allowing yourself to mourn everything you had lost.

With his help did you get yourself to therapy, Ardbert there with you every step of the way on the road to recovery.

When you reached a point where you felt stable enough to confront all that had happened, you had asked the three of them to tell you what had been going on since that day.

Cid and Merlwyb were quick to hold off the local news of misconstruing facts, Cid telling them to wait until he could get back to his home and compile all the evidence the public needed. The entire city was in an uproar, Varis’ most loyal followers spewing hate and lies to try and convince the public that everything was a ruse and that Cid was the one to cause the explosion at the research facility.

There seemed to be no hope in sight until an unsuspecting witness came to the front.

Gaius of all people had given his testimony, exposing every bit of collusion and dirty deals Varis had a hand in, debunking every lie that Varis had ever spewed, every promise he had intended to break. He had offered himself up for arrest for taking part in Varis’ crimes, even if he had been manipulated into thinking it was for the better of Kugane.

But with Varis gone, and his heir missing, what would happen to Galvus industries?

Cid would receive everything from the corporation, from shares to assets to the building itself. Cid, being the philanthropist he is, decided there was no use of him having so much extra wealth on top of what he already had, and decided to spend the rest of his days giving the money to charities and actually improving the city he now called home.

Said city of course let Lord Hien serve another term. Lord Hien, being an honest man, did not hide his taking part of your operation to stop Varis. With full transparency he informed the public of why he made the decisions he did, assuring them he had not taken out Varis for power, but had kept a tyrant from taking over their country.

When you ask what had become of Elidibus, everyone only stares at you in confusion. You try to describe him to the best of your ability, but all it seems to do is make people more concerned for your mental health by trying to make them remember someone who never existed. Hoping you had not gone off the deep end, it is only when you try to search for him on the internet do you realize his entire existence has been erased.

No notes of him being prime minister of Garlemald, no notes of him having a casual friendship with Vris. As if he had been a figment of your imagination.

Only when you reach for the back of your neck and feel the telltale pulse of your tattoo do you know it wasn’t all a dream.

Taking a deep breath, you finally answer Cid. “I...am well.”

“Good,” Cid breathes, and just hearing his voice makes you yearn for his company. You hope he’ll visit soon. “All good on funds? Need any extra change?”

“Cid, you already wire me nearly 500,000 gil a month; I couldn’t do anything else with more of it.” You grumble as you pick up some chicken breasts and place them in your basket.

“Hey, that money isn’t just for you. I know you want to keep baby Aldynn a secret, but he is still the rightful heir of the Galvus inheritance, and with me in charge of the funds I’ll ensure he gets it. The best time to start saving for college is now,”

“Cid.” you sigh, padding your way to prepare to checkout. Thankfully the lines aren’t too long this time of day. “Aldynn is barely a year old. I don’t have to start thinking about college for another decade and a half.”

“I know, I know…” Cid grumbles, and you can’t help but feel a little bad. Cid really did mean well, being every bit the overprotective uncle you knew he’d be. “I just worry. And I miss you.”

Smiling sadly, you begin to hand your items to the cashier to checkout. “I miss you too, Cid.”

“And better me to call you than Merlwyb, eh? You know we’re practically monitoring her bank account to make sure she hasn’t bought another round trip ticket to Eorzea.” Cid laughs, prompting you to snicker as you hand your payment to the cashier.

“I don’t know what she worries so much for...she really should work through her guilt…” you muse quietly, thanking the cashier as they help load your bags back into your basket.

“She will, in time. Granted, I'm sure the statue they are about to erect of Raubahn down at the police station will reopen some old wounds for a little bit.” Cid laments, both of you silent for a second. “You may be seeing her come over sooner than you’d like. Your statue,”

You stop in place as you glare angrily at the phone glued to the side of your face. “My statue?”

“Shit,” Cid curses under his breath. “Yeah, I fucked that one up. Sorry, Honey.” Cid apologizes, but you’re already fuming as you make your way out to the parking lot.

“I already said I didn’t want a statue! That Chief Raubahn was the only one who deserved it for his sacrifice!” You huff and puff, practically throwing your groceries into your trunk in frustration.

“I know, I know, but you know Merlwyb can be very convincing and very intimidating…” Cid winces as he tries to calm you down. “It’s just going to be a nice little statue in one of the parks, I promise. Merlwyb was prepared to give you an entire fountain--”

“Well thanks for making her show some restraint.” You drone sarcastically, slamming the trunk lid closed. You swear you were going to give that woman a piece of your mind. “Anyway, I appreciate the call Cid. I’m about to drive back home and cook dinner. Gotta send the babysitter on their way.”

“Of course, Honey. Take care.”

The call ends and you pull out of the parking lot, driving your humble car back out of the city. You took to Gridania almost immediately, the climate not too different from Kugane, though the entire country was packed with trees and native flora. You didn’t mind it though, having picked up gardening as a little side hobby as a result. You most likely wouldn’t try and go back into any line of work until baby Aldynn started going to school, which wouldn’t be for a few years yet.

Adjusting to an entirely new life hadn’t been easy, but you needed to just get away from everything. When you were fit to be released from the hospital after the whole ordeal, the outside of the hospital was packed with press, so much so that the only way out of there undetected was with Ardbert’s help since he wasn’t as prominent a figure as Cid or Merlwyb.

You were dodging letters and emails and phone calls every hour of every day it felt like, people badgering you about how you stayed undercover for so long, about how you had saved Merlwyb from being killed alongside Raubahn, about your supposed romance with the heir who had mysteriously gone missing--

It was Lyse and Y’Shtola’s idea that you leave Kugane.

You couldn’t have been any happier to finally reunite with them, the two of them crying their eyes out as they are finally allowed to see you, weeping about how they saw you on the news and how worried they were and for you to never leave their sight again.

You had thought to do just that, but even they could see your mental health continue to deteriorate. You couldn’t even leave your own apartment for fear of being recognized in public, unsure if people would question your “heroic deeds” or ask you things far too personal to answer. It was with their encouragement you got the idea to leave the country and start anew, and what better time to do so when you were halfway through your pregnancy? A pregnancy that against all odds, your unborn child had been just as strong as its parents.

Which, as hard as it was for you to admit, made you wonder if Aldynn would have some kind of freakish strength as he got older. No matter how many doctors checked you, after the sting operation, they said that both mother and baby were the perfect picture of health. While you were overjoyed that you would not have to deal with the trauma of a miscarriage, you can’t steer your mind from darker thoughts that your baby might have been the invincible weapon Varis had been hoping for.

Pulled from your thoughts as your phone rings, you activate the hands free calling, noticing it is your babysitter. “Hello, Zhloe. I know you’re probably eager to get home, I just left the grocery store a little while ago--”

“Oh don’t worry about it! Aldynn is safe with his father!”

Your heart stops.

“Excuse me?” you ask, voice tight but making sure to not lose your cool. While an adult, Zhloe was a very kindhearted, yet unfortunately naive individual. She lived with her younger sister down the road where they ran an animal sanctuary, the two of them orphaned when they were young but maintaining their good hearts regardless.

“Yes! I had left the house a little while ago, but a man knocked on the door. I asked who he was and he told me he was looking for you. I told him very nicely to go away at first because I thought he was a stranger, but when I got a good look at him through the window, I saw he looked just like Aldynn. I asked how he knew you, and he said he was Aldynn’s father.”

Your foot floors the gas before you can stop yourself. You had told her nothing of your past; for all you knew whatever stranger she let in your house could be out for revenge. “Zhloe, I hate to tell you this, but Aldynn’s father,”

“It’s okay, Ms. Honey, I won’t tell anybody! When I asked him questions about you, he answered all of them and that made me sure he wasn’t a stranger. I’ll admit, I had always wondered about Aldynn’s father, but it makes sense he was off in the military like he said. If you guys ever need a date night, just give me a call! He’s so handsome too...you really hit the jackpot!”

“Zhloe, wait--”

“I’m going to get dinner ready for me and Khloe. Have a good night!”

The phone call ends, and you decide not to try and call back to not worry the poor woman. She surely meant well, but you can’t stop your heart from leaping out of your chest as you turn onto the road that has you exit the city and leads to your countryside home.

It’s not possible, you keep telling yourself as you blaze down the street, passing cars like you’re in a street race. Could one of Varis’ old goons have found you, wanting revenge? Would they hold your baby hostage? It’s not possible, it’s not possible--

You’re practically drifting into the driveway of your home, kicking up dirt as you wrench the car to a stop, practically flailing as you kick the car door open. “Aldynn!” You cry. You can see the light on in his room upstairs. Your baby is in danger, he’s in danger--

Shoving the keys into the lock, you fling the door open, running down the entrance hallway and straight into the living room. Your living room is completely empty and you can see nobody in the kitchen or dining area. The house is quiet, not even the sound of your baby crying. Did they already get him? Is he gone--

“I would keep it down,” a voice calls from upstairs, “our son is sleeping.”

It’s not possible.

Halfway near tears, you numbly climb the stairs, afraid of what you might find.

You know that voice.

A single light fills the hallway from Aldynn’s room, and you hear not so much as a whimper from your babe. He knows he is safe, knows he is in no danger.

It’s not possible.

Reaching the doorway, Aldynn’s room is exactly as you left it, and so is your son. Not a hair out of place, his chubby face relaxed and asleep, entirely content in the muscular arms of the man who rocks him gently in his arms. With golden hair like your son’s adorning the man’s shoulders, there is no doubt of who is holding your child.

Blue eyes land upon you, twinkling with mirth. Pouty, pink lips pull into a taunting smile.

“Hello, my love.”

#FFXIV #ff14 #Final Fantasy XIV #zenos #zenos yae galvus #THP

[l-sincline]

Cybernetics- Cyberpunk!Sonic AU- Chapter 4

Amy Rose has been working tirelessly at her broken down booth for as long as she can imagine. Ever since Tails left their work to join forces with the revered hero of Mobius, ‘The Blue Blur’, she’s grown lonely and desperate to make her life exciting. A strange customer comes in one day asking her to fix his cyborg arm, what she didn’t know was that he would be the catalyst for a brand new life.

AO3 Tags:

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Amy Rose/Shadow the Hedgehog, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Amy Rose (Sonic the Hedgehog), Shadow the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog, Miles “Tails” Prower, Dr. Eggman | Dr. Robotnik, Rouge the Bat, Whisper the Wolf, Cream the Rabbit, Knuckles the Echidna, Badnik (Sonic the Hedgehog), E-123 Omega, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, Angst, Slow Burn, Partners in Crime

AO3 Link

Previous/Next

He had walked Amy back to her booth that night, thanking her for her service on his arm, and claiming that he’d come back if he ever needed anything else. She’d offered for him to come by any time to say hello and thanked him for the dinner, but with his personality she quite frankly doubted she’d ever see him again. She’d turned to walk into her booth, and by the time she’d looked over her shoulder to see which direction he’d already disappeared without a sound. She wondered how he did it.

Anyways, she was feeling quite refreshed this morning. Smiling at every potential customer that passed, fixing minor defects on ProjScreens for free, finally talking to someone outside of work had done a world of good for her. Amy could tell it had cleansed her mind and relaxed her a bit, and she felt a bit more like she had when Tails had co-owned the booth with her. She didn’t know how long this feeling of security and peacefulness would last, but she intended to take advantage of it for as long as she could. So, she put up her ‘be back soon’ sign and stepped out of her booth to go and visit Whisper.

The rusty bell jingled as she pushed open the creaking wood door, Whisper’s weapon shop bustled quietly with activity. A few children stood staring at an impressive sword like weapon in a glass case, and a few seemingly more serious buyers turned a base model of a blaster over in their hands.

“Amy! Come on behind the counter.” Whisper’s damaged voice reached Amy’s perked ears as the mechanic turned to look at the weapon maker and quickly headed to get behind the counter.

“Hey Whisper, sorry I couldn’t do this last night.” She apologized as she walked around the counter to stand in front of the wolf mobian.

“It’s quite fine, I understand being exhausted. I caught a glimpse of the piece you were putting back on, it looked very different from anything I’ve ever seen before.”

“It was pretty strange, but enough about my work, what have you got for me?” Amy redirected the conversation as it twisted to be on ‘Myst’s strange cyborg arms. She was sure he wouldn’t want them to be a topic of conversation, even if she didn’t know him that well, she could tell that much.

Whisper merely nodded in response before reaching under the counter and pulling out the model. As it was, it looked a lot like the metal ‘bag’ structure she’d been picturing.

“It’s made out of aluminum, so when you finish it I’m assuming you’ll make it with perhaps cobalt or some other lightweight strong metal, but this is the base form.” She explained. “The strap is here-“ Whisper popped open a compartment and the strap fell out. She continued to speak as she hooked it on to a loop on either end. “-it has magnetic fibers in it, so when you want to be able to go from using it as a weapon to using it as a bag quickly, it can just attach itself to the outside, as long as your metal is magnetic.” Whisper hung the bag over her shoulder to demonstrate how it looked. When she dropped the bag from her shoulder, she pressed a button on the top and the handle of the hammer shot out the other side. Whisper grasped it by the handle and twirled it a few times before stopping to grip it with both hands in a strong stance. “And here’s the finished product.”

“Wow...” Amy breathed out in awe as Whisper lowered it and handed it to her. “I can’t wait to work on it!” She smiled. “Beautiful work, Whisper, really.”

“I’m glad you think so.” She smiled back. “I can’t do lunch today, unfortunately, but something tells me you want to get to work right away.”

“Right- I’ll see you later, Whisper.” She smiled as Whisper waved a quiet good bye.

Amy weaved through the stands displaying weapons and out onto the busy, outer ring streets, where she dodged mobians walking quickly past her to get back into her booth and put away her ‘be back soon’ sign. She set the model down on her desk and quickly got to work on it, now eagerly hoping that no one would bother her for the rest of the day so she could get it done as soon as possible.

After a few hours of replicating pieces of the aluminum model with cobalt she had almost finished forming the head of the hammer, but it was then that she realized there was an odd silence coming from outside the booth, accompanied from a familiar hum she didn’t quite like to hear. She turned to see the mobians in the street parting the way, parents tucking their kids away, others ducking into alleys to be out of the line of fire of the devilish thing- a Robotnik Robot, easily most common to the outer ring, where people were less likely to be able to defend themselves against the flying robots, and where the government didn’t care to check up on often. The white and black robot hovered off the ground, it’s one beady red ‘eye’ shooting off a beam that it used to scan the crowd. This was normal- it was looking for someone, maybe a citizen had gotten ballsy and kicked one and the Doctor wanted his revenge. It wasn’t as much of revenge as it was an excuse to spill some blood though, she supposed. What she didn’t find normal was when it stopped on her. She hissed in pain and shielded her eyes at the sudden bright light of the robot scanning her.

Subject: Amy Rose

It spoke emotionlessly and Amy froze- what did that mean? Usually it just scanned subjects and moved on- why had it said her name?

Amy Rose, you are the last Mobian in contact with Project Shadow, reveal his whereabouts immediately.

What? Amy shrunk back a bit and found herself grabbing the aluminum hammer, it might fall apart if she used it, but she would still have all the pieces at least.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Amy shouted.

Amy Rose, reveal the whereabouts of Project Shadow.

It repeated with no care for her testimony.

“I don’t know about any ‘Project Shadow’!” Amy shouted again, angrier this time, desperate for the robot to hear her and give up.

Amy Rose will be: Terminated.

She gasped as the robot came shooting towards her, eye beginning to shine as if it were ready to hit her with a terrible blast. In a moment of adrenaline, she spun on her toes and lifted the hammer with both hands. By the time she’d made it all the way back around again, she swung as hard as she could, and BANG- home run.

The Robotnik Robot went flying back out into the street as she followed through and the hammer poised back up behind her head again. It’s white body clanked to the ground and skidded, creating a horrible screeching noise before thunking against the wall of the building opposite of her and powering down. Amy breathed heavily in fear as she lowered the hammer and dropped it to the ground, the reality of the situation coming back to her senses as the mobians in the street slowly stopped staring at her and began carrying on with their day. A couple kids scrambled to tear the broken robot apart for parts, and she clutched a hand over her chest.

What. Was. That.

She had never, never in a million years, ever been targeted by Robotnik robot. At first she thought it might’ve been because he had found out Tails had used to work here- but Tails was no ‘Project Shadow’ unless he had suddenly changed drastically in the last twenty four hours. It seemed that ‘Myst’ was her only viable culprit for the ‘Project Shadow’. Amy picked up the aluminum hammer off the floor and placed it back on her work desk, amazed it hadn’t fallen to pieces like she’d thought it would. She sat back down on her stool and pulled out her ProjScreen.

Her first search was ‘Project Shadow’

The web showed it as nothing more than some Projection vlog channel of a kid who had no more than ten subscribers.

She looked up ‘Robotnik Project Shadow’

Same kid as before, except it seemed he had made a video ranting about the Doctor, seemed like it might be amusing, just not right now.

She tried ‘White Cyborg Arms’

Most of what came up we’re just arms taken from androids modeled after white colored mobians- cats seemed to be the most common, though she also saw what appeared to be a bird- and a few were actually pictures of Mobians with white cyborg arms, but none of them were what she had looked at only a few days ago.

Then ‘Cloaked Cyborg’

And now she was getting somewhere. The first article that came up was from about two months ago, and the headline read ‘Blue Blur goes head to head once more with the Cloaked Cyborg’ she clicked on it and was met with a gut wrenching picture.

It was the Blue Blur, just as handsome as everyone claimed, right in the middle of kicking her familiar mysterious customer in the cyborg arms with his cyborg legs, through the shadow of the hood he wore she saw the gleam of clenched teeth, it seemed that his shoes were skidding on the ground as well. Something told her he would have flown into a wall right after this picture. Her stomach churned- the man she had met did not seem deserving of this treatment, but then again, she hardly knew him. What had he done to get to that? She read the article quickly, the most she got out of it was that the people were lucky to have the Blue Blur to save them from wrong doers like the Cloaked Cyborg- but it still didn’t tell her what he had done. Clearly he had some sort of connection with Robotnik, she was almost one hundred percent sure that it was the doctor himself who had made ‘Myst’ those arms now. He had also apparently done something to get on the Blur’s bad side, and by extension Tails, which meant that it was good she never showed Tails the arm, but bad that she’d let a fair amount about Tails slip to ‘Myst’. Amy groaned and powered down the ProjScreen. She wasn’t quite sure what to make of all this. She didn’t like that she couldn’t find what ‘Myst’ had done anywhere on the web, but a part of her felt like she was betraying Tails by not immediately contacting him to tell him what had happened. Her unease swirled in her mind as she clenched her hands into fists in her lap. For now, it seemed that it might be best to just not say anything at all. She didn’t have to lie to Tails if she just didn’t talk to him, and with any luck, ‘Myst’ would not reappear at her booth anytime soon. She felt like she was trapped in a web, but all she could do was toss the ProjScreen to the top of her table and start working on the hammer once more.

#sonic the hedgehog #my writing #shadow the hedgehog #Amy Rose #sonic fanfiction #cyberpunk au #cyberpunk sonic #cyberpunk #shadamy #shadamy fic

[dvp95]

quiet on widow’s peak (3)

pairing: dan howell/phil lester, pj liguori/sophie newton/chris kendall rating: teen & up tags: paranormal investigator, youtuber phil lester, dan howell is not a youtuber, online friendship, slow burn, strangers to lovers, nonbinary character, trans character, background poly, phil does some buzzfeed unsolved shit and dan is a fan word count: 3.1k (this chapter), 9.5k (total) summary: Phil’s got a list of paranormal experiences a mile long that he likes to share with the world. Abandoned buildings, cemeteries, and ghost stories have always called his name, and a particular fan of his has a really, really good ghost story.

read this chapter on ao3 or here!

Interviews used to be Phil's least favourite part of this job. The research was always captivating, the filming was always fun, the editing was always challenging, but talking? To people? About things? Absolutely not.

He still doesn't love doing it, but he's long past the point of begging Martyn or Ian to pretend to be him on the phone.

The curtains in Phil's room are open for once, letting natural light in so he doesn't look as dark on the Skype screen. His eyes keep drifting to himself, distracting him as he tries to fix his hair or laments not getting out of his pyjamas. This is his fourth interview of the day, and he's starting to hate the process with a renewed fervour.

"Okay, thank you," he says, clicking out of the screen record window. "Can I message you here if I have any further questions, or would you prefer this to be your final statement?"

"Oh, um," the girl says, her eyes round with some kind of emotion that Phil can't be bothered to parse. "No, no, that's... that's all I saw. I don't have anything else. But you can still... message me, if you like."

Ah. Phil makes a face that he hopes reads as apologetic and not panicked. "No, I - sorry. Gay. Just interested in your ghost."

"Oh!" she says again, looking more puzzled than Phil thinks she has any right to after a forty minute conversation where he mostly just asked her clarifying questions that she kept dodging. She tucks some of her long hair behind her ear and shakes her head. "Sorry, that's just - you haven't said that online."

Phil isn't very good at knowing when people are lying to him, but now he's definitely suspicious of the half-assed testimony he'd gotten from this girl. He sighs. "Okay, you know who I am, then?"

"I mean, I looked you up when you messaged me about a video and all," she says. "Wanted to know if you were a creep or, like, legit."

Okay, that's fair enough. Phil supposes that if he were a girl in uni and a stranger asked to video chat, he'd also do a little digging first. He still doesn't quite believe her story, though - most of it matches what she'd written on Facebook, word for word, and she didn't go into detail on anything she claimed happened.

"Right, of course," says Phil, feeling awkward and exposed.

Her eyes are wide and blue and she can see into his room, into his life, and she's giving him this look like she thinks she knows something about him. He hates this feeling.

"That a secret, then?" she asks.

"No," Phil says. "It's just not relevant to my job. I don't have a lot of ghouls asking me out."

She doesn't laugh. Phil is getting more and more uncomfortable by the second, and he's wondering if it's worth it to hang up on a potential lead - no matter how dubious her claims - when she says, "Well, alright. I won't tell anyone anyway."

"Thanks," Phil says automatically. He doesn't particularly care if she does or not, but he does want this call to end as soon as possible. "And thanks for your time. Message me if you think of anything else you forgot to mention about the Wilkins place or if you know of someone who's seen something."

Before she can even respond, Phil hits end on the call and groans, resting his forehead on his thumbs for a moment.

Unsurprisingly, this is giving him a migraine. It doesn't take much to make the twinge of a headache turn to insistent throbbing, because Phil's body hates him and overreacts to everything.

Phil takes a couple of deep breaths before he comes out of hiding. He attaches the final screen recording to the email he's already got open and ready to send to Martyn. After a moment's thought, he CCs PJ and Sophie in and adds, Nobody sounds credible except the second person to me, so... it's not looking good lol, before hitting send.

He takes off his glasses and rubs at his eyes for a moment. Interviews are still draining for him, especially when they don't go as planned, and Phil's starting to get the impression that there's nothing to even find at the Wilkins place.

But. Phil pauses, considers his options. He hasn't interviewed everyone, has he.

Before he can talk himself out of it, Phil shoves his glasses unceremoniously back onto his face and opens Tumblr. Winnie hasn't said anything to him so far today, so Phil feels only a little like he's bothering them when he shoots off a quick, Hey! I just finished interviewing the sources you gave me and most of them aren't very promising. Would you consider letting me ask you some questions to round out the video?

me?????, Winnie replies almost immediately. i didnt even see anything?? like im happy to answer questions but idk how much use ill b in an INTERVIEW

I know! And you don't have to lmao so don't feel pressured or anything but you know so much more about the place than they do. Everyone claimed that they didn't know other people were having paranormal experiences.

oh bullshit, Winnie says. Phil is surprised into a huff of laughter.

There's a part of Phil, fuelled by anxiety and uncertainty, that worries Winnie is just pulling an elaborate joke on him. That part of him feels a little more at ease every time he actually talks to Winnie. They just seem... genuine. And maybe Martyn would disagree, would blame Phil's desperation to see the best in people, but there's a reason Phil doesn't tell Martyn everything.

Before Phil can agree with Winnie's colourful derision, his laptop beeps again. i look like an ogre rn but i can voice chat if you rly think itll help

It would!!, Phil assures them. The tender spot behind his eyes twinges again, serving as a reminder. Can I call in like an hour? I've got a headache from the screen lol

sure i really have nothing else going on today

--

So it's later in the day, late afternoon light still streaking through Phil's window, when Phil sits back down at his computer and adds the Skype username Winnie gave him. His head still hurts a bit, but it isn't all-consuming now that he's had another coffee and some painkillers. The padded headphones feel good to put over his ears, blocking out most of the typical noises from such a full house and a busy street, and Phil just sits in the blissful quiet for a moment before he sends a voice call request.

It gets picked up almost immediately, and Phil presses a smile into his palm before he says, "Hi! Can you hear me alright?"

There's a beat. Phil waits, in case Skype is lagging as usual, but he's opening his mouth to repeat himself by the time he gets a response.

"Yeah," says Winnie. "I can hear you."

Phil isn't really proud of himself for being surprised by Winnie's voice. It's just. He knows his viewer demographics, okay, and he has a rough grasp on Tumblr demographics, and the name - alright. It isn't his proudest moment, is his point, because he's expecting a much higher pitch for absolutely no good reason.

In addition to that, his brain automatically tries to classify Winnie's voice as very obviously masculine, and Phil has to push back against that.

"I can hear you, too," Phil says cheerfully, not allowing his anxieties to spill over into the conversation.

"That's good, probably," Winnie says. There's another beat of silence, and then a huff that might be laughter or a sigh comes through Phil's headphones. "Sorry, I - I'm not trying to be fucking weird, this is just surreal."

"Is it?" Phil hums. "But I haven't even asked you about ghosts yet."

A snort - definitely laughter, this time - follows, and Phil is so glad that he's able to put Winnie at ease even if his brain is betraying him. "That's true. I guess it's gotta get weirder from here."

"That's kind of, like, the subtitle of my whole channel," says Phil. After a moment, he frowns. "Subtitle? No. What's the thing, on the poster -"

"Tagline," says Winnie. They sound so amused and warm and, okay, they've got a nice voice. That's not gendered. Phil can think that. "You're thinking of a tagline, you buffoon."

"Tagline," Phil echoes gratefully.

"Don't you," Winnie starts, then stops abruptly. They don't finish the sentence, but Phil can kind of guess what they were going to say. There's the sound of some rustling, like Winnie is getting comfortable, before they change tacks. "Again, I didn't see any of this alleged ghostly activity with my own eyes, but I know the hot goss."

Phil opens the recording program out of habit, nodding even though Winnie can't see him. "That's still really useful at this point," he says encouragingly. He clicks a couple of buttons. "And, yes, I do have an English degree. Thank you for not asking."

Winnie laughs, the sound of it filling Phil's headphones and making it feel like they're in the room with him. It's warm, like everything else about their voice, and absolutely contagious.

"I didn't want you to think I was, like, a big stalker," Winnie says, and Phil can hear the grin in their voice.

"Eh, I know you watch my videos," says Phil. "So I figure you know some stuff about me. You probably know that I'm going to ask this, too, but - is it okay if I record our conversation? I don't need to include it in the video if you don't want me to, but it's still useful for me if I don't so I can, like, actually remember the things you told me."

"Yeah, sure," Winnie agrees easily. They hesitate, for a moment, and Phil waits for whatever the caveat will be. "Uh, can I still swear?"

The question surprises Phil into laughing. "Yeah, you're fine. I can bleep them out."

"Then I am all for it. Ask me the ghost questions, ghost man."

Phil presses record and glances down at his notebook, where he's scrawled some disjointed questions alongside his usual doodling. "Uh, okay. Yes. I am totally a professional."

"If you say so, mate," says Winnie.

"Hush. Okay." Phil finally gets his brain back on track and taps his pen against a question near the end of his list. "So, Winnie, you did all this research into the Wilkins place on your own downtime, but you mentioned that you've been hearing murmurs about it for a while, right?"

"Not that long, actually, I've only been hearing about it since term started," Winnie says, and Phil is struck by how comfortable they suddenly are now that there's a guideline. Or, maybe, now that there's a non-Phil audience. "Which I thought was pretty weird, since I'd been there a couple times since I moved here, and it's a spooky fucking place but nothing to write home about."

That's more or less exactly how Phil feels about the situation, except that he doesn't remember the Wilkins place to be scary at all. Maybe it's gotten worse in the years since, or maybe he's just got a higher threshold for empty, decrepit homes than Winnie does. Either way, he's not sure if he should be relieved or suspicious that their thoughts on it mirror his own so well. He starts a spiral in the corner of his page as he considers the answer.

"So, you never got the impression that it was haunted before?"

"I - can I be perfectly honest?" Winnie asks, and then doesn't wait for a response. "I don't get the impression that it's haunted now. I dunno if people are just making shit up or if they're doing too many drugs, but we all know that ghosts don't actually exist."

Phil snorts. He does have a fairly large number of skeptics who watch his videos to argue in the comments about logical explanations for his findings or to just enjoy watching him fail so much, but he hadn't really expected that from someone who sent him a sourced essay on the topic of ghosts.

He's recording right now, so he's not about to give away the fact that, yeah, he kind of does agree with Winnie on this one. Instead, he keeps his tone neutral and says, "You don't believe in ghosts."

"I don't believe in most things that can't be explained by science," Winnie says, so matter-of-fact that Phil has to smile.

"I don't really believe in science," Phil says, mild.

A beat. "Excuse me?"

"I said I don't believe in science," Phil repeats, doubling down on the joke so he can hear that incredulous pitch of Winnie's nice voice again. "I mean, isn't it all just as made-up as anything else? People just tell us stuff exists and we have to believe them?"

"We believe them," Winnie says slowly, "because it's a fact."

"How do I know that?" Phil asks. He knows how off track he's already gotten, and he decides to cut this part out before he sends the file to Martyn or his friends.

"Because you can. See it. With your eyes." The genuine bewilderment in Winnie's voice is very funny. "Like. What the fuck, Phil. If someone drops an apple and it hits the ground and they're like, 'oh that's gravity', how are you supposed to say, 'uh, no it ain't'?"

Phil leans back in his chair a bit, his spiral turning into an apple. "Because, what if that's just what the apple wanted to do? It's not like we know any of this for sure, Winnie."

"You're fucking with me," Winnie says, but they don't sound very certain.

"I am," Phil admits happily. "Do you remember the first incident that kicked off the Wilkins place rumours?"

"You," Winnie says, and then cackles. They lean away from their mic as they do, but the sound of it still makes Phil feel some secondhand giddiness. He wonders if their laugh has a volume limit, or if it's just going to keep getting louder the funnier Phil is. He is so tempted to put that to the test. "Fuck. You little fucker."

Phil hides his own giggle in the palm of his hand and clears his throat, trying to get back into the professional mindset he'd forced himself to be in for the four earlier interviews.

"Do you need me to repeat the question?" Phil asks. He can't resist teasing, just a bit.

"No, fuck off," Winnie chuckles. They take a deep breath and let it out on a hum, low and thoughtful. "So, there was this shindig during fresher's, which I obviously didn't go to because I'm not a fresher and I'm too old to go to shindigs, but people were talking about how the house was making weird noises. A girl I know - I linked you to her Reddit post - said she saw someone just standing outside the window watching them, but, like, is that really a supernatural occurrence in Rusholme?"

"It's not. And she hit on me as well, so I'm not sure her judgement is trustworthy."

"Sounds like her. Sorry. Anyway, nobody really thought 'ghosts' as much as they thought 'rats in the walls and a pervert on the street', but then - this one didn't get spoken about online. I don't even know how valid it is."

"Word of mouth is how most ghost stories get passed," says Phil. "I'm not going to hold you to citations on rumours."

Winnie huffs a laugh. It's soft, quiet, and Phil almost wishes he could say something ridiculous to make them cackle again. Unfortunately, he has a job to do.

"Fair enough. Well, some idiots spent the night there to see if anything weird would happen," Winnie says, and Phil feels a bit attacked, "and three separate dudes had sleep paralysis."

Phil hums and jots some messy notes down. "In the same night?"

"At the same time," Winnie corrects him. "The other idiots were trying to wake them up for a long time, apparently. They're convinced that the guys who fell asleep were just pulling a prank on them, and maybe they were, but that's when the ball really got rolling."

Out of everything Phil has heard today, this is the most compelling story so far. Maybe that's a good indicator of the Manchester students being full of it - maybe there truly is nothing to find in the Wilkins place - but it piques Phil's interest anyway.

"For someone who only believes in cold, hard science, you're good at telling ghost stories," Phil says.

"Thanks," Winnie says, sounding pleased with themselves. "Learned from the best."

Phil is suddenly very, very glad that this isn't a video call, because he can't stop himself from smiling like an idiot. "Oh, is that what they're calling me?"

Another cackle. Phil doesn't remember the last time he made someone laugh so much without tripping over his own clown feet.

"I never said I was talking about you."

"Uh huh."

"Oh, shut up," says Winnie, and Phil can still hear the laughter in their voice. "Don't you have a bunch of questions to ask or something?"

Phil does. He has a whole list of questions that he should be following. He chews on his pen and looks at the doodle-covered list of things he's meant to ask Winnie. His head still hurts - maybe the extra caffeine didn't help after all - and all he really wants to do is take a nap.

"Yeah," Phil says, reluctant. "I've just got, like, a migraine. Can I call you back another time? This was a really great start."

"Oh, yeah, sure," says Winnie. They've dropped their voice down to something soft, like they're worried that they'll make Phil's headache worse.

"I'm actually going up to check the place out this weekend." Phil isn't sure what makes him say that. He meets up with sources in person, sometimes, but usually only if they've seen something with their own eyes. He just feels comfortable talking to Winnie, far more than he'd felt talking to the other students he'd interviewed today.

Phil doesn't actually extend the invitation, and Winnie either doesn't pick up the hint or doesn't care to.

"That'll be good," they say, still soft. "Get some rest, Phil, you can call me back when your brain stops trying to drill a hole through your temple."

After Phil says goodbye and hangs up, he sits at his desk for a long moment. It feels too quiet, all of a sudden, his padded headphones blocking out all the ambient noise around him. It's good for his head, but Phil is still weirdly disappointed.

#phan #phanfiction #phanfic #dnp fic #words words words #quiet on widow's peak

[365daysofsasuhina]

[ 365 Days of SasuHina || Day Two Hundred Eighty-Six: Humiliation ] [ Uchiha Sasuke, Hyūga Hinata, Uzumaki Naruto, Haruno Sakura ] [ SasuHina, NaruSaku, vulgarity, bullying ] [ Verse: Best Years of Your Life ] [ AO3 Link ]

Love can make you do really stupid things.

She’s crushed on the sunshine blond since they were in grade school. There was just something so enrapturing about his energy, his drive, his exuberance. It felt like there was nothing he couldn’t do, even as he consistently got in trouble for being too loud, too rambunctious, too bull-headed. To Hinata, Naruto’s defiance and daring was like a vision of Spring in her Winter. Her childhood had been lonely, with a father that was too reminded of his late wife when he looked at her. A sister who was favored and basked in their father’s attention. A cousin she was never allowed to see due to a falling out between twins. Her meek nature kept her within her own little box.

But Naruto gave her hope that - maybe, someday - she could escape that box. Be as bright and as free has he seemed to be.

For years she kept her admiration to herself. Naruto was the odd kid out when they were young, tussling with bullies and giving the cold shoulder to those who gave it first. But slowly, minds began to change. His fight for attention whittled away their skepticism as he took on bigger and better roles. By the time they were in high school, the gangly kid had grown into a kind-hearted jock, beloved by many for both his smiles and his skills on the field. You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who genuinely disliked him. Even those jealous of his high school stature found it hard to hate him.

And though many of them had brushed him off when they were young, several of the girls found his transformation worth a second look...including the girl he’d always chased after: Sakura Haruno.

Hinata knew that if she didn’t speak soon...she’d never have the chance to speak at all. So one afternoon, after classes were done, she built up the courage and asked to speak with him...alone.

“Hey, what’s up?”

“I…” Suddenly her throat was dry, her lungs were flat...she couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe!

“...you okay?”

“I just, u-um...I wanted to tell you that I, er...that I...like you a lot. A-and I know that...that I’m not someone you would ever...consider. But I’d regret it forever if...if I never told you.”

Golden brows lift up under their matching fringe. “You...you do?”

“...yes…”

“Oh...well, uh…” A hand idles at the back of his neck. “I’m sorry, Hinata...but there’s someone else. You’re a nice girl, but...y’know…”

She knew it was a possibility - a certainty, even. “...I-I understand. Thank you for...for listening. I’m sorry to have wasted your t-time -”

“No - Hinata, wait -!”

Skirting around him, she dodges his reaching hand and escapes into the hallway, nearly stumbling into a pair of other students before fleeing. Though she’d told herself she wouldn’t cry, tears fall free as she barrels through the doors and out into the yard beyond.

Stupid...so stupid…

As though the sky itself is mocking her, it starts to rain, and she’s drenched by the time she makes it home. Neither her father or sister are home, which she takes as a blessing. Stripped of her wet clothes, she moves straight into the hot shower, hiding under the water and steam until her skin is angry and red.

At least it’s Friday. She has two whole days to recover. Surely he’ll forget all about it by Monday, and she can just...move on. Pretend it never happened.

...yeah, right.

She’s never been one for social media, instead passing the weekend by with homework, movies, and games. To her own surprise, she feels marginally better by Monday morning, heading into school without a bow to her head.

...but it’s soon obvious something is amiss.

Heads turn, eyes stare, lips whisper. She’d be able to ignore it if it wasn’t so blatantly pointed. No one bothers to hide their gossiping, their glowers.

But the worst of it comes at her locker.

“Well, well...look who it is.”

Flinching, Hinata turns to find herself suddenly surrounded. A gaggle of girls - spearheaded by none other than Sakura - form a ring around her door. “W...what do you want?”

“Well, I just heard the most distressing little rumor,” the rosette begins, one arm across her chest as the other rests atop it. She taps a finger against her cheek. “You see...word in the hallways is that you tried to ask out a taken man.”

“I -? What are you t-talking about? I-I didn’t -!”

“Is it true you confessed to Naruto Uzumaki? Is it true that - despite him having a most devoted and loving girlfriend - you tried to cozy up to him?” Sakura’s sickeningly sweet act soon gives way to clear temper. “Because if that’s true, you little slut...I’m going to slam your face against that locker door until that idea fals right out of your head!”

Around them, a sizeable crowd is growing, attracted by her loud, furious words. Backed up to her locker, Hinata fails to fight tears, shaking her head. “N-no, I...I wasn’t trying to -!”

“He told me, you lying bitch! You think I’m going to believe you over him…? How dare you try to circumvent me! He’s mine - and none of your doe-eyeing is going to change that! If you ever try to go behind my back again, I’ll -!”

Her hand lifts, clearly making to strike a palm against Hinata’s cheek. With nowhere to go, Hinata gives a cry, turning to huddle against her locker and brace herself.

...but the impact never comes.

Instead, a shocked silence overcomes the hallway, and Hinata dares to peek over.

“...you realize that hitting another student is a one-way ticket to detention, don’t you? Wouldn’t want a spot on that record of yours, Sakura.”

Jades are wide, Sakura’s wrist held in the stranger’s hand. “...s-she started this!”

“If you really think a turned down confession with no real intent to date is worth assaulting someone...you’re an even bigger garbage heap than I thought. Take your insecurities and cry about them to someone who cares...like your boyfriend. And leave this one alone. She’s hardly about to be the reason Naruto breaks up with you. He’s got plenty without it.”

Furious color rises up Sakura’s neck, snatching her arm out of the boy’s grip. “...whatever. At least everyone knows the truth about that little harlot. You should’ve stayed in your corner where you belong!”

“Fuck...off.”

Harrumphing, Sakura stalks back down the hallway, her gaggle of girls trailing behind. For a moment, the crowds linger in uncertainty before slowly going back to their business.

All the while, Hinata barely dares to breathe, a strange hollowness in her chest. Everyone...everyone saw. Everyone heard. They all think she’s some kind of slut trying to steal someone’s boyfriend. All she wanted was to be honest...so maybe she could move on…

“Hey...are you -?”

Legs like jelly, Hinata shoves past her savior, pushing her way through the hallway traffic toward the door. She can’t stay here, she can’t stand the eyes, the words, the humiliation -!

She barely clears the doorway before her knees give out, mind completely overwhelmed. She’s ruined...the rest of her high school days will be spent in the shadow of today. How...how can she -?

Before she can skin her knees on the concrete, Hinata feels arms around her waist, hauling her back up to her feet. Still unsteady, she stays limp in her companion’s grip.

“Easy...take a second to breathe. I know you’re panicking, and I know that was a shitshow. But you have to breathe, Hinata.”

Gasping and trembling, she suddenly finds herself sobbing, the shock cut through by his words and letting her react. Even now her knees refuse to hold her, her will to hold herself up lost in the tide of her emotions.

Without a word, the one behind her gives a grunt and hauls her up further, carrying her to a bench nearby. Setting her on one end, he sits along the other, letting her collapse apathetically against him.

...who…?

To her surprise, an arm wraps around her shoulders, pulling her closer. Normally she’d flip, shoving him off and demanding to know what his problem was. But right now, he’s the only solid thing around her as she drowns...so instead, she clings.

“...I’m sorry about all that bullshit. You don’t deserve that...Sakura’s just an insecure busybody who thinks everyone’s out to get her. You didn’t do anything wrong…”

“B-but everyone...e-everyone’s going to -!”

“Naruto told me what happened. His mistake was telling Sakura. He’s gone today...but you can bet he’ll be trying to make this right when he gets back. He’s an idiot...but he’s not an asshole. Trust me, I know.”

It’s only then Hinata dares to look up, curious just who’s gotten himself involved in his mess. Pale eyes then widen as she recognizes him: Naruto’s best friend, Sasuke. “...y-you…?”

He in turn looks back at her softly. “...it’s gonna be fine. Maybe not for a day or two, but...he’ll set things right. Who knows...maybe now he’ll see her for the bitch she really is…”

“W-why are…you helping me?”

“Why wouldn’t I? Look...Sakura’s driven me nuts for a long time. She’s a nasty piece of work when she wants to be. I wasn’t about to let that slide. Just glad I was there when I was.”

“I...I can’t go back there…”

“...maybe we can talk to the school nurse and get you excused. Cuz yeah...it might not be a good idea for you to be there today. I’ll go with you.”

Still unsure why he’s trying so hard, Hinata nonetheless nods. Shakily finding her feet, she walks beside him back into the building. By now, the halls are empty as first period begins, and they make it to the office unfettered. Hinata explains as best she can, Sasuke providing additional testimony and proof.

“Well...you’re not ill, per se...but I think I can get you excused. If another student is going to be treating you like that, it’s not safe for you to be here. I’ll have the principal speak to her.”

Hinata knows that won’t do any good… “Do I...do I have to stay, and...and tell what happened again?”

“No, I have it all written down here. You go home and calm down. But you’ll have to be back in tomorrow.”

“I understand.”

“Ma’am, can I have first period excused to walk her home? She shouldn’t go alone.”

The nurse sighs...and then relents. “Oh, all right. But be back in time for second, understood.?”

“Yes ma’am.”

As they leave, Hinata grabbing her already-packed bag, she murmurs, “...you don’t have to go with me.”

“I have calculus first period. Might as well skip it. Besides...I do want to make sure you get home okay. You’re pretty shaken up.”

“...thanks.”

The walk is silent, the Hinata seemingly lost in her thoughts. Sasuke takes to texting, brow furrowed. By the time they make it to her place, he tucks the mobile back in his pocket.

“I told Naruto what happened. He’s pretty pissed, and says to tell you he’s sorry. Apparently he’ll be back for afternoon classes, and he’s gonna tell Sakura what for. So...tomorrow might not be so bad.”

“...that’s good.”

“...you sure you’re okay?”

“Not...not really.”

“I can stay.”

“N-no! You’ll get in trouble!”

“There’s worse things than skipping a day of school,” he assures her with a hint of a grin.

Hinata hesitates. “Why...why are you being so nice to me…?”

“Is that not allowed?”

“I’m just...curious. I don’t...know you. At least, n-not very well. Surely you’ve got b-better things to do, right?”

It’s then Sasuke’s turn to pause. “...I like you. You’re a nice person, even if no one bothers to see it. I don’t know anyone else quite like you. And someone nice shouldn’t be treated like that.”

A hint of pink blooms in her cheeks. He likes her? Or...does he like her…? His reply is rather...ambiguous. “...well, I...I appreciate it. But you really don’t n-need to stay. I’ll be all right, and you...you should get back to class.”

“...all right. Mind if I check in on you? Send you a text at lunch or something?”

“S...sure.” She sheepishly offers her number. “You...y-you better get going, so you’re not late.”

“I’ve got plenty of time. You get inside and take it easy, okay?”

“I will.”

“All right...see you later.” Giving a mock salute, he starts meandering back down the sidewalk.

Watching him for a time, Hinata eventually slips into the house. There’s still a lingering edge to her mind, nerves jumpy and anxious. But...she also feels a lot calmer now. Sasuke’s company seems to have helped quite a bit. Curious…

For now, however, she goes upstairs and curls in bed, phone on her pillow as she awaits a buzz in a few hours. Maybe, until then, she’ll just...take a little nap...

                                                         .oOo.

     OKAY FIRST let me say: I do not hate Sakura. I dislike some aspects about her canon character, but overall I'm not anti Sakura or anything. She just...works for the trope in this piece. Sorry Sakura fans, I just...needed someone for the role :'D      Anyway, with that out of the way...oof, this was painful to write. I was never really part of any big high school drama, so...I don't have any experience in it. And this is likely SUPER unrealistic and hyperbolic. But that's the fun of fanfic, right? But at least Hinata had someone there to come to her rescue. Hopefully Naruto can set things straight...yeesh.      But uhhh, yeah, that's all for tonight. In all honesty today was Rough and now it's super late despite me...really wanting to get some good sleep :'D So I better bounce. Thanks for reading~

#sasuhina #narusaku #uchiha sasuke #hyūga hinata #uzumaki naruto #haruno sakura #vulgarity // #bullying // #best years of your life [ au ] #365daysofsasuhina

[imagitory]

Tory Ranks the HP Films! [review]

Hi everybody! So I was chatting with a good friend of mine the other day about our favorite films in the Harry Potter series, and...well, the whole discussion got me thinking, so I decided to jot down my personal rankings!

I’ll just discuss the eight films based on the original books for this, but if you want my thoughts on the Fantastic Beasts series so far, you can read this FB-centric response and this review for CoG! These rankings are unique to me, but will be affected both by how much I personally enjoy the movie as well as how well it adapted its respective book. Hope you enjoy -- if you want, feel free to like and reblog, and of course reply/reblog with your own thoughts about the HP films!

8) Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

I’ll be honest, I was torn between this film and the one just before it as my personal worst, but in the end, I had to acknowledge that this one, out of all of the films, was just the least interesting of the lot, not just from a story perspective but also in the visuals and music. Everything was so gray and murky and dark: the only faintly creative visuals I really remember from this film were the inky effects in the Pensieve scenes (which didn’t match up with the established continuity of previous Pensive scenes) and the juxtaposition of a bird’s cage in the corner of a shot where Draco is walking down the hallway, and the only music track I remember liking at all was the choral piece In Noctem. Plus the plot itself was pretty tedious, as the filmmakers apparently decided that the book’s romantic side-stories were more worthy of focus than the main villain’s entire backstory. I mean, come on -- Harry making goo-goo eyes at Ginny and Ron being a complete idiot when it comes to the girls in his life is somehow more interesting than Dumbledore and Harry learning about the Gaunt family, Tom Riddle’s past as a neglected, but vindictive bully, and Riddle turning objects that meant something to him into Horcruxes, which sets up the Golden Trio’s quest to find them in the next book/movie? Good call on that one. Speaking of Riddle, the two new actors that were cast to portray him in this movie are also easily the worst performers in the entire series, and the completely unsubtle, black-and-white characterization of Riddle in the script didn’t do them any favors. After how much Voldemort was built up in the films, Riddle being so ridiculously obvious in how evil he is makes everyone around him (like Dumbledore and Slughorn) look like an idiot for not seeing he was bad news from the start. This film makes me a lot less angry than the #7 slot, partly because HBP is my least favorite of the books, but it also prompts just about no positive feelings either, and if there’s anything Harry Potter has never been, it’s “boring.”

7) Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

*dodges knives* LOOK. I know this is a lot of people’s favorite HP film, and I understand why. From a cinematography perspective, it’s easily one of the best. It’s very pretty to look at. The shot composition is excellent. The visuals are creative and striking. But all of that beauty is at the cost of the story and characters. Not only does Hermione become even more of an idealized Action Girl, losing even more of her wonderful, three-dimensional book characterization and flaws -- not only does the film break away from every bit of continuity established from the previous installments or even within its own film, from changing the layout of Hogwarts and the students’ uniforms to having Harry constantly light up his wand with magic no problem only ONE SCENE before getting punished for using magic outside of school -- not only does it make no sense unless you’ve read the book, given that the script just assumes that you’ll remember details like Lupin and Snape having seen the Marauder’s Map, which explains how they knew Sirius and the Golden Trio were in the Shrieking Shack -- not only does it add things that I don’t like and really don’t think fit in the established Wizarding World like the shrunken heads and a slide projector being used in Snape’s DADA class -- not only did this film depict its characters blatantly showing off their supposedly “secret” magical artifacts with no repercussions, such as Harry under his Invisibility Cloak stealing a lollypop from Neville and whamming through a crowd of people and Hermione not even trying to hide the Time Turner around her neck -- not only did Ron lose one of his best scenes in the entire series, where he stands on his broken leg yelling at Sirius that he’d have to kill him and Hermione to get to Harry, and was downgraded to the point that he pretty much became dead weight -- not only did Lupin’s werewolf form look more like a half-bald monkey than the hulking, terrifying mass I’d wanted to see -- not only did Lupin and Sirius talk to Harry about Lily almost exclusively and barely mention their best friend James -- not only was everything Crookshanks did except him chasing Scabbers left out -- not only did the script never explain that Lupin, Pettigrew, Sirius, and James were the Marauders and the reason behind the pen-names -- not only did the film originally MISSPELL “MOONY” WHEN IT WAS WRITTEN DOWN IN THE FRIGGIN’ BOOK -- but this film ruined the best part of the entire story. The descent into the Shrieking Shack and the revelation of who really betrayed the Potters took three whole chapters to unravel because of how much information was revealed and how many emotions were packed into it...yet the film decided to spend less than TEN MINUTES on that three-chapter-long plot twist. TEN. And most of the exposition dialogue was shouted haphazardly across the room in about five minutes of that time. It’s honestly little wonder to me that director Alfonso Cuaron originally hadn’t wanted to read the book before making the film and had to be convinced to do so -- he clearly was more interested in putting his own stamp on the story than respecting what was already there in the books or even in the previous films, and although yes, the darker tone and more unique visual style did help the series in the long run, I just wish that it hadn’t been done in the adaptation of my favorite book in the series. Azkaban deserved a more faithful adaptation than this.

6) Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

In a way I almost feel bad for the filmmakers trying to adapt this book. GoF is the longest in the entire series and arguably has the most subplots and tiny important details casually slipped into the text out of all of them, which would be difficult to adapt in a three-act feature film. I can’t help but feel it should’ve gotten the halfsies treatment the way Hallows did, given that it would’ve been difficult to fit every little important thing into one movie, even a long one. That being said, though...yeah, this film really is incoherent unless you’ve read the books. How do you even try to tell Goblet’s story if you’re going to cut out all of the Crouch family’s backstory? Answer: by revealing the twist ending in the first ten minutes by showing Crouch, Jr. is alive and turning him into an uninteresting, one-dimensional character, I guess. David Tenant is a wonderful actor and he could’ve been a wonderful Crouch, Jr., but in this adaptation he had just about nothing to work with. Then of course they also cut out Winky, Dobby, Hermione’s SPEW movement, the Quidditch World Cup game, Bertha Jorkins, Ludo Bagman, Percy Weasley joining the Ministry, the Weasley twins and Weasley’s Wizarding Wheezes, Rita Skeeter getting her comeuppance, and Crouch, Jr. getting Kissed by dementors before Fudge could hear his testimony about Voldemort’s return. I also wish they hadn’t turned Cedric, Viktor, and Fleur into such one-note, one-dimensional characters either -- Robert Pattinson got the most to work with out of the three actors, but the characters still seem very shallow compared to their book-originals, and considering Viktor and Fleur get no further development in later films, their characters pretty much start and end with the little material their actors get in this movie. Even Voldemort’s depiction I’m somewhat torn about: I like Ralph Fiennes as an actor, but I had sort of hoped he’d look a little scarier and that he’d have red eyes the way he had when he was attached to Quirrel’s head in Sorcerer/Philosopher and as described in the book. As much as I sympathize with how difficult the task was to adapt this story, Warner Bros. still could’ve made a longer movie and kept in more of the stuff needed to understand what was going on. Still, there are some good visuals in this film and I like a lot of the new music tracks, too.

5) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1

The Hallows films overall I sort of just see as “okay,” mainly because they and Prince’s adaptation are so dark that at some points I think they forget what made the stories so likable in the first place -- namely, the characters. Sure, we can’t have as much humor here, but where’s the love? Where are the distinct personalities, where’s the friendship? And really, one of the few answers this film gave was in that OOC Harmione dance scene, which...yeah, not only did it have no romantic chemistry (which I suppose I should be glad of, as that would be even more OOC than the scene already is), but it also had very little friendship chemistry too. It was just awkward and stilted to watch. Even Ron’s return wasn’t as strong because the film adaptations went so far out of their way to marginalize Ron and not make him an important part of the trio...so yeah, contrasted to the book where Harry and Hermione mourned Ron’s absence, the awkward dance scene attempting joy and failing miserably just falls even more flat. There are some good moments, like Luna and Harry interacting at the wedding and the break-in at the Ministry, and there’s a lot less stuff cut from this film than in others, but there’s also a lot less that I can say I loved in this film than in others.

4) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2

Part 2 is pretty even with Part 1 for me, as it doesn’t cut as much out but also left a lot to be desired. Because of the lack of explanation about what things Voldemort would turn his Horcruxes into, Harry has to rely solely on deux-ex-machina visions to tell him what to do next, Harry breaking the Elder Wand felt like such a cop-out, and the Battle of Hogwarts, although not bad exactly, really never showed off the scale of the damage and loss the way it could’ve. Fred’s death isn’t even given its proper screen time! But at the same time, I found more memorable scenes in this movie -- the Room of Requirement confrontation, McGonagall taking charge before the Battle of Hogwarts, the ending at Platform 9 3/4 that actually used the Leaving Hogwarts track from the first movie the way I’d dreamed that they would when I first read the book -- and of course every moment of Alan Rickman as Severus Snape. Yes, Rickman portrayed Snape as a much more likable, much less gray character than he was in the books, but he was still wonderful to watch every second he was on screen.

3) Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s/Philosopher’s Stone

I acknowledge nostalgia might play more of a role in my judgement of the first two films, given that I was a young teenager when they first came out...but I’m sorry, aesthetically, Columbus’s films were the most true to their source material. The darkness didn’t really start in the books until GoF, and since Cuaron jumped the gun on the darkness in Azkaban, we lost that gradual fading of the light from the original novels. And really, the Wizarding World was charming! It still is! And with the departure of Columbus, we kind of lost that charm in future films, even during the parts that were supposed to be less dark and gritty. We never got it back, and yes, one could see that as somewhat reminiscent of childhood innocence -- but I disagree, charm can be appreciated at any age. Even in my darkest days, I still could appreciate it. If anything, charm in the midst of despair and gloom became all the more precious. But regardless...Sorcerer/Philosopher is one of the most true to its subject matter -- it really does depict things almost exactly the way I’d imagined them while reading the book. The score John Williams wrote for the first two films in particular made everything feel just as magical as when I was first reading the first two books, and as the films went on, we lost that recurring score that favored the reuse of certain themes to instill various emotions: instead we just got individual themes for each film that were rarely used outside of that particular film. But I acknowledge Sorcerer/Philosopher doesn’t take nearly enough risks, the details cut so as to compress scenes sometimes create plot holes (like Snape protecting the Stone and supposedly bullying Quirrell to find out how to get past his defense, even though both their challenges were not included in the film), the CGI is pretty outdated, and a lot of the child actors were at the beginning of their learning curve. Really, the only stand-out performances among the child actors in my opinion were Tom Felton and Rupert Grint -- Dan had his moments, but Emma and a lot of the more minor actors like Devon Murray as Seamus at points sounded like they were acting in a school play. And when you placed those kids alongside great adult actors like Robbie Coltrane and Richard Harris, it could be a bit jarring. Still, I’d be lying if I said I don’t really enjoy watching this movie, almost as much as I did when I watched it as a kid so many times that after a while I could recite the entire script from memory.

2) Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

I was fortunate enough to see this film opening night with my mum and best friend at the time, and really, Chamber just built on Sorcerer/Philosopher’s cheesy yet charming, book-loyal formula. Like the previous film, there are some important details cut and not that many risks taken from a visual or film-making perspective and the CGI often doesn’t look that great (Dobby in particular hasn’t aged that well), plus some of the scenes aren’t that well-directed (i.e. the fight between the Gryffindor and Slytherin Quidditch teams lacked any real anger or energy, and even the Dueling Club scene was oddly slow and lacked excitement)...but even so, I think the child performances are better here, and we got a lot more scenes with excellent adult actors like Jason Isaacs as Lucius Malfoy, Julie Walters as Molly Weasley, and Kenneth Branagh as Lockhart. I also laugh a lot watching this one! Lockhart gets a lot of his great, funny lines from the book, but young Rupert Grint also shows a great talent for comedy that, I must be honest, is kind of lost after Chamber, as he becomes less of a distinct character who happens to say funny things and more of just a wimpy, tag-along sidekick who’s often made the butt of a joke. Even now, my mum and I smile at the memory of watching the film in theaters and laughing and cheering with the rest of the audience when Lockhart cries, “Amazing! This is just like MAGIC!”

1) Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

This film adaptation is based off my second favorite book in the series, and as much as it cut from that book, I think it overall captured the spirit of the book the best out of the series while also making a visually distinctive film. Yes, it cut out Marietta Edgecombe and the moral grayness her inclusion represented, Sirius’s passive-aggressiveness, pettiness, and cruelty toward Kreacher and the depth that it gave him as a flawed father figure, Harry’s lashing out at Dumbledore and how real it made both Sirius’s loss and Harry’s grief, Percy’s alienation of his family and the exploration of the cost of standing by one’s ideals, Neville and his family at St. Mungo’s and the pathos and complexity it gave his character, Umbridge running Hagrid out of Hogwarts and McGonagall being injured and how much that cut Harry off from the Order, and Umbridge’s revelation that she’d sent the dementors after Harry and how neatly it tied up all the loose ends. But at the same time, I hated Umbridge in this film just as much as I did in the books. I felt the sorrow of Sirius’s loss just as much as I did in the books. I felt the satisfaction at seeing Neville grow through joining the D.A. and becoming a more three-dimensional, heroic character despite his shortcomings just as I did in the books. I felt for Trelawney when she was being forcibly evicted from Hogwarts just as much as I had in the books. I felt the triumph of the Weasley twins’ rebellion against Umbridge just as much as I did in the books. I felt the camaraderie of Dumbledore’s Army just as much as I did in the books. I felt the love that Harry had for his friends and believed in both his hopelessness and his desire to fight for them just as much as I did in the books. And yet there were also film-only additions that I really liked -- the emphasis on Harry’s friends being the reason he resists Voldemort’s control, the montage of Umbridge sinking her Inquisitorial claws into Hogwarts, the music written to accompany the scenes at the Ministry and featuring Umbridge, Sirius punching Lucius Malfoy in the face and calling Harry “James” by accident. Even in a visual sense, it wasn’t too dark and gritty, but not too rosy and colorful either. Yes, this film had dark moments, but it never lost sight of what the original book series was about -- not the doom and gloom, not the action and thrills, not the drama and intrigue, not even the flights of fancy, but the love. What even are our heroes fighting for, if not the ones and things they love? Why do we even care? Why would we even watch any of these films at all, if not because of the love? In Order, I never forgot what Harry was fighting for. It balanced out the doubt and fear with kinship and nobility, just as I felt the books always had and the films often didn’t. So as many important details are shaved off, it at least still felt like Harry Potter. Not perfect, but hey, what adaptation is?

#oh boy here i go #analysis #reviews #opinion #harry potter #harry potter and the sorcerer's stone #harry potter and the philosopher's stone #harry potter and the chamber of secrets #harry potter and the prisoner of azkaban #harry potter and the goblet of fire #harry potter and the order of the phoenix #harry potter and the half-blood prince #harry potter and the deathly hallows #harry potter and the deathly hallows part 1 #harry potter and the deathly hallows part 2

[wardencommanderrodimiss]

Eyyy it’s surprise fic time. Been working on a new AU that I’ll be posting in installments, so here we go: the beginning, or a little bit too much exposition and worldbuilding for my own liking but what can I do.

“Why are so many of the Fair Folk lawyers?” Clay asks. “Also while you’re up can you grab me a pack of Swiss Rolls?”

“Is this the setup for a joke or an actual question?” Apollo asks. He throws the entire box of Swiss Rolls from the cabinet at Clay and retrieves his dinner from the microwave. “And either way, why?”

“It’s not a joke, and you had some files out on the coffee table so listen, actual question, why are Folk lawyers common enough that there’s notation on the court transcripts about whether or not the lawyers is human.”

“It’s not actually common at all,” Apollo says. “That’s just all the cases where it did happen, which is some fraction of a percent of total cases. They mark it if they know but it’s not like they throw iron at everyone on the defense and prosecution’s benches to check.”

“They should do that,” Clay says. “What are Fair Folk doing in court anyway, all that magical power and you’re just gonna, go be a lawyer instead of anything else? They could probably just go into space! Just like that! They’re magic! They live in a realm of magic! And they’re like nah gonna hang around the mundane courthouse, that’s cool.”

“Well I mean,” Apollo says, “y’know, they can’t lie, so for them, the closest they can get to lying is being a lawyer, Mr Gavin says.”

Clay is mercifully quiet for a whole twenty seconds. “So was that a punchline or was he serious?”

“I don’t know.”

-

Clay warns him that he isn’t cautious enough. Clay has warned him of this since they were children and he arrived from Khura’in with little conception of the dangers of the fae (“The Fair Folk, Apollo! The Fair Folk! They think it’s insulting to call them otherwise!”). It’s why Clay insisted that they get an apartment together as roommates (“Because God only knows you’re going to forget to hang horseshoes above your windows and then get stolen away and I’m going to have to go through the ordeal of finding a new best friend”).

Clay puts a branch of a rowan tree on top of every doorway and Apollo thinks about the little house in the mountains, him and Nahyuta and Dhurke and sometimes Datz. Did Khura’in not have the legends — no, more than legends, but spoken of in hushed tones, eyes averted, pretend you don’t believe even when you know they’re real — of the fae? It did, it did, the name of the country far too close to the name of Kurain, the mystic Court of the Fae. So was it something worse than Dhurke not believing — something in the memories Apollo has tried to forget because it hurts too much to remember that life — that sometimes the air swirled around Dhurke like wind confined to him, and sometimes Nahyuta called up spectral butterflies to his fingertips. And sometimes Apollo wonders whether his father really died or whether he was spirited away with something else left in his place.

(But the Fair Folk never give up what they’ve taken without a struggle or a bargaining and they would never just abandon —)

Most people aren’t like Clay. They are cautious, certainly, never speaking of the Fair Folk by any name but that or other even vaguer euphemisms, dodging fairy rings that appear in the grass, rerouting construction around sacred trees, and everyone has a story about the cousin of a friend of a friend — but most don’t carry charms or ward their doorways. Most in the steel and concrete jungle, with science and iron frying pans, think themselves safe. (Clay has a lecture prepared about what kinds of iron works and what doesn’t.)

“Are all astronauts this superstitious?” Apollo asks, and Clay laughs and says, “Dude, you have no idea.”

Lawyers aren’t, or at least Kristoph Gavin isn’t. Apollo leaves his apartment and Clay’s reverence (fear?) of the fae and every day heads to an office that Clay is sure out of which he will be stolen away. No horseshoes or other charms of iron or rowan branches is to be expected; what isn’t is that Gavin doesn’t call them the “Fair Folk” and rolls his eyes whenever someone does. “They are bound to the law and contracts as much as you, perhaps even moreso.” His lecture on the matter sounds rehearsed, and the first time Apollo hears it, the looks on the faces of those who have been here longer tell him that it isn’t the first time they have. “As lawyers, always looking for loopholes, you are the best prepared to deal with them.”

But he is the one to drop the packet of cases involving fae on Apollo’s desk when Apollo expresses interest in that. He studies their twisting turns of phrase, the way they never spill the whole truth but dole it out in misleading pieces for as long as they can. If nothing else, it’s a deft evasion of perjury charges.

And it’s no wonder that back against the wall, up on the witness stand, both Gavin and Phoenix Wright start speaking in that same manner. “I’ve never lied to this court,” Wright says, smug, too impossibly smug, and Gavin spins threads just vague enough that Apollo keeps belatedly realizing that he is making assumptions that fill in the gaps. Gavin doesn’t say that he saw Wright through the tiny basement window, only that one could; and he never says that he thinks Wright killed Smith, only that Wright was there alone with the unconscious girl and the dead man, evidence to lead them to a false conclusion but stopping short of actually speaking the falsehood himself.

There’s too much at hand in the trial, too many questions the court has to handle for the case at hand, for Apollo to dwell on that. But either way, handcuffs are forged with magic-dampening cold iron, and it might just be a trick of the harsh fluorescent lights in the lobby that make Wright’s eyes appear to flash bright blue for a moment after Apollo punches him. Apollo has the bloody ace on his mind, after all, and his anger doesn’t settle, and Phoenix’s eyes are dark stormy gray assessing him when he turns his back on the man he considered an idol and storms out the door.

He cleans out his desk in a rush, stealing whatever office supplies he can without going too out of his way, because who knows when he’ll have money to spare to buy pens again, and he escapes the office before his coworkers can link him to Gavin’s arrest. “I think I’m done being a lawyer,” he tells Clay after finishing the story over a dinner that is 90 percent rice because they both forgot to go grocery shopping this week. “I don’t think it’s working out for me.”

“Dude, you can’t give up yet,” Clay says, reaching over to his laptop on the coffee table and tapping on a clickbait headline that reads 23 Celebrities Likely to be Fair Folk and Why We Wouldn’t Care if they Whisked Us off to Faeryland. “I believe in you. You said Wright offered you a place at his office? You can work there.”

Apollo didn’t tell him about Wright’s eyes and his twisting testimony, because he’s sure that Clay will barricade them in the apartment for the rest of their lives if he mentions that he thinks he might have received a job offer from a fae. He can already see the conversation playing out in his mind, Clay pouring a line of salt on the threshold and making every delivery driver step over it to deliver their only sustenance, cheap takeout.

“Thanks,” he says, “but I’m not going to work there.”

Clay shrugs. “So don’t give up the search before it starts. You got your client a not-guilty on your first trial. That’s something good for the resume, right?”

“I got my boss arrested on murder charges.”

“That’s only a problem if the firm trying to hire you has a boss who’s murdered someone.”

He’s either wrong or every firm in the city has a partner who has murdered someone, because two months later, Clay has covered the full rent for June, and Apollo has been eating peanut butter for a week because it’s cheap and it’s the thing he feels least bad about taking out of the pantry. And the universe hasn’t even given him the liberty of just worrying about that, because also either the last of his sanity has left him and in its place handed him hallucinations, or there really is periodically an ethereal white dog, its red-furred ears poking up out of its foggy head and looking more real than the rest of its body, its tail wisping like smoke, stalking the hall outside their apartment. Clay doesn’t see it — he can’t see it, it seems, when Apollo pulls him to the threshold and opens the door and there on the other side is the hound with its hollow red eyes but Clay only sees an empty hallway. He buys extra salt on the next grocery run. Apollo considers walking out the door into its jaws and freeing Clay from this hell.

On the day he gets a call from Wright, he doesn’t see it lurking in the hall or outside the building, and that and his financial situation are encouragement enough that he gets on his bike and heads for the office. He still has a number of reservations about going there, but the fae are all about contracts, aren’t they? Steep interest on favors, IOUs where the price they claim is too high, nothing is given without a cost down the line — and from what Wright said, it sounds like Apollo would be doing him a favor. And that — if he owes Apollo, then that couldn’t be leveraged against Apollo. (But Apollo needs a job too. Is this an equal exchange?)

The office seems normal, for a place covered in a magician’s props, but when Wright’s daughter, wearing a top hat and cape, invites him inside, Apollo carefully skirts around the hula-hoop lying flat on the floor. He lets the girl, Trucy, her name is, the one who gave him the bloody ace, drag him off to the hospital, a place that raises more questions for him — do the fae have magical healing powers? Would they even need to go to a hospital? Would they be exposed at a hospital? But what human would survive head trauma from a car crash with only a sprained ankle, not even a concussion — never mind the way outside of court he speaks in the same obfuscated tangle.

What is Phoenix Wright?

(In one of those old case files Gavin gave him, one of the fae lawyers named herself with the surname Fey, her obvious boldness almost funny. Apollo wonders if there is more in this world less famous than the Folk, if before him shrouded in magical glamour stands a gleaming firebird.)

When they return to the office after their investigation, after Apollo has found himself with a client, the office no longer feels normal — it feels far too normal. He dodges the plastic fairy ring and sinks into the couch and it feels like home, welcoming, warm, like the maw of a beast trying to lure him in, the sickly sweet taste of a lotus offered to him to eat. It is too comfortable for him to be comfortable with it. Trucy rolls the hula-hoop across the floor on its side and unconcernedly flings herself onto the couch next to Apollo. What is she, he wonders — her magic simply sleight-of-hand or something worse?

At least the trial is full of liars, and when it is over, the Kitakis pay well. That leaves a second riddle, and that is Klavier Gavin, the brother that Apollo didn’t know his boss had, the brother who is identical in face and hair and eyes, who but for his fashion sense and grin could have been Kristoph slipped through the prison bars, who but for eight years could be his twin. Something about him feels off, like the office does, and Apollo doesn’t know if reality really is shimmering ever-so-slightly around him or whether that’s just paranoia, exhaustion, and confusion, but he trusts Klavier’s eyes, the swirling blue maelstrom, as much as he does Wright’s, the colors shifting dark to light and back.

When the trial is over and he leaves the defendant’s lobby, Klavier is waiting there, Klavier who lost the trial to Apollo who put his brother in jail, with a grin and a wink and a business card put into Apollo’s hands with a “Call me sometime, ja? Or text. I’m not picky.”

Which Apollo has no intention of doing, because he unlike Trucy is not enchanted by this man, until the next week Clay finds the business card shuffled into other papers on the coffee table and sits Apollo down on the couch. “You have Klavier Gavin’s personal phone number,” he says, waving the card, on the back of which is scrawled a number in purple gel pen, in Apollo’s face. “People would kill for this. I would kill for this!”

“Why didn’t you tell me that Mr Gavin had a brother?” Apollo asks, slumping further into the couch to get away.

“I thought you knew! Because! Klavier Gavin! He’s famous! He has a band!”

“Yeah, I’m not uselessly gay about celebrities like you are.”

“This isn’t even about me being uselessly gay — this is about you not even listening to the fucking radio.” Clay smacks him on the head and drops the card on his face. “Text him! We’re going to text him. Where’s your phone?”

He knows Clay to know that he won’t let this drop and with a sigh he retrieves his phone from where it ended up beneath the couch. “I’m not even sure if he’s human,” Apollo admits, and he waits for Clay to recoil, knock the phone back out of his hand, and for caution to regain control and them to give up on this and for Apollo’s life to return to as normal as it can be anymore. He hasn’t sighted the dog for the past six days and that’s the nicest thing that has happened to him in two months.

But Clay stares at him for a moment, frowning, and says simply, “He probably isn’t.”

“Wait,” Apollo says. “You — I’ve met him and know why I think — why do you—”

“Dude,” Clay says. “Every song he’s written is dumb legal-system bullshit and bad puns and his band should be some niche thing to like ironically at best, but no, he’s world-famous with chart-topping albums full of this bugfuckery. How do you make this many people buy into that without Fair Folk glamour?”

“Forget I asked.”

“But does it not make a certain amount of sense?”

And were this about two weeks ago, Apollo would be willing to argue, say he’s pretty and people are shallow and that’s enough, but Clay’s wacky theory can only bolster what Apollo now already thinks. “I guess,” he says.

“You still are gonna text him, though,” Clay says. “I am not letting you pass this opportunity by.”

“Opportunity to what? Get kidnapped from this realm to never return and die?”

Hey, it’s Apollo Justice.

“To go on a date with a cute celebrity who you may or may not want to be careful about taking what he offers you — don’t include your last name, how many people named Apollo do you think he’s given his number to? — Oh, you sent it already.”

“Don’t micromanage my texting.”

“I have to or you’ll sound like a loser.”

They wait in silence for an answer. There have been a few moments in Apollo’s life that have felt more ridiculous than this, sitting side-by-side on the couch staring intently at Apollo’s phone, but only a few.

-Herr Forehead! I was starting to think you had lost my number ;)

“Why does he call you that?”

“I have no idea.”

-Had any interesting cases this week?

“I’d kill for a boring case.”

“Then die.”

Not really. What about you?

“You’re supposed to say ‘wbu’! Sound casual!”

“That sounds like fuckboy slang.”

“Look at his fashion choices and tell me he isn’t a fuckboy.”

“But I’m not!”

-Nothing so fun as debating panty thefts with you.

“Oh my god. Apollo. Apollo, oh my god.”

“Yeah, he’s a fuckboy.”

“Then you know what you need to do.”

“Don’t you dare say it—”

-You busy this weekend?

“No, you’re not. You aren’t.”

“I might have plans that you’re unaware of—”

“No, no, now you don’t. Tell him you don’t.”

“So he can make fun of me for being sad and lonely?”

“Fine. Tell him you don’t have anything more important than him.”

“That’s such a fuckboy response.”

Nothing much important. You?

“You are really bad at holding conversations, Apollo.”

“I know! I’m very aware of that!”

-Want to get coffee on Saturday?

“Dude. Dude. Apollo holy shit.”

“I know.”

“Dude just fucking say yes what are you waiting for?”

“We just established not ten minutes ago that we’re pretty sure he’s not human!”

“You have a chance to score with that, you take it.”

“What happened to all of your self-preservation instincts?”

“Dude. Klavier Gavin is asking you out. Answer him!”

-There’s something I need to talk to you about.

“That doesn’t sound so much like a date,” Apollo says.

“Ah,” Clay says. “Perhaps not.”

“That sounds ominous.”

“Yeah.”

But Apollo’s life has already slipped from his control.

Where and what time? 

#roddy fanfics #i will need to come up with a tag for this au but i'll worry about that once i have more than one part #i didn't really edit this part because i've been sitting on it for so long and i wanted to post it and keep moving #maybe this..............thing can be part of my nano project #fic: the seelie of kurain

[imitranslates]

Fukigen na Mononokean Ch. 51

We finally get a peek and learn some interesting information! Here’s to hoping we finally get to see Aoi next month.

Please remember to check out the official English release when it comes out, preferably on Crunchyroll if you’re able to!

The newest chapter can be read on the official website by clicking the yellow button labeled 読む!

Fukigen na Mononokean Chapter 51 - Heap of Drawings

Page 1

Yahiko: I'm pretty sure it was a human with this kinda feeling!

[This human is...]

Page 2

[Ashiya's father...]

[Ashiya Sakae.]

Abeno: (A gakuran...)

Yahiko: When I went to Aoi's place to play,

This guy was there.

Yahiko: When I asked him, “Who are you?”

Page 3

Yahiko: He said, “I'm a servant of the Mononokean.”

Abeno: ......

Yahiko: I think he told me his name, too, but... I forgot.

Abeno: Is there anything else you remember?

Yahiko: No...

Abeno: You don't know whether this human has passed away, either?

Page 4

Yahiko: I don't know.

Yahiko: I don't keep track of whether every human

who doesn't bother to play with me could still be alive.

Page 6

Ashiya: Eh!?

Ashiya: Yahiko!? Transformed into Sakae?!

(Abeno: So noisy...)

Page 7

Ashiya: I wanna see, too! Mononokean! Go to Seiryuji Temple!

(Ashiya: I'll confirm if it's the real thing!!)

Abeno: I had to play with him all morning, day, and night. If you don't give him some kind of tribute, he's not gonna transform for you, you know? (I've been with him since the day of the cultural festival...)

Ashiya: ...Sakae's face... what was it like?

Abeno: He had blank-looking eyes...?

Abeno: And...

Abeno: He was wearing a school uniform, and looked to be about our age.

Ashiya: He was in high school?

Ashiya: Yahiko met him that long ago...?

(Then he must know something about the reason for Sakae's disappearance 16 years ago)

(And why he only came back home once after that, three years later...)

Page 8

(More over...)

Ashiya: ...Did Yahiko know anything about when Sakae died?

Abeno: No...

Abeno: He didn't play with him, so Yahiko didn't even remember his name. (It seems he just barely managed to remember what he looked like.)

Ashiya: (If you don't play with him, you'll end up completely forgotten?!)

Abeno: They only met that one time,

So Yahiko's pretty much unrelated.

Page 9

Abeno: For the purposes of our investigation, Aoi is the only one who's connected.

Ashiya: What are those books...?

Abeno: These are all of Aoi's written reports for work.

We might be able to get an idea of the circumstances of Sakae's death with these.

Ashiya: W-

Ashiya: When was it!?

Page 10

Abeno: First, look at this.

Ashiya: This is...

Page 11

Ashiya: A drawing of a demon...?

Abeno: This is a demon that Aoi exorcised.

Abeno: But, what you should be looking at isn't that...

Abeno: It's this “cat.”

Ashiya: Eh...? Where...? Ah, it's really there! A hidden cat...! (I didn't notice it at all...)

Page 12

Abeno: There are other pages with this same cat drawn on them.

Ashiya: Let's see...

Ashiya: I found it!

Ashiya: There's one here, too...!

Ashiya: And here...?!

Abeno: That report has the first cat.

After that, there are a bunch of cats scattered throughout.

Abeno: The total number is 209... (I shouldn't have overlooked any.)

Ashiya: (He was tirelessly working on this Where's Wal** like assignment on his own. (If he said something, I would have helped...!))

Abeno: Before this point, there were decorative drawings hidden inside the portraits of demons.

I've looked at many of these sketches.

Abeno: But the timing and amount of appearances of this cat, when checked again Yahiko's testimony...

Page 13

Abeno: This cat symbolizes...

Abeno: The times Ashiya Sakae was working as a servant of the Mononokean.

Ashiya: ...Sakae was...

Ashiya: A servant of the Mononokean...!?

Abeno: There should be a written record of everyone who was ever employed by the Mononokean, but I haven't found anything in the reports.

Abeno: It seems Aoi was not only hiding it from the Legislator, but the Mononokean as well.

Page 14

Abeno: I can't say for certain why it was kept secret, but it's probably because Sakae was a human....

Ashiya: (I see...) There are demons who hate humans in the Underworld, too....

[For example...]

Abeno: Yeah...

Ashiya: ...But...

Ashiya: The fact that Sakae was employed by the Mononokean just like me...

Ashiya: I only met him once when I was little, so I felt like my connection to my father was pretty weak...

Ashiya: But this makes me feel a little closer to him.

Page 15

Abeno: .......

Abeno: In the Underworld Era, night 48, cycle 27, volume 11.

Request acceptance report number 143.

Abeno: That's the last request with a cat drawn on it.

Page 16

Abeno: The 143th request's report doesn't mention anything out of the norm.

Abeno: The next request, number 144, is the same.

Abeno: These two requests, when converted from the Underworld calendar to the Human world's...

Abeno: Took place 16 years ago...

Abeno: On November 1st and November 2nd.

Page 17

Ashiya: The day Sakae first disappeared was...

November 2nd...

Abeno: In autumn, 16 years ago...

Abeno: So the time period matches up with that story, after all,

Mononokean?

Page 18

[I don't recall the exact date, but it was fall...]

[I think it was a little before I met Itsuki.]

[There was a request to exorcise a demon, and so Aoi went out.

A long time passed, and I had been worried because Aoi didn't come back...]

[It must have been horrible, because Aoi finally returned

and was wounded.]

[I tried to find out what happened, but Aoi only dodged my questions, and I wasn't able to get any details.]

[But when I kept asking insistently...]

Page 19

Mononokean: “I sat vigil at a cat's side.”

[...Aoi said that,]

[While crying.]

Page 20

Abeno: The last picture of the cat... and Aoi's words...

The day Sakae disappeared...

Abeno: If we take all this into account...

Abeno: Ashiya Sakae passed away on November 2nd.

Page 21

Abeno: Between the 143rd and the 144th reports,  there's traces of many pages being torn out.

Abeno: The day Sakae died must have originally been written about here...

Ashiya: That's not possible.

Ashiya: Three years after that...

Ashiya: When I was three years old, he came back, you know?

Ashiya: My mom and my sister met him.

Ashiya: Those two wouldn't have been mistaken.

Ashiya: That was definitely the real “Sakae.”

Page 22

Abeno: That was probably Aoi, taking the form of Ashiya Sakae.

Ashiya: ...Huh?

Page 23

Abeno: Aoi was...

A talented demon, unlike any other.

Abeno: Among anything that exists in the human world,

Abeno: Aoi has a unique and godlike ability to change into whatever could be  visualized.

Abeno: Even humans who can't see demons are able to perceive Aoi.

Page 24

Ashiya: Then...

Ashiya: The person I always thought was my father is...

Ashiya: ......

Page 25

(Aoi-san...!?)

Page 26

Ashiya: ...I see...

Ashiya: That's why he disappeared so soon afterward...

Ashiya: ..Going as far as to transform into a dead person...

Ashiya: Why did Aoi did appear before us?

Page 27

Abeno: ...I wonder.

Abeno: I've only looked the reports concerning what happened 16 years ago, but...

The reason for showing up three years later in that form....

Abeno: Aoi is the only one who really knows.

(November 2nd... Looking at the 144th's report...)

(What was written for it is very much “normal”...)

(Maybe there are other unique markings left in demon portraits...)

Page 28

Abeno: ......

[Could there be some meaning in this stupid-looking drawing...?]

Abeno: What was Aoi thinking...?

That idiot...

#fukigen na mononokean #fukigen na mononokean translation #The Morose Mononokean #fukigen na mononokean 51 #fukigen na mononokean chapter 51 #manga translation

[pyropsychiccollector]

"Th-There! All good as new!" Mikan announced with relief as she finished bandaging up Hajime's arm. He flashed her a grateful smile in return. "Thanks." The Nurse poked her index fingers together and smiled bashfully. "I-It was nothing! You were hurting and needed help! It was the least I could do." "Y-Yeah, but... I'll bet there were others you should've gotten to by now... Or you had some homework..." Hajime flinched slightly as Mikan shrilly cut him off. "N-NO! ... No." Mikan tried to calm down. "Y-You're... my friend... You listen to me, y-you never want to... DO anything to me... Y-You always want to hangout... I w-want to help you, Hinata-kun. I don't want to lose you...!" As Mikan started to cry, Hajime took her hands into his and tried to soothe her. "H-Hey... You're not gonna lose me, Mikan! It’s kinda my job to make sure Natsumi doesn't get hurt, but I'm not tough enough to handle the really big threats to her life! The Kuzuryu Clan keeps me out of those messy situations." Mikan sniffled. "B-But... Your arm..." "Yeah..." Hajime smiled wryly. "I actually took a hit that I didn't need to, 'cause Natsumi dodged, anyway. Still, this is like one of the few times I feel... useful. I'm getting paid to watch out for Natsumi, so I should take the hit when I can. 'Cause I can't predict if she sees an attack coming! If I can see it she probably can, but I don't want to take any chances. I'm not... like you Ultimates... I want to take every chance to help..." Mikan's face had softened, and she abruptly hugged him tightly. Honestly, Hajime felt the wind taken out of him. "S-Stop saying you're useless... W-We keep telling you th-that you don't have to prove yourself..." She bawled. "J-Just... Try to be less reckless... For me...?" Hajime's smile became warm as he rubbed her back consolingly. "See? Standing up like that is what a nurse has to do, sometimes! You're the nurse, I'm the patient. I should have to listen to you and do what you say, 'cause you know a lot more about health than I do." Sniffing, Mikan nodded and burrowed her head in his chest. After a while, Mikan let him go, and Hajime spoke up again. "So, uh, where were you off to when I bumped into you? You seemed distressed." Paling, Mikan recalled what she'd been doing previously, before her nurse's instincts had kicked in upon seeing Hajime. "Th-That's right! Mitarai! Oh no... Oh no, oh no, oh no..." Hajime tried, in vain, to calm her down again. "Mitarai? What's wrong with Mitarai?" "He's gone missing!" Mikan wailed. "The Ultimate Imposter said he wasn't in his apartment, so... so... I was running there to check when I ran into you! I'm so sorry, but I need to go!" Ultimate Imposter? Hajime hadn't heard of a kid like that in Mikan and Chiaki's class, but he might've been in a different one and just been a caring friend. "W-Wait... You guys are in class, aren't you? Is Mitarai sick?" Mikan wringed her hands. "W-Well... To tell the truth, Mitarai-kun never attends class because he's always working on a project, and the Imposter asked me to look after him when he collapsed from starvation again, and...!" Hajime blankly stared at Mikan as he processed what she was telling him. The Mitarai he knew from Class 77 introducing themselves to him... was this Imposter guy? That seemed way too outlandish... But then again, this WAS Hope's Peak... Now he felt even worse about holding her up with his own problems... "Let me come with you. It's the least I can do for inconveniencing you like this." "Y-You're not a n-nuisance...!" Mikan huffed before shaking her head worriedly. "L-Let's just hurry!" Hajime simply followed Mikan's lead. ~*~ Mitarai wasn't in his room, as the Imposter had said. There was even some stuff missing from the shelves, though that was based off of Mikan's testimony, and she didn't sound too sure. Mikan had been prepared to run all over campus looking for Mitarai, but Hajime kept her levelheaded and proposed they talk to her classmates. If they were going to look for one guy, they'd need all the help they could get. And despite their eccentric natures, Class 77 was pretty capable. Mikan was worried about the Imposter's feelings about this secret getting out, so they went to check with him first. "... I see. I suppose it couldn't be helped..." The Imposter leaned on the wall next to Tsumiki haggardly. It appeared he'd already exhausted himself from searching. The nurse was apologizing profusely, though the rotund boy had forgiven her already. "Do you think... the situation is serious enough to come out to everyone now...?" Hajime rubbed the back of his neck. "Well, if he's gone missing, and you haven't found him anywhere, and he didn't leave a note... It probably is." Hajime sounded apologetic, and reluctant to believe it himself. Attempted murder on a Yakuza girl was one thing, but kidnapping a recluse... Something was definitely up. "S-Sorry..." "No, you're right." The Imposter admitted. "We probably should have said something a long time ago, but I allowed myself to get complacent. Even if we kept searching on our own, the others would find out eventually." "For what it's worth, I'm still sorry." Hajime smiled wryly. He hadn't meant for Mikan to let a secret like this spill... But he was also glad he hadn't let her run off hysterically searching for Mitarai, thus alerting everyone in the school... In a way, his actions had minimized the damage. Somewhat. “At any rate, we have quite a few classmates that could help us track him down…” The nameless boy replied. Mahiru had great eyesight, and Ibuki had great hearing. Akane had a good nose, and Tanaka likely had some animals that were excellent trackers. If they couldn’t locate Mitarai with the combined powers of Class 77, then they were dealing with a truly frightening and powerful kidnapper. “Apologies for eavesdropping, but I think I could help you in this search.” Hajime, Mikan, and the Imposter all turned as one to face a lilac-haired girl who was dusting a stray strand of hair out of her view. “Who are you?” The Imposter asked warily. The girl seemed to nod indulgently. “Kyoko Kirigiri. I was scouted by Hope’s Peak as the Ultimate Detective. I am a member of the 78th class.” Understandably, Mikan was elated with this news. Hajime, too, was relieved to have a detective that was willing to help them. The Ultimate Detective at that. In contrast to them, the Imposter still seemed wary and reluctant. “I understand and appreciate your assistance. However, I must still inform our class, and enlist their help. Since Mitarai was originally part of Class 77, it’s only fair they know about his disappearance.” Again, Kirigiri seemed to understand the Imposter’s caution. “Wise. Even with me looking into this, there’s no guarantee that I will find anything. With the more people looking as soon as possible, we’ll hopefully find this Mitarai before the trail goes cold.” “Tsumiki and I will be off, then.” The Imposter replied. “Hinata, can you show Kirigiri to Mitarai’s room?” Hajime nodded dumbly as he processed that he was volunteered just like that. It made sense, though, since Reserve Course students weren’t allowed to enter the main building. “Y-Yeah. This way… I think…” Hajime chuckled sheepishly as they headed in the general direction of the dorms. If Kirigiri was bothered by his lack of confidence, she didn’t show it. ~*~ “Fuck…This whole thing with Mitarai is messed up.” Fuyuhiko cursed as he, Hajime, Natsumi, and Peko killed time until dinner at the Kuzuryu Compound. A week had passed since the initial disappearance, and no one had turned up anything that didn’t lead to a dead end. There was no ransom, no threatening phone calls… It was like Mitarai had dropped off the face of the earth. “Why would anyone go after the guy, anyway? He’s a damn animator!” “Not to mention the guy’s existence was pretty much a secret.” Natsumi mused, resting her chin in her palms as she leaned on the table. “Everyone thought fatty was the animator.” Peko clutched her elbow as she looked off to the side, standing next to the couch where Fuyuhiko and Hajime were seated. “Tsumiki did say that he went in for regular checkups for his health. It’s possible his kidnapper encountered him during one of those trips… The exact purpose for Mitarai’s abduction eludes us, but since there have been no demands, I think it is safe to assume the purpose may have had something to do with Mitarai’s talent.” “And that’s what I don’t get!” Fuyuhiko groaned. “The guy had to make fucking godly pieces of art if someone wanted to kidnap him for that… And I guess I can see him doing that ‘cause he was an Ultimate. But still! What’s the point in staging an abduction for a few anime scenes when you could go to jail for that? It’s not like he would’ve turned you down if you made a request… probably…” Natsumi noticed Hajime idly checking his phone for messages. “Still nothing from Kirigiri?” “She was giving daily updates until two days ago…” Hajime reasoned. “It didn’t matter if the investigation was slow; she said she’d keep in touch so we all wouldn’t run in circles… I haven’t seen her around campus, either.” “Fuck…” Fuyuhiko groaned again. “If Little Miss Ultimate Detective’s gone off halfcocked and gotten captured, too, I’m gonna be pissed. Natsumi, Hinata, neither of you are goin’ home alone until this is cleared up, you got that? It’s bad enough you guys got that bullshit message about Hope’s Peak and human experimentation… Man, that was fucked up!” “The other Reserve Course students believe in it, though…” Hajime muttered. “Can we say for sure it was fake? I mean, I got asked to participate in that project… And from what I remember, I was going to agree because they were going to give me a talent through that project…” “So what, dumbass?! There’s probably a little truth in all that bullshit!” The Yakuza heir raged. “Fine, maybe the school gave some kid a brain surgery so he could become talented, and maybe they used the Reserve Course funds to make it happen… But that same kid slaughtered the whole Student Council, coming out unscathed? That’s insane!” Peko sided with Fuyuhiko, as she usually did. “With seemingly the whole Reserve department getting that message, it is hard to imagine that it was completely wholesome. Someone is trying to sabotage the academy’s reputation. Perhaps it is the same person that abducted Mitarai… we have no way to know.” Hajime had to concede that possibility. Even if that whole Student Council Killlings thing might’ve been forged, the person who sent the message en masse to the Reserve department could be Mitarai’s abductor. If it was… this person might’ve been more powerful than they had initially thought. He just hoped they’d hear from Kirigiri soon. A lot could happen in two days… ~*~ Kyoko’s eyes snapped open in the dark room. It took her scarcely a second to discover her arms and legs were bound to a chair. There was only one source of light in the room, and that was the computer screen that she was forced to look at, for even her head had limited movement. It didn’t take long for a certain figure to enter her field of vision. “Aww~ You’re awake! That’s good. I was starting to get booored~” The fashionista giggled as Kyoko renewed her efforts to escape from the chair. “Junko…! What do you think you’re doing?! Kidnapping Ryota Mitarai… knocking me out and restraining me… What is the meaning of this?” Though Kyoko managed to keep her voice level and a cool façade, truthfully she was scared out of her mind. She’d finally gotten a match for the strands of hair left in Mitarai’s room, and she’d thought that she would get the drop on Enoshima, interrogate her, and hopefully resolve everything before the situation worsened somehow. Unfortunately, Kyoko underestimated Junko. Kyoko had followed Junko after class, intent on getting the blonde in an isolated area. She thought she would be prepared for Mukuro possibly interfering in Junko’s interrogation, but it wasn’t the Ultimate Soldier that she had to worry about – Enoshima had hit her with a dose of knockout gas, and now she was here. At the mercy of someone she had called ‘classmate’. And yet… Enoshima hadn’t killed her. Not yet. “Oh, Kyoko-chan! Always so impatient~” Enoshima made doe eyes at her. “Upupupu~… I’m not going to kill you. Well. Not anymore, anyway~…” The detective went ashen at this revelation. “You were going to… kill me…?” Was Junko this much of a psychopath? Junko beamed proudly, despite Kyoko’s horrified expression. “Yup, yup! You and the rest of our class! I was gonna kill you all ‘cause I love you all sooo much, and I wanted you guys to get the richest taste of Despair—death!” The blonde suddenly slipped on some glasses, changing personalities. “Ah, but now a new opportunity presents itself! My Despair Video should be tested on an Ultimate, and you fell neatly into my lap! Yes… you will serve nicely as a guinea pig, especially since you are the daughter of our esteemed headmaster.” If Kyoko had increased her efforts to escape before, she was putting everything she had into that now. Regrettably, she made zero progress. And Junko seemed to enjoy her predicament, as the fashionista strolled over and patted her cheek amicably. “Chin up~! The show’s about to start, and you won’t want to miss a minute of it!” With a click of a remote, a video appeared on the screen and began to play. It was fairly obvious to Kyoko that it would be a violent one, as she took in the weapons and the fear on the Student Council’s faces. Kyoko tried to close her eyes, but she found they were being forced open now, and she couldn’t tear her eyes even a fraction from the screen in front of her. Nevertheless, Kyoko persevered. Even through the grotesque montage of images shown, in collaboration with lighting and music, she was somehow able to not succumb in the way that Junko apparently wanted. The images were horrifying, but Kyoko was used to seeing death by this point, and she had deduced the purpose behind this video from the information Enoshima had given her earlier. Kyoko would not bow to Enoshima’s will. To her last breath she would not give in. She would not succumb. She would never succumb. Oh god… What was that…? Junko gave a Cheshire grin at seeing how stubborn the detective was. She would’ve been an inspiration to anyone else… But they were the Despair Sisters, and therefore had no hope to believe in. Junko liked it when they played hard to get. “Looks like I was right about you~! Muku, give Koko-chan that little extra push! Upupupu!” That feeling… were they poking needles into her brain?! Oh god… Ohgodohgodohgod… It felt… It felt… Kyoko's breath hitched and her heart felt like it was running a marathon. Her chest was heaving with increasing intensity. There was a burning sensation building down below. In her core. Though she still couldn’t move much, she soon found her lower body starting to buck against her will. There was a growing wetness in her loins… She was getting too excited. Damnit, she couldn't climax from this...! She couldn't allow it! But the wet patch was growing. More pre-cum was just spurting out now. Her eyes were still on the Despair Video, transfixed… And she was having an orgasm… This wasn’t right… This was sick… But it felt… good. Kyoko moaned erotically. Once that stray thought crossed her mind, Kyoko’s eyes began to swirl. Her hips bucked harder and harder, and soon she violently orgasmed. Once the ecstasy died down, Kyoko Kirigiri went limp, though her face was contorted in an eerily blissful grin…

#Danganronpa #Hajime Hinata #Mikan Tsumiki #The Imposter #Kyoko Kirigiri #Fuyuhiko Kuzuryuu #Natsumi Kuzuryuu #Peko Pekoyama #Junko Enoshima

[just-a-spark]

The Before, and The After Part 12

Warnings: Language, Sexual Content (18+ to be safe)

Series Masterlist

Summery: A wealthy classmate of Meg’s becomes close to the family, a little too close to the playboy grandson of Harlan Thrombey. The events leading up to, and following, Harlan Thrombey’s death.

                                        6 Months Later

“Hundreds of bystanders are crowding outside the courthouse today for the murder trial of famed author Harlan Thrombey’s eldest grandson. Hugh Drysdale is accused of not only murdering the family’s housekeeper, but also conspiring to murder his own grandfather in an attempt to secure a piece of his fortune. Anticipation hangs in the air as the crowd wonders, not if he’ll be convicted, but whether or not members of his influential family will pull strings to free him from a life in prison.”

Three different television stations had sent their media crews to cover the trial, and they stood at the base of the steps reporting until a car pulled up in front of the court house, causing the media to storm it for a chance to get a quote from Ransom’s mother.

“Mrs. Drysdale, how do you feel about your son being the reason for your father’s death?” The newswoman asked, and Linda turned to her with a sharp scowl, never removing her sunglasses. It was probably a good thing because if looks could kill, the newswoman would have a daggers in her head.

“First of all, It’s Ms. Thrombey.” Linda sneered, her jaw slack as she stared into the camera bitterly, “And secondly, I don’t have a son. I have a demon spawn who will spend his life in prison. I’m just here to see the look on my ex-husband’s face when his son finally learns his lesson.” With that, Linda shoved past the flashing cameras and yelling reporters to enter the courthouse.

Inside, Elizabeth smoothed down Phil’s tie as he fidgeted in the hallway outside the courtroom, “Honey, calm down. This will be quick and easy. He confessed, remember?” Elizabeth grabbed his hands to stop him from moving, “Relax.”

“This is the murder trial of the decade. I can’t mess this up.” Phil said, reaching down and placing his hands on either side of his wife’s plump stomach. “What’ll he say if I fail?”

“She’ll be proud of you no matter what.” Elizabeth cooed, placing her hands on top of Phil’s, “She’ll be proud that you made the world safer for her. Because if that man goes free... who knows what he’s capable of. You know we have history.”

“Then I’ll make sure he doesn’t go free.” Phillip answered confidently, leaning forward to kiss his wife, “It’s like you said, quick and easy.”

“You have all your evidence?” Elizabeth asked as he opened his briefcase on the windowsill, “They’re bringing in the vials, the prop knife, the needle?”

“And I sent over the confession to the clerk of courts this morning. I even have a backup copy in my briefcase, just in case.” Phil promised, clipping the latches closed. “I know you said the family may try to pull something, but we’ve covered all our bases.”

“You’re sure?” Elizabeth prodded, having a sickening feeling in her stomach that Ransom would somehow walk away unscathed.

“I’m positive.” Phil leaned forward and pressed a kiss to her lips, “I love you. I’ll take care of this for you. You have nothing to worry about.” Phil looked up and saw Linda approaching, “Incoming.”

“Mr. Stevens. Mrs. Stevens.” Linda greeted coldly and Elizabeth gave a curt nod as she thrust her hand forward to shake Phil’s, “I expect you’ll have an easy trial.”

“Are you... hoping for that?” Phil asked, eyes darting over to Elizabeth who kept her expression neutral. Linda’s mouth twisted up into a devilish grin that made Elizabeth queasy.

Linda noticed Elizabeth shifting uneasily, but didn’t bring attention to it, “Why wouldn’t I?  If he’s capable of attempting to kill my father, he could kill anybody.” She turned to Elizabeth with a warning stare, “Especially those of us who abandoned him.”

As Linda left, Lizzie swallowed hard and released the breath she’d been holding as Phil rubbed her arm comfortingly, “After today, you’ll never see him again.” She nodded, staring in the direction Linda went with panicked eyes. Phillip looked at his watch, then his wife, “Honey, I have to go. Will you be alright? My parents should be here soon, you can sit with them.”

Elizabeth heard a familiar drawl from behind her and turned to see Benoit Blanc and Marta Cabrera entering the building, chased by camera flashes and yelling from the outside world. When Marta saw them, her eyes widened and she balked a little, but Benoit greeted the Stevens with a bright smile and a wave.

“Detective Blanc, Miss Cabrera, “Phil greeted as he shook their hands, “Thank you both for coming, we really couldn’t do this case without you.”

“Well, after everything Miss Cabrera went through and the high profile nature of the case, I felt it would be important to make the trip back.” Blanc explained as he turned to Elizabeth, “Ma’am, can I just say, you are looking radiant today.”

“Thank you. I don’t believe you, but I appreciate the effort.” Lizzie said with a small smile before turning her attention to Marta, “Are you okay? I know how hard today is going to be for you.”

Marta looked from Lizzie to Phil, then to Blanc before stating simply, “Two of my best friends are dead because of him. I have to do what’s right.”

“I was surprised to see you listed as the Prosecution today Mr. Stevens, seeing as your father was close to the Thrombeys for so many years.” Blanc said as Phil glanced anxiously at his watch.

“Well, we are attorney to the Thrombey Estate, not the Thrombey family. We work for Miss Cabrera, and honestly, my father’s blood pressure has been significantly lower since we haven’t seen them.” Phil explained, then pressed a quick kiss to his wife’s cheek, “I’d love to stay, but I have to go. I’ll see you both on the stand.”

“Good luck.” Elizabeth breathed out nervously, blowing air out through rounded lips as she held her growing bump, “Baby’s doing cartwheels.”

Marta looked around, pausing when she noticed the restroom sign down the hall, “I’ll be right back, don’t go without me.”

“You know I won’t. I’ll wait with you until it’s time for you to testify.” Blanc promised as the woman darted down the hall, her ill-fitting heels clunking as she went to the restroom. Once alone, Benoit turned to Elizabeth, “Perhaps your unborn child is doing cartwheels because they know that their father will be in attendance.”

“Shhh.” Elizabeth hissed angrily, glaring up at Blanc, “My baby’s father is here. Her father is Phillip. I thought you understood that...” Elizabeth looked over her shoulder nervously, “If you even think about sharing what you think you know, you have no idea the hell you’ll create for me and my family. I’m begging you. I cannot let that get out, you are the only other person in the world who knows, and I need to keep it that way.”

“Mrs. Stevens, I have no intention of bringing up your infidelity in a court of law. That is between you and your husband and God.” Blanc told her, cracking a smile, “I am surprised you came though, considering your... history with the defendant.”

“I need to see him locked away. I don’t trust him loose. I don’t know what he could do.” Elizabeth shivered as the doors opened again, more camera flashes and screams followed whoever entered, so she guessed it was someone from Ransom’s family, “I’m scared. I’m scared of all of them. Ransom told them everything about us right before he was arrested and now I’m on the other side. They could kill me.”

“Ma’am, I feel confident that after this you will never have to see that terrible family again. I hope I can say the same.” Yelling echoed from just inside the foyer, and Elizabeth flinched as Joni’s voice screamed over Richard’s.

“Good luck today Detective. We’re all counting on you.” Elizabeth said, giving his arm a firm squeeze before she quickly entered the courtroom before the Thrombeys took notice of her.

She wasn’t fast enough.

“Hey slut! Thanks for nothing!”

Lizzie cringed at Meg’s voice, turning around slowly to meet her old friend, “Hi-”

“Don’t hi me. For six months you let us all suffer and scramble and didn’t even bother to check in? And now you want to be friends?” Meg snarled, but Joni worked to pull her back as Lizzie maneuvered around the pair and started walking toward the front of the courtroom, “Oh, real mature, you’re just going to ignore me!”

“What would you like me to say, Meg? What exactly are you angry at me for? Are you angry that Harlan didn’t leave you any money? Are you angry that my husband is representing the estate and not your family? Or, wild thought, I’m sure I’m way off base here,” Lizzie hummed as she raised her finger to her jaw, “Maybe you’re mad because I fucked your cousin. But that’s none of your business. I, like everyone else, realized he was the devil and ran for the hills. I got a real husband and I’m having a real family. Thank God too, because I dodged a bullet, not having to deal with all of you.”

Before she left the conversation, she saw Linda take her seat at the edge of the back row, clearly not wanting to be part of the spectacle. Elizabeth didn’t blame her, turning back to Meg and Joni to deliver the final blow, “Now if you excuse me, I have to go watch my husband tear your family to shreds.”

As Elizabeth stormed away, she heard Richard’s booming voice, “Oh, how nice of you to come and support our son, Linda  Do you have a good enough vantage point from back here to watch him be tried for murder?”

Elizabeth slid into the first row next to her father-in-law, leaving space for Marta and Benoit after their testimony. Despite being five rows ahead, she could hear the Thrombey’s continuing their squabble.

“Oh, Walter, are you going to hide in the shadows too? Or did you actually come to support your nephew?” Richard yelled as Allen and Lizzie turned to look over their left shoulders, unabashedly watching the sight unfold. Linda just stared blankly at her ex-husband, not saying a word as Walt approached Richard.

Walt laughed when he reached them, “Support him? We’re here to watch him burn. He destroyed this family, and you destroyed your marriage. He probably learned it from you...Sorry, Linda.”

“I spent thirty years helping out this family. I’ve seen them through so many ups and downs, Neil’s death, what to do about Joni and Meg, through it all. But even now after Harlan’s gone, they just don’t get it.” Alan sighed, turning to face the front of the court as people began settling down around them.

“Get what?” Elizabeth asked earnestly, looking from Alan back to the arguing Thrombeys.

“They don’t get that you have to take care of your family. Most deaths bring people together, but Harlan’s drove them all apart.” Alan said quietly and silenced his cell phone.

“Hmm.” Lizzie hummed as she looked back, hearing Walt’s voice continue to rise despite the filling room.

“Go to hell, asshole! You can bail your murderous son out of the electric chair with the money from your little tramp! Oh wait, she doesn’t want an old, jobless geezer like you? What a fucking surprise!” Walt yelled and Linda just rolled her eyes and placed her head in her hand as Richard surged toward his brother-in-law.

“You wanna go, Walt? Where’s your son right now!? Jerking off to Mein Kempf!?” Richard yelled. Joni put her hand up to push him back as her daughter ducked behind her mother. Meg caught Lizzie staring and rolled her eyes, but was distracted when Walt almost elbowed her in the face in his attempt to get Richard.

Joni’s floral skirt swished as she whipped around to face Richard, finger pointed at his face as he took a step back from her, “Our family has gone through a really hard time. You cheated on my poor sister and your son tried to murder our dear father. We are here to support Linda, who is about to lose her son. We have come here today, as a group, so we can take all the bad, toxic energy that has seeped into our auras over the past several months and expel it into the universe for our souls can find their light-”

“Oh, quit spouting your fucking nonsense, Joni. You aren’t even part of this family!” Walt barked loudly and Joni gasped in exaggerated surprise. Richard took this opportunity to leave, allowing the chaotic Thrombey’s to rip each other apart as he went to take his place in the first row behind the defense.  

“How dare you? After everything I’ve gone through with this family? Go to hell you piece of shit!” Joni screamed back, shoving Meg onto the bench beside Walt’s wife.

“Enough!” Linda yelled as she stood and the whole room went silent.

Lizzie bit the side of her index finger and turned around slowly as to not pull any attention to her. Her back was rigid as she tried not to laugh, but she listened to hear if Linda would berate her family or just shut them up. After a couple excruciatingly long moments, she decided it was the latter.

Elizabeth’s mind went blank as the jury began to file into the room, signalling that the trial was about to begin. She rubbed her stomach fondly, beginning to feel sick as her husband entered the room as well as the defense attorney. She was tall, lean, and sharply dressed. Elizabeth wondered how on Earth Richard and Ransom were able to afford her, but she reasoned that’s why Ransom didn’t make it out on bail.

The woman shook hands with Phil and they went to their respective sides of the court. There were whispers in the court room as everyone waited for Ransom to be brought out, but one voice was louder than the rest.

“I think I know her.” Meg told her mother and Elizabeth felt a shiver run down her spine as she considered what strings the Thrombey family would pull to save the trust fund asshole.

When the doors opened and the guards brought Ransom forward, Lizzie’s heart sunk. He was dressed in a nice suit, but he was slimmer than she remembered. The beginnings of a beard grew on his normally smooth face, and his hair was combed back, but much longer than it had been last time she’d seen him, teasing the back of his neck in a way Lizzie was sure would annoy him.

Ransom seemed to have made the conscious decision to let himself go, perhaps in an attempt to seem sadder, less wealthy and dickish. He scanned the courtroom as he was led to the table to join his defense attorney, but when his eyes landed on Lizzie, he paused just a second too long and almost tripped as she pushed him forward.

Lizzie dropped her gaze so he couldn’t find it again, wishing she could wipe away the image of his desperate, hurt blue eyes from her mind forever.

#knives out #knives out fanfic #knives out fanfiction #ransom drysdale fanfiction

[sanctferum]

Dangan Ronpa V3 Chapter 4: Class Trial, Part 2

OK, so we figured out Miu’s trap, but not who killed her. It could be anyone, except Kokichi, because Kokichi would’ve been paralyzed if he came into contact with Miu. Depending on what the glitch that happened was, I wonder if the blackened is unaware of being the blackened? In which case, it could even be Shuichi, though it’d be dumb for the game to kill off the player character again.

Monokuma & Kubs Theater. Monokuma is unmotivated, and talks about bear stuff, like whether bears get periods, and how long they hibernate for. Anyways, back to the trial.

The soap opera amongst the two remaining Kubs continues. Monotaro struggles to remember the important person he’s forgotten (Miu), and Monophanie reveals she’s pregnant with his child. Incest aside, a robot can’t get pregnant…right?

Monotaro is shocked to find out he’ll be a father. Himiko once again adjusts the death flag rate upwards.

Can we really find the killer by retracing Miu’s steps and analyzing her actions?

So, Miu modified the virtual world. She planned to go past the wall, murder Kokichi on the roof with the hammer, slip through the wall back to the chapel, and after everyone went back to the real world, find the bottle of poison on Kokichi’s chair. By having logged Kaito out earlier, he’d seem the obvious suspect, and people would think the murder happened in the real world. Miu would claim she was near the chapel the entire time, and still logged in to boot, and therefore couldn’t have killed Kokichi. And we’d have no choice but to believe her, since the bridge was out.

So, after dropping the bridge, and crossing the wall, she headed to the mansion’s rooftop. At this point, Kaito found himself logged out, and Tsumugi spotted Miu as she headed towards the mansion. Kokichi says the roof door was locked, so was Miu killed by the blackened right there, on the roof? If that’s the case, the blackened was the one who locked the door, since Miu wouldn’t have locked the door until Kokichi arrived.

Gonta thinks the killing game is the bad guy here. If things had been different, Miu might’ve been able to be our friend…Himiko has her doubts about that one, as do I. Oh, and Maki and Kokichi also wouldn’t want to be friends with her either.

How did Miu’s avatar get from the mansion roof to outside the chapel? In the Virtual World, everyone was the same strength. Even Gonta would’ve found it difficult to pick Miu up, go to the wall, and throw her to the other side. Besides, in order to do that, the blackened would have had to know the wall’s secret.

Perhaps the loud sound outside of the chapel has to do with it? Something hit the chapel wall. And the only thing there big enough to make that noise was Miu’s avatar, right? But why? Was there some way to send an object in that direction and only have it stop when it hit something?

Kaito suspects the same thing I do, that Kokichi already has all the answers. Kokichi brushes it off. He must know who the culprit is as well, right?

Kokichi is suggesting that Miu’s avatar was rolled off of the roof, and simply rolled all the way to the chapel wall via the momentum.

Hangman’s Gambit! Ah, there’s our final hidden Monokuma.

So, the blackened used the roof as a slide? But how would Miu’s body have slid all that way, even with the momentum?

Kaito calling Maki “Maki Roll” has inspired Kokichi to call Shuichi “Shumai”. Do I fuckin LOOK like a dumpling to you, ya asshat?

Still…it’s weird that Miu’s body slid all that way.

Wait…if the avatar wouldn’t slide…and the lattice came from the mansion roof…ah ha! That’s gotta be it!

So the lattice was used as a makeshift sled, and the impact against the chapel knocked her cell phone and hammer out from wherever she’d hidden them. Like Sonic the Hedgehog losing rings when he crashes into stuff, according to Monokuma. Monokuma goes on to regain his drive through his hatred of Sonic the Hedgehog. O…kay…?

Also, Monokuma’s gonna be a grandfather, according to the soap opera.

Kokichi thinks Shuichi MUST know who the culprit is by now…I got nothing.

OK, so the culprit was someone investigating the mansion. Not Kaito, probably not myself, and as much as I’d like it to be Kokichi, I don’t think so. Gonta or Tsumugi?

Someone lied when we were talking about the rooftop. Huh? Did someone lie? I didn’t notice. The only suspicious person was Kokichi.

OK, apparently it was Kokichi. Doesn’t mean he’s the culprit, though. But still. He obviously knows more than he’s claiming to.

But what specifically did he lie about?

Ah! He said he never went to the roof, and also said the door was locked. I noticed that earlier, but forgot about it until now. Mind Mine time! Now there’s blue tiles in it.

Kokichi said he never went to the roof, but he also gave testimony about the snow that was on the roof. Sure, you could guess that, but then there’s also something else on the roof that Kokichi mentioned. The brick handrail.

Kokichi’s stuttering and is very obviously lying to us. That concerns me. Is this an act? He’s never had an issue lying with a straight face before this…

Himiko did say the handrail was made of bricks near the beginning of the class trial, according to Kokichi. But I don’t ever remember her mentioning the roof. Still, as long as no one can prove Himiko didn’t say that, we gotta find another way to prove Kokichi was on the roof. Well, he says he was in the salon the whole time, but no one was there to say he was there. Except if no one was there, he can’t refute us lying ourselves about going to the salon and not seeing him.

Everyone believes me over Kokichi. No scrum debate necessary.

Wait, we fucked up. There’s one person who can attest to us never going to the salon. Tsumugi was in the dining hall. Tsumugi decides that she just must not have noticed Shuichi. All clear!

Kokichi goes into a monologue about lies. There’s only ever one truth. Which means that the number of lies there are, are infinite. Not all of them are malicious. Some of them are white lies. And if even those lies are bad…

..Then that means we’re terrible at being lied to? Is that something you can  be bad at?

Kokichi’s gonna talk, and something about that talking will hurt Shuichi. Because NO ONE tries to get away with lying to the master of lies. So, Kokichi will deny Shuichi’s talent, and just flat out reveal the entire truth here, right now.

Kokichi was suspicious of Miu from the start. He pressed Miu to give him the info on the Virtual World. That’s how he knew about it before the rest of us. And once she told him everything, he realized that that everything was lacking a few conspicuous details…which could only be because Miu planned to kill someone in the Virtual World. And that person was most likely himself. So he investigated the computer, where he found the text file with the description in it, and proof that someone could die of shock in the Virtual World. And so, Kokichi decided to use Miu’s setup to pull off a crime of his own. He helped lure us all into the Virtual World. And that wasn’t all.

Kokichi admits what we saw in that one cutscene in the game room. He worked together with Monokuma for this whole scheme. Monokuma corroborates his account. Kokichi had an idea on how to make the killing game more exciting, and Monokuma loved the idea so much that he placed a motive in the Killing Game Simulator. Monokuma didn’t help Kokichi with anything else. He had nothing to do with the murder. So in that sense, he can dodge responsibility and avoid breaking the regulation prohibiting him from directly interfering.

Maki is suspicious at how easily Kokichi is confessing. Same, Maki.

If Kokichi can’t win, he’ll get revenge by making the rest of the trial boringly easy. And with that, Kokichi reveals the blackened…Gonta. Gonta has no memory of killing Miu, though.

Kokichi claims that Gonta and he formed a duo to end the killing game. The Killing Game Busters. If two people can win the killing game, then they would be those two people. Gonta has no idea what Kokichi is talking about. And he’d never team up with Kokichi, not after the Insect Meet and Greet incident.

Is Kokichi making this all up? Kaito says it’s because Gonta doesn’t understand the Virtual World, which means Kokichi is trying to trick him into confessing to something he never did.

Kokichi is doubling down on his story, and Gonta seems to really not know anything. But if it isn’t Gonta, then the real culprit is…? Kokichi says there’s proof that he couldn’t have killed Miu. The adjustments to his avatar?

Yup. Kokichi couldn’t have killed her via strangulation. He’d be frozen in place. But, she definitely died via strangulation.

Gonta would never intentionally hurt anyone like that. I believe that. What I’m worried about is if this murder was even intentional on the part of the blackened.

Something is definitely off. Has been off since the beginning.

Kokichi tries to put Shuichi in a corner of having to either believe in Gonta and risk everyone dying, or discuss the topic while suspecting Gonta. Keebo agrees with us that we have to discuss this further, just in case. Is this leading to a scrum debate?

It is! And as long as it’s a possibility, we can’t back down. We promised Kaede not to shy away from the truth.

Kokichi tells Gonta to argue for himself, so that the truth can be found.

Kokichi is losing his temper. And he’s still insisting that this is just a game.

Kaito would rather die than stoop to Kokichi’s level. Kokichi is fine with that. Kaito should just go and die already if that’s how he feels! Maki threatens Kokichi to shut him up. Soon everyone’s tempers are flaring.

Kokichi is absolute losing it. He yells at Gonta for saying that he has no idea what’s going on. That’s all he’s been saying, this whole time.

But…Shuichi realizes something. Shouldn’t Gonta know at least some of what’s going on? Yet, Gonta has never mentioned anything about his time in the Virtual World. Then…oh no. Oh hell no.

Yeah. That’s it. The avatar user error. The reason Gonta is acting strange must be because…he has no memory of the Virtual World. Which means, if he did kill Miu, he’d have no memory of it. And that would have to be because of the VR cords being switched.

OK, so what’s gonna happen now? In all likelihood, Gonta’s gonna get executed, Kaito’s gonna stop being our friend, Kokichi is going to survive and instigate murders until he either dies or wins the game, and we’re gonna lose our confidence in our talent again. Jesus Christ this is so fucked up.

Oh. That’s what happened. Gonta’s a lefty and Himiko said “You put the red cord into the hand you use chopsticks with.” God fucking dammit, Himiko!

Gonta says he never went to the virtual world. But he was there, so that means that Kokichi was right. God DAMMIT!

AH. Maki asked a good question. Is the person who planned a murder a second blackened? It wasn’t so in the first Dangan Ronpa game, but…if that’s the case, that’d be why Kokichi asked about a potential tie.

Monokuma says that only the actual murderer becomes the blackened. Kokichi refuses to discuss how he got Gonta to agree to such a thing, and wants to go straight to voting. He also manipulates us into being forced to agree to work with him.

Maki, Himiko, and Keebo didn’t have access to the mansion. Kaito had been logged out by Miu before her death, at 6:17 AM. Miu died at 6:30 AM, so Kaito couldn’t have done it. Tsumugi and Shuichi saw each other, and therefore, we both have alibis. Those alibis cover the time that the loud sound was heard during, and the culprit was still on the roof then. And Kokichi wasn’t capable of strangling Miu without getting paralyzed in the process. And then there was one. Gonta. By process of elimination, he’s the only one who could have done it. Kokichi, you absolute MOTHERFUCKING bastard.

A truth without any lies. That’s what we found. That’s what Kokichi wanted to show us, to prove that lies are better than the truth.

Kaito refuses to let Kokichi win. And he’s still got proof that Gonta didn’t do it. After Tsumugi and Shuichi heard Keebo’s voice, they ran outside. And they almost immediately ran into Gonta. So how did Gonta get down from the roof? He couldn’t have jumped down, not with his avatar body. So how did he get down from the roof?

Shuichi knows. I’m not sure what it is, but Shuichi apparently does. And now he’s gotta explain to Kaito that even if the truth is cruel, they need to face it to survive. But Kaito won’t accept this. Gonta did it, and Shuichi believes that? Nonsense! It’s Armament Argument time!

Oh right. Gonta could’ve used a rope to climb down from the mansion. And the only thing in the Virtual World that rope could have been was the toilet paper, which we found in the direction Gonta appeared before us when we left the mansion. Gonta could’ve tied the toilet paper to the binoculars on the rooftop and used that to climb down. But he didn’t tie it. He simply looped it around the binoculars and tugged it down afterwards. And Gonta discarded the toilet paper after hearing Tsumugi and Shuichi’s footsteps, since he had no way to get it back to the bathroom.

Kokichi achieved his goal. He kept the murder game going, saved his own life, and destroyed Kaito’s outlook. Gonta still can’t believe he would have killed Miu, but Kokichi tells him to just confess to the crime he doesn’t remember already. Shuichi tells Kokichi to shut up. If anyone can get Gonta to accept what he apparently did, it’s not Kokichi. It falls to us.

Gonta doesn’t understand, but…if everyone is in agreement that he did it…he’s not smart, and they are, so they’re probably right and he’s wrong. Because Gonta trusts everyone. But…Gonta killed someone, then thought he hadn’t, and tried to convince everyone that he wasn’t the culprit. Which means Gonta did something that, regardless of what we think, he can never forgive himself for.

Kokichi says he didn’t trick Gonta at all. But before he’ll explain what happened, we got to vote, and no take-backs. So, we have no choice.

Monokuma says that the ending of the trial lacked the excitement it usually has. Well, after so many killing games, it was bound to happen eventually. I see you there. I see you there, reference to previous games in what’s supposed to be a different continuity. Well, there’s nothing we can do about that for now.

The vote is in. Kaito voted for Kokichi, and everyone else, Gonta included, voted for Gonta.

Monokuma tells us that we chose right, but everyone is too deep in despair to celebrate. Monotaro and Monophanie talk about their baby’s name. Monophanie says they should prepare six names. Sextuplets?

Kokichi told Monokuma that the trial would liven things up. But now everyone’s wearing their gloomy gus faces…well, Kokichi says, that was like everything else he’s said. A lie.

If Kokichi told us about the outside world, about the motive, we wouldn’t believe him. So Gonta will explain instead. And if Gonta can’t remember…then the only way for Gonta to explain is to go back to the Virtual World, where his avatar should still remember. What a pain.

Monokuma downloads Gonta’s memories from the Virtual World into a laptop, and creates a virtual Gonta from that and the records of his consciousness to tell us the secret.

Alter Ego Gonta?! Oh boy.

Gonta and Alter Gonta freak out at each other over being themselves.

Kokichi tells Alter Gonta that their plan failed, so it’s fine if Alter Gonta tells everyone. Alter Gonta laments not being able to save everyone. Was that what Kokichi led him to believe?

Gonta felt he had to do “it” for everyone’s sake. So he killed Miu. And as for why he thought that would save everyone…it leads back to the motive. The card key.

Beyond the door it opens is the outside world. And Kokichi planned to use the motive to save everyone after seeing the outside world for himself. Kokichi contacted Monokuma, told him he’d liven up the killing game if he was allowed to use the outside world as a motive again. The motive key card gave the user the right to view the outside world, but Kokichi didn’t use that motive to kill. So he Kokichi then suggested to Monokuma that if someone else was able to see the outside world, it’d provide the motive to kill again. Monokuma put the secret of the outside world in the Virtual World…a flashback light filled with memories of that outside world. Which means the secret of the outside world is connected to our forgotten memories.

Monokuma didn’t even hide the light! He said he put a motive in the Virtual World, but didn’t say he HID that motive.

And that’s why Kokichi lured Gonta away from the group to supposedly be his bodyguard. Koikichi tricked Gonta into using the flashback light on himself, but the truth, whatever it is, just confused him all the more. And Kokichi told him that the only way to save everyone was to kill them, and end their misery. Mercy killing them all, the game would no longer be playable.

Alter Gonta tells real Gonta that he wasn’t tricked. Now that he knows what he knows, Alter Gonta thinks it would be better and easier if everyone was dead. Because this Academy is hell. But outside the Academy is also hell. If that’s the case, there’s no reason to live. Everyone died for nothing.

Kokichi suggests that maybe they shouldn’t have voted for Gonta. Because if he alone had survived…he’d have sacrificed himself for everyone else to live in this hell while we got to die, to slumber eternally.

Alter Gonta won’t tell us what he saw. Because if he did…we’d all kill ourselves and each other. We’d lose all hope, just like he did. We’d have no choice but to despair.

Kokichi is the only one besides Alter Gonta that knows the truth. The horrible, awful truth.

We see a flashback to the murder, and learn that while he was on the roof, Gonta saw Miu walk through the wall. He told Kokichi, and Kokichi came up with everything from there.

All of us could have been saved. But…we reached for the truth and escaped the trap, and our own salvation in the process. Kokichi thinks it was wrong to fight for the truth, now that he knows what it is. And he should’ve killed Miu, because he’s the Ultimate Supreme Leader. The role of villain should have been his. He would’ve gladly killed Miu, but he figured out that she had some way of fighting back against him in the Virtual World.

Kokichi wanted to kill us all? But then, why did he guide us to the truth? Is this another lie?

Punishment Time. I don’t suppose Monokuma can just punish Alter Gonta? No, probably not, that wouldn’t cause enough despair.

Kokichi has a request before the execution. Kill him along with Gonta.

Gonta and Alter Gonta are fine with dying, as long as everyone forgives each other and stays friends. Kokichi has no choice but to accept that he’ll have to live with the truth.

Monophanie is about to give birth? Now?

Kokichi starts to lose it, screaming for Gonta not to go. But Gonta isn’t scared. He’s just upset that he couldn’t protect everyone till the end.

Execution: Wild West Insecticide

Gonta is tied up to a post. Alter Gonta’s laptop is tied to his chest. As Monotaro tries to help Monophanie through her pregnancy, their father shows up. The sheriff.

Sheriff Monokuma fires a gun at Gonta. It releases a mechanical bee. He fires with wild abandon, createing a swarm that buzzes forwards, leaving Gonta covered in welts and stings. Monophanie’s stomach bursts open, killing her. From inside, comes the alien from Alien, I mean, another robot bug. It’s a robotic praying mantis, and a giant one at that. It rears its head and screeches, cuts Monotaro in half, dives forward, and impales its claw right through both the laptop and the real Gonta. The sun sets on Monokuma’s town.

Well, I didn’t expect both of the remaining Monokubs to die, but OK. Guess that’s where the soap opera was leading…

Kubs remaining: 0. Even Monokuma didn’t expect that, or so he says. He’s lying, of course.

Monokuma killed off the two remaining Kubs cause they’d gotten a little too close to each other, to the point where they didn’t care about Monokuma himself anymore. He laughs about it and leaves.

No one can accept what happened. Not without at least understanding what drove Gonta to do what he did.

Kokichi simply laughs at them. All that stuff about saving us, wanting to die, not wanting Gonta to die? Lies, all lies! Kokichi didn’t tell us what the truth was so that it wouldn’t get in the way of the game.

Kokichi says he made Gonta kill Miu because he thought it’d liven up the game, stop it from being boring. If he’s been planning to save us all, he wouldn’t have guided us to the truth. So I WAS right about that.

Oh, goody, Kokichi’s gone FULL supervillain on us. Living up to his title, I guess…

It’s clear to all who and what Kokichi Oma is. Malice. Almost the living incarnation of malice.

The only reason he does what he does is the sheer thrill that comes from spreading misery and sorrow. He’s a sadist to the core.

And then he taunts us about all this and how Miu and Gonta died for nothing. Maki looks like she’s about to lose her patience and possibly kill him. Kaito…

Kaito runs up to Kokichi and punches the living daylights out of him. Good job, man.

When the dust clears…Kaito is on the ground and Kokichi is still standing. He dodged the punch and delivered one of his own, and he didn’t hold back.

Kokichi mentions that Kaito seems awfully slower than usual. Fuck. He knows whatever the truth of Kaito’s condition is. He knows all the truths of this place, actually, but still.

Anyways, Maki and Shuichi are freaking out. Kaito starts to get up for another attempt. Maki calls Kokichi out for claiming to be bad at fighting. Well, do you expect an expert liar like him to tell the truth about that?

Kokichi continues to taunt Kaito, but everyone’s 100% done with him by now. We all go help Kaito up instead. Shuichi points out that when something happens to Kaito, everyone runs to help him. But when something happens to Kokichi, no one will come for him, because everyone here hates his guts. GET FUCKED ASSHOLE.

Kokichi stands by himself, and he always will be. But Kokichi doesn’t give a shit about that! Friends don’t make killing games more entertaining! That’s why-

…Well, if we insist on doing that…the game will become boring. So, he no longer cares. But that’s fine with him, because he doesn’t need anyone else here. He, and he alone, will win the game. And then he boards the elevator and leaves.

Kaito is having trouble getting up. And when he does, he falls back down, coughing up copious amounts of blood. And he’s still claiming it’s just a cold. And he won’t let us help him back to his room. Not after what he feels we’ve done.

Maki goes after him, without looking any of us directly in the eye.

And Shuichi is left with the sense that everything he’s done was for nothing. By trying so hard to survive, what have they accomplished? What they’ve accomplished is to further Monokuma’s plans, and nothing else. In the end, they’re no better than Kokichi.

And Kokichi is prowling the grounds, still plotting. It’s almost time for him to end the game and claim victory. And he bends down to scrawl on the ground. On the piece of plaster with the “horse a” message.

The full message spells out, “This world is mine – Kokichi Oma”.

Well, shit.

And our present is the Empty Insect Cage.

And that’s that. End of chapter 4. Fucking hell, man. Fucking. Hell.

I was wrong. I was so so wrong. And not just about who would survive, a list of which only Maki is still alive out of. I was wrong about Kiyo. I said Kiyo would be the Nagito Komaeda of this game, but I was wrong. As a serial killer, he’s more like the Genocide Jill or Sparkling Justice of this game.

No, the Nagito of this game is unmistakably Kokichi Oma.

(Side note: I’m not sure why the secret of the outside world didn’t send him into despair like it did with Gonta. Maybe it’s cause he’s a psychopath to begin with?)

I. I don’t have the energy to keep going right this second. Goodbye for now I will try again later.

#Dangan Ronpa #Dangan Ronpa V3 #Danganronpa V3

[writing-royza]

Two Hundred and Twenty-four - “Not There”, 3.0

A/N: Happy Sunday, everyone, and a belated Happy St. Patrick’s Day! I hope you all had fun and made it home safe from wherever you went to ‘partay,’ as the kids say. I live in a college town, so I booked it the heck outta Dodge for the weekend. But I’m back, it’s Sunday, and sweet worrywart Roy awaits.

I do not own FMA.

Two Hundred and Twenty-four - ‘Not There’, 3.0

He stood outside the soaring, majestic front entrance of the Central City courthouse, hands in his pockets, just soaking up the autumn sun and enjoying the last bit of warmth before the weather began to change steadily toward winter. But for all his outward appearance of calm, Roy’s insides were pure tension and something dangerously close to nervousness.

For a month and a half, now, ever since Riza had been transferred to work under Bradley, he had been trying to think of a way to contact her, to even get within twenty feet. And now, with the opportunity just falling into his lap, he could help but feel suspicious of it.

“Bit of an odd place to hang about, isn’t it, Colonel?”

Turning at the voice behind him, Roy jumped slightly before saluting reflexively. “General! Forgive me, I didn’t see you.” Raven’s eyes crinkled at the corners, waving away the salute. “And yes, I suppose it is a bit strange. I’m just… waiting for someone.”

Understanding dawned in the older man’s expression. “Ahhh, I see. I remember hearing that your former aide is meant to testify today, isn’t that right? Are you here for moral support?”

The friendly tone was doing its level best to send icy shivers down Roy’s spine, anger and resentment rolling together in his chest. How dare Raven try to act like nothing had happened. He was the main reason for this whole mess, the whole reason Roy had been undermined and — no. No, that was his own fault, for not heeding the dangerous political waters he had been swimming in.

“Of a sort.” He folded his hands behind his back, squashing the wish for his gloves so he could send this traitor up in smoke. “It’s more that I’m a second witness to her testimony, should it be called into question. But I have no doubt Lieutenant Hawkeye can handle herself just fine.”

“Ha! I knew that from the moment I met her!” Raven’s smile was obviously genuine. “That young lady has every bit of steel in her spine that a good officer should have.” Clapping Roy on the shoulder, he started toward the street and the gleaming black car that was just rolling up to the curb. “Good luck with your testimony, Colonel. I’m sure I’ll be seeing you about.”

Oh, and I’m just sure you will. That you’ll be keeping tabs on me for the sake of every corrupt, so-called friend you have…. Taking a deep breath, purging the acidic thoughts, Roy checked his watch. Twenty minutes until the hearing was meant to start, and still no sign of Riza.

She must have gotten caught up in work, he mused, moving to sit on one of several stone benches scattered through the courtyard. The President’s office is sure to have more paperwork than mine ever did. Riza might go through paperwork like a machine, but even she can only work so fast.

He wondered, idly, what he might say to her when she showed up. Would there be too many people around to tell her he missed her? Would a touch on the shoulder, a brush of his hand against hers, be noticed? Probably, he decided. If the Homonculus that seemed to get a kind of glee out of tailing her, waiting for her to slip up, happened to be watching…. Worse, if Selim managed to tag along on some sort of pretext….

Almost on reflex, his gaze travelled around the courtyard, watching the people walking about, coming to and from the building or just passing through. Any one of them, he supposed, could be a spy for the other side. But Bradley himself had sanctioned him to back up Riza’s testimony; subverting the law for this case would not be favourably received, and to the Führer-President, image was often everything.

Fifteen minutes, now. Perhaps it would be better to wait inside, but he wanted to meet Riza out in the open, where, if he got the chance, they would have a shot at a longer conversation on the way in. He frowned, scanning the area more carefully. That is, if she ever got here….

The first threads of worry began to wriggle their way into his stomach. What was taking her so long? Surely her schedule wasn’t so busy that she couldn’t break away to make it to the hearing just a little bit early? Or maybe, she had been intimidated or forced into not attending. There had been no subpoena for her testimony, only a friendly request from a lawyer she had dealt with in the past. She was not being compelled to be there.

No, he decided. Riza would not allowed herself to be frightened away from this; Riza didn’t allow herself to be frightened of very much. But if she were forced to remain at Headquarters….

Getting to his feet, Roy turned and headed into the building. A quick check, to see if maybe she had used some side entrance, or had gotten here before he did, and if he couldn’t find her….

The worry grew.

Her message to him had said ‘Hearing Room 4,’ and it only took him a few moments to locate it. However, when he opened the door, it was entirely empty. No other observers, no attorneys… and no Riza. Standing with one hand on the doorknob, feeling the worry condense into a hard ball in the pit of his stomach, Roy wondered blankly, Now what?

“Oh! Colonel, there you are!”

He turned to find a young corrections officer coming down the hall, looking visibly relieved. “I’m sorry to bother you, sir, but I have a telephone message for you.”

For whatever reason, Roy felt his mouth go dry. “I see. From whom?”

“From Lieutenant Hawkeye, sir.” The young man held out a slip of paper. “When she didn’t find you at the prison judicial centre, she called here and asked me to check around for you. She was concerned that maybe you’d gone to the wrong place; she didn’t think she’d been very clear on where the hearing was being held.” He broke into a smile. “I’m glad I found you; she sounded pretty worried.”

Taking the message, reading through the few words there — ‘Central Prison Judicial Centre, Hearing Room 4’ - Roy felt the tension start to ebb. A misunderstanding, that was all. Apparently, that was now all it took to send him panicking, fearing for her…. Then again, perhaps that was to be expected, in this situation of theirs.

The young officer was watching him carefully, almost warily. “…Would you… would you like me to return her message, Colonel?”

He glanced to the clock on the wall — the hearing had started two minutes ago, halfway across the city. There was no way they would let him in once the proceedings were in progress, not even if Riza hadn’t given her testimony yet. “If you wouldn’t mind, yes. And tell her I’ll be returning to Central Headquarters. I’m sure she’ll be fine on her own.”

“Yes, sir.”

The words left a bitter taste in his mouth as the younger man hurried off to his task, leaving Roy to turn reluctantly toward the exit. Up until fifteen minutes ago, it had been dangerously close to a nice day — sunshine, pleasant temperature, the promise of seeing Riza….

Strange, he thought, how the sun didn’t seem as bright and the air was that slight bit cooler when she wasn’t there.

#fma #fmab #Roy Mustang #Riza Hawkeye #royza #royai #fma fanfiction #royai fanfiction #snap shots

[looking-from-the-outside-in]

Unrestricted Sons

Sons Of Issachar

252. Unrestricted Sons

Mike Parsons

with Jeremy Westcott – 

No limits

Jesus, the Truth, the second Adam, desires to remove the limits placed on us by the first Adam, to restore us and conform us to our original eternal blueprint, and to release us into the glorious freedom of our sonship. Every one of us, without exception. No-one is left out, because Jesus reconciled the whole world to Himself on the cross. The Father has made it possible for every person who has ever lived and who ever will live to come into relationship with Him if they will embrace Jesus and enter in through that door.

He desires to restore all things. That includes our capacity to engage bandwidths of electromagnetic energy and abilities which were lost at the fall, the flood and Babel. Those were times in Man’s history where He had to intervene to limit the damage we were about to do to creation by operating outside of relationship with Him. When we come back into relationship, it opens the way for Him to restore those abilities for us to use as sons and co-heirs in the kingdom.

Untethered

Jesus came to bring abundant, overflowing life. Those whom the Son sets free will be free indeed. While we remain tethered to the physical realm and under its rule and bondage, we contribute to creation’s groan rather than being able to respond to it, because we, too, are longing to be set free. In Jesus we can get to know the Truth by experience, and He makes us free to engage with creation as the sons and heirs we truly are.

So, freedom from sickness, disease and pain: can you see that reality? Freedom from rejection, fear, insecurity, addiction, poverty and every bondage and limitation: can you see those realities? If we can focus on those realities as we see them in Jesus, it will change our thinking and free us from the restrictions our minds have imposed upon us. If we can see them as truth then they can manifest in our lives. We can be set free from the chains of time and space and the dimensional restrictions of our flawed belief systems and mindsets; free to fly, untethered and unrestricted.

Earthbound

There can be many realities – and we are all living the reality we can see – but there is only One Truth. A word of warning: the truth, once perceived, may not always be to our taste. We may find the truth unpalatable and hard to swallow because of our DIY mindsets.

The truth may not always be convenient or pleasant because it will not allow us to stay the same. It may require sacrifice and discipline but it will always bring us into freedom. Because it can be hard, sometimes we encounter truth but do not follow through. We turn from the truth and return to less challenging pseudo-realities, fearing the hardships and responsibilities that freedom brings, losing sight of the higher purpose we have in God’s kingdom.

I remember once, I was ministering with another person and we saw someone’s leg grow – not just a millimetre or two, but about 8 centimetres (3 inches). The next day, the person who had been with me came to me and asked “did that really happen?” They had allowed unbelief to come in and rob them of what they had actually seen with their own eyes because it did not fit in with their mindset.

We must live beyond the veil. If we cannot perceive (or if we choose to ignore) the eternal realm of which we are citizens, then we will remain confined and tethered to this earthly, DIY version of reality; remain earthbound, restricted, living in a carefully constructed illusion that reduces us to the status of mere mortals, unable to change our circumstances and situations or fulfil our eternal destiny:

…in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God (2 Cor 2:4).

Let’s be willing to ask, are we blinded by the world’s DIY system? Whose reality are we living in?

Jesus did things by the power of His consciousness which we do not think we can do. He controlled reality through His choices. Much supernatural truth has been put ‘off limits’ to us by religious spirits operating within the old order religious systems, labelling it ‘New Age’. All truth is from God because Jesus is The Truth but some things have been veiled in deception. Just because some folk within the New Age movement may have glimpsed a reality which Christians have rejected, and just because they have their own worldviews, mindsets and filters in place which cause them to see and present a distorted version of the truth, that does not mean that the truth is not there to be revealed when viewed through the lens of Jesus. We must recover that truth.

Take the red pill

‘The Matrix’ is one of my favourite movies, a modern parable which reveals that the truth can free our minds. If you have not seen it, I recommend it! Keanu Reeves is Neo (whose name means ‘New’ and is also an anagram of ‘One’). With the help of Laurence Fishburne’s character, Morpheus, he becomes aware that the reality he is living in is a lie and seeks to expose and overthrow it.

Here are a few quotes from Morpheus:

“Let me tell you why you’re here. You’re here because you know something. What you know, you can’t explain. But you feel it. You felt it your entire life. That there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there. Like a splinter in your mind – driving you mad.”

“I’m trying to free your mind, Neo. But I can only show you the door. You’re the one that has to walk through it.”

“Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself. The question is, are you willing to look?”

This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill – you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.

“What is real? How do you define ‘real’? If you’re talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then ‘real’ is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.”

“Don’t think you are, know you are.”

Neo: “What are you trying to tell me? That I can dodge bullets?”

Morpheus: “No, Neo. I’m trying to tell you that when you’re ready, you won’t have to.”

“The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work… when you go to church… when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.”

Neo: “What truth?”

Morpheus: “That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else you were born into bondage. Into a prison that you cannot taste or see or touch. A prison for your mind.”

“The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you’re inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save… You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system that they will fight to protect it.”

“I didn’t say it would be easy, Neo. I just said it would be the truth.”



‘Meeting Morpheus‘ scene from The Matrix.

See for yourself

This rabbit-hole goes deep. “Deep calls to deep at the sound of Your waterfalls.” I can give you testimony of my experience, but you really have to see this for yourself. Choosing relationship with the Father through Jesus is like taking the red pill: once you have seen and experienced Him for real, there is no going back. Around the world, I see many people encountering the real God and beginning to grasp that He really is Love. Many of us are only now beginning to realise just how good He actually is.

When Neo goes to visit the Oracle (hoping to find out if he is ‘the One’),  there is a sign on the wall, ‘Nosce te ipsum’ (‘Know yourself’). It is only when we see God as He really is that we can know who we really are.

Some recent articles from Freedom ARC

251. God’s Original Design and Purpose

250. Pillars In My Mind

249. The Veil is Taken Away

247. Limitless Grace and Mercy

239. The Things They Now Believe

233. Wider, Deeper, Longer, Higher

Older related posts

215. Revealing the Sons of God

190. By Personal Encounter and Experience

95. Manifestation of the Sons of God

Image attribution: the black and green ‘matrix’ image used as a background for the title meme is by Pixabay contributor Tobias_ET. Used under Creative Commons CC0.

Intensive – October 30th to November 1st 2018

Expanding Our Reality: Deconstruction and Restoring Consciousness

Join us in Barnstaple, UK, for our final intensive of 2018 with Mike Parsons.

Limited places available via Eventbrite.