#ending on a cliffhanger makes me shrivel and die | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sergeantxrogers · 2 years

Text

Assured by Dreams - 5

“Your job is to protect me, isn’t it?”

“With my life.”

“Then love me, too.”

Sir James had been tasked with one assignment and one assignment only: give you protection, even if he has to die for it. When your kingdom falls under siege from the East, and you’re ripped away from the comfortability of banquets, feasts and glittering tiaras, it’s up to him to save your life, and up to you to trust him. Only, Sir James never had falling in love with his princess written in his plan for salvation.

Pairing: Knight!Bucky Barnes x Princess!Reader

Chapter word count: 3.3k

Chapter warnings: Angst, mentions of kidnapping, mentions of blood/dead bodies, slight making out, a potential cliffhanger + a special surprise towards the end

series masterlist / main masterlist

You didn’t know when you had passed out, only that a dull, aching pulse behind your eyes woke you up. You squinted your eyes open, preparing to adjust, but there was no light to adjust to. Blinking fervently, your pupils focused on your surroundings. Trees towering above you, the thick canopy of leaves covering every inch of the sky. There was only slivers and gaps of blue left between the green. The green so dark it was almost black. The trees blocked out all the sunlight coming in. It was almost like it was the middle of the night. It may as well have been, but you trusted your senses enough.

The thickness and abundance of trees and bushes helped you realize you were deep, deep in the woods, somewhere far away from where you and Bucky were initially heading.

Bucky.

Where was he?

When had he realized you were gone?

Could he find you?

Your headache throbbed violently behind your eyes, and you knew very well it was from all the tears you had spilled. With a groan, you lifted your head from the hard surface it was resting against. That was when you noticed the rope around your torso and arms, woven around you multiple times, disappearing behind you before wrapping you again. And the hard surface your back and head were against was scratchy.

A tree. You were tied to a tree. In the middle of the woods.

You looked down, seeing your wrists free from the ties they were in previously, but your hands were still unusable, wrapped flush against your body.

And it was only when you looked down had you noticed: they hadn’t had the decent courtesy to even let you sit against the tree. No, they had to tie you standing up.

Before the first cry for help could leave your lips, you heard someone click their tongue in warning. Whipping your head to the side, something inside you shriveled when you met eyes with the man who had taken you.

He gave you a blood curdling smile, his gloves now off his hands and resting on a leather satchel on the ground.

“Well, princess,” he taunted, taking a step towards you. “I thought you’d never wake up. I was getting bored.”

You said nothing, only turned your head to face the other way. A shuffle of footsteps through leaves was your only warning before a hand grabbed your jaw harshly, turning your head back to him as you yelped.

“Look at me when I speak to you, or I won’t go so easy on you.”

You glared at him, contemplating spitting in his face. “Who sent you.”

The question was blank, void of emotion as you asked it. The man frowned, bunching his brows together as he tilted his head. Releasing your jaw, you huffed as he stepped back, shaking his head in disappointment.

“For a princess, you sure do lack basic manners.”

As he spoke, he started circling around the thick tree you were tied to, steps slow and fluid, as if he had all the time in the world. You supposed he did, seeing as you were probably deep enough in the forest that nobody would hear your cries for help.

“You won’t even ask for my name?” he asked, mocking offense from behind you. Goosebumps ran up and down your arms, partially from the cool breeze, but mainly from the knowledge that you were completely helpless in front of him. At his mercy. The only thing you could do now was stall, maybe squeeze in a few more minutes before he sent you to your death in East Vidith.

“What is it?”

“What is what, princess?” he asked with a smirk, rounding the tree and facing you again.

“Your name,” you said through clenched teeth, trying to keep your breath as even as possible.

“Helmut,” he replied simply.

The name clanged around in the empty cavern of your brain, unfamiliar and unwelcomed. It was foreign, that much you knew for sure.

“And where’s the other one?”

“Brock?”

You nodded. Helmut looked around, to his sides, over his shoulder, pretending as if he hadn’t noticed the lack of the other brute.

“His work here is done. You’re all mine now.”

The words chilled you to your very core, your bones feeling heavy as you stared at his stupid smirk slapped onto his face. Focusing on evening your breaths, you forced the panic at bay when he let out a dark chuckle. It was then that he lifted a hand to rest on his hip, and when you realized, with a flicker of your eyes downwards, that he had a sword by his hip. It didn’t send you the same wave of comfort Bucky’s sword did, and you lifted your eyes up to his again.

“What are you?”

“What am I?”

You nodded towards his hip. “You don’t seem like the knightly type.”

“Ah.” He smiled, tilting his head. “You’re smart.”

You ignored his statement, staying silent until he spoke again.

“I suppose I’m something of a bounty hunter for hire. I do my job, and get half the money as promised.”

“For hire?”

Your brows furrowed as your brain ran through hoops trying to figure out who he was.

“I’ll admit, when the prince told me who I was to bring in,I was a bit skeptical. You royals are usually more the useless type.”

“Prince?” you choked out in a whisper. Helmut pouted mockingly.

“Dearest princess, haven’t you learned by now? The concept of politics is a two-sided coin. One side is love, the other is war. All it takes is a fist against the table to flip it. And your coin has been flipped, my dear.”

Your chest pressed against the rope cutting into you as your breath rose.

“By whose fist?” you muttered, holding your eye contact with him.

He gave you a sickening, saccharine smile, like he knew his next words would meet their mark exactly where he wanted them to.

“Prince Pietro of Tredia.”

The world around you went even darker then it already was, white noise buzzing in your ears as you narrowed your eyes at Helmut.

“No,” you muttered quietly, then your voice rose. “No, you’re lying. He wouldn’t do that- he wouldn’t-”

“Wouldn’t he?”

Helmut’s interruption had you take a pause, and tear your eyes away from him. Forcing the slight rage inside you to simmer down, you cleared your head enough to think about it. His two words had your mind reeling, realizing he was right. Technically, you had no idea who Pietro truly was, or what his endgame was. Still, thinking about the soft prince who had asked you so kindly to dance with a smile sending a bounty hunter after you made you feel sick to your stomach. Was it disappointment? Maybe it was fear, too.

It also made you think back to all those off looks Bucky used to give Pietro whenever he would see him. You wondered if he knew, if he had a gut feeling something wasn’t right. He probably did, but kept silent for your sake, ever the gentleman.

“Do you see now, princess?” Helmut’s voice pulled you from your thoughts, back into the deep, dark woods, tied against the rough tree trunk. “Hasn’t anybody ever told you not to trust royalty? They always have ulterior motives.”

The smile fell from his face, and he stepped towards you, so close you could feel his breath on your cheek as he said his next words.

“It’s why I hunt them down instead.”

His hand lifted, bringing his sword with it, and you sucked in a sharp gasp as you clenched your eyes shut and turned your head. You heard the swipe of a sword being unsheathed, and swung through the air. You coiled back into yourself as much as you could, bracing yourself for the impact, but it never came. You heard metal collide with flesh and bone, but the pain never appeared. What had appeared, however, was a splatter of warm blood across your face and the top of your sweater, staining your lips and neck red. Opening your eyes carefully, it only took you half a second to register that Helmut was no longer standing in front of you.

Instead, Bucky stood in front of you, panting heavily. Your eyes dropped down to his hand, tightly gripping the sword now covered with fresh blood. Drip, drip, drip. Droplets of red fell from the sharp tip and into the silent grass beneath him.

Before you could say anything, not even a whisper of his name, he raised the bloody sword again, this time at you, and swung down hard. The breath was caught in your throat, body frozen against the tree, before you felt it go loose as the rope holding you fell apart and down to your feet. Bucky dropped the sword from his shaking hand, and stepped forward just in time to catch your body collapsing from the shock.

His arms wrapped around your trembling torso, gently falling to his knees with you, and you swung your own arms around his neck. And when you buried your face into his neck, and when he splayed his hands across your back and pulled you into him, and when he whispered comfort into your ear - that was when the dam broke and the tears washed your cheeks, rolling over your jaw and down your neck, leaving streaks in the blood still on your body.

“I thought- I thought I lost you-”

Bucky’s whispered words were hot against your skin, and they made you cry harder, gripping tighter onto whatever part of him you could reach.

“I’m- I’m so sorry, Bucky, I’m sorry,” you said through pained hiccups. He rocked you side to side, and you felt the motion of him shaking his head in protest.

“Whatever do you have to be sorry for, my sweet, sweet princess?”

You sniffled deeply, calming your breath and opting to turn your head, resting your cheek on his shoulder. “I should’ve stayed on the horse.”

Bucky sighed, your body rising and falling with the movement.

“I thought I heard you,” you explained. “I thought you needed help so I wanted to go see- I didn’t think it would-”

“Shh, I know. I know,” he muttered, placing a kiss to the crown of your head. “It’s okay. You’re okay now.”

After another few minutes of silence filled by nothing other than your slowing breath and the soft creak of Bucky’s leathers as he rocked you, you lifted your head to look at him. His blue eyes seemed to hold an ocean’s storm in them, worry and fear and relief filling every crevice of his face all at once. Your eyes grazed along the worry lines in his forehead, and you brought your fingers up absentmindedly to smooth them out, gracing along the skin with a feather-light touch.

“How did you know I was here?” you whispered, partially reluctant to disturb the quiet.

“I followed you.”

At your confused look, he spoke again.

“I heard voices coming from where I had left you, and I was just on my way back, so I hurried. I came in time to see them haul you over that damn horse and take you away,” he said quietly, eyes dropping to avoid yours. He blamed himself for not being fast enough.

“I had to be smart about it, so I waited until I got the perfect opportunity. That shit for brains Brock left as soon as they tied you up, so it just made my job even easier.”

You nodded, feeling your heartbeat slow to a normal pace, the pulse in your head and throat relaxing. You gave Bucky a small smile.

“Thank you,” you told him, quietly, sincerely, and he didn’t respond. He only looked at you, eyes roving over your face before settling on your lips.

The entire world seemed to pause for a moment as your breath hitched. Was he getting closer? Or was it just your imagination? The dark woods seemed to brighten as your focus zeroed in on him, and then-

“We should get going.”

His sentence snapped you out of your trance, and you felt ashamed of the flood of disappointment filling your core. You cleared your throat and nodded.

“Where to?”

“There’s another town nearby, not a very far walk. We’ll have to hide better this time.”

You hummed, and turned your head. What you saw made your stomach churn, and you almost threw up. You probably would’ve if you had eaten anything in the past two days.

Helmut’s lifeless eyes stared up at you a few feet away, glazed over and frozen open. His mouth was agape, the color already drained from his face. What had really made you sick was the lack of body beneath his neck.

Bucky had beheaded him in one clean, swift swing, head rolling off the collapsed body into the grass. Your eyes stayed on the rest of him for only a second before you turned away.

After wiping your face and neck clean of blood with the end of his cape, and settling you down in front of him, in his arms, on your horse, it was only a matter of minutes until you reached the next town over.

Since you were still in broad daylight, Bucky had covered you in his cloak, pulling the hood up over your head so as not to be recognized while you waited outside the small inn for him. He returned with good news, grabbing your hand and tugging you inside behind him, up three flights of stairs. A single key dangled from his hand.

Following a measly dinner of a couple of bread rolls and some rum, you and Bucky slid underneath the covers of your bed - yes, the only bed in the only room they had available. Turning to your side to face him, Bucky did the same, resting his head on his arm as he gave you a smile.

There was a fire crackling in the stone hearth on the opposite wall of the bed, warming your feet. The spring days were just starting to warm up, but the nights were still ruthlessly chilly. Almost unbearable now that you were outside of the palace.

“What is it?” you asked him softly, noting his dopey smile.

Bucky half shrugged, then smiled wider.

“You look pretty like this.”

You told yourself the heat that crept up your neck and ears was from the fire and not his words, and you shook your head.

“Shut up,” you whispered, rolling your eyes, and he scoffed.

“I mean it, really-”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“I’m serious, Y/N.”

You fell silent, avoiding making eye contact and instead raking your eyes along the cracks in the wall behind him.

“You know,” Bucky said, voice unnervingly quiet, “I thought I wouldn’t be able to get you back.”

That made your gaze drop to him again, and you could see the sincerity in his eyes.

“I really thought something would go wrong, and I would lose you for good, and then I would live out the rest of my days in grief and guilt. And regret for not saying anything.”

“Regret?”

Bucky nodded slowly, and his free hand, that lied on the bed between you two, travelled upwards to grab yours. His cold, soft fingers wrapped around yours, squeezing gently, and you squeezed back.

“If I... If I lost you today, I would never have been able to...”

“To what?”

You barely pushed the words out, like they were holding on for dear life in your throat as you stared at him intently.

“To tell you what I’ve wanted to tell you since the first day I saw you, in your father’s study in your pink, frilly dress, stomping your feet like a little child.”

You didn’t want to jump to conclusions. You shouldn’t, you knew that, but... the way he was looking at you had you dropping all your defenses. Pulling your hand out of his, you brought it up to his face. Tracing the soft stubble growing across his jaw, his chin, his cheeks, your nimble fingers graced his nose, then his eyelashes, his eyebrows. He closed his eyes, relaxing into your touch, and finally, you brought your hand to his lips, ghosting over them ever so lightly.

You could feel the puff of breath he let out when he opened his eyes.

“And what would that be?” you whispered, however certain you were that you already knew the answer.

His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed heavily. The corner of his lips lifted faintly as his hand took yours, and he placed a kiss to your fingers.

“I’ve been hopelessly, completely, positively out of my mind for you since the day I saw you.”

You hadn’t expected him to say it like that. You froze in shock, silent and staring at him, and his vague smile seemed to falter a bit.

“My God...,” you whispered, finally, lost in the relief washing over his face.

Your own lips curled into a shy grin as he shifted closer to you.

“Bucky,” you said, word hanging loose in the tense air between you, and he hummed.

You didn’t know why you said his name. You had nothing to say, really. You had just felt the need to feel his name on your tongue, feel it fall from your lips, directed towards him and only him.

You had nothing to say, so you stayed quiet. Instead, you brought your face closer to his, hand cupping his jaw, and closed your eyes when you felt his lips meet yours.

Finally, finally, finally was all that swirled around in your brain as your lips melted into his, soft and warm and sweeter than sugar, unspoken promises and wishes bleeding from them and seeping through your teeth. Pink, perfectly molding with yours, you could feel Bucky smiling into the kiss, almost like he couldn’t believe it was actually happening.

His hand reached up to you, curling around the back of your neck and pulling you in closer, to the point where you were almost lying on top of him, and you giggled into his mouth.

Pulling away, your chest heaved vaguely from the lack of air as you looked at him. His pupils were blown wide, almost completely devouring the periwinkle of his irises as he gave you a dizzy grin with swollen, red lips. Your cheeks flushed, and you let your thumb stroke his cheekbone.

“I’ve wanted to do that for forever, princess,” he whispered breathlessly through a chuckle, only making you blush harder. You dropped your head into his chest, hiding from his gaze that always seemed to strip you down to your very bones, but Bucky tutted and shook his head, grabbing your chin softly and forcing you to look at him.

“I want to see those pretty eyes,” he cooed, and the smile slapped onto your face only grew.

“Why haven’t we done that earlier?” you asked, and he laughed, shutting his eyes and throwing his head back a bit.

“You tell me, baby. I wasn’t the one getting on your nerves on purpose everyday for a year.”

You rolled your eyes, pinching his cheek playfully with a giggle. You shifted against him, and your laughter died down when he let out a groan under his breath. The oxygen seemed to drain itself from your lungs, and your throat went dry when Bucky shifted underneath you, clenching his eyes shut.

“If you don’t stop moving, we’re going to have a bit of a problem.”

You ignored the burning in your cheeks, your neck, your ears, your core, as you smirked at him.

“What if it’s a problem I want to solve for you?”

Bucky paused, his entire body going still. Regret had almost started trickling in, until a dark look overcame him and he gripped the back of your head, hard.

“You shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep, princess.”

TAGLIST:

@dreamsley @a-ngeli-que @555shots @agirlinherhead @s-katergorl @ace-27749 @leyannrae @tailsoflightning @acidwidow @angelofthorr @gallysonegoodlung @creatingjana @gitasor @artofluxuryy @inlovewfictionalmen826 @pin-ci @writing-for-marvel @buckybarnesrealwife @americasass0 @ginger-swag-rapunzel @eclecticpatrolroadlawyer

#marvel #mcu #marvel fanfic #marvel fanfiction #bucky barnes #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes fanfic #james buchanan barnes #bucky barnes fluff #bucky barnes angst #bucky barnes smut #bucky barnes x you #james bucky barnes #james bucky barnes x reader #james buchanan bucky barnes #bucky barnes au #princess au #assured by dreams

107 notes · View notes

vaguekiwi · 3 years

Note

*reads violet rain ch27* *screams internally for 10mins straight* *wanders off in a daze to get a drink and some chocolate* fsck I need some fluffy comfort fics now

I’m gonna reply to all your asks right here I hope that’s okay ❤️ This was like 100% my fault for being offline but there’s a whole damn conversation under the cut 😂

FSCKING BECK WHEN WILL HE DIE!?!?! lol. Oh boy. My starker heart came to life when Peter thought that somehow Tony was there to save him, and then my starker heart shrivelled into a sad little lump when Peter was on the brink of letting Tony die. But I have to say it did feel painfully realistic, like yeah, if he just let Tony die maybe a lot of problems would be solved. Seems like their relationship has another 100k words to go in order to get anywhere good! Which I for one, welcome! Lol

YES GOD BECK IS INFURIATING IN THIS FIC. I was rereading 16 and 18 the other day (which are Beck’s chapters) and I was like ‘man, I even knew what was coming and these chapters are still SO unsettling on the reread 😂’

I think that the moment where Peter has the opportunity to let Tony die (ostensibly at no fault of his own, albeit he designed the poison sooo 👀🤷‍♀️) is a really important moment for the fic. It digs into that idea that gets brought up in 28 that this is more a reflection of Peter’s character and the concept of divine grace, rather than Tony. Don’t get me wrong, I love Tony. But Violet Rain I think is more of a Peter fic 😄 And… just in the directions things ended up going in, that climactic moment centres more on Peter’s character and concepts of forgiveness rather than revenge.

Their relationship probably does have another 100k words to go to get to a stable place… but umm… we can follow up on this after 29 and 30 are posted 😂

-yo yo just read ch28 of violet rain and like i think this is the first chapter in months that did NOT send my blood pressure through the roof so thank you for that lol. just absolutely incredible what a rollercoaster this has been you should do something fun to celebrate when you get to the end of this fic!

i loved Tony's coma visions of his family and his conversation with Ben. in my opinion it was absolutely spot on - peter didn't save tony because of who tony is, he saved Tony because of who he (peter) is. and that's true grace! nice! like everyone else, i ADORED the cuddling. i like to think that despite everything some part of tony and peter realises that there's this unacknowledged potential & burgeoning chemistry between them. if they had only met under different circumstances...*heart eyes*

also i find violet rain amazing because I feel I could be fine with an ending where Tony annuls the marriage & leaves, then Peter just happily rules Arachne, the end! and they're both like, ok, that was a crazy few months, guess i was kind of attracted to you, occasionally felt a weird connection with you, but never mind lol. meanwhile i, the starker-shipping reader, crumbles into a pile of ashes haha. but that ending would absolutely make sense and be fine! i need to ramble more about this

i'm just so invested in violet rain's ending because like I said, i think it could go either way & make perfect sense. i was just imagining an epilogue where Tony and Peter get word of each other's re-marriage/engagement, Tony to some nice noblewoman & Peter to some nice duke/soldier, & they're both like, oh,that's nice! congratulations & there's some weird unexpected wistfulness & mixed feelings but ultimately acceptance, so it's one of those bittersweet endings that haunts readers FOREVER lmao

I'm so sorry for the spam and ramblings from my imagination haha. I just can't remember the last time I was so invested in a fic! ch28 was such a welcome change of pace for me and my heart rate lol compared to the last i don't know how many chapters! i absolutely love peter refusing to leave Tony for even a second. is it just because he's the only one with the required medical expertise? or also for other, subconscious reasons he's left unexamined? regardless, it made my shipper heart happy!

Yeah, I was quite adamant that 28 not end on a big cliffhanger/scary moment. I didn’t even really want to mention the annulment again, I wanted the end of 28 to just be soft and sweet between the boys. But, part of Tony’s little moral shift involved mentioning the annulment. And I didn’t want it to be forgotten about when it comes up again, so my beta and I added a beat right at the end of 28 which mentions it.

I am so happy you liked Tony’s dreams/visions/whatever-they-actually-were lol 😅 Originally, Ben was kinda weirdly-nice to Tony and my betareader ended up pushing for a harsher tone, which I think ended up working out GREAT. Because, the dreams needed to read as EITHER an ethereal/paranormal experience for Tony OR as Tony’s subconscious speaking to himself, what would Tony think these people will say/do.

“If they had met under different circumstances” is really the kicker, isn’t it? I have an ex who I often think of as being ‘the right person at the wrong time’. He very well could have been the absolute-endgame-love-of-my-life. He was effortless for me: we had many of the same values, many of the same interests, we were compatible in many ways, etc. But I think that endgame would only have existed if we’d met differently and once we were older. Now, he and I never hurt one another as egregiously as Tony hurts Peter or anything like that. But it’s very hard to walk away from so much potential just because the timing or setting or external factors didn’t work out.

And honestly? You just being on board with a non-Starker ending? 🥺🥺 That makes me so soft. I’m glad the direction of the story fits and the thought of that tiny bit of heartbreak-wistful-but-still-satisfying-happyish-ending is actually exactly what I’m going for (though, spoiler alert, your proposal here isn’t how it ends 😅) It’s something bittersweet; acknowledging that a lot of pain and heartbreak has occurred but still finding a way to move forward. They have a lot of life left to live, after all!

I’m a big fan of the artist Sleeping at Last and his songs Three and Light have been on my mind a lot as I draft the end of the fic. Three has a whole thing about past regrets and doing enough to make up for them, even though humans are automatically worthy of love/grace/etc.

Please never ever apologise for talking to me about this fic. As you can tell from this reply (which I actually pared down, lmao) I have SO much to talk about regarding my own life, this fic, different scenes, the brainstorming/drafting/re-brainstorming/re-drafting/revising process, etc. I think once I’m done I’m gonna write up a really big reflection for myself and there’s no doubt in my mind it’ll be like ten thousand words lmao.

And as for Peter staying by Tony’s side: Peter Parker’s a control freak 😂 Part of it is that he has the most expertise, but he also mentions in Ch. 28 that if he did go sleep somewhere else then he wouldn’t be able to sleep because he’d be worried about Tony. So, there is indeed something subconscious keeping him by Tony’s side in addition to his perceived obligation as a doctor (he did the same thing with Rhodey in Chs. 7-8.)

I really really hope the end of the fic holds up my end of the bargain to you and other readers with this whole crazy adventure❤️❤️❤️ I’m not sure right now when 29 and 30 will be up, but I can’t wait for you to read them ❤️❤️❤️

#grace talks #asks #blutterlie #under a violet rain

3 notes · View notes